Time Travel Omnibus, page 190
Thalma turned to him, and there was compassion, pity, in her eyes.
“Ran is dead, Jarcka. He gave his life for me, when Marnota attempted to murder me.”
Jarcka staggered, as if a physical blow had struck him, and then was straight, stalwart as before.
“It is high time to put an end to Marnota’s crimes. Let us proceed, Salom.”
A sigh gusted through the group. They started toward the tunnel entrance. Thalma barred their way.
“Stop! You cannot go through. The tunnel is blocked.”
“But you have come through it.”
Thalma told them what had happened. When she had finished there was silence for a moment. Then Salom made a hopeless gesture.
“It was our last, desperate hope. Now America is lost indeed. Tomorrow morning Marnota will appear in court to demand immediate title to your half of the company. Under the law it must be given him and—” Again his gesture took the place of words.
“Tomorrow! Where, Salom?”
“In the Federal Court, before judge Layton. Layton is on our side, but he is bound by the law. He will have to—”
“You forgot that I am alive. The law is on our side now.”
“Marnota will defy the law. He will not retreat now. He has the power—and he will use it.”
“No!” Thalma’s clear voice rang out, and she was living flame in that dim chamber, her face aglow with a light that was somehow blinding. “He has the power. But we have right on our side. Salom. Jarcka. Take me to a safe hiding place. We have all night to think. To plan. We shall find a way to defeat him.”
“Impossible,” someone muttered. “He is too powerful.”
“OYEZ, oyez, oyez. The court is open!” In ten centuries the immemorial formula had not changed. On the wall above the long, ornately carved bench still was pictured the ancient representation of the blindfolded goddess, with her balanced scales. The justice, in his high-backed chair, still wore the ancient black robes. Judge Layton was a short, slender man, stooped a little under the weight of his years and learning. His jaw was grim-set as he surveyed the scene below him.
The row upon row of chairs that filled the courtroom were occupied, every one, by hard-visaged men who wore the green of Marnota’s cohorts. Each held, ready in his hand, the black cylinder of his ray-gun, and the eyes of each was fastened immovably on the countenance of his master.
Marnota sat at the counsel table, his bearing that of a monarch deigning to appear before his subjects. There was an aura of power, of dominance, about him, and in the sharp blackness of his eyes there was a glow of triumph. Overflowing the seat beside him, the flabby, bulging contours of him gross and sensual, was Rants, head of the Adams Company’s legal forces.
At the other end of the long table Salom sat, his face an imperturbable mask. Save for the clerk of the court at his desk, and a single attendant policeman contrasting ludicrously with Marnota’s armed display, he was alone. He seemed the leader of a forlorn hope, checking for the last of innumerable times the disposition of the enemy and his sparse preparations for battle.
He glanced at the huge, bronze entrance portal, at the small door behind the bench that led to Layton’s chambers. And, finally at two screened openings in the ceiling, openings that Dunning might have identified, had he been present, as the voice outlets for the communication system of this twenty-fourth century world.
“The matter of the settlement of the estate of Thantala of the House of Adams.” Judge Layton’s voice was thin and quavering. “Any motions?” Ranta rose with a mock bow.
“Your Honor.” His mellow accents filled the great chamber. “I appear for Marnota of the House of Adams, brother of the decedent and his sole surviving kin. We move that the title to all property of the estate be vested in us.”
Salom was on his feet.
“Your Honor, I appear to oppose this motion.”
“Representing whom?”
“Representing Thalma of the House of Adams, daughter of the decedent.”
A little rustle passed through the great room.
“I object,” Ranta thundered. “Thalma of the House of Adams is dead. No attorney can represent a dead person?”
Salom’s voice remained calm and low. “I submit, your Honor, that the death of my client has not been proved before the court. The presumption is, therefore, that she continues to live. I move that the guardianship of Marnota of the House of Adams over the body and goods of my client, as set up by the decedent’s will, be declared at an end, and that title to the property of the estate be vested in my client.”
Ranta riposted, quickly.
“We have submitted affidavits from several persons who state definitely that a stratocar, in which Thalma of the House of Adams was known to be, was seen by them to explode in the air above the Pacific Ocean. We have the affiants in court and are ready to produce them.”
JUDGE LAYTON turned again to Salom.
“That seems to settle the matter, counselor. Do you demand that these witnesses be placed on the stand?”
“That will not be necessary, your Honor. I can prove the existence of my client to the court’s satisfaction.”
“I defy you to,” Ranta roared. “You cannot prove what is not true!”
Salom’s voice never rose.
“I can prove Thalma of the House of Adams to be alive.”
The lawyer turned, and pointed to the massive entrance doors. As if his gesture were a signal, they started to swing slowly open. Eternity seemed to pass as the space between the huge bronze leaves widened. Salom’s quiet words thudded into a deathly silence.
“Your Honor, Thalma of the House of Adams.”
A slim figure stood in the aperture. The paleness of Thalma’s set face matched her white garment. Only her eyes were alive, darkly grey, as they sought and held Marnota’s gaze.
The crack of the judge’s gavel cut short a rising murmur.
“The motion of Marnota of the House of Adams is denied. I grant—”
“Stop!” Marnota’s cry cut short the words. He was on his feet. As if at an unvoiced command his helots had also risen. “I’ve had enough of this farce. What you grant or deny is no concern of mine.”
“What do you mean?”
“You and your law have no power over me. My men have surrounded the White House, have invested every army barracks, every police headquarters, in the nation.” He raised his right arm high above his head: “When my arm drops, the signal will be flashed, and the government whose law you administer will be at an end. From now on I am the law!”
“Marnota!” Thalma’s voice rang sharply from the door. “Marnota! You will never give that signal!”
The bronze doors clanged, shutting her out. Swift action exploded in the courtroom. Salom, with agility beyond his years, lifted himself over the barrier, and leaped to the little door behind the judge’s seat through which Layton, the clerk and the lone attendant had already darted. A roaring sound filled the chamber.
At first like the growling of some vast impending cataclysm, it shot higher and higher in pitch. In seconds it was a shrill scream, slashing at the nerves of the imprisoned Marnota and his helots, invading their quivering brains with needling pain. Then there was no longer any appreciable sound. But Marnota, feeling thin agony whipping through his body, knew that the vibrations still kept on, high above the upper limit of human hearing.
At the great bronze door, at the smaller exit through which Salom had escaped, frantic knots of green-clad men worked with their ray-tubes to force an escape. Some, deprived of reason by the searching torture of the unheard sound, clawed maniacally at the unyielding metal. A pandemonium of curiously muffled shouts burst out.
As the myriad cells of tortured bodies shattered into dissolution under the inexorable, destroying vibrations that unceasingly poured out of the communication discs in the ceiling, cylinders dropped from palsied hands, legs crumpled. The courtroom was a tremendous shambles of writhing, dying humanity.
THE invisible, inaudible, vibration of vengeance kept on. Marnota, still holding himself erect by the force of the tremendous, twisted will that had been his undoing; his face empurpled by the bursting capillaries of his skin, his eyes dark pools of torment; glared through a blurring haze the heaving, dying mass that had been the flower of his army. He strove to speak, but the cords of his throat refused his bidding. Slowly, with a defiance still radiant from his pain-wracked form, he slid to the floor. The arm that was to have given the signal for flashup flung out, quivering—There was not the least stirring of any form in all that crowded room.
Thalma’s eyes held no jubilance, nor Dunning’s as they stood in the doorway of that courtroom that was a tomb. After a while they turned silently away.
“Just what happened, Thalma? I know that you arranged with your secret adherents to have some kind of machinery connected with the communication system that led into the courtroom and turned on at your cue. But I can’t understand how it could have done—that.”
The girl’s voice was very very weary.
“Some time in the twentieth century it was discovered that bacteria in milk could be killed by using sound waves above the upper limit of audibility. This process was extended to other foods, but when it was attempted to cure disease by the method, it was found that while the pathogenic bacteria were killed by the vibrations, the patient, also, was killed, or injured.
“What we did was simply to connect the sound-sterilization machinery of the Central Milk Plant with the communication system of the courtroom, and turn the tremendously amplified vibrations into the courtroom.”
Jim Dunning was silent again for long minute.
“You’re safe now, Thalma, and all the great power of the Adams Company is yours,” he said finally. “You can carry out all your father’s plans, unhindered, and make this country a paradise.”
The girl’s voice was very soft.
“If it hadn’t been for you that could not have come to pass. I should still be—lost in time.” Silence, again; and at last she spoke. “It’s a great responsibility, Jim. Will you help me?”
In the grey eyes that looked into his Dunning read something that thrilled him. He knew that the world was theirs—for always.
OTHER TRACKS
William Sell
A new author gives as a true MUTANT—Astounding’s second new-concept story—of Time. A man had to have a tool more powerful than anything made today. He had a time machine. But—it wouldn’t go futureward!
CAUTIOUSLY, Tom Garmot set his foot down on the board. That was the one. It squeaked. Garmot removed his foot hastily and stepped on the next one. He eased the compact, heavy case to the floor with a suppressed grunt, and, silent in the dim glow from the street lamp outside the locked laboratory, motioned to Charlie Thorne, his nephew, to deposit the similar case he carried.
Garmot slipped a key into the lock on the door marked “Dr. William R. Laddo. Electronic Research Department. Taggert Foundation.”
“If,” said Garmot softly, but intensely, “Laddo shows up by some mischance, I hope you’ve got as persuasive a tongue with him as you had with me.”
Thorne chuckled almost silently. “You know darn well you wanted to try out that battery of yours. You didn’t take much persuading.”
“Laddo’ll take a lot if he finds me trying my battery on his pet gadget. Come on, and skip that board.”
They oozed into the laboratory and locked the door. Being designed to permit the observation of experiments on light during daylight hours, it was admirably adapted to night invasion. Garmot turned on the ceiling light. Thorne put down the battery cases with a mild snort. “It’s an un-handsome looking assemblage of spare parts.”
“But if it does what Laddo wants it to——!”
“If.” Thorne grinned. “He shouldn’t kick. If your new battery has the kick you say——”
“It has,” snapped Garmot. Then, mournfully, “And Laddo has even more kick if he finds his honest, trustworthy assistant messing around here at night.”
“His great theory won’t work unless he gets a battery with power enough. I’d love to see him driving his apparatus from the power mains while it gradually retreated in the general direction of the Year One. The power mains don’t run in that direction. And, from what you say, the lead-acid batteries he has won’t, either. What’s his kick if yours makes it work?”
Garmot grinned unhappily. “You,” he explained, “don’t know Laddo. He’s not vicious, just sarcastic. Cut the chatter and help me. These cells are heavy. Yes—that lead here. Put the old cell——Oh, ye gods! I forgot! He had these cells made up by a French firm, and they put a left-hand thread on the posts. Can’t be helped. I’ll have to use a jumper.”
“Now what?” demanded Thorne.
“The skylight. We go out that way—straight up. If we go. And we go only straight up and down. You argued me into trying it this far, but you can argue Laddo if you want a ride through Time. Open the skylight, and pile in here.”
The two men crawled in among the maze of stainless-steel tube framework, power leads, and small motors and tubes. Garmot touched a switch, and four small motors hummed momentarily; four helicopter blades overhead rocked the framework. He turned on a small instrument light, snapped off the overhead light, and reentered the machine.
“Everything looks O.K. Are you ready?”
“Sure. Give her the gun.”
GARMOTt pushed the control, and a hum arose from below the floor boards. As it increased to a whine, they could feel they were ascending. Before he could cut down the power they were several hundred feet above the laboratory, dimly white below them.
“Man, this is great,” said Thorne. “I hope you know how to get down.”
“Sure. We just cut the power off gradually and she’ll settle right down. It works all right, doesn’t it? I knew my batteries would do it. You can see all over town from here, can’t you?”
“Yeah. But why do you have to get up in the air before you go ahead in Time? I forgot to ask you at the house.”
“Suppose we went ahead in Time and there was something solid in the way? What would happen to us? This way we get above all possible obstructions, and if we went to the year Five Thousand, say, all we’d have to do would be to float gently to the ground when we got there.”
“I see. And which is the lever that would send us to the year Five Thousand?”
“This one. But keep your fingers away. If you touch it, there’s no telling—ugh.”
Charlie, in his examination, had, perhaps inadvertently, pushed the lever slightly to the left.
A sudden slight compression, totally beyond past experience, momentarily seized them, evidence of acceleration into another dimension. Garmot was too surprised to do anything but gasp. But immediately he realized what had happened, and forced himself to bring the lever back to neutral. Compression gave way to expansion. Then they felt normal.
“Lord, Charlie, what have you done?”
“I guess I touched the lever a little. We seem to be all right, though. There is the lab right below us.”
“Yes, and I’m going down. Keep away from the levers.”
Tom cut the power down and the machine slowly descended. But Charlie, looking over the side, called excitedly.
“Stop it, Tom. Somebody has closed the skylight. Hey—there’s no skylight there!”
Garmot hastily turned on power until the machine again hovered, and cautiously ventured a look. Charlie was right. There was no skylight for them to enter.
“We’ll have to land on the ground and figure this out,” he decided. Operating other controls, he guided the machine uncertainly to the apparently deserted lawn. With a slight jar it touched the ground. He cut off the power.
“Can’t afford to exhaust the battery staying in the air,” he explained to Charlie, who was uncommonly quiet. “Now, let’s see,” he went on, “what we are up against.”
Charlie touched his arm. “Shhh,” he warned, “somebody’s coming.”
AROUND a clump of shrubbery a dark figure approached. In the darkness, the two adventurers kept silent. Perhaps he would pass without noticing them. But no. Turning his flashlight toward them, he called, “What have we got here?”
Tom nudged Charlie. “Keep quiet, kid.” To the visitor he said, “Just an accident. Our machine made a forced landing here.”
“Well, I’m the watchman here.” Tom was surprised. The laboratory hadn’t employed a watchman since he’d been there. “What sort of a machine have you got? I never saw an airplane as small as that before. Where’d you come from?”
“This is an experimental job, officer,” Tom told him. “Where are we?”
“You’re on the grounds of the Taggert Company.”
“What time is it?”
The watchman turned his flashlight on his watch. “Half past three,” he said. “Charlie, in the glare of the light, had seen a familiar decoration on the watchman’s coat. “I see you’re wearing the Landon sunflower,” he said.
“Yes,” the watchman replied, “they’ll all be wearing sunflowers in November.”
“Hunh?” Charlie ejaculated. “Don’t you know the election has been over for two years?”
The watchman looked at him sourly. “Is that so? Are you sure it was an airfield and not an asylum you came from?”
In spite of Tom’s attempt to hush him, Charlie would go on. “You’re the one who is crazy. Don’t you know all the sunflowers died when Roosevelt was reelected?”
Garmot broke in. “Don’t mind him, officer. He’s kinda hipped on politics.” He turned to Charlie and whispered. “Can it, will you! We’ve traveled back through Time about two years—they haven’t had the election yet. Hold tight. I’m going up.” Then, aloud, “I think the machine is fixed now. Thanks, officer,” and he turned the switch. To the astonished watchman the machine appeared to vanish into the night.
From two hundred feet above, Charlie could see his light searching the lawn. He cupped his hands and yelled down: “Roosevelt will carry every state but Maine and Vermont. Don’t forget it—Maine and Vermont.”
