Time Travel Omnibus, page 216
“It’s the sunspots,” I yelled at him.
“Sunspots?” he squeaked.
“Sure,” I said. “There aren’t any.”
MY HUNCH had been right.
There weren’t any sunspots. No black dots on that great ball of flame.
It had taken two days before we found a pair of powerful field glasses in the rubbish of what once had been a jewelry store. Most of the stores and shops were wiped clean. Raided time after time in the violence which must have followed the breakdown of government, they later would have been looted systematically.
“Herb,” I said, “there must have been something in what Billy said. Lots of sunspots and we have good times. No sunspots and we have bad times.”
“Yeah,” said Herb, “Billy was plenty smart. He knew his science, all right.”
I could almost see Billy, his ears wiggling, his eyes glowing, as he talked to me that morning.
Wall Street followed the sunspot cycle, he had said. Business boomed when sunspots were riding high, went to pot when they blinked out.
I remembered asking him what would happen if someone passed a law against sunspots. And now it seemed that someone had!
It was hard to believe, but the evidence was there. The story lay in those musty files up in the Globe office. Stories that told of the world going mad when business scraped rock bottom. Of governments smashing, of starving hordes sweeping nation after nation.
I put my head down between my hands and groaned. I wanted a glass of beer. The kind Louie used to push across the bar, cool and with a lot of foam on top. And now there wasn’t any beer. There hadn’t been for centuries. All because of sunspots!
Ultraviolet light Endocrine glands and human behavior. Words that scientists rolled around in their mouths and nobody paid much attention to. But they were the things that had played the devil with the human race.
Herb chuckled behind me. I swung around on him, my nerves on edge.
“What’s the matter with you?” I demanded.
“Boy,” said Herb, “this Wash Tubbs can get himself into some of the damnedest scrapes!”
“What you got there?” I asked, seeing he was reading a paper.
“Oh, this,” he said. “This is that old paper we found up at the office.
The one published in ’85. I’m going to take it back and give it to J.R. But right now I’m reading the funnies—”
I grunted and hunkered down, turning my mind back to the sunspots. It sounded wacky, all right, but that was the only explanation.
It didn’t seem right that a body of matter ninety-three million miles away could rule the lives of mankind—but, after all, all life depended on the Sun. Whiff out the Sun and there wouldn’t be any life. Those old savages who had worshiped the Sun had the right idea.
Say, then, that sunspots had gone out of style. What would happen? Exactly what those files back at the Globe office had shown. Depression, ever deepening. Business failures, more and more men out of work, taxes piling higher and higher as a panicky government fought to hold off the day of reckoning.
I HEARD Herb making some strangling sounds and swung around again. I was getting annoyed with Herb.
But the look on Herb’s face halted the words that were bubbling on my lips. His face was stark. It was white as a sheet and his eyes were frozen wide.
He shoved the paper at me, babbling, a shaking finger pointing at a small item.
I grabbed the sheet and squinted to make out the faded type. Then I read, slowly, but with growing horror:
LANGER DIES
“James Langer, convicted in 1951 of tampering with the time machine in which Mike Hamilton and Herb Harding, Globe newsmen, set out on a flight into the future the preceding year, died in Rocky Point prison today at the age of sixty-five.
“Langer, at his trial, confessed he had bribed the guard placed in charge of the machine, to allow him to enter the plane in which it was installed. There, he testified, he removed that portion of the mechanism which made it possible for the machine to move backward in time.
“Langer, at that time, was an employee of the Standard, which went out of business a few years later.
“National indignation aroused by the incident resulted in the passage by Congress of a law prohibiting further building or experimentation with time machines. Heartbroken, Dr. Ambrose Ackerman, inventor of the machine, died two weeks after the trial.”
I sat numb for a few minutes, my hand tightening in a terrible grip upon the paper, grinding its yellowed pages into flaking shreds.
Then I looked at Herb, and as I looked into his fear-stricken face I remembered something.
“So,” I said, and I was so mad that I almost choked.
“So, you just had a few drinks with the boys that night before we left. You just met up with some Standard boys and had a few.”
I remembered the way Jimmy Langer had laughed in my face as I was leaving the Dutchman’s. I remembered how nervous the guard had been that morning.
“You didn’t spill your guts, did you?” I rasped.
“Look, Mike—” said Herb, getting up off the ground.
“You got drunk, damn you,” I yelled at him, “and your brains ran right out of your mouth. You told that Standard crowd everything you knew. And Old Man Johnson sent Langer out to do the dirty work.”
I was mad, mad clear down to. the soles of my boots.
“Damn you, Mike—” said Herb, and right then I let him have it. I gave him a poke that shook him clear down to the ground, but he came right back at me. Maybe he was mad, too.
He clipped me alongside the jaw and I plastered him over the eye, and after that we went at it hammer and tongs.
Herb wasn’t any slouch with his dukes, and he kept me pretty busy.
I gave him everything I had, but he always came back for more, and he pasted me a few that set my head to ringing.
But I didn’t mind—all I wanted was to give Herb a licking he’d remember right down to the day he breathed his last.
When we quit it was just because neither one of us could fight another lick. We lay there on the ground, _ gasping and glaring at one another. One of Herb’s eyes were closed, and I knew I had lost a couple of teeth and my face felt like it had been run through a meat grinder.
Then Herb grinned at me.
“If I could have stayed on my feet a bit longer,” he gasped, “I’d have murdered you.”
And I grinned back at him.
PROBABLY we should have stayed back in 2450. We had a chance back there. Old Daniel Boone didn’t know too much, but at least he was civilized in a good many ways. And no doubt there still were books, and we might have been able to find other useful things.
We might have made a stab at rebuilding civilization, although the cards would have been stacked against us. For there’s something funny about that sunspot business. When the sunspots stopped rearing around out on the Sun, something seemed to have run out of men—the old double-fisted, hell-for-leather spirit that had taken them up through the ages.
But we figured, that men would make a come-back. We were pretty sure that somewhere up in the future we’d find a race that had started to climb back.
So we went ahead in time. Even if we couldn’t go back, we still could go ahead.
We went five hundred years and found nothing. No trace of Daniel Boone’s descendants. Maybe they’d given up raising squashes and had moved out where the hunting was better. The city still stood, although some of the stones had crumbled and some of the buildings were falling to pieces.
We traveled another five hundred years, and this time a horde of howling savages, men little more advanced than the tribes which roamed over Europe in the old Stone Age, charged out of the ruins at us, screaming and waving clubs and spears.
We just beat them to the plane.
In two thousand years the tribe had disappeared, and in its place we saw skulking figures that slunk among the mounds that once had been a city. Things that looked like men.
And after that we found nothing at all. Nothing, that is, except a skeleton that looked like it might once have been a human being.
Here at last we stop. There’s no use of going farther, and the gas in the tank of our plane is running low.
The city is a heap of earthy mounds, bearing stunted trees. Queer animals shuffle and slink over and among the mounds. Herb says they are mutations—he read about mutations somewhere in a book.
To the west stretch great veldts of waving grass, and across the river the hills are forested with mighty trees.
But Man is gone. He rose, and for a little while he walked the Earth. But now he’s swept away.
Back in 1950, Man thought he was the whole works. But he wasn’t so hot, after all. The sunspots took him to the cleaners. Maybe it was the sunspots in the first place that enabled him to rise up on his hind legs and rule the roost. Billy said that sunspots could do some funny things.
But that doesn’t matter now. Man is just another has-been.
There’s not much left for us to do. Just to sit and think about J.R. rubbing his hands together. And Billy Larson wiggling his ears. And the way Jimmy Langer laughed that night outside the Dutchman’s place.
Right now I’d sell my soul to walk into the Dutchman’s place and say to Louie: “It’s a hell of a world, Louie.”
And hear Louie answer back: “It sure as hell is, Mike.”
THE END.
EQUATION FOR TIME
R.R. Winterbotham
THERE is no one today who has seen a living horse. The creature became extinct a couple of centuries ago, about the year 2,800. Man, who betrayed the horse into what he became, hardly regretted the passing.
However, and I speak with all sincerity, there will be men of the future who will see a horse. Perhaps men of the future may ride horseback like knights and cowboys of the Middle Ages.
The secret of time travel has been discovered. No one has traveled through time as yet, although man has explored the universe for more than twenty light years from the sun. But the day of time travel is not far distant. It had simple beginnings. All great things began in simple ways. Newton and the apple were the beginnings of modern understanding of the laws of the physical world; Watts and the teakettle were the origins of industry and the machine age. A very beautiful young woman and an unscrupulous man were responsible for time travel.
I met the man early in the morning of July 2, 3002. I remember the date because on the day before I had visited in Alexandria, Egypt, and I had eaten dinner in Shanghai, China. It was nearly midnight when I reached the rocket port in Chicago and a jam in the pneumatics delayed my arrival home until nearly one o’clock in the morning.
Blake, fully dressed, met me at the door. There was a worried look in his eyes.
“There is a gentleman to see you, sir,” Blake said. “I explained that you would not return until quite late and I tried to get him to leave, but he said it was urgent that he see you the minute you returned.” Blake glanced over his shoulder toward the library and lowered his voice to a whisper. “I was a little frightened of him, sir. He doesn’t seem quite—ah—quite right, sir, if you know what I mean. Shall I call the police?”
“No, Blake.” I felt confident of licking my weight in madmen and I entered the library.
A tall, distinguished, dark haired gentleman rose to greet me.
“Ah! Dr. Huckins! I was afraid you would not get here in time!”
As he spoke I noticed a peculiar light in his eyes. It seemed to be a reflection from the fluorescent lamps of the library, but it showed a little too much of the whites of his eyes and I thought of what Blake had said about the man not being “quite right.”
I did not feel that I owed him an apology for keeping him waiting, since I usually received visitors by appointment.
“I am Gustav Keeshwar!” he introduced himself. He seemed to expect some reaction, but unfortunately the name meant nothing to me, although if I had paid more attention to the newspapers I would have known who he was at once.
“I am the president of the Stellar Transport Company,” he announced.
As he spoke he glanced secretively about the room, as though he feared an eavesdropper. Then he picked up a brief case which was lying on the table. With no explanation he opened it and pulled out package after package of thousand dollar bills.
“You may count it if you wish,” Keeshwar said. “There are 1,000 bills, each of one thousand dollar denomination. One million dollars in cold cash.”
There are any number of bank presidents who have never seen a million dollars in one pile. Spread out before me, I could scarcely grasp the amount of wealth it represented. As I recall now, my clearest mental reaction was a curiosity about how he managed to tuck it away so neatly in a brief case. Then I wondered if it was real money. A closer glance at the bills convinced me that it was.
Suddenly I came to my senses. I closed the library door and locked it. I glanced nervously at the shades to make sure all were pulled down.
“Great Scott, man, you shouldn’t carry all that money around with you in a brief case!” As I said it, I spoke with the realization that the man was mad.
“I brought the money to you,” Keeshwar said. “It is yours if you will do one thing for me.”
“I must ask you to leave, and to take your money with you,” I said, realizing that I was turning down the ransom of a king. “No honest task ever called for a million dollars compensation—”
“But you have not asked me what I wish you to do!” Keeshwar exploded. “Look! Do you see how much money a million dollars is?”
I do not wish to pose as a man overstocked with principles. A million dollars is more money than I ever hope to see again at one time. But I had a good income, a nice little fortune tucked away in worth while investments. I had a good name and my position in the world was better than average. I did not trust this man. I had a feeling that the million dollars he offered would not be worth the price.
“I am a surgeon,” I said. “If you wish my professional services, I will charge you a reasonable fee.”
“I want your services,” Keeshwar said. “I want them for one day.”
“You may have them. I will send you a bill after I complete the task.”
“I want your services tomorrow,” said Keeshwar, persistently.
I shook my head. “I have a delicate operation scheduled tomorrow. It is an operation I cannot postpone.”
“It is an operation on Trella Mayo?”
I started. “How did you know that?”
“It is this operation that I wish you to perform for me,” Keeshwar said. “Would it not be simple to let your knife slip, or to allow something to happen to her—for one million dollars!”
I do not remember clearly what happened next. I think I knocked the man down. I do remember stuffing his million dollars into his brief case and throwing it after him out of the door.
When I closed the door I was excited and unnerved. I found some sedative tablets and swallowed one. Then I sat down to think. Trella Mayo, beautiful, young and intelligent, a woman in a billion! Someone wanted to kill her.
She was only twenty-eight, yet her discoveries in physics had astounded the world. She might have taken first place in any beauty contest, yet she preferred working in a laboratory with men too old to notice her charms.
Her operation was not serious, except that it involved delicate skill. I resolved that nothing must happen during that operation the following day.
Two weeks later I visited Trella, now convalescing from her operation.
“I’ve wanted to talk to you, Fred,” she said after I had taken her temperature, felt her pulse and gone through the usual ritual.
“I must warn you that I’ll send you a bill for any medical advice I give you,” I replied, laughing.
She smiled only a little and then puckered her brow seriously.
“I wanted to ask you about that operation. Wasn’t it performed under unusual circumstances?”
I was taken by surprise and I am afraid that the truth forced its indications through my professional manner. “Why do you ask?”
“I noticed Blake standing near the door. There seemed to be a bulge in his pocket. It couldn’t have been a gun, could it? And you kept watching, as if you were afraid a tribe of Indians would drop in for a massacre. I wonder if there couldn’t have been a tall, dark gentleman mixed up in these unusual precautions?”
I did not reply.
“And I’ve noticed during my convalescence that the internes that continually hover around my door have a look as if—well, shall I say that they look more like policemen than internes?”
I laughed nervously. “I think you are a mental case, Miss Mayo,” I said. “I shall have to call in a specialist.”
“You do not need to deny it, Fred,” she said. “Why do you suppose I insisted that you perform the operation? Why didn’t I let you call in someone else? It was because you are the only man in the world that I trust, Fred. How much did Gustav Keeshwar offer you to do me in?”
Before I could stop myself I opened my mouth and blurted the truth.
“One million dollars!”
“Whew!” Trella whistled softly. “I’m worth a lot to you! I must be getting close if Keeshwar will pay a million to see me out of the way.”
“Trella,” I pleaded. “What is it all about? What’s behind this mystery?”
“If you turned down a million dollars for my sake, I think I can trust you,” she said. “Supposing I was about to invent a new method of locomotion? Can you see where Keeshwar might find me obnoxious?”
“A new kind of space ship?”
Trella shook her head. “A new kind of locomotion. Animals either swim or walk. Man also uses wheels.”
“He also can fly. So can birds.”
“Flying is simply swimming through the air and crawling, as a worm or snake, is gliding, like swimming. Space ships swim, too, after a fashion. Boats swim through the sea and sleds swim on ice. Therefore we have only three kinds of locomotion: Legs, wheels and sleds. Another might revolutionize everything.”
