Time Travel Omnibus, page 236
He detached Helen’s arms gently. “My dear,” he said inanely, “imagine finding you here.”
“Imagine finding you here,” she retorted. “Why, professor—you’re crying!”
“Oh, no; not at all,” he said hastily, and turned to Monroe. “It’s good to see you, too, Robert.”
“That goes double for me, doc,” Monroe agreed.
The leader said something to Monroe. He answered her rapidly in their tongue, and turned to Frost. “Doctor, this is my elder sister, Margri, Actoon Margri—Major Margri, you might translate it roughly.”
“She has been very kind to me,” said Frost, and bowed to her, acknowledging the introduction. Margri clapped her hands smartly together at the waist and ducked her head, features impassive.
“She gave the salute of equals,” explained Robert-Igor. “I translated the title doctor as best I could, which causes her to assume that your rank is the same as hers.”
“What should I do?”
“Return it.”
Frost did so as best he might, but awkwardly.
DR. FROST brought his two erstwhile students up to “date”—using a term which does not apply, since they were now on a different time axis. His predicament with the civil authorities brought a cry of dismay from Helen. “Why, you poor thing! How awful of them!”
“Oh, I wouldn’t say so,” protested Frost. “It was reasonable, so far as they knew. But I’m afraid I can’t go back.”
“You don’t need to,” Igor assured him. “You’re more than welcome here.”
“Perhaps I can help out in your war.
“Perhaps—but you’ve already done more than anyone here by what you’ve enabled me to do. We are working on it now.” He swung his arm in a gesture which took in the whole room.
Igor, it was explained, had been detached from combat duty and assigned to staff work in order to make available Earth techniques. Helen was helping him. “Nobody believes my story but my sister,” he admitted, “but I’ve been able to show them enough for them to realize that what I’ve got is important, so they’ve given me a free hand and are practically hanging over my shoulder, waiting to see what we can produce. I’ve already got them started on a pursuit plane and a 37-millimeter semiautomatic gun to arm it.”
Frost expressed surprise. How could so much be done so fast? Were the time rates different? Had Helen and Igor crossed over many weeks before, figured along this axis?
No, he was told, but Igor’s countrymen, though lacking many Earth techniques, were far ahead of Earth in manufacturing skill. They used a single general type of machine to manufacture almost anything. They fed into it a plan which Igor called, for want of a better term, the blueprints. It was, in fact, a careful scale model of the device to be manufactured; the machine retooled itself and produced the artifact. A three-dimensional pantograph, Igor called the machine, vaguely and inaccurately. One of them was, at that moment, molding the bodies of fighting planes out of plastic, all in one piece and in one operation.
Igor’s engineering colleagues had rejected the Earth-type reciprocating engines as being too complex and too inefficient, and had substituted a modified gas engine of their own design which worked on the reaction principle, using a blast of gas as in a turbine. It had no moving parts.
“We are going to arm these jobs with both the stasis ray and the one-pounders,” said Igor. “Freeze ’em and then shoot the damn things down while they are out of control.”
They talked a few minutes longer, but Frost could see that Igor was getting fidgety. He guessed the reason, and asked to be excused. Igor seized on the suggestion. “We will see you a little later,” he said with marked relief. “I’ll have some one dig up some quarters for you. We are pretty rushed. War work—I know you’ll understand.”
Frost fell asleep that night planning how he could help his two young friends, and their friends, in their struggle.
BUT it did not work out that way. His education had been largely academic rather than practical; he soon discovered that the reference books which Igor and Helen had brought along were so much Greek to him—worse than that; he understood Greek. He was accorded all honor and a: comfortable living because of Igor’s affirmation that he had been the indispensable agent whereby this planet had received the invaluable new weapons, but he soon realized that for the job at hand he was useless, not even fit to act as an interpreter.
He was just a harmless nuisance, a pensioner—and he knew it.
And the underground life was getting on his nerves. The ever-present light bothered him. He had an unallocated fear of radioactivity, born of ignorance, and Igor’s reassurances did not stifle the fear. The war depressed him. He was not temperamentally cut out to stand up under the nervous tension of war. His helplessness to aid in the war effort, his lack of companionship, and his idleness, all worked to increase his malaise.
He wandered into Igor and Helen’s workroom one day, hoping for a moment’s chat if they were not too busy. They were not. Igor was pacing up and down; Helen followed him with worried eyes.
Frost cleared his throat. “Uh—I say, something the matter?”
Igor nodded, answered, “Quite a lot,” and dropped back into his preoccupation.
“It’s like this,” said Helen. “In spite of the new weapons, things are still going against us. Igor is trying to figure out what to try next.”
“Oh, I see. Sorry.” He started to leave.
“Don’t go. Sit down.” He did so, and started mulling the matter over in his mind. It was annoying, very annoying!
“I am afraid I’m not very much use to you,” he said at last to Helen. “Too bad Howard Jenkins isn’t here.”
“I don’t suppose it matters,” she answered. “We have the cream of modern Earth engineering in these books.”
“I don’t mean that. I mean Howard, as he is where he’s gone. They had a little gadget there in the future called a blaster. I gathered that it was a very powerful weapon indeed.”
Igor caught some of this and whirled around. “What was it? How did it work?”
“Why, really,” said Frost, “I can’t say. I’m not up on such things, you know. I gathered that it was sort of a disintegrating ray.”
“Can you sketch it? Think, man, think!”
Frost tried. Presently he stopped and said, “I’m afraid this isn’t any good. I don’t remember clearly, and anyhow, I don’t know anything about the inside of it.”
Igor sighed, sat down and ran his hand through his hair.
After some minutes of gloomy silence, Helen said, “Couldn’t we go get it?”
“Eh? How’s that? How would you find him?”
“Could you find him, professor?”
Frost sat up. “I don’t know,” he said slowly, “but I’ll try!”
THERE WAS the city. Yes, and there was the same gate he had passed through twice before. He hurried on.
Star Light was glad to see him, but not particularly surprised. Frost wondered if anything could surprise this dreamy girl. But Howard more than made up for her lack of enthusiasm. He pounded Frost’s back hard enough to cause pleurisy. “Welcome home, master! Welcome home! I didn’t know whether or not you would ever come, but we are ready for you. I had a room built for you, and you alone, in case you ever showed up. What do you think of that? You are to live with us, you know. No sense in ever going back to that grubby school.”
Frost thanked him, but added, “I came on business. I need your help urgently.”
“You do? Well, tell me, man; tell me!”
Frost explained. “So you see, I’ve got to take the secret of your blaster back to them. They need it. They must have it.”
“And they shall have it,” agreed Howard.
Some time later the problem looked more complicated. Try as he would, Frost was simply not able to soak up the technical knowledge necessary to be able to take the secret back. The pedagogical problem presented was as great as if an untutored savage were to be asked to comprehend radio engineering sufficiently to explain to engineers unfamiliar with radio how to build a major radio station. And Frost was by no means sure that he could take a blaster with him through the country of time.
“Well,” said Howard at last, “I shall simply have to go with you.”
Star Light, who had listened quietly, showed her first acute interest. “Darling! You must not—”
“Stop it!” said Howard, his chin set stubbornly, “This is a matter of obligation and duty. You keep out of it.”
Frost felt the acute embarrassment one always feels when forced to overhear a husband and wife having a difference of opinion.
When they were ready, Frost took Howard by the wrist. “Look me in the eyes,” he said. “You remember how we did it before?”
Howard was trembling. “I remember. Master, do you think you can do it—and not lose me?”
“I hope so,” said Frost; “now relax.”
THEY GOT BACK to the chamber from which Frost had started, a circumstance which Frost greeted with relief. It would have been awkward to have to cross half a planet to find his friends. He was not sure yet just how the spatial dimensions fitted into the time dimensions. Some day he would have to study the matter, work out an hypothesis and try to check it.
Igor and Howard wasted little time on social amenities. They were deep into engineering matters before Helen had finished greeting the professor.
At long last—“There,” said Howard, “I guess that covers everything. I’ll leave my blaster for a model. Any more questions?”
“No,” said Igor, “I understand it, and I’ve got every word you’ve said recorded. I wonder if you know what this means to us, old man? It unquestionably will win the war for us.”
“I can guess,” said Howard. “This little gadget is the mainstay of our system-wide pax. Ready, doctor? I’m getting kinda anxious.”
“But you’re not going, doctor?” cried Helen. It was both a question and a protest.
“I’ve got to guide him back,” said Frost.
“Yes,” Howard confirmed, “but he is staying to live with us. Aren’t you, master?”
“Oh, no!” It was Helen again.
Igor put an arm around her. “Don’t coax him,” he told her. “You know he has not been happy here. I gather that Howard’s home would suit him better. If so, he’s earned it.”
Helen thought about it, then came up to Frost, placed both hands on his shoulders, and kissed him, standing on tiptoe to do so. “Good-by, doc,” she said in a choky voice, “or anyhow, au revoir!”
He reached up and patted one of her hands.
FROST lay in the sun, letting the rays soak into his old bones. It was certainly pleasant here. He missed Helen and Igor a little, but he suspected that they did not really miss him. And life with Howard and Star Light was more to his liking. Officially, he was tutor to their children, if and when. Actually, he was just as lazy and useless as he had always wanted to be, with time on his hands. Time—time.
There was just one thing that he would have liked to have known: What did Sergeant Izowski say when he looked up and saw that the police wagon was empty? Probably thought it was impossible.
It did not matter. He was too lazy and sleepy to care. Time enough for a little nap before lunch. Time enough—
Time.
THE END.
THE MAN WHO SAW THROUGH TIME
Leonard Raphael
Gary Fraxer went into the future and saw something that must not happen. So he came back with a plan to prevent a future crime
“IT will be soon,” Walter Yale told himself for the fiftieth time. “It must be soon now.”
He was very tired. His eyelids were as swollen as Hitler’s chest, and his head felt like London after an all-night bombing. But he gritted his teeth and kept staring out of the window, looking at the place where Gary Fraxer should soon appear.
For months the two had been working out on the desert, sleeping all day when the sun shone brightest and working hard all through the cool nights. They used an old shack for their laboratory.
The little wooden building was the only structure in sight on the broad expanse of desert.
That was one of the reasons they had chosen this spot. They had wanted a place where no one would disturb them. So they had come out here and pretended to be doing astronomical observation. Actually, they were perfecting a time machine.
It had been Fraxer’s idea originally.
“You see,” he had said, “all we need is a machine which can travel in the fourth dimension; a machine that will take a person through time. According to Einstein, time travels in a curved line. This machine would not only move ahead, but would take a short-cut from one point in the line, the present, to another, the future.”
They had slaved over the machine until they were exhausted, but neither of them had any intention of giving up. And then, one night when they were both bleary-eyed from loss of sleep and overwork, the machine had been completed.
IT was a complicated mass of machinery which would have bewildered anyone but its creators. To them, however, each lever, each nut and bolt was familiar. They looked at it for a little while, hardly believing it was done at last.
Walter Yale put into words the thought that was in both their minds.
“Who tries it?” he questioned hoarsely.
Gary Fraxer passed a nervous hand over the heavy stubble on his chin.
“I guess it’s all mine,” he said. “Guess again. You’re thinking that this experiment with time is too dangerous, and you don’t want me to risk my life. No, you’ve done enough already. This time I’m going to take the chance.”
“I should be the one,” protested Fraxer. “After all you wouldn’t be much use to Carol Lewis if you were stranded somewhere in the future.”
“Quit kidding. We both love Carol, and she cares for you as much as for me. She’d be just as sorry if you were lost. We can’t tell who she’ll finally choose for a husband, so that’s no reason for your going.”
“Well,” said Fraxer, “you can’t blame a guy for trying. What about flipping a coin?”
“You’re too lucky at that. I’ve got a better idea.”
He pointed to a cockroach crawling along a crack in the table.
“If the cockroach crawls toward you, you go. If it comes to me, I go.”
“Fair enough.”
The two men bent over the table, watching the insect intently. The insect paused; then, attracted by a stray crumb of bread, crawled slowly toward Fraxer.
Fraxer smiled.
“Looks like my luck holds out even in this.”
The two men wheeled the machine outside, and Fraxer climbed up into the seat. He put his hand on the lever. “Well, here I go.”
He pulled back sharply. There was a sudden buzzing and whirling of wheels, and then the machine was gone.
NOW Yale was sitting on the edge of the bed, waiting. Fraxer had been gone over twelve hours. Despite his resolve to keep awake, Yale started to nod sleepily.
He was half-asleep when the door suddenly banged open. Yale started, instantly wide awake, as Gary Fraxer came walking in.
“What happened?” burst out Yale. “What did you find? Is the machine all right?”
“I found plenty. As for the machine, that’s resting about a thousand years in the future. I fixed that as soon as I got back.” There was a strained, half-hysterical note in Fraxer’s voice.
Yale jumped up from the little cot.
“What’s wrong?”
“Keep back.”
A gun sprang from Fraxer’s holster like a live thing. Yale looked at his partner in amazement:
“Have you gone completely out of your mind?”
At that moment Fraxer did look like a madman. His face was twisted into a mask of hate, the eyes shining like cold bits of glass, the mouth a mere slash of red.
“No, I’m not insane. But I’d be crazy to pass up an opportunity like this. You’re the only man in the world who stands between Carol Lewis and myself.”
“What’s she got to do with this?”
“Quite a bit in an indirect way. Except for the fact that you’re still alive, she’d marry me. So you’re not going to go on living. I’ll fix that.”
Walter Yale stared unbelievingly at the man with the leveled gun. It took him a little while to realize that Gary Fraxer, the man he had trusted above all others, was going to kill him. This wasn’t really happening, he tried to tell himself, it was a dream, a nightmare.
But you couldn’t fit that steady gun or that white, set face into a dream.
“It’s that damned time machine,” said Yale. “Traveling in it must have affected your mind.”
At the mention of the time machine, the gun in Fraxer’s hand wavered ever so slightly. Walter Yale’s hand moved a little closer to the drawer of the table.
“Hold it,” said Fraxer, and his voice was cold, hard. He reached over, opened the drawer, and laid the revolver in it on the top of the table.
“You’ll be put on trial for murder,” said Yale, staring at it, “and probably be convicted. Even if they don’t find you guilty, Carol would never marry a man suspected of killing me.”
“No one will suspect anything,” said Fraxer confidently. “Two graduate students who are very close friends go out into the desert to do some research work in astronomy. One of them—you, Walter—happens to wander off and is lost forever. Too bad, but other men have died in the desert. There will be no trial. People will sympathize with me because I have lost a friend, not condemn me for killing him.”
YALE racked his brains for a plan of escape. He could think of nothing. There was the revolver Fraxer had inexplicably placed on the table, but he wouldn’t have a ghost of a chance to get it before the other fired. And one shot was all Fraxer ever needed to hit his mark.
“So it’s going to be murder in cold blood, is it?”
“Not quite that. You’ll have three counts during which you can try to get to that gun on the table. When you reach, I fire.”
“That’s not much more than murder!”
“I won’t argue the point,” said Fraxer impatiently. “We’ve done enough talking.”
