Time Travel Omnibus, page 290
Then what had caused it?
I looked around the lab. The place was deserted. There wasn’t a sound, except—I listened again. The back wall of the lab was flush with the alley that ran at the rear. Somebody was hurrying along that alley. I could hear his footsteps. He was—The back door rattled. He was coming in. I ducked down behind a bench. The door opened.
“It got away, Mr. Emerson,” a voice said. “I looked everywhere and I couldn’t find it. Shall I call the police and tell them to be on the lookout for a little horse—Ob!”
The intruder gasped as I got to my feet.
It was Lucy Trent. I had recognized her voice.
“Don! You startled me!” she gasped.
There was one thing that I didn’t want to happen, and another thing that I did. I didn’t want her to see Emerson’s body, and I wanted to get her out of this place—quickly. Apparently she had been working over-time helping the inventor on one of his experiments. Why she was here didn’t matter. The important thing was to get her away as soon as possible.
“Where did you come from?” she asked. My sudden appearance had startled her but she had recovered from her surprise. She smiled. “Is this your night to play jack-in-the-box—What’s the matter, Don? Is something wrong?”
The expression on my face must have warned her that everything was not right.
“Hello, Lucy,” I said. “I came by in the hope that I would still find you here. How about me and you going to dinner, huh?”
I didn’t know whether or not anybody was listening, but I had not forgotten that shadow, and if we had an eavesdropper, I wanted to fool him for a few seconds—long enough to get Lucy out of here. I started toward her.
“Dinner? I’d love it. But, Don—”
“Good,” I said quickly. “Take off that lab smock and we’ll be on our way. Don’t tell me you have to powder your nose. You can do that in the cab.”
If I could help it, she wasn’t getting time to do any thinking. I started to help her take off the smock she was wearing.
“You look beautiful tonight, baby,” I said gayly. “We’ll drop by your apartment so you can change clothes, then we’ll head for bright lights, music, and food. How does that strike you, huh?”
“I’d love it!” Her eyes glistened. “But—where is Mr. Emerson?”
“He went for a walk.”
“HE DID?” There was doubt in her voice. “That’s odd. He said he was going to be very busy tonight. Don, the strangest thing happened a while ago. A little horse wandered right into the lab. At least, I guess it had wandered in. I had gone out to post some letters and when I got back it was here, and Mr. Emerson was trying to catch it. It got out the back door and Mr. Emerson said I should chase it. It was the cutest little thing! You should have seen it.”
“Urn!” I choked over the words. The little horse the cops had caught had been here in the lab! Did that mean anything? “Well, you never can tell where you will find a horse these days!” I said.
“Mr. Emerson said it was a mesohippus,” she continued. She frowned a little then. “I’ve heard of eohippus. Eo means dawn in Greek and eohippus means dawn horse. But mesohippus—Meso means middle in Greek and mesohippus would mean middle horse. But how would a mesohippus get here in Chicago now? They vanished millions of years ago!” She was talking to herself.
I was having heart failure. Not only was there a dead man lying on the floor in this laboratory but I had the strong suspicion that the murderer was not far off. I didn’t want to alarm Lucy if I could help it, but I desperately wanted to get out of this place. At the same time, if the murderer was listening in, I didn’t want him to know that I suspected his presence. That might be all he needed to convince him that he ought to knock us off, too.
“Let’s skip the heavy science for tonight, Lucy. Come on. I’m hungry as a wolf.”
“Just a second and I’ll be ready.” She pulled out a compact and started to inspect her complexion. I groaned. She was an expert laboratory technician, able and willing to talk science by the hour, but she was a woman, too, and she had to be certain that her face was fixed right. I didn’t blame her for that. If I could have told her why I wanted her to hurry, she would have tossed the compact out the window. I suffered agonies before she was ready to go.
“We’ll go out the back,” I said.
She laughed. “So you are walking me through an alley tonight, Don Kelsey?”
“It’s closer that way,” I grumbled. I didn’t want to take her out the door by which I had entered. If we went that way, she would see Emerson. We started toward the back. From somewhere in the quiet laboratory came a soft creak.
Lucy glanced back over her shoulder. Her eyes opened in startled horror and a sudden, convulsive shudder shook her body.
“Don!” she gasped.
I turned around.
There was a third door into the laboratory, an entrance that led directly to the residence in front. When I entered the lab, this door had been closed. It was open now. A shadow stood in front of it.
At least my first dazed impression was that the thing that was standing there staring so intently at us was a shadow. It was so black that it looked like a shadow, but the blackness came from the color of its skin. Except for a broad belt made of linked metal circling the waist, it was naked. It was human; or it had been human millions of years in the past or it would be human millions of years in the future, but its shape was that of a normal human being, except that it was at least seven feet tall.
A black giant seven feet tall, muscled like a superb wrestler! Its head was utterly hairless, as smooth and as black as a bowling ball.
Suspended from the metal belt that circled the waist was a holster of some kind. It was empty now. The weapon—I remember thinking it looked like a gun straight out of Buck Rogers—that belonged in the holster was pointing straight at us.
“WHO the devil are you?” I gasped.
“Do not move,” the giant answered. “If you obey me, you will live. If you disobey me, I will treat you as I treated him.” A flick of the weapon pointed toward the spot where Emerson was lying.
In so many words, this giant admitted that he had killed the inventor. Lucy looked in the direction in which this black beast had pointed and for the first time she saw Emerson. She cried out and started toward him.
The weapon in the giant’s hand centered directly on her. He was utterly casual about it. He had told us not to move and she had moved. He was going to destroy her.
I grabbed her.
“Don! Mr. Emerson is hurt.”
“He’s worse than hurt, he’s dead. And we’ll be dead too, if we don’t do what this devil says!” I gritted. “Keep quiet and don’t move.”
The tone of my voice shocked her into obedience. Poor kid, she had not realized our danger. She had not realized there was any danger. I wiped sweat from my face and turned back to the giant. He was calmly regarding us. If we had been two bugs under a microscope, he could not have been more detached in his manner.
“I recognize the instinctive tendency,” he said, in a satisfied tone of voice. “It is the urge of the male to protect the female in time of danger.”
One moment he was about to kill us; the next moment he was analyzing our emotions.
“W—what?” I gasped.
He looked at me and I had the impression that he was probing to the depths of my mind. There was a hypnotic quality about his gaze that held me spellbound. When he had finished his scrutiny, he ignored my question.
“I require to speak to a person by the name of Garr!” he said. “Bring him to me!”
“Garr!”
“Certainly. Bring him to me.”
“Bring him to you!” I floundered. “How?”
“By the use of your mind, of course. Call him.”
I didn’t know what to say. This giant seemed to have the impression that I could send out some kind of a mental impulse which Garr would hear and come running to answer. I was already in a daze. This idea of summoning a person by the use of the mind was merely another mad fact that, to me, had no meaning. When I said I couldn’t do it, the giant seemed to think I was stalling. Anger clouded his face and for an instant I had the impression he was about to destroy me. Then he seemed to remember something.
“Ah, yes,” he said. “Of course. It is impossible for you to do what I ask. Your race does not know how to use telepathy. Very well. Take me to Garr.”
If he wanted to go to Garr, there was nothing I could do except take him. But I hadn’t forgotten that Rommer was still waiting out in front. If I could walk this black giant past the detective, Rommer would know that something was very much wrong.
“Of course I will take you to Garr,” I said. “Come, Lucy.” I started toward the side door. One glimpse of this black monster would be all that Rommer needed to go into action. We could trap this giant!
If I do say so myself, this was fast thinking in a pinch. The only thing that was wrong with it was that it didn’t work. When I started toward the side exit, the giant grunted.
“We will go out this way,” he said, pointing to the back door. “I suspect, if I go the way you want me to, that I will find myself in a trap.”
He seemed to be able to read my mind.
We went out the back door.
CHAPTER III
Garr’s Ambition
“WHAT the devil are you doing here, Kelsey?” Garr demanded, when he opened the door of his private office and saw Lucy and me. “What do you mean by bringing women around here at night—”
Then he saw the black giant standing behind us. Never before had Garr’s face displayed emotion. His eyes had always revealed his feelings, with the face remaining cold and unmoved. It revealed emotion now. Shocked surprise appeared on it, then bewilderment, then delight.
“A Rmoahal!” he gasped. “But—but contact was not to be established until—until one minute past midnight. I—I had planned to be present—when contact was established. I—”
Garr was actually at a loss for words! He looked like a man whose dreams have come true beyond his wildest expectations. The sight sent a chill through me. Anything Garr dreamed of, was bound to be bad.
“The cursed investor made a mistake!” the giant angrily said. “He disobeyed orders and tested his device before the proper time. His error caused us much inconvenience and may cause all our plans to miscarry. You fool! Why did not you not instruct this inventor that his machine, under no circumstances, was to be set in operation before the designated time?”
Garr looked like he had swallowed a mouthful of mud. He was not accustomed to being called a fool and he didn’t like it.
“I did so instruct him,” he snapped. He glared at me. “Did you deliver my message?”
“N—no.”
For a second, so murderous was the light in his eyes, I thought he was going to spring at my throat. “You ignorant fool!” he shouted. “Didn’t I tell you to deliver that message without fail? What did you do? Pick up this damned girl and waste your time with her instead of doing as you were told?”
I could have smacked him for that but it wouldn’t have done any good. “I didn’t have a chance to deliver your message,” I said.
“You didn’t! Don’t lie to me! You left here hours ago. You had plenty of time—”
“I went straight to Emerson’s laboratory. When I got there, I found him dead.” I told him exactly what had happened, with the exception of my talk with Rommer.
“You’re lying. You deliberately failed to deliver my message!”
“I did exactly what you told me to do!”
“Then how did Emerson happen to have his machine in operation before the designated time?”
“I—I don’t know what the devil you’re talking about. Remember, I only work here. You told me to deliver a message and I tried to deliver it.” My life was hanging in the balance and I knew it. Garr was angry enough to kill me. The giant standing behind us was silent but I had seen enough of him to know that he would blast me out of existence with no more compunction than he would display in stepping on a bug.
“I think I can explain what happened,” Lucy spoke for the first time.
“Who the devil are you?” Garr snapped.
She flushed but answered readily enough. “I am—was sort of an assistant to Mr. Emerson.”
“I didn’t know he had an assistant. He told me he worked alone.”
“He does—did. I took care of his correspondence and helped him in his work when I could. If you are referring to the invention on which he has been working for the past few months—”
“Do you know what that invention was?” Garr asked quickly.
“No. Mr. Emerson didn’t tell me, except to say it was something extra special that he was developing for somebody else.”
Garr seemed a little relieved at that. “All right. What happened?”
“Mr. Emerson finished it this afternoon. And—well, I was with him and I think he understood he was not to put it into operation until the person for whom he was developing it told him to. But he—well, he wanted to be certain it would work properly and I think he tested it to see if it was all right. I was out at the time and I don’t know that he tested it but I think he probably did. Then something else happened and I went out again. When I returned, Mr. Kelsey was in the laboratory and—well, I’m sure Mr. Emerson did not receive the message. But that wasn’t Mr. Kelsey’s fault,” she added quickly.
HIS black eyes popping with anger, Garr thought over what she had told him. She gave me an alibi, all right, and probably saved my neck. I didn’t know what Emerson’s machine was, bur obviously the first thing any inventor does when he completes something new is to test it and see if it works.
“It is scarcely my fault that the message was not delivered,” Garr said to the silent giant behind us.
“So I see,” was the cool answer. “But you are still a fool. You should have delivered the orders yourself, to make certain they were obeyed.”
Gar didn’t like this answer a bit but he swallowed hard and managed to get it down. He led us into his private office. Apparently he had been in conference, for a couple of hard-looking thugs were waiting in the office. One of them was a stranger to me but the second one had a scar on his cheek and I recognized him. My heart climbed right up into my mouth when I saw him. That scar-faced man was important to me. So far as I was concerned, he was the most important man who ever lived; and if the arrival of the black giant had not completely upset Garr and thrown him off his stride, he would never have let me see his scarfaced henchman. Not alive, anyhow.
Garr was upset. There was no doubt about that. He was surprised and bewildered and frantically worried. Somewhere his plans had gone awry. He forgot all about his two thugs and he forgot all about Lucy and me too. I didn’t do anything to call his attention to me. Surreptitiously, I pulled Lucy against the wall and both of us kept as quiet as possible. To me, the situation looked explosive, and if Garr and the giant started calling each other names, there was an excellent chance that we might learn something.
There was a devil of a lot that I wanted to know. Garr had called this giant a Rmoahal. What was a Rmoahal? If any such race had ever existed on earth, it was news to me. And—where had the giant come from? If he had gone wandering around Chicago dressed as he was, he would certainly have attracted plenty of attention from everybody including the police. Obviously Garr had been in communication with him. They had been planning something. What?
“I fail to understand how the fact that you arrived a few hours earlier than we had planned can make any difference,” Garr said. “The important fact is that you are here. Even now I can scarcely believe that I have succeeded in bringing a live Rmoahal across four million years of time!” Garr was becoming more and more excited. “A Rmoahal, alive on earth today!”[2]
If Garr was excited, so was I. If what he said was correct, he had hired Emerson to build a machine that had brought this black giant out of the past!
“Did you hear what Garr said?” I whispered to Lucy.
“Yes.”
“He’s nuts! I knew he was an astrologer and an occultist but I didn’t think he was that crazy.”
“Sh—” she whispered. “I’m afraid he isn’t insane.”
“What?” I gasped.
“I didn’t tell Garr the truth when he asked me if I knew what Mr. Emerson was working on,” she whispered tersely. “Mr. Emerson told me about the invention Garr wanted him to develop.”
“What was it?”
“It was—” she hesitated and looked queerly at me as if she was wondering whether I would think she had blown her top if she answered my question. “What was it?” I insisted.
“It was—a kind of a time machine!” she said desperately.
I BACKED against the wall and shut up. Emerson, working under Garr’s direction, had been building a time machine! Not only had been building it, but had built it! And, if the presence of this Rmoahal proved anything, the damned thing had worked! The black giant had been brought out of the past. It seemed impossible but I suddenly remembered seeing two cops chase an animal that looked like a little horse. Lucy had called it a mesohippus,[3] one of the tiny ancestors of the horse of the present day. The only place it could possibly have come from was the time machine. Emerson, in testing his invention, had accidentally brought a mesohippus to the present!
“You are Zorn?” Garr continued, looking at the giant. “You are the Rmoahal whose thought impressions reached my mind across time, who gave me the specifications that I passed on to Emerson so he would be able to build the device you needed?”[4]
“I am Zorn,” the Rmoahal said. The way he spoke showed that he was still angry but was making an effort to suppress it. “As I revealed to you, my life was in danger in my own country. I sought to escape into the one place where those who were seeking to destroy me would never be able to find me—into time. In spite of your blundering, you helped me to escape, and I am grateful.”
