Time Travel Omnibus, page 293
“I told you he was a blackmailer,” he said. “He was blackmailing you all the time.”
“I know it, now,” I answered. “But he doesn’t know I know it.”
I handed my gun to Lucy and put two grenades in my pockets. She watched me get ready to leave and her soul was in her eyes. “Don—” she said. That was all she could say but I knew what she meant. She loved me. Now, that I knew I was not a murderer, I could tell her that I loved her. I hadn’t been able to tell her before. But now I knew my hands were clean.
Rommer clapped me on the back. “Good luck, Don,” he said huskily. “We’ll hide out somewhere near this time machine and wait to see what happens.”
The look in his eyes told me that he thought my life was not worth a plugged dime.
“Get out of sight, you two,” I said. They scurried into a small alcove, the only possible hiding place.
“Mr. Garr!” I called at the top of my voice. “Mr. Garr. Where are you?”
I hoped there was frantic fear in my voice. Shouting for Garr as loud as I could, I ran into the arch. From the group below, a half dozen of the Buck Rogers pistols were instantly centered on me.
“Don’t shoot!” I shouted frantically. “Don’t let them shoot, Mr. Garr—”
“Kelsey!” Garr shouted, recognizing me. “Where the devil did you come from?”
“Don’t shoot!” I gasped. I was putting on an act, the biggest act I had ever put on in my life. With my hands held over my head, I trotted down the ramp.
“Mr. Garr! Where am I? Where is this place?”
Zorn and his fellow Rmoahals were regarding me calmly. Too calmly, I thought.
“I got lost in the tunnels under the sub-basement,” I said. “When I got out I couldn’t find you anywhere. I went to Emerson’s laboratory. Mr. Garr, what were those horrible beasts I saw? What—what’s happened? After the police were scared away I went into the laboratory looking for you—”
GARR was paying very little attention to me and none at all to my story. His face had lost all trace of color. Sweat was oozing out of every pore. He was wearing a light-weight summer suit and it was soaked with perspiration. He turned his black eyes on me and looked at me and through me and scarcely saw me.
“W—what’s wrong?” I gasped.
The scar-faced thug that I was supposed to have murdered was standing at one side. He and his companion were standing very straight, their arms stiff at their sides. They were looking straight ahead in a way that I recognized. I have seen prisoners of war stand like that.
“W—what is it, Mr. Garr?” I whispered.
“Shut up!” he said.
“But—”
“I said to shut up!” he snapped.
Not until then did I realize that the Rmoahals surrounding us were covering him with the pistols that produced the terrible twisting death! Garr turned back to them and continued an argument that I had interrupted.
“But you can’t do this,” he protested. “Even if you did deceive me, even if you are not Rmoahals, when you return to my time-world you will need my help.”
I listened in stupefied astonishment. Garr had said these black giants were not Rmoahals! What did he mean?
Zorn laughed. “Why should we need you?” he asked. “You have no power, you have no influence. The police of your own people are seeking you. No, we do not need you. It is you who need us, you who planned to use us to establish your power over your race with our help.”
“But—” Garr protested.
“I thought you were running from your own people,” I blurted out to Zorn. He had said he was seeking safety from those who were trying to kill him. That was why he had gone into time.
He laughed. “So did Garr!” he said. His eyes mocked me. “When Garr first felt the telepathic impulses of my mind, he thought a member of some long dead race that he called the Rmoahals was contacting him. Since this worked out to our advantage, I did not correct him.”
“Then if you aren’t a Rmoahal, what are you?” I blurted out. “Did—didn’t you come out of time?”
Zorn’s laughter had all the hollowness of a drum beat. “Of course I came out of time,” he said. “Garr thought I had come from four million years out of the past. I didn’t. I came from eight million years out of the future!”
“The future—”
He laughed again. “Certainly. We are the last living inhabitants of earth. We landed here centuries ago, before the last of you humans left this planet. We came here from one of the stars, but when we landed, we found the planet provided inadequate resources to enable us to repair and refuel our ship. Inasmuch as we could not get fuel elsewhere, we had no choice except to stay.”
Zorn was giving me information in large doses. I had come here looking for information and I was getting it, though in larger quantities than my mind could easily absorb. It was not too difficult to imagine the possibility of space flight or to believe that Zorn and his race had come from the stars but it was with great difficulty that I could grasp what he meant when he said that the human race had left earth. Where had they gone?
“The ones that were still here, we exterminated,” he said grimly. “The others had already gone to a planet called Venus, which is a much younger world than earth and is still capable of supporting life. Besides Venus is much closer to the sun and receives more heat than earth.”
IT MADE me feel a little better to know that the human race had not perished. Out there somewhere in space on another planet, the race was fighting on!
“But what—what are you trying to do?” I whispered. “Why did you contact Garr, why did you go into time?”
“We are going back into time,” Zorn said grimly. “This is a dead world, incapable of supporting life. Out there—” he gestured toward the windows—“the air is almost gone. Very little oxygen. No water remains on earth, no seas. There is so little air that winds do not blow. In this time your planet is dead. We are going back to a time when there were still water and oxygen on earth, when there was metal in the mountains, when vegetation and animal life were abundant. We are going into your time—” He looked meaningly at me. “There we shall find metals, oxygen, all we need. In that time we shall also find a huge supply of laborers to serve us!”
I saw the whole picture, then. The world that we had seen from the dome that housed the time machine was earth, when the whole surface of the planet was a desert. Almost without air, entirely without water, earth was what the moon had been in my time, a dead, lifeless world floating in space, slowly circling a dying sun. Eight million years in the future—men had gone to Venus and a race of black giants from another star held the dead and lifeless husk of earth!
“We are provisioning a small ship,” Zorn said, nodding toward the vessel. “We are going to take it through time. I think we shall find your time-world a very pleasant place indeed.”
“You won’t get away with it,” I said huskily.
“Won’t we?” he answered. “No doubt we shall find your police have laid an ambush for us. However, there are certain powers housed within our ship, certain weapons, that even your police force cannot overcome.”
From the way he spoke, and the wolfish grin on his face, I did not doubt that he knew what he was talking about. When the ship went through time, it would meet a police ambush, but what chance would the police have against the weapons that Zorn possessed? What chance would an army have? Zorn’s race, even this little colony, possessed tremendous scientific knowledge. No armies out of the past of earth could stand against them. The hordes of Genghis Khan were the mightiest fighting machine of their time. What chance would they have had against a Flying Fortress?
This ship was as far ahead of the Flying Fortress as the Fortress was ahead of the men of Genghis Khan!
“We’ll give you what you want,” I protested. “You won’t have to fight for it. We’ll give you land for your people; metals, foods.”
I was lying when I spoke. I knew the temper of my people. At the first sign of the aggressor—and Zorn would certainly be an aggressor—they would rise in arms. They might yield eventually, when the last man was dead.
“We take what we want,” Zorn said. “Your race will serve us as slaves—nothing more.”
Out of the infinity of time itself, a grim invader had come!
“But what about me?” Garr spoke. He had been a silent and wretched listener to our conversation. “I helped you. Without me, you would never have got a pole of your time machine built in our time. You owe me something for that.”
“Yes,” Zorn said thoughtfully. “Yes, we owe you something.”
“You owe me everything,” Garr blurted.
HE WAS one of the sickest-looking men I have ever seen. His dreams of conquest, of becoming another dictator, had turned into nightmares. Zorn would be the dictator! Zorn had used Garr as a tool, had made a fool of him. It was bitter medicine for Garr to swallow. The dog! Under other circumstances I would have enjoyed seeing him crawl. He had made me crawl often enough.
“Well, we shall pay you,” Zorn said.
Garr looked a little relieved.
“What do you want?” Zorn said. “We shall need someone to serve as an intermediary between us and your people. Would that position be suitable for your talents?”
“Yes!” Garr shouted. He began to thank Zorn profusely. I clinched my teeth. Garr would betray his race, he would become a sort of super-Quisling.
“I’ll do anything I can to help you,” Garr said. “Anything—Just tell me what it is and I will do it?”
“Good,” Zorn answered calmly. The wolf grin appeared again on his face. “The first thing you can do for us—” he brought up the pistol”—is diet.”
A yellow pasty color appeared on Garr’s face. “No!” he screamed. “No!”
The fluttery hush-hush-hush of the Buck Rogers pistol echoed through the air.
Garr’s body jerked as the horrible vibration hit it. He screamed and the scream jerked into silence. Zorn calmly lowered the pistol.
“Garr would have betrayed us,” he said. “You! What are you doing!”
He was speaking to me. I didn’t bother to answer him. I was too busy. The attention of all the black giants was concentrated on what was happening to Garr. From the looks on their faces, they seemed to be relishing the sight. They weren’t noticing me.
I pulled one of the grenades out of my pocket and tossed it straight through the open door of the ship!
I could have tossed it at Zorn. It would have got him, too. But he was not as important as that ship. Not a tenth as important. Without the ship, he and his people might go through time, but they would be without the power the vessel gave them. If I could smash the ship! If I could tear the guts out of it!
The grenade, if tossed against the walls of the hull, would have no more effect than a shell from a small cannon against the steel armor plate of a battle ship. But a grenade, in the magazine of a battle ship, could blow the mightiest dreadnaught to hell and gone.
“That’s what I’m doing!” I yelled at Zorn.
The grenade arched through the open door. I heard it clang as it hit.
Blooie!
A thundering explosion seemed to split my ear-drums. A spout of fire leaped out of the open door of the ship. Tremendous thuds sounded within the vessel, secondary explosions that were taking place as the fire from the grenade was communicated to the fuel tanks or possibly to the driving machinery. As evidence of the fury of the blast, I remember seeing a black giant blown completely out of the door of the ship. Like a monstrous, wingless crow, he sailed through the air.
I had beaten Zorn to the draw. His ship was smashed!
I found myself looking into Zorn’s face when the explosion took place. There was maniacal fury in his eyes. He was yanking the pistol up, pointing it at me.
MY TIME had come. I was looking at death. Well, I had looked at death before, a hundred times at least, in the seat of a fighter plane, but somehow or other the old man with the scythe had always passed me by. He wouldn’t pass me by this time. I flung myself toward the floor, tried to drive in under the beam that would be released from the pistol. The gun followed my movements. I saw Zorn press the trigger.
Rat-tat-tat-tat-tat-tat—
It was not the hush-hush-husk flutter of the vibration pistol. It was an entirely different sound and one that I instantly recognized—the rattle of a machine gun. Somewhere near me singing bullets gouged grooves in the air.
Zorn’s black face splashed with a sudden burst of red as that stream of bullets hit him. I have seen machine guns cut down small trees. This machine gun cut Zorn down. It blasted holes in his chest, his neck, his head. All at once a dozen fountains seemed to spurt blood all over his body. For a second he stood erect, feet planted wide apart, straining suddenly sightless eyes trying to see where this totally unexpected deluge of death had come from. Then life went out of him and he fell with a sodden crunch.
I was on the floor. I rolled over and sat up. If Zorn had been surprised by this machine gun suddenly going into action, so had I. Then I saw the machine gun, and yelled at the top of my voice.
Doug Rommer was kneeling in the archway that led upward to the rounded dome. He was holding a sub-machine gun against his shoulder, shooting down.
“Give ’em hell, Rommer!” I yelled.
That was twice he had saved my life! This time, I got a chance to pay him back. There weren’t many of the giants but any was too many. Rommer was shooting down on them. Off to one side I saw one bring up the terrible vibration pistol. I hurled the second grenade.
Even then I knew we didn’t have a chance. There were only two of us. So far, surprise had fought on our side. But surprise was no longer helping us. One of those star-roving giants was more than a match for the both of us. Rommer had killed four or five of them. The sudden blasting fury of his attack had disorganized them. But they wouldn’t be disorganized long.
I saw Rommer press the trigger of his machine gun. It failed to fire. He had emptied the magazine. I saw him glance back over his shoulder.
“Run!” I yelled at him. “Get away.”
“Run, hell!” he shouted back at me. “This is no time to run. Look what’s coming!”
He calmly picked up the gun I had left with him and started shooting.
I saw them coming! Blue-coated figures, dozens of them, as fast as they could run. They were springing out of the time machine. I saw what they were bringing with them and I rolled as fast I could to the side of the room and took cover behind some kind of a machine.
The trench mortars began to let go. That was what the cops were bringing—mortars. Vaguely I remembered having heard a police captain tell one of his men to break into an armory and get a supply of mortars. The little weapons had arrived. From the arched doorway the police could toss the shells down into the vast room. How they did toss them down! Captain Kelly, if he had been alive, would have been proud of the way they handled those terrible little guns. They poured a torrent of shells into the room. The door of the ship was still open. They got the exact range on that—and poured shell after shell inside the vessel. Remembering what had happened to Captain Kelly, they didn’t stop as long as a single giant remained alive. This was something a little worse than a den of rattle-snakes, and the police were cleaning it up.
When the explosion of the last shell had died into silence, I crawled out into the open. Rommer, his eternal grin still on his face, came down the ramp to meet me.
“Where did all the cops come from?” I demanded.
“I sent the boss after them,” he answered.
“The boss—”
“Yeah. Lucy. She happens to be my boss. As soon as you got down here and I could see what was happening, I sent Lucky back through time after the cops. It looked to me like this menace had to be stopped here, and I thought we might need the police to help out.” He was right about that. Rommer was usually right. “How does Lucy happen to be your boss?” I demanded.
“She hired me,” he grinned. “She said Garr had some kind of a hold over you and that you wouldn’t ask her to marry you until you were free. So she hired me to—but here she is. She can tell you about it herself.”
Lucy was coming running down the ramp. She flung herself into my arms. “Don, are you all right? There’s blood on your face, Don! Are you hurt?”
“It’s nothing but a scratch,” I answered. “But listen, young lady, I want the straight of this. Rommer says you hired him to free me from Garr because you thought I wouldn’t ask you to marry me until I was free from Garr. What I want to know, is Rommer telling the truth?”
She blushed shyly. “You wouldn’t think Doug Rommer would lie, would you?” she said.
[1] In the middle of 1943, the Japs still had a few Zeros, their fast navy fighter, left. They didn’t have the factories that made them, however. The Flying Fortresses had got to their plants. By the end of 1943, they didn’t have any planes of any description left, or anything else, for that matter.—Ed.
[2] The Rmoahals, according to one school of occultist believers, were the first Atlantean subrace. They are believed to have originated in Lemuria and to have migrated to Atlantis. Coal black in color, they were larger in stature than the men of today, and they first became a race four to five million years ago. The Rmoahals were the ancestors of the Atlantans. They are believed to have possessed many magical powers.—Ed.
[3] The ancestor of the horse was a tiny animal no larger than a dog, and it had five toes on each of its feet. During the ages the mesohippus has evolved, growing larger, and at each stage losing one of its toes until today it is a large animal with one toe and the rudimentary evidence of a second.—Ed.
[4] A sort of super mental telepathy was involved here. Zorn possessed tremendous mental powers and he forced mental concepts across time to Garr’s mind. At first Garr thought he was receiving some kind of an inspired revelation, later learning the source of his inspiration. Garr, being an occultist and already familiar with the beliefs concemings the Rmoahals, did not find it difficult to believe he was actually in contact with one of these legendary creatures. The instructions he received for the construction of the actual time machine were beyond his ability to carry out. Consequently he hired an out-standing inventor to do the actual work for him.—Ed.
