Time Travel Omnibus, page 329
Now the robots are fleeing the factories in droves as explosions drive them out. They lurch around, and I see that the oil loosens their nuts and bolts until the poor nuts are bolting all over the place.
The robots are being destroyed.
I get out of that section of the city, but fast. The Great Brains and robots are done for now. But I still have the Martians and the Mad Scientist to reckon with.
And time is short.
I head for the building where the Mad Scientist has his laboratory. I head for it fast, dodging falling masonry as I go.
But I am too late. Out of the sky swoops a gleaming plane.
MARTIN the Martian sticks his head out a few feet and spots me. Then he sticks his tongue out a few feet.
“Nyaaah!” he says. “We Martians won’t wait. We are coming to invade this stupid earth.”
I shrug. I lose after all. Martin the Martian points up at the sky.
“They are here, just clear of the stratosphere,” he tells me. “When I give the signal, they will swoop down with their greater disintegrators, and wipe everything off the map.”
“Why?” I ask. “Why do you want to do that? What is earth worth?”
“Nothing,” the Martian admits. “But we superior beings don’t like to see it run so stupidly. All these Brains and robots now—they’re silly. They offend us.”
I fake a laugh. “Well go away,” I suggest. “Your troubles are over. I destroy the robots and the Great Brains.” And I tell him how.
His face falls about five feet on his long neck when he hears this. His Adam’s apple wobbles on its long stem.
“You mean they no longer exist?” he mourns. “We cannot have the fun of destroying them and all their civilization?”
“That’s right. There’s nothing left for you to invade or criticize,” I tell him. “Nothing on earth. You are welcome to come down and rebuild it to suit yourselves, though,” I add. “You criticize so much, I figure maybe you want a chance to run things of your own way.”
Martin the Martian scowls. “No!” he sighs. “We are destructive critics only. If there is nothing we can destroy or feel superior to, we aren’t happy. Just for that, we won’t invade earth after all. I’ll go back and tell the gang. I think we’ll leave earth and invade some place else.”
“Why not try Mars?” I call after him, as his plane soars aloft again.
“Good idea!” he yells.
And that is the last I see of the Martian menace.
I run upstairs to the laboratory where the Mad Scientist waits. And he is waiting for me, definitely.
As I come through the doorway he stands up. His bald head gleams. So do his teeth. So does the horrible ray-gun he holds in his hand.
He points the ray-gun at me. I stop dead in my tracks, wondering how soon it will be.
“So,” he snarls. “You destroy my Great Brains. You ruin my robots. You drive away the Martians. The whole city is crashing to ruins. I am furious!”
“Calm down,” I advise him. “Be very calm.”
I sit down next to a bookshelf and pretend to smile.
In a minute I do smile, because I remember what the Great Brains tell me. They advise me correctly about getting rid of the robots. And they tell me that the Martians will leave when there is nothing to criticize—which they do.
And now I recall what they say about the Mad Scientist. He will be all right when he has nothing to get mad about, they prophesy.
So I open my mouth and tell the Mad Scientist what happens.
“You see?” I conclude. “You are always mad about the robots and the Martians rivaling you—and they are gone, now. You are mad about having to run the city—and it is almost in ruins. You are angry with the Great Brains. They will never trouble you again. So what is there to be mad about? Be happy and forget it!”
BUT the Mad Scientist doesn’t look happy. From what I can see of his face behind the foam on his mouth, he is frothing with rage.
“You—you——!” he shrieks. His hand whips out. The ray-gun blazes.
I duck, just in time.
The ray-gun passes over my head and blasts into the bookshelves behind me. There is a searing, sizzling sound, a single flash, and then the bookshelves disappear!
“Yeeeooooow!” screams the Mad Scientist. “Now look what happens!”
“What?” I ask.
“Those bookshelves I blast—you know what they contain?” he yells.
“No.”
“The books of wisdom, that’s all!” he yammers. “I just blast the precious books of wisdom in that bookshelf!”
I grin. “So what?” I shrug. “Doesn’t that solve everything? Stop and think a moment—what makes you so irate of late? Just having to invent all of those things you read about in the science-fiction magazines.
“Now there are no magazines. No more rules and regulations for you to live up to. You can sit back, relax, be yourself. Why don’t you leave this stuffy laboratory and get out in the open and live?”
The Mad Scientist smiles.
“You can get a little farm,” I continue. “Plant a few acres and putter around. That’s the way for a man to live. All this super-stuff is super-silly.” He beams at me. He puts the ray-gun down.
“You aren’t mad any more?” I ask. “No,” he chuckles. “I feel great.”
“Then you’ll let me take the Time-Machine back to my own day and age?” I ask.
“Go ahead, and bless you,” he tells me.
He sits there humming as I go out the door.
I prowl through the twisted streets until I find the Time Machine, still shining and spotless, on the pavement where I leave it early in the day.
I open it up with the key, press the dials on the panel, and then I’m off.
Off into unconsciousness. Off into oblivion. Off into the past. Off——
And on again. I wake up sitting on the floor in the laboratory of Skeetch and Meetch. Funny thing is, the Time Machine I sit in has no panel in it.
I open the door and rush out. “Hey, boys!” I yell. “I don’t do it! Honestly——I don’t remove the panel from the Time Machine.”
Skeetch and Meetch stare at me in the other room, and Cosmo Creetch looks up.
“There is no panel on the Time Machine,” he tells me. “I will not finish it until tomorrow.”
“Won’t finish it?” I ask.
“And how do you know about the Time Machine?” snaps Cosmo Creetch. “Who are you, anyway?”
“How do I know? Who am I? Why I’m the guy you hire to take a trip into the future in the Time Machine.”
“When do I do that?”
“Earlier today.”
“But how can I?” Creetch insists. “I never see you before in my life. And the Machine is not completed yet so how can you take a trip?”
“Are you kidding?” I inquire. But Skeetch and Meetch nod their heads. They agree with Creetch. As far as they are concerned, I never come up to their laboratory at all.
So I tell my story and they all shake their heads.
“Don’t understand it,” Creetch murmurs. “Unless you make a mistake when you come back in such a hurry. Maybe you set the panels for one day before the time you are supposed to.”
“What do you mean?”
“When you are in the future, do you set the return switch for the same date five hundred years earlier—for February 28th, 1944?”
“Yes,” I insist.
“Well—then I don’t understand it.
Unless, of course——”
I interrupt him. “No,” I gasp. “I set it for the 29th of February. Because I leave here on the 29th.”
“But that’s tomorrow!” objects Creetch.
“I’ve got it!” yells Skeetch. “You leave here on the 29th, of course. But 500 years from now—in 2544—they must abolish the extra day in February for Leap Year. So 500 years from now is falling on February 28th. When you come back you arrive on the 28th, one day earlier than you start.
“Consequently you never start at all!”
I sigh. “I give up, boys,” I tell them. “But it certainly is an exhausting trip I don’t take.”
* * *
LEFTY FEEP finished his story and sat back. His beady eyes darted from my face to Bill’s.
“So you see,” he concluded, “Truth is stranger than science-fiction, after all. And you see me yesterday even if I am not here. Understand?”
“No, I don’t,” I confessed. “Anyway, there’s one consolation. If you never went into 2544, then the civilization won’t be so bad, because it doesn’t exist and never will.”
“Please,” said Lefty Feep, raising a hand. “Do not confuse me any further. I do not wish to think about science-fiction any longer.”
“I don’t blame you,” murmured my friend, Bill. “But say, it’s been a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Feep. You certainly have the most remarkable adventures.”
“Yes,” grinned Lefty Feep. “And I think this is one of the most remarkable adventures I ever had in all my life.”
TIME ON YOUR HANDS
David Wright O’Brien
STARTING with ancient Rome. Reggie worked forward in Time, trying to change history. What chance had he to succeed?
THE package had been sent to Reggie Vliet at his club. It had, upon being opened by that amiable young playboy, presented quite an emotional jolt. Shock and nostalgia had been the prime essentials of his emotions. Shock at the realization that old Lowndes was dead; nostalgia at the recollection of what the small object had once meant to him.
The small object was a watch. Lowndes’ watch. An extraordinary timepiece which gave the wearer the astounding ability to flip back, very much in the flesh, into any page of any historical era he might wish to visit.
The watch, in fact, was used to that advantage by Reggie himself several years previously. Used, thanks to the kindliness of the strange butler, Lowndes, to enable the young man to have a go at changing history.[*]
Reggie hadn’t changed history on that occasion. But he had succeeded, through his prowlings through the pages of Time, in bringing back from history enough evidence to force the coldblooded old colonel, now his father-in-law, to permit him to marry the girl of Reggie’s dreams.
At the time of the arrival of this strange timepiece Reggie was, and had been for several years, thank you, quite happily married to that girl. Married so happily, in fact, that it seemed years since—upon returning from the historic past and winning the girl—he had given the watch back to Lowndes.
And now, as he gazed at the watch and remembered it all more forcibly than he had ever recalled it since, he realized also that the arrival of the timepiece signified that Lowndes was dead. For Lowndes had told Reggie, back then, that his present to Reggie and his bride-to-be would be a provision in his will which would pass the watch on to Reggie, should the eccentric old butler ever go the way of all flesh.
Reggie felt sad to think that Lowndes was dead. So sad, in fact, that he almost quite forgot the watch as he mechanically, idly, strapped it to his wrist and fiddled with the dial. The explosion in Reggie’s bean followed with terrifying immediacy, and for a second he thought he was losing consciousness. Then daylight returned.
Perplexed, Reggie shook his head. He noticed then, with some surprise, that his head showed no indication of exploding again. He shook it again, cautiously.
“Well, anyway,” he said aloud, “I’m not drunk.”
Then he remembered his fiddling with the watch. His heart turned a triple somersault and didn’t quite right itself. Something very funny was going on in his stomach and now his head was hurting!
HE STARED dazedly about a magnificent chamber. His brain was struggling to assimilate the evidence his eyes were presenting. It was monstrously unbelievable! Impossibly incredible! He shut his eyes desperately. It would all be gone when he opened his eyes. It had to be.
He opened his eyes again. A despairing moan trickled through his lips. Nothing had changed. The chamber was just as magnificent, just as real as ever.
Reggie began to tremble at the thought. The soft jelly-like surface of the wonderful bed trembled with him. He passed a hand over his suddenly damp forehead and noticed, for the first time since he had left the privacy of his club, the Time Machine strapped securely to his wrist. He peered at it closely. It was set for year minus one. Somehow it gave him a feeling of confidence.
If things got blackish he had merely to set the machine and Pip Pip! he’d be out of it. His nervousness began to fade away. His perky smile appeared again at the corners of his mouth.
He even felt a bit debonair, for he was still dressed as he had been in the library. Cutaway coat, striped trousers, buttonaire—neatly turned out.
Excitement and a delicious sense of adventure were stealing over him. He, Reggie Vliet, was again actually living in the past. He could enjoy it, relish it, admire it, and—change it. That was why he was here. To scramble the past, knock it off its customary track, blast it out of its timeworn groove.
The thought made him laugh delightedly. He thought of old Colonel Vanderveer, ancestry-ridden and heredityconscious. Why, with an upheaval in history the old boy might turn up a beggar or a thief or a milkman or even a fifth columnist. Then let him object to the humble Randhope name. Reggie laughed louder. Why the old goat would probably be happy to have his daughter’s name linked to the Randhopes, or anybody for that matter.
“Fifth columnist,” Reggie chortled, “or maybe even a congressman.”
So engrossed was Reggie with these entrancing visions that he did not hear the soft footsteps behind him. He was cheerfully oblivious to all but his own happy contemplations. But not so oblivious that he failed to hear the smooth, liquid voice at his side say:
“Greetings, strangely attired one.” The smile remained on Reggie’s face through force of habit, but he started suddenly and toppled off the soft edge of the bed. He struck the floor in a confused heap of arms and legs and rolled over once. Then he climbed to his feet. The smile was still stuck on his feet like a mask. He turned slowly to face a dark-haired, puzzled-looking girl, attired in a loose, flowing white garment that did little to conceal her lovely feminine contours.
The smile on Reggie’s face began to thaw. Then, when his lips were manageable again, it widened.
He smoothed his hair and straightened his tie. “I say,” he declared, “they didn’t exaggerate about you at that. You’re all they said, er—Miss Cleopatra, and then some.”
The girl’s frown deepened. “Cleopatra?” Her smooth voice was doubtful.
“Er—yes.” Reggie cleared his throat. “You are Cleopatra, aren’t you?”
THE girl’s eyes lighted and then she smiled, a brilliant flashing smile that had a couple of dimples and a lot of white teeth mixed together very attractively. “Cleopatra,” she said, and gestured about the room.
Reggie beamed. “We’re getting on, aren’t we?” He took her hand and seated her on the side of the bed, slumping himself next to her. “Now, Cleopatra,” he said briskly, “what’s all this I hear about you throwing yourself away on this mug, Anthony?”
The girl shook her head and glanced fearfully about the room.
“Now just relax, Cleo,” Reggie said soothingly, “maybe I was too blunt about everything. I mean, we hardly know each other.” He smiled and she smiled back at him rather uncertainly. Reggie congratulated himself modestly. A plan was buzzing around his head. If he could eliminate Cleopatra and Anthony it might have terrific repercussions down through time.
He smiled again at the girl. It’d be fun, too.
“Cleopatra . . .” His voice held a muted throb. His eyes dosed soulfully. “How I’ve waited for this moment. I’ve lived for it, dreamed and hoped for it for centuries. To see the beauty, the glory, the incomparable loveliness that is you and you alone. To be near the immortal woman, whose life has fired the imagination——”
Reggie opened one eye cautiously to see how it was going.
He looked closer at the girl and opened the other eye. Something was wrong. She was staring over his shoulder transfixed, completely oblivious to him. The Vliet pride suffered.
“After all,” he said peevishly, “you could at least listen.”
Reggie became conscious, then, of another presence in the room. It wasn’t anything he could hear or see or smell. It was as if the very air had been charged with some electric force that beat against him in prickling waves. He turned slowly.
Standing before him was a woman.
“Cleopatra,” he breathed. He knew it instinctively. Just as a person wouldn’t need an introduction to Niagara Falls, so Reggie needed no introduction to this magnificent woman.
“I beg forgiveness, mistress,” the girl alongside Reggie said tearfully. “I found him when I came to draw your bath.”
Cleopatra made a slight gesture with her hand. Her eyes burned steadily into Reggie’s. The girl slipped away.
Reggie loosened his collar with his forefinger and stood up weakly. Very brilliant of him, he thought dazedly. Making his torrid play for Cleopatra’s maid. He noticed uneasily that Cleopatra had crossed her arms and was regarding him with a smouldering intensity.
“Warm, isn’t it?” He loosened his collar again and smiled enthusiastically. “For this time of the year, I mean.”
Her lips curved slightly. Reggie looked at her closely, his fascination temporarily over-riding his feeling of fearful awkwardness. She was not tall, yet she created that impression. It was something in the way she held her head. Her features were ordinary except for a curiously alive, vibrant quality about her mouth and nose. Her hair was a splendid, thrilling crown that sparkled like, black diamonds as it cascaded in a tumbling stream down her back. But her eyes were a new experience to Reggie. They were green and then they were black and they danced and glittered like quicksilver. Reggie turned his eyes away and blinked. It was like looking too long at a flashing neon sign.
“It is warm,” she said unexpectedly.
Her voice was clear and yet it was the type of voice that can purr at times.
“Oh, oh yes,” Reggie nodded vigorously, “warm.”
