Time Travel Omnibus, page 463
The officer’s face wrinkled. “What do you mean?”
“Mechanical killers. Robots. As a weapon.”
The circle of soldiers drew back a little. “What the hell is he talking about?”
“You better explain,” the officer said, his face suddenly hard. “What’s this about claws?”
“No weapon was ever developed along those lines?” Kastner asked.
There was silence. Finally one of the soldiers grunted. “I think I know what he means. He means Dowling’s mine.”
Ryan turned. “What?”
“An English physicist. He’s been experimenting with artificial mines, self-governing. Robot mines. But the mines couldn’t repair themselves. So the Government abandoned the project and increased its propaganda work instead.”
“That’s why the war’s over,” the officer said. He started off. “Let’s go.”
The soldiers trailed after him, down the side of the ridge.
“Coming?” The officer halted, looking back at Ryan and Kastner.
“We’ll be along later,” Ryan said. “We have to get our equipment together.”
“All right. The camp is down the road about half a mile. There’s a settlement there. People coming back from the Moon.”
“From the Moon?”
“We had started moving units to Luna, but now there isn’t any need. Maybe it’s a good thing. Who the hell wants to leave Terra?”
“Thanks for the cigarettes,” one the soldiers called back. The soldiers piled in the back of the truck. The officer slid behind the wheel. The truck started up and continued on its way, rumbling along the road.
Ryan and Kastner watched it go.
“Then Schonerman’s death was never balanced,” Ryan murmured. “A whole new past—”
“I wonder how far the change carries. I wonder if it carries up to our own time.”
“There’s only one way to find out.”
Kastner nodded. “I want to know right away. The sooner the better. Let’s get started.”
Ryan nodded, deep in thought. “The sooner the better.”
They entered the time ship. Kastner sat down with his briefcase. Ryan adjusted the controls. Outside the port the scene winked out of existence. They were in the time flow again, moving toward the present.
Ryan’s face was grim. “I can’t believe it. The whole structure of the past changed. An entire new chain set in motion. Expanding through every continuum. Altering more and more of our stream.”
“Then it won’t be our present, when we get back. There’s no telling how different it will be. All stemming from Schonerman’s death. A whole new history set in motion from one incident.”
“Not from Schonerman’s death,” Ryan corrected.
“What do you mean?”
“Not from his death but from the loss of his papers. Because Schonerman died the Government didn’t obtain a successful methodology by which they could build an artificial brain. Therefore the claws never came into existence.”
“It’s the same thing.”
“Is it?”
Kastner looked up quickly. “Explain.”
“Schonerman’s death is of no importance. The loss of his papers to the Government is the determining factor.” Ryan pointed at Kastner’s briefcase. “Where are the papers? In there. We have them.”
Kastner nodded. “That’s true.”
“We can restore the situation by moving back into the past and delivering the papers to some agency of the Government. Schonerman is unimportant. It’s his papers that matter.”
Ryan’s hand moved toward the power switch.
“Wait!” Kastner said. “Don’t we want to see the present? We should see what changes carry down to our own time.”
Ryan hesitated. “True.”
“Then we can decide what we want to do. Whether we want to restore the papers.”
“All right. We’ll continue to the present and then make up our minds.”
The fingers crossing the time map had returned almost to their original position. Ryan studied them for a long time, his hand on the power switch. Kastner held on tightly to the briefcase, his arms wrapped around it, the heavy leather bundle resting in his lap.
“We’re almost there,” Ryan said.
“To our own time?”
“In another few moments.” Ryan stood up, gripping the switch. “I wonder what we’ll see.”
“Probably very little we’ll recognize.”
Ryan took a deep breath, feeling the cold metal under his fingers. How different would their world be? Would they recognize anything? Had they swept everything familiar out of existence?
A vast chain had been started in motion. A tidal wave moving through time, altering each continuum, echoing down through all the ages to come. The second part of the war had never happened. Before the claws could be invented the war had ended. The concept of the artificial brain had never been transformed into workable practice. The most potent engine off war had never come into existence. Human energies had turned from war to rebuilding of the planet.
Around Ryan the meters and dials vibrated. In a few seconds they would be back. What would Terra be like? Would anything be the same?
The Fifty Cities. Probably they would not exist. Jon, his son, sitting quietly in his room reading. USIC. The Government. The League and its labs and offices, its buildings and roof fields and guards. The whole complicated social structure. Would it all be gone without a trace? Probably.
And what would he find instead?
“We’ll know in a minute,” Ryan murmured.
“It won’t be long.” Kastner got to his feet and moved to the port. “I want to see it. It should be a very unfamiliar world.”
Ryan threw the power switch. The ship jerked, pulling out of the time flow. Outside the port something drifted and turned, as the ship righted itself. Automatic gravity controls slipped into place. The ship was rushing above the surface of the ground.
Kastner gasped.
“What do you see?” Ryan demanded, adjusting the velocity of the ship. “What’s out there?”
Kastner said nothing.
“What do you see?”
After a long time Kastner turned away from the port. “Very interesting. Look for yourself.”
“What’s out there?”
Kastner sat down slowly, picking up his briefcase. “This opens up a whole new line of thought.”
Ryan made his way to the port and gazed out. Below the ship lay Terra. But not the Terra they had left.
Fields, endless yellow fields. And parks. Parks and yellow fields. Squares of green among the yellow, as far as the eye could see. Nothing else.
“No cities,” Ryan said thickly.
“No. Don’t you remember? The people are all out in the fields. Or walking in the parks. Discussing the nature of the universe.”
“This is what Jon saw.”
“Your son was extremely accurate.”
Ryan moved back to the controls, his face blank. His mind was numb. He sat down and adjusted the landing grapples. The ship sank lower and lower until it was coasting over the flat fields. Men and women glanced up at the ship, startled. Men and women in robes.
They passed over a park. A herd of animals rushed frantically away. Some kind of deer.
This was the world his son had seen. This was his vision. Fields and parks and men and women in long flowing robes. Walking along the paths. Discussing the problems of the universe.
And the other world, his world, no longer existed. The League was gone. His whole life’s work destroyed. In this world it did not exist. Jon. His son. Snuffed out. He would never see him again. His work, his son, everything he had known had winked out of existence.
“We have to go back,” Ryan said suddenly.
Kastner blinked. “Beg pardon?”
“We have to take the papers back to the continuum where they belong. We can’t recreate the situation exactly, but we can place the papers in the Government’s hands. That will restore all the relevant factors.”
“Are you serious?”
Ryan stood up unsteadily, moving toward Kastner. “Give me the papers. This is a very serious situation. We must work quickly. Things have to be put back in place.”
Kastner stepped back, whipping out his blaster. Ryan lunged. His shoulder caught Kastner, bowling the little businessman over. The blaster skidded across the floor of the ship, clattering against the wall. The papers fluttered in all directions.
“You damn fool!” Ryan grabbed at the papers, dropping down to his knees.
Kastner chased after the blaster. He scooped it up, his round face set with owlish determination. Ryan saw him out of the corner of his eye. For a moment the temptation to laugh almost overcame him. Kastner’s face was flushed, his cheeks burning red. He fumbled with the blaster, trying to aim it.
“Kastner, for God’s sake—”
The little businessman’s fingers tightened around the trigger. Abrupt fear chilled Ryan. He scrambled to his feet. The blaster roared, flame crackling across the time ship. Ryan leaped out of the way, singed by the trail of fire.
Schonerman’s papers flared up, glowing where they lay scattered over the floor. For a brief second they burned. Then the glow died out, flickering into charred ash. The thin acrid smell of the blast drifted to Ryan, tickling his nose and making his eyes water.
“Sorry,” Kastner murmured. He laid the blaster down on the control board. “Don’t think you better get us down? We’re quite close to the surface.”
Ryan moved mechanically to the control board. After a moment he took his seat and began to adjust the controls, decreasing the velocity of the ship. He said nothing.
“I’m beginning to understand about Jon,” Kastner murmured. “He must have had some kind of parallel time sense. Awareness of other possible futures. As work progressed on the time ship his visions increased, didn’t they? Every day his visions became more real. Every day the time ship became more actual.”
Ryan nodded.
“This opens up whole new lines of speculation. The mystical visions of medieval saints. Perhaps they were of other futures, other time flows. Visions of hell would be worse time flows. Visions of heaven would be better time flows. Ours must stand some place in the middle. And the vision of the eternal unchanging world. Perhaps that’s an awareness of non-time. Not another world but this world, seen outside of time. We’ll have to think more about that, too.”
The ship landed, coming to rest at the edge of one of the parks. Kastner crossed to the port and gazed out at the trees beyond the ship.
“In the books my family saved there were some pictures of trees,” he said thoughtfully. “These trees here, by us. They’re pepper trees. Those over there are what they call evergreen trees. They stay that way all year around. That’s why the name.”
Kastner picked up his briefcase, gripping it tightly. He moved toward the hatch.
“Let’s go find some of the people. So we can begin discussing things. Metaphysical things.” He grinned at Ryan. “I always did like metaphysical things.”
OUTSIDE—LOOKING IN
Ron Elton
A new twist on the time-travel gags . . .
THE Doctor had a daughter, so I’ve got pretty rich. Or rather I haven’t, but the chap who . . . well, I suppose it is me.
I said he had a daughter—actually he’s still got her, but as far as I’m concerned he might just as well be a bachelor.
Or an Eskimo.
I wish he was an Eskimo, then I shouldn’t be where I am now. Neither should I be rich. Or rather the chap who . . . Look, this is getting us nowhere—I’ll start at the beginning.
We’ll start with the Staff Dance. The Staff being Permanent Plastics, Ltd. “We make ’em—try and break ’em”—where I am (was) a warehouseman.
P.P. pride themselves on their modern outlook on Capital and Labour, the let’s-all-be-workmates-together sort of thing, and, provided you don’t call the Managing Director Charley, to his face, you get on all right.
So that when I had a dance with Browneyes, sat the next one out with her on the veranda, and after we’d come up from the clinch for breath, I asked her name, and she said “Beryl Jameson,” I didn’t drop dead from shock. Even though I knew her old man was top-dog in the Research Labs.
I took her home after the dance, said “good-night” in the approved fashion, and caught an all-night ’bus to Shepherds Bush, with one of thosewho-is-this-bloke-called-Boyer feelings.
Naturally I had dated Browneyes, and we did a West End show, with afeed in Lyons’ to follow. And that’s how the great romance started.
Of course, on seven quid a week, you can’t do the West End every night, but we made out all right, with the local gaff, and down by the river at Hammersmith.
Oh yes, we reached the every-night stage, and pretty soon she said to me: “Would you like to meet Daddy?”
“I do,” I told her. “Every day.”
“No, dear,” she laughed. “I mean at home.”
Influence is a fine thing, even at P.P., and anyhow, I was beginning to think of settling down, so I said “O.K.” Doctor Jameson, F.R.S., wasn’t at all a bad old stick. Apart from being a Chelsea supporter, he was almost human. “Come round, by all means, laddie,” said he. “Drop in any time you feel like it.” And that’s how the Thursday discussion group began.
Thursday being Browneyes’ night for her Amateur Theatricals, the discussion group consisted of: (a) Doc Jameson, speaker, and (b) me, audience. I’ll make this clear now. Although I’m a member—was a member—of P.P.—“Products of the Future, Today”—I’m a warehouseman. One of the boys in the basement, who pack the finished article for delivery. When I visit the Labs it’s with a brush in my hand to sweep up. My scientific knowledge consists of two things—H2O, and CO2. When I’ve said those, scientifically that’s my lot.
I’m a science fiction fan and have been for years, but purely of the B.E.M. group. When somebody starts in to describe the overdrive, or to work out the Nth Power of something or other, I skip that bit, and carry on with the story when it comes back to my level.
So most of what the Doc said was way over my head. I gathered, quite early in the proceedings, however, that his heart wasn’t in Plastics, and that he had a lab. of his own, in the house.
The plot thickens.
Then, one Thursday night, I got what he was talking about. I’d formed the habit of listening with one ear, while pursuing my own train of thought, and every time he paused I’d make some noncommittal sort of noise and off he’d go again.
This night I was playing centre forward for the Rangers and had just scored the winning goal at Wembley when I caught the words “space-time continuum.”
This, being science fiction stuff, was more or less up my street, so, telling the vicecaptain to look after the cup, I came back to earth.
“—was beyond all reasonable doubt,” he was saying. “So it remained only to see if the same applied to living organisms. My first attempt, with a mouse, was successful at twenty seconds, and . . .”
He paused, and, pointing dramatically to Jimmy-boy the cat, sitting placidly in front of the fire, said: “—and there is proof of my second.”
Obviously he’d expect something more than a non-committal grunt this time, so, looking suitably impressed, I gasped: “Great Scott! You mean . . .?”
I didn’t know what he was talking about, but I soon found out, for . . .
“Yes,” he said, in a voice that mentally patted himself on the back. “Jimmy spent five minutes in the twelfth century and came back as right as rain.”
Good Heavens! Time machines!
He stood up. “Come and see it,” he said.
I’ve always wanted to see a time machine, so I followed him to the back of the house, to his lab, prepared to go all agog at the powerful, yet graceful lines of the projectile. Or am I thinking of spaceships? Anyhow, there was no projectile, no graceful lines. Not even a metal chamber with a dark, sinister doorway. All I could see was a wooden table with half a dozen arc lamps over it, and, in the corner, a Heath Robinson contraption of wires, dials and switches. The table, though, when I took a closer look, wasn’t wood at all but some kind of plastic, new to me, and I lived among the blinking stuff.
The Doc saw me poking it about, and said: “This is the discovery I made.” He patted the table. “As I told you it has unique shift properties.”
“Oh yes, of course,” I replied brightly, wondering what a shift property looked like when it was out.
“I’ve explained about the lamps,” he went on, “and that’s the Klystron on the panel.” He waved his hand vaguely towards the corner.
I replied: “Quite.”
“I think that’s all,” he said. Then he turned to me, quite casually. “Well, would you like a trip?”
I had a strong idea that something like this was coming, and had been going over a few facts in my mind.
Fact A—Only people in S.F. build time machines.
Fact B—If time travel were possible, somebody from the future would have bobbed up here now, to have a gander at us. Therefore, time travel couldn’t be done.
Fact C—The table, where the body, apparently, went was not, as far as I could see, connected to any wires or suchlike, and would probably be the safest place to be when he started mucking about with switches.
Also I had spotted something that I was going to use as an extra safeguard, when his back was turned, at the panel, so . . .
“Sure,” I said. “I don’t mind.”
“Stout fella. It will be a five minute trip, and when you return I’ll show you what to do, and I’ll have a go myself.”
That’s what I liked about the Doc. None of this “pioneers-of-science . . . for-the-glory-of-the-Empire” stuff about him. Just a matter-of-fact, take-it-or-leave-it approach. Which is partly why I took it.
He turned towards the panel. “Up on the table, then, while I switch on. It takes a little time for the power to build up.”
He started fiddling about with relays and switches, and I grabbed the rubber mat which I had spotted, laid it on the table, and climbed onto it. It was near enough the same colour as the table, and I didn’t think he’d notice it.
