Time Travel Omnibus, page 484
“It isn’t worth it,” said Leigh.
“Why not?”
“Chances are that we’ll be ordered home before you can show any real progress.”
“Look, sir,” pleaded Nolan, making a final effort. “Everyone else is raking in results. Measurements, meterings and so forth. They’ve got bugs, nuts, fruits, plants, barks, timber-sections, rocks, pebbles, soil-samples, photographs, everything but shrunken heads. The communicators are the only ones asked to accept defeat and that’s because we’ve not had a fair chance.”
“All right,” Leigh said, taking up the challenge. “You fellows are best placed to make an accurate estimate. So tell me: how long would a fair chance be?”
That had him tangled. He shuffled around, glowered at the wall, examined his fingers.
“Five years?” prompted Leigh.
No answer.
“Ten maybe?”
No reply.
“Perhaps twenty?”
Nolan growled, “You win,” and walked out. His face still hankered to create a corpse.
You win, thought Leigh. Like heck he did. The winners were the Waitabits. They had a formidable weapon in the simple, incontrovertible fact that life can be too short.
Four days later Sector Nine relayed the message from Earth.
37.14 ex Terra. Defense H.O. to C.O. battleship Thunderer. Return route D9 calling Sector Four H.O. Leave ambassador if suitable candidate available. Position in perpetuity. Rathbone. Com. Op. Dep. D.H.O. Terra.
He called a conference in the long-room amidships. Considerable time was spent coordinating data ranging from Walterson’s findings on radioactive life to Mr. Fish’s remarks about creeping shrimps. In the end three conclusions stood out clearly.
Eterna was very old as compared with Earth. Its people were equally old as compared with humankind, estimates of life-duration ranging from eight hundred to twelve hundred for the average Waitabit. Despite their chronic sluggishness the Waitabits were intelligent, progressive and had advanced to about the same stage as humankind had reached a century before the first jump into space.
There was considerable argument about whether the Waitabits would ever be capable of a short rocket-flight even with the aid of automatic, fast-functioning controls. Majority opinion was against it but all agreed that in any event none would live to see it.
Then Leigh announced, “An Earth Ambassador is to be left here if anyone wants the job.” He looked them over, seeking signs of interest.
“There’s little point in planting anybody on this planet,” someone objected.
“Like most alien people, the Waitabits have not developed along paths identical with our own,” Leigh explained. “We’re way ahead of them, know thousands of things that they don’t, including many they’ll never learn. By the same token they’ve picked up a few secrets we’ve missed. For instance, they’ve types of engines and batteries we’d like to know more about. They may have further items not apparent in this first superficial look-over. And there’s no telling what they’ve got worked out theoretically. If there’s one lesson we’ve learned in the cosmos it’s that of never despising an alien culture. A species too big to learn soon goes small.”
“So?”
“So somebody’s got to take on the formidable task of systematically milking them of everything worth a hoot. That’s why we are where we are: the knowledge of creation is all around and we get it and apply it.”
“It’s been done time and again on other worlds,” agreed the objector. “But this is Eterna, a zombie-inhabited sphere where the clock ticks about once an hour. Any Earthman marooned in this place wouldn’t have enough time if he lived to be a hundred.”
“You’re right,” Leigh told him. “Therefore this ambassadorial post will be strictly an hereditary one. Whoever takes it will have to import a bride, marry, raise kids, hand the grief to them upon his deathbed. It may last through six generations or more. There is no other way.” He let them stew that a while before he asked, “Any takers?”
Silence.
“You’ll be lonely except for company provided by occasional ships but contact will be maintained and the power and strength of Terra will be behind you. Speak up!”
Nobody responded.
Leigh consulted his watch. “I’ll give you two hours to think it over. After that, we blow. Any candidate will find me in the cabin.”
At zero-hour the Thunderer flamed free leaving no representative on the world. Some day there would be one, no doubt of that. Some day a willing hermit would take up residence for keeps. Among the men of Terra an oddity or a martyr could always be found.
But the time wasn’t yet.
On Eterna the time never was quite yet.
The pale pink planet that held Sector Four H.Q. had grown to a large disk before Pascoe saw fit to remark on Leigh’s meditative attitude.
“Seven weeks along the return run and you’re still broody. Anyone would think you hated to leave that place. What’s the matter with you?”
“I told you before. They make me feel apprehensive.”
“That’s illogical,” Pascoe declared. “Admittedly we cannot handle the slowest crawlers in existence. But what of it? All we need do is drop them and forget them.”
“We can drop them, as you say. Forgetting them is something else. They have a special meaning that I don’t like.”
“Be more explicit,” Pascoe suggested.
“All right, I will. Earth has had dozens of major wars in the far past. Some were caused by greed, ambition, fear, envy, desire to save face or downright stupidity. But there were some caused by sheer altruism.”
“Huh?”
“Some,” Leigh went doggedly on, “were brought about by the unhappy fact that the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Big, fast-moving nations tried to lug small, slower moving ones up to their own superior pace. Sometimes the slow-movers couldn’t make it, resented being forced to try, started shooting to defend their right to mooch. See what I mean?”
“I see the lesson but not the point of it,” said Pascoe. “The Waitabits couldn’t kill a lame dog. Besides, nobody is chivvying them.”
“I’m not considering that aspect at all.”
“Which one then?”
“Earth had a problem never properly recognized. If it had been recognized, it wouldn’t have caused wars.”
“What problem?”
“That of pace-rate,” said Leigh.
“Previously it has never loomed large enough for us to see it as it really is. The difference between fast and slow was always sufficiently small to escape us.” He pointed through the port at the reef of stars lying like sparkling dust against the dark. “And now we know that out there is the same thing enormously magnified. We know that included among the numberless and everlasting problems of the cosmos is that of pace-rate boosted to formidable proportions.”
Pascoe thought it over. “I’ll give you that. I couldn’t argue it because it has become self-evident. Sooner or later we’ll encounter it again and again. It’s bound to happen somewhere else eventually.”
“Hence my heebies,” said Leigh.
“You scare yourself to your heart’s content,” Pascoe advised. “I’m not worrying. It’s no hair off my chest. Why should I care if some loony scout discovers life forms even slower than the Waitabits? They mean nothing whatever in my young life.”
“Does he have to find them slower?” Leigh inquired.
Pascoe stared at him. “What are you getting at?”
“There’s a pace-rate problem, as you’ve agreed. Turn it upside-down and take another look at it. What’s going to happen if we come up against a life form twenty times faster than ourselves? A life form that views us much as we viewed the Waitabits?”
Giving it a couple of minutes, Pascoe wiped his forehead and said, unconvincingly, “Impossible!”
“Is it? Why?”
“Because we’d have met them long before now. They’d have got to us first.”
“What, if they’ve a hundred times farther to come? Or if they’re a young species one-tenth our age but already nearly level with us?”
“Look here,” said Pascoe, taking on the same expression as the other had worn for weeks, “there are troubles enough without you going out of your way to invent more.”
Nevertheless, when the ship landed he was still mulling every possible aspect of the matter and liking it less every minute.
A Sector Four official entered the cabin bearing a wad of documents.
“Lieutenant Vaughan, at your service, commodore,” he enthused. “I trust you have had a pleasant and profitable run.”
“It could have been worse,” Leigh responded.
Radiating good will, Vaughan went on, “We’ve had a signal from Markham at Assignment Office on Terra. He wants you to check equipment, refuel and go take a look at Binty.”
“What name?” interjected Pascoe.
“Binty.”
“Heaven preserve us! Binty!” He sat down hard, stared at the wall. “Binty!” He played with his fingers, voiced it a third time. For some reason best known to himself he was hypnotized by Binty. Then in tones of deep suspicion he asked, “Who reported it?”
“Really, I don’t know. But it ought to say here.” Vaughan obligingly sought through his papers. “Yes, it does say. Fellow named Archibald Boydell.”
“I knew it,” yelped Pascoe. “I resign. I resign forthwith.”
“You’ve resigned forthwith at least twenty times in the last eight years,” Leigh reminded.
“I mean it this time.”
“You’ve said that, too.” Leigh sighed.
Pascoe waved his hands around. “Now try to calm yourself and look at this sensibly. What space-outfit which is sane and wearing brown boots would take off for a dump with a name like Binty?”
“We would,” said Leigh. He waited for blood pressure to lower, then finished, “Wouldn’t we?”
Slumping into his seat Pascoe glowered at him for five minutes before he said, “I suppose so. God help me, I must be weak.” A little glassy eyed, he shifted attention to Vaughan. “Name it again in case I didn’t hear right.”
“Binty,” said Vaughan, unctuously apologetic. “He has coded it 0/0.9/E5 which indicates the presence of an intelligent but backward life form.”
“Does he make any remark about the place?”
“One word,” informed Vaughan, consulting the papers again. “Ugh!” Pascoe shuddered.
THE END
A HITCH IN TIME
Anthony G. Williamson
A life and a marriage was saved when there was—a hitch in time!
TIME TRAVEL’S A QUEER business. You start out from a room that looks a cross between the Atomic Pile at Halford and the complicated part of a mechanical nightmare, and then, with only the nauseating plunge of the projectors, land right smack in the middle of another nightmare—only this one is a little more realistic than the classic mode. I’d gone in for it as a lark, not knowing what to do and having a couple of hundred thousands pounds to do it with, and finished up by being a time travel vector operator.
A T.T.V.O.’s job is a complicated one. Apart from having to usher gawking customers from one period B.C. to another, he has to know exactly what is going to happen and be able to extricate his charges from any awkward situation which may arise; like the young lady who fell in love with a crusader and couldn’t understand that by settling down with him she’d probably find herself spread around in two thousand different people . . . all non-existent anyway!
Confusing isn’t it?
When I was one of the youngsters at Time Tourists Ltd. I was given sector one. This sector existed in the hot, tropical period of the “before-man-wore-trousers” era, simply crawling with prehistoric animals that the most eminent zoologist refused, at first, to believe, finally admitting that their drawings and theories for the past few hundred years “might” have been slightly wrong. Of course there was the brontosaurus, dinosaur, pterodactyl and mammoth, but their habits did not conform to the specified pattern and their neighbours seemed rather out of place.
But I won’t bore you with details. This was my sector, and after months of arduous “time study” I was finally given my first party, an old fellow who had become senile enough to want to shoot a real live mammoth. For myself I would have preferred a week in ancient Rome during one of their particularly “wild” holidays, but then maybe I’ll make it yet.
I picked him out an old bull, about twenty feet high and quite ferocious to look at, although it was about to die of old age five minutes after we got there. He didn’t know that, of course, just thought it was having its afternoon nap. Wearing our protective suits of rubber, and breathing “canned” air, I led him up to within fifty yards of the brute and let him have his high-powered automatic rifle.
The mammoth looked at us with weak and watery eyes, and made a valiant effort to scramble to its feet; whereupon the old man gave a squawk of terror and fired about fifty rounds into various parts of the animal’s anatomy before jamming his weapon and turning to me with terror-stricken eyes. Calmly I ejected the jammed cartridge, fired three shots into its right eye, and prepared to take the trophy pictures.
Not all my trips in this sector were like this, some providing days of careful stalking and finishing with a hefty battle in which my party usually gave a good account of themselves. But the most serious case was that of Mr. and Mrs. Nick Lestrange.
It was a three-day trip, our vector being set for removal after that period, and we had three full days in which to track across the dry burning plains of what was then the central continent of the world. This area was my gold mine. Here we could shoot as many animals as we liked without distorting the time continuum, for a mere two million years after we left it vanished beneath the seas and could never have any direct effect on the evolution of the world. Consequently, I reserved it for special customers—the only thing special about them being a bank account of the “very large” size, and a strong inclination to pay scandalously for the rather dubious pleasures upon which we embarked.
Nick Lestrange was like that, and Gloria, his young and beautiful wife, didn’t want to stay at home either. We were after sabre-toothed tiger and, complete with land-rover and high velocity standard hunting weapons, we were projected, one blazing hot morning, into a desert of ash and short dry grass. Almost immediately I began to get complaints. Their suits weren’t refrigerating enough, their air supply seemed clogged, why did I have to drive over so many pot holes? I took it all, beginning to think that here was another pair of “fish” who would run before we got within a mile of our prey. They soon settled down, however, and as the day wore on things began to look a little brighter.
Nick was a big man in his late thirties, with a bluff and hearty manner which could, at times, become irritating. He sat in the back of the land rover, gun across his knees, watching the terrain with squinting eyes, whilst Gloria, with her slim figure and shining blonde hair, sat chattering merrily next to me. I was happy, he was happy, and she seemed happy enough. Anyway, until we saw the first one.
There aren’t many animals on the plains; a few slow-moving saurians, the occasional bat-winged bird, and, of course, the sabre-tooths. It was just before noon, whilst we were setting up the table for the afternoon meal, that he came loping out of the mile long clump of brush that extended away to our right. He was big—all sixteen feet of him—and at first I thought Mrs. Lestrange was going to have hysterics. After groaning once or twice as though someone had just stepped on her best hat, she went a sickly yellow and began to run madly for the landrover.
“There he is,” I said, unnecessarily, to Nick. “Bag him.”
But, after a moment’s agonised stare, he was running frantically after his wife, looking a bit sheepish when she climbed into the rover and yelled at him to shoot the damned thing and then we could go home. Pulling out my frequency whistle I spent a casual moment adjusting it, whilst the pair watched fearfully, and then blew it as hard as I could. The tiger, only a hundred yards or so away and coming like an express train, slid to a stop, shook its head, tried to come a bit nearer, and then bounded away with a howl of disgust.
“What on earth did you do?” asked Gloria, face pale.
“Sonic vibrations, we all have them in case we’re attacked by something we aren’t allowed to shoot.”
Looking slightly embarrassed, she turned to her husband. “You wanted to shoot a sabre-toothed tiger! Your one ambition in life was to shoot one whilst it came at you snarling and roaring. You could hardly wait to come on this trip. Well you just had your chance!”
I really felt sorry for him.
“Took me by surprise,” he explained, red faced. “I’ll get it next time.”
“Took you by surprise.” She slid off the vehicle, and with a final disgusted glance, came towards me, looking extremely pretty in the close-fitting suit and general air of indignation. “I’ll help you get the meal ready, Tony,” she smiled. “Perhaps you’ll take me hunting this afternoon? Now that I know you’ve got that little whistle I feel much safer.” With a pointed glance at poor Nicholas.
We spent the afternoon roaming the bush, shooting a couple of animals that were probably the prototype of the present-day gazelle, and returning to the camp as the sun began to set. The pair of lightweight tents were soon erected and, using a reactor, I quickly had a cheerful-looking blaze that was a passable imitation of a camp fire. Over this I cooked the thin juicy steaks, the remainder of the courses coming steaming hot from the food packs, but nevertheless making a very satisfactory meal.
Nick was out of favour with Gloria, and I soon saw that by both vying for my attention and completely ignoring each other the atmosphere was going to be fraught with peril for yours truly. Apparently the trip had been taken as a last attempt to save a disintegrating marriage, childlessness and hair-trigger tempers making life rather hard for the pair. After two hours of painful conversation I suggested that we retire for the night, and with sighs of relief they went into their tent.
