by Jerry
Frantically, I pulled on my space-suit and clambered through the air-lock. I ran, until the cumbersome suit slowed me down to a staggering walk through the sand beside the Oceanus Procellarum.
Leaden and dull, the great sea lay undisturbed by the thin atmosphere still remaining. It had shrunk by evaporation far away from its banks, and where the water once had been there was a dark incrustation of impurities. On the land side, all was a great white plain of glittering alkali without a sign of vegetation. I went on toward Nardos the Beautiful.
EVEN from afar off, I could see that it was desolate. Visible now that the water had gone down, the pillars supporting it rose gaunt and skeletal. Towers had fallen in, and the gleaming white was dimmed. It was a city of the dead, under an Earth leprous-looking with black spots where the clouds apparently had parted.
I came nearer to Nardos and the bridge, nearer to the spot where I had last seen Kelvar. Below the old water level, the columns showed a greenish stain, and half-way out the whole structure had fallen in a great gap. I reached the land terminus of the span, still glorious and almost beautiful in its ruins. Whole blocks of stone had fallen to the sand, and the adamantine pillars were cracked and crumbling with the erosion of ages.
Then I knew.
In our argument as to the possible speed of the Comet, Garth and I had both been right. In our reference frame, the vessel had put on an incredible velocity, and covered the nine-hundred-odd light-years around Rigel in six months. But from the viewpoint of the moon, it had been unable to attain a velocity greater than that of light. As the accelerating energy pressed the vessel’s speed closer and closer toward that limiting velocity, the mass of the ship and of its contents had increased toward infinity. And trying to move laboriously with such vast mass, our clocks and bodies had been slowed down until to our leaden minds a year of moon time became equivalent to several hours.
The Comet had attained an average velocity of perhaps 175,000 miles per second, and the voyage that seemed to me six months had taken a thousand years. A thousand years! The words went ringing through my brain. Kelvar had been dead for a thousand years. I was alone in a world uninhabited for centuries.
I threw myself down and battered my head in the sand.
MORE to achieve, somehow, my own peace of mind, than in any hope of its being discovered, I have written this narrative. There are two copies, this to be placed in a helio-beryllium box at the terminus of the bridge, the other within the comet. One at least should thus be able to escape the meteors which, unimpeded by the thin atmosphere, have begun to strike everywhere, tearing up great craters in the explosion that follows as a result of the impact.
My time is nearly up. Air is still plentiful on the Comet, but my provisions will soon run short. It is now slightly over a month since I collapsed on the sands into merciful sleep, and I possess food and water for perhaps another. But why go on in my terrible loneliness?
Sometimes I waken from a dream in which they are all so near—Kelvar, Garth, all my old companions—and for a moment I cannot realize how far away they are. Beyond years and years. And I, trampling back and forth over the dust of our old life, staring across the waste, waiting—for what?
No, I shall wait only until the dark. When the sun drops over the Grimaldi plateau, I shall put my manuscripts in their safe places, then tear off my helmet and join the other two.
An hour ago, the bottom edge of the sun touched the horizon.
THE REIGN OF THE ROBOTS
Edmond Hamilton
Slaves of the machine, they cringed under its power, until two men arrived . . . .
EDMOND HAMILTON is the master of exciting stories that carry the reader breathlessly from the first word to the last without a stop. This story is one of those can t-stop-until-you-finish kind.
Many people believe that machines are not an unmixed blessing. Even as far back as a hundred years ago, Mrs. Shelley in her “Frankenstein” showed the machine—the creation of a human brain arising to overthrow its master. Many thoughtful people today believe that that may yet happen if we are not careful.
It is a monstrous thing to picture human beings as the creatures or slaves of machines; but if machines are given intelligence and power, their domination may be limitless.
Incidentally this story has an entirely unexpected as well as surprising ending that we doubt anyone will guess beforehand. Those ironical twists at the ends of his stories are part of Mr. Hamilton’s great popularity.
GRANT PERRY pushed his chair back from his desk with finality. “Mr. Loring, I may be a young man but I’m not a fool. Because I inherited one hundred million dollars is no reason for disbursing it to every fanatic society that comes along with a new idea.”
Robert Loring, the older man in the office, looked at him calmly. “I expected this attitude on your part, Mr. Perry,” he said quietly. “But our society is not asking for this money on the mere strength of an idea. We think we can give you proof.”
“Proof of what?” Grant demanded.
“You say your society believes that the ceaseless increase of man’s machines and mechanical methods will in the end spell disaster for the human race.
You tell me that your society wants to set up on some Pacific island a community that will live a simple life without mechanisms or mechanical methods and which will thus preserve human civilization in that spot at least from the machine menace.
“You tell me this,” Grant continued, “and you ask me to donate twenty million dollars to establish your non-mechanical community. The only basis your society has for this request is its belief that humanity in the future will face a machine menace. And when I say that I don’t give away twenty millions on the strength of beliefs, you say that you think you can prove to me that there’ll be such a machine menace in the future. How can you possibly prove to me or anyone what the future will be like?
“Easily enough,” Loring answered. “We can let you see the future with your own eyes.”
Grant Perry stared incredulously at Loring.
There was for a moment quiet in the office, whose eastern windows looked out across Chicago’s roar and tumult toward the far-stretching green expanse of Lake Michigan. Grant broke the silence.
“Let me see the future with my own eyes,” he repeated. “Are you crazy, Loring?
“I am not and neither am I joking, told him. “I can go into the future ten thousand years and take you with me, and we can see for ourselves whether or not the future will be as our society believes.
“But how could we or any other men travel ten thousand years into the future?” the young multi-millionaire demanded. “You surely don’t mean that you’ve built some sort of time machine—”
“I don’t,” Loring interrupted. “No machine could take a human body through time into the future. I have found the one thing that can do it, take men physically across time, and that is the time drug!”
Before Grant Perry could comment, Loring was speaking swiftly. “Perry, I’ve worked on the thing for years. I knew to start with that time is but a dimension, but I soon found that no machine or vehicle could take men farther along the time-dimension. The only thing that could move a living human body forward or backward along the time-dimension, I found, would be a drug taken into the body for that purpose.
“I sought to prepare such a time drug, and after the deepest researches into bio-chemistry finally succeeded, literally combing the world for the super-rare elements and compounds required for its preparation. But at last I have ready this time drug, or rather, these two time drugs.
“For there are two drugs, with opposing effects. The first time drug, which I colored red to distinguish it, when taken into the human body causes that body to move forward instantly along the time-dimension, into the future. The more of the drug taken, the farther into the future will that body be moved. Similarly the other drug, which I colored green, moves the body back along the time-dimension into the past.”
LORING leaned forward. “I
have made enough of these time drugs to take two men ten thousand years into the future and to bring them back to this time. It is impossible ever to make more of the drugs for earth seems not to have upon it any more of the necessary elements. But with what I have, we two can go ten thousand years ahead and see the future for ourselves!”
Grant was staggered. “A time drug! Loring, are you serious—will these drugs actually take living beings into past or future?”
“I am absolutely serious,” Loring answered. “I have tested the time drugs and know their power—they are now over in the rooms of our society, guarded by two of our members.”
“But what was your purpose in making them?” Grant asked. “You say that you are certain that your society is right about the future—that the machine menace to man will come to be. If you are certain, why do you have to convince yourself by going into the future to see it?”
“I do not have to convince myself,” Loring said, “for like every one of our society’s hundreds of members, I believe absolutely that in the future that machine menace to humanity will come to pass. But I have to convince you, Perry—you do not believe as we do and until you do believe will not give our society the twenty millions we need.”
“So you propose to go into the future ten thousand years with me to convince me,” Grant Perry added. “What if we found that your menace had not come to pass after all?”
“I don’t admit even the possibility of that,” Loring answered. “I and all our society are certain that the future will see man crushed by his own machines.”
“Well, suppose we do go ahead ten thousand years and find machines dominating humanity,” Grant said. “That will be the real future, won’t it? Then how could your society do anything in this time to avoid what you know must come to be?”
“Whatever you and I would see, Perry,” Loring told him, “would be the future only in this region where Chicago now stands. Human civilization might be at low ebb here ten thousand years from now. Yet down on the islands of the Pacific there might be a real human civilization, springing from the non-mechanical community our society wishes to establish there in this time.”
“Logical enough,” Grant Perry commented thoughtfully. He stared across the office for a time, then abruptly stood up.
“Loring, I’m going to do it! I’ll use this time drug of yours to go ten thousand years ahead with you, and if we find humanity dwarfed or dominated by its machines I’ll give your society when we return not only twenty millions but all I’ve got! If we find instead that humanity has benefited by machines and mechanical methods, your society gets nothing from me. Is it a bargain?”
“It is!” said Robert Loring, his eyes alight. “Perry, this venture of ours, if it convinces you, may mean the preservation of human civilization!”
Grant was impressed by the man’s sincerity, and shook his offered hand. “Whether or not it convinces me, to travel ten thousand years ahead is an adventure I wouldn’t miss.”
“You’re ready, then?” Loring asked. “We can start this morning—within the hour.”
Grant was surprised. “This morning? But after all, why not if you have your time drugs ready.”
“We made all ready in the hope that you’d go,” Loring explained. “The time drugs, as I said, are over in our society’s rooms with two of our members guarding them.”
“Lead on, then,” Grant Perry told him. “If I stop to think this over sober sense may get the better of me.” Grant Perry’s lightness had left him by the time he and Loring left their taxi in front of a building on upper Michigan Avenue. There was an earnestness and purpose about Loring that made the thing seem more serious. This venture across ages was no longer an interesting suggestion but something near and real, almost terrifying. He glanced back up along Michigan Avenue, whose long line of high square buildings rose buoyantly into the morning sunlight. Across the park from the busy street the green plain of Lake Michigan extended to meet the horizon. Grant asked himself if he was actually to hurtle out of this familiar place and time into the unfamiliar world of ten thousand years hence.
Robert Loring was unlocking a door with a pass-key and they entered a small ante-room. He led the way back through a compact auditorium with several hundred seats and through a book-crowded library to a small laboratory. Two elderly, scholarly-looking men were in the laboratory whom Loring introduced-as Wilson Gunnett and Dr. Martin Dwale, fellow-officers of Loring’s society.
“It is good that you’ve come,” Gunnett told Grant. “It will mean much to our society—and to the world—if you are convinced that we are right.”
Dr. Dwale had opened a safe and taken from it four small glass flasks which he handed to Loring. “We have kept close watch over them,” he said, and added to Grant Perry—“It is because these time drugs cannot ever be duplicated, for lack of the necessary elements, that we have guarded them so closely.”
Loring handed to Grant two of the flasks and a broad leather belt. Grant saw that one of his flasks held a bright red liquid and the other an equally brilliant green liquid, and that the belt had a pocket in which one flask could be carried without fear of loss or breakage.
“The red drug is that which will throw us ahead ten thousand years when we take it,” Loring said. “The green drug is that which will bring us back to the present, and in these belts we can carry the green drug safely with us.”
“But will the belts and the green drug go into the future with us?” Grant Perry asked. “If the drug affects only our bodies I’d think our clothes and belts and the green drug would be left in this time.”
LORING shook his head. “No, the time drugs affect not only our bodies but everything in the immediate range or aura of our bodies. Thus our clothing and the belts and the flasks of the green reverse drug will be carried with us into the future and back with us when we return. Why, we could each take another person through time with us by holding him or her closely in our arms.”
Grant donned the belt, the flask of green drug in its pocket. Then with the red drug in his hand looked inquiringly at Loring.
“We’ll sit on the floor in taking the drug,” Loring said. “We’ll probably lose consciousness anyway in going through time.”
“Of course you understand,” he added, “that we run a risk of appearing in future time at a point where other matter already exists. If that happens we would be annihilated. But we’ll have to chance that.”
Gunnett and Dr. Dwale had placed cushions on the floor and the two seated themselves on these. Grant unscrewed the top of the flask of red time drug and smelt it. The stuff had a strange, pungent odor of unfamiliar chemicals.
Loring had opened his flask also. Grant Perry’s heart was beating rapidly and he saw Gunnett and Dwale watching with awe on their faces from the room’s edge. Loring, his eyes on Grant’s, nodded and raised his flask, drinking rapidly the red liquid in it.
Grant Perry raised his own flask, gulped the red time drug. The taste was strange, strong but not unpleasant. Hardly had he swallowed it than the room seemed to spin rapidly around him. Then it vanished from about him as he was hurled into blackness.
Chapter II
Caught!
BLACKNESS—blackness—out of it Grant Perry emerged slowly, stirring and opening his eyes. He sat up, more than a little dazed, felt a movement beside him and saw Robert Loring, who had been lying beside him, opening his eyes. He and Loring looked about them, at first mechanically, then with quick interest and amazement.
The laboratory—the street—the whole vast plain of buildings that was Chicago had vanished entirely from about them. They sat upon a long sloping sandy beach. A hundred yards in front of them the waves of Lake Michigan lapped on this beach, but all along its sandy length was no structure or sign of life.
Grant looked upward at the sun as he and Loring got to their feet. It was climbing toward the zenith as when he and his companion had taken the time drug, but was higher now. The wind blowing from the east upon them seemed c
old to him, and the only sound to be heard was the washing of waves on the beach.
As Grant took in the immensity of the change he gripped Loring’s arm.
“Chicago!” he uttered thickly. “It was here—all about us—a few minutes ago!”
“It was here ten thousand years ago, you mean!” Loring said. “Grant, the time drug has worked—has thrown us ten thousand years ahead. Chicago seems to have perished entirely in those ten thousand years.”
“Perished entirely!” Grant exclaimed. “My God, the people I knew, the world I knew, dead and gone thousands of years ago!”
“Keep your nerve, Grant!” Loring commanded sharply. “Remember, we’re going back to that world and time, back to Chicago, when we’ve seen what we came here to see.”
His words brought Grant Perry’s mind back to the motive of their venture. He looked about.
“But there’s nothing to see! Nothing but the lake, which hasn’t changed, and this beach.”
“There must be more than this farther back inland,” Loring said. He seemed to Grant a little doubtful, anxious. “It can’t be that there are not humans somewhere here.
“Before we leave this spot, though,” Loring added, “we’ll mark it—this black stone will do it—for we’ll have to be here when we take the drug throwing us back to our own time, or we won’t go back to the room we started from. And it would mean death if we appeared in some spot where matter already was.”
Having set the black stone he had noticed upon the spot, Loring started with Grant up the beach’s slope. They came to its crest and stopped to stare.
A great plain stretched inland as far as eye could see No buildings were visible on it but dotting its surface at distances of a quarter-mile from each other were several hundred round dark openings like the mouths of so many wells or shafts.
Grant Perry was turning to Loring to exclaim upon this strange sight when something emerged suddenly from the well-mouth nearest to them. It was a slender white human figure that raced instantly from the well-mouth toward the lake, heading toward Grant and Loring!
