by Earl
Lon tried to see more of the ship he was in by pressing his face against the port glass, and succeeded in glimpsing the bulging walls of metal on either side. But the size of it astounded him. If the whole ship was built in like proportion, it must be capable of holding at least a hundred passengers! In that bulge of wall he could see rows of ports exactly like his.
What was this all about? How had he come here? What had happened after he went senseless in his ship while hanging above the wingless ship? And who were these people?
Lon paced the narrow confines of his prison cell in a whirl of thought. But he could make nothing of it. He examined the walls of his room for possible escape. There was just one door, tight shut, and no means of opening it from the inside.
Realizing the security of his prison, Lon stepped again to the port-window. Sunlight glinted brightly on the metal walls. He turned his eyes again to those ports within his range of vision. If these were a series of tiny prisons, he should see faces at those other ports. Suddenly he involuntarily cried aloud. Mirna’s face peered out of the third port from him! Almost at the same moment she saw him. Surprise, bewilderment, then joy came over her face. Then she disappeared.
Lon heard the door open, and gasped aloud as Mirna came running in and threw herself into his arms. After a while Lon held her at arm’s length.
“Quick, Mirna. You must know more about this than I. You opened my door. Can we escape somehow?”
The girl shook her head. “I’m afraid not. I can open any door in this corridor from the outside. But I can’t—and none of us can—open the door at the end of the corridor, which leads to the air-lock.”
“None of you?” queried Lon. “How many of you are there?”
Mirna looked at him queerly. “Lon, there are over a hundred rooms and right now most of them are occupied—each by a woman!”
WHOLESALE abduction, like in the wild days two centuries ago, thought Lon. Could it be for the purpose of a tremendous ransom? Or, since they were all women, was it some other, more gigantic, scheme. But who or what could be behind this?
“What do the other women know about all this?” asked Lon.
“Not much more than I do,” answered the girl. “Except that some who’ve been here a few days say they are treated with utmost respect and decency. The only men they’ve seen are a few of those masked men.”
Though restless to do something. Lon had to pause to think.
“In the hands of mysterious masked men,” he said at last, “who have a miraculous wingless ship and also this huge oversize air-buoy, fitted out as a liner. What in the universe can the whole thing mean? Here we’re prisoners. Back in the city we would be separated. For the life of me, I can’t figure out whether we’re worse or better off than before!”
“It’s all about the same to me,” said Mirna in weary tones. “Father had kept me a prisoner in our home for a week. And here I’m a prisoner, too.” Then her tone became lighter. “But at least here you and I—”
Lon interrupted. “Mirna, I want to see the door at the end of the corridor. Nobody’s going to keep me a prisoner if I can help it. Come on.”
The corridor proved deserted. As they passed a small cross-corridor, Lon paused to question the girl about it.
“Those of the women who aren’t in their rooms,” whispered Mirna, “are in a general lounge at the end of that corridor. I was in there this morning. It’s a beautiful and comfortable room. Those masked men seem to have planned everything elaborately, whatever their plans are.”
They passed dozens of doors on either side. Lon’s room had been at the extreme end, where the corridor ended abruptly in blank wall. At the other end was the door that led to other parts of the huge ship.
They reached the door and Lon grasped the handle, to find it locked. He looked his disappointment. But suddenly the handle turned from the other side and the door swung open. Lon lunged at the masked figure that appeared and clipped him on the jaw with a hard fist. The masked man staggered back, then raised a shout that was chopped off by another sharp blow from Lon’s fist. A quick, powerful jab to his heart floored the masked man.
“Quick, Mirna, follow me!”
He jumped through the door to run into the arms of three more masked men. Without a word Lon brought his powerful shoulders into play, knocking one masked man against the wall with a thud. He turned on the second and jabbed a half dozen quick blows to face and chest, sending him reeling.
The last masked man had taken a step backward and raised his arm. Lon cursed at the same time that he sank unconscious beneath the shock-pistol aimed at him.
When he came to, he found himself in the same little room in which he had first awakened some hours before. He tried the door despondently—it was locked.
Wondering if they were going to starve him to death, Lon peered out the port-window for a chance glimpse of Mirna at her window. But there was no face there, even though he went back time and again.
It was just as Lon was calculating the effect of the couch-frame against the port-window, that the door suddenly opened. A masked man stepped in. In one hand he held a shock-pistol. Lon grinned as he saw that his chin, which was not covered by the mask, was bruised.
“You will precede me, out into the corridor.”
At a wave of the pistol, Lon complied and walked to the further end of the corridor, followed by his guard. Passing through, they went down a larger passageway and from there into a large room. In this room was another masked man—and Mirna! She smiled to him.
LON gave her a quick nod, then turned grimly to the masked man seated behind a desk with many buttons and levers on it.
“I would appreciate,” he said with ironic politeness, “an explanation of all this, particularly why we’ve been imprisoned here.” The masked man nodded. “Exactly,” he said, his voice friendly. “First of all, you wonder who I and my masked companions are. Do you remember the hundred scientists who left civilization nine years ago, renouncing allegiance to any government on earth?”
Lon and Mirna stared at him in amazement, too shocked to speak.
“Yes, we aboard this ship are of that hundred,” continued the masked man. “We foresaw the coming ice-age nine years ago. Our instruments detected the dark, invisible star which approached the solar system, and which was to distort the orbits of the planets by its giant gravity, pulling them partly away from the sun. And because civilization was so corrupt, we made no move to warn the rest of the world. Instead, we decided to take steps to preserve our little group and let the mass of humanity come to its inevitable doom without needless forewarning. We could not save them anyway.
“We left, creating such a stir as is already history, and selected a new home, and founded a community of our own. But what good is a state without posterity to inherit it? Accordingly, these women have been abducted—as you may call it—to become the future mothers of our children. In fact, in the larger sense, to carry on the human race!”
Lon had sufficiently recovered from his first surprise to ask: “But just how is your community to escape the ice-age which is going to cover the whole earth with ice and storms in a few more years?”
“Because,” smiled the masked man, “our new home and community is not on earth but on the planet Mars! That planet, having no great seas, will suffer little change through the expansion of its orbit. It will harbor life when all earth is covered with a vast sheet of ice. There is air there, thin but highly oxygenated. There is water at the poles, enough for human need. And our science will give us food and warmth through the long, bitter period that will follow.
“Of the marvelous inventions and discoveries we made in these last nine years, I will say nothing. This ship is one result of it—a giant space-ship that will take us to Mars as soon as our work here is completed. We will join there the other hall of our hundred, who are even now preparing our community-home for the coming of its future mistresses.”
Suddenly Lon looked at Mirna and then back at the speaker.
“And just how,” he asked curiously, “do I fit into the picture?” The masked man smiled as if in amusement. “Last night,” he said, “when you so persistently tried to save this young lady from some fate you couldn’t know at the time, you won the admiration of those aboard our air-flyer. Seeing you attacked by the Air Patrol, we descended to help you—drove them away and took you in after rendering you unconscious for purposes of secrecy.
“I will be frank with you. This young woman was intended to be the wife of one of our hundred. But it will be easy enough for us to get another, and let you marry her—that is, if you want each other.”
The scientist smiled at the form in which his answer came. They were in each other’s arms, asking one another if it could be true. Finally Lon turned again to the other man.
“But how about the Mars question in our case?” he asked.
“You have your choice in that,” returned the scientist. “Despite our masks—which we wear because of a figurative vow never to show our faces on earth again, after leaving it because of its tyranny—despite them, we are not lawless in our tactics. We will give all these abducted women free choice to return to their old homes, if they so wish. But I rather doubt, all things considered, any one of them will want to return. Anyway, in your case, too, we offer you a safe return to the city, or the New Life on Mars. Which is your choice?”
BUT before Lon could answer, a buzz sounded in the room and with a word of apology’, the scientist tripped a lever on his desk. An excited voice came from the speaker over which was the televised vision of one of the masked men.
“Dr. Johnson!” said the image, “Professor Michel, at the B-6 screen, reports a large fleet of aircraft coming through the ten-mile cloud layer! They are heading straight this way, under rocket power. It must be the Air Patrol!”
The masked Dr. Johnson gave an involuntary gasp. Then he asked: “And our space-motors are not yet repaired?”
“No! It will take a few more hours before the motors are ready for use!”
“Then we must give battle! ”
“We must!” repeated the image. “Each of us must get to our detailed ship, as planned, as quickly as possible, and oppose the Air Patrol, if they are bent on battle!”
“Right!” And the scientist snapped off the switch.
He turned to Lon and Mirna with eyes that were burning strangely. “Somehow, we’ve been discovered, despite our many precautions. The Royal tyrants have sent up their minions, no doubt with orders to kill and destroy. We hoped to avoid this. We are scientists, not military butchers. Unfortunately, our space-motors are under repair, else we would leave. Well, battle it is!”
“But you won’t stand a chance!” gasped Lon. “The Air Patrol has hundreds of ships in this city, and you have only—”
“Twelve,” supplied the scientist. “But it won’t be so unequal as you think. Our twelve ships are invincibly armed, and heavily armored—in fact, invulnerable. Our big concern will be to destroy the Air Patrol fleet before they think of attacking this vessel. That is our only worry. The best thing for us to do, of course, will be to attack immediately—engage them in the fight which must be victorious for us before they discover this space-ship miles higher.” As the scientist ran past Lon toward the door, Lon grabbed his arm.
“Dr. Johnson,” he said. “If you need a spare gunner, lead me to the Air Patrol. I want to do my bit toward earning a place in your community.”
And that was his answer to the choice between old Earth and the New Life.
THE TIME CHEATERS
Two Adventurers Build Earth’s First Time-Travel Machine and Go Forth Into Tomorrow—to Change the Future!
CHAPTER I
Test of Time
IN the dimly illumined shed, three men stood watching an empty shelf. Their eyes were glued on the undisturbed dust. Now and then their glances flicked to the nearby clock.
Time was passing—time, the deepest mystery of the universe.
The three watchers gasped, though they had been prepared. A moment before the shelf had been bare. Now a small wooden box perched there.
Milt Harble reached forth to touch it, half skeptical of its existence. It was solid, real. From a side compartment, next to the time apparatus, Will Gregg pulled a piece of raw meat. He sniffed at it.
“Fresh as the day it was put in, six months ago,” he stated. “Proving that the lapse of time, to the box and its contents, was zero.”
The two young men, both under thirty, were a contrast of types. Milt Harble, fair, chubby-cheeked, hardly looked as if his mind could twist through the tortuous maze of higher mathematics with the agility of a jungle creature. Will Gregg, tall, dark and spare, had an intuitive sense that leaped the gaps of scientific fact and theory. Between them, they had succeeded in breaking down the manmade barrier of orthodox time. Now they were ready to traverse the road beyond.
Eagerly, they turned to the airplane at one end of the big shed. A larger time machine had been built into it. Similar in outward form to a huge radio, it took up most of the rear of the small cabin. Its power cable led under the floor to a row of heavy-duty batteries.
“Now,” whispered Milt Harble, “we’re ready to embark for the future ourselves!”
The third man was Colonel Robert Manson, Milt Harble’s uncle. He puffed slowly at his pipe and shook his head.
“How do you know you can come back at all?” he asked. “Going into the future is understandable, even if you skip centuries. But coming back into the past is something else. It’s like finishing a book and then rereading it to find parts in the beginning changed. What’s happened can’t be changed.”
THE two younger men looked at each other, half in amusement They knew there was no use trying to explain again, for the hundredth time, that the time-warp, produced by their apparatus, would lift them perpendicularly into the time-dimension. It amounted to rising in the time-dimension, free of the three physical dimensions, and going anywhere they wanted in time.
There was one limiting factor, however, which Harble’s formulae had shown from the first. Moving forward in time—“with the current” as Harble had put it—was comparatively simple. But moving back in time, like fighting the way uphill against gravitation, would require tremendous power. More power than they had or knew of. They had not succeeded in sending one of their models so much as a second into the past. Only one type of power could answer to the energy-symbol in Harble’s equation—atomic power.
“We have it all figured out, Colonel Manson,” informed Gregg. “We can only go into the future, without atomic power. So we’ll go into the future, and keep on going. Sooner or later atomic power will have been discovered by man. Then we will come back!”
A final check-up was made on the time machine in the plane. Gregg made delicate adjustments of photoelectric valves. Then both climbed a step-ladder to the wing-tips and checked the pitch of the wire-cage radiators. It was important that the time-warp field should include all the ship.
The airplane itself had nothing to do with the actual time-traveling. Even Colonel Manson grasped that. Going into the future, they might materialize where some other object then existed. But high in the air, in a plane, that possibility was avoided.
“Well,” said Gregg a little nervously, “I guess we’re ready to take our first hop into the future.” His dry, undramatic voice shook, for he realized one of the great moments of history had arrived. “First, we’ll jump only a year, right here in the shed, without flying the plane. We’re trusting you, Colonel Manson, to lock the shed as soon as we ‘leave,’ so that nothing is disturbed. Then, a year from now, we’ll materialize again and see how our time machine stood up under that ‘trial flight’.” He grinned. “Damn! It sounds silly to use common terms in relation to time-traveling!”
“So long, Unk!” Milt Harble tried to say casually.
They exchanged handshakes.
“Good luck, boys!” grunted the colonel. “Danged if I’d get in that machine to save my soul!”<
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GRINNING, the two young men stepped into the ship’s cabin, seated themselves in the pilot seats. Gregg, by half turning, was in easy reach of the time machine’s controls. He turned on the power and set the vernier for the year-mark. Then he put his hand, trembling slightly, on the main switch.
“Ready, Milt?” he breathed.
Harble nodded silently.
They waved once to Colonel Manson and then Gregg closed the circuit. A deep hum sounded from the depths of the apparatus back of them. Photoelectric relays flashed without sound. A field of energy sprang about the ship, radiating from the focal wire-cages on the wings and at the tail. A field of energy that, in unsuited words, shoved the ship and its contents at right angles to the world-line of time.
The succeeding sensation, to Gregg and Harble, was one of being wrenched somewhere at blinding speed. Their minds flickered, out and then on again, like a blinking light. To their eyes, the workshop scene also flickered off and on, like two successive frames of a movie film.
Yet in that wink of an eye, recorded by their clock as a split-second, they they had made an amazing journey. They had catapulted a year into the future.
Gregg snapped off the power. They looked through the cabin windshield. At first nothing seemed changed in the workshop. Then they noticed that dust had miraculously settled over everything. Two other things were altered from that scene of a “second” before. Colonel Manson was absent, and it was day instead of night.
They clambered out.
Harble strode immediately for the window, raised it, and called out to the figure puttering in the little garden. The old colonel straightened, staring. He came at as much of a run as his age would allow.
“There’s a new house down the road,” Harble informed his companion. “Gave me quite a start to see it. For a second I thought it was my eyes.” He grinned ruefully.
