by Don Wilcox
And all in a split second. They were charging up the incline, I was shooting down it. The spray of B-B’s turned their windshield visible just in time to give me my cue.
I bore down on the throttle. We crashed head on.
I awoke in a state of terrific pain.
I was lying in a bed. I tried to turn over, but my body seemed to be burdened down with mortar. I was a mass of casts and bandages. I supposed I was dying. In fact, I thought the doctor was trying to be funny when he spoke up so brightly to the group of people who came in to talk with him.
“Oh, sure,” the doctor said. “This fellow’s going to pull out of it all right. A few breaks and cuts. Nothing serious.”
“Good,” said a stern voice. “We’ve got a cell for him as soon as you get through with him. I’ll miss my guess if the whole bunch of them don’t get death by gas for this.”
I twisted my head and forced an eye open. The view was blurry at best, but I could see the crowd was largely officers. Then I heard some piping voices that were familiar—the voices of Freckles and Shorty.
“You’ve got him all wrong!” Shorty squawked.
“What are these boys yelping about?” one of the officers demanded.
“They’re trying to make out that the fellow’s innocent,” another officer answered. “They claimed they had a wild ride with him—”
“He’s guilty, no question about that,” put in a third officer. “We admit he was smart enough to get his hair cut and change his shirt, but he’s a Venusian, there’s no getting around that. Maybe he talks good English—the six we’ve got locked up can do that too. And probably the four dead ones could, too.”
“The boys admitted that this guy used the by-word zang!” the second officer said, with an air of pride. “And I happen to know that that’s Venusian for wow!”
“Hold on! Hold on!” said the first officer. He turned to the two boys. “How’d you happen to be shooting those air rifles at the runway?”
“Because he told us to,” said Freckles, jerking a thumb at me. “He said that sooner or later the bandits would try to drive up that incline in invisible cars, but if we would pepper them with shots they’d turn visible.”
“Now we’re getting somewhere—”
“And he said that he guessed it was up to him to stop them by crashing into them, because you police weren’t on your jobs,” Shorty added.
“What’s this?” The officers turned to me, and if I hadn’t been defenseless I think they would have bit me. I mumbled my explanation.
I explained that I had phoned through to the Spaceport Police to warn them. Then I had driven through to make certain that they had left no loopholes that the invisible motorcade could get through. And all I had found was loopholes.
“The nearer the boys and I got to the Suburb,” I said, “the more I became convinced that my warning hadn’t been taken seriously—”
The senior officer went white with rage. “Who the devil took that telephone call? Which of you? Speak up?”
“Don’t get sore,” said the second officer. “After all, that call came from a city with a nut house. The inmates are always getting away and pulling tricks. When this voice on the wire told me the cars were invisible, I figured—well—”
“The whole bunch of us,” said another officer, “figured the same. We thought it was a red-hot gag.”
“Gag!” the senior officer roared. “Stupid fools! You thought it was a red-hot gag! And so this fellow—whoever he is—risked his life—”
“He’s a Venusian secret service man,” said the doctor. “I found the credentials on him. From the things he’s been saying in his delirium, I assume that he was a stowaway on the space ship of the Venusian bandits.”
I nodded. There hadn’t been time to get word through to the Earth of the danger. In fact, I had barely caught the boat after a last-minute tip.
“Did the freighter get off?” I inquired.
“On schedule,” said the senior officer, “with three truckloads of gold.”
“If you don’t mind,” I murmured, “I’d like to have one of those invisible cars for a souvenir. I’ve sort of taken a liking to invisible driving.”
“Sorry,” said the officer, “but the whole motorcade smashed up and turned into the most visible pile of junk you ever saw.”
“Zang!”I said. Which, as one of the erudite officers had observed, is the Venusian word for wow!
[*] Lights such as could be used on a car of this kind, completely invisible in itself, might have to be worked on an entirely different principle. Invisible rays of ultra-violet or infra-red could be used, and by use of a pair of spectacles which would translate the vibrations into a range visible to the naked eye, would mean complete vision in the dark by the driver while others would be unaware of any illumination.
THE LOST RACE COMES BACK
First published in Amazing Stories, May 1941
There was a strange power in these mysterious lights—the power to carry a man 25,000 years into the past—or 100,000 years into the future . . .!
CHAPTER I
Vincent Harrison grumbled at himself with every step. “I’m a sap,” he thought, scowling at himself in a passing display window. “My spring vacation’s practically gone, and what have I done with my time? Nothing. Nothing but run errands for other people. I’m a sap.”
He recounted his injuries as he trudged along. That was the way with vacations. You look forward to them for weeks, and when they come you don’t get a thing done. Everyone horns in on your time. Everyone from your grandpa down to your neighbor’s yowling tomcat.
You run errands for your Aunt Minnie. You look up old acquaintances for your college professors. You lug your saxophone into a repair shop because your orchestra leader has got to have a saxophone player in his spring concert and you’re the only one that can cut the three-measure cadenza he wrote into his new original composition, The Symphony of Time.
“I’m too accommodating, that’s my trouble. I’m everybody’s wheelhorse and everybody’s errand boy and—look at me, loaded down with a saxophone case and an armload of Aunt Minnie’s books,” he temporarily overlooked the fact that some of the volumes were his own biology reference books that he had taken out of the library on Aunt Minnie’s card, and that the saxophone was very much his own. “Tomorrow this vacation’s over and I’ve only had three dates with Lucille and one with Marge, and I haven’t worked in more than five hours of bowling—and hell, I haven’t even started practicing that symphony.”
He snorted at the thought. Symphony of Time! Original composition by Maestro Stenovo O. Galancho in four movements. With a long, slow andante movement. That was a laugh. Time doesn’t move that way.
There’s nothing slow about it. Ask any college student on his spring vacation.
Vincent stopped at an intersection and consulted a notebook. He checked over the items. 1, Get the saxophone repaired. (Yes, he’d done that.) 2. Return library books. (He was on his way, the long way around.) 3. Call Marge for date. (He hadn’t forgotten that.) 4. Look up Xandibaum, 23rd and Oak. (All right, everything was done—or would be, before he got back home.)
The address of Xandibaum took him several blocks out of his way. So far as he could remember, he had never traversed this street before. The house was much like all the others of the block—an old frame structure with a mansion-like elegance in spite of being crowded in too closely among Its neighbors. An iron fence surrounded it, but the gate was open. Vincent started in.
He was met by the custodian of the place, who came out the front door donning his hat and gloves.
“Xandibaum?” the custodian shrugged. “He ain’t here.”
“Will he be back this afternoon?”
“Couldn’t say. He never says when he’s comin’ back.”
Vincent weighed his baggage and grunted, “Long walk over here for nothing.” He started to go reluctantly and the dismal-faced old custodian followed him out to the walk. Vincent said, “So yo
u don’t have any idea when he’ll be in? Did he leave the city?”
“I couldn’t say. The day I came to work here he gave me to understand that how or where he came or went was none of my business. So long.”
“One more question,” said Vincent as the fellow got into his parked car. “Just when, to your best knowledge, did Mr. Xandibaum leave? This morning, or this noon—or was it yesterday?”
“It was four years ago this Easter,” The custodian drove off.
“Smart guy,” Vincent muttered as the car rolled away. “Well, at least I can go back and tell my physics prof that I saw his friend Xandibaum’s house.”
Vincent’s gaze at the structure led his steps forward toward the front porch. He noted the name “R.O. XANDIBAUM” set in one of the concrete steps. He noted the narrow stone walk that led around to the rear and was half tempted to follow it. Something that his physics professor had said about this man Xandibaum tickled his curiosity. He sauntered idly around the house, recalling that conversation.
A far-away look had come into the physics prof’s eyes upon learning that Vincent lived in this city.
“I don’t suppose you know a man named Xandibaum—a scientist—no, you wouldn’t, of course. He doesn’t mix with the public much. I wonder what he’s doing . . .”
The physics prof’s voice had droned away in a reverie of memory, and Vincent had broken in with, “You wouldn’t want me to look him up, would you?”
“Yes—yes, I would—very much I would, if you don’t mind.” And then the physics prof had dropped a few hints as to Xandibaum’s curious career. The eccentric old thinker, he said, had always attended the scientists’ conclaves year after year, and always had tried to make a stump speech about some of his revolutionary theories about a universal something that he called a time chain that transcends the present—that is, it links through the past, the present, and the future . . .” Again the physics prof’s voice had mumbled away into something incomprehensible.
“It sounds daffy,” Vincent had commented.
“That was what all the scientists thought. Old Xandibaum used to try to insist that this time chain could be tapped in a thousand ways for scientific experiments. But the science conventions would laugh him off the platform. And the fifteenth year that he tried to put over his speech, they threw him out bodily. I’ve never heard of him since.”
“Gone hermit, maybe.”
“No doubt. But if he’s still living in your city, and you can get word to him, tell him that I, for one, am still pondering over some of his radical theories.” With that the physics professor had wished Vincent a good vacation, and Vincent had gone off musing over the strange ideas.
Now he looked up to find himself at the rear door of the old house. A neighbor’s dog came barking down to the fence, and a genial, portly man, working in the neighboring yard, struck up a conversation with Vincent.
“I had hoped to find Mr. Xandibaum, the scientist,” said Vincent, and in a minute he had gone over the story of the errand for his physics professor, the meeting of a moment ago with the custodian, the custodian’s blunt answer that Xandibaum had been away for four years.
The neighbor puffed at his pipe.
“He was right about that, my lad. Xandibaum hasn’t been seen for four years. He’s dead, of course. But that custodian’s too thick-headed to realize it. Says he’s just gone on some mysterious journey and he’ll be back someday. Wanna go in and take a look at the scientist’s stuff?”
“Huh?”
“Sure, go ahead. You can’t hurt anything. The basement door’s right there on the back porch.”
Vincent hesitated. “You’re sure it’s all right?”
“Sure. I go down every day or so to borrow tools—usually my own that the care-taker has forgot to bring back . . .
Vincent started to set his saxophone case down on the back porch, but fearing he might forget it, he lugged it along down the basement stairs in his left hand, with his books under his left arm.
The passage beyond the tool room was coated with dust and draped with spider webs. He blew the dust off the scratch pad that hung on the door knob. It read:
“William: I’ll be out for a short time. Please see that nothing is disturbed.”
Vincent opened the door and went in.
He didn’t turn on the light. There was already a glow of lights from a distant corner of the big room—a circular string of what he took to be miniature light bulbs. At a glance, they gave him the impression of an illuminated string of pearls floating horizontally in the blackness.
For a moment he was slightly disturbed to think that the careless custodian had left these lights burning. At once the objects in the room engrossed his attention, however, and he was completely absorbed. He spent several minutes trudging slowly through the aisles.
Each table of apparatus seemed more formidable than the one before, painting higher and more grotesque shadows on the wall.
Suddenly it occurred to Vincent that the shadows were gradually rising all over the room. That is to say, the string of illuminated pearls from the farther corner of the room had been gradually descending all the while.
A chill ran over Vincent’s shoulders and down his arms. He clutched his luggage and made his way through the shadows over to the comer from which the light was rising.
His nerves quickened. The circle of little lights was almost to the floor. What would happen if they touched? Would they crash out? He glanced back to catch the general direction of the door, in case he should be left in darkness.
Down—down—the lights floated toward the floor, and for an instant they must have touched. At least they suddenly reversed the direction of their movement. Now they were rising.
With his free hand Vincent mopped his brow. They were rising as gently as they had fallen, the whole formation, as horizontal as the floor itself. All in all, it was too much like a magician’s trick for comfort. Vincent bent closer.
So far as he could see, those lights were not suspended from any visible wire. Were they controlled by the strange apparatus built around and beneath them? He glanced upward, searched the space overhead for a trace of puppet strings. What he saw was a patch of open sky high above him—for directly above the chain of lights was an open air shaft that rose vertically through the house.
Had these little balls of light floated down through that shaft? Were they going to make a return trip and escape through it? Vincent gulped.
In appearance the little blobs of light were illuminated marbles, as big around as the end of your little finger. Their glow was dull and slightly colored. They gave forth no sound or smell or feeling of heat. They stood—or better, swam—in the same definite arrangement, a few inches apart, constantly in a single horizontal plane—a plane that was slowly rising.
Now they floated above the level of the books hooked close within his left elbow. His eye traveled from one side of the circle to the other. The lights were very mysterious indeed, for they were indeterminate. They faded away into the blackness like the tails of comets, giving him the impression that their influence might extend a great deal farther than he could see.
“Damnedest thing I ever saw,” he muttered half aloud.
He stood so close now that he could have passed his hand over a score or more of the lights with a single stroke.
He thought of doing so. He made several tests to convince himself that they were giving out no noticeable heat, that they were not strung together by wires, nor supported from above or below. He passed his hand between two of them. Nothing!
The physics professor’s words echoed through his confused thoughts: “A universal power—a time chain—a power that can be tapped in a thousand ways for scientific experiments . . .
Vincent barely touched the ball of light nearest him.
Instantly there was a brightness like daylight all about him. The sudden change frightened him so that his hand jerked back through the light blob. The blinding light vanished.
&n
bsp; Vincent stepped back, trembling. He hugged his sax case and his books, and took a deep breath, casting his dazzled eyes over the lowering shadows of the laboratory instruments. Well, everything seemed to be safe and sound, and he had to admit to himself that he hadn’t experienced any burn or electrical shock. And actually, there hadn’t been a sound to frighten him. Nothing but the sudden brightness.
Okay, he thought; if this is simply a slick way of turning the laboratory lights on full blaze, he’d do it again.
Which one of these numerous lighted marbles had he passed his hand through? He was proud to find that he knew the answer. Swift though it had all happened, he had made one definite observation. There was a clean-cut color division in this article of lights.
The light ball nearest him and all the others extending away to his left were of a bluish cast.
But the one he had touched, he was dead certain, had also gone blue at his touch—but as his hand had jerked back through it, it had returned to its original reddish tone.
Likewise, all the other little spheres of light on his right were reddish.
He touched the nearest red one again. Again it turned blue—barely visible in the blinding brightness that simultaneously swept in.
It was a brightness like all out-of-doors. In fact, if he could believe his dazzled eyes, it was the out-of-doors!
The glimpse of a completely changed scene shot panic through Vincent. The impression that the laboratory had suddenly been swept away, and the whole city with it, leaving him out in broad daylight in the open countryside—it was all so frightening and uncanny that his hand struck out in a frantic, uncontrolled gesture, through ten or twelve of the little lights.
It was a wild, impulsive swing of the arm that anyone might have made under the circumstances. But far from combating the unseen power, his action unleashed a thundering, roaring, splashing fury! The rolling sea! It was tumbling in upon him!
