“Shut up!” hissed Travis.
“Nightmare.”
“Turn around,” commanded Travis. “Walk quietly to the Machine. We’ll remit one half your fee.”
“I didn’t realize it would be this big,” said Eckels. “I miscalculated, that’s all. And now I want out.”
“It sees us!”
“There’s the red paint on its chest!”
The Tyrant Lizard raised itself. Its armored flesh glittered like a thousand green coins. The coins, crusted with slime, steamed. In the slime, tiny insects wriggled, so that the entire body seemed to twitch and undulate, even while the monster itself did not move. It exhaled. The stink of raw flesh blew down the wilderness.
“Get me out of here,” said Eckels. “It was never like this before. I was always sure I’d come through alive. I had good guides, good safaris, and safety. This time, I figured wrong. I’ve met my match and admit it. This is too much for me to get hold of.”
“Don’t run,” said Lesperance. “Turn around. Hide in the Machine.”
“Yes.” Eckels seemed to be numb. He looked at his feet as if trying to make them move. He gave a grunt of helplessness.
“Eckels!”
He took a few steps, blinking, shuffling.
“Not that way!”
The Monster, at the first motion, lunged forward with a terrible scream. It covered one hundred yards in six seconds. The rifles jerked up and blazed fire. A windstorm from the beast’s mouth engulfed them in the stench of slime and old blood. The Monster roared, teeth glittering with sun.
Eckels, not looking back, walked blindly to the edge of the Path, his gun limp in his arms, stepped off the Path, and walked, not knowing it, in the jungle. His feet sank into green moss. His legs moved him, and he felt alone and remote from the events behind.
The rifles cracked again. Their sound was lost in shriek and lizard thunder. The great lever of the reptile’s tail swung up, lashed sideways. Trees exploded in clouds of leaf and branch. The monster twitched its jeweler’s hands down to fondle at the men, to twist them in half, to crush them like berries, to cram them into its teeth and its screaming throat. Its boulder-stone eyes leveled with the men. They saw themselves mirrored. They fired at the metallic eyelids and the blazing black iris.
Like a stone idol, like a mountain avalanche, Tyrannosaurus fell. Thundering, it clutched trees, pulled them with it. It wrenched and tore the metal Path. The men flung themselves back and away. The body hit, ten tons of cold flesh and stone. The guns fired. The Monster lashed its armored tail, twitched its snake jaws, and lay still. A fount of blood spurted from its throat. Somewhere inside, a sac of fluids burst. Sickening gushes drenched the hunters. They stood, red and glistening.
The thunder faded.
The jungle was silent. After the avalanche, a green peace. After the nightmare, morning.
Billings and Kramer sat on the pathway and threw up. Travis and Lesperance stood with smoking rifles, cursing steadily.
In the Time Machine, on his face, Eckels lay shivering. He had found his way back to the Path, climbed into the Machine.
Travis came walking, glanced at Eckels, took cotton gauze from a metal box, and returned to the others, who were sitting on the Path.
“Clean up.”
They wiped the blood from their helmets. They began to curse too. The Monster lay, a hill of solid flesh. Within, you could hear the sighs and murmurs as the furthest chambers of it died, the organs malfunctioning, liquids running a final instant from pocket to sac to spleen, everything shutting off, closing up forever. It was like standing by a wrecked locomotive or a steam shovel at quitting time, all valves being released or levered tight. Bones cracked; the tonnage of its own flesh, off balance, dead weight, snapped the delicate forearms, caught underneath. The meat settled, quivering.
Another cracking sound. Overhead, a gigantic tree branch broke from its heavy mooring, fell. It crashed upon the dead beast with finality.
“There.” Lesperance checked his watch. “Right on time. That’s the giant tree that was scheduled to fall and kill this animal originally.” He glanced at the two hunters. “You want the trophy picture?”
“What?”
“We can’t take a trophy back to the Future. The body has to stay right here where it would have died originally, so the insects, birds, and bacteria can get at it, as they were intended to. Everything in balance. The body stays. But we can take a picture of you standing near it.”
The two men tried to think, but gave up, shaking their heads.
They let themselves be led along the metal Path. They sank wearily into the Machine cushions. They gazed back at the ruined Monster, the stagnating mound, where already strange reptilian birds and golden insects were busy at the steaming armor.
A sound on the floor of the Time Machine stiffened them. Eckels sat there, shivering.
“I’m sorry,” he said at last.
“Get up!” cried Travis.
Eckels got up.
“Go out on that Path alone,” said Travis. He had his rifle pointed. “You’re not coming back in the Machine. We’re leaving you here!”
Lesperance seized Travis’s arm. “Wait—”
“Stay out of this!” Travis shook his hand away. “This fool nearly killed us. But it isn’t that so much, no. It’s his shoes! Look at them! He ran off the Path. That ruins us! We’ll forfeit! Thousands of dollars of insurance! We guarantee no one leaves the Path. He left it. Oh, the fool! I’ll have to report to the government. They might revoke our license to travel. Who knows what he’s done to Time, to History!”
“Take it easy, all he did was kick up some dirt.”
“How do we know?” cried Travis. “We don’t know anything! It’s all a mystery! Get out there, Eckels!”
Eckels fumbled his shirt. “I’ll pay anything. A hundred thousand dollars!”
Travis glared at Eckels’ checkbook and spat. “Go out there. The Monster’s next to the Path. Stick your arms up to your elbows in his mouth. Then you can come back with us.”
“That’s unreasonable!”
“The Monster’s dead, you idiot. The bullets! The bullets can’t be left behind. They don’t belong in the Past; they might change something. Here’s my knife. Dig them out!”
The jungle was alive again, full of the old tremorings and bird cries. Eckels turned slowly to regard the primeval garbage dump, that hill of nightmares and terror. After a long time, like a sleepwalker he shuffled out along the Path.
He returned, shuddering, five minutes later, his arms soaked and red to the elbows. He held out his hands. Each held a number of steel bullets. Then he fell. He lay where he fell, not moving.
“You didn’t have to make him do that,” said Lesperance.
“Didn’t I? It’s too early to tell.” Travis nudged the still body. “He’ll live. Next time he won’t go hunting game like this. Okay.” He jerked his thumb wearily at Lesperance. “Switch on. Let’s go home.”
———
1492. 1776. 1812.
They cleaned their hands and faces. They changed their caking shirts and pants. Eckels was up and around again, not speaking. Travis glared at him for a full ten minutes.
“Don’t look at me,” cried Eckels. “I haven’t done anything.”
“Who can tell?”
“Just ran off the Path, that’s all, a little mud on my shoes—what do you want me to do—get down and pray?”
“We might need it. I’m warning you, Eckels, I might kill you yet. I’ve got my gun ready.”
“I’m innocent. I’ve done nothing!”
1999. 2000. 2055.
The Machine stopped.
“Get out,” said Travis.
The room was there as they had left it. But not the same as they had left it. The same man sat behind the same desk. But the same man did not quite sit behind the same desk.
Travis looked around swiftly. “Everything okay here?” he snapped.
“Fine. Welcome home!”
“Okay, Eckels, get out. Don’t ever come back.”
Eckels could not move.
“You heard me,” said Travis. “What’re you staring at?”
Eckels stood smelling the air, and there was a thing to the air, a chemical taint so subtle, so slight, that only a faint cry of his subliminal senses warned him it was there. The colors, white, gray, blue, orange, in the wall, in the furniture, in the sky beyond the window, were . . . were . . . And there was a feel. His flesh twitched. His hands twitched. He stood drinking the oddness with the pores of his body. Somewhere, someone must have been screaming one of those whistles that only a dog can hear. His body screamed silence in return. Beyond this room, beyond this wall, beyond this man who was not quite the same man seated at this desk that was not quite the same desk . . . lay an entire world of streets and people. What sort of world it was now, there was no telling. He could feel them moving there, beyond the walls, almost, like so many chess pieces blown in a dry wind. . . .
But the immediate thing was the sign painted on the office wall, the same sign he had read earlier today on first entering.
Somehow, the sign had changed:
TYME SEFARI INC.
SEFARIS TU ANY YEER EN THE PAST.
YU NAIM THE ANIMALL.
WEE TAEK YU THAIR.
YU SHOOT ITT.
Eckels felt himself fall into a chair. He fumbled crazily at the thick slime on his boots. He held up a clod of dirt, trembling. “No, it can’t be. Not a little thing like that. No!”
Embedded in the mud, glistening green and gold and black, was a butterfly, very beautiful and very dead.
“Not a little thing like that! Not a butterfly!” cried Eckels.
It fell to the floor, an exquisite thing, a small thing that could upset balances and knock down a line of small dominoes and then big dominoes and then gigantic dominoes, all down the years across Time. Eckels’ mind whirled. It couldn’t change things. Killing one butterfly couldn’t be that important! Could it?
His face was cold. His mouth trembled, asking: “Who—who won the presidential election yesterday?”
The man behind the desk laughed. “You joking? You know very well. Deutscher, of course! Who else? Not that fool weakling Keith. We got an iron man now, a man with guts!” The official stopped. “What’s wrong?”
Eckels moaned. He dropped to his knees. He scrabbled at the golden butterfly with shaking fingers. “Can’t we,” he pleaded to the world, to himself, to the officials, to the machine, “can’t we take it back, can’t we make it alive again? Can’t we start over? Can’t we—”
He did not move. Eyes shut, he waited, shivering. He heard Travis breathe loud in the room; he heard Travis shift his rifle, click the safety catch, and raise the weapon.
There was a sound of thunder.
RICHARD MATHESON
Richard Matheson was recognized as a powerful new talent in postwar fantasy with the publication of his first story, “Born of Man and Woman,” in 1950. His early novels I Am Legend and The Shrinking Man broke new ground through their blending of fantasy, horror, and science-fiction elements and elaborations of the theme that dominates all his writing: the individual alone in a hostile universe struggling to survive. Matheson’s special interest in the paranormal has served as the foundation for his novels A Stir of Echoes, Hell House, and What Dreams May Come. His time-travel romance, Bid Time Return, won the World Fantasy Award. His short stories are among the most reprinted in the fields of fantasy, horror, and science fiction. Most were collected in the definitive retrospective volume The Stories of Richard Matheson. He is also author of the suspense novels Ride the Nightmare and Seven Steps to Midnight, and the award-winning westerns Journal of the Gun Years and The Gunfight. He has scripted many movies and television shows, and his own work has been adapted for film and television series, including The Twilight Zone and Night Gallery.
A popular exploration of the time-travel story is that of the protagonist meeting him- or herself from the future or the past. Matheson’s “Death Ship” takes the idea one step further, having the space-exploring heroes of the tale encounter themselves in a very dangerous future tense. This story was filmed as an episode of the original Twilight Zone television series in 1963, and starred Jack Klugman and Ross Martin as two of the astronauts.
DEATH SHIP
RICHARD MATHESON
MASON SAW IT FIRST.
He was sitting in front of the lateral viewer taking notes as the ship cruised over the new planet. His pen moved quickly over the graph-spaced chart he held before him. In a little while they’d land and take specimens. Mineral, vegetable, animal—if there were any. Put them in the storage lockers and take them back to Earth. There the technicians would evaluate, appraise, judge. And, if everything was acceptable, stamp the big, black INHABITABLE on their brief and open another planet for colonization from overcrowded Earth.
Mason was jotting down items about general topography when the glitter caught his eye.
“I saw something,” he said.
He flicked the viewer to reverse lensing position.
“Saw what?” Ross asked from the control board.
“Didn’t you see a flash?”
Ross looked into his own screen.
“We went over a lake, you know,” he said.
“No, it wasn’t that,” Mason said. “This was in that clearing beside the lake.”
“I’ll look,” said Ross, “but it probably was the lake.”
His fingers typed out a command on the board and the big ship wheeled around in a smooth arc and headed back.
“Keep your eyes open now,” Ross said. “Make sure. We haven’t got any time to waste.”
“Yes sir.”
Mason kept his unblinking gaze on the viewer, watching the earth below move past like a slowly rolled tapestry of woods and fields and rivers. He was thinking, in spite of himself, that maybe the moment had arrived at last. The moment in which Earthmen would come upon life beyond Earth, a race evolved from other cells and other muds. It was an exciting thought. 1997 might be the year. And he and Ross and Carter might now be riding a new Santa Maria of discovery, a silvery, bulleted galleon of space.
“There!” he said. “There it is!”
He looked over at Ross. The captain was gazing into his viewer plate. His face bore the expression Mason knew well. A look of smug analysis, of impending decision.
“What do you think it is?” Mason asked, playing the strings of vanity in his captain.
“Might be a ship, might not be,” pronounced Ross.
Well, for God’s sake, let’s go down and see, Mason wanted to say, but knew he couldn’t. It would have to be Ross’s decision. Otherwise they might not even stop.
“I guess it’s nothing,” he prodded.
He watched Ross impatiently, watched the stubby fingers flick buttons for the viewer. “We might stop,” Ross said. “We have to take samples anyway. Only thing I’m afraid of is . . . “
He shook his head. Land, man! The words bubbled up in Mason’s throat. For God’s sake, let’s go down!
Ross evaluated. His thickish lips pressed together appraisingly. Mason held his breath.
Then Ross’s head bobbed once in that curt movement which indicated consummated decision. Mason breathed again. He watched the captain spin, push and twist dials. Felt the ship begin its tilt to upright position. Felt the cabin shuddering slightly as the gyroscope kept it on an even keel. The sky did a ninety-degree turn, clouds appeared through the thick ports. Then the ship was pointed at the planet’s sun and Ross switched off the cruising engines. The ship hesitated, suspended a split second, then began dropping toward the earth.
“Hey, we settin’ down already?”
Mickey Carter looked at them questioningly from the port door that led to the storage lockers. He was rubbing greasy hands
over his green jumper legs.
“We saw something down there,” Mason said.
“No kiddin’,” Mickey said, coming over to Mason’s viewer. “Let’s see.”
Mason flicked on the rear lens. The two of them watched the planet billowing up at them.
“I don’t know whether you can . . . oh, yes, there it is,” Mason said. He looked over at Ross.
“Two degrees east,” he said.
Ross twisted a dial and the ship then changed its downward movement slightly.
“What do you think it is?” Mickey asked.
“Hey!”
Mickey looked into the viewer with even greater interest. His wide eyes examined the shiny speck enlarging on the screen.
“Could be a ship,” he said. “Could be.”
Then he stood there silently, behind Mason, watching the earth rushing up.
“Reactors,” said Mason.
Ross jabbed efficiently at the button and the ship’s engines spouted out their flaming gases. Speed decreased. The rocket eased down on its roaring fire jets. Ross guided.
“What do you think it is?” Mickey asked Mason.
“I don’t know,” Mason answered. “But if it’s a ship,” he added, half wishfully thinking, “I don’t see how it could possibly be from Earth. We’ve got this run all to ourselves.”
“Maybe they got off course,” Mickey dampened without knowing.
Mason shrugged. “I doubt it,” he said.
“What if it is a ship?” Mickey said. “And it’s not ours?”
Mason looked at him and Carter licked his lips.
“Man,” he said, “that’d be somethin’.”
“Air spring,” Ross ordered.
Mason threw the switch that set the air spring into operation. The unit which made possible a landing without then having to stretch out on thick-cushioned couches. They could stand on deck and hardly feel the impact. It was an innovation on the newer government ships.
The ship hit on its rear braces.
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