Harry Turtledove

by The Best Time Travel Stories of the 20th Century

  “Why don’t we stop kidding ourselves?” Mason said. “We all know what it is, don’t we?”

  He was thinking of what Ross had said just a moment before. About the senses giving evidence of what was believed. Even if there was nothing there at all . . .

  Then, in a split second, with the knowledge, he saw Ross and he saw Carter. As they were. And he took a short shuddering breath, a last breath until illusion would bring breath and flesh again.

  “Progress,” he said bitterly, and his voice was an aching whisper in the phantom ship. “The Flying Dutchman takes to the universe.”

  L. SPRAGUE DE CAMP

  L. Sprague de Camp (1907–2000) began writing in the 1930s, and published more than one hundred science-fiction and fantasy novels, dozens of short stories, and many acclaimed nonfiction works during his career. Known early on for his space opera novels, he was first critically and popularly recognized for his novel Lest Darkness Fall, the story of one man’s attempt to change history during the Roman Empire. Adept in every genre he turned his hand to, he has written everything from fantasy (The Incomplete Enchanter series) to Conan pastiches, revising and publishing Robert E. Howard’s unfinished works in the collection Tales of Conan, to books on writing science fiction (Science-Fiction Handbook). He also wrote many excellent nonfiction books on topics that varied from author biographies, including books on H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, to texts on aspects of science and even the Scopes monkey trial. He was loved, respected, and lauded in the science-fiction and fantasy field, receiving the Gandalf (the Grand Master Award for Lifetime Achievement in Fantasy) Award, and the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America’s Grand Master Award. In 1997, his autobiography, Time and Chance, received the Hugo Award for best nonfiction work. He married Catherine A. Crook in 1939, and they remained together for more than sixty years, traveling the world and writing, until her death in 2000.

  De Camp was able to take virtually any topic and make a smooth, believable story out of it by the time he was done, and “A Gun for Dinosaur” is a perfect example. In contrast to Bradbury’s emphasis on the bells and whistles, he sidesteps the idea of a time paradox in about five paragraphs, and it’s on to the meat (slight pun intended) of the story, hunting what would arguably be the most challenging game of all—a late Mesozoic dinosaur. The idea of time travel actually takes a backseat to the rest of the story—except, of course, for one character’s admittedly gruesome end, also described in a few paragraphs where de Camp shows his mastery of answering a logical question by showing the results, and wrapping up his plot as neat as can be.

  A GUN FOR DINOSAUR

  L. SPRAGUE DE CAMP

  NO, I’M SORRY, Mr. Seligman, but I can’t take you hunting Late Mesozoic dinosaur.

  Yes, I know what the advertisement says.

  Why not? How much d’you weigh? A hundred and thirty? Let’s see; that’s under ten stone, which is my lower limit.

  I could take you to other periods, you know. I’ll take you to any period in the Cenozoic. I’ll get you a shot at an entelodont or a uintathere. They’ve got fine heads.

  I’ll even stretch a point and take you to the Pleistocene, where you can try for one of the mammoths or the mastodon.

  I’ll take you back to the Triassic where you can shoot one of the smaller ancestral dinosaurs. But I will jolly well not take you to the Jurassic or Cretaceous. You’re just too small.

  What’s your size got to do with it? Look here, old boy, what did you think you were going to shoot your dinosaur with?

  Oh, you hadn’t thought, eh?

  Well, sit there a minute. . . . Here you are: my own private gun for that work, a Continental .600. Does look like a shotgun, doesn’t it? But it’s rifled, as you can see by looking through the barrels. Shoots a pair of .600 Nitro Express cartridges the size of bananas; weighs fourteen and a half pounds and has a muzzle energy of over seven thousand foot-pounds. Costs fourteen hundred and fifty dollars. Lot of money for a gun, what?

  I have some spares I rent to the sahibs. Designed for knocking down elephant. Not just wounding them, knocking them base-over-apex. That’s why they don’t make guns like this in America, though I suppose they will if hunting parties keep going back in time.

  Now, I’ve been guiding hunting parties for twenty years. Guided ’em in Africa until the game gave out there except on the preserves. And all that time I’ve never known a man your size who could handle the six-nought-nought. It knocks ’em over, and even when they stay on their feet they get so scared of the bloody cannon after a few shots that they flinch. And they find the gun too heavy to drag around rough Mesozoic country. Wears ’em out.

  It’s true that lots of people have killed elephant with lighter guns: the .500, .475, and .465 doubles, for instance, or even .375 magnum repeaters. The difference is, with a .375 you have to hit something vital, preferably the heart, and can’t depend on simple shock power.

  An elephant weighs—let’s see—four to six tons. You’re proposing to shoot reptiles weighing two or three times as much as an elephant and with much greater tenacity of life. That’s why the syndicate decided to take no more people dinosaur hunting unless they could handle the .600. We learned the hard way, as you Americans say. There were some unfortunate incidents. . . .

  I’ll tell you, Mr. Seligman. It’s after seventeen-hundred. Time I closed the office. Why don’t we stop at the bar on our way out while I tell you the story?

  ———

  . . . It was about the Raja’s and my fifth safari into time. The Raja? Oh, he’s the Aiyar half of Rivers and Aiyar. I call him the Raja because he’s the hereditary monarch of Janpur. Means nothing nowadays, of course. Knew him in India and ran into him in New York running the Indian tourist agency. That dark chap in the photograph on my office wall, the one with his foot on the dead sabertooth.

  Well, the Raja was fed up with handing out brochures about the Taj Mahal and wanted to do a bit of hunting again. I was at loose ends when we heard of Professor Prochaska’s time machine at Washington University.

  Where’s the Raja now? Out on safari in the Early Oligocene after titanothere while I run the office. We take turn about, but the first few times we went out together.

  Anyhow, we caught the next plane to St. Louis. To our mortification, we found we weren’t the first. Lord, no! There were other hunting guides and no end of scientists, each with his own idea of the right way to use the machine.

  We scraped off the historians and archaeologists right at the start. Seems the ruddy machine won’t work for periods more recent than 100,000 years ago. It works from there up to about a billion years.

  Why? Oh, I’m no four-dimensional thinker; but, as I understand it, if people could go back to a more recent time, their actions would affect our own history, which would be a paradox or contradiction of facts. Can’t have that in a well-run universe, you know.

  But, before 100,000 B.C., more or less, the actions of the expeditions are lost in the stream of time before human history begins. At that, once a stretch of past time has been used, say the month of January, one million B.C., you can’t use that stretch over again by sending another party into it. Paradoxes again.

  The professor isn’t worried, though. With a billion years to exploit, he won’t soon run out of eras.

  Another limitation of the machine is the matter of size. For technical reasons, Prochaska had to build the transition chamber just big enough to hold four men with their personal gear, and the chamber wallah. Larger parties have to be sent through in relays. That means, you see, it’s not practical to take jeeps, launches, aircraft, and other powered vehicles.

  On the other hand, since you’re going to periods without human beings, there’s no whistling up a hundred native bearers to trot along with your gear on their heads. So we usually take a train of asses—burros, they call them here. Most periods have enough natural forage so you can get where you want to go.

  As I say, everybody had his own idea for using the
machine. The scientists looked down their noses at us hunters and said it would be a crime to waste the machine’s time pandering to our sadistic amusements.

  We brought up another angle. The machine cost a cool thirty million. I understand this came from the Rockefeller Board and such people, but that accounted for the original cost only, not the cost of operation. And the thing uses fantastic amounts of power. Most of the scientists’ projects, while worthy enough, were run on a shoestring, financially speaking.

  Now, we guides catered to people with money, a species with which America seems well stocked. No offense, old boy. Most of these could afford a substantial fee for passing through the machine into the past. Thus we could help finance the operation of the machine for scientific purposes, provided we got a fair share of its time. In the end, the guides formed a syndicate of eight members, one member being the partnership of Rivers and Aiyar, to apportion the machine’s time.

  We had rush business from the start. Our wives—the Raja’s and mine—raised hell with us for a while. They’d hoped that, when the big game gave out in our own era, they’d never have to share us with lions and things again, but you know how women are. Hunting’s not really dangerous if you keep your head and take precautions.

  ———

  On the fifth expedition, we had two sahibs to wet-nurse; both Americans in their thirties, both physically sound, and both solvent. Otherwise they were as different as different can be.

  Courtney James was what you chaps call a playboy: a rich young man from New York who’d always had his own way and didn’t see why that agreeable condition shouldn’t continue. A big bloke, almost as big as I am; handsome in a florid way, but beginning to run to fat. He was on his fourth wife and, when he showed up at the office with a blond twist with “model” written all over her, I assumed that this was the fourth Mrs. James.

  “Miss Bartram,” she corrected me, with an embarrassed giggle.

  “She’s not my wife,” James explained. “My wife is in Mexico, I think, getting a divorce. But Bunny here would like to go along—”

  “Sorry,” I said, “we don’t take ladies. At least, not to the Late Mesozoic.”

  This wasn’t strictly true, but I felt we were running enough risks, going after a little-known fauna, without dragging in people’s domestic entanglements. Nothing against sex, you understand. Marvelous institution and all that, but not where it interferes with my living.

  “Oh, nonsense!” said James. “If she wants to go, she’ll go. She skis and flies my airplane, so why shouldn’t she—”

  “Against the firm’s policy,” I said.

  “She can keep out of the way when we run up against the dangerous ones,” he said.

  ’’No, sorry.”

  “Damn it!” said he, getting red. “After all, I’m paying you a goodly sum, and I’m entitled to take whoever I please.”

  “You can’t hire me to do anything against my best judgment,” I said. “If that’s how you feel, get another guide.”

  “All right, I will,” he said. “And I’ll tell all my friends you’re a God-damned—” Well, he said a lot of things I won’t repeat, until I told him to get out of the office or I’d throw him out.

  I was sitting in the office and thinking sadly of all that lovely money James would have paid me if I hadn’t been so stiff-necked, when in came my other lamb, one August Holtzinger. This was a little slim pale chap with glasses, polite and formal. Holtzinger sat on the edge of his chair and said:

  “Uh—Mr. Rivers, I don’t want you to think I’m here under false pretenses. I’m really not much of an outdoorsman, and I’ll probably be scared to death when I see a real dinosaur. But I’m determined to hang a dinosaur head over my fireplace or die in the attempt.”

  “Most of us are frightened at first,” I soothed him, “though it doesn’t do to show it.” And little by little I got the story out of him.

  While James had always been wallowing in the stuff, Holtzinger was a local product who’d only lately come into the real thing. He’d had a little business here in St. Louis and just about made ends meet when an uncle cashed in his chips somewhere and left little Augie the pile.

  Now Holtzinger had acquired a fiancée and was building a big house. When it was finished, they’d be married and move into it. And one furnishing he demanded was a ceratopsian head over the fireplace. Those are the ones with the big horned heads with a parrot beak and a frill over the neck, you know. You have to think twice about collecting them, because if you put a seven-foot Triceratops head into a small living room, there’s apt to be no room left for anything else.

  We were talking about this when in came a girl: a small girl in her twenties, quite ordinary-looking, and crying.

  “Augie!” she cried. “You can’t! You mustn’t! You’ll be killed!” She grabbed him round the knees and said to me:

  “Mr. Rivers, you mustn’t take him! He’s all I’ve got! He’ll never stand the hardships!”

  “My dear young lady,” I said, “I should hate to cause you distress, but it’s up to Mr. Holtzinger to decide whether he wishes to retain my services.”

  “It’s no use, Claire,” said Holtzinger. “I’m going, though I’ll probably hate every minute of it.”

  “What’s that, old boy?” I said. “If you hate it, why go? Did you lose a bet, or something?”

  “No,” said Holtzinger. “It’s this way. Uh—I’m a completely undistinguished kind of guy. I’m not brilliant or big or strong or handsome. I’m just an ordinary Midwestern small businessman. You never even notice me at Rotary luncheons, I fit in so perfectly.

  “But that doesn’t say I’m satisfied. I’ve always hankered to go to far places and do big things. I’d like to be a glamorous, adventurous sort of guy. Like you, Mr. Rivers.”

  “Oh, come,” I said. “Professional hunting may seem glamorous to you, but to me it’s just a living.”

  He shook his head. “Nope. You know what I mean. Well, now I’ve got this legacy, I could settle down to play bridge and golf the rest of my life, and try to act like I wasn’t bored. But I’m determined to do something with some color in it, once at least. Since there’s no more real big-game hunting in the present, I’m gonna shoot a dinosaur and hang his head over my mantel if it’s the last thing I do. I’ll never be happy otherwise.”

  Well, Holtzinger and his girl argued, but he wouldn’t give in. She made me swear to take the best care of her Augie and departed, sniffling.

  When Holtzinger had left, who should come in but my vile-tempered friend Courtney James? He apologized for insulting me, though you could hardly say he groveled.

  “I don’t really have a bad temper,” he said, “except when people won’t cooperate with me. Then I sometimes get mad. But so long as they’re cooperative I’m not hard to get along with.”

  I knew that by “cooperate” he meant to do whatever Courtney James wanted, but I didn’t press the point. “How about Miss Bartram?” I asked.

  “We had a row,” he said. “I’m through with women. So, if there’s no hard feelings, let’s go from where we left off.”

  “Very well,” I said, business being business.

  The Raja and I decided to make it a joint safari to eighty-five million years ago: the Early Upper Cretaceous, or the Middle Cretaceous as some American geologists call it. It’s about the best period for dinosaur in Missouri. You’ll find some individual species a little larger in the Late Upper Cretaceous, but the period we were going to gives a wider variety.

  Now, as to our equipment: The Raja and I each had a Continental .600, like the one I showed you, and a few smaller guns. At this time we hadn’t worked up much capital and had no spare .600s to rent.

  August Holtzinger said he would rent a gun, as he expected this to be his only safari, and there’s no point in spending over a thousand dollars for a gun you’ll shoot only a few times. But, since we had no spare .600s, his choice lay between buying one of those and renting one of our smaller pieces.
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br />   We drove into the country and set up a target to let him try the .600. Holtzinger heaved up the gun and let fly. He missed completely, and the kick knocked him flat on his back.

  He got up, looking paler than ever, and handed me back the gun, saying: “Uh—I think I’d better try something smaller.”

  When his shoulder stopped hurting, I tried him out on the smaller rifles. He took a fancy to my Winchester 70, chambered for the .375 magnum cartridge. This is an excellent all-round gun—perfect for the big cats and bears, but a little light for elephant and definitely light for dinosaur. I should never have given in, but I was in a hurry, and it might have taken months to have a new .600 made to order for him. James already had a gun, a Holland & Holland .500 double express, which is almost in a class with the .600.

  Both sahibs had done a bit of shooting, so I didn’t worry about their accuracy. Shooting dinosaur is not a matter of extreme accuracy, but of sound judgment and smooth coordination so you shan’t catch twigs in the mechanism of your gun, or fall into holes, or climb a small tree that the dinosaur can pluck you out of, or blow your guide’s head off.

  People used to hunting mammals sometimes try to shoot a dinosaur in the brain. That’s the silliest thing you can do, because dinosaur haven’t got any. To be exact, they have a little lump of tissue the size of a tennis ball on the front end of their spines, and how are you going to hit that when it’s imbedded in a six-foot skull?

  The only safe rule with dinosaur is: always try for a heart shot. They have big hearts, over a hundred pounds in the largest species, and a couple of .600 slugs through the heart will slow them up, at least. The problem is to get the slugs through that mountain of meat around it.

  ———

  Well, we appeared at Prochaska’s laboratory one rainy morning: James and Holtzinger, the Raja and I, our herder Beauregard Black, three helpers, a cook, and twelve jacks.

  The transition chamber is a little cubbyhole the size of a small lift. My routine is for the men with the guns to go first in case a hungry theropod is standing near the machine when it arrives. So the two sahibs, the Raja, and I crowded into the chamber with our guns and packs. The operator squeezed in after us, closed the door, and fiddled with his dials. He set the thing for April twenty-fourth, eighty-five million B.C., and pressed the red button. The lights went out, leaving the chamber lit by a little battery-operated lamp. James and Holtzinger looked pretty green, but that may have been the lighting. The Raja and I had been through all this before, so the vibration and vertigo didn’t bother us.