The Coils of Time

by A Bertram Chandler

  “Just help Mr. Wilkinson on with it. Or help him into it.” Henshaw grinned briefly. “After all, all things are relative.”

  “Before we go too far,” asked the spaceman, “what’s the drill?”

  “Getting cold feet?” enquired the scientist, but there was no sneer in his voice. “Can’t say that I blame you.”

  “No. Not cold feet. Not quite. But it’s part of my training to run around with a check list before leaving the ground.”

  “You have something there,” admitted the other. “But in the case of a voyage through Space you know what to expect and what has to be done about it. In the case of a voyage through Time — who knows what to expect?”

  “Air supply?” Wilkinson asked Clavering.

  “Don’t worry about it, mister. It comes on automatically, as soon as the suit is sealed. You’ve a good six-hours’ breathing — more if you don’t exert yourself.”

  “And for how long shall I be gone?” Wilkinson asked Henshaw.

  “For this trial run, just ten minutes. The same as I gave Rufus and the rats. They had no armor and they were brought back unharmed.”

  With the little mechanic standing by to assist, Wilkinson clambered into the suit, It was comfortable, the padding adjusting itself to every contour of his body. It was comfortable, but when Wilkinson heard the sharp click as the back snapped shut he felt the beginnings of claustrophobia. He had never felt happy when obliged, occasionally, to go outside his ship in a conventional spacesuit — but this was worse. In a conventional suit he had been able to move freely.

  But the air supply was in order; he could feel the faint draft on his face, cool and refreshing. And he could, at least, move his head inside the helmet, the heavy glass strip visor giving him an arc of vision of 180°. He heard Henshaw’s voice, tinny in the helmet phones, “Are you all right, Wilkinson?”

  He said that he was.

  “Good. I’m sending you back now. Just for ten minutes, the same as I did Rufus and the rats.” He repeated what he had said before. “They had no armor, and they were brought back unharmed.”

  They could move, thought Wilkinson, and then remembered that it was only the cat who had enjoyed the advantage of mobility. The rats had been in an airtight box.

  From the corner of his eye he could just see the physicist at his complicated switchboard, and almost directly ahead of him was the glittering complexity of rotors and spindles, motionless now, and the gleaming column that was almost a Moebius Strip. And then, slowly at first, but gathering momentum, the fantastic contraption began to move, the wheels spinning and precessing, the Moebius Strip twisting upon itself. It began to move, and he could feel it pulling him, dragging him from the sane Universe and into and across unfathomable gulfs of Space and Time, and the rotors spun and precessed, tumbling down the dark dimensions, carrying him with them….

  He tried to look away, but could not. He tried to close his eyes, but his eyelids were immovable. He tried to cry out, but his mouth and tongue and throat were paralyzed.

  At last, “Stop!” he managed to croak, and shut his eyes against the yellow glare.

  The yellow glare?

  He opened his eyes slowly and painfully, stared unbelievingly at a confusion of sullen green and shrieking scarlet, at an intolerably brassy sky.

  V

  AT FIRST he thought that he had been transported to Earth, to one of the few remaining untamed areas of the mother planet. But this, he came to realize slowly, was no world that he had ever known. It was not Earth, and it was not Venus, and it certainly was not Mars. Fantastically lush was the vegetation; great fleshy fronds, huge blossoms that were explosions of scarlet and orange, green-and-purple-mottled ribbons and streamers that undulated lazily in the breeze.

  But was there a breeze?

  Wilkinson cursed the immobility of his armor, and then discovered that he could, at least, move his helmet — slowly and painfully, but enough to extend his field of vision. He bore down on the chin pad and the helmet tilted, the neck joints complaining. He was standing, he discovered, in what appeared to be an almost dry watercourse. There was a bed of stones, large and small, waterworn, all covered with an unpleasant grey slime that steamed in the heat. (He knew, somehow, that it was hot, even though the temperature control of the suit was functioning perfectly.)

  Little things like crabs, hard to see because of their protective coloration, scurried over the pebbles and boulders, darting into the crevices. And there drifted into the spaceman’s field of view a larger creature, a thing with a long, spindly body, striped orange and black supported between flickering gauzy wings. It hovered before his helmet, staring at him with its great, many-faceted eyes, and then, suddenly, it was gone.

  With an effort Wilkinson turned his head, pressing on the right cheek pad, striving to follow the creature’s line of flight. He was in time to see it dive in a blur of rapid motion, to see it lift again with something clutched in its mandibles, a bundle of dirty brown fur that was bleeding, that was still struggling feebly. Before it was carried out of sight the man had time to see what it was.

  It was a rat.

  So this was Earth, then. (But Terran rats, he knew, had established themselves in the underground colonies on the Moon and on the Jovian satellites, in the domed cities of Mars and even in the Martian desert itself.) But this could be Earth. What if Henshaw’s machine displaced its — its victims? … both in Time and Space? What if he, Wilkinson, had been teleported to the Earth of the Carboniferous Era? It all fitted in — the lush vegetation, the little scurrying crustacea, the thing like a huge dragonfly.

  It all fitted in …

  But the rat did not.

  He became aware of a droning sound, a distant throbbing, loud enough even to be heard through the thick casing of his helmet, that seemed to come from somewhere overhead. He knew the beginnings of fear. What new monster was this? Something that could crack his armor like a nutshell with its jaws or mandibles, or something that would achieve the same effect by lifting him, carrying him aloft and then dropping him hundreds of feet to the stones beneath? But whatever it was, panic was useless. And whatever it was, he told himself unconvincingly, the sound it was making was regular, mechanical …

  But did flying machines belong in the Carboniferous Era?

  Slowly, painfully, he tilted his helmet back on its neck joints, pressing back hard on the pad. At last he was able to stare directly into the yellow, featureless sky, into the glaring haze, the brassy overcast. The drumming noise was louder, louder, and still he could see nothing.

  And then it swept into his field of view, only a black speck at first, but one that expanded rapidly as he watched. Conveniently it circled, so that he never quite lost it. It circled, losing altitude, and he was able to make out details — the torpedo-shaped hull, the swept-back wings, the flicker of blue flame at the after end. He knew what it was then. He had seen machines like it, although only in training films during his astronautical education. In the early days of space travel the rocket had been the only possible means of locomotion from world to world, but shortly after the first Lunar landing it had been rendered obsolete by the inertial drive.

  And did rocket ships belong in the Carboniferous Era?

  It circled, losing altitude and speed, dropping lower and lower. From its belly its landing gear protruded. It circled more widely so as to pass behind the man immobile in his heavy armor. It passed out of his arc of vision and, struggle as he would, Wilkinson could not follow its flight. The stuttering roar of it faded, faded — and then, abruptly, began to swell. Wilkinson realised that the unknown pilot must be following the line of the watercourse. Perhaps it led to a landing field, or to a town or settlement.

  The screaming roar was loud, and louder, and swelling to a deafening crescendo. The spaceman cringed inside his suit, and tried desperately to throw himself forward onto his face as the thing swept overhead. And then it was in sight again — squat, foreshortened, the flaring flame from its tail blindingly
brilliant. It was dropping rapidly.

  A hundred yards beyond him it touched and rebounded, touched again and slewed violently around as one wing tip fouled a boulder standing higher than its fellows. For a brief second its course was reversed and it was heading straight for Wilkinson, and then the damaged wing dipped, striking a coruscating shower of sparks from the stony river bed. That was the end of it. It turned over and over in a cloud of sparks and debris, and the screech and clatter of rending metal was loud even in the helmet.

  The spaceman stared in horror at the crumpled wreckage. Smoke was rising from it, and through the rents in the once sleek hull he could see a pulsing, ominous blue glow. There was a trickle — more than a trickle — of red fluid from the battered fuselage, and already the little crustaceans, too brainless to have really been frightened, were crawling around and over it. Already the first of the giant dragonflies were hovering over the growing puddle, were beginning to participate in the obscene feast. Already the rats — more intelligent and more cautious than the arthropods — were emerging from their hiding places.

  Wilkinson retched miserably. He did not know what manner of beings had manned the wrecked rocket plane, but some of them might still, somehow, be living, and he was unable to go to their assistance, imprisoned as he was in his all but immobile armor. The perspiration poured down his skin as he tried to lift first one heavy leg of the suit, then the other. He achieved no more than a slight teetering motion.

  But something was moving in the wreckage.

  It was a man.

  Slowly, painfully, he crawled from one of the larger rents in the plating, a scarecrow in bloody, smouldering rags that had once been a uniform. Slowly he staggered to his feet, then turned, thrusting an arm into the jaggedly edged hole from which he had emerged. He seemed to be tugging at something, and then he stooped so that he could use both hands, to lift as well as to pull. Something — clothing snagged on a sharp projection? — gave, and he fell backwards, lay sprawled on the stones with a body of a small girl clasped tightly in his arms. She moved, stirring feebly, then turned her head so that she was looking straight at Wilkinson.

  He cried out, although he knew that she would not be able to hear him. He knew, with absolute certainty, who she was was. He had seen photographs of her — taken on Mars and not on this impossible planet. He had been shown, by Vanessa’s mother, portraits made of her when she was a child.

  She looked at him, and he saw her mouth moving. She must be calling to him for help, and he, in the imprisoning armor, was helpless. She looked at him, pleadingly — and then her features settled to a hardness shocking to see on the face of one so young. She turned away from him and freed herself from the man’s arms, scrambling clumsily to her feet. She exploded into a fury of action, kicking and striking at the rats and the crustaceans which had gathered around the two survivors. They retreated sullenly. She bent over the man, struggling to pull him to his feet.

  And then he was standing, swaying unsteadily. She grasped his arm and started to lead him over the slimy stones, away from the broken aircraft, away from the crumpled heap of metal, inside which the pulsing blue light was now much brighter. The man paused to look at Wilkinson, and his hand went to his belt, to the holster from which the butt of some sort of pistol protruded. Dazedly, Wilkinson thought, I know you. The face, battered and bloodstained as it was, was as familiar as that of the girl, more familiar — and yet impossible to place.

  The girl gestured impatiently, tugging at the man’s arm. With one last, long look at Wilkinson he followed her, and the pair moved out of the spaceman’s field of vision.

  He was alone now, alone and utterly immobilized, standing only yards from a bomb that would explode any second now. He did not know what sort of engines had powered the rocket plane, but that blue glare was ominous, and did more than hint at some reserve of raw energy that was on the point of being released. He knew that somehow, somewhere and somewhen, Vanessa was still living — but this knowledge would be meaningless if he were to be incinerated or blown to atoms within the next few seconds. What was Henshaw doing? Surely the ten minutes must have elapsed long since.

  The rats were going, scurrying from the scene with a haste that was evidence of panic. And then the crablike things were gone, melting into the crevices. The dragonflies lifted slowly, drifting upwards towards the sky — and as they did so Wilkinson heard the dull, ominous roaring, a continuous thunder that was felt as much as was heard, a heavy rumble that set the stout structure of his suit to quivering, that in the space of a few seconds became deafening.

  But it did not come from the crashed rocket. It seemed to be coming from behind him.

  Something struck him a violent blow on the back and he was overset, swept from his feet, carried helplessly down upon the twisted wreckage of the flying machine. Only the suit padding saved him from serious injury.

  Before the transparency of his visor was hopelessly obscured he caught a fleeting glimpse of a surging torrent of mud.

  VI

  SUDDENLY THE violent motion ceased and he realized that he was once again standing upright. Slowly the mud drained from the visor of his helmet, leaving a dirty translucent film. He could see, dimly, vague outlines a few feet ahead of him, something that gleamed like burnished metal. The wreckage of the rocket plane? But this was no wreckage; this was a complexity of shining wheels and spindles, an intricate convolution of glass tubing.

  He cried out as he felt himself falling backwards. Something checked his fall, and he was lowered gently to a polished plastic floor. He looked up in bewilderment and saw a giant, a mud-plastered giant in whose back was a great, gaping hole. He stared at it stupidly, realizing only after long seconds that this was the armor from which he had been released.

  “Mr. Wilkinson!” somebody was asking urgently. “Mr. Wilkinson! Are you all right?”

  He turned his face towrds the sound of the voice, saw the anxious face of Olga. Beyond her was Henshaw, pale and more than a little frightened. Wilkinson tried to grin reassuringly. He said, “I survived.”

  “You survived what?” The scientist’s expression of alarm was fading fast, replaced by an alert curiosity. “What did you survive? And where?”

  “Dr. Henshaw,” said the girl, her voice severe. “This man needs medical attention. Furthermore, I suggest that you take measures, at once, to have this suit thoroughly disinfected; it’s coated with mud and, in all probability, crawling with micro-organisms. It will be advisable, too, if all three of us are given broad spectrum anti-biotic shots …”

  “I do the suggesting around here, Olga,” snapped the physicist, his customary bombardment reasserting itself. “I handled the cat and the rats when we brought them back from wherever it is, and there was nothing in previous mud samples capable of harming us.”

  “How do you know that Mr. Wilkinson was sent to the same place?” demanded the girl. “The same place — or the same time?”

  “There were rats there …” muttered Wilkinson. “There were rats there … and people…. She was there….” He managed to stagger to his feet. “And I have to go back. I must go back. But I need weapons. And …”

  The room was swirling dizzily about him. He clutched at the tall girl for support. He felt himself fall against the yielding solidity of her, felt her arms supporting him. He realized dimly that she was leading him to a chair. He collapsed into it, and that was the last he knew for all of twelve hours.

  • • •

  He awoke in his narrow bed in the quarters that had been assigned to him. At first he did not know where he was, and his eyes refused to focus. He sensed rather than saw the woman bending over him. He murmured softly, “Vanessa …”

  She said, her voice crisp and efficient, “My name is Olga.” She added in a barely audible whisper, “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s all right,” he said vaguely.

  “Drink this,” she told him.

  He took the ice-cold tumbler of fruit juice that she put into his gropi
ng hand. It was refreshing, and the almost flavorless additive, whatever it was, cleared his head. He looked around, recognizing his surroundings. He smiled shakily at the tall brunette, and managed a grin for Henshaw and Titov. The other man in the room was a stranger to him.

  “How do you feel?” asked the physicist.

  He replied, “Not too bad.” Then, “I’m ready to talk.”

  “There’s no need to, Mr. Wilkinson,” the stranger told him. “You’ve already done so.” He went on, not without embarrassment, “It would have been a shame not to have taken advantage of your condition. It was conducive to total recall.”

  Wilkinson growled something about violation of privacy.

  “You signed a waiver,” Henshaw reminded him. “remember? In any case, we weren’t concerned with your murky past, only with what happened on the other world.”

  “Where is the other world?” demanded Wilkinson.

  “I wish I knew. I thought at first, as you did, that my device had sent you back to the Carboniferous Era on Earth — but Titov assures me that this was not the case.”

  “The crustacea and the giant dragonflies fitted in, more or less,” said the biologist. “But the vegetation, according to your description, was all wrong. And then there were the rats, not to mention human beings flitting around in rocket planes.”

  “I’ll find out more for you when I go back,” promised Wilkinson grimly.

  “I’ve no doubt that he will,” said the stranger. “I’ve no doubt that he will. Have you considered the possibility, Dr. Henshaw, that Mr. Wilkinson’s experiences may have been subjective rather than objective? Your device may have done no more — and no less — than the hallucinogenic drugs.”

  “He didn’t get that mud out of his subconscious,” said Henshaw drily. “His suit was covered with it. By the way, Titov, what did you make of it?”