Neil glanced through the nearest inspection plate on the crates containing machinery. Then he looked again with more urgency. Startled, he peered inside the next crate, and then the next. Thoroughly alarmed he jumped across to where the crates of silkworms stood and the answer was even more startling. There was only one thing to do to satisfy himself, and he did it. He wrenched the lids from the nearest crates and then let them fall with a clatter, his senses completely stunned by the vision of a pile of completely broken and jumbled components smothered in rust in the machinery crates. As for the silkworms, these crates were completely empty. Not a vestige, not a trace!
Aware of the recent international tensions, his mind revolved round spies, saboteurs, even plain unvarnished magic; then commonsense stepped in and took charge. Returning to the bridge control-room he had the freighter stopped so that the engineers could leave their posts. Then, with the few others essential to the crew, he had them assemble in the bridge.
“I am not going to beat about the bush, men,” he said, coming straight to the point. “I am going to give the culprit amongst you the chance to confess and save a lot of trouble. To state the matter briefly, a consignment of machinery and silkworms, our cargo for Brazil, has been broken and corroded into useless junk in the case of the machinery, whilst the silkworms have vanished completely. The crates have apparently not been opened, but the contents have nevertheless been tampered with or removed completely. As far as I know I am the only person with the combination of the storage-room door, but obviously someone else has gained knowledge of that combination. Now, which of you is going to speak?”
Nobody did. They looked completely astonished. It was noteworthy that not a single man had an angry look. Commander Neil was too much respected for any member of his crew to show open resentment.
“If I might say something, sir?” asked Andrews, the first mate.
“Well?” Neil barked.
“What man would want silkworms, and what man could destroy machinery without being heard and apprehended? The very idea of it is absurd, sir—meaning no disrespect.”
“There are ways of doing so, Andrews, if the occasion warrants it,” Neil snapped.
“I don’t see how such a thing could happen, sir,” Swanton remarked. “Both consignments were safely in the vessel when we disembarked: you told me you’d checked on them. That could only mean the depredations and theft took place whilst we were in mid-ocean. And that is equally impossible. No vessel has been anywhere near us to take off stolen cargo, and for one of us to remove the silkworms from their crates and throw them overboard simply doesn’t make sense.”
“True,” Neil admitted, thinking, for fortunately he was not an obstinate man. He was always ready to listen to anything reasonable when a problem baffled him.
“Do I understand, sir, that the crates themselves have not been disturbed?” Swanton continued.
“Correct. From the look of them the crates themselves have not been disturbed. Theoretically, of course, it is possible to remove an object from inside another by fourth dimensional processes, and in this scientific era I am willing to believe that it could be done. An experienced spy might have knowledge enough to do it.”
“I don’t agree, sir,” Swanton said. “A spy would never trouble to be so complicated. If he knew the combination of the storage-hold door he would most certainly get rid of the cargo by dispatching it somewhere in the crates. You have entirely the wrong angle, or so I think.”
Neil frowned and moved to the starboard outlook, gazing out for a time over the rolling ocean. Finally he turned.
“Mister Swanton.…”
“Sir?”
“Take Mister Carlton with you and search the ship. The cargo may be concealed somewhere. The rest of you men stay here until the search is completed.”
The order was promptly obeyed, and for close on twenty minutes Swanton and Carlton, the chief engineer, were absent. When they came back they merely shrugged their shoulders.
“Not a trace, sir,” Swanton said. “And if I may say so the concealment of large amounts of live silkworms is hardly an easy task.”
“I’ll be made to look about the biggest fool in the service, when I radio my report back to my employers,” Neil declared bitterly. “To continue to Brazil now is useless since we haven’t a cargo to deliver! And what sort of a story am I to tell them back home? That the cargo was trashed or vanished from under my very nose without any explanation?”
“There must be an explanation,” Swanton muttered, his brows knitted.
“Then I’d be glad if you’d find it for I certainly can’t. All right, men, back to your posts. We’re returning to Bristol immediately, and I warn you there will be a most rigid enquiry. That consignment was of extreme value. Take over, Mister Swanton. I am still entitled to sleep even if the damned cargo does disappear!”
And, fuming with anger, Neil followed the baffled crew from the bridge. Before heading for his cabin he detoured to the radio room and made his report.
And, like all similar odd reports it was subsequently transmitted to the office of the Master, and became one more story in an accumulating pile of them that just cried out for a sensible answer.
The Master, in fact, sifted these stories and reports for the best part of the following morning. Amongst them was the report from Commander Neil explaining that his cargo of machinery had been destroyed, and that of silkworms had vanished without trace. He was willing to resign the service in disgrace because he just could not explain the mystery.
“The problems are not isolated,” the Master muttered to himself. “Therein lies the mystery of it all. Steel supports have collapsed in countless places, and machinery and vital instruments containing steel have rotted and fallen apart. Then there are numerous instances of silk garments that have rotted and developed holes or disappeared altogether. On top of that is corroding leather, dying animals that subsequently disappear leaving only bones, warps in beechwood and devastating increase in the size of some beech trees.…” He drew a hand over his face wearily as he looked at the reports. “All this cannot be the work of spies, surely?”
He sat for a long time, thinking, turning the mystery over in his mind, but scientist though he was even he could not work without a known premise or fact from which to start. So, gradually, his thoughts drifted back to one recollection—that of the guard who had found clothes belonging to a period many centuries earlier, and then had discovered their entire disappearance. And they had belonged to a woman who had not been identified, and Clem Bradley and Buck Cardew possibly knew a good deal about her.
His face grim the Master flicked a switch and spoke. “Find Boring Engineers Bradley and Cardew at the Protection Tower site and order them to come here without delay. If they refuse, use force. And with them bring, if possible, a woman worker whom they are shielding.”
“Yes, Master.”
The information was promptly passed to the appropriate quarter, and it happened to be Guard 67 who was on duty when the order came through. So far he had not reported that he had been hit in the face and that Cardew, Clem and the mystery girl had got away from him: he didn’t wish to take the risk on top of having already failed to produce the clothes after the song he had made about them. But this new order looked like his supreme chance to clean matters up. His eyes narrowed, he gave orders to his men and promptly went into action.
In consequence he and his fellow guards appeared suddenly in the underground workings of the Protection Tower, towards the close of the afternoon. Clem and Buck were not expecting such a thing to happen and were overpowered before they could make an attempt to save themselves.
“What the devil’s the idea?” Clem demanded hotly. “Or don’t you know I’m in charge down here?”
“Not as far as the law is concerned,” the guard answered, with a sour glance. “I’ve been waiting for a chance like this, Mister Bradley, to even up the score—and now I’ve got it! Where is that woman you brought with you?”
“You know perfectly well! The one who was with you in your autobus this morning.”
“Suppose you try and find out?” Clem suggested. “She is quite innocent of any crime, no matter what the law thinks or does—and she’ll stay safely hidden. Understand?”
“You’re a fool,” Guard 67 said. “She’ll be found! Search the place,” he added to his men.
Clem gave Buck a significant glance. The girl, concealed in a high niche of the wilderness of working, was not likely to even be seen, let alone captured, and the boys on the job would see that she was kept safe and well provisioned since they were completely loyal to their two bosses.
“All right, let’s be on our way,” the guard snapped at last. “We can’t hang about forever. Get a move on, you two! For the time being you can consider yourselves under arrest, by order of the Master.”
He led the way to the official autobus in the tunnel and in a few minutes it was whirling them through the city again. So, at length, Clem and Buck found themselves in the austere presence of the Master.
“You may go,” he told the guards; then his thin hand reached out and pressed a button so that the entire interview might be recorded for later play-back and study.
“Sit down, gentlemen,” he invited, and both men looked surprised.
“I was given to understand by the guard, sir, that we are prisoners,” Clem remarked.
“Guard Sixty-Seven is hardly a man of discernment, Mister Bradley,” the Master answered dryly. “You are not prisoners—yet. I simply wish to ask you a few questions, and you will be good enough not to be evasive with your answers. There are limits to my patience with the number of problems I have on my mind.”
Clem sat down slowly and so did Buck, his big jaw jutting obstinately.
“Now.…” The Master relaxed in his chair, “what is your explanation, gentlemen, for shielding a woman from the authorities because she has no index-card? What is this mystery woman’s connection with mysterious acts of sabotage which began from the time she was first noticed?”
Clem hesitated for a long moment, then he said deliberately, “That woman, Master, is named Lucy Denby. She came from the year 2009.”
“I warned you, Mister Bradley, that my patience is wearing thin. To the point, please!”
“That is the truth, sir. And it is because she has come from 2008 that so many queer things keep happening.”
“I can understand that she is probably at the back of the many mysterious incidents besetting us, but I certainly do not believe that she comes from a time of a thousand years ago. Our best scientists have proven time travel—in a physical form at least—to be impossible.”
“I am aware of it, Master, but you would not deny that a person could, by scientific means, be physically suspended for a thousand years and awaken in perfect health, would you?”
“Well—no.” The Master frowned. “You mean this woman slept for almost a thousand years?”
“She didn’t exactly sleep. Because of entropy being fully created she leapt the time-gap without being aware that she had leapt it.”
The Master made a weary movement. “Mister Bradley, I am a very tired man, and I am in no mood to ponder such outrageous theories at the moment. This much I will tell you—then you may realize the seriousness of your behavior. Our ambassador to the East informs me that Eastern invasion is imminent within a day or two. This hemisphere of ours is faced by an onslaught from the most efficient scientific armada in history, and it is horribly possible that we may be utterly defeated. The West is riddled with spies, of which this woman—who has evidently fooled you into thinking she is a denizen of a thousand years ago—is a particularly blundering example. Only since her appearance has steel developed such grave faults, a vital ingredient of our infrastructure and armaments. Beechwood, and beech trees, leather—those, too, have been queerly affected, obviously by atomic control. I remain convinced this woman can explain the mystery even if she did not actually participate in the sabotage. I would also ask her, could I find her, how she, or her contemporaries, destroyed a valuable cargo of machinery and silkworms from a freight vessel at sea. Silk is also being treated strangely, Mister Bradley, and of course it is a valuable armament ingredient, apart from its use for clothing—”
“That’s it—silkworms!” Clem cried in excitement. “That fits in! I do believe my theory is right!”
The Master frowned. “What theory?”
“I’ve been working one out, sir, and I needed a few more factors to make it fit. And now I think it does! But first may I ask if you will please at least listen to the story of this woman, and how I came to discover her in a sealed globe.”
“Proceed,” the Master invited, and half-closed his eyes in order to concentrate.
“As I see it,” Clem said, when he had outlined the earlier details of the finding of Lucy in the force-globe, “that scientist, Bryce Fairfield, forgot something, and it was this: If you place anything organic or inorganic in a field of non-time you destroy the entropy. Everything in the bubble was stopped dead in its tracks. No entropy went on at all, but each article in the bubble gave off the energy that we recognize as entropy. Therefore the energy was still there, but imprisoned.”
“And so?” the Master asked.
“For a thousand years,” Clem continued, “a girl in silk clothes lay on a steel table. She was cradled about the head and shoulders in a beechwood rack and fastened down by heavy leather straps. All these things I noticed when I first saw her through the globe. You begin to understand, sir? For a thousand years the energy of everything about her was emanated, but it could not escape. Entropy was there but held stagnant. Hence, when the globe was finally shattered the energy of entropy-change went forth in an overpowering wave and sought out the original atomic formation from which it had sprung, just as a river takes the shortest route to the sea. It had to do so in order to catch up on the predestined entropy intended for those particular formations.
“So, Master, steel in the Mid-City Bridge went soft because of extreme age and the strain it was taking. It affected the steel of my brake pedal also. Why? Because the steel that formed the girl’s table came from the same ores that were later used to make a bridge. Metals, like human beings, exist in groups from a parent set of ores—but the parts of the bridge made from a different set of ores were unaffected. Everything connected with the girl suddenly became a thousand years old! Beech trees shot up to a thousand years of growth because those particular trees were direct descendants of the tree from which the head cradle had been made.
“Leather disappeared because it was made from the skin of animals whose ancestors had provided the leather for the straps and the belt on the girl’s frock. Live animal ancestors also suddenly became a thousand years old. It would operate through the line of descendants and relationship each time, though there was no exact moment of dissolution which could be pinpointed, it depending on how long the energy took to level out. Hence the girl retained her clothes for quite a while before they disappeared. I understand that Guard Sixty-Seven tried to give you the girl’s clothes and found they had gone. Since he hadn’t noticed their disappearance—or rather detected a decrease in the weight of the bag—it is possible that they vanished at the very moment he tried to produce them.
“Even silkworms vanished,” Clem finished. “They were the remote ‘descendants’ of the silkworms which had created the silk for the girl’s dress. Entropy caught up, right through the line again, evolved them over a thousand years and they consequently vanished. Consider the untold millions of silkworms which must have evolved in the interval, from the original progenitors, and it will be seen that very few silkworms could escape being involved, which is why all of them vanished on the transatlantic ship. Let us hope that the entropy balance will soon be reached and the disasters besetting us will cease.”
The Master was silent for nearly three minutes when Clem had finished speaking, so much
so it appeared that he had gone to sleep. Apparently such was not the case for at last he stirred. “I accept the explanation, Mister Bradley,” he said. “I have been deliberating the various scientific issues and I see nothing which is at variance with logic—at least as far as the various articles connected with this woman are concerned. As you say, let us hope that the energy will soon find its level and that our troubles may cease. I think, however, that you neglected a factor in your otherwise excellent hypothesis.”
“And what is that, sir?”
“What of the woman herself? Why has not entropy caught up with her? Since the various articles and garments connected with her have disappeared, and their entropy been transmitted down a direct descending line, is it not possible that this woman, too, will be involved?”
“That,” Clem admitted, “is a thought which has worried me quite a deal, sir, but so far nothing has happened to her.”
“That does not imply that it will not do so later. Her energy must have been given off and transmitted through—” The Master sat up abruptly. “Had she any descendants? Progeny?” he asked, his eyes sharpening.
“A son, sir.” Clem’s expression changed too as he suddenly realized the implications. “Great heavens! The deaths of cattle have proven that entropy reacts through organic bodies as it does through inorganic substances. That means that all those connected with her, in a descending line, will find entropy catching up on them!”
“Yes. And she herself will vanish,” the Master added. “She must, because, by the law of entropy, she is nearly a thousand years old! My conception of the problem is that so far this woman’s entropy has not found its level, therefore none of her descendants has been affected, or she either. But once the level is found.…”
The Science-Fantasy Megapack: 25 Classic Tales From Fantasy Adventures Page 18
