There had been wars, pestilence, famines and destruction undreamed of in the red decades following the rise of the dictator nations. Empires had spread their tentacles over most of the earth's surface —enslaving humans with their mephitic, bestial ideologies.
Then the people, as if inspired and guided by some soul-inspiring force outside their enslaved bodies, had risen in rebellion all over the world, thrown off their shackles, and annihilated their masters.
Scientifically and mechanically, the world had never stood still. There seemed to be no end to the inventive genius of mankind. But man, himself, had not changed—only the structures that housed him, and the mechanical marvels that surrounded him. He was still r-ubject to greed, poverty and fear of the unknown. In the world's largest city, New York, the month of Venus brought intolerable heat that drove people deep underground to ventilated caverns constructed when
Venus had been known as the month of July. Those who were not in the caverns, or not working at daily tasks, were garnered before the Continental Television News panels where they watched rathef than heard world news. Aside from the seasonal heat, there was nothing to mar the serenity of their daily lives.
Around them, as they stood watching the news flash across the panel from all parts of the globe, towered massive buildings. The tallest of these was the one where Aaron Carruthers' connecting laboratories covered the top floor of a hundred-story structure.
Looking from the quartz glass windows of these laboratories, one could see the steel control towers of New York's majestic transportation system—the four-speed sidewalk bands that extended north, south, east and west.
Subway and elevated trains no longer existed. Taxis and privately owned vehicles had been banished to the great open spaces known as the outlands.
This efficient transportation system, of escalator type, was high above the city streets, and extended north to Pcckskill and west across the Hudson River into a teeming industrial center that had once been known as New Jersey.
The first band from the station platform moved cjuite slowly. The second, somewhat faster. By stepping from the slower to the faster-moving bands, passengers could easily control the speed they wished to travel.
There was little or no noise in this sprawling metropolitan area except the droning reverberations of turbines deep underground — turbines which supplied light, power and heat to all businesses, all families, rich and poor alike.
Even to this lonely, serious-faced young scientist there came moments of reflection when he marveled at the changes that had taken place during his own lifetime. But
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he wasn't thinking about them now. They had been crowded from his mind by gloomy forebodings of an insecure future. This precious, yet terrible knowledge weighed heavily, on his shoulders. He clenched his jaw and straightened to an upright position.
The red eyes of a golden Buddha on his desk glowed warningly. Someone was coming down the corridor to the entrance of his private laboratory.
Soundlessly the door opened. Through the opening came his friend and laboratory assistant, Karl Danzig. "Vignot's here," he stated, 'and crusty as usual."
CARRUTHERS nodded. He liked George Vignot in spite of the bearded chemist's sarcastic, blustering ways. "Show him into the west laboratory where our Time Projector— No. Wait a minute. Vignot's not yet ready for that experiment. Show him instead into the Thermo-cell laboratory. We'll work on our problem there."
The eyes of Karl Danzig held worried glints. ■
He hesitated a moment then said: "You—you aren't going to test out the new Time Projector Machine—?"
"It all depends," shrugged Carruthers, "on whether certain computations I have made are correct in assumption and ultimate result. Vignot's undoubtedly the foremost mathematician in the east. And I want him to re-check my calculations for possible error. If he arrives at the same answer as I have, we'll make the experiment -— provided he is willing and not afraid."
Still, Dan2ig did not leave the room. "In some ways," he went on, "I wish you'd abandon the experiment, Aaron. It's not that I'm disloyal, but it seems to me that you're going to get entangled into something that—that the universal creator doesn't want mankind to know. Some-
how, it doesn't seem right for man to probe into the mystery of what has not yet happened."
Carruthers placed a hand on his friend's shoulder. "I'm not questioning your loyalty, Karl, when you oppose the experiment I've got to go through with. But I know you'll stand by till the end. Perhaps I'm asking for death in trying to do some-think that transcends the physical impossibility of tampering with the element of time.
"Still, being the way I am, there seems no other course open—for me at least. So don't have any doubts. We've been mixed up in strange and fantastic experiences before, and have somehow survived. Let's keep the thought in mind that we'll survive this one."
Danzig nodded. "I understand all that, Aaron. But you've never gone through anything like the experiment you've planned with the Time Projector Machine. You still don't know what effect it will have on your physical body."
"I've tried it on mice and they came back alive."
"Mice aren't human beings. It scares me, Aaron. Things that have happened in the past are history, and they're static in most ways. Things that are happening in the present are understandable and real. They are things you and I can get a grip on. I can touch my skin, my hair and fingernails, and feel them. They are the result ol growth that extends into the past, itiey are also the result of growth that is taking place this very second."
"That's quite true, Karl. The sum of our knowledge is based on what is happening now, and what has taken place in the past. That being true, would not our knowledge be astoundingly increased in the revealing awareness of what is going to happen in—say a year from now, or a decade of years for that matter? Could we not arrange to meet misfortune and disas-
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ter better if we knew what was to take place in the future?"
"You're getting into the realm of predestination, Aaron. And that is dangerous ground for man to invade. Suppose fate has willed that I am to die at eleven o'clock at night a year from today from coming in contact with fifty-thousand volts of electricity in this laboratory. Could you, by your foreknowledge of events that are yet to happen, cheat fate by having the current turned off so that I couldn't possibly be electrocuted?''
"I don't know, Karl, any more than you do." The shadow of some inner disturbance crossed his serious young face. When he spoke again his voice was low and vibrant. "But the scientific urge to find the answer to your question and others of my own propounding is greater than my emotional will to resist that urge. I've got to find out, Karl. My mind won't rest, nor my body either, until the answer to the riddle comes to me out of the impalpable element of a time period that has not yet taken place. Go get Vignot now, and bring him to the Thermo-cell laboratory. And I'll want you with us, Karl, for reasons you'll discover for yourself."
Without another word he turned and walked down a tile corridor to a white, gleaming laboratory. A few minutes later Danzig, with George Vignot close behind him, entered the room.
GEORGE VIGNOT spread his feet wide and puffed out both checks. "So!" His voice had the booming quality of a deep organ note. "It isn't enough that I should be plagued by inconsequential classroom experiments I have performed a thousand—yes, a million times. No. I must fritter away my precious moments with arithmetic, with figures which you seemed to have forgotten—"
"Wait a minute, Vignot—"
"Ha. Wait? Always I'm waiting.
Where is this Time Proj'ector? Speak up, for I have no time to waste on trivialities. Certainly it isn't in this room. It wouldn't be. You'd keep it hidden. I don't want to see it. I don't want anything to do with it. The last experience I had with your Neutronium exploration apparatus nearly drove me insane. I damned near starved to death, too. No. Count me out of any future exper
iments dealing with the unknown. I'll stick to my moronic classroom lectures—"
"I suppose," Carruthers broke in, "that I could easily persuade the noted bio-chemist, Haley, to assist me, or Professor Grange the metallurgist whose experiments and findings have lately startled the world. Not being concerned with petty classroom sessions, they'd undoubtedly—"
"Bah! Haley's a doddering fool. And Grange is afraid of his own shadow. Petty classroom sessions, eh? You brought that up, Aaron, just to goad me on into doing something I don't want—"
Carruthers shook his head. "I wouldn't urge you to do anything you don't want to djo, or have your heart set on doing. Go back to your classroom. I'll find someone else."
Vignot's big body shook with gusty laughter. "Oh ho! I should go now after I'm already here. You should get rid of me like I'm an incompetent scullion who keeps dropping beakers and test tubes. I'm not so good as Haley or Grange. So now. What is that problem in arithmetic?"
"The arithmetic will come in a few minutes." He pointed to a marble-topped table. "First, I want you to check the readings on the tape from the Thermo-cell unit recordings."
"Hummm!" grunted Vignot, crossing the room to the table and bending over the intricate machine which indicated and traced the pattern of any electrical or metallic disturbances in the outer reaches of the sky.
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Since he was familiar with the unit, he had no difficulty. "Solar disturbances as usual,'' he muttered, "but no radio signals or undiscovered mass formations—wait a second. Maybe I'm wrong. The indicator won't remain on the 2ero line. Ah! There is a disturbance caused by the presence of matter. It's center—let me calculate roughly—just as I thought—about seventeen degrees to the left of the planet Neptune."
"Well?" Carruthers' voice had a touch of impatience.
Vignot peered at a map of star constellations on the nearest wall. "You tell me, Aaron. There's nothing but bleak emptiness in that part of the sky. It's a place where time seems to stand still, where distances from one body to another are fixed at millions of miles. It's a vast immensity where there is no light, no heat, no sound, and nothing more substantial than occasional streamers of dark, gaseous clouds/'
He turned to Carruthers and spread his hands, palms upward. "The disturbance is caused by a comet. Any astronomer could have told you that much. It's that simple."
"Not quite," said Carruthers. "I thought of comets. On the table beside the Thermo-cell unit you'll find charts. The top one was made in 1967, and based on figures and negatives furnished me by the Palomar Observatory. Plotted on this chart are the paths of various wanderers of the sky—meteors, asteroids and comets. None of them are to be found in the sky area on which the unit's detector beam is centered.
"On the second chart you'll find the periodic comets and their paths across the heavens. Biela's comet, first observed in 1772, returns every seven years. It isn't due again for five years. Rule that one out."
Vignot shrugged. "Go on," he urged.
"Following it is one discovered by Encke. Its period of visibility at a fixed point in the sky occurs every three years.
Then Halley's comet comes along with a period of seventy-six years, followed by Donati's which appears at intervals several thousand years apart. None are due this year—or now."
George Vignot tugged thoughtfully at his beard. "I see," he nodded. "But all this talk about comets must mean something. What?"
Carruthers watched both men seat themselves in comfortable chairs but made no motion to follow their example. Instead he began to pace the floor. "I didn't say anything about comets. You brought them into our talk yourself. The thing that is causing the disturbance on the sensitive plates of the Thermo-cell unit might be a planet or a star, or a globe like our own inhabitated with human beings.
"Or it may be nothing more than a sphere of black gas with a metallic core because it isn't yet visible. And it's out there in that bleak emptiness as, you call it, beyond the gravitational pull of Neptune. It's still impossible to correctly determine its size or structure. But if the Thermo-cell unit is accurate to within one tenth of a degree, that invisible body is headed toward our earth at a tremendous speed which will accelerate to an even greater velocity as its expanding gases drive it onward. And unless it meets with some other mass in the sky, it should be hurling itself in a mighty cataclysm against our earth—"
"/"< OOD Lord," breathed Vignot. ^-J "When does all this take place?"
"That's the problem in arithmetic you so caustically referred to. We have its location in the sky. We have its speed—"
"Speed?" Vignot looked doubtful.
"That can be determined by examining the strength of the first disturbance signals on the cell plate recording tape. Each day they have grown stronger. By comparing this difference from day to day-r—"
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"I know how to calculate speed, Aaron. The point I still don't understand is this. That Mass out in space may be pointed at our earth right now. But our earth isn't stationary. We're revolving around the sun once every three-hundred and sixty-five days. Also, in the course of a year, our whole planetary system is moving at an incredible speed away from where it is now. In other words, our earth after each journey around the sun never returns to the identical spot from which it started. The Mass should miss us by a million miles."
"That's possible," admitted Carruthers. "And I'd like to believe you. Since, however, I've figured it out mathematically, I've come to the conclusion that your theory is not justified. The collision takes place ten years from this summer or fall. And that will be the end of the world, and of the Moon, too. A collision of such catastrophic proportions is bound to draw our Lunar neighbor into the earth's attraction so that the Mass, Moon and Earth will come together and merge into a sphere of flaming whiteness."
Vignot scoffed. "Phooey! Where is your copy of Einstein's calculator of variable factors of time and space?"
From his pocket Carmthers removed a leather-bound book and handed it to his colleague. Then he sat down.
"Very well," announced Vignot. "We'll see." He sprawled across the marble-topped table and began his tabulations which he fitted into complicated equations. From time to time his forehead wrinkled with thought. Then pure concentration erased everything from his face except a hard, purposeful glow in his eyes.
An hour passed with no interruption from either Carmthers or Danzig. They sat relaxed in their chairs, waiting. Vig-not's pencil covered scratch papers with numerals and symbols. Occasionally he blinked as the figures began to take on
meaning. Finally he pushed the papers aside and looked up.
"Your calculations agree with mine, Aaron. We'll have ten years of worry, floods, earthquakes, cyclones—then absolute chaos."
Carmthers said nothing for the moment. Instead he got to his feet, crossed the room to the quartz glass windows and stared uneasily across the roofs of the great city. After a time he turned from the window, walked to the table and examined Vignot's tabulations.
"You used a different arrangement of symbols and calculation devices than those I used," he acknowledged. "But you arrived at the same answer—the year of 2017. It looks," he added, "like absolute annihilation—which means the end of the world."
"I wish," sighed the bearded chemist, "you hadn't sent for me." He blinked owlishly. "Absolute annihilation beyond a doubt . . . unless . . . unless the earth's air barrier should prove heavy enough to turn it from its course. His eyes stopped blinking. Instead, they stared straight into those of the young scientist. "You propose to do something about this collision, Aaron. What?"
"I'm still mortal, Vignot, and human as the next man. What can I do?"
Vignot wagged his head impatiently. "That's not exactly what I meant. You've got something on your mind that you haven't yet explained to me. I want to hear it—now."
"Even if it means death before the Mass strikes the earth?"
"Even if it means death within th
e next twenty-four hours," snapped the bearded chemist.
THE voice of Aaron Carmthers became low and purposeful. "Ten years is a long time to wait for death especially when we know there is no way to avoid ■it. Yet,
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in those ten years, we will have ample time to erect our defenses and seek a way to destroy the Mass—if such a miracle is possible."
He paused as if searching for the right words. "Vignot," he continued. "Would you like to know today—now, just how fatal this coming catastrophe will be?"
"I don't quite understand."
"What I mean is this. Through the remarkable emanations of my Time Projector Machine, I can—"
"Don't do it." Karl Danzig was speaking for the first time. "You'd both be fools. There's nothing to be gained by submitting to such an experiment. You'd both be destroyed in the Thoridium Rays. I'm against the experiment utterly and completely."
"Quiet, Karl," advised Carruthers. "This is between Vignot and me."
"Ah!" sighed Vignot. "A difference of opinion. I never knew you two ever to disagree before. The prospect intrigues me. And since I don't expect, and don't want to live forever, I have little fear of death. Only I don't want to die by slow starvation. I want my meals regular. I want— Urnmm. Go ahead, Aaron. And please don't interrupt him, Karl. I'll weigh my chances of survival after hearing a few facts, then I'll make my decision."
"My plan," said Carruthers, "is to project our bodies into the year of 2017—"
"Impossible!" Vignot scoffed.
"Suicidal," added Danzig. "Let's abandon the whole business."
Carruthers eased his lanky body from the chair. He didn't smile, but there was a forceful, inner gleam in his eyes that lighted his whole face.
"There is no other way out for me," he told them, "but to go ahead with my plan. And once I have closed and locked the door to the Time Projector laboratory, I don't expect either of you men to violate my aloneness in that room. Should I come
Weird Tales volume 36 number 02 Page 11
