The COMPLEAT Collected Short SFF Stories
Page 20
Ellen-Sue stopped and looked at me. "We gonna fix this thing, Joe?" she asked. "Won't be no other chance, and these two poor guys got mighty dead trying."
"Yeah," I agreed. "But how? Neither of us can run this thing."
"I watched real careful, Joe, and so did Leo. It runs just like on automatic when this door is bolted. Now just suppose, for instance, we open the other door a teeny bit, or even just unlock it? Then we shut this one. What happens now if this thing goes back with one door open?"
I thought for a minute. What would happen if the thing had a gate open and rushed back millions of years into the past? What would come in while it was moving, moving back into time, whatever "time" was?
"Get ready up at the top," I said. "Watch out for anyone who might be on guard. Here." I handed her Leo's gun, after wiping it on his sleeve, the dry one. Then I stepped wetly over Sally's head and went back to unlock the inside catches on the other port.
Ten seconds later I was closing the outer catches, on the tunnel side. When the last one was tight, I waited. Sure enough, the humming started. I ran like hell for daylight, and then some. I don't think anybody alive knew what kind of force that damn machine built up, and I didn't want a close view of any malfunction, either!
At the top, Ellen-Sue met me with good news. No one was in sight, but there was an empty jeep with a key in it. This must have been Sally's. He wouldn't need it. He was going back to his paradise hotel, minus head, with two dead secret agents as bodyguards.
We tore down the hill road and went straight past the big house, heading for the little harbor. At the gate, two goons were lounging in the shade and they slouched over, not suspicious. I guess they had seen us around enough. Fortunately, they both looked to be halfwits.
"Any of these motor cruisers gassed up?" I asked casually.
"So who wants to know, bud? You know the rules around here."
"I do!" said Ellen-Sue sticking her gun up his nose. "And you better too, mister, 'cause that crazy machine is running wild up there, Mister Big Boss is stone-cold dead, and this whole rat pit of an island is probably going to blow up!"
That did it. Ten minutes later, the two hoods in one boat, minus hardware, and us in another were creaming out through the entrance. We had no map, so we just went west and hoped. Where they went, I never heard.
About an hour later, when we were well out of sight of the island, a great big smooth wave came out of the east and picked us up by the rear end and shook us before going on. When the ocean got calm again, we just looked at each other. But we never heard a sound.
You know, we weren't over fifty miles from the mainland? Never mind which mainland, either. But not too far from a town where I could swipe a car and Ellen-Sue could hock her jewelry (in her purse the whole time; she just "had a feeling") for enough to get us airline tickets. We didn't need passports either, if that's a clue.
Yeah, we found the money in the Swiss accounts. Half what Sally said, and so I stopped any tears which might have got started. And we're living OK. And no more live freight or dead weight is appearing out of the past any more. And the scientists are all busy writing papers about what they think happened. So here's mine. No time like the present.
The End
Sleipnir Press
10/29/2015