Before The Golden Age - A SF Anthology of the 1930s

by Edited By Isaac Asimov

  The motors wheezed more and more. They were operating on a closed throttle. At full speed they might dash the propellers to bits.

  However, they must be warmed up. Otherwise they would simply die. It would be stark tragedy to roll out into space with three dead engines. It would mean a crash which neither of them could hope to survive.

  “Give her the gun, Bill,” said Harl in a tense voice.

  Bill pushed the accelerator slowly. The motors protested, sputtered, and then burst into a roar. Here, in the machine, because of the artificial air, sound could be heard. Out in the time stream there could be no sound.

  Harl listened anxiously, hoping fiercely that the propellers would stand.

  Bill cut the acceleration and the motors, once more barely turning over, ran more smoothly.

  Harl glanced at his wrist watch. Despite the fact they were in time, where actual time could not be measured by clocks, the little watch still ticked off the time-space seconds and minutes.

  They had been out eight minutes. Seven minutes more and they must roll out of time into space.

  Fifteen minutes was all that the tortured motors could stand of this intense cold and vacuum.

  He glanced at the time dial. It read 2816. They had traveled 2816 years into the future. They should be well over 5000 when the fifteen minutes were at an end.

  Bill touched his arm.

  “You’re sure we’re still over Denver?”

  Harl chuckled.

  “If we aren’t, we may find ourselves billions of miles out in space. It’s a chance we have to take. According to all our experiments we should be in exactly the same position we were when we snapped into the time stream. We are occupying a hole in space. It should remain the same.”

  Their lungs began to ache. Either the atmosphere generators were failing or the air leakage out into the vacuum was greater than they had expected. Undeniably the air was becoming thinner. The motors still ran steadily, however. It must be a leakage from the cabin of the ship.

  “How long?” bellowed Bill.

  Harl glanced at his watch.

  “Twelve minutes,” he reported.

  The time dial read 4224.

  “Three minutes,” replied Bill, “I guess we can stand it. The motors are running all right. It’s getting colder, though, and the air’s pretty thin.”

  “Leakage,” said Harl gruffly.

  The minutes dragged.

  Bill tried to think. Here they hung, hypothetically, over the city of Denver. Less than a quarter of an hour ago, they were in the year 1935, now they were passing over years at a lightning-like speed—a speed of over 350 years in each space-minute. They must now be in about the year 6450.

  He glanced at his hands. They were blue. It was intensely cold in the cabin. Their heat was leaking—leaking swiftly. It was hard to breathe. The air was rare—too rare for safety. Suppose they became unconscious. Then they would freeze—would drive endlessly through time. Frozen corpses, riding through the aeons. The earth beneath them would dissolve in space. New worlds might form, new galaxies be born as they whirled on in the time stream. The time needle would reach the pin, bend back upon itself and slip past the pin, to slam against the side of the dial, where it would still struggle to record the flight of the years.

  He chafed his hands and glanced at the time dial. It read 5516.

  “A quarter of a minute,” snapped Harl, his teeth chattering, his right hand on the lever, his wrist watch held in front of him.

  Bill placed his hands on the wheel.

  “All right!” shouted Harl.

  He jerked the lever.

  They hung in the sky.

  Harl uttered a cry of astonishment.

  It was twilight. Beneath them were the ruins of a vast city. To the east lapped a sea, stretching to a murky horizon. The sea coast was a desert of heaped sand.

  The motors, warming to their task, bellowed a mighty challenge.

  “Where are we?” cried Harl.

  Bill shook his head.

  “It’s not Denver,” said Harl.

  “Doesn’t look much like it,” agreed Bill, his teeth still chattering.

  He circled, warming the motors.

  There was no sign of humanity below them.

  The motors blasted a throaty defiance to the desert sands and under Bill’s hand, the machine came down in a long swoop, headed for a level stretch of sand near one of the largest of the white stone ruins.

  It hit the ground, bounced high in a cloud of sand, struck and bounced again, then rolled to a stop.

  Bill cut the motors.

  “We’re here,” he said.

  Harl stretched his legs wearily.

  Bill glanced at the time dial. It read 5626.

  “This is the year 7561,” he said slowly, thoughtfully.

  “Got your gun?” asked Harl.

  Bill’s hand went to his side, felt the reassuring touch of the .45 in its holster.

  “I have it,” he said.

  “All right, let’s get out.”

  Harl opened the door and they stepped out. The sand glittered under their boots.

  Harl turned the key in the door lock and locked the ring to his belt.

  “Wouldn’t do to lose the keys,” he said.

  A chill wind was blowing over the desert, moaning among the ruins, carrying with it a freight of fine, hard granules. Even in their heavy clothing, the time explorers shivered.

  Harl grasped Bill by the arm, pointing to the east.

  There hung a huge dull red ball.

  Bill’s jaw fell.

  “The sun,” he said.

  “Yes, the sun,” said Harl.

  They stared at one another in the half-light.

  “Then this isn’t the year 7561,” stammered Bill.

  “No, more likely the year 750,000, perhaps even more than that.”

  “The time dial was wrong then.”

  “It was wrong. Badly wrong. We were traveling through time a thousand times faster than we thought.”

  * * * *

  They were silent, studying the landscape about them. They saw only ruins which towered hundreds of feet above the sands. They were ruins of noble proportions, many of them still bearing the hint of a marvelous architecture of which the twentieth century would have been incapable. The stone was pure white, gleaming beautifully in the twilight which the feeble rays of the great brick-red sun could not expel.

  “The time dial,” said Bill, thoughtfully, “was registering thousands of years instead of years.”

  Harl nodded cheerlessly.

  “Maybe,” he said. “For all we know it may have been registering tens of thousands of years.”

  A creature, somewhat like a dog, dull gray in color, with tail hanging low, was silhouetted for a moment on a sand dune and then disappeared.

  “These are the ruins of Denver,” said Harl. “That sea we saw must cover the whole of eastern North America. Probably only the Rocky Mountains remain unsubmerged and they are a desert. Yes, we must have covered at least 750,000 years, perhaps seven million.”

  “What about the human race? Do you think there are any people left?” asked Bill.

  “Possibly. Man is a hardy animal. It takes a lot to kill him and he could adapt himself to almost any kind of environment. This change, you must remember, came slowly.”

  Bill turned about and his cry rang in Harl’s ear. Harl whirled.

  Running toward them, leaping over the sands, came a motley horde of men. They were dressed in furs and they carried no weapons, but they charged down upon the two as if to attack.

  Harl yanked his .45 from its holster. His great hand closed around the weapon and his finger found the trigger. It gave him a sense of power, this burly six-shooter.

  The men, their furs flying behind them, were only a hundred yards away. Now they yelled, blood-curdling, vicious whoops which left no doubt that they were enemies.

  No weapons. Harl grinned. They’d give ‘em hell and plenty of it. T
here were about fifty in the mob. Big odds, but not too great.

  “We might as well let them have it,” he said to Bill. The two guns roared. There was disorder in the running ranks, but the mob still forged ahead, leaving two of its members prone on the ground. Again the .45’s barked, spurting a stream of fire.

  Men staggered, screaming, to collapse. The rest hurdled them, raced on. It seemed nothing could stop them. They were less than fifty feet away.

  The guns were empty. Swiftly the two plucked cartridges from their belts and reloaded.

  Before they could fire the mob was on top of them. Bill thrust his gun into the face of a running foeman and fired. He had to sidestep quickly to prevent the fellow tumbling on top of him. A knotted fist connected with his head and he slipped to his knees. From that position he drilled two more of the milling enemies before they piled on top of him.

  Through the turmoil he heard the roar of Harl’s gun.

  He felt the grip of many hands, felt bodies pressing close about him. He fought blindly and desperately.

  He fought with hands, with feet, with suddenly bared teeth. He felt bodies wilt under his blows, felt blood upon his hands. The sand, kicked up by many feet, got into his nostrils and eyes, half strangling, half blinding him.

  Only a few feet away Harl fought, fought in the same manner as his companion. With their weapons knocked from their hands they resorted to the tactics of their ancient forebears.

  It seemed minutes that they battled with their attackers, but it could not have been more than seconds before the sheer weight of numbers subdued them, wound thongs tightly about their hands and feet and left them, trussed like two fowls ready for the grid.

  “Hurt, Bill?” called Harl.

  “No,” replied Bill. “Just mussed up a bit.”

  “Me, too,” said Harl.

  They lay on their backs and stared up at the sky. Their captors moved away and massed about the plane.

  A loud banging came to the ears of the two. Evidently the others were trying to force an entrance into the machine.

  “Let them bang,” said Harl. “They can’t break anything.”

  “Except a propeller,” replied Bill.

  After more banging, the men returned and untying the bonds on the feet of the captives, hoisted them up.

  For the first time they had an opportunity to study their captors. They were tall men, well proportioned, clean of limb, with the stamp of well-being about them. Aside from their figures, however, they held a distinctly barbarous appearance. Their hair was roughly trimmed, as were their beards. They walked with a slouch and their feet shuffled in the sand with the gait of one who holds a purposeless existence. They were dressed in well-tanned furs, none too clean. They bore no arms and their eyes were the eyes of furtive beings, shifty, restless, as are the eyes of hunted beasts, always on the lookout for danger.

  “March,” said one of them, a large fellow with a protruding front tooth. The single word was English, with the pronunciation slightly different than it would have been in the twentieth century, but good, pure English.

  They marched, flanked on either side by their captors. The march led back over the same route as the future-men had come. They passed the dead, but no attention was paid them, their comrades passing the sprawled figures with merely a glance. Life apparently was cheap in this place.

  * * * *

  CHAPTER II

  Orders of Golan-Kirt

  They passed between monstrous ruins. The men talked among themselves, but, although the tongue was English, it was so intermixed with unfamiliar words and spoken with such an accent that the two could understand very little of it.

  They reached what appeared to be a street. It led between rows of ruins and now other humans appeared, among them women and children. All stared at the captives and jabbered excitedly.

  “Where are you taking us?” Bill asked a man who walked by his side.

  The man ran his fingers through his beard and spat in the sand.

  “To the arena,” he said slowly that the twentieth century man might understand the words.

  “What for?” Bill also spoke slowly and concisely.

  “The games,” said the man, shortly, as if displeased at being questioned.

  “What are the games?” asked Harl.

  “You’ll find out soon enough. They are held at high sun today,” growled the other. The reply brought a burst of brutal laughter from the rest.

  “They will find out when they face the minions of Golan-Kirt,” chortled a voice.

  “The minions of Golan-Kirt!” exclaimed Harl.

  “Hold your tongue,” snarled the man with the protruding tooth, “or we will tear it from your mouth.”

  The two time-travelers asked no more questions.

  They plodded on. Although the sand beneath their feet was packed, it was heavy going and their legs ached. Fortunately the future-men did not hustle their pace, seeming to be content to take their time.

  A good-sized crowd of children had gathered and accompanied the procession, staring at the twentieth century men, shrieking shrill gibberish at them. A few of them, crowding too close or yelling too loudly, gained the displeasure of the guards and were slapped to one side.

  For fifteen minutes they toiled up a sandy slope. Now they gained the top and in a depression below them they saw the arena. It was a great building, open to the air, which had apparently escaped the general destruction visited upon the rest of the city. Here and there repairs had been made, evident by the decidedly inferior type of workmanship.

  The building was circular in shape, and about a half-mile in diameter. It was built of a pure white stone, like the rest of the ruined city.

  The two twentieth century men gasped at its size.

  They had little time, however, to gaze upon the building, for their captors urged them on. They walked slowly down the slope and, directed by the future-men, made their way through one of the great arching gateways and into the arena proper.

  On all sides rose tier upon tier of seats, designed to hold thousands of spectators. On the opposite side of the arena was a series of steel cages, set under the seats.

  The future-men urged them forward.

  “They’re going to lock us up, evidently,” said Bill.

  He of the protruding tooth laughed, as if enjoying a huge joke.

  “It will not be for long,” he said.

  As they approached the cages, they saw that a number of them were occupied. Men clung to the bars, peering out at the group crossing the sandy arena. Others sat listlessly, regarding their approach with little or no interest. Many of them, the twentieth century men noticed, bore the marks of prolonged incarceration.

  They halted before one of the cells. One of the future-men stepped to the door of the cage and unlocked it with a large key. As the door grated back on rusty hinges, the others seized the two, unbound their hands and roughly hurled them inside the prison. The door clanged to with a hollow, ringing sound and the key grated in the lock.

  They struggled up out of the dirt and refuse which covered the floor of the cell and squatted on their heels to watch the future-men make their way across the arena and through the archway by which they had come.

  “I guess we’re in for it,” said Bill.

  Harl produced a pack of cigarettes.

  “Light up,” he said gruffly.

  They lit up. Smoke from tobacco grown in 1935 floated out of their cell over the ruins of the city of Denver, upon which shone a dying sun.

  They smoked their cigarettes, crushed them in the sand. Harl rose and began a minute examination of their prison. Bill joined him. They went over it inch by inch, but it was impregnable. Except for the iron gate, it was constructed of heavy masonry. An examination of the iron gate gave no hope. Again they squatted on their heels.

  Harl glanced at his wrist watch.

  “Six hours since we landed,” he said, “and from the appearance of the shadows, it’s still morning. The sun was wel
l up in the sky, too, when we arrived.”

  “The days are longer than those back in 1935,” explained Bill. “The earth turns slower. The days here may be twenty-four hours or longer.”