by Chad Oliver
John shrugged. “I talked it over with my wife.”
“She made suggestions, perhaps?”
“One or two, yes,” John said, remembering the telephone book. “But I came here to ask you the questions.”
“Impossible,” stated Mr. Rogers flatly. “Quite, quite impossible.” He darted a look into the corner of the room, almost as if he expected to see something there. His pink forehead was gleaming with sweat.
John glanced into the corner.
There was nothing there.
“Well!” said Mr. Rogers, suddenly getting to his feet. “Must be going!”
“Wait a minute, dammit! You can’t—”
Mr. Harold X. Rogers paid no attention. He walked hurriedly to a side door in the room, opened it, stepped inside. Just before the door closed behind him, John caught a glimpse of a large dull gray metal sphere in the room, flickering with tiny flames that reminded him of little lightning flashes.
“Hey!”
Too late. The door was shut. There was a high whine, like the dynamo-sound he had heard before, and then silence.
The lights went out.
In the darkness, John reached out and tried the door. It wouldn’t budge. He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out his cigarette lighter. He spun the wheel, and on the fifth try he got a light.
Bewildered, he crossed over to the desk, looked at it. There was nothing on the desk. He pulled open the drawers, one by one. In the bottom right drawer, there was a piece of scratch paper. He flattened it out on top of the desk, and held the light down where he could see it.
It was covered with marks. Not writing, he saw instantly. Some kind of formula—
He stared at it more closely. There were lots of brackets and equal signs, and a number of curious squiggles that looked vaguely familiar. One a tiny circle with an arrow on it, another a circle with a plus sign attached….
Of course! They were the astronomical symbols for Mars and Venus. He felt a curious wild excitement. His mind raced ahead, throwing off conjectures and postulates like sparks. Mars and Venus. The closest planets to Earth. Earth was in the middle—
“What the devil,” he muttered.
He decided to make a copy of the chart, but before he could get his pencil ready for action his lighter went out. He spun the wheel without results, hammered the treacherous gadget into the palm of his hand without results, and cursed it roundly, also without results.
He groped over to the door by which he had entered and ran his hand over the wall. He found a light switch and flicked it, but the lights refused to come on.
And it was getting late.
He could, of course, take the scrap of paper along with him. John, however, had a healthy respect for the law, and he certainly had no right to rifle Mr. Rogers’s desk. He stumbled across the room, replaced the paper in the drawer, and left the place.
The juke box was still blasting out its philosophy of agony from the beer parlor. John glanced at his watch, saw that he only had two minutes left on his lunch hour, and practically sprinted back to work.
He was damp from the rain.
He was hungry.
He was completely baffled.
Who was Harold X. Rogers? Why had he gone to all the trouble of doctoring up a man’s newspaper, and then been disappointed when the man came to see him? What had Mr. Rogers been afraid of during the interview? What had that strange metal sphere been in the next room? It wasn’t any printing press, that was certain.
For that matter, where had Mr. Rogers gone?
And how?
And those squiggles, those signs for Mars and Venus …
John tried to ignore the rumblings in his empty stomach and the churnings in his equally empty brain. He did his work methodically until almost four o’clock.
Then, quite suddenly, he dropped what he was doing.
“Tell the Old Man I was taken sick,” he hollered to Ben.
He grabbed his coat, ran out of the building, got his car out of the lot, and headed for home.
And, law-abiding citizen or not, he broke some speed regulations getting there.
When he got home, there was already a car parked in his driveway. It was a perfectly ordinary blue sedan, and he had never seen it before. It did not belong to any of his friends, and it had no business being in his driveway.
He knew who had driven it there, however.
John glided to a stop at the curb and got out of the car. He left the door partially open, careful to make no sound. He stepped across the soggy lawn and paused at the front door.
The door was slightly ajar.
He could hear voices in the living room.
One of the voices belonged to his wife, Barbara.
The other one belonged to Harold X. Rogers.
Of course, he thought. Mr. Rogers was never after me at all. He wanted Barbara. That was why he was so disappointed when I walked into that office of his. He was testing Barbara all the time. He asked me if she had helped me out with the solution, and I didn’t deny it. He wants my wife. What for?
He listened.
“You do not seem to understand, Mrs. Dodson,” the man named Rogers was saying in an exasperated tone of voice. The words were not so precise as they had been before; he was slurring them a bit as he got excited. “I am a man from the future, I have traveled through time to make this contact with you.”
Future? Time? What about—
“That’s really swell,” Barbara said. There was the clink of a coffee cup against a saucer. “I appreciate it, but you should really talk to Johnny about things like that. He’s always been interested in crazy theories, and I—”
“No, no, no. You are impossible! No, I don’t mean that. Please, you must forgive me.”
“That’s quite all right. Johnny says things like that all the time.”
“Imbecile! I mean, look. Listen. Attend! I will attempt to explain one more time.”
“About this Edgar Vincent Winans of New York? Really, Mr. Rogers, I’m quite happy as I am—”
“Bah. That is not the point. Do you care nothing at all for the human race?”
There was silence, as Barbara earnestly tried to decide what to do.
“Look. Listen. Attend. You have heard of the hydrogen bomb, I trust?”
“Oh, yes.”
“Well! The radiation from the fallouts of these bombs has certain very harmful effects on the germ plasm, on the genes. It leads to an increased frequency of mutations—”
Genes. Mutations. Those symbols: one a tiny circle with an arrow on it, another a circle with a plus sign attached. Astronomical signs for Mars and Venus, yes. But also the symbols for male and female in a genetics computation. Those brackets and equal signs. Barbara and Edgar Vincent Winans …
“Mr. Rogers, I never discuss politics.”
Mr. Rogers said something in a foreign language, paused, and tried again. “My dear Mrs. Dodson. In a few hundred years, in my time, these mutations have had serious consequences for the human race as you know it today. In fact, we are faced with extinction! A new race of men has come into being—”
“Oh, yes, those supermen you were telling me about.”
“They are not supermen!” screamed Mr. Harold X. Rogers. He spluttered for a moment, then continued in a relatively normal tone of voice: “They are not supermen. Only different men. They are strong, they are powerful. And they wish to isolate normal men, people like us, for the good of the race! The arrogance, the nerve—”
“Now, Mr. Rogers, don’t let yourself get all excited.”
“Well! We must fight back, we normal men. How, you ask? I will tell you. We must go back in time, we must prevent certain matings before children are born, we must assure other matings which will produce superior human beings to aid us in our struggle! If we fail, our race is doomed. You, Mrs. Dodson, have a crucial genetic contribution to make to the future! It is imperative that you have no children by your present husband. Instead, our computations show that you and Edg
ar Vincent Winans of New York City—”
“Please, Mr. Rogers! I try to be broad-minded and all that, but you are making it very difficult for me.”
“Bah! This ridiculous sex taboo. Look! Listen! Attend! It is a question of science, a matter of random assortment and recombination; it has nothing to do with your infantile ideas about sex!”
“I just don’t see it that way, I’m afraid.”
“Then you refuse?”
“Well, I hate to say no—I always have trouble saying no to people about charity drives and things—”
“Mrs. Dodson, consider! Your decision may mean the obliteration of the human race!”
“Well, I’m really awfully sorry, Mr. Rogers, but I really couldn’t. I’d like to help you out, really I would, but I love my Johnny and I simply have no interest at all in this Edgar Winans of yours.”
“Love! You speak of love at a time like this! Mrs. Dodson, you are a fool, a colossal, stupendous, incredible fool!”
“Now look here, Mr. Rogers. Mr. Rogers! Keep away from me, Mr. Rogers! I’ll call Bru—”
John decided that it was time he made his entrance. He took a deep breath and stepped through the doorway.
“Hold it, Rogers!” he said
The short fat man with the red face whirled. His face grew even redder. He pointed a trembling finger. “You! Murderer! Race-slayer! Mutant-breeder!”
John spread his hands. “I mean you no harm, Rogers. What you were saying may have been the truth, for all I know. But you can’t talk to my wife that way, sir. Get out of my house before I throw you out.”
Harold X. Rogers hesitated.
John doubled up his fist, which was of impressive dimensions.
Mr. Rogers spat out something in that foreign language. John could not understand it, but he knew it was no compliment. Then the man from the future stormed out the door, fuming with rage.
“Johnny!” breathed Barbara.
John received his hero’s reward, then disentangled himself.
“Baby, I’ve got to go out again,” he said. “You lock all the doors and don’t let anyone in until I get back.”
“But, Johnny—”
“I won’t be long, honey. But there’s something I just have to find out. You see, if that man was telling the truth …”
He left her there in the living room, ran outside, and climbed back into his car.
He pulled out into the heavy five o’clock traffic and headed for town as fast as he could go.
Sixth Street was a wet ribbon, reflecting the white headlights of the homeward-bound automobiles in cold, silvered puddles. John rounded the block three times before he found a parking place.
The dirty stone building was still there, even more gloomy in the damp dusk. The cut-rate men’s clothing store was cheerful with warm yellow light, and doing a brisk after-work business. The beer joint was filled with the low murmur of drinking men, and the juke box was moaning:
“Gimme your love, you great big doll,
“I’m hungry for your smile and that ain’t all….”
John pushed open the hesitant door and stepped into the unswept hallway. He took the wooden steps two at a time and paused at the second floor landing.
The thumbtacked white card was still in place: HAROLD X. ROGERS. Was he too late?
No—he heard sounds from inside, and light showed beneath the wooden door. John pressed the button.
There was no reply, but the noises from the other side of the door increased in volume. Two voices, speaking a strange tongue, and a sound of scuffling—
John opened the door and stepped inside the barren room.
He stopped, staring.
Harold X. Rogers was there all right, but he was in the process of leaving. The red-faced fat man, in fact, was suspended in mid-air, held in the arms of a man who looked like a perfectly proportioned giant.
“You!” screamed Mr. Rogers, kicking his legs futilely.
The other man raised one eyebrow in salute, and smiled in greeting. He was a good seven feet tall, and he was golden. He glowed—that was the only word for it.
The giant said nothing to John. He just carted Harold X. Rogers through the side door as though Mr. Rogers were a sack of sawdust.
“They’ve won!” cried Mr. Rogers as he vanished into the other room. “Murderer! Idiot!”
John watched, but kept his distance. The huge man lifted Mr. Rogers into the dull gray metal sphere and then climbed in after him, waving courteously to John as he disappeared. There was a clank as the portal into the sphere closed. Tiny flames flickered over the surface of the metal.
There was a humming whine, like a dynamo.
The sphere—wasn’t.
The room was empty.
John shivered in the sudden silence. He felt as if he were in a cave far underground, with tons of rock sealing him off from the sounds of life. Then the hush lifted. He heard the juke box, the squish of tires on the street outside, the call of a newsboy.
He turned and left the room.
He had found out what he needed to know. The man had told the literal truth. He had come out of the future on a mission to save the human race as he knew it. He had set up the test with the newspaper as a check on Barbara’s intelligence—even genetics could be misleading at times, and he had to be sure. No doubt he had taken the paper back with him into the future to have it altered, or even taken them all at once. Time travel made many things possible….
And he had failed.
Barbara had turned him down.
The delicate balance had tilted the other way.
John got back into his car, and set out for home. He was not depressed at all. In fact, he was elated. He did amount to something! He was, in truth, a very important man.
What had Rogers called him?
“Mutant-breeder.”
Why, he and Barbara were going to become two of the most significant parents in history!
Of course, old Homo sapiens was going down the tube in the process. Well, he thought, who am I to stand in the way of evolution?
He drove on home and pulled the car into the driveway. He let himself into his home with his key. He felt mighty good.
When they had finished eating, Barbara yawned at him contentedly.
“I’m certainly glad no one will be fooling with our paper again,” she said, folding it back to the comic section. “That funny man gave me the creeps.”
John nodded and turned to the dog curled up by the stove.
“Well, Brutus,” he said, “how would you like to have an exceptionally interesting little playmate in a year or so?”
Barbara looked up from the comics, eyes wide with delight.
Brutus thumped his tail.
THE EDGE OF FOREVER
Dale Jonston gripped the palisade logs until his knuckles went white with strain and tiny droplets of blood began to form under his fingernails. The humid air choked his throat and a cold sweat beaded his forehead and trickled down the inside of his ETS shirt.
Start, his tense mind whispered. Why don’t you start?
The massed black clouds rolled over his head like a dark sea suspended in the air. Drums of thunder throbbed in the west and an electric hush charged the atmosphere. Lightning flickered in ghost-flames around the distant peaks of the Hills of the Dead.
It was the Time of the Terror—and the Terror was coming. “It will be soon now,” a low voice echoed his thoughts.
Dale Jonston jumped inwardly at the sound and then forced himself to relax. He turned around. A tall native stood there watching him, a faint smile playing across his proud face. In the murky haze the light blueness of his skin was all but invisible.
“Good to see you, Lkani,” Dale Jonston said. “This weird weather of yours has just about got me down—you almost scared me to death creeping up on me like that! Don’t you ever make any noise?”
“Perhaps you should tie a bell around my neck,” the native suggested. “Is not that what you do to keep track
of the animals on your planet?”
“Your sense of humor can be a trifle … startling, Lkani.”
Dale Jonston eyed the native thoughtfully. These people never ceased to surprise him, and he had been stationed on Rohan for two years now. The planet was referred to officially as Procyon Twelve, of course, but no one who had ever been there called it by that colorless name. When in Rome—
“It is coming,” Lkani said quietly, pointing out into the gathering darkness. “My people have all gone from the Changing Lands—they are waiting in the hills. They will not have to wait long.”
Dale Jonston felt his jumpy nerves begin to settle down. He shouldn’t let it get him this way, he realized. But this brooding weather did something to a man. It was like waiting for a bad hurricane back on Earth, when you sat around interminably in the still air and watched the barometer fall. It had been like this for weeks now.
And there were the Others—the people of mystery that no man had ever seen, custodians of a civilization that spanned the far-flung stars. Somehow, in the mutter of the thunder and the clouds of darkness, he knew that they were near. Watching. Waiting—
“You know we’d be glad to have you on the Post,” he said. “We’ve got room for fifteen or twenty, and our buildings may be able to take what’s coming better than your settlement in the hills.”
“I will stay with my people,” Lkani said. “We have been through the Terror before—you have not.”
“You’ve got a point there at that.”
The motionless, dead-smelling air pressed down on them heavily. The yellow squares of light in the windows of the Post buildings looked safe and comfortable. Dale Jonston was glad that they were there.
“You had better get inside before it comes,” Lkani said.
“I guess I’ll have time for that, anyway,” Jonston replied.
“It comes fast.” Lkani smiled.
“Well, if we can be of any help to you just whistle or beat on a drum or something.”
“If we can help you just flash us a radio signal or send up a magnite flare,” Lkani countered.
“You win,” Dale Jonston laughed. “Sometimes I wonder just who is kidding who around here.”
“Here it comes,” said Lkani.
