A man stepped out of the forest. He was less than five feet tall, thick-set, muscled like a wrestler and wearing a fur kilt. His skin was colored a medium gray. He carried a ragged tree limb, roughly shaped into a club. Two dozen others came through the forest behind him. They marched directly up to Eldridge.
“Hello, fellows,” Eldridge said pleasantly.
The leader replied in a guttural language and made a gesture with his open palm.
“I bring your crops blessings,” Eldridge said promptly. “I’ve got just what you need.” He reached into his sack and held up a package of carrot seeds.
“Seeds! You’ll advance a thousand years in civilization—” The leader grunted angrily and his followers began to circle Eldridge. They held out their hands, palms up, grunting excitedly.
They didn’t want the sack and they refused the discharged hand pistol. They had him almost completely circled now. Clubs were being hefted and he still had no idea what they wanted.
“Potato?” he asked in desperation.
They didn’t want potatoes, either.
His time machine had two minutes more to wait. He turned and ran. The savages were after him at once. Eldridge sprinted into the forest like a grayhound, dodging through the closely packed trees. Several clubs whizzed past him.
One minute to go.
He tripped over a root, scrambled to his feet and kept on running. The savages were close on his heels.
Ten seconds. Five seconds. A club glanced off his shoulder. Time! He reached for the button—and a club thudded against his head, knocking him to the ground. When he could focus again, the leader of the savages was standing over his Time Traveler, club raised.
“Don’t!” Eldridge yelled in panic.
But the leader grinned wildly and brought down the club. In a few seconds, he had reduced the machine to scrap metal.
ELDRIDGE was dragged into a cave, cursing hopelessly. Two savages guarded the entrance. Outside, he could see a gang of men gathering wood. Women and children were scampering back and forth, laden down with clay containers. To judge by their laughter, they were planning a feast.
Eldridge realized, with a sinking sensation, that he would be the main dish. Not that it mattered. They had destroyed his Traveler. No Viglin would rescue him this time. He was at the end of his road.
Eldridge didn’t want to die. But what made it worse was the thought of dying without ever finding out what Eldridge I had planned.
It seemed unfair, somehow.
For several minutes, he sat in abject self-pity. Then he crawled farther back into the cave, hoping to find another way out.
The cave ended abruptly against a wall of granite. But he found something else.
An old shoe.
He picked it up and stared at it. For some reason, it bothered him, although it was a perfectly ordinary brown leather shoe, just like the ones he had on. Then the anachronism struck him.
What was a manufactured article like a shoe doing back in this dawn age?
He looked at the size and quickly tried it on. It fitted him exactly, which, made the answer obvious—he must have passed through here on his first trip. But why had he left a shoe?
There was something inside, too soft to be a pebble, too stiff to be a piece of torn lining. He took off the shoe and found a piece of paper wadded in the toe. He unfolded it and read in his own handwriting:
Silliest damned business—how do you address yourself? “Dear Eldridge” ? All right, let’s forget the salutation; you’ll read this because I already have, and so, naturally, I’m writing it, otherwise you wouldn’t be able to read it, nor would I have been.
Look, you’re in a rough spot. Don’t worry about it, though. You’ll come out of it in one piece. I’m leaving you a Time Traveler to take you.where you have to go next.
The question is: where do I go? I’m deliberately setting the Traveler before the half-hour lag it needs, knowing there will be a cancelation effect. That means the Traveler will stay here for you to use. But what happens to me?
I think I know. Still, it scares me—this is the first cancelation I’ll have experienced. But worrying about it is nonsensical; I know it has to turn out right because there are no time paradoxes.
Well, here goes. I’ll push the button and cancel. Then the machine is yours.
Wish me luck.
WISH him luck! Eldridge savagely tore up the note and threw it away. But Eldridge I had purposely canceled and been swept back to the future, which meant that the Traveler hadn’t gone back with him! It must still be here!
Eldridge began a frantic search of the cave. If he could just find it and push the button, he could go on ahead. It had to be here!
Several hours later, when the guards dragged him out, he still hadn’t found it.
The entire village had gathered and they were in a festive mood. The clay containers were being passed freely and two or three men had already passed out. But the guards who led Eldridge forward were sober enough. They carried him to a wide, shallow pit. In the center of it was what looked like a sacrificial altar. It was decorated with wild colors and heaped around it was an enormous pile of dried branches.
Eldridge was pushed in and the dancing began.
He tried several times to scramble out, but was prodded back each time. The dancing continued for hours, until the last dancer had collapsed, exhausted. An old man approached the rim of the pit, holding a lighted torch. He gestured with it and threw it into the pit.
Eldridge stamped it out. But more torches rained down, lighting the outermost branches. They flared brightly and he was forced to retreat inward, toward the altar.
The naming circle closed, driving him back. At last, panting, eyes burning, legs buckling, he fell across the altar as the flames licked at him. His eyes were closed and he gripped the knobs tightly—
Knobs?
He looked. Under its gaudy decoration, the altar was a Time Traveler—the same Traveler, past a doubt, that Eldridge I had brought here and left for him. When Eldridge I vanished, they must have venerated it as a sacred object.
And it did have magical qualities.
The fire was singeing his feet when he adjusted the regulator. With his finger against the button, he hesitated.
What would the future hold for him? All he had in the way of equipment was a sack of carrot seeds, potatoes, the symphonic runs, the microfilm volumes of world literature and small mirrors.
But he had come this far. He would see the end.
He pressed the button.
OPENING his eyes, Eldridge found that he was standing on a beach. Water was lapping at his toes and he could hear the boom of breakers. The beach was long and narrow and dazzlingly white. In front of him, a blue ocean stretched to infinity. Behind him, at the edge of the beach, was a row of palms. Growing among them was the brilliant vegetation of a tropical island.
He heard a shout.
Eldridge looked around for something to defend himself with. He had nothing, nothing at all. He was defenseless.
Men came running from the jungle toward him. They were shouting something strange. He listened carefully.
“Welcome! Welcome back!” they called out.
A gigantic brown man enclosed him in a bearlike hug. “You have returned!” he exclaimed.
“Why—yes,” Eldridge said.
More people were running down to the beach. They were a comely race. The men were tall and tanned, and the women, for the most part, were slim and pretty. They looked like the sort of people one would like to have for neighbors.
“Did you bring them?” a thin old man asked, panting from his run to the beach.
“Bring what?”
“The carrot seeds. You promised to bring them. And the potatoes.” Eldridge dug them out of his pockets. “Here they are,” he said.
“Thank you. Do you really think they’ll grow in this climate? I suppose we could construct a—”
“Later, later,” the big man interrupted. “You mu
st be tired.” Eldridge thought back to what had happened since he had last awakened, back in 1954. Subjectively, it was only a day or so, but it had covered thousands of years back and forth and was crammed with arrests, escapes, dangers and bewildering puzzles.
“Tired,” he said. “Very.”
“Perhaps you’d like to return to your own home?”
“My own?”
“Certainly. The house you built facing the lagoon. Don’t you remember?” Eldridge smiled feebly and shook his head.
“He doesn’t remember!” the man cried.
“You don’t remember our chess games?” another man asked.
“And the fishing parties?” a boy put in.
“Or the picnics and celebrations?”
“The dances?”
“And the sailing?”
ELDRIDGE shook his head at each eager, worried question.
“All this was before you went back to your own time,” the big man told him.
“Went back?” asked Eldridge. Here was everything he had always wanted. Peace, contentment, warm climate, good neighbors. He felt inside the sack and his shirt. And books and music, he mentally added to the list. Good Lord, no one in his right mind would leave a place like this! And that brought up an important question. “Why did I leave here?”
“Surely you remember that!” the big man said.
“I’m afraid not.”
A slim, light-haired girl stepped forward. “You really don’t remember coming back for me?”
Eldridge stared at her. “You must be Becker’s daughter. The girl who was engaged to Morgel. The one I kidnaped.”
“Morgel only thought he was engaged to me,” she said. “And you didn’t kidnap me. I came of my own free will.”
“Oh, I see,” Eldridge answered, feeling like an idiot. “I mean I think I see. That is—pleased to meet you,” he finished inanely.
“You needn’t be so formal,” she said. “After all, we are married. And you did bring me a mirror, didn’t you?”
It was complete now. Eldridge grinned, took out a mirror, gave it to her, and handed the sack to the big man. Delighted, she did the things with her eyebrows and hair that women always do whenever they see their reflections.
“Let’s go home, dear,” she said.
He didn’t know her name, but he liked her looks. He liked her very much. But that was only natural.
“I’m afraid I can’t right now,” he replied, looking at his watch. The half hour was almost up. “I have something to do first. But I should be back in a very little while.”
She smiled sunnily. “I won’t worry. You said you would return and you did. And you brought back the mirrors and seed and potatoes that you told us you’d bring.”
She kissed him. He shook hands all around. In a way, that symbolized the full cycle Alfredex had used to demolish the foolish concept of temporal paradoxes. The familiar darkness swallowed Eldridge as he pushed the button on the Traveler.
He had ceased being Eldridge II.
From this point on, he was Eldridge I and he knew precisely where he was going, what he would do and the things he needed to do them. They all led to this goal and this girl, for there was no question that he would come back here and live out his life with her, their good neighbors, books and music, in peace and contentment.
It was wonderful, knowing that everything would turn out just as he had always dreamed.
He even had a feeling of affection and gratitude for Viglin and Alfredex.
THE OGRE TEST
Which insidious monster was telling the truth? Almooroa, the fur-skinned giant, or Irik, the long-failed runt? Earth’s best brains futilely sought the answer as the proclaimed Day of Doom approached.
GEORGE HENDRICKS stood in the middle of his furnished room at twelve o’clock midnight, trying to decide whether he wanted to take a shower first or fry an egg. He was very hungry; but also, he was quite grimy. It was a tough decision. Hendricks was on the verge of flipping a coin when the telephone rang.
He picked it up on the first ring, hoping it might be good news for a change. But of course it wasn’t.
“Hendricks? Could you come right over?” Professor Jenkins asked him. “We’ve run into some difficulty.”
“What sort of difficulty?” Hendricks asked, lighting a cigarette one-handed. He had been working with Jenkins on the big project all week, and everything had been going smoothly.
“You’d better come right over,” Jenkins said, in a quiet, dead voice one might use to announce the end of the world. Hendricks didn’t argue. Jenkins, aside from being a top cultural anthropologist, was head of the project.
Hendricks slipped on a topcoat and hurried out.
Seated in a taxi, he tried to think what difficulty could have come up. The battle date might have been advanced, of course. They had been working on a tight schedule since Almooroa had landed. If the alien had miscalculated by a day or two—
The taxi stopped in front of the Ellinson Foundation.
Hendricks paid, and showed the door guard his credentials.
Inside, there was an unusual amount of movement for twelve-thirty, even with the battle date only three days off. He asked another guard where he could find Professor Jenkins.
“He’s probably up there in Room 2112 with that alien fellow,” the guard said in a bored voice, as though extraterrestrial visitors were an everyday occurrence.
Hendricks hurried upstairs. In front of 2112 another guard looked at his papers and let him in.
“Hello, Hendricks,” Almooroa said. He was sitting in a reinforced chair, browsing through a magazine. Even sitting down he was immense. Now he stood up to his full height of seven feet six inches and clapped his elbows together ceremonially.
“I have heard many people running in the corridors,” he said in almost perfect English. “Is anything wrong?”
“Just what I want to find out,” Hendricks said. “Have you seen Professor Jenkins?”
“I have not seen him for almost eight hours,” Almooroa said. He was quite human looking, aside from his pelt of dark brown fur and protruding sabre-toothed jaw.
“I hope nothing is wrong,” the extraterrestrial said, pacing nervously up and down the room. “Your ships must leave Earth inside of three days. You must join our fleet on time if you wish to have any chance against the Harrag Horde.”
Hendricks nodded. As far as he knew the Earth fleet was ready.
The door opened and Jenkins hurried in. “So here you are,” he said. “Would you come with me?”
Hendricks excused himself and followed. Jenkins rushed down the hall, his long, dark hair lifting from his scalp with every step.
“What’s all this about?” Hendricks asked, trying to catch up.
“You’ll see.” He opened a door at the end of the hall. Hendricks followed him in, and gulped.
All the scientists on the project were there, seated in a semicircle. In the middle of that circle was a being about four feet tall. His skin was a scaly green-gray, and he had a long barbed tail. He was roughly human looking, except for the antennae behind each ear.
Another extraterrestrial!
“I think we’re all here now,” Jenkins said, in his tired voice. “This gentleman is called Irik. He landed on Earth a few hours ago, and was rushed here by the UN police. Tell them, Irik.”
THE alien twitched his antennae and said, “Gentlemen, I am very sorry our two cultures must meet this way. Unfortunately there is no time for the usual ceremonies attending a first contact. You are in terrible danger. I will be brief, since the time is so short.”
Irik twisted his tail twice around his leg, and licked his lips. “I represent the Orged Civilization, an ancient confederacy of several hundred planetary systems. We are a voluntary organization formed in the interests of peace, trade and cultural diffusion.
“The Sleeret Pack, our nearest neighbors, sprang from savagery to superficial technological civilization in a few hundred years—”
; Hendricks looked around. Jenkins, with a barely perceptible shake of his head, cautioned him to be silent.
“As this horde swarmed into the periphery of our civilization we have been forced to fight The war has been raging for almost a hundred years now, and the front has shifted considerably. Your planet lies in the present invasion route. Your planet is the next they will attack.”
The alien looked around to see how they were receiving the news. He seemed baffled by their apparent calm.
“Perhaps you don’t believe me,” he said. “Well, the Orged Civilization cannot undertake the defense of your planet alone, much as we would like to. The better strategy would be for us to retreat, leaving your planet to the Pack, and regroup farther in our own territory. But we feel a moral obligation toward all intelligent life.
“Accordingly, we offer you a choice. You may, if you wish, join us. With your people and your resources actively on our side, we will undertake the joint defense of this planet.
“To this purpose I have brought several hundred of our older ships on slave circuit. If you are joining us, it must be at once, for the Pack will swarm into your system in about three of your days.”
Hendricks was silent for a moment, trying to digest what the alien had said. It wasn’t too hard to grasp, though, for it was almost exactly what Almooroa had told them.
“What do these barbarians look like?” Jenkins asked.
“They are tall, almost twice the size of myself,” Irik answered. “And they have ugly brown fur and a tremendous jaw.”
Just like Almooroa.
Almooroa had mentioned that the barbarians of the Harrag Horde were little monsters, not more than four feet high, thickset, with green-gray scaly hides, tail and antennae.
Just like the newest arrival.
The question is, Hendricks thought, which is telling the truth?
It was a very good question.
“If you will wait,” Jenkins said, “I wish to talk with my colleagues.”
Irik swung his tail over his head in assent, and the scientists filed out.
ALMOOROA had landed first, with substantially the same story as Irik. He said that he was a representative of the old, peaceful Malig Civilization, now engaged in a death struggle with a cruel barbarian horde. He, too, said that Earth was in the invasion path.
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