Complete Fiction (Jerry eBooks)

by Robert Abernathy

  “Brains,” explained Manning succinctly. “While the rest of the Seventh goes on handing body blows to the enemy, we’re going after his gray matter. Brains are about the only article of value left in this bombed-out country. And Dr. Panraz Kahl has one of the best.”

  “What’s he keeping it in these woods for?” Dugan glanced out at the receding park-like scenery, green now with spring.

  “Unless the jerk they picked up back in Freiburg sold Intelligence a fairy story, the Herr Doktor had some kind of a hideout here, where he was doing experiments—something that impressed the Nazis enough they were willing to finance him and leave him alone.”

  Dugan looked properly impressed. Of course, he had learned to expect such knowledge from Manning, who had been at M.I.T. and had managed to stay a combat soldier only by the grace of God and a lot of blarney . . . Dugan was still looking impressed when the truck scuffed tires to a halt. Then he was first man out, and the rest of the troops followed in seconds—they needed no telling to get out of a stationary vehicle.

  “Road ends,” somebody remarked. It did, in a loop that took it back the way they had come. The lieutenant in charge of the detachment swung out of the lead jeep and called them together under the trees.

  “We’ll have to spread out,” declared the lieutenant. “Groups of three. That hideout ought to be within a mile of here. If you find it and there’s resistance, keep shooting at intervals and wait for the rest. Remember, we’ve got to make captures this time, not kills.”

  The sergeant rattled off names and the groups formed swiftly and took off. Manning and Dugan, naturally, were two corners of one trio; its third was a corporal named White.

  WITH Dugan as point, they advanced up a brush-grown ravine, using caution and cover, skirting the path that curved up the hill. They topped a saddle, and saw the house—a sprawling mountain lodge, built of logs by somebody with a passion for privacy, its roof well camouflaged now with synthetic greenery—not a hundred yards away up a slight slope rankly overgrown with grass. It looked deserted. Dugan had taken a few steps into the open before something—perhaps a far-away tinkle of breaking glass—warned him, and he went down smoothly in to the grass and rolled sidewise toward a clump of young evergreens.

  From the house came a splitting crack and a bullet hit the ground where he had been. Behind him, Manning jumped behind a comfortably thick tree-trunk, unslinging the automatic rifle he carried. But White was a moment too slow. The second bullet caught him as he turned, and he stumbled to his knees; two more shots rolled echoes down the ravine, and White collapsed on his face.

  Manning sighted his automatic and gave the window from which the fire had come a short but intensive burst. The house was silent. He fired again at a venture; in answer, a bullet snapped past, coming from a different spot. There was more than one marksman up there, or one was moving fast.

  From ahead came Dugan’s voice, low-pitched but carrying. “Cover me, Ray. I’m gonna crawl around to the back.”

  “You damn fool, you don’t know how many there are. Our guys’ll be along in a few minutes.”

  “Hell with them,” said Dugan. “Just cover me.” He didn’t mention White. But there was a compressed fury in his voice.

  Manning sighed. “All right.”

  Dugan crawled like a weasel. Manning lost sight of him. He waited with humming nerves, firing spaced shots into the enemy’s log fortress.

  Then he noticed he had stopped drawing any return fire. That might mean things had started happening inside the house, if it wasn’t a trick—He discarded most of his caution and darted into the open, zigzagging from scanty cover to cover—something must have happened inside—and flattened against the rustic wall beside one shattered window, just in time to hear a voice beyond it exclaim hoarsely, “Gut!”

  That was all he wanted to know. If anything was going gut in there, it was time Ray Manning got into the picture. He cleared the window-ledge with automatic level.

  There was a big, raftered room, and in the middle of the floor Eddie Dugan was struggling groggily to get up, while behind him stood a white-goateed civilian with a wrench, and in front of him a tough-looking younger man was lifting a rifle.

  The two Germans saw the gun in Manning’s hands and made a tableau as they were. It was broken as the burly one’s grip relaxed and his Mauser clattered on the floor.

  Manning motioned toward the goatee. “Dr. Kahl? Better drop that,” he advised in German.

  The little physicist looked down at his wrench and let it fall with an expression of disgust. Then he glared at Manning and called him a couple of names culled from biology rather than physics. “If your man hadn’t caught Wolfgang reloading—As it is, you have interrupted my work at the most crucial point imaginable—a work that might yet save the Reich—” He woke up to the nature of his audience, and finished lamely, “And which is in any case the greatest scientific advance of all time.”

  Dugan got shakily back to his feet, scooped up his dropped Browning, and trained it on Wolfgang. “Is that Kahl?” he inquired sourly. “If I’d known this guy wasn’t the one we had to capture, I’d have let him have it when I first got the drop on him.”

  Manning didn’t answer. His eyes roved rapidly about the interior, alert against another surprise entrance; but anybody else on the premises was lying pretty low. One, in fact, was doing it just under the window Manning had first fired at. He was no longer a factor.

  One end of the room was storage space for the overflow of Kahl’s electrical equipment. Manning recognized some of the articles there and read the labels on a couple of crates, but they gave him no clue to the Herr Doktor’s world-shaking research. The door behind Kahl was ajar on a room that, from what showed, might be his laboratory . . .

  THEY’D taken the required prisoner, and all duty called for now was a short wait until Intelligence took him off their hands. But Manning’s curiosity was needled. Kahl wasn’t modest about whatever he’d done—but his wrath at the “interruption” was genuine, and there might really be something here. The soldier in Manning fought a brief battle with the student, and lost.

  “What is this work of yours?” He made his voice authoritatively crisp, over the automatic’s steady muzzle.

  Kahl glanced momentarily toward the open door, then glowered at the American for a long ten seconds. “It is not for barbarian eyes.”

  “So there’s something worth seeing—or a booby trap, maybe?” said Manning to himself. Aloud he snapped, “Suppose you show us what’s in that room. Ahead of me—no, let Wolfgang go first. Keep him covered, Eddie!”

  Dugan hadn’t been able to follow the conversation—his German was limited to “Komm heraus mit die Hand in die Luft!” and a few other useful expressions from the American Tourists’ Phrase Book, 1945 edition—but he didn’t question Manning’s wisdom. He did a silent and highly efficient job of shepherding Wolfgang through the doorway, and stood well aside as Manning followed, preceded by a cowed-looking physicist.

  Manning was all eyes for Kahl’s invention: his first impression was that the room was disappointingly small and bare. There was nothing that looked like a rocket motor, a guided missile, or even an improved submarine periscope. But then the American’s eyes narrowed as they took in what was there.

  There were no windows, and walls, floor and ceiling were metal or sheathed with metal. Around them ran what looked like medium-thick pipes, without openings or discernible use. The only furniture was a table, supporting a rather fantastic electrical setup—stuff in the thousands of megacycles, judging by the heavy dielectric tubes and coils that were just a copper twist or two; that was what Manning had glimpsed from outside.

  Then a movement jerked Manning’s gaze back to the prisoners—and he almost shot the Herr Doktor. For Kahl had contrived to halt near the apparatusladen table, had taken one quick step and thrown a switch.

  The damage—if damage there was—was already done; that thought stayed Manning’s trigger finger. But nothing seemed t
o have happened; only when the contacts had touched the light had flickered briefly, and something had made a deep humming sound that rose in pitch like an electric motor starting under load—rose and snapped off in an instant.

  But something stayed wrong. The unconscious faculty of observation that had been sharpened for Manning in shell-smashed towns where the ability to notice small wrongnesses might keep a man from touching off a hidden mine told him that . . . He tried to read the expressions of the two Germans. Every wrinkle on Kahl’s face beamed crafty triumph. But his helper’s look made Manning blink. Wolfgang’s Aryan-blue eyes bulged with panic. And they were staring past Manning, at the door.

  Eddie Dugan broke the tense silence. “Ray—where’s the light coming from?”

  That was it! “Watch them!” rasped Manning, and whirled to face the door.

  It was ablaze with green-gold sunlight.

  II

  AND BEYOND IT WAS NOT THE gloomily raftered feast-hall of a Nazi baron, with gray March outside its windows—but a woodland rich with high summer. A breeze stole in from that preposterous outdoors and brought warmth and scent of firs, and of something else . . . Suddenly there was a crashing in the thicket, a thud of racing hooves. “A deer,” said Manning stupidly. “Something must have scared it.” Dugan, sweating with his back to the door, relaxed slightly.

  Like an echo from behind Manning came a dry cackle of laughter. He faced about again; his glare stilled even the Herr Doktor’s hysterical glee.

  “All right, how’d you do it?” he snapped in English, then, with returning control: “Erklaren Sie das sogleich!”

  “Gem,” grinned the scientist. “This room, all of it, is my invention. It was built into the house, but when I closed the switch, it moved, and left the house behind.”

  “Where are we, then? No riddles!”

  “It is simple enough. What you see outside is the world of the future—no longer future to us, but present, though about a hundred years removed from the ‘present’ which we have just left. This room is my time traveler—der Kahl’sche Zeitfahrer!”

  Meantime Dugan had taken a look out the door. He said nothing, but his eyes grew larger and larger in a paling face. Manning told him, tersely and without comment, what Kahl claimed to have done; in his own mind he had already accepted it as truth, the only possible explanation for the seeming impossible. He said stonily to the German: “The demonstration of your invention is very interesting. But now we must deliver it to American Intelligence, who will appreciate your genius. Set the machine to take us back where we came from.”

  “I could not if I would,” retorted Kahl. “Because of your interference, I had no opportunity to make adjustments. I merely threw the activating switch, and the Zeitfahrer exhausted its power before coming to a stop. You see, the switch is still closed. Only the field has collapsed as the batteries went dead.”

  There was a sound like a sob. It came from the hard-faced Wolfgang. The man’s patent terror was more convincing than Kahl’s assertions.

  Manning eyed him coldly, inwardly surprised at his own reaction to the news that they were stranded. Perhaps he was still dazed by the incredible—but his chief emotion was a waxing excitement and wonder at the thought of seeing with his own eyes that world of the future about which people dreamed and speculated, cursing the shortness of their lives . . .

  Dugan had guessed more than he had understood the meaning of Kahl’s words. But to him the situation suggested more routine concerns.

  “Say, Ray,” he inquired, “do you suppose we’re AWOL?”

  “I don’t think so,” Manning choked down an impulse to wild laughter. “No more than a guy that’s blown off his post by an 88. Anyway, I don’t remember any General Order that says you’ve got to be in the right year. But our program now will have to be: get oriented in this place, this time, I mean, and dig up some fresh batteries to send this thing back to 1945. In the twenty-first century batteries shouldn’t be scarce; we’ll just have to be careful about contacting the natives, so we don’t get tossed in jail or the booby hatch . . . To begin with, let’s get out of here. This damn traveling vault is getting on my nerves.” He motioned at Kahl and Wolfgang. “Outside.”

  Kahl didn’t stir; his eyes narrowed slyly. “There is no sense in your treating us as prisoners, now. The war is ancient history.”

  “Until further notice,” said Manning, “we’ll continue as of 1945. Move!” Grudingly they moved. Kahl growled over his shoulder, “One thing does not seem to have occurred to you. This is Germany of the future, where Wolfgang and I are much more likely to find friends than you are.”

  MANNING did not answer. He had halted, stiffening, on the time machine’s threshold, and sniffed the air critically. To him came sudden recognition of the scent which mingled, strengthening, with that of spruce and fir: a heavy, tarry odor of burning. He looked upwind. Through the rifts of the treetops were clearly visible clouds of black smoke, boiling upward against the blue sky. Flames flickered angrily beneath, and to Manning’s ears came the faint but subtly all-pervasive crackling of the fire. It was drowned out briefly by the alarmed croakings of a flight of ravens that circled overhead and then flapped away, and in the relative stillness that followed another sound was audible—that of human voices, raised in shouts and commands.

  “Looks like the local fire department’s on the job,” remarked Dugan.

  “The fire!” exclaimed Kahl hoarsely. “It is blowing toward us—If it reaches the Zeitfahrer—”

  “Guess the man’s right,” said Manning. “If that is the fire department, we’d better get in touch with them.” All four started to run, quartering across the visible face of the blaze toward the voices’ source.

  They had covered a hundred yards when from ahead, sharp above the snapping flames, a shot spanged. The two Americans instinctively hugged the ground; Kahl and Wolfgang, in advance, froze and stared at the screen of firs. From just beyond exploded a violent fusillade, with the hasty clatter of automatic fire setting the tempo; and in the midst of all the shooting was the noise of a racing motor and a rackety whir that could come only from spinning propeller blades.

  The sound rose and seemed to hang overhead. Manning looked up and thought for an instant that he glimpsed the dark moving shape of a flying thing;, but when he looked straight at the spot there was nothing. A moment later he was conscious that the roar of the engine had ceased and with it the noise of firing. The crackle of the forest fire came as from far away to deafened ears.

  Dugan and Manning looked blankly at one another. They got to their feet and stood in indecision.

  “Damned if I know,” said Manning bewilderedly. “For a minute I thought we’d landed in the middle of another war. Now I don’t know whether it was real or—”

  “Halt!” barked a keyed-up voice on their right. “Still-gestemden, oder ich schiesse!”

  The man who had appeared from the bushes, despite the unfamiliar uniform he wore, was at least real. So was the tommy gun he trained on the group, and the look of vicious eagerness that twisted his face.

  “Das Gewehr fallen lassen!” he shouted.

  “Better drop it,” said Manning quietly to his companion. “We don’t know what the score is yet. And that guy wants to shoot.”

  Other uniformed figures appeared behind the first man. All of them were armed and looked excited and dangerous. But surprising was the caution, amounting to anxiety, with which they fanned out and kept their weapons leveled; they seemed to expect some formidable and disconcerting counterattack from the disbanded and outnumbered captives.

  The first arrival jerked a thumb toward the way he had come; his manner didn’t encourage protest. And Manning, who had read science fiction stories, reflected that a time traveler’s best bet was to keep his mouth shut.

  Beyond the fir grove a meadow-like clearing opened out. Smoke was drifting across it and the fire licking at its edges, but that didn’t seem to be what was bothering the men who swarmed about it. Some of
them were squinting into the bright summer sky, nervously fingering guns, others arguing in loud groups. A crowd clustered about a helicopter which perched on the grass with, slowly revolving vanes. Toward it the four prisoners were marched.

  UNDER the intermittent shadow of the helicopter’s blades a big man in curiously patterned civilian garments stood with arms akimbo, facing a soldier who was ramrod-stiff and obviously embarrassed before him.

  “There was no chance, Herr Schwinzog,” the latter was insisting. “They wore Tarnkappen, and they were inside the machine and had the engine going before we knew that anything was wrong. We fired on them as they rose, and they made the helicopter invisible. Of course, then it was too late to stop them—without shutting off the power over the whole district, and that would mean chaos—”

  “Of course it was too late,” said Herr Schwinzog bitingly, “since it was already too late when you started thinking. You may as well put your report in writing, Captain, and hope that your superiors don’t see fit to demote you. For my part, I shall use my influence to see that they do.”

  He pivoted, grinding his heel into the turf, and snapped at the man at his elbow: “What is it?”

  The soldier saluted jerkily. “Unauthorized persons, Herr Schwinzog. We apprehended four of them about two hundred meters to the northwest. Two were armed.”

  “Hum!” grunted the big man explosively. His eyes narrowed, coming to rest on the group of captives. His scrutiny was chillily penetrating. He held it on them while the shadows of the helicopter vanes swept across his face a dozen times. Then he said flatly, in slightly accented English: “You, no doubt, are Americans?”

  Manning was silent, feeling the dream-sense of unreality overcome him again. That question tangled time and space—it and another thing: around the left arm of Schwinzog’s oddly cut coat was a broad band, and in a circle on it sprawled a stark black swastika. A hundred years ago—if a hundred years had passed—American armies had been trampling that emblem in mud and blood.