The Collected Stories

by Earl

  A FIGURE came hurrying down the front steps to meet them. He was a tall, bearded man, dressed in utilitarian shorts, open-necked shirt, and sandals. His bright blue eyes twinkled at them as though in recognition. He extended his hand.

  “My name is Dr. Vindell,” he said pleasantly. His accent was rich and full, as though the centuries had added subtle new vowels to the English language. “I bid you welcome. You are William Gregg and Milton Harble?”

  Of all their introductions to new ages, this was the most amazing, breath-taking.

  “How—” Gregg choked.

  “How do I know your names?” supplied the man, smiling. “I have been awaiting your arrival, from the past. I have a written record of your coming. You see, I have a time machine myself.”

  Without another word he turned, beckoning them to follow to the house. Gregg and Harble, wondering if it might be a dream, were offered bathing facilities, fresh linen, and then a sumptuous meal with their host.

  “You are from the year nineteen thirty-nine,” stated Dr. Vindell blandly. “In nineteen forty-five you saw the attack of the Martians, and their defeat. You realized then that you had brought back the weapon that ended the menace by going into the future to find it. You stopped in the year two thousand, again in twenty-five hundred, again in thirty-five hundred, and now you are in forty-five hundred A.D.”

  “How can you know all that?” Gregg half moaned.

  “Simply enough. With my time machine, I recently went a year into the future, and read the written account I had made, or will make after you leave. Then I came back, awaiting your arrival.”

  CHAPTER V

  No Escape

  HARBLE, brow puckered thoughtfully, nodded with uncharacteristic abstraction.

  “I see. But here’s a question. You knew of the Martian invasion, knew of the threat to the twentieth century, before we came. Why didn’t you immediately go back in time, to offer your atomic power weapon? Or did you?”

  The 46th century man shook his head.

  “No, I didn’t. As a matter of fact, I can’t go back there.”

  “Why not?”

  “There are limitations to time travel.” The scientist settled back, lighting a fragrant cigar and offering the same to them. “They’ve been known for some time. In thirty-seven fourteen a man made a time machine for the second time. Yours was the first. That man has been to our time and beyond, and has gone back to his own age, but back no further. No living person can go backward in time to before his birth. He would simply cease to exist!

  “You two time-travelers, the first to accomplish it, are unique in that you can go any distance into the future and then go back as far as the twentieth century. But you can’t go back further.”

  Harble nodded again.

  “That explains another term in my equations. Life cannot be pried loose from the world time-line.”

  “So you see,” continued their host, “that the defeat of the Martians rests entirely with you. None of us of the future can go back personally. But our help can.

  “I will equip your time-warp with atomic power, giving you the superenergy you need to backtrack. I also have ready for you a case of atomic power charges that can be used in your twentieth century guns. You substitute an electrical firing-pin in the breech, line the barrel with wax, and each charge will tear apart ten tons of matter in three-tenths of a second, within a range of sixty miles. That is the weapon that will—and did—defeat the Martians.”

  A strange thought struck Gregg. “You have space travel in this age. What about the Martians now?”

  “We trade very amicably with Mars. Back in your century, developing space travel, they sent their fleet to Earth, fully intent on taking over this world. Their defeat utterly astounded them.” Dr. Vindell chuckled a little. “After that, they left Earth strictly alone, till we opened negotiations with them, in thirty-eight eighty.”

  “When was atomic power discovered?” asked Harble curiously.

  “In thirty-six eighteen, just in time to prevent the collapse of civilization into barbarism.”

  Harble shook his head a little sadly.

  “Then that ragged hopeful we talked to in thirty-five hundred died without seeing it. Poor fellow!”

  “Atomic power is a frightful force,” the scientist said. “To produce and control it took heart-breaking years of research, by the best minds of that time. If you’re thinking of introducing atomic power to your age, I must destroy the illusion. Your science would be incapable of handling its colossal powers.”

  His voice had been almost patronizing. Gregg and Harble realized that in Dr. Vindell’s eyes they were from a half-barbaric age of science. An Egyptian of the Cheops Dynasty of 3000 B.C., with his oxen-powered civilization, would be like that to them.

  DR. VINDELL led them to his laboratory, and showed them his time machine, a smooth ovoid ship with rocket motivation. Then he opened the lid of a steel container and picked up a tiny metal capsule.

  “An atomic power charge,” he said, himself respectful. “There are a hundred thousand of them in this case, enough to blast the invading Martians.”

  Harble’s eyes took on the peculiar glint that had been in them so many times recently.

  “We are supposed to go back to defeat the Martians, two thousand five hundred and fifty-five years ago. Those same Martians that today you trade with, amicably. But today, as we stand here, that is a historical episode. It’s done with, over, finished.” His voice was dry, cracked. “What if we don’t bring those capsules back?”

  Again that monstrous thought of cheating time, upsetting the applecart of predestined fate! Gregg and Harble were both pale, as they awaited the scientist’s comment. The thought had grown malignantly.

  Dr. Vindell smiled, as he might at children.

  “I knew you would ask that, as I’ve known all of this in advance. You must go back, defeat the Martians, for that has been written into the loom of time. You did do it. You can’t change that, no matter how you try. I’ll explain why.”

  He thought a moment, then spoke.

  “You have no memory of bringing the weapon back. That is because the event hasn’t happened to you within your normal time cycle. And, secondly, as you go back in time, all memory of the future will vanish, also! Memory does not follow the time-line.

  “Suppose you went back without the weapon, to nineteen forty-five. Arriving there, you would not remember having been here, nor would you remember having determined to thwart time. Therefore, when the Martians attacked, you would again be horror-struck, and would again embark on your search into the future, for a weapon. This would occur again and again, till your written records proved to you finally the hopelessness of pursuing that endless circle. And you would bring back the weapon!”

  “No memory of the future!” mused Harble. “Another paradox—one that took me by surprise.” Suddenly he trembled. “Dr. Vindell! In telling me that, you’ve shown me the way to break the chain. Look. Suppose we go back to one year after the Martian defeat. We would know of the attack and defeat. Suppose, also, we had an unmistakable message written out, telling us we had been to the future and decided to arrive back after the defeat, to show we needn’t go back for the weapon!”

  The scientist tugged at his beard.

  “It sounds foolproof. But something—what, I don’t know myself—will upset your plan.” He looked at the two young men gravely. “Just why are you doing it?”

  Gregg and Harble had no answer. The feverish impulse had gripped them to throw a wrench into the cogs of time and see what would happen.

  A WEEK later, they stepped into their plane. Under the floorboards, the batteries had been replaced by an atomic power unit, for the time-warp. Back of them reposed the box of charge capsules.

  “Take them along,” said Dr. Vindell confidently, “and save yourselves a trip back!”

  “We’ll dump them in Long Island Sound, in nineteen forty-six!” asserted Harble, equally confident. “And then we’l
l come back to tell you the Martians were defeated with a weapon we never brought back!”

  Harble patted the paper in his jacket pocket. Meticulously, he had written out the full details of their visit with Dr. Vindell. In 1946, he would read it, destroy the capsules, and gloat at his victory over Time.

  Waving farewell, Gregg sent their plane up into the air. The dials were set for 1946. For the first time, they were going back in time, hurtled across the time-line by irresistible atomic energy.

  “All set?” asked Gregg.

  “Right!” barked Harble.

  Gregg knifed the switch and the hum of a caged giant of power vibrated through through the tiny cabin. There was a blinding wrench, a fightful sensation of falling into nothingness, and 46th century Earth flicked out.

  Milt Harble found his mind curiously blank for a moment. They were circling over New York—20th century New York. Thick clouds of smoke billowed upward and they could see the flat Martian ships in the distance. Harble sat up.

  “What was that you just said, Will?”

  Gregg was staring with haunted eyes at the scene.

  “I just said it doesn’t matter when we start for the future, to get that weapon. We can bring it back to the time before New York was attacked!” Saying this, Gregg had the curious feeling he had said it before, not just once, but twice. . . .

  Harble’s eyes shone. “That’s right!

  In the meantime, we can see something of the future. Just think, Will, we can go to periods beyond our normal span of life—”

  His eyes suddenly popped open, as his glance over his shoulder rested on the time-warp apparatus. “Look, Will! It’s been changed. Those tubes aren’t the tubes we installed. And that box—”

  He lifted the lid, looked blankly at the metal capsules, then read the paper of instructions with them. Electric firing-pin, wax-lined barrel, range of effectiveness. . . .

  “Good Lord, Will!” he blurted in an awed, stunned voice. “We have been to the future, though we can’t remember. We’ve brought back the weapon. Land, Will. Hurry! The colonel will get the capsules to our fighting forces!”

  And 24 hours later, the Earth forces began to thunder back at the attacking Martians, with a weapon produced by 46th century science.

  NOT till a month later, after the atomic power beams had driven the last Martian ship away, that Milt Harble found the paper in his pocket. He had written it in the year 4500 A.D., with his own hand, but it sounded like gibberish.

  After he had read the full account of his log, he faintly understood, though his memory of all this was utterly empty. They had tried to prevent themselves doing something they did do. They had saved Earth, in spite of themselves!

  One little thing had thrown off their plan. They had arrived back in 1945 instead of 1946!

  One more thing Harble noticed, in his log, in the account of their visit—achingly unremembered—to 2500 A.D. Across one whole page he had scrawled in big black letters.

  “Take Will back to 2500 without fail!”

  And he did. Memory flooded back to them, as they arrived a few days beyond the last visit. Gregg strode toward Gloria with the look of a man entering a higher sphere.

  Harble made an announcement of his departure on the third day.

  “I’ll be back some day, Will,” he promised. “I’m going to visit this Dr. Vindell, take my medicine. I have it written down that he said something would spoil my little plan. Something did—the error in our time-dial. It was a few days off on every yearly jump. It was weeks off on the bigger hops. And when we made the biggest jump of all, a jump of twenty-five hundred years into the past, it was off a full year!”

  He shrugged helplessly and went on quietly. “I should have known a little accident like that would do it, as when we wanted to dismantle the time machine last time we were here. If I had known”—he shrugged—“but then something else would have done it!” His eyes were faraway, as though he gazed down the endless halls of futurity.

  “Time,” he admitted, “is immutable.”

  VIA SUN

  The Pioneers From Earth Could Reach Home Only One Way—by Heading Into the Sun’s Inferno!

  AHOY, Earth! We say that because, unbelievable as it may seem to you, we are within ten million miles of Earth, rapidly approaching!

  Venus Expedition Number One resuming contact, via etherline radio. Operator Gillway tapping the keys, and I’m so excited I wonder if I’m making sense, or even coherent.

  For five months, marooned on Venus, we had little if any hope of ever seeing Earth again. Now, if our cosmic luck holds out, we’ll be maneuvering for a landing within two weeks. Seven men—Wilson is dead—once resigned to certain death on an alien planet, are now as certain of safe return!

  There is quite a bit of explaining to do. Five months ago, my last message outlined a grim situation. But right now you wonder how we can be here, in Earth’s back yard. Venus and Earth, at present long past conjunction, are about a hundred million miles apart. How could we have cut down that all-important difference in orbital velocity, with Venus running ahead of Earth?

  The truth will astound you. We have come, not one hundred million miles, but close to two hundred million miles! And we are approaching Earth from behind, not from Venus’ side at all. Astronomers will immediately grasp the significance of this. I will detail that later. We have made an amazing argosy. We have blazed a new trail that future space ships will follow, when circumstances demand.

  There was some suffering. We are gaunt and worn, but otherwise in good shape. We are worried about Karsen, however. He has never really felt right since the amputation of his hand, on Venus. He is running a fever. But we’ll have him in the care of good doctors, on Earth, within two weeks.

  Earth! How brightly, how gloriously you shine in our eyes! And now . . . You are playing “Hall, Men of Space,” the song dedicated to the Martian Expedition when it returned. Thanks.

  Will resume tomorrow, when the sun-mirror has recharged my batteries.

  SIX Hundred Twenty-Ninth Day.

  To tell something of the story of the last five months, I’ll go back to the day Wilson died.

  Conjunction past, and our hope of returning to Earth at that time quashed, we had settled down to face fourteen months of the trials of Venus. As Markers had dismally predicted, the UV apparatus one day gave its dying sputter. Without it, the slightest break in the skin meant quick death.

  And so it happened with Wilson. Careful as we had all been to avoid injury, Wilson one day slipped in the mud, stepping from the ship. His shoulder fell against a little, sharp stone. There was a scraped bruise two inches long. Instantly, the vicious death-mold began its superswift work.

  Wilson dashed in, shouting. Parletti dived for the bottle of antiseptic and swabbed it on hurriedly. The flesh swelled around the bruise. Parletti slashed away the swelling, drowning the gash in a bath of antiseptic. Far below that, the bone began to expand. There was little hope, even after he amputated the arm.

  Wilson went through the agony silently. Parletti was the one who whimpered at the bloody work he had to do. The rest of us stood around helplessly, biting our lips and digging our nails into our palms.

  The amputation had been a forlorn hope. It only added to the hazard of further infection. Wilson’s shoulder began swelling. Parletti couldn’t amputate that. Wilson looked around at us, the mark of death in his eyes. He smiled farewell, through his pain, then made a signal with his hand. We understood. A minute later, outside, Captain Atwell put a bullet through his head. We carried the body to the cliff and tossed it over.

  Venus, planet of rampant life and rampant death, had taken its third life from our original ten. From then on, we adopted a psychology of inevitable doom. We awaited the end. Each of us secretly hoped he would not be the last. What horror we lived through!

  Earth, by the way—to switch to the present again—is a distinctly blue planet. Not green, as might be expected from its vegetated land areas. We noticed that on the
return trip from Mars also. Markers advances the logical explanation that Earth’s seas compose three-fourths of the surface. The seas are blue.

  SIX Hundred Thirtieth Day.

  Paradoxically, our fatalistic attitude there on Venus seemed to lighten our spirits. In accepting eventual death, we no longer feared it. It bolstered our morale to plunge into our studies of Venusian phenomena, ignoring the sword of death over our heads.

  Markers devised a system of latitude and longitude, based on the beautiful geometric rainbow effects caused by the invisible sun after each rain.

  Swinerton spent long hours over his microscope, studying specimens of Venus’ virulent molds. Tests indicated that silver compounds attacked the molds quite readily.

  Tarnay made what may some day prove to be a valuable discovery. Experimenting with metals from our chemical supplies, he created an alloy of chromium and beryllium that seems proof against corrosion in Venus’ active air. We wished our ship were made of it. Even stainless steel “rusts” badly on Venus. We could not do much beyond constantly polishing and oiling all our metal surfaces, and hoping they would last.

  With shovel and electroscope, Parletti made assays of the rich radioactive ore deposits nearby. When these ores are exploited, radium will be as cheap as $1,000 a gram.

  As for myself, I hit upon an amazing thing. The ionic currents in the Venus air—which charge my batteries—are so heavy, my main thiatron tube exhibits television images. It may mean something in the improvement of television.

  And so, despite our precarious position, we kept busy. All except Karsen. His lack of one hand was a handicap that seemed to infuriate him. He spent long hours scratching formulae down. When he ran out of paper, he would crouch in the sand, writing numbers with a stick. He would vouch nothing to our questions. We began to fear he was going mad.

  A cheer is now ringing in my ears, from the others. They have just sighted the moon, a sixth-magnitude speck beside Earth. It is a sure sign now that we are close—