by Jerry
The physicist nonchalantly opened the two windows of the second story room. No one said a word.
He raised the innocuous-looking funnelmouthed tool to waist-height and leveled it out the window.
He touched the crude switch on the side.
There was a slight buzz. Nothing changed in the house. But within a radius of five hundred feet—there was nothing! Literally nothing. Men and machines and houses and streets disintegrated. As a child plays with a toy gun, so McClary swept his weapon around and the ensuing holocaust—was not even that. The only sound was the rush of air to fill the vacuum.
Open-mouthed the rebels stood around McClary.
“Is it good enough?” he asked, a wry, amused smile on his tired face. “Do you think we’ll clear the country now?”
There was awed silence, the silence of reverence . . .
The Chilly Visitor
William Karney
PROFESSOR Wilson stooped and picked the peculiar-looking rock of the snow and muck. Holding the dirty thing gingerly he opened the basement door and walked in.
He thought it odd that the lump of rock had such a funny, almost slimy feel, but he didn’t think twice about it. It looked at a casual glance like a piece of meteoric iron, but Jimmy had probably picked it up while playing in the neighboring lot. Well, he thought, kids get attached to the damndest things. If Jimmy wants it, let him have it.
He stamped up stairs, shaking the snow from him as he went.
And on the casual lump of rock, the slimy leathery, colorless piece of protoplasm stirred and slowly came to life, as the warmth of the cellar penetrated its curious gelatinous structure.
Instinctively it sought the source of the heat, and its still sluggish brain recognized the strange machine which furnished it In a combination of extension and relaxation it moved over the cold concrete and sought safe refuge near a maze of metal tubes which led into the heat-machine . . .
Wilson sat down to examine the current mail and in a short while he was comfortably settled, cigarette and drink supplying the atmosphere of comfort which the outdoors belied.
Presently he began to stir a little. The room seemed to be a little too warm, he became aware suddenly. For a moment he forgot it, but with increasing insistence the temperature disturbed him.
“Umph,” he grunted in surprise as he stared at the thermometer on the thermostat. It was ninety-five in the room. The furnace must be stuck. A quick glance at the thermostat showed it to be clear.
“Damn!” he muttered angrily as he clumped down the basement stairs. “I had the thing cleaned two months ago. Last time I call them!”
The intelligence now alert, clamped itself around the odd mechanism tighter, and surveyed its situation, trying to orient itself with respect to this strange new world. Consciousness and awareness had existed so long ago . . . life had worked at a slow ebb for such a long time . . . his crime hadn’t been that great to deserve the exile . . .
Wilson strode over to the furnace and opened the door. The flame was roaring brightly even though the thermostat called for no heat. At the same time, the intelligence wrapped around the valve-mechanism saw the source of increased warmth. Instinctively, without waiting to consider it moved in a slithery motion through the open door—and vanished in a puff of disintegrated protoplasm . . .
Professor Wilson thought he saw a flicker, but who notices such trivia. The flame suddenly died down as the valve was released.
Two hours later, Professor Wilson told his wife, “Alice, I can’t understand the furnace. It acted up this afternoon for no reason at all. If it happens again, call Acme, will you? Those things can be dangerous.” Dangerous . . . Indeed . . .
Grandfather Paradox
John Weston
“THE ONLY field of science,” Ree Parker said, waving his cigarette like a baton, “which the physicists haven’t touched—and never will—is time.”
John Wilson took another sip of his drink.
“That’s a funny thing for you to say,” he grinned, “especially when your old man was one of the few physicists who ever attempted to understand it.”
“He was on the wrong track,” Parker said. “After his disappearance I went through all his papers and while he talked about time, he didn’t really say anything.”
“Are you sure? Maybe you simply didn’t understand what he was trying to get at.”
“No,” Parker disagreed, “I’m sure I’m capable of understanding as much mathematics as anyone else. Oh—before I forget—I wanted to tell you that I’ve invited an acquaintance over tonight. I met him at the University Club. He’s very interesting and we talked a lot about the nature of time. And incidentally, you can tell me whether or not I’m going nuts. This guy—he calls himself Dr. Lensen—looks exactly like father—well, the resemblance at least is uncanny. That’s what attracted me to him in the first place. See what you think of him. He talks a lot, but I don’t think he says too much.”
Wilson laughed: “You’re a complete skeptic, Reed. Maybe this guy really is your father—remember you have no idea of what happened to him.”
Parker laughed too: “Now you’re giving me the needle. You know my pet argument. I can’t see that anything can ever be done about time—I always think of the Grandfather Paradox—remember?”
“Yes, I know it by heart,” Wilson raised his voice to a mocking tone. “Time-travel is impossible, because a man could travel back in time, inadvertently kill his grandfather, and thus prevent himself from ever having been born!”
“That’s what I mean,” Parker agreed, “Past and future events can’t have such a close link.”
The buzzer interrupted the conversation and Parker left the room to return a minute later with a stranger in his wake. Wilson was shocked by the amazing resemblance of the man to Parker’s father.
After the introductions and the small talk, the conversation soon directed itself to the scientific problem of the nature of time. Here Wilson repeated Parker’s favorite paradox of the grandfather.
The grey-haired man shook his head: “I’m afraid it won’t do,” he said quietly, “it’s completely wrong. Time travel is possible.”
“I suppose you’ve traveled through time,” Parker said, grinning.
“Yes,” the older man remarked matter-of-factly, “I have, son.”
Parker went white and Wilson clenched the arms of his chair.
“You’re joking, of course,” Wilson said, “remember the paradox.”
“The paradox doesn’t exist,” the man smiled, as if thinking aloud, “you see, there is another and more important idea. The time-traveler may in no way operate upon future or past events. He may only observe . . .”
Parker handed Wilson another drink. “Gee—that was funny,” he said musingly. “I had the damndest feeling as if I was talking with someone . . .”
“Funny—is right!” Wilson agreed. “I had a crazy idea that someone was in this room speaking with us.” He raised his drink. “We’d better cut it out. We’re spending too much time talking about time. Bottoms up!”
“Bottoms up!” Parker echoed.
Kobald in the Hearth
Ramsey Sinclair
JOE SKAGERAC squinted through the violet lenses into the flaming mouth of the open-hearth furnace. He shook his head as if to clear away the keening throb that wracked it. He gritted his teeth and bent down, his brawny arms scooping up shovel after shovel of vanadium alloy into the open gate.
It seemed to him that the molten monstrous pool of metal devoured the material like a ravenous animal. Joe wiped his forehead with a rag and leaned on his shovel. The door dosed and the fire went out of his eyes.
“How’s it going, Joe?” Mr. Sellman asked in a friendly tone. Nightly he made the rounds and the expected question got the anticipated answer:
“She go all right, Mister Sellman, she go all right,” Joe answered, gutturally.
“Fine,” boomed Sellman, “we’re putting in six hundred pounds of manganese tonight.
Spread it good!”
“Yah, Mr. Sellman.”
When the concentrate came, the door slid up and Joe bent to work again, powerful back and arm muscles glittering with sweat as he hurled load after load into the flaming maw. As Joe gazed into the fire it seemed alive. The mighty blasts of ravening gas raced across the surface of the molten steel, cooking it, converting it into the alloy it would become. The shimmering surface of metal seemed alive as gas bubbled through it. The white hot fire-brick walls of the furnace cast an incredibly intense light on the inferno, and to Joe’s tortured eyes it seemed as if the devils were in it.
Joe stood stock-still.
On top the flaming sea of metal stood a figure. It was small and gnarled, twisted and dwarf-like. Over its shoulder it carried a pick and its long beard dragged at its feet.
Joe shook his head. But the image didn’t go away. It seemed to advance to the very edge of the furnace door. Now Joe could distinguish the warped and twisted smile on its hideous little face. It raised an arm. It beckoned.
Joe screamed shrilly. With a wild desperate gesture, he flung his shovel in the furnace, tore off his goggles and ran screaming down the long line of the open-hearth.
“Too bad,” the doctor said later, “the man’s as mad as a hatter. Kobalds! Where did he ever pick up such mythology? Why the man can hardly read!”
But nobody told the doctor that two days later, the number Three furnace—Joe’s furnace—burst a section of lining and spilled three hundred tons of molten steel all over the cooking room floor—and took two men with it . . .
Temple of Terror
Milton Matthew
HARRIGAN tried not to be furtive. He posed his features in the look of angelic goodness typified by any visitor to the Temple of Light. He toyed with the pamphlet eulogizing Franee, the beautiful Founder and periodically he would raise his head and gaze adoringly at the gigantic three-dimensional image of the woman, which was the alter of the Lighters.
Inwardly his mind was racing like a jet. He knew every nook and cranny of the temple—almost as well as the architect who had designed it—maybe better. Service had briefed him thoroughly.
“We’ve got to have time,” Richards had said back in the Service headquarters. “Remember all the she-devil has to do is touch a stud. Then the whole thing will go.”
Harrigan visualized the entire Moon shuddering, then moving as a gigantic projectile toward Terra, driven by the monstrous engines buried beneath the Temple here in Luna City. The fantastic fanatic, Franee, Founder of the Temple of Light and high-priestess of horror was planning to commit the grandest sacrifice of all. Her warped mind, backed with the hideous perversions of science and scientists who believed the rot she dished out, had conceived of this unbelievable gesture. And he, Harrigan, had to stop it. Thank God, that Service had gotten wind of it from a neophyte who had broken under Interrogation!
For months Harrigan had undergone this rigorous implantation as a neophyte himself. And the time was coming when he has to act. It was here and now.
He moved slightly in the pew, and he felt the comforting bulges beneath his flowing outer garment. Two Type-Q atomics nestled there, but they had to be planted in the heart of the powerful warp-motors to destroy them so no damage to either the Moon—or even Terra—could be done.
Harrigan decided to play it bold. He rose from the pew and nonchalantly walked to the elevators toward Quarters. The guards recognizing a Neophyte let him through with the usual, “Blessed be Franee,” and Harrigan trembled with relief as the elevator dropped him into the depths.
With a soft whine it stopped. Harrigan stepped out. With a blaster he shot down the two guards. The surprise was so complete there was no chance of outcry. Running madly Harrigan dashed through doors, in and out of corridors, through three elevator stages, praying that the pursuit would not nail him before he had his chance.
He cut down three more men who interfered with his progress and in minutes he was before the doors which had been described in such detail to him. Using a Sounder, he went to work on the locks. In seconds he was through. He was staggered by the sight of the vast warp-drive. Now he could well believe that this monstrous machine could set a planet in motion!
Harrigan had been trained with one purpose in mind. He knew what Fate awaited him. There was not the slightest chance of his coming out alive. It was just as well to die with the bombs as under the torturers’ tools.
He hurled both toward the base of the drive, a hundred feet below him. And then Harrigan died, died quickly and painlessly in an atomic blast which sent steel running like water and in whose ensuing holocaust all things animate and inanimate, vanished in vapers.
On the surface, the huge edifice called the “Temple Of Light”, rose slightly and then settled into a distorted mass of steel and stone. The high-priestess, Franee and her weird plan had ended.
Today there is a little bronze plaque in commemoration of the act. It says simply—“Here Harrigan Died—Thirty Thirty One.” And everyone knows who is meant and what happened . . .
Opening Gambit
Lee Owen
SO FAR AS the casual eye could discern, the man was a non-entity. Even to the trained eye of the station detective, there was nothing to excite curiosity in the appearance or the manner or the bearing of the man with the suitcase.
He was heavy set which made him look less tall than he really was. There was an absorbed, introspective air about him. A guesser might have said, “look at the professor,” and they wouldn’t have been far wrong.
At the exit of the station, the man stopped and put down his suitcase. He drew a package of cigarettes from an outer pocket and lit one, glancing about casually. An extraordinarily acute observer might have noticed that he stood peculiarly with the suitcase between his legs, almost as if he were afraid it would be snatched from him.
It was late and not train time so no rush of people engulfed the man. He picked up his suitcase and walked slowly toward the concourse where a passing cab paused for him.
“Crayton Arms,” the man said to the cab-driver in perfect English marred only by the peculiar perfection some foreigners give to the language when they’ve learned it well.
Anyone who watched this innocent tableau might have seen three men step forward as the stranger entered the cab, and a few seconds later might have noticed that four automobiles seemed to follow in the wake of the cab.
When the cab drew up before the hotel, the graceful stranger stepped out, paid his fare and entered the hotel. Registration was a matter of seconds.
The man followed the bell-hop who seemed to sag considerably—unusually so—under the weight of the suitcase.
Once inside the room, the stranger quickly tipped the bell-hop and sent him on his way.
Then the air of calmness and lethargy dropped from him. He bent over the suitcase. His hands moved quickly to a small flap on the outside. He did something underneath the flap.
He Straightened up and a smile crossed his face. He left the suitcase in the middle of the room and opened the door to the corridor. He stepped out.
Two men standing just outside quietly pinioned his arms to his side and another two materialized from nowhere.
“What is the meaning of this outrage?” the stranger asked angrily, but there was the livid white tones of fear reflected in his face.
“Come with us. We arrest you as a foreign agent . . .”
Two other men were already in the hotel room and one immediately got down on his knees and poured over the nondescript suitcase. He found the same flap. His hands moved quietly and surely.
“That’s that,” he said finally to his companion, “that boy was ready to start it.” He hefted the suitcase experimentally as if to judge its weight “Enough ‘pluto’ to blast the city,” he said laconically. “We’ll, this is another time it won’t happen.”
The other shook his head; “We were really lucky,” He stepped closer to his friend. “Can we always stop them in time? . . .”
Lee Owen
EVEN THROUGH the pile of boulders before the cave’s entrance, gusts of wind came driving. The fire flickered under the icy impact and cast grotesque shadows on j the walls. The quiet little group of humans huddled closer together for warmth and one old crone muttered under her breath, “Aiee, the coolth is always with us.”
A man broke away from the confines of the group. He was tall and lean under the heavy layers of skins and his hand clenched a spear-haft firmly.
“Listen to me,” he called angrily and his voice echoed in the narrow confines, “listen to me! We must all go into the Place. If we do not go, we will die. There is no food and there is no heat. How long can we feed this feeble fire.”
Another figure stood up. “You are wrong, Kah. We cannot go. It is the law. Did not the Ones Who Came Before say that no men could go into the places? Aye, they did. And some of us didn’t believe them. Do you remember the stories of the children born to those who disobeyed?”
“But that is changed,” Kah shouted angrily in retort, “That was much time before. Now the Places are clean and free from the taint. We must go!”
“How do you know the Places are free?” the oldster questioned Kah craftily.
The young man’s defiance wilted for a moment—then he thrust his jaw out. “Because I have been there,” he said. “Yes, I, Kah, the same as you, have been in the Places. And they are warm and there is food in the funny stones, and there is shelter. I have seen and used them!”
The small group of humans listened listlessly to the argument between Kah and the Oldster. They disdained to take sides only because they were hungry and cold and feeble. And the Law of course was strong in them.
“The Law says you must die, Kali,” the Old man said shrewdly, “for you have broken the Law.” He spat. “The Ones Who Came Before warned us many times.”