"Scientists are pretty sure periods of excitement are explained by acute changes in the nervous and psychic characters of humanity which take place at sunspot maxima, but they aren't sure of the reasons for those changes."
"Ultraviolet light," I yawned, remembering something I had read in a magazine about it.
Billy wiggled his ears and went on: "Most likely ultraviolet has a lot to do with it. The spots themselves aren't strong emission centers for ultraviolet. But it may be the very changes in the Sun's atmosphere which produce the spots also result in the production of more ultraviolet.
"Most of the ultraviolet reaching Earth's atmosphere is used up converting oxygen into ozone, but changes of as much as twenty percent in its intensity are possible at the surface.
"And ultraviolet produces definite reaction in human glands, largely in the endocrine glands."
"I don't believe a damn word of it," Herb declared flatly, but there was no stopping Billy.
He clinched his argument: "Let's say, then, that changes in sunshine, such as occur during sunspot periods, affect the physiological character and mental outlook of all the people on Earth. In other words, human behavior corresponds to sunspot cycles.
"Compare Dow Jones averages with sunspots and you will find they show a marked sympathy with the cycles — the market rising with sunspot activity. Sunspots were riding high in 1928 and 1929. In the autumn of 1929 there was an abrupt break in sunspot activity and the market crashed. It hit bedrock in 1932 and 1933, and so did the sunspots. Wall Street follows the sunspot cycle."
"Keep those old sunspots rolling," I jeered at him, "and we'll have everlasting prosperity. We'll simply wallow in wealth."
"Sure," said Herb, "and the damn fools will keep jumping off the buildings."
"But what would happen if we reversed things — made a law against sunspots?" I asked.
"Why, then," said Billy, solemn as an owl, "we'd have terrible depressions."
I got up and walked away from him. I had got to thinking about what I had seen on the sidewalk after the fellow jumped, and I needed that beer.
Jake, one of the copy boys, yelled at me just as I was going out the door.
"J.R. wants to see you, Mike."
So I turned around and walked toward the door behind which J.R. sat rubbing his hands and figuring out some new stunts to shock the public into buying the — Globe-.
"Mike," said J.R. when I stepped into his office, "I want to congratulate you on the splendid job you did this morning. Mighty fine story, my boy, mighty fine."
"Thanks, J.R.," I said, knowing the old rascal didn't mean a word of it.
Then J.R. got down to business.
"Mike," he said, "I suppose you've been reading this stuff about Dr. Ackerman's time machine."
"Yeah," I told him, "but if you think you're going to send me out to interview that old publicity grabber, you're all wrong. I saw a guy spatter himself all over Fifth Street this morning, and I been listening to Billy Larson telling about sunspots, and I can't stand much more. Not in one day, anyhow."
Then J.R. dropped the bombshell on me.
"The — Globe-," he announced, "has bought a time machine."
That took me clear off my feet.
The — Globe-, in my time, had done a lot of wacky things, but this was the worst.
"What for?" I asked weakly, and J.R. looked shocked; but he recovered in a minute and leaned across the desk.
"Just consider, Mike. Think of the opportunities a time machine offers a newspaper. The other papers can tell them what has happened and what is happening, but, by Godfrey, they'll have to read the — Globe- to know what is going to happen."
"I have a slogan for you," I said. "Read the News Before It Happens."
He didn't know if I was joking or was serious and waited for a minute before going on.
"A war breaks out," he said. "The other papers can tell what is happening at the moment. We can do better than that. We can tell them what will happen. Who will win and lose. What battles will be fought. How long the war will last-"
"But, J.R.," I yelled at him, "you can't do that! Don't you see what a hell of a mess you'll make of things. If one side knew it was going to lose-"
"It doesn't apply merely to wars," said J.R. "There's sports. Football games. Everybody is nuts right now to know if Minnesota is going to lick Wisconsin. We jump into our time machine, travel ahead to next Saturday. Day before the game we print the story, with pictures and everything."
He rubbed his hands and purred.
"I'll have old Johnson down at the — Standard- eating out of my hand," he gloated. "I'll make him wish he never saw a newspaper. I'll take the wind out of his sails. I'll send my reporters out a day ahead-"
"You'll have every bookie on your neck," I shouted. "Don't you know there's millions of dollars bet every Saturday on football games? Don't you see what you'd do?
You'd put every jackpot, every betting window out of business. Tracks would close down. Nobody would spend a dime to see a game they could read about ahead of time. You'd put organized baseball and college football, boxing, everything else out of business. What would be the use of staging a prize fight if the public knew in advance who was going to win?"
But J.R. just chortled gleefully and rubbed his hands.
"We'll publish stock-market quotations for the coming month on the first of every month," he planned. "Those papers will sell for a hundred bucks apiece."
Seeing him sitting there gave me a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. For I knew that in his hands rested a terrible power, a power that he was blind to or too stubborn to respect.
The power to rob every human being on Earth of every bit of happiness. For if a man could look ahead and see some of the things that no doubt were going to happen, how could he be happy?
Power to hurl the whole world into chaos. Power to make and break any man, or thing, or institution that stood before him.
I tried another angle.
"But how do you know the machine will work?"
"I have ample proof," said J.R. "The other papers ridiculed Dr. Ackerman, while we presented his announcement at face value. That is why he is giving us an exclusive franchise to the purchase and use of his invention. It's costing us plenty of money — a barrel of money — but we're going to make two barrels of money out of it."
I shrugged my shoulders.
"O.K.," I said. "Go ahead. I don't see why the hell you called me in."
"Because," beamed J.R., "you're going to make the first trip in the time machine!"
"What!" I yelled.
J.R. nodded. "You and a photographer. Herb Harding. I called you in first. You leave tomorrow morning. Five hundred years into the future for a starter. Get pictures. Come back and write your story. We'll spring it in the Sunday paper. Whole front-page layout. What does the city look like five hundred years from now? What changes have been made? Who's mayor? What are the women wearing in the fall of 2450?"
He grinned at me.
"And you might say, too, that the — Standard- no longer is published. Whether it's the truth or not, you know. Old Johnson will go hog wild when he reads that in your story."
I could have refused, of course, but if I had, he would have sent somebody else and tied the can on me. Even in 1950, despite a return to prosperity that beggared the flushest peak of 1929, good jobs in the newspaper field were not so easy to pick up.
So I said I'd go, and half an hour later I found myself getting just a bit excited about being one of the first men to travel into time. For I wouldn't be the very first. Doc Ackerman had traveled ahead a few years in his own machine, often enough and far enough to prove the thing would work.
But the prospect of it gave me a headache when I tried to reason it out. The whole thing sounded wacky to me. Not so much the idea that one could really travel in time, for I had no doubt one could. J.R. wasn't anybody's fool. Before he sunk his money in that time machine he would have demanded ironclad, gilt-e
dged proof that it would operate successfully.
But the thing that bothered me was the complications that might arise. The more I thought of it, the sicker and more confused I got.
Why, with a time machine a reporter could travel ahead and report a man's death, get pictures of his funeral. Those pictures could be taken back in time and published years before his death. That man, when he read the paper, would know the exact hour that he would die, would see his own face framed within the casket.
A boy of ten might know that some day he would be elected president of the United States simply by reading the — Globe-. The present president, angling for a third term, could read his own political fate if the — Globe- chose to print it.
A man might read that the next day he would meet death in a traffic accident. And if that man knew he was going to die, he would take steps to guard against it. But could he guard against it? Could he change his own future? Or was the future fast in a rigid mold? If the future said something was going to happen, was it absolutely necessary that it must happen?
The more I thought about it, the crazier it sounded. But somehow I couldn't help but think of it. And the more I thought about it, the worse my head hurt.
So I went down to the Dutchman" s.
Louie was back of the bar, and when he handed me my first glass of beer, I said to him: "It's a hell of a world, Louie."
And Louie said tome: "It sure as hell is, Mike."
I drank a lot of beer, but I didn't get drunk. I stayed cold sober. And that made me sore, because I figured that by rights I should take on a load. And all the time my head swam with questions and complicated puzzles.
I would have tried something stronger than beer, but I knew if I mixed drinks I'd get sick, so finally I gave up.
Louie asked me if there was something wrong, and I said no, there wasn't, but before I left I shook hands with Louie and said good-by. If I had been drunk, Louie wouldn't have thought a thing of it, but I could see he was surprised I acted that way when he knew I was sober as the daylight.
Just as I was going out the door I met Jimmy Langer coming in. Jimmy worked for the — Standard- and was a good newspaperman, but mean and full of low-down tricks. We were friends, of course, and had worked on lots of stories together, but we always watched one another pretty close. There was never any telling what Jimmy might be up to.
"Hi, Jimmy," I said.
And Jimmy did a funny thing. He didn't say a word. He just looked right at me and laughed into my face.
It took me so by surprise I didn't do anything until he was inside the Dutchman" s, and then I walked down the street. But at the corner I stopped, wondering if I hadn't better go back and punch Jimmy's nose. I hadn't liked the way he laughed at me.
The time-machine device was installed in a plane because, Doc Ackerman told us, it wouldn't be wise to try to do much traveling at ground level. A fellow might travel forward a hundred years or so and find himself smack in the middle of a building. Or the ground might rise or sink and the time machine would be buried or left hanging in the air. The only safe way to travel in time, Doc warned us, was to do it in a plane.
The plane was squatting in a pasture a short distance from Doc's Laboratories, situated at the edge of the city, and a tough-looking thug carrying a rifle was standing guard over it. The plane had been guarded night and day. It was just too valuable a thing to let anyone get near it.
Doc explained the operation of the time machine to me.
"It's simple," he said. "Simple as falling off a log."
And what he said was true. All you had to do was set the indicator forward the number of years you wished to travel. When you pressed the activator stud you went into the time spin, or whatever it was that happened to you, and you stayed in it until you reached the proper time. Then the mechanism acted automatically, your time speed was slowed down, and there you were. You just reversed the process to go backward.
Simple. Simple, so Doc said, as falling off a log. But I knew that behind all that simplicity was some of the most wonderful science the world had ever known — science and brains and long years of grueling work and terrible disappointment.
"It will be like plunging into night." Doc told me. "You will be traveling in time as a single dimension. There will be no heat, no air, no gravitation, absolutely nothing outside your plane. But the plane is insulated to keep in the heat. In case you do get cold, just snap on those heaters. Air will be supplied if you need it, by the oxygen tanks. But on a short trip like five hundred years you probably won't need either the heaters or the oxygen. Just a few minutes and you'll be there."
J.R. had been sore at me because I had been late. Sore, too, because Herb had one of the most beautiful hangovers I have ever laid eyes on. But he'd forgotten all about that now. He was hopping up and down in his excitement.
"Just wait," he chortled. "Just wait until Johnson sees this down at the — Standard-. He'll probably have a stroke. Serve him right, the stubborn old buzzard."
The guard, standing just outside the door of the ship, was shuffling his feet. For some reason the fellow seemed nervous.
Doc croaked at him. "What's the matter with you, Benson?"
The guy stammered and shifted his rifle from one hand to another. He tried to speak, but the words just dried up in his mouth. Then J.R. started some more of his gloating and we forgot about the guard.
Herb had his cameras stowed away and everything was ready. J.R. stuck out his fist and shook hands with me and Herb, and the old rascal was pretty close to tears.
Doc and J.R. got out of the ship, and I followed them to the door. Before I closed and sealed it I took one last look at the city skyline. There it shimmered, in all its glory, through the blue haze of an autumn day. Familiar towers, and to the north the smudge of smoke that hung over the industrial district.
I waved my hand at the towers and said to them: "So long, big boys. I'll be seeing you five hundred years from now."
The skyline looked different up there in the future. I had expected it to look different because in five hundred years some buildings would be torn down and new ones would go up. New architectural ideas, new construction principles over the course of five centuries will change any city skyline.
But it was different in another way than that.
I had expected to see a vaster and a greater and more perfect city down below us when we rolled out of our time spin, and it was vaster and greater, but there was something wrong.
It had a dusty and neglected look.
It had grown in those five hundred years, there was no doubt of that. It had grown in all directions, and must have been at least three times as big as the city Herb and I had just left behind.
Herb leaned forward in his seat.
"Is that really the old burg down there?" he asked. "Or is it just my hangover?"
"It's the same old place," I assured him. Then I asked him. "Where did you pick up that beauty you've got?"
"I was out with some of the boys," he told me. "Al and Harry. We met up with some of the — Standard- boys and had a few drinks with them later in the evening."
There were no planes in the sky and I had expected that in 2450 the air would fairly swarm with them. They had been getting pretty thick even back in 1950. And now I saw the streets were free of traffic, too.
We cruised around for half an hour, and during that time the truth was driven home to us. A truth that was plenty hard to take.
That city below us was a dead city! There was no sign of life. Not a single automobile on the street, not a person on the sidewalks.
Herb and I looked at one another, and disbelief must have been written in letters three feet high upon our faces.
"Herb," I said, "we gotta find out what this is all about."
Herb's Adam's apple jiggled up and down his neck.
"Hell," he said. "I was figuring on dropping into the Dutchman's and getting me a pick-up."
It took almost an hour to find anything that loo
ked like an airport, but finally I found one that looked safe enough. It was overgrown with weeds, but the place where the concrete runways had been was still fairly smooth, although the concrete had been broken here and there, and grass and weeds were growing through the cracks.
I took her down as easy as I could, but even at that we hit a place where a slab of concrete had been heaved and just missed a crack-up.
The old fellow with the rifle could have stepped from the pages of a history of early pioneer days except that once in a while the pioneers probably got a haircut.
He came out of the bushes about a mile from the airport, and his rifle hung cradled in his arm. There was something about him that told me he wasn't one to fool with.
"Howdy, strangers," he said in a voice that had a whiny twang.
"By Heaven," said Herb, "it's Daniel Boone himself."
"You jay birds must be a right smart step from home," said the old guy, and he didn't sound as if he'd trust us very far.
"Not so far," I said. "We used to live here a long time ago."
"Danged if I recognize you." He pushed back his old black felt hat and scratched his head. "And I thought I knew everybody that ever lived around here. You wouldn't be Jake Smith's boys, would you?"
"Doesn't look like many people are living here any more," said Herb.
"Matter of fact, there ain't," said Daniel Boone. "The old woman was just telling me the other day we'd have to move so we'd be nearer neighbors. It gets mighty lonesome for her. Nearest folks is about ten miles up thataway."
He gestured to the north, where the skyline of the city loomed like a distant mountain range, with gleaming marble ramparts and spires of mocking stone.
"Look here," I asked him. "Do you mean to say your nearest neighbor is ten miles away?"
"Sure," he told me. "The Smiths lived over a couple of miles to the west, but they moved out this spring. Went down to the south. Claimed the hunting was better there."
All Flesh Is Grass and Other Stories Page 106