by E. C. Tubb
The first sign came in an urgent phone-call to Lucy as she sat at home waiting for Reggie to return from a business trip down south. Immediately she went to the instrument in the hall and picked it up.
“Hello? Mrs. Denby speaking.”
“This is Bryce, Lucy. I’m speaking from a call-box near Little Oldfield. In case you don’t know where it is it’s some two miles outside Penarton where Reggie went on business today.”
“Oh?” Lucy was clearly mystified. “But—but what—”
“I’m on my vacation at present,” Bryce hurried on. “You remember me telling you it was about due? I’m taking it in the form of a walking tour. This morning, as I was on the tramp down south, who should pass me in his car but Reggie! Naturally I got in with him and most of the day I’ve stayed beside him, except when he’s made his business calls. There’s been a nasty accident,” Bryce continued. “We ran into a telegraph pole through a fault in the car’s steering-column. Reggie’s pretty badly knocked about, though it’s nothing serious. He’s in the Little Oldfield Hospital down here. I sent for an ambulance and that’s where they took him. I thought you ought to know right away.”
“You’re sure he isn’t badly hurt?” Lucy asked, her voice revealing her deep anxiety.
“Convinced of it. Best thing you can do is come down and see him for yourself—”
“I could ring up the hospital and.…”
“That wouldn’t help you to speak to him, though, would it? Never mind ringing up: just get down to Little Oldfield as fast as you can. By that time I’ll have hired a car from the local garage with which to meet you. It won’t take you more than an hour to get here. You take a Penarton train—they’re pretty regular—with a connection for Little Oldfield. How’s that?”
“Yes. Yes, I’ll start off right away. And thanks so much for helping me, Bryce.”
“That’s all right. See you later.”
The line went dead. Lucy stood frowning, disturbed by the queer premonition that something was not ‘quite right’ somewhere. And yet— Finally she turned to the directory, found the number of the Little Oldfield Hospital, and rang them up. There was apparently no mistake. Reginald Denby had been admitted that afternoon, suffering from abrasions and severe shock and his condition was unchanged.
Lucy wasted no more time. She set off for the station, leaving her mother in charge of little Robert, and as the evening was beginning to lower into darkness she found herself alighting at Little Oldfield Station, which was like an oasis on the edge of nowhere.
Outside the station Bryce Fairfield’s tall, bony figure was visible, stalking around impatiently—then the moment the girl emerged from the station he came hurrying towards her, his lank hair disturbed by the restless wind.
“Good!” he exclaimed, putting a protective arm about her shoulders. “You made it in good time, Lucy. Won’t take me long to whisk you down to the hospital.”
“I hope he’s no worse.” Lucy found herself propelled towards an obviously borrowed car. “I rang up the hospital and they said there was no change.”
“He’ll be all right,” Bryce assured her, settling down at the steering wheel. “Nasty accident, but not serious. I wish to heaven it had happened nearer home and I could have had my own car at your disposal. This infernal thing came out of the Flood, I should think.”
Wheezing and protesting, it finally started up and Bryce drove it out of the station-approach onto a graveled road leading between dusty summer beeches. Lucy looked around her and frowned a little. The region seemed incredibly lonely and out of touch with the world.
“Terribly deserted spot, isn’t it?” she asked, hardly able to suppress a little shiver. “I just don’t know this part at all. Where exactly are we?”
“About fifteen miles from the south coast. We’re in a region of old copper mines apparently: you can see the hills that have been created in boring them. Beyond those lies Little Oldfield itself. Won’t take us long.”
Lucy became silent, again obsessed with that queer conviction that something was not ‘quite right’. Bryce’s expression certainly gave nothing away. His lean, saturnine face was without emotion as he drove the ancient car at its fastest, the summer wind setting the back hood flapping in dilapidated disorder in the rear.
It was not long before Bryce deserted the main road entirely and sent the car bumping and bounding along a rutted track, obviously long disused, leading between the somber hills of excavated earth from the mines.
“Bryce, are you sure you’re going the right way?” Lucy turned to him in wonder after a while. “There doesn’t seem to be anything ahead but these copper mines—or what’s left of them. If this is a short-cut.…”
“I know what I’m doing!” he snapped, and drove on.
Lucy gave him another look of surprise, deepening to a growing fear. Then suddenly he pulled up sharply and pointed to a notice board. “See that?” he demanded, and grinned harshly.
Lucy looked, but the board’s inscription did not make sense to her. It said:
FAIRFIELD COPPER PROJECT—KEEP OUT
Then, through her confusion, a light dawned.
“Oh, you mean this land belongs to you?”
“All of it!”
“And that’s why you’re using it as a short cut? It could not have happened better. Maybe we can get to the hospital all the quicker.”
“We’re not going to the hospital, Lucy! Get out of the car!”
Lucy stared. Bryce repeated his command, with such fiendish determination that the girl did not dare hesitate any further. Bryce scrambled out after her and slammed the car door; then when he turned again Lucy noticed that he had an automatic in his hand.
“Just in case you get any funny ideas,” he explained. “Now start walking and do just as I tell you—”
“Bryce, for heaven’s sake! What’s come over you? What about Reggie—?”
“Be damned to Reggie! Carry on!”
Stumbling, terror-stricken, Lucy kept on going, satisfied now that her premonition of something peculiar had been justified. Not that it did her any good now: she was, she felt, at the mercy of a madman.
“Turn left!” Bryce commanded suddenly. She did so, finding herself following a hardly visible track, which led to the top of a mineshaft. Here a cage was standing as if in readiness. Was all this prepared then—she wondered? Evidently so, for she was roughly bundled into the cage and Bryce came and stood beside her. He had equipped the cage with some kind of electric device—not a difficult feat for a man of his scientific knowledge—the flick of a switch setting the mechanism in action and plunging the cage into the depths of the long, disused shaft.
By this time Lucy’s heart was pounding. Everywhere was pitch-darkness and she could hear the harsh, tense breathing of Bryce close beside her. His bony fingers gripped her arm so tightly she half cried out, then she was shoved forward brutally. The hand left her. There was a snap and light came up, filling a long tunnel with a dim glow. Along this Bryce forced her and at last into a well-lighted natural cavern.
Lucy came to a standstill, panting, her wide eyes looking around her. She paid no more attention to the steadily leveled gun in Bryce’s hand. In every part of the cavern there seemed to loom scientific apparatus, none of it making sense to Lucy’s completely unscientific mind.
“You needn’t worry about Reggie,” Bryce said dryly, putting his gun away. “They’ll patch him up and turn him out when they’re sick of him. Naturally, m’dear, the whole thing was deliberately arranged. I’d timed it in such a way that that accident should have killed Reggie—only it didn’t work out. Never mind; I’ll correct the error later.”
“You’ll—you’ll what?” Lucy whispered in horror; then without waiting for an answer she hurried on: “Where are we? What is this place? Does it belong to you?”
“Every bit of it, and all the land around it. First I made gold by synthesis of elements; then I sold it and made a fortune. I can have anything in the world I want—exc
ept you. And that’s the part I don’t like. I could have you, of course, but against your will. I don’t want it that way. What I cannot forget is that you played around with my affections once, then kicked me out in favor of that idiot of a salesman! I’ve never forgotten that. I’ve schemed and plotted for this moment. I kept in touch with your movements. I knew I’d meet Reggie today because I knew just where he was going. I planned the accident that should have killed him and left me unhurt. I pushed him in the Little Oldfield Hospital in case you rang them up—”
“I did!” Lucy’s eyes were bright with anger now.
“I guessed you might. But now you’re here, m’dear, and you’re going to be here a tremendously long time. So you turned me down in favor of Reggie Denby, did you?”
“I married Reggie because I really loved him, Bryce! I never could love you. You’re too clever, too cold-blooded, too scientific—”
“I am going to show you, Lucy, what it means to turn me down,” Bryce interrupted deliberately. “I made up my mind to do it on the night you chose Reggie.”
Lucy stared at him now with horror in her eyes, panic. She no longer had the courage to be angry. “Bryce, you’re mad!” she whispered.
“Perhaps I am—mad with jealousy.” He gave a shrug “All I know is that if I can’t have you then neither can Reggie have you any longer. You didn’t like my science, you say? You will like it even less by the time I’ve finished with you!”
Suddenly he reached forward, clutched Lucy’s arm, and sent her stumbling through a distant opening in the cavern into yet another lighted area. Lucy found herself again confronted by scientific machinery that she could not possibly understand. Fear, devastating enough to make her faint, surged over her as Bryce followed her in and locked the metal door behind him. Then he stood with his back to it, a ghastly smile on his lean face. “This is one time, m’dear, when you’ll listen to science and listen well,” he said slowly. “Take a look about you, at these tubes, these magnets, that table with the straps fastened to it.”
Lucy stared at the objects indicated as if mesmerized. Then she suddenly found her tongue again.
“Bryce you’ve got to let me out of here!” Her voice was a hoarse scream. “You daren’t do anything to me! You daren’t! Reggie will find you and—”
“Reggie!” Bryce sneered. “That moon-faced dolt? What do you imagine he could do to me? I’m one of the great scientists of this or any other age. No, m’dear, he’ll do nothing. What is more, when I’ve finished with you I’ll deal with him. Yes, him—and that squealing little brat to whom I was made godfather! I’ll utterly destroy all three of you!”
As the girl stared at him hopelessly he continued: “You have only yourself to blame, Lucy. You could have had me and all the power and wealth science can bring. You chose differently, and for that I have decided there must be a price.”
“Who are you to decide my life?” Lucy demanded frantically. Flinging herself forward she drove her small fists fiercely into Bryce’s granite-like face, but he did not budge by a fraction. Finally he threw her away from him.
“Mad!” she repeated. “Always an egomaniac, and now it has completely overwhelmed you! You’re insane, Bryce! Insane!”
He remained motionless for a moment. Then he strode forward, gripped the girl in his powerful hands, and dumped her full-length on the steel table against which she had fallen. Before she realized what was happening the straps upon it were being buckled into place, across her neck, waist and ankles.
“Bryce, what are you going to do?” She could hardly get out the words.
“Plenty!” He surveyed her pinioned form and smiled coldly. “But first I have one or two things to tell you, things connected with the science you so obviously detest! You are going on a long journey, m’dear—a journey so long, indeed, that even I, a scientist, do not know where it will end. A journey into the future—alone!”
“What!” Lucy wriggled desperately in the straps, relaxed again, then breathed stormily. Her eyes fixed themselves on Bryce’s merciless features.
“You, Lucy, are going to be the victim of entropy,” he explained. “Naturally, you don’t know what entropy is, do you?”
“You know I don’t!” she shrieked. “Let me go!”
“Entropy,” Bryce stated calmly, as though delivering a lecture, “is the increasing disorder of the universe, the process by which the universe gradually moves to what is termed thermodynamic equilibrium. It can be likened to a perpetual shuffling, the disorder getting worse after each shuffle. Just like a pack of cards when we used to play that infernal game of bridge!”
“Bryce, for God’s sake—”
“If only you had read Eddington whilst at school you might have learned something about entropy,” Bryce sighed. “However, I’ve made it as clear as I can. Recently—” his tone changed to grim menace— “I fell to wondering what would happen if I created a non-entropy state, wherein nothing ever happens! So I decided to create a specified area—in this cavern to be precise—wherein molecular shuffling would achieve sudden and absolute equilibrium, a space wherein the ultimate of entropy would be reached instantly, instead of in a thousand, a million, ten million years’ time. Do you understand that?”
Lucy was beyond answering.
“Yes!” he said, his voice harsh with triumph. “I discovered how to create an entropy globe—a globe of force, the walls of which will attain absolute equilibrium, whose vibrations will extend inwards to everything inside the globe. Therefore, whatever is in the globe will be plunged into a state of non-time. Entropy will be halted! Progress will stop!”
“You,” Bryce continued deliberately, “will be inside that globe, Lucy! At your feet is one magnet; at your head another. Between them they will build up the hemisphere of the entropy globe, and within it time for you will cease to be. You will be plunged into an eternal ‘now’ from which release may never come. If it does it will be at a far distant time when scientists as clever as I find the way to unlock your prison.”
“Bryce, I beg of you!” Lucy implored huskily. “Let me go! I’ll do anything you want. Anything! I’ll divorce Reggie. You can’t do this to me! I’ve so much to live for! My baby and his future! You can’t do it!”
“On the wall there,” Bryce said, as though he had not even heard her, “is a calendar, placed I hope so that you can see it. See the date? Seventeenth of August, two thousand and nine. Remember that well!”
“Bryce, you cannot—”
He flung a switch, keeping clear of the steel table as he did so. Immediately an impalpable bubble of unknown forces—clearer than glass—enclosed the girl completely, swallowing up the steel table on which she lay. She was stopped in mid-motion of raising her head, her last sentence truncated.
Bryce waited for a moment or two, his brooding eyes on the many meters; then he turned and moved slowly towards the girl, contemplating her.
Her lips were slightly parted: her eyes stared at him quite unseeingly, eyes that were froze and yet somehow alive.
His gaze went up and down her slim form in the light overcoat, which had fallen apart to reveal the brown silk dress beneath. Then he looked at the steel table, the four leather binding straps, and lastly the beechwood cradle supporting her shoulders.
Bryce smiled. Time, he knew, was no more inside that globe. Entropy was halted by reason of the globe’s walls themselves having already achieved the ultimate of shuffling in their constitution.
“A year—fifty years—fifty centuries,” Bryce murmured half aloud. “Maybe for eternity.”
Then he turned back to the switchboard and examined the maze of instruments minutely. He waited perhaps half-an-hour and then cut the power out of the magnets at either end of the girl. A low, exultant sigh escaped him as he saw that the globe remained where it was, self-sustained, eternally balanced, a small foretaste of what the universe itself must one day become.
“If there is a key to open it—a random element to restore the shuffling—I do not kno
w of it, nor do I want it! None shall unlock the prison!”
He nodded to himself, then pulling out a plunger he waited a moment and stepped back. In a sudden blaze of light and explosion the entire switchboard blew itself to atoms, tearing out part of the wall with it.
Bryce turned to the massive door of the cavern, took one last look at the motionless girl in the motionless globe. Then he closed the door upon her and locked it. With the face of a dead man he went silently through the adjoining cavern and into the tunnel that led to the surface.
“Reggie and the brat,” he murmured, “They must be taken care of too—”
The thought was dashed from his mind as there suddenly came a vast ominous rumbling. He looked up with a start, flashing the beam of his torch. He was in time to see the tunnel roof fissuring along its whole length. In a flash he realized what had occurred, remembering the crack in the cavern wall, which had followed the wrecking of the switchboard. The underground workings had been savagely shaken, and now— The truth had no sooner flashed across his mind than he saw a vast mass of rubble and stone hurtling down towards him.
CHAPTER TWO: TIME BARRIER
The Master was deliberating. He sat in his office at the top of a building towering to two thousand feet—a lonely being with the entire Western world beneath him. His was the guiding brain, his the responsibility for the continued progress of western civilization. The people had voted him into his position, and his father before him. He knew only the duty and the inflexible adherence to laws made by his predecessors.
In appearance he was only slight. Like all his fellows he was deeply tanned. His movements were deliberate and every gesture had finality about it. His thin, high-cheek-boned face was without expression because he had been schooled in keeping his emotions in rigid check. In becoming more refined he had also become less human.
Presently the Master pressed a button amongst the multitude on his desk. Then he sat back to wait, the papers relevant to his next interview neatly arranged on the desk before him. A door with the warm gleam of copper about it opened and shut and a lithe, well-built man, scrupulously dressed and aged about forty, came forward with active strides.