Time Travel Omnibus Volume 2

by Anthology

  A destroyer was fitted with a sending and a receiving set. Another destroyer simply had the detector.

  The place chosen for the experimental work was the Caribbean side of the Isthmus of Panama, and the work was to go on in a natural way, so that no outsider might suspect. The destroyer Shoshone, in whose radio shack had been connected the complete apparatus, was simply to proceed to sea for a couple of days’ engine trial; the destroyer Osage, with the Callieri Detector only, would remain at anchor off Colon. The Shoshone would send, the Osage receive. If at any time during the trials it was deemed necessary to communicate from the Osage side, it were but by the simple cutting of an electrical contact that the ordinary radio would be put into play.

  As suggested, it was done.

  At eight on the morning of March 6, the Shoshone put to sea, fully equipped. The day was peaceful, weather no warmer than as ordinarily in the tropics, sea placid and gleaming like cut sheet lead under the slanting rays of the early sun. The meteorological observatory for the canal prophesied calm conditions, with no appreciable change in temperature. It seemed a splendid day for the experiment.

  Everything turned out as Professor Callieri had declared it would. The Shoshone sent continuously, alternating between the usual radio wave and the new type. The Osage received all the messages sent. The Apache, lying at anchor within three hundred yards of the Osage, received only the messages coming by the ordinary medium. Between were blanks. No sound. Nothing to work on. Nothing to tune in. Simply blanks of utter radio silence. But the Osage caught all, and with the Callieri Detector filled in the blanks.

  It was an unqualified success.

  At eight o’clock that evening the Shoshone sent in her position report to the squadron commander. And at nine she radioed that she would be with him at eight o’clock the next morning.

  From that point on it were best that an eyewitness take up the narrative.

  Lieutenant Graham Hardwick, Medical Corps, U. S. Navy, attached to the Shoshone as division doctor, told me the tale in the first case, and was kind enough to repeat it, in my presence, so that a yeoman stenographer might take it down verbatim. With some slight editing, his story of the rather extraordinary occurrences following the last message sent in to the squadron commander follows. Recall again the account of Francisco Verdugo de Coloma, penned in the year 1564, as you read on. The relationship, to me, is overwhelming. Follow on, and see if you, too, will not believe.

  Chapter III

  THE TERROR SUN

  The experiment had been a success.

  I, myself, was the first to have the pleasure of grasping Professor Callieri by the hand in congratulation, and I thrilled to find him trembling with emotion. He was so happy. His work had been well received, his trial fully approved. And the country of his adoption was the richer ,and more powerful through his brain and through his effort. The tears almost welled into my eyes as I noted that his own lashes were blinking wet with them. The day augured to be a great one in our naval history.

  At nine o’clock that evening all the data had been tabulated, all the signatures down.

  At once the commanding officer radioed to the squadron commander that the Shoshone would arrive in Colon at about eight the next morning, and standard speed was run up on the engine room telegraphs. We turned our bows almost due west, and were shortly making our fifteen knots. The sea was smooth the evening clear, though without moon, the temperature the customary tropical eighty-one. The day itself had been ideal for the work carried on—with no atmospheric eccentricities to interfere.

  It was at this time that the professor requested permission to go to the radio shack for the purpose of trying an experiment that he intimated had been long in his mind, but that he had never attempted because of lack of such powerful equipment as a destroyer carried.

  I know now something of the work he intended to do, and though I am no radio expert I can say at least that it entailed the conjoining of his own cool wave with that of the ordinary apparatus in such a manner that all other ordinary radio waves in the ether might be neutralized. The benefit of such a condition is easily seen. We could send our own secret messages in time of war or peace, then absolutely blank off the atmosphere to the passage of any alien work.

  But the main point I desire to make is that this neutralization was to be effected by a combination of the ordinary wave impulse with the Callieri Cool Wave. The combination, you understand. It had never been tried on a large scale—it was a virgin experiment.

  So the professor was given a free hand, and went below. It was past nine o’clock.

  I remained on the bridge enjoying a cigar with the officer of the deck, and chatting over a coming boar hunt we were to have south of the canal during the coming weekend. We had been talking for perhaps ten minutes in the darkness of the bridge, with the black satin of the Caribbean spreading out ahead and about the ship, and the diamond stars projecting just above our heads as though ready for any plucking hand, when suddenly we found ourselves half blinded by a dazzling light in the west.

  That sounds rather trite, perhaps. Blinded by a dazzling light in the west. But I assure you that it was not a trite thing to us—coming out of the deepening shadows of the night.

  The sea suddenly sprang from the deepest black to the shimmering blue of day, and the long lance-like reflections from that light were momentarily torture to our eyes. The fo’c’sle of the ship leaped into life, and I could see the men asleep on their cool mats about the number one four-inch, one or two raised on their elbows staring, as was I.

  I gasped. I felt that I had fallen asleep, and was in the midst of a strange dream. Half stupefied, I turned to the men about me.

  And then I felt a spasmodic clutch at my right arm. The suddenness of it made me jump.

  It was Ronleigh, who had the deck, and staring out as though mad with wonder, and with terror, too. It was not a dream—it was true; unbelievable, but true.

  That dazzling light was the sun, the sun—and yet that same sun had set three hours before!

  “God!” The word came from Lieutenant Ronleigh’s lips. It was not an oath. It was more a prayer.

  “Doc!” he suddenly shouted in my ear. “Tell me I’m awake! Tell me I’m sane. Tell me I am. alive. The sun. The sun. Daylight! And not three hour’s ago—it set—a minute ago—a minute back it was—night! Doc!”

  I could not answer. The ship was ahum with new life. Cries from fore and aft. Running of feet. The captain appeared, his face drawn and white, and a look of wonder in his eyes that I never wish to see again. Wonder in which was mingled a peculiar light of almost mystic awe, of fear.

  Came a rush of feet, and more cries of astonishment. The bridge was crowded with our officers and those who had come aboard for the purpose of witnessing Callieri’s experimenting.

  For perhaps five minutes no man uttered a word.

  And during those five minutes the sun slowly sank toward the western horizon, sank again toward its resting place beyond the seas. At six five it had slid once from sight, and night had closed in with its tropic alacrity, the day was done:. And here—here at nine fifteen of the same night, three hours after it had let darkness have full sway, the sun was once more sinking toward its western harborage. An hour more, and it would set again.

  Again!

  Unbelievable! And yet—there it was. And one hundred and twenty sane men standing in wonder and in fear. I felt that if the deck were to open up beneath my feet and precipitate me suddenly to life in the center of the earth my wonder could not be greater. The sun—out of the darkness of the night—breaking out of the black western sky—come again to bring the day. Dropping now—setting for a second time!

  Unbelievable. Yet, there it was!

  With a sudden oath the captain leaped for the annunciators, and jerked the signal to stop. There came no answering swing of the indicators. He turned savagely on the port lookout.

  “Get down there and get those men on the job! Call for the engineer officer. On the
jump!”

  The lad stared the captain full in the face, his jaw unhinged, his pale blue eyes wide open in a sightless stare. Then, without a sound, he collapsed on the deck. I jumped to his side.

  “Fainted, captain,” I said quickly in answer to the latter’s dumbstruck look of wonder. “One, of you help me into the emergency cabin with him. Get water—I’ll bring him ’round.”

  At that moment the engineer appeared, coatless, disheveled, black, swiped with grease. Some one else had collected the wit to call.

  “You wanted me, captain?”

  Captain Williams turned upon him with that dazed look still in his eyes. The lad with me suddenly groaned, and raised his head.

  “What is the matter with—with—things?” he demanded, groping vaguely with an outstretched hand.

  The captain knelt by his side, disregarding Lieutenant Porter, who was mopping the sweat from his forehead with a bit of oily waste.

  “It’s all right, lad,” the captain said. “Here, you!” He turned to the other lookout. “Help this lad below.”

  The officer of the deck, suddenly alive, cried over the port sill to the men crowded on the fo’c’s’le.

  “Tell the bosun’s mate of the watch to hustle up another lookout!”

  The captain turned to the engineer.

  I expected a tirade. But his voice came softly.

  “Porter,” he said, “what’s the matter in the engine room?”

  The lieutenant rubbed his hands with his bit of waste.

  “Sir, the men—they saw—they heard that it—was—was shining again, and that crazy engineman yelled that it was the day of resurrection and jumped for the deck. I just came from below, sir.” His wavering glance fixed upon the engine room telegraph dial. “Your signal’s answered, captain. The engines are stopped.”

  The captain’s eyes followed the engineer’s. He nodded without a word. Then he stepped slowly over to the telegraphs, paused behind the stand as though in uncertainty—and it was the first time I had ever seen Commander Williams act thus—then slowly put the arrow at standard speed again.

  “Ronleigh.”

  “Sir?” returned the officer of the deck, alert now.

  “Call down to the engine room to prepare for full speed on the two boilers lit off!”

  “Aye, aye, sir!”

  The captain turned to me.

  “Medico, what in the name of Heaven does this mean?”

  He waved to the sinking sun.

  I shook my head. His eyes dropped. Then he gave a short cough, and shrugged his shoulders.

  “Ronleigh!”

  The officer of the deck clamped the voice tube cap down.

  “Get back on your course. We’ll open her up wide when they’re ready below.”

  “Aye, aye, sir.”

  The captain turned to us again. “Where’s Callieri?” he demanded.

  “In the radio shack—when we—left it, captain.”

  “He’s a man of science. Ask him what this means.”

  The assistant squadron radio officer was back in ten seconds, whiter of face than before, consternation in his eyes.

  “The professor, is dead, sir,” he gasped.

  “Dead!”

  The man nodded, rubbing his hands and twisting them, his eyes peering over the captain’s shoulder at the dying sun.

  “Lying across the radio desk, captain. I thought he had just fainted, like—like the lad they took below—but I think he’s dead, sir.”

  “Doctor—”

  But I was already halfway down the ladder.

  I stooped over the professor who had worked the wonder in radio that we had seen that day—the day before—the second day—I found myself in doubt. The body of Antonio Callieri was sprawled over the desk-like shelf before the instrument board, one hand on the key, the other evidently fallen from one of the tuning dials just above. The shack was deserted but for his quiet form.

  I touched him. His body was tense and hard to my hand. The thought flashed to me: rigor mortis could not set in so soon. I seized Callieri’s pulse, and breathed a sigh of relief.

  The inventor was not dead. But something—perhaps he had unwittingly made contact with a bare wire and the shock—or the experiment he wanted to try. I could not tell. I saw no connection then between his own accident and the extraordinary return of day.

  I laid him down on one of the radio operator’s bunks, and applied restorative. To my infinite relief his eyes opened, and a breath of a sigh escaped his lips.

  I confess that my gladness was so much that I might again go topside and see that miraculous second setting of the sun as it was that the man was alive. Five minutes I stayed, with my hospital apprentice under instruction as to the professor’s care.

  Then came a sudden hubbub on deck. A loud outcry. Then another. A chorus of them.

  I suddenly felt the ship leap throbbingly beneath me, tremulous as with a newly invigorated life.

  I bent over Professor Callieri and asked him how he felt.

  “Bettair, bettair, doctor. I—I but wondair what ees t’ees light—eet ees anothair day, no? I haf been vairee eel?”

  I saw at once that I had better not inform him just yet of the unheard of situation outside.

  “It’s all right, professor,” I whispered. “Just take it easy for half an hour or so, and we’ll have you on your feet.”

  Again came a cry from topside. And a chorused shout.

  Then the ship heeled. She was swinging off to one side! Where? Why? The captain had just said that we would go on.

  Came a rush of feet, and the sudden clang of an iron hatch cover.

  A long scream of the siren.

  I rushed from the radio shack, and scrambled to the bridge.

  The dying sun was about me. The sun—that unbelievable sun—was turning golden as it neared its journey’s end.

  Every man on the bridge was staring out to port, and I noted that the ship’s head was swinging in that direction.

  I seized somebody’s arm. “Quick! Shall I get the professor up? Are we in danger?”

  He raised his arm and pointed.

  “There! Look! Of all the wonders of heaven, what will happen next? Look there!”

  I looked in the direction he indicated, and stiffened once more in rigid astonishment and awe—and with somewhat of fear, too, for who could dream of what terrible thing would yet come?

  Chapter IV

  THE CRASH OF GUNS

  Not a mile away was a fleet of ships. But such ships!

  Twelve of them I counted, twelve ships in a fleet. Men of war? Surely not—not men of war. Men of war in this day do not carry sail. And yet—merchantmen? Merchantmen do not go to sea in peace times in groups of twelve.

  I stepped beside the captain, using my doctor’s privilege.

  “Captain,” I began. “What—”

  He turned his blank eyes upon me, and shrugged his shoulders.

  “We’re going to find out,” he said grimly.

  I stared.

  High pooped, deep bellied, tall bowed—twelve ships. Four masted—two towering from the waist; two tiny ones—at stem and stern. From the former, great, ballooned sail; from the latter, smaller spreads of rounded canvas. And all—all reflecting crimson gold in the flame of the second sinking of the sun.

  Where had I seen such ships before? Where in my life—Such ships!

  We were approaching fast, the Shoshone pulsing to her engine’s turn. I glanced at the engine room annunciators. Full speed! I reflected. Two boilers. That would mean nearly thirty knots! Automobile speed.

  The vessels grew larger. We could see details.

  Banners whipping. Colors. Crimsons. Golds.

  Guns—peering from battlemented ports. Guns that gleamed golden in the sun. Brass cannon—or bronze.

  Figures. Movement about the decks. Men!

  The Shoshone heeled again. We were almost upon them, not five hundred yards away, running on a parallel course.

  The captain
gave a great oath. “By heaven, what flag is that they fly?”

  I stared at the banners of the nearest ship. Those colors! Crimson and gold.

  As I opened my mouth, came a gasping cry at my side.

  “Galleons!”

  It was Professor Callieri, rigid, one arm outstretched stiffly.

  We rushed down their flank. Every eye was upon the strange vessels.

  I stared at the captain. His knuckles shown white on the port sill. The word had broken from him as though forced by some other power than his own will. He was staring out upon the extraordinary apparition as though transfixed with wonder. His face twitched.

  Suddenly he whipped about to us. “Gentlemen!” he cried. “Galleons—a fleet of old Spain! Four hundred years ago! Understand? And that sun—that sun—setting for us a second time!”

  A thought seized me to which I found I could not give word. What—he could not mean that!

  But it must be true. We all saw it. I was not mad. We were not all of us mad.

  Movements on the decks of the nearest ship.

  A flash. A loud boom!

  The captain gave a shout.

  “By heaven, they’re firing on us!” To the officer of the deck: “Ronleigh, Ronleigh, sound general quarters. Get up the gunnery officer. Wheelsman, there! Hard right!”

  The raucous, intermittent honking of the general alarm beat through the ship. The gun crews leaped for their guns. Came another clanging of hatch covers. The ammunition parties were at their posts. The gunnery officer appeared at the captain’s elbow.

  “You want me, captain?”

  “How are your torpedoes?” came the quick, incisive demand.

  “None with warheads on, sir. But—”

  “Get your entire torpedo force on the job. Warheads on. Quick work now, Cowling! Tubes O.K.?”