by Anthology
“We came to a great flat and open field outside the city and there Thicourt stopped and we got out of the vehicle. There were big buildings at the field’s end, and I saw other vehicles rolling out of them across the field, ones different from any I had yet seen, with flat winglike projections on either side. They rolled out over the field very fast and then I cried out as I saw them rising from the ground into the air. Mother of God, they were flying! The men in them were flying!
“Rastin and Thicourt took me forward to the great buildings. They spoke to men there and one brought forward one of the winged cars. Rastin told me to get in, and though I was terribly afraid, there was too terrible a fascination that drew me in. Thicourt and Rastin entered after me, and we sat in seats with the other man. He had before him levers and buttons, while at the car’s front was a great thing like a double-oar or paddle. A loud roaring came and that double-blade began to whirl so swiftly that I could not see it. Then the car rolled swiftly forward, bumping on the ground, and then ceased to bump. I looked down, then shuddered. The ground was already far beneath! I too, was flying in the air!
“We swept upward at terrible speed that increased steadily. The thunder of the car was terrific, and, as the man at the levers changed their position, we curved around and over downward and upward as though birds. Rastin tried to explain to me how the car flew, but it was all too wonderful, and I could not understand. I only knew that a wild thrilling excitement held me, and that it were worth life and death to fly thus, if but for once, as I had always dreamed that men might some day do.
“Higher and higher we went. The earth lay far beneath and I saw now that Paris was indeed a mighty city, its vast mass of buildings stretching away almost to the horizons below us. A mighty city of the future that it had been given my eyes to look on!
“There were other winged cars darting to and fro in the air about us, and they said that many of these were starting or finishing journeys of hundreds of leagues in the air. Then I cried out as I saw a great shape coming nearer us in the air. It was many rods in length, tapering to a point at both ends, a vast ship sailing in the air! There were great cabins on its lower part and in them we glimpsed people gazing out, coming and going inside, dancing even! They told me that vast ships of the air like this sailed to and fro for thousands of leagues with hundreds inside them.
“The huge vessel of the air passed us and then our winged car began to descend. It circled smoothly down to the field like a swooping bird, and, when we landed there, Rastin and Thicourt led me back to the ground-vehicle. It was late afternoon by then, the sun sinking westward, and darkness had descended by the time we rolled back into the great city.
“But in that city was not darkness! Lights were everywhere in it, flashing brilliant lights that shone from its mighty buildings and that blinked and burned and ran like water in great symbols upon the buildings above the streets. Their glare was like that of day! We stopped before a great building into which Rastin and Thicourt led me.
“It was vast inside and in it were many people in rows on rows of seats. I thought it a cathedral at first but saw soon that it was not. The wall at one end of it, toward which all in it were gazing, had on it pictures of people, great in size, and those pictures were moving as though themselves alive! And they were talking one to another, too, as though with living voices! I trembled. What magic!
“With Rastin and Thicourt in seats beside me, I watched the pictures enthralled. It was like looking through a great window into strange worlds. I saw the sea, seemingly tossing and roaring there before me, and then saw on it a ship, a vast ship of size incredible, without sails or oars, holding thousands of people. I seemed on that ship as I watched, seemed moving forward with it. They told me it was sailing over the western ocean that never men had crossed. I feared!
“Then another scene, land appearing from the ship. A great statue, upholding a torch, and we on the ship seemed passing beneath it. They said that the ship was approaching a city, the city of New York, but mists hid all before us. Then suddenly the mists before the ship cleared and there before me seemed the city.
“Mother of God, what a city! Climbing range on range of great mountain-like buildings that aspired up as though to scale heaven itself! Far beneath narrow streets pierced through them and in the picture we seemed to land from the ship, to go through those streets of the city. It was an incredible city of madness! The streets and ways were mere chasms between the sky-toppling buildings! People—people—people—millions on millions of them rushed through the endless streets. Countless ground-vehicles rushed to and fro also, and other different ones that roared above the streets and still others below them!
“Winged flying-cars and great airships were sailing to and fro over the titanic city, and in the waters around it great ships of the sea and smaller ships were coming as man never dreamed of surely, that reached out from the mighty city on all sides. And with the coming of darkness, the city blazed with living light!
“The pictures changed, showed other mighty cities, though none so terrible as that one. It showed great mechanisms that appalled me. Giant metal things that scooped in an instant from the earth as much as a man might dig in days. Vast things that poured molten metal from them like water. Others that lifted loads that hundreds of men and oxen could not have stirred.
“They showed men of knowledge like Rastin and Thicourt beside me. Some were healers, working miraculous cures in a way that I could not understand. Others were gazing through giant tubes at the stars, and the pictures showed what they saw, showed that all of the stars were great suns like our sun, and that our sun was greater than earth, that earth moved around it instead of the reverse! How could such things be, I wondered. Yet they said that it was so, that earth was round like an apple, and that with other earths like it, the planets, moved round the sun. I heard, but could scarce understand.
“At last Rastin and Thicourt led me out of that place of living pictures and to their ground-vehicle. We went again through the streets to their building, where first I had found myself. As we went I saw that none challenged my right to go, nor asked who was my lord. And Rastin said that none now had lords, but that all were lord, king and priest and noble, having no more power than any in the land. Each man was his own master! It was what I had hardly dared to hope for, in my own time, and this, I thought, was greatest of all the marvels they had shown me!
“We entered again their building but Rastin and Thicourt took me first to another room than the one in which I had found myself. They said that their men of knowledge were gathered there to hear of their feat, and to have it proved to them.
“ ‘You would not be afraid to return to your own time, Henri?’ asked Rastin, and I shook my head.
“ ‘I want to return to it,’ I told them. ‘I want to tell my people there what I have seen—what the future is that they must strive for.’
“ ‘But if they should not believe you?’ Thicourt asked.
“ ‘Still I must go—must tell them,’ I said.
“Rastin grasped my hand. ‘You are a man, Henri,’ he said. Then, throwing aside the cloak and hat I had worn outside, they went with me down to the big white-walled room where first I had found myself.
“It was lit brightly now by many of the shining glass things on ceiling and walls, and in it were many men. They all stared strangely at me and at my clothes, and talked excitedly so fast that I could not understand. Rastin began to address them.
“He seemed explaining how he had brought me from my own time to his. He used many terms and words that I could not understand, incomprehensible references and phrases, and I could understand but little. I heard again the names of Einstein and De Sitter that I had heard before, repeated frequently by these men as they disputed with Rastin and Thicourt. They seemed disputing about me.
“One big man was saying, ‘Impossible! I tell you, Rastin, you have faked this fellow!’
“Rastin smiled. ‘You don’t believe that Thicourt and I brought
him here from his own time across five centuries?’
“A chorus of excited negatives answered him. He had me stand up and speak to them. They asked me many questions, part of which I could not understand. I told them of my life, and of the city of my own time, and of king and priest and noble, and of many simple things that they seemed quite ignorant of. Some appeared to believe me but others did not, and again their dispute broke out.
“ ‘There is a way to settle the argument, gentlemen,’ said Rastin finally.
“ ‘How?’ all cried.
“ ‘Thicourt and I brought Henri across five centuries by rotating the time-dimensions at this spot,’ he said. ‘Suppose we reverse that rotation and send him back before your eyes—would that be proof?’
“They all said that it would. Rastin turned to me. ‘Stand on the metal circle, Henri,’ he said. I did so.
“All were watching very closely. Thicourt did something quickly with the levers and buttons of the mechanisms in the room. They began to hum, and blue light came from the glass tubes on some. All were quiet, watching me as I stood there on the circle of metal. I met Rastin’s eyes and something in me made me call goodbye to him. He waved his hand and smiled. Thicourt pressed more buttons and the hum of the mechanisms grew louder. Then he reached toward another lever. All in the room were tense and I was tense.
“Then I saw Thicourt’s arm move as he turned one of the many levers.
“A terrific clap of thunder seemed to break around me, and as I closed my eyes before its shock, I felt myself whirling around and falling at the same time as though into a maelstrom, just as I had done before. The awful falling sensation ceased in a moment and the sound subsided. I opened my eyes. I was on the ground at the center of the familiar field from which I had vanished hours before, upon the morning of that day. It was night now, though, for that day I had spent five hundred years in the future.
“There were many people gathered around the field, fearful, and they screamed and some fled when I appeared in the thunderclap. I went toward those who remained. My mind was full of things I had seen and I wanted to tell them of these things. I wanted to tell them how they must work ever toward that future time of wonder.
“But they did not listen. Before I had spoken minutes to them they cried out on me as a sorcerer and a blasphemer, and seized me and brought me here to the Inquisitor, to you, sire. And to you, sire, I have told the truth in all things. I know that in doing so I have set the seal of my own fate, and that only a sorcerer would ever tell such a tale, yet despite that I am glad. Glad that I have told one at least of this time of what I saw five centuries in the future. Glad that I saw! Glad that I saw the things that someday, sometime, must come to be—”
It was a week later that they burned Henri Lothiere. Jean de Marselait, lifting his gaze from his endless parchment accusation and examens on that afternoon, looked out through the window at a thick curl of black smoke going up from the distant square.
“Strange, that one,” he mused. “A sorcerer, of course, but such a one as I had never heard before. I wonder,” he half-whispered, “was there any truth in that wild tale of his? The future—who can say—what men might do—?”
There was silence in the room as he brooded for a moment, and then he shook himself as one ridding himself of absurd speculations. “But tush—enough of these crazy fancies. They will have me for a sorcerer if I yield to these wild fancies and visions of the future.”
And bending again with his pen to the parchment before him, he went gravely on with his work.
THE MAN WHO SAW THROUGH TIME
Leonard Raphael
“It will be soon,” Walter Yale told himself for the fiftieth time. “It must be soon now.”
He was very tired. His eyelids were as swollen as Hitler’s chest, and his head felt like London after an all-night bombing. But he gritted his teeth and kept staring out of the window, looking at the place where Gary Fraxer should soon appear.
For months the two had been working out on the desert, sleeping all day when the sun shone brightest and working hard all through the cool nights. They used an old shack for their laboratory.
The little wooden building was the only structure in sight on the broad expanse of desert.
That was one of the reasons they had chosen this spot. They had wanted a place where no one would disturb them. So they had come out here and pretended to be doing astronomical observation. Actually, they were perfecting a time machine.
It had been Fraxer’s idea originally.
“You see,” he had said, “all we need is a machine which can travel in the fourth dimension; a machine that will take a person through time. According to Einstein, time travels in a curved line. This machine would not only move ahead, but would take a short-cut from one point in the line, the present, to another, the future.”
They had slaved over the machine until they were exhausted, but neither of them had any intention of giving up. And then, one night when they were both bleary-eyed from loss of sleep and overwork, the machine had been completed.
It was a complicated mass of machinery which would have bewildered anyone but its creators. To them, however, each lever, each nut and bolt was familiar. They looked at it for a little while, hardly believing it was done at last.
Walter Yale put into words the thought that was in both their minds.
“Who tries it?” he questioned hoarsely.
Gary Fraxer passed a nervous hand over the heavy stubble on his chin.
“I guess it’s all mine,” he said. “Guess again. You’re thinking that this experiment with time is too dangerous, and you don’t want me to risk my life. No, you’ve done enough already. This time I’m going to take the chance.”
“I should be the one,” protested Fraxer. “After all you wouldn’t be much use to Carol Lewis if you were stranded somewhere in the future.”
“Quit kidding. We both love Carol, and she cares for you as much as for me. She’d be just as sorry if you were lost. We can’t tell who she’ll finally choose for a husband, so that’s no reason for your going.”
“Well,” said Fraxer, “you can’t blame a guy for trying. What about flipping a coin?”
“You’re too lucky at that. I’ve got a better idea.”
He pointed to a cockroach crawling along a crack in the table.
“If the cockroach crawls toward you, you go. If it comes to me, I go.”
“Fair enough.”
The two men bent over the table, watching the insect intently. The insect paused; then, attracted by a stray crumb of bread, crawled slowly toward Fraxer.
Fraxer smiled.
“Looks like my luck holds out even in this.”
The two men wheeled the machine outside, and Fraxer climbed up into the seat. He put his hand on the lever. “Well, here I go.”
He pulled back sharply. There was a sudden buzzing and whirling of wheels, and then the machine was gone.
Now Yale was sitting on the edge of the bed, waiting. Fraxer had been gone over twelve hours. Despite his resolve to keep awake, Yale started to nod sleepily.
He was half-asleep when the door suddenly banged open. Yale started, instantly wide awake, as Gary Fraxer came walking in.
“What happened?” burst out Yale. “What did you find? Is the machine all right?”
“I found plenty. As for the machine, that’s resting about a thousand years in the future. I fixed that as soon as I got back.” There was a strained, half-hysterical note in Fraxer’s voice.
Yale jumped up from the little cot.
“What’s wrong?”
“Keep back.”
A gun sprang from Fraxer’s holster like a live thing. Yale looked at his partner in amazement:
“Have you gone completely out of your mind?”
At that moment Fraxer did look like a madman. His face was twisted into a mask of hate, the eyes shining like cold bits of glass, the mouth a mere slash of red.
“No, I’m not insane. But I�
��d be crazy to pass up an opportunity like this. You’re the only man in the world who stands between Carol Lewis and myself.”
“What’s she got to do with this?”
“Quite a bit in an indirect way. Except for the fact that you’re still alive, she’d marry me. So you’re not going to go on living. I’ll fix that.”
Walter Yale stared unbelievingly at the man with the leveled gun. It took him a little while to realize that Gary Fraxer, the man he had trusted above all others, was going to kill him. This wasn’t really happening, he tried to tell himself, it was a dream, a nightmare.
But you couldn’t fit that steady gun or that white, set face into a dream.
“It’s that damned time machine,” said Yale. “Traveling in it must have affected your mind.”
At the mention of the time machine, the gun in Fraxer’s hand wavered ever so slightly. Walter Yale’s hand moved a little closer to the drawer of the table.
“Hold it,” said Fraxer, and his voice was cold, hard. He reached over, opened the drawer, and laid the revolver in it on the top of the table.
“You’ll be put on trial for murder,” said Yale, staring at it, “and probably be convicted. Even if they don’t find you guilty, Carol would never marry a man suspected of killing me.”
“No one will suspect anything,” said Fraxer confidently. “Two graduate students who are very close friends go out into the desert to do some research work in astronomy. One of them—you, Walter—happens to wander off and is lost forever. Too bad, but other men have died in the desert. There will be no trial. People will sympathize with me because I have lost a friend, not condemn me for killing him.”
Yale racked his brains for a plan of escape. He could think of nothing. There was the revolver Fraxer had inexplicably placed on the table, but he wouldn’t have a ghost of a chance to get it before the other fired. And one shot was all Fraxer ever needed to hit his mark.
“So it’s going to be murder in cold blood, is it?”