by Anthology
Thalma seated herself at the control board. “Which way?”
“East. See America first!”
The girl glanced at a dial on which were the familiar compass markings, then deftly moved a lever. The sea began to glide smoothly toward the bottom of the lower view-disc.
Were it not for the evidence of the visoscope Dunning would not have realized that the stratocar was moving, so vibrationless was its progress. The girl was still pale, and her hands were quivering. He must get her mind off their present plight.
“I wish you would tell me what all this is about. Things have been happening so quickly around here that there hasn’t been any time to ask questions. For instance, who is this Mar-nota?”
“Marnota is America’s greatest scientist, since my father’s death. He is my uncle and my guardian. He and father, together, invented these stratocars and countless other things that have revolutionized civilization. Through their inventions they gained tremendous power. A quarter of the population of the United States is employed by Adams, Inc. Its factories, its transportation lines, its ports and its warehouses blanket the Americas. The prosperity, the very existence of the smallest village in the country depends on the company.
“Why do you think he would wish to harm you?”
“I know he would. Although my father and Marnota were brothers, they differed widely in everything but their scientific genius. My father envisaged his work as something that would make the world a paradise, reduce the hours of labor, increase everyone’s opportunity for luxury and culture. He wished to donate everything to the government, to reserve a mere livelihood for himself. But all their inventions were owned jointly by the brothers and Marnota would not permit this to be done. Money is his god.
“While father lived simply, and devoted his great wealth to the people’s welfare, Marnota built himself great palaces, filled them with sycophantic degenerates who pandered to his vices. He came to my father repeatedly with urgings to reduce wages, lengthen hours, increase prices. Adams, Inc. was all-powerful, he argued. The people might grumble, but would have to submit.”
Thalma paused for a moment. “When I was just fifteen, after a particularly virulent argument in which my father made it clear once for all that he would never agree to Marnota’s schemes, he was killed by an explosion in the laboratory. Strangely enough, Marnota, who had been working with him on some new problem, had been called away not fifteen minutes before the fatal accident. The laboratory was completely demolished. There was no way of telling just what had happened.”
“Sounds suspicious, as you tell it. But, after all, Marnota was your father’s brother. Do you really believe that he—”
“I’d believe any villainy of Marnota,” the girl flared. “He is vile, I tell you, vile!” Thalma was somehow less lovely as hate darkened her clean-cut features. There was a long pause, while her unfocused eyes stared into vacancy. The stratocar swam steadily eastward. No hint of what age they were in showed in the visoscope.
The girl resumed her story.
“My father’s will had been made shortly after my birth, before my uncle’s real character had showed itself. Imagine my horror when it was revealed that Marnota was to be my guardian, trustee of my inheritance till I was twenty-one! A week before my twenty-first birthday he presented this stratocar to me. A much improved model, he said. It could be easily handled by one person and he wanted me to have the first one produced as a birthday gift.
“I was pleased, but not for the reason he thought. With this new flyer at my disposal I could disappear, hide myself somewhere until I came into my own. For I was uneasy, frightened. My death would mean so much to him. His power over Adams, Inc. would become absolute if I were removed. That night I stole out to the car, planning to flee alone. How well Marnota read me! But Ran, my faithful servant and friend, suspected my intention, and intercepted me. He insisted on going with me, and I yielded.
“We made for Hawaii. We were above the Pacific when I heard Ran say something about descending a bit. He moved the lever. There was a sudden, awful flare into nothingness—I felt myself thrown from the couch—and—well, you know the rest.”
“That flame I saw, and the wave that wrecked the Ulysses, must have been the visible result of the warping of space-time as the stratocar shot back for centuries! What a devil that uncle of yours must be, and how well he planned! A murder without a clue—the body hidden in another era. But see how the man’s scheme had been upset by accidents he could not have foreseen! If you had been at the controls, instead of Ran; if you had been over land; if I hadn’t happened to be at that point in all the miles of the Pacific; he would be in undisputed control of the company, with nothing to fear. As it is—”
“As it is, I can’t see what difference all that makes.” Thalma’s tone was flat, hopeless. “I might as well be dead as wandering aimlessly—lost in time.”
Once more that phrase struck a chill through Dunning. In the visoscope, low on the horizon ahead, a bluish haze appeared. The blueness deepened, solidified. A dark fleck appeared in the sky. It grew rapidly: It was a tiny ball—the sun caught it and it glinted coppery.
“Jim! Jim!” The girl’s fingers dug into his arm, her voice was strident, hysterical. “It’s a stratocar! A stratocar! Do you hear me? What does that mean?”
“It must mean that by some miracle we’re back in your time.”
“Oh, thank; God! Thank God!”
“What’s that blue band around the center of that flyer, and those black discs? There are nothing like those on this sphere.”
Thalma wheeled back to the screen. An exclamation of dismay came from her.
“It’s a patrol ship, one of Marnota’s police craft!”
From one of the black spots that had caught Dunning’s eye a white beam shot out. It caught the time-traveler. The scene in the visoscope dissolved into a dazzling radiance.
Thalma tugged frantically at the levers. There was no response.
“They’ve got us in the neutralizing beam. Our power is gone!”
A voice sounded in the chamber, coldly challenging.
“What craft is that?”
The girl faced a circular device, covered with a fine metallic mesh, that was inserted in the wall beside the control board. “This is Thalma of the House of Adams.” Her steady tones showed nothing of the fear that stared from her eyes. “Shut off your beam and permit me to proceed.”
The voice laughed, sneeringly.
“The message received by Marnota of the House of Adams purporting to announce her return on the eve of her majority has been found to be a forgery. My orders are to bring any claimants, should they appear, directly to Marnota for identification.” Dunning and Thalma exchanged startled glances. The plotter had provided against failure of his plan.
“I demand to be taken before the Federal Court.” Thalma was defiant. “Marnota may appear there, and deny my identity if he dare.”
The voice continued; ignoring the interruption.
“You will follow me peaceably, or I shall be compelled to ray you.”
Thalma threw her arms wide, signaling their helplessness.
“We follow, helot!” she cried aloud. To Dunning she whispered: “One flash of their ray-gun and there will be nothing left of this stratocar but some dust. Marnota would like nothing better.”
The view-screen cleared. Close at hand they could see the police-car, hovering. The voice came again.
“Keep within a hundred feet of us. Remember, the slightest swerve from that position and I blast.” The blue-banded stratocar began to move, and with trembling fingers Thalma pressed down the levers to follow.
CHAPTER IV
DEATH BEHIND THE ARRAS
Faster and faster the two spheres cleaved the air, till below there was but a tinted blur. The hazy earth dropped away, was a great bowl, then rounded again into a far-spread convexity. Dunning peered at the control board.
“Look here, Thalma. The time-lever you pressed returned aut
omatically to neutral position. That must mean the time mechanism is set to make just that one leap of approximately four hundred years. That gives me an idea. All we have to do is press the other handle. We’ll shoot back to my time—I’ll see that you’re taken care of there for life.” His hands darted to the board.
Thalma thrust it aside.
“No!” Low-voiced as the exclamation was, inflexible determination sounded in it. “No, Jim, I cannot. I must remain in my own time. I must meet Marnota face to face and accuse him of his crimes. My father’s memory cries out for vengeance, and the downtrodden people lift their hands to me in mute appeal. Something here,” a white hand pressed against her heart, “tells me that he cannot triumph.”
Dunning’s hand dropped from the levers, and he was silent. He could not argue against the burning vision in Thalma’s grey eyes, the fire in her low voice.
“But you can easily escape.” The girl turned and pointed. “There, just in front of the couch, is a trapdoor to the lower hull. Hide below there, among the coils, till I am taken away. Then you can steal but, shift the time lever and go back to the twentieth century.”
“No!” Dunning told her firmly. “I’m staying here—with you.”
They were slowing now. Below was a far-spreading, white city. Great towers reached upward to the dropping sphere. The rooftops were landscaped gardens. Airy bridges leaped in a gossamer network across mile-deep chasms. Dunning glimpsed the Hudson, almost hidden beneath many bridges.
In the middle of a watery expanse Dunning recognized as New York’s Upper Bay a circular building brooded, black, ominous. Straight down to its flat roof the sphere with the blue band drifted, and Thalma followed. The roof opened, dividing into many leaves that slid one under the other, and a round gap showed. The leading stratocar dipped within.
Guards in bright green uniforms surrounded them as they emerged from the stratocar. Two mercenaries ranged themselves on either side of Dunning and the girl, seizing their arms at the elbows. But just as they started forward a voice rang out.
“Sergeant Farston!”
The leader whirled, and saluted the communication disc. “Here, sir,” he snapped.
From somewhere among the half dozen private police crowding around him Dunning heard a gasped, “Mar-nota, himself!”
“You will bring the prisoners to me, at once!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Gosh, the chief has listened in on damn near everything the last week!” someone said, low-voiced.
Presently they were marched to Marnota through a circling corridor whose marble walls showed fine veinings of gold. Then the party was being challenged by a sentry before a doorway curtained by cloth of gold.
“Halt! Who goes there?”
“Sergeant Farston and prisoners.”
“You will pass in at once, Sergeant, with the prisoners. Orders are to dismiss the rest of your men.” The guard drew the curtain aside. A bronze portal behind it swung open.
Dunning had a confused sense of tapestry-hung walls in the room they entered, of a floor covered thick with glowing rugs. But a tableau at the other end of the chamber, fifty feet away, caught and held his attention as the sergeant halted him just within the closing door.
On a great carved chair of ebony in the center of a gold dais, sat a small thin man whose black eyes gleamed piercingly out of a sharp-featured, hawk-like face. Thin lips were twisted in a cruel, sardonic smile.
Marnota’s stubby hands rested on the arms of the throne-like chair, and it seemed to Dunning that the short fingers curled and uncurled like the claws of a cat toying with a helpless victim.
Thalma approached him fearlessly, her slight form straight and defiant. The girl’s arm was outstretched, her hand pointed at the throned man.
“Remember, Marnota,” her clear accents rang out, “in the end, you will fail, and terrible will be the price you pay.”
Thalma’s arm fell to her side. She swayed a bit, then drew herself again proudly upright. A rustle of sound drew Dunning’s eyes away from her. He started. Behind the rich tapestries, to the left of the entrance, someone was hidden, someone in the green uniform of Marnota’s helots. He saw a black death-cylinder, ominously ready.
Marnota’s sadistic smile deepened. There was amusement in his silky tones.
“Splendid!” he said. “You are a marvelous actress. No wonder you were selected to come here with your absurd claim to be my niece. Unfortunately the forger who concocted the note that preceded you was not as skillful as the surgeon who remodeled your features.”
He turned toward Dunning and his guard.
“Ah, Sergeant, you arrived a little more quickly than I anticipated. But I’ll be through soon, very soon. You may leave your prisoner here, and go.”
The sergeant saluted, turned sharply, and was gone.
“I shall be finished directly, young man. Just step to one side.”
Marnota turned back to Thalma. “Yes,” he purred. “You are a wonderful actress. Too bad you have allowed yourself to be duped into this imposture. However, you will not be able to deceive the court. You may go.”
Thalma turned wonderingly toward the door. And suddenly Dunning understood Marnota’s amazing show of leniency. The lurking mercenary was posted to flash the girl down as she passed. If there were an inquiry, the explanation would be simple. Balked in her attempted fraud, she had tried to escape, had been rayed by an over-zealous guard. The cylinder would do its work well, there would be no chance for troublesome identification. He was the only witness. He would not be alive to testify.
Thalma came slowly across the floor, straight toward the waiting assassin. Dunning whirled. His great hands spread wide, caught the arras on either side of the form behind it. He lunged forward, tearing the fabric from its fastenings. He toppled, fell heavily, with the writhing, heaving bundle in his arms. A tearing dart of flame seared his shoulder. He located the round of a head under the cloth, and slugged at it. The wrapped, entangled figure slumped beneath him.
Dunning leaped to his feet—glimpsed Marnota, standing on the gold dais, blue flashes crackling from his ray-gun—saw Thalma, just outside the open door, struggling in the arms of the outer guard.
Dunning was a maelstrom of lightning action, the very swiftness of his movements foiling Marnota’s darts. He sprang through the opening, thrusting at the door as he went. The clang of its shutting drowned the smack of his fist as it splashed into the snarling face of the guard. The helot jarred loose from Thalma. His hand shot to the ray-gun, jerked it from his belt. Before he could use it, hard knuckles exploded again on his jutting jaw, and the mercenary crashed to the floor.
A siren moaned an alarm. Dunning twisted to Thalma. She was snatching up the guard’s weapon from where it had spun as he fell. Its blue ray shot out, spattered against the edge of the bronze portal. The metal glowed red and fused where the heat vibrations impinged.
“The lock,” the girl gasped. “That will hold him for a while.”
The siren’s wailing rose to new fury. From around the curve of the corridor shouts came and the thunder of many rushing feet.
“They’re coming!” Dunning exclaimed. “We’ve got to get out of here!” He whirled to the right, hesitated as from that side, too, clamored an oncoming rush still hidden by the arc of the circling hall. Aside from the sealed entrance to Marnota’s audience chamber, the black marble walls were without a break. “Finish!” he groaned. “We’re trapped!”
“Not yet,” Thalma snapped, her face white but her eyes bright and fearless. She was at the wall opposite the bronze door. Her hand reached out to it, her fingers pressed the center of an apparently aimless whorl in the gold tracery. A narrow rectangle of stone shot down into the floor, revealing a black void behind. “Quick! In here!”
Dunning was on her heels as she darted through. Some gesture of the girl’s, indistinguishable in the darkness, sent the secret panel thudding back into place.
He crouched, listening. Had they been swift enoug
h? Had the screen closed in time to conceal their retreat from Marnota’s men? Or would the cracking of heated marble show that the ray-guns were at work, seeking out the fugitives?
Muffled noises, the moaning siren, guttural calls, an authoritative voice in sharp command, came through the wall. Behind him, Thalma’s heavy breathing gusted and the beat of his own pulse hammered in his ears. The air was musty, stagnant. Dust, long undisturbed, choked him. Fierce agony seared his shoulder, sent tendrils of pain raying through him.
A hand tugged at Dunning.
“Come!” Thalma’s voice was an almost inaudible whisper. “We’ve got to get out of here before Marnota frees himself and directs his stupid helots in their search.”
The endless passage twisted, pitched downward, so narrow that Dunning’s arms brushed the walls on either side. In the tar-barrel darkness even Thalma’s white garments were invisible. Dunning clung to her icy, trembling hand, let it guide him down and down.
“This is the way I went when I thought I was escaping from Marnota, as he planned I should think. Jarcka, Ran’s father, was in charge of this building’s construction, shortly after my own father’s death. He must have foreseen I should some day need a hiding place. By a minute adjustment of the building machines, he contrived this secret passage, with outlets in my own quarters, in the corridor from which we just came, and in the wall of the stratocar hangar. It also connects to a secret tunnel under the Bay, into the city.”
“Secret! But thousands of men—”
Thalma answered swiftly. “Only Jarcka himself knows of it. He used Thorgersen’s Mechanical Mole, converting earth and rocks into energy, reconverting some of it into a lining for the bore, harder and more rigid than steel. I—Oh-h!”
She broke off in a wail of terror. The tunnel had flared into a sudden luminescence. The walls glowed with a cold, infinitely menacing light.
“What is it?” Dunning gasped, leaping into new effort after the bounding girl. “What—”