Time Travelers

by Peter Haining (ed)

  ‘No, I am not from Mars, or any planet of which you have ever heard. You would not understand what I am. Yet I will tell you this. I am from the Future.’

  ‘The Future! That’s ridiculous!’

  ‘Indeed? I should be interested to know why.’

  ‘If that sort of thing were possible, our past history would be full of time travelers. Besides, it would involve a reductio ad absurdum. Going into the past could change the present and produce all sorts of paradoxes.’

  ‘Those are good points, though not perhaps as original as you suppose. But they only refute the possibility of time travel in general, not in the very special case which concerns us now.’

  ‘What is peculiar about it?’ he asked.

  ‘On very rare occasions, and by the release of an enormous amount of energy, it is possible to produce a – singularity – in time. During the fraction of a second when that singularity occurs, the past becomes accessible to the future, though only in a restricted way. We can send our minds back to you, but not our bodies.’

  ‘You mean,’ said Ashton, ‘that you are borrowing the body I see?’

  ‘Oh, I have paid for it, as I am paying you. The owner has agreed to the terms. We are very conscientious in these matters.’

  Ashton was thinking swiftly. If this story was true, it gave him a definite advantage.

  ‘You mean,’ he continued, ‘that you have no direct control over matter, and must work through human agents?’

  ‘Yes. Even those bracelets were made here, under our mental control.’

  She was explaining too much too readily, revealing all her weaknesses. A warning signal was flashing in the back of Ashton’s mind, but he had committed himself too deeply to retreat.

  ‘Then it seems to me,’ he said slowly, ‘that you cannot force me to hand this bracelet back.’

  ‘That is perfectly true.’

  ‘That’s all I want to know.’

  She was smiling at him now, and there was something in that smile that chilled him to the marrow.

  ‘We are not vindictive or unkind, Mr. Ashton,’ she said quietly. ‘What I am going to do now appeals to my sense of justice. You have asked for that bracelet; you can keep it. Now I shall tell you just how useful it will be.’

  For a moment Ashton had a wild impulse to hand back the accelerator. She must have guessed his thoughts.

  ‘No, it’s too late. I insist that you keep it. And I can reassure you on one point. It won’t wear out. It will last you’ – again that enigmatic smile – ‘the rest of your life.

  ‘Do you mind if we go for a walk, Mr. Ashton? I have done my work here, and would like to have a last glimpse of your world before I leave it forever.’

  She turned toward the iron gates, and did not wait for a reply. Consumed by curiosity, Ashton followed.

  They walked in silence until they were standing among the frozen traffic of Tottenham Court Road. For a while she stood staring at the busy yet motionless crowds; then she sighed.

  ‘I cannot help feeling sorry for them, and for you. I wonder what you would have made of yourselves.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘Just now, Mr. Ashton, you implied that the future cannot reach back into the past, because that would alter history. A shrewd remark, but, I am afraid, irrelevant. You see, your world has no more history to alter.’

  She pointed across the road, and Ashton turned swiftly on his heels. There was nothing there except a newsboy crouching over his pile of papers. A placard formed an impossible curve in the breeze that was blowing through this motionless world. Ashton read the crudely lettered words with difficulty:

  SUPER-BOMB TEST TODAY

  The voice in his ears seemed to come from a very long way off.

  ‘I told you that time travel, even in this restricted form, requires an enormous release of energy – far more than a single bomb can liberate, Mr. Ashton. But that bomb is only a trigger—’

  She pointed to the solid ground beneath their feet. ‘Do you know anything about your own planet? Probably not; your race has learned so little. But even your scientists have discovered that, two thousand miles down, the Earth has a dense, liquid core. That core is made of compressed matter, and it can exist in either of two stable states. Given a certain stimulus, it can change from one of those states to another, just as a seesaw can tip over at the touch of a finger. But that change, Mr. Ashton, will liberate as much energy as all the earthquakes since the beginning of your world. The oceans and continents will fly into space; the sun will have a second asteroid belt.

  ‘That cataclysm will send its echoes down the ages, and will open up to us a fraction of a second in your time. During that instant, we are trying to save what we can of your world’s treasures. It is all that we can do; even if your motives were purely selfish and completely dishonest, you have done your race a service you never intended.

  ‘And now I must return to our ship, where it waits by the ruins of Earth almost a hundred thousand years from now. You can keep the bracelet.’

  The withdrawal was instantaneous. The woman suddenly froze and became one with the other statues in the silent street. He was alone.

  Alone! Ashton held the gleaming bracelet before his eyes, hypnotised by its intricate workmanship and by the powers it concealed. He had made a bargain, and he must keep it. He could live out the full span of his life – at the cost of an isolation no other man had ever known. If he switched off the field, the last seconds of history would tick inexorably away.

  Seconds? Indeed, there was less time than that. For he knew that the bomb must already have exploded.

  He sat down on the edge of the pavement and began to think. There was no need to panic; he must take things calmly, without hysteria. After all, he had plenty of time.

  All the time in the world.

  THE INSTABILITY

  Isaac Asimov

  Professor Firebender had explained it carefully. ‘Time-perception depends on the structure of the Universe. When the Universe is expanding, we experience time as going forward; when it is contracting, we experience it going backward. If we could somehow force the Universe to be in stasis, neither expanding nor contracting, time would stand still.”

  “But you can’t put the Universe in stasis,” said Mr. Atkins, fascinated.

  “I can put a little portion of the Universe in stasis, however.” said the professor. “Just enough to hold a ship. Time will stand still and we can move forward or backward at will and the entire trip will last less than an instant. But all the parts of the Universe will move while we stand still, while we are nailed to the fabric of the Universe. The Earth moves about the Sun, the Sun moves about the core of the Galaxy, the Galaxy moves about some center of gravity, all the Galaxies move.

  “I calculated those motions and I find that 27.5 million years in the future, a red dwarf star will occupy the position our Sun does now. If we go 27.5 million years into the future, in less than an instant that red dwarf star will be near our spaceship and we can come home after studying it a bit.”

  Atkins said, “Can that be done?”

  I’ve sent experimental animals through time, but I can’t make them automatically return. If you and I go, we can then manipulate the controls so that we can return.”

  “And you want me along?”

  “Of course. There should be two. Two people would be more easily believed than one alone. Come, it will be an incredible adventure.”

  Atkins inspected the ship. It was a 2217 Glenn-fusion model and looked beautiful.

  “Suppose,” he said, “that it lands inside the red dwarf star.”

  “It won’t,” said the professor, “but if it does, that’s the chance we take.”

  “But when we get back, the Sun and Earth will have moved on. We’ll be in space.”

  “Of course, but how far can the Sun and Earth move in the few hours it will take us to observe the star? With this ship we will catch up to our beloved planet. Are you ready,
Mr. Atkins?”

  “Ready,” sighed Atkins.

  Professor Firebrenner made the necessary adjustments and nailed the ship to the fabric of the Universe while 27.5 million years passed. And then, in less than a flash, time began to move forward again in the usual way, and everything in the Universe moved forward with it.

  Through the viewing port of their ship, Professor Firebrenner and Mr. Atkins could see the small orb of the red dwarf star.

  The professor smiled. “You and I, Atkins,” he said, “are the first ever to see, close at hand, any star other than our own Sun.”

  They remained two-and-a-half hours during which they photographed the star and its spectrum and as many neighboring stars as they could, made special coronagraphic observations, tested the chemical composition of the interstellar gas, and then Professor Firebrenner said, rather reluctantly, “I think we had better go home now.”

  Again, the controls were adjusted and the ship was nailed to the fabric of the Universe. They went 27.5 million years into the past, and in less than a flash, they were back where they started.

  Space was black. There was nothing. Atkins said, “What happened? Where are the Earth and Sun?”

  The professor frowned. He said, “Going back in time must be different. The entire Universe must have moved.”

  “Where could it move?”

  “I don’t know. Other objects shift position within the Universe, but the Universe as a whole must move in an upper-dimensional direction. We are here in the absolute vacuum, in primeval Chaos.”

  “But we’re here. It’s not primeval Chaos anymore.”

  “Exactly. That means we’ve introduced an instability at this place where we exist, and that means— ”

  Even as he said that, a Big Bang obliterated them. A new Universe came into being and began to expand.

  TIME HAS NO BOUNDARIES

  Jack Finney

  When I walked into Sergeant Ihren’s office, he stood up reluctantly, as though he weren’t sure but that he’d be throwing me into a cell in the next few minutes and would regret such politeness. I’m Bernard Weygand, I said brightly, stopping at his desk, but he didn’t smile.

  Yeah, he said. Nice of you to come, he added suspiciously and gestured at the chair before his desk. We both sat down.

  Glad to come, I said, though I have no idea why you want to see me.

  He didn’t rise to that; he just sat looking me over. Pretty young to be a professor, aren’t you? he said.

  Well, actually I’m an assistant professor.

  Young for that too, aren’t you?

  Sure. That’s the reason for these metal-rimmed professor-style glasses and the burlap suit; it helps the image, as the political-science boys say. He didn’t smile; I had the sudden feeling that he was absolutely uninterested in anything but his work; that, except for crime news, he read nothing; that he was intelligent, shrewd, perceptive and humorless; and that he probably knew no one but other policemen and didn’t think much of most of them. He was a young-middle-aged, undistinguished, formidable man and, if he’d murmured boo just then, I’d have leaped from my chair and confessed to anything.

  He said, There’s some people we can’t find, and I thought maybe you could help us. I looked politely puzzled, but he ignored it. One of them worked in Haring’s restaurant; you know the place, been there for years. He was a waiter, and he disappeared at the end of a three-day weekend with their entire receipts — nearly $5000. Left a note saying he liked Haring’s and enjoyed working there, but they’d been underpaying him for ten years, and now he figured they were even. Guy with an oddball sense of humor, they tell me. Ihren leaned back in his swivel chair and frowned at me. We can’t find that man. He’s been gone over a year now and not a trace of him.

  I thought he expected me to say something, and I did my best. Maybe he moved to some other city and changed his name.

  Ihren looked startled, as though I’d said something even more stupid than he expected. That wouldn’t help! he said, irritated.

  I was tired of feeling intimidated. Bravely I said, Why not?

  People don’t steal in order to hole up forever; they steal money to spend it. His money’s gone now, he feels forgotten, and he’s got a job again somewhere as a waiter. I looked skeptical, I suppose, because Ihren said, Certainly as a waiter; he won’t change jobs. That’s all he knows, all he can do. Remember John Carradine, the movie actor? Used to see him a lot. Had a face a foot long, all chin and long jaw; very distinctive. I nodded, and Ihren turned in his swivel chair to a filing cabinet. He opened a folder, brought out a glossy sheet of paper and handed it to me. It was a police WANTED poster and, while the photograph on it did not really resemble the movie actor, it had the same remarkable long-jawed memorability. Ihren said, He could move, and he could change his name, but he could never change that face. Wherever he is, he should have been found months ago; that poster went everywhere.

  I shrugged, and Ihren swung to the file again. He brought out and handed me a large oldfashioned sepia photograph mounted on heavy gray cardboard. It was a group photo of a kind you seldom see any more; all the employees of a small business lined up on the sidewalk before it. There were a dozen moustached men in this and a woman in a long dress, smiling and squinting in the sun as they stood before a small building, which I recognized. It was Haring’s restaurant, looking not too different than it does now. Ihren said, I spotted this on the wall of the restaurant office; I don’t suppose anyone has really looked at it in years. The big guy in the middle is the original owner who started the restaurant in 1885, when this was taken; no one knows who anyone else in the picture was, but take a good look at the other faces.

  I did and saw what he meant; a face in the old picture almost identical with the one in the WANTED poster. It had the same astonishing length, the broad chin seeming nearly as wide as the cheekbones, and I looked up at Ihren. Who is it? His father? His grandfather?

  Almost reluctantly he said, Maybe. It could be, of course. But he sure looks like the guy we’re hunting for, doesn’t he? And look how he’s grinning! Almost as though he’d deliberately got a job in Haring’s restaurant again and was back in 1885, laughing at me!

  I said, Sergeant, you’re being extremely interesting, not to say downright entertaining. You’ve got my full attention, and I am in no hurry to go anywhere else. But I don’t quite see —

  Well, you’re a professor, aren’t you? And professors are smart, aren’t they? I’m looking for help anywhere I can get it. We’ve got half a dozen unsolved cases like that; people that absolutely should have been found, and found easy! William Spangler Greeson is another one; you ever heard of him?

  Sure; who hasn’t in San Francisco?

  That’s right; big society name. But did you know he didn’t have a dime of his own?

  I shrugged. How should I know? I’d have assumed he was rich.

  His wife is; I suppose that’s why he married her, though they tell me she chased him. She’s older than he is, quite a lot. Disagreeable woman; I’ve talked to her. He’s a young, handsome, likable guy, they say, but lazy; so he married her.

  I’ve seen him mentioned in Herb Caen’s column; had something to do with the theater, didn’t he?

  Stage-struck all his life; tried to be an actor and couldn’t make it. When they got married, she gave him the money to back a play in New York, which kept him happy for a while; used to fly East a lot for rehearsals and out-of-town tryouts. Then he started getting friendly with some of the younger stage people, the good-looking female ones. His wife punished him like a kid. Hustled him back here, and not a dime for the theater from then on. Money for anything else, but he couldn’t even buy a ticket to a play anymore; he’d been a bad boy. So he disappeared with $175,000 of hers, and not a sign of him since, which just isn’t natural. Because he can’t — you understand, he can’t — keep away from the theater. He should have shown up in New York long since with a fake name, dyed hair, a mustache, some such nonsense. We should
have had him months ago, but we haven’t; he’s gone too. Ihren stood up. I hope you meant it when you said you weren’t in a hurry, because —

  Well, as a matter of fact —

  — because I made an appointment for both of us. On Powell Street near the Embarcadero; come on. He walked out from behind his desk, picking up a large Manila envelope lying on one corner of it. There was a New York Police Department return address on the envelope, I saw, and it was addressed to him. He walked to the door without looking back, as though he knew I’d follow. Down in front of the building he said, We can take a cab; with you along I can turn in a chit for it. When I went by myself, I rode the cable car.

  On a day like this, anyone who takes a cab when he can ride the cable car is crazy enough to join the police force.

  Ihren said, O.K., tourist, and we walked all the way up to Market and Powell in silence. A cable car had just been swung around on its turntable, and we got an outside seat, no one near us; presently the car began crawling and clanging leisurely up Powell. You can sit outdoors on the cable cars, you know, and it was nice out, plenty of sun and blue sky; a typical late-summer San Francisco day. But Ihren might as well have been on the New York subway. So where is William Spangler Greeson? he said, as soon as he’d paid our fares. Well, on a hunch I wrote the New York police, and they had a man put in a few hours for me at the city historical museum. Ihren opened his Manila envelope, pulled out several folded sheets of grayish paper and handed the top one to me. I opened it; it was a Photostatic copy of an old-style playbill, narrow and long. Ever hear of that play? Ihren said, reading over my shoulder. The sheet was headed:

  TONIGHT & ALL WEEK!

  SEVEN GALA NIGHTS!

  Below that, in big type:

  MABEL’S GREENHORN UNCLE!

  Sure, who hasn’t? I said. Shakespeare, isn’t it? We were passing Union Square and the St. Francis Hotel.

  Save the jokes for your students and read the cast of characters.