The Menace From Earth

by Robert A. Heinlein

  Wilson sat up with a jerk, then turned his head slowly around. He fervently hoped that there was someone behind him. Otherwise— He perceived the stranger with relief. "Thank God," he said to himself.

  "For a moment I thought I had come unstuck." His relief turned to extreme annoyance. "What the devil are you doing in my room?" he demanded. He shoved back his chair, got up and strode over to the one door. It was still locked, and bolted on the inside.

  The windows were no help; they were adjacent to his desk and three stories above a busy street. "How did you get in?" he added.

  "Through that," answered the stranger, hooking a thumb toward the circle. Wilson noticed it for the first time, blinked his eyes and looked again. There it hung between them and the wall, a great disk of nothing, of the color one sees when the eyes are shut tight.

  Wilson shook his head vigorously. The circle remained. "Gosh," he thought, "I was right the first time. I wonder when I slipped my trolley?" He advanced toward the disk, put out a hand to touch it.

  "Don't!" snapped the stranger.

  "Why not?" said Wilson edgily. Nevertheless he paused.

  "I'll explain. But let's have a drink first." He walked directly to the wardrobe, opened it, reached in and took out the bottle of gin without looking.

  "Hey!" yelled Wilson. "What are you doing there? That's my liquor."

  "Your liquor—" The stranger paused for a moment. "Sorry. You don't mind if I have a drink, do you?"

  "I suppose not," Bob Wilson conceded in a surly tone. "Pour me one while you're about it."

  "Okay," agreed the stranger, "then I'll explain."

  "It had better be good," Wilson said ominously. Nevertheless he drank his drink and looked the stranger over.

  He saw a chap about the same size as himself and much the same age—perhaps a little older, though a three-clay growth of beard may have accounted for that impression. The stranger had a black eye and a freshly cut and badly swollen upper lip. Wilson decided he did not like the chaps' face. Still, there was something familiar about the face; he felt that he should have recognized it, that he had seen it many times before under different circumstances.

  "Who are you?" he asked suddenly.

  "Me?" said his guest. "Don't you recognize me?"

  "I'm not sure," admitted Wilson. "Have I ever seen you before?"

  "Well—not exactly," the other temporized. "Skip it—you wouldn't know about it."

  "What's your name?"

  "My name? Uh... just call me Joe."

  Wilson set down his glass. "Okay, Joe Whatever-your-name-is, trot out that explanation and make it snappy."

  "I'll do that," agreed Joe. "That dingus I came through"—he pointed to the circle—"that's a Time Gate."

  "A what?"

  "A Time Gate. Time flows along side by side on each side of the Gate, but some thousands of years apart—just how many thousands I don't know. But for the next couple of hours that Gate is open. You can walk into the future just by stepping through that circle." The stranger paused.

  Bob drummed on the desk. "Go ahead. I'm listening. It's a nice story."

  "You don't believe me, do you? I'll show you." Joe got up, went again to the wardrobe and obtained Bob's hat, his prized and only hat, which he had mistreated into its present battered grandeur through six years of undergraduate and graduate life. Joe chucked it toward the impalpable disk.

  It struck the surface, went on through with no apparent resistance, disappeared from sight.

  Wilson got up, walked carefully around the circle and examined the bare floor. "A neat trick," he conceded. "Now I'll thank you to return to me my hat."

  The stranger shook his head. "You can get it for yourself when you pass through"

  "That's right. Listen—" Briefly the stranger repeated his explanation about the Time Gate. Wilson, he insisted, had an opportunity that comes once in a millennium—if he would only hurry up and climb through that circle. Furthermore, though Joe could not explain in detail at the mo­ment, it was very important that Wilson go through.

  Bob Wilson helped himself to a second drink, and then a third. He was beginning to feel both good and argumentative. "Why?" he said flatly.

  Joe looked exasperated. "Dammit, if you'd just step through once, explanations wouldn't be necessary. However—" According to Joe, there was an old guy on the other side who needed Wilson's help. With Wilson's help the three of them would run the country. The exact nature of the help Joe could not or would not specify. Instead he bore down on the unique possibilities for high adventure. "You don't want to slave your life away teaching numskulls in some freshwater college," he insisted. "This is your chance. Grab it!"

  Bob Wilson admitted to himself that a Ph.D. and an appointment as an instructor was not his idea of existence. Still, it beat working for a living. His eye fell on the gin bottle, its level now deplorably lowered. That explained it. He got up unsteadily.

  "No, my dear fellow," he stated, "I'm not going to climb on your merry-go-round. You know why?"

  "Why?"

  "Because I'm drunk, that's why. You're not there at all. That ain't there." He gestured widely at the circle. "There ain't anybody here but me, and I'm drunk. Been working too hard," he added apologetically. "I'm goin' to bed."

  "You're not drunk."

  "I am drunk. Peter Piper pepped a pick of pippered peckles." He moved toward his bed.

  Joe grabbed his arm. "You can't do that," he said.

  "Let him alone!"

  They both swung around. Facing them, standing directly in front of the circle was a third man. Bob looked at the newcomer, looked back at Joe, blinked his eyes and tried to focus them. The two looked a good bit alike, he thought, enough alike to be brothers. Or maybe he was seeing double. Bad stuff, gin. Should ‘ave switched to rum a long time ago. Good stuff, rum. You could drink it, or take a bath in it. No, that was gin—he meant Joe.

  How silly! Joe was the one with the black eye. He wondered why he had ever been confused.

  Then who was this other lug? Couldn't a couple of friends have a quiet drink together without people butting in?

  "Who are you?" he said with quiet dignity.

  The newcomer turned his head, then looked at Joe. "He knows me," he said meaningly.

  Joe looked him over slowly. "Yes," he said, "yes, I suppose I do. But what the deuce are you here for? And why are you trying to bust up the plan?"

  "No time for long-winded explanations. I know more about it than you do—you'll concede that—and my judgment is bound to be better than yours. He doesn't go through the Gate."

  "I don't concede anything of the sort—"

  The telephone rang.

  "Answer it!" snapped the newcomer.

  Bob was about to protest the peremptory tone, but decided he wouldn't. He lacked the phlegmatic temperament necessary to ignore a ringing telephone. "Hello?"

  "Hello," he was answered. "Is that Bob Wilson?"

  "Yes. Who is this?"

  "Never mind. I just wanted to be sure you were there. I thought you would be. You're right in the groove, kid, right in the groove."

  Wilson heard a chuckle, then the click of the disconnection. "Hello," he said. "Hello!" He jiggled the bar a couple of times, then hung up.

  "What was it?" asked Joe.

  "Nothing. Some nut with a misplaced sense of humor." The telephone bell rang again. Wilson added, "There he is again," and picked up the receiver. "Listen, you butterfly-brained ape! I'm a busy man, and this is not a public telephone."

  "Why, Bob!" came a hurt feminine voice.

  "Huh? Oh, it's you, Genevieve. Look—I'm sorry. I apologize—"

  "Well, I should think you would!"

  "You don't understand, honey. A guy has been pestering me over the phone and I thought it was him. You know I wouldn't talk that way to you, babe."

  "Well, I should think not. Particularly after all you said to me this afternoon, and all we meant to each other"

  "Huh? This afternoon? Did you sa
y this afternoon?"

  "Of course. But what I called up about was this: you left your hat in my apartment. I noticed it a few minutes after you had gone and just thought I'd call and tell you where it is. Anyhow," she added coyly, "it gave me an excuse to hear your voice again."

  "Sure. Fine," he said mechanically. "Look, babe, I'm a little mixed up about this. Trouble I've had all day long, and more trouble now. I'll look you up tonight and straighten it out. But I know I didn't leave your hat in my apartment—"

  "Your hat, silly!"

  "Huh? Oh, sure! Anyhow, I'll see you tonight. ‘By." He rang off hurriedly. Gosh, he thought, that woman is getting to be a problem. Hallucinations. He turned to his two companions.

  "Very well, Joe. I'm ready to go if you are." He was not sure just when or why he had decided to go through the time gadget, but he had. Who did this other mug think he was, anyhow, trying to interfere with a man's freedom of choice?

  "Fine!" said Joe, in a relieved voice. "Just step through. That's all there is to it."

  "No, you don't!" It was the ubiquitous stranger. He stepped between Wilson and the Gate.

  Bob Wilson faced him. "Listen, you! You come butting in here like you think I was a bum. If you don't like it, go jump in the lake—and I'm just the kind of guy who can do it! You and who else?"

  The stranger reached out and tried to collar him. Wilson let go a swing, but not a good one. It went by nothing faster than parcel post. The stranger walked under it and let him have a mouthful of knuckles—large, hard ones. Joe closed in rapidly, coming to Bob's aid. They traded punches in a free-for-all, with Bob joining in enthusiastically but inefficiently. The only punch he landed was on Joe, theoretically his ally. However, he had intended it for the third man.

  It was this faux pas which gave the stranger an opportunity to land a clean left jab on Wilson's face. It was inches higher than the button, but in Bob's bemused condition it was sufficient to cause him to cease taking part in the activities.

  Bob Wilson came slowly to awareness of his surroundings. He was seated on a floor which seemed a little unsteady. Someone was bending over him. "Are you all right?" the figure inquired.

  "I guess so," he answered thickly. His mouth pained him; he put his hand to it, got it sticky with blood. "My head hurts."

  "I should think it would. You came through head over heels. I think you hit your head when you landed."

  Wilson's thoughts were coming back into confused focus. Came through? He looked more closely at his succorer. He saw a middle-aged man with gray-shot bushy hair and a short, neatly trimmed beard. He was dressed in what Wilson took to be purple lounging pajamas.

  But the room in which he found himself bothered him even more. It was circular and the ceiling was arched so subtly that it was difficult to say how high it was. A steady glareless light filled the room from no apparent source. There was no furniture save for a high dais or pulpit-shaped object near the wall facing him. "Came through? Came through what?"

  "The Gate, of course." There was something odd about the man's accent. Wilson could not place it, save for a feeling that English was not a tongue he was accustomed to speaking.

  Wilson looked over his shoulder in the direction of the other's gaze, and saw the circle.

  That made his head ache even more. "Oh, Lord," he thought, "now I really am nuts. Why don't I wake up?" He shook his head to clear it.

  That was a mistake. The top of his head did not quite come off—not quite. And the circle stayed where it was, a simple locus hanging in the air, its flat depth filled with the amorphous colors and shapes Of no-vision. "Did I come through that?"

  "Yes."

  "Where am I?"

  "In the Hall of the Gate in the High Palace of Norkaal. But what is more important is when you are. You have gone forward a little more than thirty thousand years."

  "Now I know I'm crazy," thought Wilson. He got up unsteadily and moved toward the Gate.

  The older man put a hand on his shoulder. "Where are you going?"

  "Back!"

  "Not so fast. You will go back all right—I give you my word on that. But let me dress your wounds first. And you should rest. I have some explanations to make to you, and there is an errand you can do for me when you get back—to our mutual advantage. There is a great future in store for you and me, my boy—a great future!"

  Wilson paused uncertainly. The elder man's insistence was vaguely disquieting. "I don't like this."

  The other eyed him narrowly. "Wouldn't you like a drink before you go?"

  Wilson most assuredly would. Right at the moment a stiff drink seemed the most desirable thing on Earth—or in time. "Okay."

  "Come with me." The older man led him back of the structure near the wall and through a door which led into a passageway. He walked briskly; Wilson hurried to keep up.

  "By the way," he asked, as they continued down the long passage, "what is your name?"

  "My name? You may call me Diktor—everyone else does.

  "Okay, Diktor. Do you want my name?"

  "Your name?" Diktor chuckled. "I know your name. It's Bob Wilson."

  "Huh? Oh—I suppose Joe told you."

  "Joe? I know no one by that name."

  "You don't? He seemed to know you. Say—maybe you aren't that guy I was supposed to see."

  "But I am. I have been expecting you—in a way. Joe... Joe—Oh!" Diktor chuckled. "It had slipped my mind for a moment. He told you to call him Joe, didn't he?"

  "Isn't it his name?"

  "It's as good a name as any other. Here we are." He ushered Wilson into a small, but cheerful, room. It contained no furniture of any sort, but the floor was soft and warm as live flesh. "Sit down. I'll be back in a moment."

  Bob looked around for something to sit on, then turned to ask Diktor for a chair. But Diktor was gone, furthermore the door through which they had entered was gone. Bob sat down on the comfortable floor and tried not to worry.

  Diktor returned promptly. Wilson saw the door dilate to let him in, but did not catch on to how it was done. Diktor was carrying a carafe, which gurgled pleasantly, and a cup. "Mud ~n your eye," he said heartily and poured a good four fingers. "Drink up."

  Bob accepted the cup. "Aren't you drinking?"

  "Presently. I want to attend to your wounds first."

  "Okay." Wilson tossed off the first drink in almost indecent haste— it was good stuff, a little like Scotch, he decided, but smoother and not as dry—while Diktor worked deftly with salves that smarted at first, then soothed. "Mind if I have another?"

  "Help yourself."

  Bob drank more slowly the second cup. He did not finish it; it slipped from relaxed fingers, spilling a ruddy, brown stain across the floor. He snored.

  Bob Wilson woke up feeling fine and completely rested. He was cheer­ful without knowing why. He lay relaxed, eyes still closed, for a few moments and let his soul snuggle back into his body. This was going to be a good day, he felt. Oh, yes—he had finished that double-damned thesis. No, he hadn't either! He sat up with a start.

  The sight of the strange walls around him brought him back into continuity. But before he had time to worry—at once, in fact—the door relaxed and Diktor stepped in. "Feeling better?"

  "Why, yes, I do. Say, what is this?"

  "We'll get to that. How about some breakfast?"

  In Wilson's scale of evaluations breakfast rated just after life itself and ahead of the chance of immortality. Diktor conducted him to another room—the first that he had seen possessing windows. As a matter of fact half the room was open, a balcony hanging high over a green countryside. A soft, warm, summer breeze wafted through the place. They broke their fast in luxury, Roman style, while Diktor explained.

  Bob Wilson did not follow the explanations as closely as he might have done, because his attention was diverted by the maidservants who served the meal. The first came in bearing a great tray of fruit on her head. The fruit was gorgeous. So was the girl. Search as he would he could discern
no fault in her.

  Her costume lent itself to the search.

  She came first to Diktor, and with a single, graceful movement dropped to one knee, removed the tray from her head, and offered it to him. He helped himself to a small, red fruit and waved her away. She then offered it to Bob in the same delightful manner.

  "As I was saying," continued Diktor, "it is not certain where the High Ones came from or where they went when they left Earth. I am inclined to think they went away into Time. In any case they ruled more than twenty thousand years and completely obliterated human culture as you knew it. What is more important to you and to me is the effect they had on the human psyche. One twentieth-century style go-getter can accom­plish just about anything he wants to accomplish around here—Aren't you listening?"

  "Huh? Oh, yes, sure. Say, that's one mighty pretty girl." His eyes still rested on the exit through which she had disappeared.

  "Who? Oh, yes, I suppose so. She's not exceptionally beautiful as women go around here."

  "That's hard to believe. I could learn to get along with a girl like that."

  "You like her? Very well, she is yours."

  "Huh?"

  "She's a slave. Don't get indignant. They are slaves by nature. If you like her, I'll make you a present of her. It will make her happy." The girl had just returned. Diktor called to her in a language strange to Bob. "Her name is Arma," he said in an aside, then spoke to her briefly.

  Arma giggled. She composed her face quickly, and, moving over to where Wilson reclined, dropped on both knees to the floor and lowered her head, with both hands cupped before her. "Touch her forehead," Diktor instructed.

  Bob did so. The girl arose and stood waiting placidly by his side. Diktor spoke to her. She looked puzzled, but moved out of the room. "I told her that, notwithstanding her new status, you wished her to continue serving breakfast."

  Diktor resumed his explanations while the service of the meal con­tinued. The next course was brought in by Arma and another girl. When Bob saw the second girl he let out a low whistle. He realized he had been a little hasty in letting Diktor give him Arma. Either the standard of pulchritude had gone up incredibly, he decided, or Diktor went to a lot of trouble in selecting his servants.