The Fourth Time Travel MEGAPACK®

by Fritz Leiber

  Her room was shared, of necessity, with three men. Tall, gangling Boris gave her no trouble, turned his back when she undressed for the evening, even though she was careful to slip under the covers first. Ivan, the second man, was short, thin, stooped. Often she found him looking at her with what might have been more than a healthy interest, but aside from that he kept his peace. Besides, Ivan had spent two years in secondary school (as much as Sophia) and she enjoyed conversing with him.

  The third man, Georgi, was the troublemaker. Georgi was one of those plump young men with red cheeks, big, eager eyes, a voice somewhat too high. He was an avid talker, a boaster and a bore. In the beginning he showered attentions on Sophia. He insisted on drawing her wash-basin at night, escorted her to breakfast every morning, told her in confidence of the conquests he had made over beautiful women (but not as beautiful as you, Sophia). He soon began to take liberties. He would sit—timorously at first, but with growing boldness—on the corner of her bed, talking with her at night after the others had retired, Ivan with his snores, Boris with his strong, deep breathing. And night after night, plump Georgi grew bolder.

  He would reach out and touch Sophia, he would insist on tucking her in at night (let me be your big brother), he would awaken her in the morning with his hand heavy on her shoulder. Finally, one night at bedtime, she heard him conversing in low whispers with Ivan and Boris. She could not hear the words, but Boris looked at her with what she thought was surprise, Ivan nodded in an understanding way, and both of them left the room.

  Sophia frowned. “What did you tell them, Georgi?”

  “That we wanted to be alone one evening, of course.”

  “I never gave you any indication—”

  “I could see it in your eyes, in the way you looked at me.”

  “Well, you had better call them back inside and go to bed.”

  Georgi shook his head, approached her.

  “Georgi! Call them back or I will.”

  “No, you won’t.” Georgi followed her as she retreated into a corner of the room. When she reached the wall and could retreat no further, he placed his thick hands on her shoulders, drew her to him slowly. “You will call no one,” he rasped.

  She ducked under his arms, eluded him, was on the point of running to the door, throwing it open and shouting, when she considered. If she did, she would be asking for quarter, gaining a temporary reprieve, inviting the same sort of thing all over again.

  She crossed to the bed and sat down. “Come here, Georgi.”

  “Ah.” He came to her.

  She watched him warily, a soft flabby man not quite so tall as she was, but who nevertheless outweighed her by thirty or forty pounds. In his eagerness, he walked too fast, lost his footing and floated gently to the ceiling. Smiling as demurely as she could, Sophia reached up, circled his ankle with her hand.

  “I never could get used to this weightlessness,” Georgi admitted. “Be nice and pull me down.”

  “I will be nice. I will teach you a lesson.”

  He weighed exactly nothing. It was as simple as stretching. Sophia merely extended her arm upwards and Georgi’s head hit the ceiling with a loud thunk. Georgi groaned. Sophia repeated the procedure, lowering her arm a foot—and Georgi with it—then raising it and bouncing his head off the ceiling.

  “I don’t understand,” Georgi whined, trying to break free but only succeeding in thrashing his chubby arms foolishly.

  “You haven’t mastered weightlessness,” Sophia smiled up at him. “I have. I said I would teach you a lesson. First make sure you have the strength of a man if you would play a man’s game.”

  Still smiling, Sophia commenced spinning the hand which held Georgi’s ankle. Arms and free leg flailing air helplessly, Georgi began to spin.

  “Put me down!” he whined, a boy now, not even pretending to be a man. When Sophia shoved out gently and let his ankle go he did a neat flip in air and hung suspended, upside down, his feet near the ceiling, his head on a level with Sophia’s shoulders. He cried.

  She slapped his upside down face, carefully and without excitement, reddening the cheeks. “I was—only joking,” he slobbered. “Call back our friends.”

  Sophia found one of the hard, air-tight metal flasks they used for drinking in weightlessness. With one hand she opened the lid, with the other she grasped Georgi’s shoulder and spun him in air, still upside down. She squirted the water in his face, and because he was upside down and yelling it made him choke and cough. When the container was empty she lowered Georgi gently to the floor.

  Minutes later, she opened the door, summoned Boris and Ivan, who came into the room self-consciously. What they found was a thoroughly beaten Georgi sobbing on the floor. After that, Sophia had no trouble. Week after week of boredom followed and she almost wished Georgi or someone else would look for trouble…even if it were something she could not handle, for although she was stronger than average and more beautiful, she was still a woman first, and she knew if the right man.…

  * * * *

  “Did you know that radio communication is maintained between Earth and Mars?” the Alaric Arkalion on Mars asked Temple.

  “Why, no. I never thought about it.”

  “It is, and I am in some difficulty.”

  “What’s the matter?” Temple had grown to like Arkalion, despite the man’s peculiarities. He had given up trying to figure him out, feeling that the only way he’d get anywhere was with Arkalion’s cooperation.

  “It’s a long story which I’m afraid you would not altogether understand. The authorities on Earth don’t think I belong here on the Nowhere Journey.”

  “Is that so? A mistake, huh? I sure am glad for you, Alaric.”

  “That’s not the difficulty. It seems that there is the matter of impersonation, of violating some of the clauses in Public Law 1182. You’re glad for me. I’m likely to go to prison.”

  “If it’s that serious, how come they told you?”

  “They didn’t. But I—managed to find out. I won’t go into details, Kit, but obviously, if I managed to embark for Nowhere when I didn’t have to, then I wanted to go. Right?”

  “I—uh, guess so. But why—?”

  “That isn’t the point. I still want to go. Not to Mars, but to Nowhere. I still can, despite what has happened, but I need help.”

  Temple said, “Anything I can do, I’ll be glad to,” and meant it. For one thing, he liked Arkalion. For another, Arkalion seemed to know more, much more than he would ever say—unless Temple could win his confidence. For a third, Temple was growing sick and tired of Mars with its drab ochre sameness (when he got to the surface, which was rarely), with its dank underground city, with its meaningless attention to meaningless detail. Either way, he figured there was no returning to Earth. If Nowhere meant adventure, as he suspected it might, it would be preferable. Mars might have been the other end of the galaxy for all its nearness to Earth, anyway.

  “There is a great deal you can do. But you’ll have to come with me.”

  “Where?” Temple demanded.

  “Where you will go eventually. To Nowhere.”

  “Fine.” And Temple smiled. “Why not now as well as later?”

  “I’ll be frank with you. If you go now, you go untrained. You may need your training. Undoubtedly, you will.”

  “You know a lot more than you want to talk about, don’t you?”

  “Frankly, yes.… I am sorry, Kit.”

  “That’s all right. You have your reasons. I guess if I go with you I’ll find out soon enough, anyway.”

  Arkalion grinned. “You have guessed correctly. I am going to Nowhere, before they return me to Earth for prosecution under Public Law 1182. I cannot go alone, for it takes at least two to operate…well, you’ll see.”

  “Count me in,” said
Temple.

  “Remember, you may one day wish you had remained on Mars for your training.”

  “I’ll take my chances. Mars is driving me crazy. All I do is think of Earth and Stephanie.”

  “Then come.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “A long, long way off. It is unthinkably remote, this place called Nowhere.”

  Temple felt suddenly like a kid playing hookey from school. “Lead on,” he said, almost jauntily. He knew he was leaving Stephanie still further behind, but had he been in prison on the next street to hers, he might as well have been a million miles away.

  As for Arkalion—the thought suddenly struck Temple—Arkalion wasn’t necessarily leaving his world further behind. Perhaps Arkalion was going home.…

  * * * *

  Stephanie picked up the phone eagerly. In the weeks since her first meeting with Mrs. Draper of the C.E.L., the older woman had been a fountain of information and of hope for her. Stephanie for her part had taken over Mrs. Draper’s job in her own section of Center City: she was busy contacting the two hundred mothers and fifty sweethearts of the Nowhere Journey which had taken Kit from her. And now Mrs. Draper had called with information.

  “We’ve successfully combined forces with some of the less militant elements in both houses of Congress,” Mrs. Draper told her over the phone. “Do you realize, my dear, this marks the first time the C.E.L. has managed to put something constructive through Congress? Until now we’ve been content merely to block legislation, such as an increase in the Nowhere contingent from.…”

  “Yes, Mrs. Draper. I know all that. But what about this constructive thing you’ve done.”

  “Well, my dear, don’t count your chickens. But we have passed the bill, and we expect the President won’t veto it. You see, the President has two nephews who.…”

  “I know. I know. What bill did you pass?”

  “Unfortunately, it’s somewhat vague. Ultimately, the Nowhere Commission must do the deciding, but it does pave the way.”

  “For what, Mrs. Draper?”

  “Hold onto your hat, my dear. The bill authorizes the Nowhere Commission to make as much of a study as it can of conditions—wherever our boys are sent.”

  “Oh.” Stephanie was disappointed. “That won’t get them back to us.”

  “No. You’re right, it won’t get them back to us. That isn’t the idea at all, for there is more than one way to skin a cat, my dear. The Nowhere Commission will be studying conditions—”

  “How can they? I thought everything was so hush-hush, not even Congress knew anything about it.”

  “That was the first big hurdle we have apparently overcome. Anyway, they will be studying conditions with a view of determining if one girl—just one, mind you—can embark on the Nowhere Journey as a pilot study and—”

  “But I thought they could make the journey only once every seven-hundred-eighty days.”

  “Get Congress aroused and you can move mountains. It seems the expense entailed in a trip at any but those times is generally prohibitive, but when something special comes up—”

  “It can be done! Mrs. Draper, how I love to talk with you!”

  “See? There you go, my dear, counting your chickens. One girl will be sent, if the study indicates she can take it. One girl, Stephanie, and only after a study. She’d merely be a pilot case. But afterwards.… Ah, afterwards.… Perhaps someday soon qualified women will be able to join their men in Nowhere.”

  “Mrs. Draper, I love you.”

  “Naturally, you will tell all this to prospective C.E.L. members. Now we have something concrete to work with.”

  “I know. And I will, I will, Mrs. Draper. By the way, how are they going to pick the girl, the one girl?”

  “Don’t count your chickens, for Heaven’s sake! They haven’t even studied the situation yet. Well, I’ll call you, my dear.”

  Stephanie hung up, dressed, went about her canvassing. She thought happy thoughts all week.

  * * * *

  “Shh! Quiet,” cautioned Arkalion, leading the way down a flight of heavy-duty plastic stairs.

  “How do you know your way around here so well?”

  “I said quiet.”

  It was not so much, Temple realized, that Arkalion was really afraid of making noise. Rather, he did not want to answer questions.

  Temple smiled in the semi-darkness, heard the steady drip-drip-drip of water off somewhere to his left. Eons before the coming of man on this stopover point to Nowhere, the Martian waters had retreated from the planet’s ancient surface and seeped underground to carve, slow drop by drop, the caverns which honey-combed the planet. “You know your way around so well, I’d swear you were a Martian.”

  Arkalion’s soft laugh carried far. “I said there was to be no noise. Please! As for the Martians, the only Martians are here all around you, the men of Earth. Ahh, here we are.”

  At the bottom of the flight of stairs Temple could see a door, metallic, giving the impression of strength without great weight. Arkalion paused a moment, did something with a series of levers, shook his head impatiently, started all over again.

  “What’s that for?” Temple wanted to know.

  “What do you think? It is a combination lock, with five million possible combinations. Do you want to be here for all of eternity?”

  “No.”

  “Then quiet.”

  Vaguely, Temple wondered why the door wasn’t guarded.

  “With a lock like this,” Arkalion explained, as if he had read Temple’s thought, “they need no other precaution. It is assumed that only authorized personnel know the combination.”

  Then had Arkalion come this way before? It seemed the only possible assumption. But when? And how? “Here we are,” said Arkalion.

  The door swung in toward them.

  Temple strode forward, found himself in a great bare hall, surprisingly well-lighted. After the dimness of the caverns, he hardly could see.

  “Don’t stand there scowling and fussing with your eyes. There is one additional precaution—an alarm at Central Headquarters. We have about five minutes, no more.”

  At one end of the bare hall stood what to Temple looked for all the world like an old-fashioned telephone booth, except that its walls were completely opaque. On the wall adjacent to it was a single lever with two positions marked “hold” and “transport”. The lever stood firmly in the “hold” position.

  “You sure you want to come?” Arkalion demanded.

  “Yes, I told you that.”

  “Good. I have no time to explain. I will enter the conveyor.”

  “Conveyor?”

  “This booth. You will wait until the door is shut, then pull the lever down. That is all there is to it, but, as you can see, it is a two-man operation.”

  “But how do I—”

  “Haste, haste! There are similar controls at the other end. You pull the lever, wait two minutes, enter the conveyor yourself. I will fetch you—if you are sure.”

  “I’m sure, dammit!”

  “Remember, you go without training, without the opportunity everyone else has.”

  “You already told me that. Mars is halfway to eternity. Mars is limbo. If I can’t go back to Earth I want to go—well, to Nowhere. There are too many ghosts here, too many memories with nothing to do.”

  Arkalion shrugged, entered the booth. “Pull the lever,” he said, and shut the door.

  Temple reached up, grasped the lever firmly in his hand, yanked it. It slid smoothly to the position marked “transport.” Temple heard nothing, saw nothing, began to think the device, whatever it was, did not work. Did Arkalion somehow get moved inside the booth?

  Temple thought he heard footfalls on the stairs outside. Soon, fain
tly, he could hear voices. Someone banged on the door to the hall. Licking dry lips, Temple opened the booth, peered inside.

  Empty.

  The voices clamored, fists pounded on the door. Something clicked. Tumblers fell. The door to the great, bright hall sprung outward. Someone rushed in at Temple, who met him savagely with a short, chopping blow to his jaw. The man, temporarily blinded by the dazzling light, stumbled back in the path of his fellows.

  Temple darted into the booth, the conveyor, and slammed it shut. Fingers clawed on the outside.

  A sound almost too intense to be heard rang in Temple’s ears. He lost consciousness instantly.

  CHAPTER VI

  “What a cockeyed world,” said Alaric Arkalion Sr. to his son. “You certainly can’t plan on anything, even if you do have more money than you’ll ever possibly need in a lifetime.”

  “Don’t feel like that,” said young Alaric. “I’m not in prison any longer, am I?”

  “No. But you’re not free of the Nowhere Journey, either. There is an unheralded special trip to Nowhere, two weeks from today, I have been informed.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yes, oh. I have also been informed that you will be on it. You didn’t escape after all, Alaric.”

  “Oh. Oh!”

  “What bothers me most is that scoundrel Smith somehow managed to escape. They haven’t found him yet, I have also been informed. And since my contract with him calls for ten million dollars ‘for services rendered,’ I’ll have to pay.”

  “But he didn’t prevent me from—”

  “I can’t air this thing, Alaric! But listen, son: when you go where you are going, you’re liable to find another Alaric Arkalion, your double. Of course, that would be Smith. If you can get him to cut his price in half because of what has happened, I would be delighted. If you could somehow manage to wring his neck, I would be even more delighted. Ten million dollars—for nothing.”