Collected Fiction (1940-1963)

by William P. McGivern

  SIDETRACK IN TIME

  First published in the July 1941 issue of Amazing Stories.

  Kingley knew how to get rid of the professor without murdering him—just maroon him in the future! But he found out he wasn’t so smart, because when he got back—

  PHILIP KINGLEY’S hand was moist as it closed over the cold butt of the automatic that nestled in the flap pocket of his lab jacket. He swallowed nervously and licked his dry lips. Everything was ready. The old man was washing his hands in the next room and in a few seconds he would step back into the laboratory, muttering absent-mindedly to himself and peering near-sightedly about with bright blue eyes as he always did.

  Then—raise the gun quickly and fire and it would be all over!

  Kingley knew there was nothing to worry about but he wished the cold tight knot in his stomach would stop bothering him. He wiped his free hand across his damp forehead and then clenched it fiercely and jammed it into his trouser pocket to keep it from shaking. “Well, well,” a dry, old voice sounded behind him, “you look as pale as a ghost. Matter? Trip tomorrow got you scared?”

  Kingley wheeled at the sound of Professor Newton’s voice, his heartbeats thudding frantically against his ribs. The old man was muttering to himself and his bright blue eyes were peering uncertainly about the lab.

  “Where in thunder’d I leave my glasses, Phil?” Kingley heard him mutter. “Can’t find a blasted thing when you need—ups.” He found them on his forehead and adjusted them over his eyes, harrumphing noisily all the time.

  Kingley’s hand tightened on the gun in his pocket. With his eye he selected a spot in the center of Professor Newton’s wrinkled forehead. He drew the gun half clear of the pocket flap, waited his chance.

  “Great thing our trip,” the Professor was mumbling. “Ought to be proud of ourselves, eh? First humans to travel through time and pierce the veil of the future. Yessir, a great thing.”

  Kingley tried to pull the gun then but his muscles refused to obey the desperate command of his brain. He slumped suddenly against the lab bench his chest heaving like a bellows, his heart hammering furiously.

  It was no use. He couldn’t commit murder. Not cold-blooded, deliberate murder. The gun slid back into his pocket. He couldn’t kill this way—but—already his mind was exploring another infinitely simpler and more subtle plan that had just occurred to him.

  “S’matter?” the Professor asked grumpily. “Sick? Snap out of it, ’cause”—he paused to cackle—“we can’t take any sick people into the future.”

  “No,” Kingley said weakly, “we can’t.” He watched the old man puttering about the lab bench and his lips parted in a triumphant smirk.

  IT was so simple. It was surprising that it hadn’t occurred to him before this.

  He and Professor Newton were testing the Professor’s time machine tomorrow. The machine worked—they had sent it into time by itself—but this was the first passenger trip. If they traveled, say, a thousand years into the future, what was to prevent him from leaving the Professor stranded there and return himself to the present? Then with the Professor out of the way the time machine would be his exclusive property, a source of limitless wealth and power.

  It wouldn’t be necessary to kill the Professor then, merely strand him in time, and thus eliminate him forever from the present.

  Kingley’s grin widened as his eyes followed the bent old figure of the Professor as he puttered around the lab equipment. Their time trip tomorrow would be a one way trip to oblivion for the old coot.

  “Can’t wait,” he heard the old man mutter, “to see, really see the future.”

  Kingley smiled.

  “No rush,” he thought to himself. “You’re going to be there a long, long time.”

  “READY?” snapped Professor Newton, his old voice trembly with suppressed excitement.

  “All set,” Kingley answered.

  It was the following day. They were seated inside the time machine on the leather tractor seats provided for that purpose. Around them, circling them like a cage, gleamed the shimmering contours of the time machine, undulating weirdly, as if the silvery bars were twisting and bending from one dimension to another.

  The Professor’s hand moved to a sliding bar that governed the entropy reduction apparatus on the machine, then he turned and nodded briefly to Kingley. His other hand rested on a bar, calibrated with time units. Days, months, years, were marked above small levers and another bar, fitted above this one was marked with the smaller time units of seconds, minutes, hours.

  The Professor’s hand moved a lever and suddenly Kingley felt an amazing sensation. It was if his body had suddenly developed a fluid constituency and was twisting and bending and undulating in accordance with the silver bars of the machine. For an instant he tried to yell, but then the familiar lab, visible through the bars of the machine, vanished abruptly and he seemed to be hurtling at express train speed down a black corridor that seemed, somehow to be twisting and bending before him.

  How long this sensation lasted he couldn’t tell, but after what seemed an interminable period it ceased, almost imperceptively at first and then with a swift abruptness that brought the blood to his temples in a dizzying rush.

  The shimmering, undulating bars of the time cage gradually steadied slightly and Kingley was able to see a broad, vista extending before them.

  The Professor was nudging him.

  “All right, all right,” the old voice cracked in his ear. “We’re here. Get out, get out. Let’s look around.”

  Kingley climbed out of the cramped quarters and peered about, his curiosity for the moment transcending the real purpose of his trip.

  It was a barren, rock-blighted scene that met their eyes. As far as they could see mighty boulders were piled one upon the other and everything was quiet; frighteningly quiet.

  “H-how far are we?” Kingley asked.

  “Five thousand years into the future,” the old Professor said casually. “If there’s any humans, they must be occupying another part of the globe.”

  Kingley clenched his fists nervously as the Professor moved away from the shimmering machine to inspect a peculiarly colored piece of slate. He was bending over, his back to Kingley, inches away from a fissure in the rock that dropped into a shallow valley.

  Kingley stepped behind him, noiselessly, carefully. This was his chance. He’d never get a better one. A slight shove with his hand . . .

  His hand reached out, and then the Professor turned.

  “Say look—” his voice trailed off as he took in Kingley’s tense, crouched figure. His eyes widened and his mouth opened but it was too late to cry out. Kingley’s hand collided with his frail shoulder. The old man staggered back a step and crashed downward into the shallow gully.

  KINGLEY watched triumphantly as the Professor slid down the rough shale siding, clawing frantically with his hands and feet until he stopped at the base of the rock, a cloud of rock dust rising about his frail, crumpled old figure.

  Then Kingley wheeled and stepped into the time machine. He grinned exultantly as he set the devices and levers, his hands working swiftly, automatically. But even in his haste he did not forget the primary law of time travel which the Professor had drummed into his head. Never return to the same second in time from which the trip originated. Wouldn’t do to get caught in a time groove at this stage in the game.

  He heard the Professor’s thin, cracked voice shouting frantically and he heard a scuffling, scratching sound as the old man attempted vainly to. scramble to the top of the ledge.

  Kingley’s grin split wider as he listened to these sounds.

  The twisting tunnel of blackness stretched before him then, endlessly, infinitely mysterious. Through its black unknown he rushed, backward, backward into the time that was past.

  As before, the sensation departed slowly at first and then with a dizzying rush of speed. The silvery shimmer of the bars was once again visible and through their glittering undulation he glimp
sed the familiar benches and equipment of Professor Newton’s laboratory.

  He scrambled out of the machine, the delirious feeling of success and power coursing through his veins like strong drink. His eyes traveled about the laboratory, slowly, gloatingly. All of it his. The equipment, the formulas and most important of all—the time machine.

  The Professor was removed from the scene forever. Kingley thought of the old man wandering dazedly about, five thousand years in the future and he laughed shrilly. If any snooper got suspicious—why let them snoop. What could they prove without a body?

  His possessive gaze rested on the time machine and he felt himself trembling with anticipatory greed. The money, the power, the position that it would give him were beyond the limits of imagination. Millions—

  “Well, well,” a horribly familiar voice blasted into his thoughts, “you look as if you’d seen a ghost.”

  Kingley wheeled, the cold crushing hand of fear closing over his heart.

  Professor Newton stood in the doorway!

  FOR a frozen instant Kingley stared into the Professor’s bright blue eyes and then he staggered back, his jaw hanging slack, an inarticulate bleat welling hysterically from his throat. Somehow—the thought pounded with horrible force into his frenzied brain—the old man had followed him back from time. Followed him from the future to point the finger of guilt at him. Now he was moving toward him.

  Kingley’s tongue clove to the roof of his mouth.

  “For God’s sake,” he tried to scream, “Keep away from me, do y’ hear? You can’t be here, you’re not here. Keep away from me.”

  Instinctively his hand slipped into his pocket, jerked out the automatic. The muscles in his arm refused to lift the gun shoulder high. His breath hissed through his teeth in great choking sobs as he backed away from the Professor. He couldn’t kill the old man. No one could. He had gone five thousand years into the future to get rid of him, but like some horrible nemesis the old Professor had tracked him back across the bridgeless gulf of Time.

  Suddenly strength flowed into his arm and he raised the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger. The blasting report reverberated through the lab and Kingley never heard the old Professor say: “Trip tomorrow got you scared?” Nor would Kingley ever know that in his haste to return to the Present, he had selected the day before he and Professor Newton started for the Future.

  He didn’t even see the figure behind him. The figure to which Professor Newton now said, his voice unmoved by the tragedy that had taken place before him:

  “Where in thunder’d I leave my glasses, Phil?”

  DOORWAY OF VANISHING MEN

  First published in the July 1941 issue of Fantastic Adventures.

  It was just an ordinary revolving door in a department store—except for one thing; people went into it, but didn’t come out!

  MY CITY Editor hung up the phone and pointed a determined finger at me.

  “You’re it,” he said. “That’s the fifteenth call I’ve had this morning about Barton’s Department Store. It would seem something very screwy is going on over there. Check on it and let me know the minute you pick up something that we might blow up into a column. Snap into it.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “One excellent reason,” my editor said with suspicious calm, “is that you are employed by this paper and hope to draw your check next week. Another fine reason is that there might be a story there. I know this latter reason does not appeal to your idealistic nature, but for the sake of the first—scram!”

  It is my opinion that editors see too many movies and consequently get to acting like Hollywood thinks an editor ought to act. Which is a sad state of affairs for reporters.

  I climbed to my feet, like the wage slave I am.

  “What seems to be popping over there?” I asked, starting to leave.

  “People,” my editor said distinctly, “are disappearing over there.”

  “Are you kidding?” I asked suspiciously.

  The slave driver shook his head. I could tell he was serious.

  “That’s the report. It might be just a corny gag but I’ve got a funny hunch it’s more serious than that.”

  I got moving then . . .

  TWENTY-TWO minutes later I walked into the office of Brixby Barton, President of the Barton Store. He was a plump, pink, harassed-looking little man with a nervous blink to his eyes. Surrounding him were a half-dozen assorted public-relations men, department heads, complaint managers, etc. Everybody looked plenty serious.

  “It’s the press, gentlemen,” I announced. “Ready to listen, look and tell all.”

  Barton flushed a deeper shade of pink and tried to smile.

  “Now Lansing,” he said weakly, “we don’t want any wild stories to get started. If you’ll just be patient we’ll try and give you the facts in the case. Above all we mustn’t have any undesirable publicity. Is that perfectly clear?”

  I began to feel my story pulse accelerating.

  “I won’t bother you gentlemen,” I smiled, as I backed toward the door. “I’ll just peek around on my own and see what’s up.”

  “No you don’t,” Barton cried unsteadily. He rose from his desk and hurried to my side, panting heavily. “I don’t trust you,” he said, with something like desperation in his voice. “You’ll get your story from us and nothing more. I’m not going to let you start any riot in this city. I carry plenty of advertising with your paper and you’ll print what I tell you.”

  I looked at Barton closely. His eyes were widened with fear and his mouth was twitching uncontrollably.

  “You’re in a jam,” I stated. “Something is decidedly screwy around here and I’ll get the story if I have to dynamite this building. If you want to play ball, I’m willing. Give me the straight dope about what’s eating you and everybody else in the store and I’ll treat you as gently as I can. If you’d rather play the role of Tough Executive, okay. You’ll still read the story in tomorrow morning’s News.”

  Barton took a deep breath.

  “You’re quite mistaken,” he said with an effort, “if you imagine that something—out of place is going on in my store.”

  “What about the people disappearing?” I snapped. “Would you call that out of place?”

  Barton clapped a hand over his mouth and peered fearfully about the office.

  “When did you find out?” he hissed to me.

  “Come on,” I said irritably, “let’s dispense with the question bee. I know, that’s enough, isn’t it? Do you start cooperating now, or do I get this story in my own prying, snoopy, annoying fashion?”

  Barton mopped his brow with a silk handkerchief and turned despairing eyes to the stooges grouped around his desk.

  “I—I’ll go with Mr. Lansing and show—tell him the story,” he said nervously. “We must cooperate with the press, of course. D—don’t give out any information on the phone while I’m away, to anyone.” He turned then and opened the door. “After you, Mr. Lansing,” he said tonelessly.

  HE followed me out of the office and led me to the elevators. On the way down he asked me a funny question.

  “Lansing,” he said earnestly, “do you believe in—in ghosts or spirits?” He blurted the last two words out as if anxious to get them off his tongue because they were hot.

  I looked hard at him.

  “Under certain circumstances I might,” I answered. “I remember one night believing firmly in the existence of three elephants that had followed me home.”

  He looked rather unhappy at my answer and nothing more was said until we reached the main floor and were walking toward the main revolving doors. I broke the silence.

  “What’s the matter with everyone?” I asked, peering about at the clerks and customers. “They all looked scared to death.”

  “They probably are,” Barton said unhappily. He had stopped walking and I saw that we were directly in front of the main entrance to Barton’s store. The four-paneled glass revolving doors were not in mot
ion. There was something vaguely disturbing about those doors. It might be, I decided, the odd manner that the sunlight bounced through them. The refraction was at a greater angle than the eye expected and the effect was somehow created that the panels might be out of true, or a bit warped.

  Through the door I could see cars whizzing by on State street and knots of pedestrians huddled about in a peculiar manner in front of the entrance to the store.

  “LOOK!” Barton suddenly cried in my ear.

  I followed his pointing finger and saw that a man was approaching the revolving doors. Barton was staring at him, as if mesmerized.

  The man stepped into the door and shoved the panel, and the door began to revolve.

  I saw the man clearly as he stepped into the door. I had been sober for a week. My eyes are good. May Heaven be my judge if I am not stating things accurately.

  That man vanished completely in that revolving door.

  The door turned slowly and came to a stop, concrete evidence of the energy of the man’s shove. But the man had completely disappeared. I could still see the cars whizzing by on State street through the glass panels of the door. The man had stepped into the revolving door from State street, but he had never entered the interior of the store. In some mysterious way he had been blotted up like a dew drop on a June day.

  I turned shakily to Barton.

  “D—did you see what I think I just saw?” I asked dazedly.

  Barton nodded miserably.

  “It’s been happening all morning,” he said dully. “Men, women and children have been vanishing in that revolving door since we opened the store this morning. At first we thought it was some publicity gag some magician might be working. But before we had the doors open ten minutes our complaint department was stormed by wives, fathers, mothers, all yelling their heads off because some relative or friend disappeared in the door. We’ve sent workmen in to inspect the floor and the mechanism of the door and they’ve vanished too. It’s terrible, absolutely terrible.”