Collected Fiction (1940-1963)

by William P. McGivern

  Hundreds of German soldiers manned the equipment. At first glance the major knew that he and his men had blundered into a trap from which there was no escaping. But as his eyes swung over the scene his fear for his men was replaced by sheer incredulous amazement.

  For the hundreds of German soldiers were not preparing to open fire or unleash a savage tank attack. They were milling about in confusion, as if they had forgotten their orders, or were completely demoralized by some major catastrophe.

  THE major was almost too stunned to take advantage of the situation. But as his men crowded up the slope at his heels, he snapped to a full appreciation of his advantage.

  “Charge!” he yelled. “Give ’em hell!”

  At the base of the slope, beside the towering artillery structure, the major met a maniacal German officer. He was the only man who offered any resistance.

  He was screaming, “The fools! The fools! They won’t listen to me. They’ve gone mad. They don’t understand—”

  When this officer saw the charging British soldiers he fired wildly at them, but his aim was erratic. The major dropped him for good with one careful shot.

  After that it only took a short time to round up the Germans, disarm them and confiscate their equipment . . .

  “Damndest thing I’ve ever seen,” the Australian driver said to the major, “This whole bunch of kraut heads act like they’ve gone sun daffy.”

  The major didn’t answer. Queer, disturbing thoughts were plucking at his brain, but he was too busy superintending the job of taking over the German camp, to worry about anything else.

  Those of the wounded that could be moved were shifted to the faster German trucks, and sped on to Cairo. A number of soldiers were left to guard the prisoners, captured tanks, and artillery.

  It was a long tiring job to organize and manage, but through it all the major’s attention wandered time and again to a number of things beyond his understanding.

  Had all the Germans been suddenly sun-struck? That question popped into his mind a dozen times during the long hot afternoon, as he watched the dazed, glassy-eyed, stumbling prisoners being herded into trucks.

  And their vague, senseless mumblings, incoherent and meaningless—

  Finally the long tiresome job was done. The prisoners were under guard, his own men were fed and quartered for the night, and the major could relax.

  That is, after he wrote his nightly report, he could relax.

  In an improvised tent he stared for a long moment at the sheet of paper on the table, before tearing it up and throwing it disgustedly into a corner.

  Lighting a cigarette he strolled out of the tent. Night, black and swift, had descended. The bowl of the dark sky was studded with myriad pin points of silver.

  Looming above in the blackness was the bulky outline of the firing tower the Germans had constructed to elevate their artillery.

  The major walked slowly along the row of trucks that held those unfortunates who couldn’t be moved. He would start them on their way as soon as possible. Some strange attraction drew him to the end of the line, where a white cloaked figure with a flowing beard lay in uncomplaining agony, mumbling his ageless prayers.

  MOSOCH, the Hebrew, was lying patiently in his litter, and he looked up when the major approached.

  One glance into those sunken, filmy eyes was enough to reveal that the angel of death was laying his soothing hand on that noble, suffering brow.

  “My time is come,” Mosoch said feebly, “it has been written. On this place where the wrath of the God of Jehovah has been felt, I find my moment. Here, where the command of the Lord has been violated, I depart. That much has been written. Good-bye, my friend.”

  “Please,” Major Archibald Douglass leaned forward and gripped the old patriarch’s arm, “you mustn’t go. I mean—I mean without explaining what you’ve said. About the wrath of the Lord, I mean. I must know.”

  He leaned forward as the old man’s lips fluttered laboriously. The major heard three words, three strange, unbelievable words.

  The last word was followed by a gasping choke, and before it had ceased to sound, Mosoch was dead.

  Shaken, the major returned to his tent. He smoked three cigarettes nervously trying to decide what to write in his official report of the action. Through the flap of the tent he could see the looming bulk of the artillery structure the Germans had built.

  What a good joke on them.

  After a while Major Douglass wrote his report.

  He wrote: “In a skirmish at the bridge head of the Nile tributary, our force was able to capture the personnel and equipment of an ambushing German camp. Our success was due primarily to the bad judgment of the enemies’ selection of artillery positions He smiled as he wrote that last line. The report was rather inadequate but, after all, what else could he say?

  In a military report he couldn’t point out the significance of a fact that had only occurred to him a few moments ago. Namely, that the Manetong plateau derived its name from a contraction of two English words, “many” and “tongue.”

  Nor could he relate the incident of a feverish, dying Hebrew who had whispered to him that the curse of the Lord lay over this ground because on it presumptuous man had attempted to erect a structure into heaven.

  For adding all this together, his superior officers would decide that he was trying to imply that the Germans had accidentally built an artillery structure on the foundation of the ancient, almost legendary Tower of Babel.

  Which was perfectly silly, of course.

  SAFARI TO THE LOST AGES

  First published in the July 1942 issue of Fantastic Adventures.

  What thing could be so valuable that five people would face certain death in Earth’s dim past to gain possession of it?

  CHAPTER I

  The Present

  BARRY RUDD glanced up from the charts on his desk as McGregor, his burly, square-faced assistant, lumbered into his office.

  McGregor’s red face was redder than usual and there was an outraged gleam in his normally mild eyes.

  “Boss,” he said hoarsely, “I’m reaching the limits of my patience. No fair man will deny that I’ve stood for a lot, but this is the final straw. I just can’t take any more.”

  “What’s up, Mac?” Barry Rudd asked quizzically.

  “It’s just this: We’re goin’ soft as lap dogs on a cream diet. When I think of what we used to be and what we are now I could weep for the shame of it. And it’s gone far enough, I tell you. Right now is the time to stop.”

  The big Scotchman paused and swept a heavy arm about the elaborately furnished office.

  “This ain’t our style, boss,” he said, almost pleadingly. “We don’t belong on the two hundred and fifteenth floor of an office building.”

  Barry Rudd stood up, grinning faintly. He was a tall young man with solid shoulders and narrow hips. His features were regular and pleasant, but his gray eyes were startlingly out of place in that ordinary face. His eyes were the eyes of a man who has seen everything the world contained and who has found much of it not worth looking at. They were not cynical, but, rather, amused, as if deep inside he were grinning at something that others couldn’t see.

  “Are you sure it’s not spring fever that’s bothering you, Mac?” he asked, still smiling.

  “Spring fever!” McGregor snorted. “That’s not my trouble and you know it. I’ll tell you what’s bothering me.”

  “I wish you would,” Barry sighed.

  “All right. Time travel today is just as common as telephones were a couple of hundred years ago. You can’t deny that we had a lot to do with convincing people that it’s a safe and sensible pastime. Now that, in a nutshell, is my gripe.”

  Barry ran his hand through his black kinky hair and laughed.

  “I don’t follow you, Mac. Sure time travel is safe. If it wasn’t we’d be darn soon out of business. If people weren’t making vacation excursions into the past there would be little use for our time travel
agency, our machines and our services. We organize, equip and direct expeditions into the past. It’s a good business. We make nice money. I don’t see your complaint.”

  McGREGOR jammed his hands into his pockets and paced nervously up and down the room, breathing heavily.

  “Maybe I can’t explain what I feel,” he growled. “In the old days we had fun. There was a lot of excitement exploring the past. Sure, it wasn’t all coffee and cake, but damn it, it was living. Remember that fracas we had in the twelfth century? The time I got captured by the Saracens and you got there just in time to save me from being cut into sixty-six pieces?”

  “I remember,” Barry said softly. McGregor’s words were churning memories to life within him.

  “Now,” McGregor went on disgustedly, “we’re acting as nursemaids for a lot of tittering school teachers who don’t want to go back any farther than their own grandparents. I tell you it ain’t right. And this girl is the last straw. She—”

  “Girl?” Barry interrupted. “What girl?”

  “Didn’t I tell you?” McGregor stopped pacing. “I guess I was so mad I forgot all about it.”

  “I guess you did,” Barry said drily. “She’s out in the reception room now,” McGregor continued moodily. “She wants to see you.”

  “Why didn’t you send her in?” Barry asked.

  “I was just going to,” McGregor said guiltily, “when all of a sudden I looked at her and got mad all over. I told her to wait and I came in to get this off my chest.”

  Barry sat down behind his desk and toyed with a pencil with lean strong fingers.

  “What’s wrong with her?” he asked ironically. “She must be pretty terrible if the mere sight of her caused you to explode like this.”

  “There’s nothing wrong with her,” McGregor muttered. “She’s little and pretty with great big eyes. But she’s either a college dame or a society debutante. I could tell that from her clothes.”

  “Very shrewd of you,” Barry said with faint sarcasm.

  “You don’t get what I mean,” McGregor said miserably. “If we start taking business like that we’re sunk forever. She’ll probably want us to take a party of young punks back fifty or sixty years for a party or something. Or maybe she’ll want an expedition for a sorority initiation.” The big Scotchman shuddered visibly at the thought. “Don’t you see, boss,” he went on desperately, “if we start sending out joy rides like that we’re through. Let me tell her you aren’t in. Then let’s lock the door of this office and throw the key away. That’s the only way we’ll ever get away.”

  “It’s a tempting idea,” Barry said thoughtfully, “but it’s out of the question right now. Maybe when we get ourselves straightened out financially we can make a break like that. Now you’d better show the young lady in before she decides to take her business somewhere else.”

  “All right,” McGregor grumbled mournfully, “but wait and see. You’re making a mistake.”

  WHEN the girl walked into his office, Barry received a start. McGregor had neglected to say that she was extraordinarily beautiful. Her hair was long and dark and her eyes were the clearest, deepest and bluest that Barry had ever seen. There was a lithe grace in her stride as she approached his desk.

  He stood up and held a chair for her. “Thank you,” she said. “You’re Barry Rudd, aren’t you?”

  “Guilty,” he smiled. “What can I do for you?”

  She didn’t answer immediately. Instead her deep eyes regarded him thoughtfully, almost appraisingly.

  “Is anything wrong?” he asked.

  “I don’t think so,” she said slowly. “You’ve changed a little, but not too much.”

  “Changed?” Barry asked, mystified. “Have we met before?”

  “No,” the girl said, “we haven’t met before. But five years ago, Mr. Rudd, you were a special hero of mine. I suppose every girl in her teens has one. I collected all the pictures and stories of you that I ran across and pasted them into a scrapbook. I followed your career as closely as I could. It used to be my fondest dream that I could go with you on one of your exciting trips into the deep past.”

  Barry ran a finger under his collar uncomfortably.

  “That’s very nice,” he said awkwardly, “but why are you telling me this now?”

  “Because,” the girl said quietly, “I need the Barry Rudd of five years ago. I need the Barry Rudd who laughed at the danger of time travel, who loved the excitement of it, who flashed deeper into the past than any man has since, and did it with a smile on his lips. There was something about that Barry Rudd that made him seem a knight in shining armor to a silly sixteen year old girl. I’m wondering if the armor is still shining, Mr. Rudd.”

  Barry sat down behind his desk, face expressionless. He cupped his chin in his hands and stared steadily at the girl.

  “Suppose you tell me what you want?” he suggested quietly.

  The girl leaned forward eagerly and Barry noticed that her small hands were clasped together, the knuckles whitening with strain.

  “My name is Linda Carstairs,” she said. “My father, Professor Carstairs, traveled into the past about three months ago. His trip was supposed to be a very brief one. In fact he only took food enough for three or four days. He was accompanied by his laboratory assistant. They haven’t returned.”

  “I remember reading about it,” Barry said, “As I recall they were going back to the fourth century. Is that correct?”

  “No, it isn’t,” the girl said evenly. “For some reason or other there was a great deal of secrecy about the purpose of the trip and father didn’t announce his real destination. Actually he was planning on traveling much deeper than the fourth century.”

  BARRY straightened up, a flicker of interest in his eyes.

  “Just where was he going?”

  “He was attempting to reach the era before the North American ice age,” the girl answered. “He estimated it at thirty thousand years B.C.”

  “Thirty thousand years B.C.” Barry muttered. “Whatever put an idea like that in your father’s head?”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Linda Carstairs said helplessly. “It was necessary and that was sufficient reason for him.” Barry was silent for a moment. Then he said,

  “And you want me to go after him? Is that why you came here?”

  “I know he isn’t dead,” Linda said passionately. “Everyone has told me I’m crazy for thinking that, but it isn’t a matter of logic or reason. It’s something I feel inside me. I came here because I felt you were the one person who could help me. Please, won’t you?” Barry suddenly found it impossible to meet her eyes. He dropped his gaze to the pencil he held in his hands.

  “You must realize,” he said uncomfortably, “that what you are asking is practically impossible. It just isn’t feasible. Besides the expense and the danger there’s the possibility that your father—I mean, well, we might not find any trace of him.”

  Barry lifted his eyes to the girl’s and what he saw there brought a stain of color to his cheeks. It wasn’t actually contempt. Worse, it was something close to pity.

  “I’m sorry to have troubled you,” she said, standing up. “I was looking for a man by the name of Barry Rudd, but I seem to be about five years late.”

  She turned on her slender ankles and started for the door, but not so quickly that Barry didn’t see the trembling of her firm small chin.

  The door opened before she reached it, and McGregor stuck his big red face into the room.

  “Well, boss,” he said resignedly, “I suppose we’ve got ourselves a job, eh?” In the next brief instant Barry Rudd did a lot of thinking. He thought of the comfortable, safe existence he was enjoying, the sensible, dependable business he was building, and he wasn’t pleased.

  He thought of Linda Carstair’s deep blue eyes and the look of contemptuous pity that he had seen in them and he wasn’t pleased with that either.

  He stood up and there was a reckless smile on his lips. A smile that had be
en absent for almost five years.

  “Miss Carstairs,” he said suddenly. “Please don’t go. I’ve changed my mind.”

  “I knew it,” growled McGregor. “Now we are sunk.”

  Linda Carstairs was half way through the door when Barry spoke. She stopped dead and turned slowly, almost as if she didn’t trust her ears. When she saw the smile on his face her eyes changed to stars.

  “I wasn’t wrong,” she breathed. “I wasn’t too late.”

  McGregor scowled at the floor. “What kind of a stunt are we in for now?” he demanded of Barry.

  Barry solemnly removed the office keys from his pocket and tossed them to him.

  “You may lock the office,” he said, “and then throw those as far away as you can. We’re nomads again.”

  “Hot dog!” McGregor yelped. “How far, boss?”

  “It’s the jackpot this time,” Barry said, “thirty four thousands years should do it.”

  McGregor had a hard time swallowing.

  CHAPTER II

  30,000 Years Into the Past

  IT TOOK a week to make the necessary arrangements. Barry checked every detail of the trip personally. It was while he was checking a long list of supplies, frowning absorbedly at the items listed, that the door of his office opened and Linda Carstairs entered.

  With her was a tall, heavyset man of about thirty-five years. He had a frank, open face, and blond, almost wheat-colored hair. His eyes were a pale blue, surprisingly keen and intense. The tweeds he wore fitted him well, giving his bigness a smooth, trimmed-down look.

  Barry shoved the papers from him and stood up.

  “Mr. Rudd,” Linda smiled at him, “this is my fiancé, Bruce Allerton. Bruce was one of my father’s closest friends.”

  The men shook hands.

  “Glad to know you, Allerton,” Barry said. He appraised the other man carefully. You’re not good enough for her, he found himself thinking. This was a foolish, illogical thought, and he smiled wryly to himself. What difference did it make to him?