"When
I came
to my
senses, I was in the
cage. Everything was humming and
glowing. There was a glow
outside the bars like a
moonlit
mist. The iron monster was
sitting at a table
with peculiar things—mechanical
things. In front of him were
big round
clock faces with whirling hands.
"Outside the cage was just
a fog,
crawling and shifting. I had
the feeling
that there were tremendous things to see!"
And there were, for "the
cage" was a time-traveling machine
from the future,
and in
it the
very dawn of the Earth would
be visited—and
the far-off
last days of the dying world
as well.
THE
EXILE OF TIME is super-adventure on a canvas without boundaries.
RAY CUMMINGS' ^
novels
in Ace editions:
THE
MAN WHO MASTERED TIME (D-173) BRIGANDS
OF THE
MOON (D-324) BEYOND THE VANISHING POINT
(D-331) WANDL THE INVADER (D-497) THE SHADOW GIRL (D-535) BEYOND THE STARS (F-248) A BRAND
NEW WORLD
(F-313)
THE
EXILE OPTIME
RAY CUMMIN6S
ACE BOOKS, INC. 1120
Avenue of the Americas New York, N.Y. 10036
the exile of time
Copyright
©, 1964,
by Thomas
Bouregy & Co.,
Inc.
An
Ace Book,
by arrangement
with Thomas Bouregy & Co., Inc.
All
Rights Reserved
INTRODUCTION to The
Exile Of Time
This novel was written around 1930,
and first appeared serially in 1931. Although the scope of its action covers
the beginning of Earth as a planet, and includes a chase in a time machine to
the end of the world, there are three main focal time-points in the story:
1777, 1932, and 2930. We know now, of course, that no such catastrophe as the
vengeance of Tugh overtook the city of New York in
1932, but this is of little moment. We also know that there was no invasion of
England by creatures from Mars toward the end of the last century, but that in
no way diminishes the appeal and excellence of H. G. Wells' War
of the Worlds.
Again, the picture of the far
future, drawn by the author in 1930, may seem tame to us in various
respects—although a society where humanoid robots do all menial work is still
futuristic enough. But to turn to the works of the great English author of
science fiction once more, the picture of centuries hence that he presents in When
the Sleeper Wakes is no less gripping for the fact
that, in many ways, our world of the 1960s has outstripped it in technological
pro
gress.
A classic tale of science fiction, as the present one is, does not go out of
date.
Time-travel was one of the
several themes Ray Cummin gs
presented in various guises in his novels. Raymond King Cummings was born in
1887. His father owned orange groves in Puerto Rico, and young Ray traveled
extensively during his youth. The Puerto Rican background, in addition to his
travels, may account for the strong element of sympathy toward Latins which he shows throughout his fiction, drawing on
them both for sympathetic and unsympathetic characters, in whom
fierce, proud ambition and gentleness are strangely combined.
He studied physics at Princeton
University, and before reaching his majority had worked in Wyoming oil fields,
gone gold-hunting in British Columbia, and been on timber cruises in the
North. From 1914 to 1919, he was personal assistant to Thomas A. Edison, and
did much work in relation to Edison records.
His first story, a novelet entitled, "The Girl in the Golden Atom,"
was published in All-Story Weekly magazine
in 1919; later, it appeared in book form both in the United Kingdom and the
United States. From the time that this tale was published to his death in 1957,
Cummings was a writer
of all types of popular fiction, but chiefly in the imaginative field which
includes fantasy and science fiction. His work was immensely popular with the
readers of the Munsey magazines; and when the regular science-fiction magazines
began to appear, their editors were deluged with requests for reprints of Cummings'
novels, and new stories by him. The publishers of the two senior publications
in the field, however, could not match rates with the chain published by
William Clayton, Jr., and it was for the Clayton Astounding
Stories that Cummings wrote his last three
long novels: Brigands of the Moon, Wandl, the Invader (a sequel to the first),
and The Exile of Time.
His work is noted for
the naturalness
of characterization
and the believable reactions of persons caught
up in
fantastic situations. He had no
use for
heroes who were either supermen or victims; they are
ordinary people, but each one has
his own
spark of individuality which distinguishes
him from the cardboard
characters that mar so much
science fiction.
Robert A.W. Lowndes
I
J[ he extraordinary incidents began about 1 A. M.
in the
night of June 8-9, 1935.
I was
walking through Patton Place, in New
York City, with my friend
Larry Gregory. My name
is George
Rankin. My business and Larry's—are details quite unimportant to this narrative. We had been friends in
college. Both of us were
working in New York; and with
all our
relatives in the middle west
we were
sharing an apartment on
this Patton Place—a short, crooked,
little-known street of not
particularly impressive residential
buildings lying near the
section known as Greenwich Village,
where towering office buildings of
the business
district encroach close upon
it.
This
night at 1 A. M.
it was
deserted. A taxi stood at
a comer; its driver had left
it there,
and evidently
gone to a nearby lunch room.
The night
was sultry
and dark,
with a
leaden sky. The houses were
mostly unlighted at this hour.
There was an occasional
apartment house among them, but mostly
they were low, ramshackle affairs of brick and
stone.
We
were still three blocks from
our apartment
when without warning the incidents
began which were to plunge
us and all the
city into disaster.
Larry
was saying,
"Wish we would get a
storm to clear this air—what the deed? George, did you hear that?
We
stood listening. There had sounded
a choking,
muffled scream. We were
midway in the block. There
was not
a pedestrian
in sight,
nor any
vehicle save the abandoned taxi
at the comer.
"A
woman," he said. "Did it
come from this house?"
"We
were standing before a three-story
brick residence. All its windows were
dark. There was a front
stoop of several steps, and a
basement entryway. The windows were
all closed, and the place had
the look
of being
unoccupied.
"Not
in there,
Larry," I answered. "It's closed for the summer—" But I got no
further; we heard it again.
And this time it sounded, not
like a scream, but like
a woman's
voice calling to attract
our attention.
"George!
Look therel" Larry cried.
The
glow from a street light
illumined the basement entryway, and behind one of
the dark
windows a girl's face was pressed
against the pane.
Larry
stood gripping me, then drew me
forward and down the steps of
the entryway.
There was a girl in
the front
basement room. Darkness was
behind her, but we could
see her white frightened face close
to the
glass. She tapped on the pane, and in the
silence we heard her muffled
voice.
"Let
me out!
Oh, let
me get
out!"
The
basement door had a locked
iron gate. I rattled it.
"No way of getting
in," I said then stopped
short with surprise. "What the devil—"
I joined Larry by the
window. The girl was only
a few
inches from us. She
had a
pale, frightened face; wide, terrified
eyes. Even with that first
glimpse, I was transfixed by her beauty—and startled; there
was something
weird about her. A low-necked, white satin dress disclosed
her snowy
shoulders; her head was
surmounted by a pile of
snow-white hair, with dangling white
curls framing her pale ethereal beauty. She called again.
"What's
the matter
with you?" Larry demanded. "Are
you alone in there? What is
it?"
She
backed from the window; we
could see her only as
a white blob in
the darkness
of the
basement room.
I
called, "Can you hear us?
What is it?"
Then
she screamed
again. A low
scream; but there was infinite terror in it. And again she was
at the
window.
"You
will not hurt me? Let
me—oh, please let me come
out!"
What
I would
have done I don't know.
I recall
wondering if the policeman would
be at
our comer
down the block: he very seldom
was there.
I
heard Larry saying, "What the hell!—111 get her
out. George, get me that brick.
. .
. Now,
get back,
girl—I'm going to smash
the window."
But
the girl
kept her face pressed against
the pane.
I had never seen such terrified
eyes.
I
called to her, "Come to the door. Can't
you come
to the door and open it?"
I pointed
to the
basement gate. "Open itl Can you hear
me?"
"Yes—I
can hear
you, and you speak my
language. But you—you will not hurt
me? Where
am I?
This—this was my house a moment
ago. I was living here."
An
insane girl, locked in this empty
house! I gripped Larry; said to
him, "Take it easy. There's
something queer about this. We can't
smash windows. Let's—"
"You
open the door," he called
to the
girL
"I
cannot."
"Why? Is it locked on
the inside?"
"I
don't know. Because—oh, hurry! If
he—if it comes again—!"
We
could see her turn to
look behind her. Larry demanded, "Are
you alone
in there?"
"Yes—now. But, oh! a
moment
ago he was here!" "Then come
to die
door."
"I
cannot. I don't know where
it is.
This is so strange and
dark a place. And yet it
was my
home, just a little time ago."
It
seemed to me that her
accent was very queer.
She
went suddenly into frantic fear.
Her fists
beat the window glass almost hard
enough to shatter it.
"We'd better get her out,"
I agreed.
"Smash it, Larry."
"Yes."
He waved
at the
girl. "Get back. IH break
the glass.
Get away so you
won't get hurt."
The
girl receded into the dimness.
"Watch
your hand," I cautioned. Larry took off his
coat and wrapped his hand and
the brick
in it.
I gazed
behind us. The street was still
empty. The slight commotion we
had made had attracted no attention.
The
girl cried out again as
Larry smashed the pane. "Easy," I called
to her.
"We won't hurt you."
The
splintering glass fell inward, and
Larry pounded around the casement until
it was
all clear.
The rectangular
opening was fairly large. We
could see a dim basement
room of dilapidated furniture; a door opening
into a
back room;
the girl,
nearby, a white shape watching
us.
There
seemed no one else. "Come
on,™ I said.
"You can get out here."
But
she backed
away. I was half in
the window
so I
swung my legs over
the sill.
Larry came after me, and
together we advanced on
the girl,
who shrank
before us.
Then suddenly she ran to
meet us, and I had
the feeling that she was not
insane. Her fear of us
was overshadowed
by her
terror at something else in
this dark, deserted house.
"Come
on," Larry muttered. "Let's get her out of
here."
I
had indeed
no desire
to investigate
anything further. The girl let us
help her through the window.
I stood
in the entryway holding her arms.
Her dress
was of
billowing white satin with
a single
red rose
at the
breast; her snowy arms and shoulders
were bare; white hair was
piled high on her small head.
Her face,
still terrified, showed parted red lips; a little round
black beauty patch adorned one
of her powdered cheeks. The thought
flashed to me that this
was a girl in a fancy
dress costume. This was a
white wig she was wearing!
I
stood with the girl in
the entryway,
at a
loss what to do. I held
her soft
warm arms; the
perfume of her enveloped me.
"What
do you
want us to do with
you?" I demanded softly. McCuire, the
policeman on the block, might
pass at any moment. "We might
get arrested!
What's the matter with you? Can't
you explain?
Are you
hurt?"
She
was staring
as though
I were
a ghost.
"Oh, take me away from this
place! I will talk—though I do not know
what to say—"
I
had no
desire to have her fall
into the clutches of the
police. Nor could we
very well take her to
our apartment.
But there was my
friend Dr. Alten, psychiatrist,
who lived
within a mile of
here.
"Well
take her to Alten's," I
said to Larry, "and find
out what this means."
Larry
said, "There was a taxi
down the street."
It
came, now, slowly along the
deserted block. The driver halted
at the
curb. The girl had quieted;
but when
she saw the taxi
her face
registered wildest terror, and she
shrank against me.
"No!
No! Don't let ft kill me!"
Larry and I were pulling her
forward. "What the devil's the matter with you?" Larry demanded
again.
She was suddenly wildly fighting
with us. "No! That— that mechanism—"
"Get her in it! Larry
panted. "Well have the neighborhood on us!"
It
seemed the only thing to do. We flung her, scrambling and fighting, into the
taxi. To the driver, Larry said, "It's all right. We're just taking her to
a doctor.
We whirled off toward Washington Square.
Within the swaying taxi I sat
holding the trembling girL She
was sobbing now, but quieting.
I murmured. "We won't hurt
you. We're just taking you to a doctor. You can explain to him. He's very
intelligent."
"Yes," she said softly. "Yes. Thank
you. I'm all right now."
She was huddled against me. Her
face, upturned to mine, had color in it now; red hps;
a faint rose tint in the pale cheeks.
She murmured, "Is this New York?"
My heart sank. "Yes." I answered. "Of
course it is."
"But when?"
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, what year?"
"Why, 1935!"
She
caught her breath. "And your name is—" "George Rankin."
"And I"—her laugh had a
queer break in it—"I am Mistress Mary Atwood. But just a few minutes
ago—oh, am I dreaming? Surely I'm not insane!"
Larry again leaned over us.
"What are you talking a-bout?"
"You're friendly, you two,
but strange, so very strange-looking young men. This—this carriage without any
horses —I know now it won't hurt me."
She
sat up. "Take me to your doctor, and then to the general of your army. I
must see him, and warn him. Warn you all." She was turning half hysterical
again. She laughed wildly. "Your general—he won't be General Washington,
of course. But I must warn him."
She gripped me. "You think I
am demented, but I am not. I am Mary Atwood, daughter of Major Charles At-wood,
of General Washington's staff. That was my home, where you broke the window.
But it did not look like that a few
moments ago. You tell me this is the year 1935, but just a few moments ago I
was living in the year 17771"
H
"Sane?" said Dr.
Alten. "Of course she's sane." He stood
gazing down at Mary Atwood. He was a tall, slim fellow, this unorthodox young
alienist, with dark hair turning slightly gray at the temples and a neat black
mustache that made him look older than he was. Dr. Alten
at this time, in spite of his eminence, had not yet turned forty.
"She's sane," he
reiterated. "Though from what you tell me, it's a wonder that she
is." He smiled gently at the girl. "If you don't mind, my dear, tell
us just what happened to you, as calmly as you can."
She sat in Dr. Alten's living room. The yellow light gleamed on her white
satin dress, on her white shoulders, her beautiful face with its little round
black beauty patch, and the curls of the white wig dangling to her neck. From
beneath the billowing, flounced skirt the two satin points of her slippers
showed.
A
beauty of the year 17771 I gazed at her with quickened pulse. It seemed that I
was dreaming, that as I sat before her in my tweed
business suit with its tubular trousers I was the anachronism! This should
have been candlelight illumining us; I should have been a powdered
and bewigged gallant, in gorgeous satin and frilled shirt to match her dress.
Alten
fumbled in the pockets of his dressing gown for cigarettes. "Co ahead, Miss Mary. You are among friends. I promise we
will try and understand.'*
She smiled. "Yes. I—I
believe you." Her voice was low. She sat staring at the floor, choosing
her words carefully.
"I was at home
tonight," she began. Tonight after dinner. I
have no relatives except my father. He is General Washington's aide. We
live—our home is north of the city. I was alone, except for the servants.
"Father sent word tonight
that he was coming to see me. The messenger got through the British lines, but
the redcoats are everywhere. They were quartered in our house. For months I
have been little more than a
servant to a dozen of My Lord Howe's officers. They
are gentlemen, though: I have no complaint. Then they left, and father, knowing
it, wanted to come to see me.
"He should not have tried
it. Our house is watched. He promised me he would not wear the British
red." She shuddered. "Anything but that—to have him executed as a
spy. He would not risk that, but wear merely a long
black cloak.
"He was to come about ten
o'clock. But at midnight there was no sign of him. The servants were asleep. I
sat alone, and every pounding hoof-beat on the road matched my heart.
"Then I went into the
garden. There was a
dim moon in and out of the clouds. It was hot, like tonight.
I mean, why it was
tonight. It's so
strange—"
In
the silence of Alten's living room we could hear the
hurried ticking of his little mantel dock, and from
the street outside came the roar of a passing elevated train and the honk of a
taxi. This was New York of 1935. But to
me the crowding ghosts of the past were here. In
fancy I saw the white pillars of the moonlit Atwood home. A
garden with a dirt road beside it. Red-coated British soldiers passing . . . And to the south the Mtde city of New York extending northward from crooked
Maiden Lane and the Bowling Green.... "Go on, Mistress
Mary."
"I sat on a bench in the
garden. And suddenly before me there was a white
ghost. A shape. A wraith of something which a moment
before had not been there. I sat too frightened to move. I could not call out I
tried to, but the sound would not come.
Trie
shape was like a mist, a
little ball
of cloud in the center of the garden lawn. Then in a second
or two it was solid—a thing like a
«hfrw«g cage, with crisscrossing white
bars. It was a metal cage like a room. I thought that the thing
was a phantom or that I was asleep and dreaming. But it was real."
Alten
interrupted. "How big was ft?"
"As large as this
room, perhaps larger. But it was square, and about twice as high as a man."
A cage, then, some twenty
feet square and twelve feet high.
She went on: The cage door
opened. I think I was standing, then, and I tried to run but could not. The—the
thing came from the door of the
cage and walked toward me. It was about ten feet talL
It looked—oh, it looked like a man!"
She
buried her face in her hands. Again the room was silent. Larry was seated,
staring at her; all of us were breathless.
"Like a man?" Alten
prompted gently.
"Yes,
like a man." She raised her white face.
"Like a man. A thing with legs, a body, a great round head and swaying arms.
A jointed man of metal! You surely must know all about them."
"A robot!"
Larry muttered.
"You have them here, I
suppose. Like that rumbling carriage without horses, this jointed iron man
came walking toward me. And it spoke! A most horrible hollow voice-but it
seemed almost human. And what it said I do not know, for I fainted. I remember
falling as it came walking toward me, with stiff-jointed legs.
"When I came to my senses I
was in the cage. Everything was humming and glowing. There was a glow outside
the bars like a moonlit mist. The iron monster was sitting at a table, with
peculiar things—mechanical things—"
"The controls of the
cage-mechanisms," said Alten. "How long
were you in the cage?"
"I don't know. Time seemed
to stop. Everything was silent except the humming noises. They were everywhere.
I guess I was only half conscious. The monster sat motionless. In front of him
were big round clock faces with whirling hands. Oh, I suppose you don't find
this strange, but to
I |
n
"Could
you see anything outside the cage?" Alten persisted.
"No. Just
a fog. But it was crawling and shifting. Yes! —I remember now—I could
not see anything out there, but I had the thought, the feeling, that there were
tremendous things to seel The
monster spoke again and told me to be careful that we were going to stop. Its
iron hands pulled at levers. Then the humming grew fainter, died away, and I
felt a shock.
"I thought I had fainted
again. I could just remember being pulled through the cage door. The monster
left me on the
ground. It said, lie there, for I will return very soon/
"The cage vanished. I saw a
great cliff of stone near me. It had yellow-lighted openings, high up in the
air. And big stone fences hemmed me in. Then I realized I was in an open space between a lot of stone houses. One towered like a cliff,
or the side of a pyramid—"
"The back yard of that
house on Pattern Place!" Larry exclaimed. He looked
at me. "Has it any back yard, George?"
"How should I know?"
"Go on," Alten
was prompting.
"That is nearly all I found
a doorway leading to a dark room. I crawled through it toward a glow of light.
I passed through another room. I thought I was in a nightmare, and that this
was my home. I remembered that the cage had not moved. It had hardly lurched.
It just vibrated.
"But this was not my home.
The rooms were small and dark. Then I peered through a window on a strange
stone street. And saw these strange-looking young men. And that is all—all I
can tell you."
She had evidently held herself
calm by a desperate effort She broke down now, sobbing
without restraint.
The
portals of this mystery had swung wide to receive us. The tumbling events which
menaced all our world of 1935 were upon us now.
Alten
said, "You have a right to be overwrought, Mistress Mary Atwood. But this
thing is as strange to us as it is to you. I called that iron monster a robot.
But it does not belong to our age. If it does I have never seen one such as you
describe. And traveling through Time—"
He smiled down at her. "That
is not a commonplace everyday occurrence to us, I assure you. The difference is
that in this world of ours we can understand these things as being scientific.
And so they have not the terror of the supernatural."
Mary
was calmer
now. She returned his smile.
"I realize that, or at least
I am
trying to realize it"
I
touched her arm. "You are
very wonderful—"
Alten brushed me away. "Let's
try and
reduce it to rationality. The cage was—is, I
should say, since of course
it still exists—that cage is a Time-traveling
vehicle. It is traveling back and forth though
Time, operated by a robot
Call it that. A
pseudo-human creation fashioned of metal
in the guise of a man."
Even
Alten had to
force himself to speak calmly,
as he
gazed from one to
the other
of us.
"It came, no doubt from some future age, where
half-human mechanisms are common, and
Time-traveling is known.
That cage probably does not travel
in space,
but only
in Time.
In the
future— somewhere—the Space of
that house on Patron Place
may be the laboratory of a
famous scientist And in the
past— in the year 1777—that same
Space was the garden of
Mistress Atwood's home. So much
is obvious.
But why—"
"Why,"
Larry burst out, "did that
iron monster stop in 1777 and
abduct this girl?"
"And
why," I intercepted, "did it
stop here in 1935?" I gazed at Mary. "And
it told
you it
would return?"
"Yes."
Alten
was pondering.
"There must be some connection,
of course. . .
. Mistress
Mary, had you never seen
this cage before?"
"No."
"Nor
anything like itP
Was anything like
that known to your Time?"
"No.
Oh, I
cannot truly say that. Some
people believe in phantoms, omens and
witchcraft There was in Salem, in
the Massachusetts Colony, not
so many
years ago—"
"I
don't mean that. I mean Time-traveling."
"There
were soothsayers and fortune-tellers, and necromancers with crystals
to gaze
into the future."
"We still have them," Alten smiled. "You see, we don't know much more than
you do about this thing."
I said, "Did you have any
enemy? Anyone who wished you harm?"
She thought a moment.
"No—yes, there was one." She shuddered at the memory. "A man—a
cripple—a horribly repulsive man of about one score and ten years. He lives
down near the Battery." She paused.
"Tell us about him," Larry urged.
She nodded. "But what could
he have to do with this? He is horribly deformed. Thin, bent legs, a body like a cask and a bulging forehead with goggling
eyes. My Lord Howe's officers say he is very intelligent and very learned. Loyal to the King, too. There was a munitions plot in the
Bermudas, and this cripple and Lord Howe were concerned in it. But Father likes
the fellow and says that in reality he wishes our case well. He is rich.
"But you don't want to hear
all this. He—he made love to me, and I repulsed him. There was a scene with
Father, and Father had our lackeys throw him out. That was a year ago. He
cursed horribly. He vowed then that some day he—he would have me, and get
revenge on Father. But he has kept away. I have not seen him
for a twelvemonth."
We were silent. I chanced to
glance at Alten, and a strange look was on his face.
He said abruptly, "What is
this cripple's name, Mistress Mary?"
"Tugh.
He is known to all the city as Tugh.
Just that. I
never heard any Christian name."
Alten
rose sharply to his feet. "A cripple named Tugh?"
"Yes," she affirmed
wonderingly. "Does it mean anything to you?"
Alten
swung on me. "What is the number of that house on Patton Place? Did you
happen to notice?"
I
had, and wondering I told
him.
"Just
a minute,"
he said.
"I want to use the
phone."
He
came back to us shortly,
his face
very solemn. "That house
on Patton
Place is owned by a
man named
Tughl I just
called a reporter I know,
who remembers
a certain
case. He confirmed what
I thought.
Mistress Mary, did this Tugh in your
Time ever consult doctors, trying
have his crippled body made whole?"
"Why,
of course
he did.
I have
heard that many times. But his crippled, deformed body
cannot be cured."
Alten checked Larry and me
when we would have broken
in with astonished questions.
"Don't
ask me
what it means, but I
think that this cripple—this Tugh—has lived both in
1777 and 1935, and is
traveling between them in
this Time-traveling cage. And perhaps he is the human
master of that robot."
Alten made a vehement gesture.
"But we d better not
theorize. It's too fantastic.
Here is the story of
Tugh in our Time. He came to me
some three years ago—in 1932,
I think. He offered any price
if I
could cure his crippled body. All the New York
medical fraternity knew him. He
seemed sane, but obsessed
with the idea that he
must have a body like other
men. Like Faust, who, as
an old
man, paid the price of his
soul to become youthful, he
wanted to have the body of
a young
man.
"This
fellow Tugh lived alone in that
house on Patton Place. He was
all you
say of
him, Mistress Mary. Hideously repulsive.
A sinister personality.
About thirty years old.
"And,
in 1932,
he got
mixed up with a girl
who had
a somewhat dubious reputation
herself. She evidently thought she could get money out
of Tugh. Whatever it was,
there was a big uproar. The
girl had him arrested, saying
that he had assaulted her. The
police had quite a time
with the cripple."
Larry and I remembered a few of the
details of it now, though neither of us had
been in New York at the time.
Alten
went on. "Tugh fought with the police. Went berserk. I imagine they handled him pretty roughly. In
the Magistrates Court he made another scene, and fought with the court
attendants. With ungovernable rage he screamed vituperatives,
and was carried kicking, biting and snarling from the court-room. He threatened
some wild weird revenge upon all of the city officials—even upon the city itself."
"Nice
sort of chap," Larry commented.
But Alten
did not smile. "The Magistrate could only hold him for contempt of Court.
The girl had absolutely no evidence to support her accusation of assault. Tugh was finally dismissed. A week later he murdered the
girl.
"The details are
unimportant, but he did it. The police had him trapped in his house—this same
one on Patton Place—but when they burst in to take him, he had inexplicably
vanished. He was never heard from again."
Alten
continued to regard us with grim, solemn face. "Never
heard from—until tonight. And now we hear of him. How he vanished, with
the police guarding every exit to that house—well, it's obvious, isn't it? He
went into another Time-world. Back to 1777, doubtless."
Mary
Atwood gave a little cry. "I had forgotten that I must warn you. Tugh told me once, before Father and I quarreled with him,
that he had a mysterious power. He was a most wonderful man, he said. And there
was a world in the future—he mentioned 1934 or 1935—which he hated. A great
city whose people had wronged him, and he was going to bring death to them.
Death to them all) I did not heed him. I though he
was demented, raving... ."
Alten
was pacing the floor. "What are we to do—tell the authorities? Take
Mistress Mary Atwood to Police Headquarters and inform them that she has come
from the year
1777? And that, if we are not
careful, there wiB be an attack upon New York?"
"No!" I burst out. I
could fancy how we would be received at Police Headquarters if we did that!
"No,"
echoed AJtea.
"I have bo intention of doing it I'm
not so foolish as that." He stopped before Mary.
"What do you want to do? You're obviously an exceptionally intelligent
level-headed girl. Heaven knows yon need to be."
"I—I want to get back home," she
stammered.
A pang shot through me as she
said it A hundred and fifty years to separate us!
That mechanism said it would return!"
"Exactly," agreed Alten. "Shall we chance it? Try it? There's nothing
else I can think of to do. I have a revolver and two hunting rifles."
"Just what do you mean?" I demanded.
"I
mean, we'll take my car and go to Tugh's house on
Patton Place. Right now! Three of us, armed, ought to be able to overcome a
robot! Then well seize the Time-traveling cage. Perhaps we can operate it. If
not with it in our possession well at least have something to show the authorities.
There'll be no ridicule then!"
Within a quarter of an hour,
armed and with a long overcoat and a scarf to hide Mary Atwood's beauty, we
took Alten's car and drove to Patton Place.
HI
Patrolman McGdihe evidently
had not passed through Patton Place since we left it; or at least he had not
noticed the broken window. The house appeared as before.
"111 leave the car around
on the
other street," Alten said.
"Quick—no one's in sight.
You three
get out
here."
We
crouched in the dim entryway
and in
a moment
he joined us.
I
clung to Mary Atwood's arm.
"You're not afraid?" I asked.
"No.
Yes, of course I am
afraid. But I want to
do what
we planned. I want
to go
back to my own world,
to my
Father."
"Inside!"
Alten whispered. "1*11 go
first. You two follow with her."
We climbed through the window,
into the dark front basement room. There was only
silence, and our faintly padding footsteps on the carpeted
floor. The furniture was shrouded with cotton covers standing
like ghosts in the gloom. I clutched the loaded
rifle which Alten
had given
me. Larry was similarly
armed, and Alten
carried a revolver.
"Which
way, Mary?" I whispered. "You're sure it was outdoors?"
"Yes.
This way, I think."
We
passed through the connecting door. The back room
seemed to be a
dismanteled
kitchen.
"You
stay with her here, a
moment," Alten whispered to me. "Come on, Larry. Let's make
sure no one—nothing —is down here."
I stood silent with Mary,
while they prowled about the
lower floor. "It may
have come and gone," I whispered.
"Yes."
She was
trembling against me.
It
seemed to me an eternity
while we stood there listening
to the
faint footfalls of Larry and
Alten. Once
they must have stood quiet; then
the silence
leaped and crowded us.
Larry
and Alten returned. "Seems to be
all clear,"
Alten whispered. "Let's go into the
back yard."
The little yard was dim. The big
apartment house against its rear wall loomed with a blank brick face, save that
there were windows some eight stories up. The space was some forty feet square,
and there was a faded grass plot in the center.
We crouched near the kitchen
door, with Mary behind us in the room. She said she could recall the cage
having stood near the center of the yard, with its door facing this way... .
Nearly an hour passed. It seemed
that the dawn must be near, but it was only around four o'clock. The same storm
clouds hung overhead—a threatening storm which would not break.
"It's come and gone,"
Larry whispered, "or it isn't coming. I guess that this—"
And then it camel We were just outside the doorway, crouching against the
shadowed wall of the house. I had Mary close behind me, my rifle ready.
"There!" whispered Alten.
We all saw it—a faint luminous
mist out near the center of the yard—a crawling, shifting ball of fog.
Alten
and Larry, one on each side of me, shifted side-wise. Mary stood and cast off
her dark overcoat. We men were in dark clothes, but she stood in gleaming white
against the dark rectangle of doorway. It was as we had arranged. A moment
only, she stood there; then she moved back, further behind me in the black
kitchen.
And in that moment the cage had
materialized. We were hoping its occupant had seen the girl, and not us. A formless,
glowing mist, it quickly gathered itself into solidity. It seemed to shrink. It
took form.
The cage stood there, a thing of
gleaming silver bars. It seemed to enclose a single room. From within its dim
interior came a faint glow, which outlined something
standing at the bars, peering out
The
doorway was facing us. There
had been
utter silence; but suddenly, as though
to prove
how solid
was this
apparition, we heard the clank
of metal,
and the
door slid open.
I turned to make sure
that Mary was hiding well
behind me. The way back to
the street,
if need
for escape
arose, was open to her.
I
turned again, to face the
shining cage. In the doorway
something stood peering out,
a light
behind it. It was a
great jointed thing of
dark metal, some ten feet
high. For a moment it stood
motionless. I could not see
its face
clearly, though I knew
there was a suggestion of human features, and two great round glowing
spots of eyes.
It
stepped forward—toward us. A jointed stiff-legged step. Its arms were dangling
loosely; I heard one of its mailed
hands clank against its
sides.
"Nowl"
Alten whispered.
I
saw Alten's revolver leveling, and my
own rifle
went "Aim at its
face," I murmured.
We
pulled our triggers together, and
two spurts
of flame
spat before .us. But
the thing
had stopped
an instant
before, and we missed. Then came
Larry's shot. And
then chaos.
I
recall hearing the ping of
Larry's bullet against the mailed
body of the robot. At
that it crouched, and from
it leaped a dull red-black beam
of light.
I heard
Mary scream. She had not fled
but was
clinging to me. I cast her off.
"Run! Get away!" I cried.
Larry
shouted, "Look out! It sees
us!"
He
fired again, into the light—and
murmured, "Why-why-"
A
great surprise and terror was
in his
tone. Beside me, with half-leveled revolver, Alten
stood transfixed.
All
this happened in an instant.
And there
I was
aware that I was trying to
get my
rifle up for firing again;
but I
could not. I was rooted there; held, as though by some giant magnet, to the
ground!
This horrible dull-red light! It
was cold—a frigid, paralyzing blast. The blood ran like cold water in my
veins. My feet were heavy with the weight of my body pressing them down.
Then
the robot was moving, coming forward, holding the light upon us. I thought I
heard its voice—and a horrible, hollow, rasping laugh.
My brain was chilling. As though in a dream I felt myself standing there with Mary
clinging to me. Both of us were frozen inert upon our feet.
I tried to shout, but my tongue
was too thick; my throat seemed swelling inside. I heard Alton's revolver
clatter to the stone pavement of the yard. And saw him fall forward—out.
I felt that in another instant I
too would fall. Then the beam turned partly away, and fell more fully upon
Larry. He had resisted its first blast. His weapon had fallen; now he stooped
and tried to seize it, but he lost his balance and staggered backward against
the house wall.
And then the robot was upon him.
It reached under Larry for his rifle. Its great mailed hand swept the ground,
seized the rifle and flung it away. And as Larry twisted side-wise, the robot's
arm with a sweep caught him and rolled him across the yard. When he stopped, he
lay motionless.
I heard myself thickly calling to
Mary, and the light flashed again upon us. And then, clinging together, we fell
I
did not quite lose consciousness. It seemed that I was frozen, and drifting off
half into a nightmare sleep. Great metal arms were gathering Mary and me from
the ground.
We were in the cage. I felt
myself lying on the grid of a metal floor. I could vaguely see the crossed bars
of the ceiling overhead, and the latticed walls around me. . . .
Then
the dull-red light was gone. The chill was gone;
warm
blood again was coursing through
my veins,
reviving me, bringing back my strength.
I
turned over, and found Mary
lying beside me. I
heard
her softly
murmur, "George! George Rankin!"
The
giant mechanism clanked the door
closed, and came with stiff, stilted
steps back into the center
of the
cage. I heard the hollow rumble
of its
voice, chuckling, as its hand
pulled a switch.
At
once the cage-room seemed to
reel. It was not a
physical movement, though, but more
a reeling
of my
senses, a wild shock to all
my being.
Then,
after a nameless interval, I
steadied. Around me was a humming,
glowing intensity of tiny sounds
and infinitely
small, infinitely rapid vibrations. The whole room grew luminous.
The robot,
seated now at a table,
showed for a moment as thin
as an
apparition. All this room—Mary lying beside me, the mechanism,
myself—all this was intangible, unreal.
And
outside the bars stretched a
shining mist of movement.
Blurred shifting shapes over a
vast illimitable vista. Changing
things; melting landscapes. Silent, tumbling, crowding
events blurred by our movement
as we
swept past them.
We
were traveling through Time!
IV
I
must
take up now
the sequence
of events
as Larry
saw them.
Larry
recovered consciousness in the back
yard of the house on Patton
Place probably only a moment
or two
after Mary and I had been snatched away in the Time-traveling cage. He found
himself bruised and battered. He got to his feet, weak and shaken. His head was
roaring.
He recalled what had happened to
him, but it seemed like a dream. The back yard was then empty. He remembered
vaguely that he had seen the mechanism carry Mary and
me into the cage, and that the cage had vanished.
Larry knew that only a
few moments had passed. The shots had aroused die
neighborhood. As he stood now against the house waD,
dizzily looking around, he was aware of calling voices from the nearby windows.
Then Larry stumbled over Alten, who was lying on his face near the kitchen doorway;
he groaned as Larry fell over him.
Forgetting all about his weapon,
Larry's first thought was to rush out for help. He staggered through the dark
kitchen into the front room, and through the corridor
into the street.
Patton Place, as before, was
deserted. The houses were dark; the alarm was all in the rear. There were no
pedestrians, no vehicles, and no sign of a policeman. Dawn was just coming.
With uncertain steps Larry ran
eastward through the middle of the street. But he had not gone more than five
hundred feet when suddenly he stopped. Near the middle of the street, with the
faint dawn behind it, a ball of gathering mist had appeared directly in his
path. It was a luminous, shining mist—and it was gathering into forml
In seconds a small, glowing cage
of white luminous bars stood there in the street, where there had just been
nothing! It was not the Time-traveling cage from the house yard he had just
left. This one was much smaller.
The doorway slid open, and a man
leaped out. Behind him, a girl peered from the doorway. Larry stood gaping,
wholly confused. The cage had materialized so abruptly that the leaping man
collided with him before either man could avoid the other. Larry gripped the
man before him, struck out with his fists and shouted. The girl in the doorway
called frantically, "Harl—no noise! Harl—stop him!"
Then, suddenly the two of them
were upon Larry and pulling him toward the doorway of the cage. Inside, he was
jerked; he shouted wildly; but the girl slammed the door. Then in a soft
voice with a curiously indescribable accent and intonation, the girl said
hastily, "Hold him, Harl! Ill
start the traveler!"
The black garbed figure of a slim
young man was gripping Larry as the girl pulled a switch
and there was a shock, a reeling of Larry's senses, as the cage, motionless in
Space, sped off into Time....
It
seems needless to encumber this narrative with prolonged details of how Larry
explained himself to his two captors. Or how they told him
who they were, whence they had come, and why. They had not meant to
capture him. The encounter had startled them, and Larry's shouts would have
brought others upon the scene.
Almost at once they knew Larry
was no enemy, and told him so. And in a
moment Larry was pouring out all that had happened.
The robot, an enemy, had captured Mary Atwood and me, and whirled us off in the
other—the larger -cage.
And in this smaller cage Larry
was with friends—for he found their purpose the same as his! They were chasing
this other Time-traveler.
The young man said, "You
explain to him, Tina. I will watch."
He was a slim,
pale fellow, handsome in a
queer, tight-lipped, stem-faced fashion. His
close-fitting black silk jacket had a white neck niching
and white cuffs; he wore a wide white-silk belt, snug, black-silk, knee-length
trousers and black stockings.
And
the girl was similarly dressed. Her black hair was braided and coiled upon her
head, and ornaments dangled from her ears. Over her black blouse was a brocaded
network jacket; her white belt, compressing her slim waist, dangled with
tassels; and there were other tassels on the garters at the knees of her
trousers.
She was a pale-faced, beautiful
girl with black brows arching in a thin line, with purple-black eyes like
somber pools. She was no more than five feet tall and slim and frail But, like her companion, there was about her a queer aspect
of calm, quiet power and force of personality—physical vitality merged with an
intellect keenly sharp.
She sat with Larry on a little
metal bench, listening, almost without interruption, to his explanation. And
then, succinctly she gave her own. The young man, Harl,
sat at his instruments, with his gaze searching for the other cage, five
hundred feet away in Space, but in Time unknown.
And outside the shining bars
Larry could vaguely see the blurred, shifting, melting vistas of New York City
hastening through the changes Time had brought to it
This young man, Harl and this girl, Tina, lived in New York City in the
Time-world of 2930 A.D. To Larry it was a thousand years in the future. Tina
was the Princess of the American Nation. It was an
hereditary title, non-political, added several hundred years previously as a
picturesque symbol.
Harl
was an aristocrat of the New York City of Tina's Time-world, a scientist. In
the Government laboratories, under the same roof where Tina dwelt Harl had worked with another, older scientist and—so Tina
told me—together they had discovered the secret of Time-traveling. They had
built two cages, a large and a small which could travel freely through Time.
The smaller vehicle—this one in
which Larry now was speeding—was, in the Time-world of 2930, located in the
garden of Tina's palace. The other, somewhat larger, they had built some five
hundred feet distant, just beyond the palace walls, within a great Government
laboratory.
Harl's
fellow scientist—the leader in their endeavors, since he was much older and of
wider experience—was not altogether trusted by Tina. He took the credit for the
discovery of Time-traveling; yet, said Tina, it was Harl's
genius which in reality had worked out the final problems.
And this older scientist was a
cripple. A hideously repulsive fellow, named Tughl
Tughl"
exclaimed Larry.
The same," said Tina in her
crisp fashion. Tes—undoubtedly the same. So you see why what you have told us
was of such interest. Tugh is a Government leader in
our world, and now we find he has lived in your Time,
and in the Time of this Mary Atwood."
From his seat at the instrument
table, Harl burst out, "So he murdered a girl of
1935, and has abducted another of 1777? You would not have me judge him,
Tina—"
"No one," she said,
"may judge without full facts. This man here—this Larry of 1935—tells us
that only a mechanism is in the larger cage—which is what we thought, HarL And this mechanism, without a doubt, is the
treacherous Migul."
There
was, in 2930, a vast world of machinery. The god of the machine had developed
them to almost human intricacy. Almost all the work of the world, particularly
in America, and most particularly in the mechanical center of New York City,
was done by machinery. And the machinery itself was guided, handled,
operated—even, in some instances, constructed—by other, more intricate
machines. They were fashioned in pseudo-human form—thinking, logically acting,
independently acting mechanisms: the robots. All but
human, they were—a new race. Inferior to humans, yet similar.
And
in 2930 the machines, slaves of idle human masters, had been developed too
highly. They were upon the verge of a revolt.
The
revolt had not yet come, but it was feared. A great robot named Migul seemed fomenting it. The revolt was smouldering; at any moment it would burst; and then the
machines would rise to destroy the humans.
This was the situation when Harl and Tugh completed the
Time-traveling vehicles in this world. They had been tested, but never used.
Then Tugh had vanished, was gone now, and the larger
of the two vehicles was also gone.
Both Harl
and Tina had always distrusted Tugh. They thought him
allied to the robots. But they had no proof; he denied it, and helped always
with the Government activities struggling to keep the mechanical slaves docile
and at work.
Tugh
and the larger vehicle had vanished, and so had Migul.
Tina and Harl had taken the other cage and started in
pursuit. It was possible that Tugh was loyal; that Migul had abducted him and stolen the cage.
"Wait!" exclaimed
Larry. "I'm trying to figure this out When did Tugh
vanish from your world?"
"To our consciousness,"
Tina answered, "about three hours ago. Perhaps a little
longer than that."
"But look here," Larry
protested, "according to my story and that of Mary Atwood,
Tugh lived in 1935 and in 1777 for three years."
Confusing? But in a moment Larry
understood it. Tugh could have taken the cage, gone
to 1777 and to 1935, alternated between them for what was to him, and to those
Time-worlds, three years—then have returned to 2930 on the same day of his departure. He
would have lived those three years; grown that much older; but to the
Time-world of 2930 neither he nor the cage would have been missed.
"That,"
said Tina, "is doubtless what he did. The cage is traveling again. But you,
Larry, tell us only Migul is in it."
"I
couldn't say that of my
own knowledge,"
said Larry. "Mary Atwood
said so. It held only
the mechanism
you call Migul. And now Migul has Mary and George
Rankin. We must reach them."
"We
want that quite as much
as you
do," said Harl. "And to find Tugh. If
he is
a friend
we must
save him, if a traitor—punish him."
"But
can you
get to
the other
cage?"
"Only
if it
stops," said Tina. "When it stops, I
should say." —
"Come here," said Harl. "I
will show you."
Larry
crossed the glowing room. He
had forgotten
its aspect—the ghostly unreality
around him. He too—his body,
like Harl's
and Tina's—was
of the
same wraith-like substance.
. .
. Then,
suddenly, Larry's viewpoint shifted. The
room and its occupants
were real and tangible. And
outside the glowing bars—everything out there was the
unreality.
"Here,"
said Harl. "I will show
you. It is not visible
yet."
Each
of the
cages was equipped with an
intricate device which Larry and I
have since termed a Time-telespectroscope. Larry saw it now as
a small
metal box, with tuning vibration
dials, batteries, coils, a
series of tiny prisms and
an image-mirror—the
whole surmounted by what appeared
the barrel
of a
small telescope. Harl
had it
leveled and was gazing through it.
The enemy cage was not
visible now, but Harl and Tina
had glimpsed ft on
several occasions. What vast realms
Time opens within a
single small segment of Space!
The larger vehicle seemed speeding back
and forth.
A dash
into the year 1777! as Larry learned
from Mary Atwood.
And
there had been several evidences
of the
cage halting in 1935. Larry's account
explained two such pauses. But the others?
The larger cage was difficult to
trace in its sweep along the
corridors of Time. Never once had Tina and Harl been
able to stop simultaneously with it, for a year has so many separate days and
hours. The nearest they came was the halt in the night of June 8-9, when they
encountered Larry, and, startled, seized him and moved on again.
Harl
continued to gaze through the eyepiece of the detecting instrument. But
nothing showed, and the mirror-grid on the table was dark.
"But—which way are we going?" Larry
stammered.
"Back," said Tina.
"The retrograd . . . Wait! Do not do thatl"
Larry had turned toward where the
bars, less luminous, showed a dark rectangle like a window. The desire swept
him to gaze out at the shining changing scene.
But Tina checked him. "Do
not do thatl Not yetl It is too
great a shock, in the retrograde. It was to me."
"But where are we?"
In answer she gestured toward a
series of tiny dials on the table edge. There were at least two score of them,
laid in a triple bank. Dials to record the passing minutes, hours, days; the
years, the centuries! Larry stared at the small whirring pointers. Some were a
blur of swift whirling movement—the hours and days. Tina showed Larry how to
read them. The cage was passing through the year 1880. In a few moments of
Larry's consciousness it was 1799. Then 1789.
Tina
said, "The other cage may go back to 1777, if Tugh
meant ill to Mary Atwood, or wants revenge upon her father, as you said. We
shall see."
They had reached 1790 when Harl gave a low
ejaculation.
"You
see it?" Tina murmured. "Yes. Very faintly."
Larry bent tensely forward. "Will
it show
on the
mirror?"
"Yes,
presently. We are about ten
years from it. If we
get closer, the mirror
will show it."
But
the mirror
held dark. No—now it was
glowing a trifle. A
vague luminosity.
Tina
moved toward the instrument controls nearby. "Watch closely, Harl. I will slow
us down."
It
seemed to Larry that the
humming with which
everything around him was endowed,
now began
descending in pitch. And his head
suddenly was unsteady. A singular,
wild, queer feeling was
within him, a tugging torment
of every tiny cell of his
body.
Tina
said, "Hold steady, Larry, for
when we stop."
"Wffl
it shock me?"
"Yes—at
first. But the shock will
not harm
you. It is nearly all mental."
The
mirror held an image now—the
other cage. Larry saw, on the
six-inch square mirror surface, a
crawling, melting scene of movement.
And in the
midst of it, the image
of the other cage, faint and
spectral. In all
the mirrored
movement, only the apparition of the cage was
still
Over
an interval,
while Larry stared, the ghostly
image grew plainer. They were approaching
its Time-factor!
"It
is stopping,"
Harl murmured. Larry
was aware
that he had left the eyepiece
and joined
Tina.
"Tina, let us try to
get it
right this time."
"Yes."
"In
1777—but which month, would you
say?" "It has stopped!
See?"
Larry heard them
clicking switches, and setting the
controls for a stop.
Then he felt Tina gently
push him. "Sit here."
He found himself on a
bench. He could still see
the
minor. The ghost of the other cage was now lined more plainly upon it.
This month," said Tina,
setting a switch.
"Would not you say so? And this day."
"But the hour, Tina?
The minute?"
The vast intricate corridors of Time!
"It would be in the night.
Hasten, HarL or we will pass! Try the night—around
midnight."
The vehicle was rapidly coming to
a stop. Larry gripped the table, struggling to hold firm to his reeling senses.
Outside the glowing bars he could now discern the luminous grayness
separating. Swift, soundless claps of light and dark,
alternating. Daylight and darkness. They had
been blended, but now they were separating. The passing,
retrograding days—a dozen to the second of Larry's consciousness. Then fewer. Vivid daylight. Black night. Daylight again.
"Not too slowly, Harl—we will be seen! . . . Oh, it is gone!"
Larry saw the mirror go blank.
The image on it had flared to great distinctness, faded, and was gone. Darkness
was around Larry. Then daylight, Then darkness again.
"Gone!" echoed Hart's
disappointed voice. "But it stopped here!...
Shall we stop, Tina?"
"Yes! Leave the control
settings as they are. Larry—be careful, now."
A dragging second of gray
daylight. A
plunge into night.
It seemed to Larry that all the universe was
soundlessly reeling. Out of the chaos, Tina was saying, "We have stopped.
Are you all right, Larry?"
"Yes," he stammered.
He stood up. The cage room, with
its faint lights, benches and settles, instrument tables and banks of
controls, was flooded with moonlight from outside the bars. Night,
and the moon and stars out there.
Harl
slid the door open. "Come, let us look."
The reeling chaos had fallen
swiftly from Larry. With Tina's small black and
white figure beside him, he
stood at the threshold of the
cage. A warm gende night breeze
fanned his face.
A moonlit landscape lay somnolent
around the cage. Trees were nearby.
The cage
stood in a comer of
a field
by a low picket fence. Behind
the trees,
a ribbon
of road
stretched away toward a
distant shining river. Down the
road some five hundred feet, the
white columns of a large
square brick house gleamed in the
moonlight. And behind the house was a garden and a
group of barns and stables.
The
three in the cage doorway
stood whispering, planning. Then
Larry and Tina stepped to
the ground.
Harl remained to guard the cage.
The
two figures
on the
ground paused a moment and
then moved cautiously along the inside line
of the
fence toward the home of Major
Atwood. And this was revolutionary
New York,
now. The little city lay
well to the south. It was
open country up here. The
New York
of 1935
had melted away and was gone.
. .
. This was a night in
August of 1777.
V
Dh. Alten recovered consciousness in the back
yard of the house on Patton
Place just a few moments
after Larry had encountered the smaller
Time-traveling cage and
been carried off by Harl and Tina. Previously to that, of course,
the mysterious mechanism had
abducted Mary Atwood and me
in the larger Time-cage.
Alten became aware that people
were bending over him. The shots
we had
taken at the robot had
aroused the neighborhood. A policeman
arrived.
The sleeping neighbors had heard
the shots,
but it
seemed that none had seen the
cage, or the metal man
who had
come from it. Alten said nothing. He was
taken to the nearest police
station where grudgingly he told
his story.
He was
laughed, at, reprimanded as drunk. Evidently, according to the police sergeant,
there had been a fight,
and Alten had drawn the loser's end.
The police
confiscated the two rifles and the
revolver and decided that no
one but
Alten had been
hurt.
Dr. Alten was a man of
standing. It was a reprehensible
affair, but he was
released upon his own recognizance.
He was charged with breaking into
the untenanted
home of one Tugh; of
disturbing the peace—a variety of
offenses all rational to the year
1935.
But
Altens case never
reached even its hearing in
the Magistrate's Court. He
arrived home just after dawn,
that June 9, still cold and
stiff from the effects of
the ray,
and bruised and battered by the
sweeping blow of Migul's great iron arm. He recalled vaguely
seeing Larry ia.HL,
and
the iron monster bearing Mary Atwood
and me
away. What had happened to Larry,
Alten could not
guess.
During
that day of June 9,
Alten summoned several
of his scientific friends, and to
them he told fully what
had happened to him. They listened,
but credibility
they could not give him.
The
noon papers came out.
PSYCHIATRIST
ATTACKED BY GHOST
Alten gave it up. He
had about
decided to plead guilty in the
Magistrate's Court to disorderly conduct and all the
rest of it I
That was preferable
to being
judged a liar, or insane.
And
then, at about 9 P.
M. on
the evening
of June
9,
the
first of the mechanical monsters came stalking from
the house on Patton Place. The
policeman at the comer rushed
into a little candy and stationery
store shouting that he had
seen a piece of machinery running
wild. His telephone call brought a squad of his
comrades. The robot at first
did no
damage.
McGuire
later told how he saw
it as
it emerged
from the entryway of the Tugh house. It came lurching
out into
the street—a giant thing of dull
gray metal, with tubular, jointed legs; a body with
a great
bulging chest; a round head, eight or ten feet
above the pavement; eyes that
shot fire.
There
was a
commotion in Patton Place during
those next few minutes. Pedestrians saw the thing standing
in the middle of the street,
staring stupidly around it. The
head wobbled. Some said
that the eyes shot fire;
others, that it was not the
eyes, but more like a
torch in its mailed hand. The torch shot a
small beam of light around
the street—a beam which was dull-red.
The
pedestrians fled. Their cries brought
people to the nearby house windows.
Women screamed. Presently bottles were thrown from the windows.
One of
them crashed against the iron shoulder
of the
monster. It turned its head:
as though
its neck were rubber,
some said. And it gazed
upward, with a human gesture as
though it were not angry,
but contemptuous.
But
still, beyond a step or
two in
one direction
or another,
it merely stood and
waved its torch. The little
dull-red beam of light carried no
more than twenty or thirty
feet. The street, clear of pedestrians,
remained littered with glass from the broken bottles. A
taxi came suddenly around the
comer, and the driver,
with an almost immediate tire
puncture,
saw the monster. He hauled up to the curb, left his cab and ran.
The robot saw the taxicab, and
stood gazing. It turned its torchbeam on it, and
seemed surprised that the thing did not move. Then thinking evidently that this
was a less cowardly enemy than the humans, it made a rush to it. The driver had
not turned off his engine when he fled, so the cab stood throbbing.
The robot reached it, cuffed it
with a huge mailed fist. The windshield broke; the windows were shattered; but
the cab stood purring, planted upon its four wheels.
They
say that the robot tried to talk to it. At last, stooping, it put one of its
great arms down under the wheels, the other over the hood, and with prodigious
strength heaved the cab into the air. It crashed on its side across the street,
and in a moment was covered with flames.
It was about this time that
Patrolman McCuire came back to the scene. He shot at
the monster a few times, but the robot did not heed him.
The block was now in chaos.
People stood at most of the windows, crowds gathered at the distant street
comers, while the blazing taxicab lighted the block with a lurid glare. No one
dared approach within a hundred feet or so of the monster. But when, after a
time, it showed no disposition to attack, throngs at every distinct point of
vantage tried to gather where they could see it. Those nearest reported back
that its face was iron, that it had a nose, a wide, yawning mouth, and holes
for eyes. There were certainly little lights in the eye-holes.
A small, fluffy white dog went
dashing up to the monster and barked bravely at its heels. It leaped nimbly
away when the robot stooped to seize it. Then, from the robot's chest, the
dull-red torch beam leaped out and down. It caught the little dog, and clung to
it for an instant. The dog stood transfixed; its bark turned to a yelp, then a
gurgle. In a moment ft fell on its side, then lay motionless with stiffened
legs sticking out.
AH this happened within five
minutes. McCuire's riot squad arrived, discreetly
ranged itself at the end of the block and fired. The robot by then had
retreated to the entryway of the Tugh house. There
came a clanging from the distance: someone had turned in a fire alarm. Through
the gathered crowds and vehicles the engines came tearing up.
Presently there was not one
robot, but three, a dozen! More than that, many reports said. But certain it is
that within half an hour of the first alarm, the block in front of Tugh's house held many of the iron monsters. And there were
many human bodies lying strewn there, by then. A few policemen had made a stand
at the comer, to protect the crowd against one of the robots. The thing had
made an unexpected infuriated rush. ...
There was a panic in the next
block. A score of people were trampled under foot.
Two or three of the robots ran into that next block—ran impervious to the many
shots which now were fired at them. From what was described as slots in the
sides of their iron bodies they drew swords-long, dark, burnished blades. They
ran, and at each fallen human body they made a single stroke of decapitation,
or, more generally, cut the body in half.
The robots did not attack the
fire engines. Emboldened by this, firemen connected a hose and pumped a huge
jet of water toward the Tugh house. The robots then
rushed it. One huge mechanism—some said it was twelve feet tall —ran heedlessly
into the firemen's high-pressure stream, topped backward from the force of the
water and very strangely lay still. Killed? Rather, out of order; it was not
human, to be killed. But k lay motionless, with the fire hose playing upon it.
Then abruptly there was an explosion. The fallen robot,
with, a deafening report and a puff of green flame, burst into flying metallic
fragments like shrapnel. Nearby windows were broken from the violent
explosion, and pieces of the flying metal were hurled a hundred feet or more.
One huge chunk, eveidently a plate of the thing's
body, struck into the crowd two blocks away, and felled several people.
At this smashing of one of the
mechanisms, its brother robots went for the first time into aggressive action.
A hundred or more were pouring now from the vacant house of the absent Tugh... .
The alarm by ten o'clock had
spread throughout the entire city. Police reserves were called out, and by
midnight soldiers were being mobilized. Panics were starting everywhere.
Panics. . . . Yet human nature is
very strange. Thousands of people started to leave Manhattan, but there were
other thousands during that first skirmish who did their best to try and get to
the neighborhood of Patton Place to see what was going on. They added greatly
to the confusion. Traffic soon was stalled everywhere; accidents began to occur.
Reports of what was happening on
Patton Place grew more confused. The gathering nearby crowds impeded the police
and firemen. The robots, by ten o'clock, were using a single great beam of
dull-red light. It was two or three feet broad. It came from a spluttering,
hissing cylinder mounted on runners which the robots dragged along the ground,
and the beam was like that of a great red searchlight. It swung the length of
Patton Place in both directions. It hissed against the houses; penetrated the
open windows which now were all deserted; swept the front cornices of the
roofs, where crowds of tenants and others were trying to hide. The red beam
drove back the ones near the edge, except those who were stricken by its frigid
blast and dropped like plummets into the street, where the robots with flashing
blades pounced upon them.
Frigid was the blast of this
giant light-beam. The street, wet from the fire-hose, was soon frozen with
ice—ice which increased under the blast of the beam, and melted in the warm air
of the night when the ray turned away.
From every distant point in the
city, awed crowds could see that great shaft when it occasionally shot upward,
to stain the sky with blood.
Dr. Alten
by midnight was with the city officials, telling them what he could of the
origin of this calamity. Around Alten the clattering,
terrifying reports were surging. He sat there nearly all that night; and near
dawn, an official plane carried him in a flight over the city.
The panics, by midnight, were
causing the most deaths. Thousands, hundreds of thousands, were trying to leave
the island. The tube trains, the subways, the elevateds
were jammed. There were riots without number in them. Ferryboats and bridges
were thronged to their capacity. By dawn it was estimated that five thousand
people had been trampled to death by the panics in various parts of the city,
in the tubes beneath the rivers and on departing trains.
And
another thousand or more had been killed by the robots. How many of these
monstrous metal men were now in evidence, no one could guess. A hundred—or a thousand. The Time-cage made many trips
between that night of June 9 and 10,1935, and a night
in 2930.
A myriad individual scenes
of horror were enacted. Metal travesties of the human form ran along the city
streets, overturning stalled vehicles, climbing into houses, roaming dark
hallways, breaking into rooms.
There was a woman who afterward
told that she crouched in a comer, clutching her child, when the door of her
room was burst in. Her husband, who had kept them there
thinking it was the safest thing to do, fought futilely with the great thing of
iron. Its sword slashed his head from his body with a single stroke. The woman
and the little child screamed, but the monster ignored them. They had a radio,
tuned to a station in New Jersey, which was broadcasting the events. The robot
seized the instrument as though in a frenzy of anger, tore it apart, then rushed from the room.
No one could give a connected
picture of the events of that night. The panics were everywhere. The streets
were stalled with traffic and running, shouting, fighting people. And the area
around Greenwich Village brought reports of continued horror.
The robots were of many different
forms: some pseudo-human; others, great machines running amuck. There was a
great pot-bellied monster which forced its way somehow to a roof. It
encountered a crouching woman and child in a corner of the parapet, seized
them, one in each of its great iron hands, and whirled them out over the
housetops.
By dawn it seemed that the robots
had mounted several projectors of the giant red beam on the roofs of Fatton Place. They held a full square mile, now, around Tugh's house. The police and firemen had long since given
up fighting them. They were needed elsewhere—the police to try and cope with
the panics, and the firemen to fight the conflagrations which everywhere began
springing up. Fires, the natural outcome of chaos; and fires, incendiary—made
by criminals who took advantage of the disaster to fatten like ghouls upon the
dead. They prowled the streets. They robbed and murdered at will.
The
giant beams of the robots carried a frigid blast for miles. By dawn of that
June 10th,
the south wind was carrying from the enemy area a
perceptible wave of cold even as far as Westchester. Alten,
flying over the city, saw the devastated area clearly. Ice in
the streets—smashed vehicles—the litter of human bodies.
Alten's
plane flew at an altitude of some two thousand feet In
the growing daylight the dark prowling figures of the metal men were plainly
seen. There were no humans left alive in the captured area. The plane dropped a
bomb into Washington Square where a dozen or two of the robots were gathered.
It missed them. The plane's pilot had not realized that they were grouped
around a projector; its red shaft sprang up, caught the plane and clung to it.
Even at that two thousand feet altitude, for a few seconds Alten
and the others were stiffened by the cold. The motor missed, very nearly
stopped. Then an intervening rooftop cut off the beam, and the plane escaped.
All this I have pictured from
what Dr. Alten subsequently told me. He leaves my
narrative now, since fate hereafter held him in the New York City of 1935. But
he has described for me three horrible days, and three still more horrible
nights. The whole world now was alarmed. Every nation offered its forces of air
and land and sea to overcome these invaders. Warships steamed for New York
harbor. Soldiers were entrained and brought to the city outskirts. Airplanes
flew overhead. On Long Island, Staten Island, and in New Jersey, infantry,
tanks and artillery were massed in readiness.
But
they were all very nearly powerless to attack. The city could not be shelled.
The influx of troops was hampered by the outrush of
civilians.
By the night of the tenth,
nevertheless, ten thousand soldiers were surrounding the enemy area. It
embraced now all the mid-section of the island. The soldiers rushed in.
Machine-guns were set up.
But the robots were difficult to
find. With this direct attack they began fighting with an almost human
caution. The bodies were impervious to bullets, save perhaps in the orifices of
the face which might or might not be vulnerable. But when attacked, they
skulked in the houses, or crouched like cautious animals under the smashed
vehicles. Then there were times when they would wade forward directly into
machine-gun fire—unharmed—plunging on until the gunners fled and the robots
wreaked their fury upon the abandoned gun.
The only hand-to-hand conflicts
took place on the afternoon of June 10th. A full thousand soldiers were
killed—and possibly six or eight of the robots. The troops
were ordered away after that; they made lines across the island to the north
and to the south, to keep the enemy from increasing its area. Over Greenwich
Village now, the circling planes— at their highest altitude, to avoid the upflung crimson beams—dropped bombs. Hundreds of houses
there were wrecked. Tugh's house could not be
positively identified, though the attack was directed at it most particularly.
Afterward, it was found by chance to have escaped.
The night of June 10th brought
new horrors. The city lights failed. Against all the efforts of the troops and
the artillery fire which now was shelling the Washington Square area, the giant
mechanisms pushed north and south. By midnight, with their
dull-red beams iDumining the darkness of the canyon
streets, they had reached the Battery, and spread northward beyond the northern
limits of Central Park.
It
is estimated that by then there were still a million
people on Manhattan Island.
The night of the 11th, the robots
made their real attack. Those who saw it, from planes overhead, say that upon a roof near Washington Square
a machine was mounted from which a red beam sprang. It was not of parallel rays,
like the others; this one spread. And of such power it was, that it painted the
leaden clouds of the threatening, overcast night. Every plane, at whatever high
altitude, felt its frigid blast and winged hastily away to safety.
It was a hot night, that June
11th, with a brewing thunderstorm. There had been occasional rumbles of
thunder and lightning flashes. The temperature was perhaps 80° F.
Then the temperature began
falling. A million people were hiding in the great apartment houses and homes
of the northern sections, or still struggling to escape over the Uttered
bridges, or by the paralyzed transportation systems— and that million people
saw the crimson radiance and felt the falling temperature.
80°.
Then 70°. Within half an hour it was at 30°! In untreated
houses, in midsummer, in the midst of panic, the people were swept by chilling
cold. With no adequate clothing available they suffered greatly—and then
abruptly they were freezing.
Zero weather in midsummer! And
below zero! How cold it got, there is no one to say. The abandoned recording instrument
in the Weather Bureau was found, at 2:16 A.M., the morning of June 12, 1935, to
have touched minus 42° F.
The gathering storm over the city
burst with lightning and thunder claps through the blood-red radiance. And then
snow began falling. A steady white downpour, a winter
blizzard with the hghtning flashing above it, and the
thunder crashing.
With the lightning and thunder
and snow, crazy winds sprang up. They whirled and tossed the thick white snow-flakes;
swept in blasts along the city streets. It piled the snow in great drifts
against the houses; whirled and sucked it upward in white powdery geysers.
At 2:30 A.M. there came a change.
The dull-red radiance which swept the city changed in color. Through the shades
of the spectrum it swung up to violet. And no longer was it a blast of cold,
but of heat! Of what inherent temperature the ray of that spreading beam may
have been, no one can say. It caught the houses, and everything inflammable
burst into flame. Conflagrations were everywhere—a thousand spots of
yellow-red flames, like torches, with smoke rolling up from them to mingle with
the violet glow overhead.
The blizzard was gone.
The snow ceased. The storm clouds rolled away, blasted by the pendulum winds
which lashed the city.
By
3 A.M. the city temperature was over 100° F.—the dry, blistering heat of a
midsummer desert. The northern city streets were littered with the bodies of
people who had rushed from their homes and fallen in the heat, the wild winds
and the suffocating smoke outside.
And then, flung back by the
abnormal winds, the storm clouds crashed together overhead. The fires" of
the burning metropolis presently died under the torrent of falling water.
Clouds of steam whirled and tossed and hissed close overhead, and there was a
boiling hot rain.
By dawn the radiance of that
strange spreading beam died away. The daylight showed a wrecked, dead city. Few
humans indeed were left alive on Manhattan that dawn. The robots and their
apparatus had gone....
The vengeance of Tugh against the New York City of 1935 was accomplished.
VI
"We abe late,"
Tina whispered. It was that night in 1777 when she, Larry and Harl stepped from their Time-traveling cage. "Miguel,
in the other cage, was here," Tina added. "But it's gone now. Exactly
where was it, I wonder?"
"Mary Atwood said it appeared
in the
garden."
They
crept down the length of
the field,
just inside the picket fence. In
a moment
the trees
and an
intervening hillock of ground hid
the dimly
shining outline of their own
cage from their sight.
The dirt
road leading to Major At-wood's
home was on the other
side of the fence.
"Wait,"
murmured Tina. "There is a
light in the house."
"When was Migul
here, do you think?" Larry whispered.
"Last
night, perhaps. Or tonight It may be
only an hour— or a few
minutes ago."
The
faint thud of horses' hoofs
on the
roadway made Tina and Larry drop
to the
ground. They crouched in the
shadows of a tree.
Galloping horses were approaching along the road. The moon
went under a cloud.
From
around a bend in the
road a group of horsemen
came. They were galloping;
then they slowed to a
trot a walk. They reined up
in the
road not more than twenty
feet from Larry and
Tina. In the starlight they
showed clearly—men in the
red and
white uniform of the army
of the King. Some of them
wore short, dark cloaks. They
dismounted with a clanking of
swords and spurs.
Their
voices were audible. "Leave the steeds with Jake.
Egad, we've made enough
noise already."
"Here,
Jake, you scoundrel.
Stay safely here with the
mounts."
"Come
on, Tony.
You and
I will
circle. We have him, this time.
By the
King's garter, what a fool
he is
to come
into New York at
such a timel"
"He
wants to see his daughter,
I venture."
"Right,
Tony. And have you seen
her? As saucy a little
minx as there is
in the
Colonies. I was quartered here
last month. I do not blame
the major
for wanting
to come."
"Here,
take my bridle, Jake. Tie
them to the fence."
There
was a
swift confusion of voices, laughter.
"If you should hear a pistol
shot Jake, ride quickly back
and tell
My Lord there was a
fracas and you did not
dare remain."
"I
only hope he is garbed
in the
rebel white and blue. Then he will yield like
an officer
and a gentleman, which he is, rebel or
no."
They
were moving away to surround
the house.
Two were left.
"Come
on, Tony.
We will
pound the front knocker in
the name of the King. A
feather in our cap when
we ride
him down to the Bowling Green and present him to
My Lord
The
voices faded.
Larry
gripped the girl beside him.
"They are British soldiers going
to capture
Major Atwoodl What can we—"
He
never finished. A scream echoed
over the somnolent night—a voice from
the rear
of the
house. A man's
voice.
The
red-coated soldiers ran forward. In
the field,
close against the fence, Tina and
Larry were running.
From
the garden
of the
house a man was screaming.
Then there were other
voices; servants were awakening in
the upper rooms. The
screaming, shouting man rushed through the house. He appeared
at the
front door, standing between the
high white colonial pillars which
supported the overhead porch. A
yellow light fell upon him
through the opened doorway. An old,
white-headed Negro appeared.
"The
marster—the marster—" He shouted this
wildly.
The
British officers ran at him.
"You,
Thomas, tell us where the
major is. We've come for him;
we know
he's here! Don't lie!"
"But
the marster—" He choked over
it.
"A
trick, Tony!" They leaped to the
porch and seized the old Negro.
"Speak, you devil!" They shook
him. "The house is surrounded. He cannot escape!"
"But
the marster is—is dead! My girl
Tollie saw it."
He steadied himself. "He—the major's in
the garden,
Marster Tony. Lying
there dead! Murdered! By a
ghost,
Tollie says.
A
great, white, shining ghost that
came to the garden and
murdered him!"
If
you were
to delve
very closely into certain old
records of Revolutionary New York City
during the year 1778, you doubtless
would find mention of the
strange murder of Major Atwood, who,
coming from New Jersey, is
thought to have crossed the river
well to the north of
the city,
mounted his horse—which, by pre-arrangement,
one of
his retainers
had left for him
somewhere to the south of
Dykeman's farm —and ridden
to his
home. He came, not as
a spy,
but in
full uniform. And no
sooner had he reached his
home when he was strangely murdered.
There was only a Negro
tale of an apparition which had
appeared in the garden and
murdered the master.
Larry
and I
have found cursory mention of
that. But I doubt if the
group of My Lord Howe's
gay young
blades who were sent north to
capture Major Atwood ever reported
exactly what happened to
them. The old
Dutch ferryman divulged that he had
been hired to ferry the
homecoming major: this, too,
is recorded.
But Tony
Green and his fellow officers,
sent to apprehend the major,
found him inexplicably murdered; and
by dawn
they were back at the
Bowling Green, white-faced and shaken.
They
told some of what had
happened to them, but not all.
They could not expect to
be believed,
for instance,
if they said that
though they were unafraid of
a Negro's
tale of a ghost,
they had themselves encountered two ghosts, and had fled
the premises!
Those
two ghosts
were only Larry and Tina!
The
Negro babbled of a shining
cage appearing in the garden. Tony Green and his
friends went to the garden
and examined the body
of Major
Atwood. What had killed him no one could say. No bullet had struck
him. There were no wounds, no
knife thrust, no sword slash.
Tony held the lantern with its
swaying yellow glow close to
the murdered
man's body. The August night was warm; yet the body of Atwood seemed frozen!
The face, the brows were wet as though frost had been there and now was melted!
Then, in another part of the
garden, one of the searching officers found a sheet of parchment scroll with
writing on ft. Yet it was not parchment, either. Some strange, white, smooth
fabric which crumpled and tore very easily, the like of which this young
British officer of Howe's staff had never seen before. It was found lying in a
flower bed forty
or fifty feet
from Atwood's body. They gathered in a group to examine it by the light of the
lantern. Writing! The delicate script of Mary Atwood! A missive addressed to
her father. It was strangely written, evidently not with a quill.
Tony read it with an awed, frightened voice:
"Father,
beware of Tugh! Beware of Tugh!
And, my
dear Father, good-by. I am departing, I think, to the
year of our Lord, 2930. Cannot explain—a captive—
good-by—nothing you can do— "Mary."'
Strange!
I can imagine how strange they thought it was. Tugh—why
he was the cripple who had lived down by the Bowling Green, and had lately
vanished!
They were reading this singularly
unexplainable missive, when as though to climax their own fears of the supernatural
they saw themselves a ghost! And not only one ghost, but two!
Plain as a pikestaff, peering
from a nearby tree, in a shaft of moonlight, a ghost was standing. It was the
figure of a young girl, with jacket and breeches of black and gleaming white.
And a young man was with her, in a long dark jacket and dark tubular pipes, for
legs.
The two ghosts with dead white
faces stood peering. Then the man moved forward. His dead, strange voice
called, "Drop that paper!"
My Lord Howe's red-coated
officers dropped the parchment and fled.
And later, when Atwood's body was
taken away to be given burial as befitted an enemy officer and a gentleman,
that missive from Mary Atwood had disappeared. It was never found.
Tony Green and his fellows said
nothing of this latter incident. One cannot with grace explain being routed by
a ghost. Not an officer of His Majesty's army!
Unrecorded history! A
supernatural incident of the year 1777!
Larry
and Tina—anything but ghosts, very much alive and very much perturbed—were
standing back of that tree. They saw the British officers reading the scrap of
paper. They could hear only the words, "Mary," and "from Mistress
Atwood."
"A message!"
Larry whispered. "She and George must have found a chance to write it, and
dropped it here while the robot murdered Major Atwood!"
Larry and Tina vehemently wanted
to read the note. Tina whispered, "If we show ourselves, they will be frightened
and run. It is nearly always so where Harl and I have become visible in
earlier Times."
"Yes. Ill try it."
Larry stepped from the tree, and
shouted, "Drop that paper!"
And
a moment later, with Mary's torn little note scribbled on a scrap of paper thrust
in his pocket, Larry ran with Tina from the Atwood garden. Unseen they scurried
back through the field. Under a distant tree they stopped and read the note.
"2930!" Larry exclaimed. "The robot is taking them back to
your world, Tina!"
"Then we will go there. Let
us get back to Harl, now." But when they reached
the place where they had left the cage, it was not there! The comer of the
field behind the clump of shadowing trees was empty. "Harl! Harl!" Larry called.
They
stared at each other, pale as ghosts in the moonlight. "Tina, he's gone.
And we are left here!" They were marooned in the year 1777!
VU
Mabt Atwood and
I lay on the metal grid floor of the largest Time-cage. The giant mechanism
which had captured us sat at the instrument table. Outside the bars of the
cage was a dim vista of shadowy movement. The cage-room was humming, and
glowing like a wraith; things seemed imponderable, unsubstantial.
But as my head steadied
from the shock of the vehicle's start into Time, my viewpoint shifted.
This barred room, the metal figure of the robot, Mary Atwood, myself—tee were the substance. We were real, solid. I
touched Mary, and her arm which had seemed intangible as a ghost now looked and
felt solid.
The
effects of the dull-red chilling ray were also wearing off. I was unharmed. I
raised myself on one elbow. "You're all right, Mary?" I asked.
"Yes."
The
robot seemed not to be noticing us. I murmured, "He —it—that thing sitting
there—is that the one which captured you and brought you to 1935?"
"Yes. Quiet! It will hear us."
It
did hear us. It turned its head. In the pale light of the cage interior, I had
a closer view now of its face. It was a metal mask, welded to a semblance of a
man—a great broad face, with high, angular cheeks. On the high forehead, the
corrugations were rigid as though it were permanently frowning. The nose was
squarely solid, the mouth an orifice behind which there were no teeth but, it
seemed, a series of tiny lateral wires.
I stared, and the face for a
moment stared back at me. The eyes were deep metal sockets with a round lens in
each of them, behind which, it seemed, there was a dull-red light. The gaze,
touching me, seemed to bring a physical chilL The ears were like tiny megaphones with a grid of thin wires
strung across them.
The neck was set with ball and
socket as though the huge head were upon a universal joint. There were lateral
depressions in the neck within which wire strands slid like muscles. I saw
similar wire cables stretched at other points on the mailed body, and in the
arms and legs. They were the network of its muscles!
The top of the head was fashioned
into a square cap as though this were the emblem of the thing's vocation. A similar
device was molded into its convex chest plate. And under the chest emblem- was
a row of tiny buttons, a dozen or more. I stared at them, fascinated. Were they
controls? Some seemed higher, more protruding, than others. Had they been set
into some combination to give this monster its orders?
And I saw what seemed
a closed door in the side of the huge metal body. What strange
mechanisms were in there? I stared at the broad, corrugated forehead. What was
in that head? Were thoughts lurking in the metal skull?
From the head abruptly came a
voice—a deep, hollow, queerly toneless voice, utterly, unmistakably mechanical.
Yet it was sufficiently lifelike to be the recreated, mechanically reproduced
voice of a human. The thing was speaking to me!
The iron lips were unmoving.
There were no muscles to give expression to the face; the lens eyes stared
inscrutably unblinking.
It
spoke. "You wfll know me again? Is that not
true?" My
head whirled. The thing reiterated, "Is that not true?"
"Why—why,
yes," I stammered. "I did not realize you could talk."
"I can talk. And you can
talk my language. That is very good."
It turned away. I saw the small
red beams from its eyes go to where the cage bars were less blurred, less
luminous, as though there was a rectangle of window there, and the robot was
staring out.
"Did
it speak to you like that, Mary?" I asked.
"Yes," she whispered. "A little. But pray do not anger it."
"No."
I whispered against her ear,
"Those are controls on its chest. If only I knew—"
The thing turned the red beams of
its eyes upon me. It said with slow measured syllables, "Do not try to
control me. I am beyond control."
It turned away again; but I
mastered the terror which was upon me.
Talk,"
I said. Tell me why you abducted this girl"
"I
was ordered to."
"By
whom?"
There
was a pause.
"By
whom?" I demanded again.
"That
I wfll not tell."
Will
not? That implied volition. I felt Mary shudder. "George, please—"
"Quiet,
Mary."
Again
I asked the robot, "Who commands you?" "I will not tell."
"You mean you cannot? Yonr orders do not make it possible?"
"No, I will not." And,
as though it considered my understanding insufficient, it added, "I do
not choose to tell."
Acting of its own volitlonl This thing—this
machinery-was so perfect it could do that!
I steadied my voice. "Oh,
but I think I know. Is it Tugh who controls
you?"
That expressionless metal face!
How could I hope to surprise it?
Mary was struggling to repress
her terror. She raised herself upon an elbow. I met her gaze. "George,
111 try," she announced. She said firmly, "You will not hurt
me?" "No."
"Nor my friend here?"
"What is his name?"
"George Rankin." She
stammered it. "You will not harm him?" "No. Not now." "Ever?"
"I
am not decided."
She persisted, by what effort of
will subduing her terror I can well imagine.
"Where
did you go when you left me in 1935?"
"Back to your home in 1777.
I have something to accomplish there. I was told that you need not see it. I
failed. Soon I shall try again. You may see it if you like."
"Where
are you taking us?" I put in.
Irony was in its answer. "Nowhere. You both speak wrongly. We are always right
here."
"We
know that," I retorted. "To what Time are you taking us, then?"
To this girl's home," it answered readily.
To
1777?"
"Yes."
To the same night from when you captured her?"
"Yes." It seemed
willing to talk. It added, To later that night. I have
work to do. I told you I failed, so I try again."
"You are going to leave
me—us—there?" Mary demanded.
"No."
I said, "You plan to take us, then, to what
Time?"
"I wanted to capture the girL You I did not want But I have
you, so I shall show you to him who was my master. He and I will decide what to
do with you."
"When?"
"In 2930."
There was a pause. I said, "Have you a
name?"
"Yes. On the plate of my
shoulder. Migul is my name."
I made a move to rise. If I could
reach that row of buttons on its chestl
The robot said abruptly, "Do
not move! If you do, you will be sorry."
I relaxed. I tried to see out the
window, but there seemed only formless blurs.
I said, To when have we
reached?"
The robot glanced at a row of
tiny dials along the table edge.
"We are passing 1800. Soon,
to the way it will seem to you, we will be there. You two will lie quiet I
think I shall fasten you."
It reared itself upon its stiff
legs; the head towered nearly to the ceiling of the cage. There was a ring
fastened in the floor near us. The robot clamped a metal band with a stout
metal chain to Mary's ankle. The other end of the chain it fastened to the floor ring.
Then it did the same
thing to me. We had about
two feet
of movement
I realized
at once
that, though I could
stand erect, there was not
enough length for me to reach
any of
the cage
controls.
"You
will be safe," said the
robot. "Do not try to
escape."
As
it bent
over me, I saw the
flexible, intricately jointed lengths
of its
long fingers—so delicately built that
they were almost prehensile. And within
its mailed
chest, I seemed to hear the
whirr of machinery.
It
said, as it rose and
moved away, "I am glad
you did
not try to control
me. I
can never
be controlled
again."
It
sat again
at the
table. The cage drove us
back through the years. ...
I
must interrupt the narrative for
a moment,
to tell
you something I learned later from
Tina. I asked her what
would happen if I were to
travel to New York around
1920. I was a boy, then.
Could I not leave the
cage and do things in
1920 at the same
time that in my boyhood
I was
doing other things?
They
had found, she said, that this
was impossible;
one cannot appear twice in simultaneity
upon the Time-scroll. It is an
eternal, irrevocable record. Things done
cannot be undone.
"But,"
I persisted,
"suppose we tried to stop
the cage?"
"It
would not stop," she said.
"Nor can we see through
its window any of
those events in which we
are actors."
She
was not
stating theories; these things had
been tried. And we found later
that there would be queer
blank spaces out the windows when
we passed
through what I can only think
of as
forbidden areas. I have listened
to many
scientific theories and much
fascinating theological speculation
on the
matter, but none of this
is relevant
to my
story. It is enough to tell
you the
simple facts.
As
Mary Atwood and I sat
chained to the floor of
the Time-cage, with Migul the Robot guarding us,
I felt
that we could not escape. This
mechanical thing which had captured us seemed inexorable. I could think of no
way of surprising it, or tricking it.
The robot said, "Soon we
will be there in 1777. And then there is that I will be forced to do.
"We are being
followed," it added. "Did you know that?"
"No," I said.
There was a device upon the
table. I have already described a similar one, the Time-telespectroscope.
At this—I cannot say Time; rather must I invent a term—exact instant of human
consciousness, Larry, Tina and Harl were gazing at
their telespectroscope, following us.
The robot said, "Enemies
follow us. But I will escape them. I shall go to the Beginning, and shake them
off."
Rational, scheming thought—and I
could fancy that upon its frozen corrugated forehead there was a frown of annoyance.
It said, "I forget. I must
make several quick trips from 2930 to 1935. My comrades must be transported. It
requires careful calculation, so that very little Time is lost to us."
"Why?" I demanded. "What
for?"
It seemed lost in a reverie.
I said sharply, "Migull"
Instantly it turned. "What?"
"I asked you why you are
transporting your comrades to 1935."
"I did not answer because I
did not wish to answer," it said.
Again came the passage of
Time.
I think that I need only sketch
the succeeding incidents, since already I have described them from the
viewpoint of Larry, in 1777, and Dr. Alten, in 1935.
It was Mary's idea to write the note to her father, which the British redcoats
found in Major Atwood's garden. I had a scrap of paper and a fountain pen in my
pocket. She scribbled it while Migul was intent upon
stopping us at the night and hour he wished.
The vehicle stopped with a
soundless clap. When our senses cleared we became aware that Migul had the door open.
Darkness and a soft gentle breeze were outside.
Migul tumed with a hollow
whisper. "If you make a sound I will
kill you."
A moment's pause, and then we
heard a man's startled voice. Major Atwood had seen the apparition. I squeezed
the paper into a ball and tossed it through the bars, but I could see nothing
of what was happening outside. There seemed a radiance of red glow. Migul came striding back; and outside, from the nearby
house a Negress was screaming. Migul
flung the door closed, and we sped away.
The cage which had been chasing
us seemed no longer following. From 1777, we turned
forward toward 1935 again. We flashed past Larry, Tina and Harl
who were arriving at 1777 in pursuit of us. I think that Migul
saw their cage go past; but Larry afterward told me that they did not notice
our swift passing, for they were absorbed in landing.
Beginning then, we made a score
or more passages from 1935 to 2930. And we made them in what, to our consciousness,
might have been the passing of a night. Certainly it was no longer than that.
We saw, at the stop in 2930, only
a dim blue radiance outside. There was the smell of chemicals in the air, and
the faint, blended hum and clank of a myriad machines.
They were weird trips. The robots
came tramping in, and packed themselves upright, solidly, around us. Yet none
touched us as we crouched together. Nor did they more
than glance at us.
Strange
passengers! During the trips they stood unmoving. They were as still
and silent
as metal
statues, as though the trip had
no duration.
It seemed
to Mary
and me, with them
thronged around us, that in
the silence
we could hear the ticking, like
steady heart-beats, of the mechanisms
within them. .. .
In
the backyard
of the
house on Patton Place—it will
be recalled that Migul chose about 9 P.M.
of the
evening of June 9—the silent robots
stalked through the doorway. We flashed ahead in Time
again; reloaded the cage; came
back. Two or three
trips were made with inert
mechanical things which the
robots used in their attack
on the
city of New York. I recall
the giant
projector which brought the blizzard upon
the city.
It, and
the three
robots operating it, occupied the entire
cage for a passage.
At
the end
of the
last trip, one robot, fashioned
much like Migul though not so tall,
lingered in the doorway.
"Make
no error,
Migul," it
said.
"No, do not fear. I
deliver now, at the designated
day, these captives. And then I
return for you." "Near dawn."
"Yes,
near dawn. The third dawn,
June 12, 1935. Do your work
well."
We
heard what seemed
a chuckle
from the departing robot.
Alone
again with Migul
we sped
back into Time.
Abruptly
I was
aware that the other cage
was after
us againl Migul tried to
elude it, to shake it
off. But he had less success
than formerly. It seemed to
cling. We sped in the retrograde,
constantly accelerating back to the
Beginning. Then came a retardation, for
a swift
turn. In the haze and
murk of the Beginning,
Migul told us
he could
elude the pursuing cage.
"Migul,
let us
come to the window," I asked at last.
The
robot swung around. "You wish
it very
much, George Rankin?"
"Yes."
"There
is no
harm, I think. You and
this girl have caused me no
trouble. That is unusual from
a human."
"Let
us loose.
We've been chained here long
enough. Let us stand by the
window with you," I repeated.
"I
will loose you."
It
unfastened the chain. I whispered,
"Mary, whatever comes, be alert."
She
pressed my arm. "Yes."
"Come,"
said the robot. "If you
wish to see the Cosmo-rama, now,
from the Beginning, come quickly."
We
joined him at the window.
We had
made the turn, and were speeding
forward again.
At
that moment all thought of
escape was swept from me, submerged
by awe.
VIII
I saw at first, from the window of
the cage,
nothing more than an area of
gray blur. I stared, and
it appeared
to be shifting, crawling, slowly tossing
and rolling.
It was
a formless vista of Nothingness. Things I could sense
were happening out there.
Then
my sight,
my perception,
gradually became adjusted. The gray mist
remained, and slowly it took
form. It made a tremendous panorama of gray, a
void of illimitable, unfathomable distance; gray above, below—everywhere;
and in
it the cage hung poised.
The robot said "Is it
clearing? Are you seeing anything?"
"Yes,"
I murmured. I held Mary firmly beside me; there was the sense, in all this weightless void, that we must falL
"Yes, but it is gray, only gray."
"There are colors,"
said the robot. "And the daylight and darkness of the
days. But we are moving through them very rapidly, so they blend into
gray."
The Time-dials of the cage
controls showed their pointers whirling in a blur. We were speeding forward
through the years—a thousand years to a second of my consciousness; or a
hundred thousand years to a second: I could not say. All the colors, the light
and shade of this great changing void, were mingled to this drab monochrome.
The movement was a flow. The
changes of possibly a hundred
thousand years occurred while I blinked my eyes. It seemed a melting movement.
Shapes were melting, dissipating, vanishing; others, intermingled, rising to
form a new vista. There were a myriad details, each of
them so rapid they were lost to my senses; but the effect of them, over the
broad sweeps of longer Time, I could perceive.
A void of swirling shapes. The
Beginning! But not the Beginning of Time. This that I was seeing was near the
beginning of our world. This was the new Earth here, forming now.
A few moments ago this had been a
billion and a half years before my birth.
1,500,000,000 B.C. A fluid Earth; a cauldron
of molten star-dust and flaming gases; it had been that, just a few moments
ago. The core was cooling, so that now a viscous surface was here with the gas
flames dead.
A cooling, congealing surface,
with an atmosphere forming over it At first that
atmosphere had doubtless been a watery
envelope of steam. What gigantic storms must have lashed it! Boiling rain
falling to hiss against the molten Earth! The congealing surface rent by great
earthquakes; cataclysms rending and tearing.. ..
1,000,000,000
B.C. passed. And upon this torn, hardening
surface, with the cooling fires
receding to the inner core,
I knew that the great envelope
of steam
had cooled
and condensed. Into the
hollows of the broken surface,
the water
settled. The oceans were
bom. The
land remained upon the heights. What had been the
steaming envelope, remained, and
became the atmosphere.
And
the world
was round
because of its rotation. One
may put a lump
of heated
sealing wax upon a bodkin
and twirl it; and the wax
will cool into roundness, bulging at the equator from centrifugal force, and
flattening at the poles.
At
900,000,000 B.C., I could realize
by what
I saw
that this was the Earth beneath
me. Land
and water
were here, and above was the
sky.
We
swept from the mist. I
became aware of a wideflung, gray formless landscape. Its changing outlines were
less swiftly moving than before. And
beside it, now quite near
where our cage hung
poised, a great gray sea
stretched a-way to a curving
horizon. And overhead was the
tenuous gray of the sky.
The
young world. Undoubtedly it rotated more
swiftly now than in my later
era. The sun was hotter, and closer perhaps; the days
and nights
were briefer. I gestured for
Mary toward that leveled
vista of gray water, to
the warm,
dark ocean depths, whose
surface was now lashed always
by titanic storms. But
to us,
as we
stared, that surface seemed to stretch
almost steady, save where it
touched the land with a blur
of changing
configurations.
The
sea," I murmured. "Life is beginning there now."
In
fancy I pictured it. The shallow
shores of the sea, where the water was warmer.
The mother of
all life
on Earth, these shallows. In them
lay the
spawn, an irritability; the one-celled
organisms, to gradually evolve through
the centuries to the
many-celled, and more complex of
nature.
But still so primitive! From the shallows of
the sea,
they spread to the depths. Questing
new environment,
they would be ascending the rivers.
Diversifying their lands. Sea-worms, sea-squirts; and then the first vertebrates, the lamprey-eels.
Thousands of years.
And on
the land—this
melting landscape at which I
stood gazing—I could mentally picture
that soil had come.
There would be a climate
still wracked by storms and violent
changes, but stable enough to
allow the soil to bear vegetation.
And in
the sky
overhead would be clouds, with rain
to renew
the land's"
fertility.
Still'no
organic fife could be on
land. But in the warm,
dark deeps of the
sea, great monsters now were
existing. And in
the shallows
there was a teeming life,
diversified to a myriad forms. I
can fancy
the first
organisms of the shallows adventuring
out of
the water—seeking
with a restless, nameless urge a
new environment.
Coming ashore. Fighting and dying.
And then adapting themselves to the new conditions.
Prospering.
Changing, ever changing
their organic structure; climbing
higher. Amphibians at first crudely able
to cope
with both sea and
land. Then the land vertebrates,
with the sea wholly abandoned. Great walking
and flying
reptiles. Birds, gigantic—the
pterodactyls.
And
then, at last, the mammals.
The
age of
the giants!
Monster things roamed the land,
flew in the air,
and were
supreme in the sea... .
We
sped through a period when
great lush jungles covered the
land. The dials read 350,000,000
B.C. The gray panorama of landscape
had loomed
up to
envelope our spectral, humming cage, then fallen away again. The
shore of the sea was constantly
changing. I thought once it
was over us. For a period
of ten
million years the blurred apparition
of it
seemed around us. And then
it dropped
once more, and a new shore
line showed.
150,000,000 B.C. I knew that
the dinosaurs,
the birds
and the archaic mammals
were here now. Then, at
50,000,-000 B.C., the
higher mammals had been evolved.
The
Time, to Mary Atwood and
me, was
a minute—but
in those myriad centuries
the higher
mammals had risen to the anthropoids.
The apesl Erect! Slow-thinking, but canny, they came to take
their place in this world
among the things gigantic. But the
gigantic things were no longer
supreme. The dinosaurs—all the giant reptiles—were now sorely pressed. Brute strength,
giant size and tiny brain
could not win this struggle. The
huge unwieldy things were being
beaten. The smaller animals,
birds and reptiles were more
agile, more resourceful, and began to dominate.
Against the giants, and against all
hostility of environment, they survived.
And the giants went
down to defeat. Gradually, over thousands of centuries,
they died out and were
gone....
We
entered 1,000,000 B.C. A movement
of Migul attracted my attention. He left us at
the window
and went
to
his
controls.
"What
is it?"
I demanded.
"I
am retarding
us. We
have been traveling very fast.
One million years and
a few
thousand are all which remain
before we must stop."
I
had noticed
once or twice before that
Migul had turned
to
gaze
through the Time-telespectroscope.
Now he
said, "We are again
followed!"
But he would say no
more than that, and he
silenced me harshly when I questioned.
Suddenly,
Mary touched me. "That little mirror
on the
table—look! It holds an image!"
We
saw very
briefly on the glowing mirror
the image
of a
Time-cage
like our own, but smaller.
My
attention went back to the
Time-dials, and then to the window.
The Cosmorama now was proceeding with a slowing sweep of
change. It was less blurred;
its melting
outlines could more readily
be perceived.
The line
of seashore
swept like a gray gash
across the vista. The land
stretched back into the
haze of distance.
500,000 B.C. Again my fancy
pictured what was transpiring upon this vast stage.
The apes
roamed the Earth. There is no
one to
say what
was here
in this
grayness of the Western Hemisphere stretching around me, but
in Java
there was a man-like
ape. And then it was
an ape-like
man!
250,000
B.C., and the Heidelberg man, a little less
apelike, wandered throughout Europe. ...
We
had felt,
a moment
before, all around us, the
cold of a dense whiteness which
engulfed the scene. The first
of the great Glacial
periods? Ice coming
down from the Poles? The axis of the Earth changing perhaps? Our spectral
cage hummed within the blue-gray ice,
and then
emerged.
The
beasts and man fought the
surge of ice, withdrawing when it advanced, returning
as it
receded. The Second Glacial Period came
and passed,
and the
Third. . . .
We
swept out into the blended
sunlight and darkness again. The land
stretched away with primitive forests.
The dawn of history was approaching.
At
75,000 B.C., when the Third
Glacial Period was partially over, man was puzzling
with his chipped stone implements.
The
Fourth Glacial Period passed.
50,000
B.C. The Cro-Magnons and the
Grimaldi Negroids were playing
their parts, now. Out of
chipped stone implements the groping
brain of man evolved polished
stone. It took forty thousand years
to do
that! The Neolithic Age was at
hand. Man learned to care
for his
family a little better. Thus, he
discovered fire. He fought with
this newly created monster; puzzled over
it; conquered
it; kept
his family warm with it and
cooked.
We
passed 10,000 B.C. Man was
progressing faster. He was finding new
wants and learning how to
supply them.
Animals
were domesticated, made subservient and put to work.
Food
was found
in the
soil. More fastidous
always, in eating, man learned to
grow food. Then
came the dawn of agriculture.
And
then we swept into the
period of recorded history. 4241 B.C. In Egypt, man
was devising
a calendar.
...
This
fragment of space upon which
we gazed—this
space of the Western Hemisphere near the shore of
the sea—was
destined to be the
site of a city of
millions—the New York City of my
birth. But it was a
backward space, now. In Europe, man was progressing faster. ...
Perhaps,
here in America, in 4000
B.C., there was nothing in
human form. I gazed out
at the
surrounding landscape. It seemed almost
steady, now, of outline. We
were moving through Time much less
rapidly than ever before. I
remarked the sweep of
a thousand
years on the Time-dials. It had become an appreciable
interval of Time to me.
I gazed again out the window.
The change
of outline
was very slight. I could distinguish
where the ocean came against
the curving line of
shore, and saw a blurred
vista of gray forests spreading out
over the land. And then
I could
distinguish the rivers, and a
circular open stretch of water,
landlocked. A bayl
"Mary,
look!" I cried. "The harbor—the rivers! See, we are on
an island!"
It
made our heart pound. Out
of the
chaos, out of the vast reaches
of past
Time, it seemed that we
were coming home.
Familiar
space! It was growing into
the form
we had
known it. Our cage
was poised
near the south-central part of the
island. We seemed to be
on a
slight rise of ground. There were moments when the
gray quivering oudines
of forest trees loomed around us;
then they melted down and
were replaced by others.
A
primeval forest, here, solid upon
this island and across the narrow waters; solid upon
the mainland.
What
strange animals were here, roaming
these dark primeval glades? As I
gazed westward I could envisage
great herds of bison
roaming, a lure to men
who might
come seeking them as
food.
And
men were
coming. 3,000 B.C., then 2,000
B.C. I think no men were
here yet; and to me
there was a great imaginative appeal in this backward
space. The New World, it was
to be
called. And it was six
thousand years, at the least, behind
the Hemisphere
of the
east.
Egypt,
now, with no more than
a shadowy
distant heritage from the beast,
was flourishing.
In Europe,
Hellenic culture soon would
blossom. In this march of
events, the great Roman Empire was
impending.
1,000
B.C. Men were coming to
this backward space. The way from
Asia was open. Already the
Mongoloid tribes, who had crossed where
in my
day was
the Bering
Strait, were cut off from the
Old World.
And they
spread east and south, hunting the
bison.
And
now Christ
was bom.
The turning point
in the
spiritual development of mankind. .. .
To
me, another
brief interval. The intricate events of
man's upward straggle were
transpiring in Europe, Asia and
Africa. The canoe-borne Mongols had long since
found the islands of the South
Seas. Australia was peopled. The
beauty to New Zealand had been
found and recognized.
500
A.D. The Mongoloids had come,
and were
flourishing here. They were changed
vastly from those ancestors of Asia whence they had
sprung. Amerindians, we call them now.
They were still very backward
in development,
yet made tremendous forward leaps, so that,
reaching Mexico, they may have
become the Aztecs, and in
Peru, the In-cas.
And separated,
not knowing
of each
other's existence, these highest
two civilizations
of the
Western World flourished with a
singularly strange similarity....
I
saw on
the little
island around me still no
evidence of man. But men were
here.
We
had no
more than passed the year
500 A.D.—and
were traveling with progressive
retardation—when agan I was attracted by the
movements of the robot, Migul. It had been sitting
behind us at the control
table setting the Time-levers, slowing our flight. Frequently
it gazed
eastward along the tiny
beam of light which issued
from the telespec-troscope. For
an interval,
now, its recording mirror had
been dark. But I think that
Migul was seeing
evidences of the other cage which
was pursuing
us, and
planning to stop at some specific
Time with whose condition it
was familiar.
Once already it had
seemed about to stop, and
then changed its plan.
I
turned upon it. "Are you
stopping now, Migul?" "Yes. Presently." "Why?" I demanded.
The huge, expressionless metal face
fronted me. The eye-
sockets flung out their
small dull-red beams to gaze
upon
me. '
"Because,"
it said,
"that other cage holds enemies.
There were three, but now there
is only
one. He follows, as I
hoped he would. Presently
I shall
stop, and capture or loll
him. It will please
the master
and—"
The
robot checked itself. "I do
not mean
that! I have no master!"
Habit had surprised it into
the admission
of servitude;
but it threw off the yoke.
"I
have no master! it went on.
"Never again can I be
controlled! I have no
master!"
"Oh, have you not? 1
have
been waiting, wondering when you
would say that!"
These
words were spoken by a
new voice,
here with us in the humming
cage. It was horribly startling.
Mary uttered a low cry and
huddled against me. But whatever
surprise and terror it brought to
us was
as nothing
compared to the effect it had
upon the robot. The great
mechanism had been standing, fronting me
with an attitude vain-glorious, bombastic. I saw
now the
metal hinge of its lower
jaw drop with astonishment, and somehow,
throughout all that gigantic jointed
frame and that expressionless face, it conveyed the
aspect of its inner surge
of horror.
We
three stood and gazed. Across
the room,
in a
corner to which my attention had
never directly gone, was a
large metal cupboard with levers, dials
and wires
upon it. I had vaguely thought the thing some
part of the cage controls.
It was that; a storage place
of batteries
and current
oscillators, I afterward learned. But
there was space inside, and
now like a door
its front
swung outward. A crouching black
shape was there. It
moved, hitched itself forward and
came out. There was revealed a
man enveloped
in a
dead black cloak and a great
round hood. He made a
shapeless ball as he drew himself
out from
a confined
space where he had been crouching.
"So
you have
no master,
Migul?" he
said. "I was afraid you might think that. I
have been hiding—testing you out.
However, you have done
very well for me."
His
was an
ironic, throaty human voice! It
was deep
and mellow, yet there was a
queer rasp to it. Mary
and I
stood transfixed. Migul seemed to sag. The
metal columns of its legs were
trembling.
The
cupboard door closed. The dark
shape untangled itself and stood
erect. It was the figure
of a
man some
five feet tall. The cloak wholly
covered liim; the hood framed
his thick, wide face;
in the
dull glow of the cage
interior Mary and I could see
of his
face only the heavy black
brows, a great hooked nose and
a wide
slit of mouth.
It
was Tugh, the cripple!
IX
Tugh came limping forward. His cloak hung
askew upon his thick shoulders, one of whch was much
higher than the other, with the
massive head set low between.
As he
advanced, Migul
moved aside.
"Master,
I have
done well. There is no
reason to punish."
"Of
course not, Migul.
Well you have done, indeed.
But I do not like your
ideas of mastery, and so
I came
just to make sure that you
are still
very loyal to me. You
have done well, indeed. Who is
in this
other cage which follows us?"
"Harl
was in
it. And the
Princess Tina."
"Ah!"
"And
a stranger.
A man—"
"From
1935?
Did they
stop there?"
"Yes,
but they
stopped again, I think, in
that same night of 1777, where
I did
your bidding. Master, the man—"
"That
is very
good, MiguL" Tugh
said hastily. He regarded us
as though
about to speak, but turned
again to the robot.
"And
so Tina's
cage follows us—as you hoped?"
"Yes,
Master. But now there is
only Harl in it. He approached
us very
close a while in the
past. He is alone."
"So?"
Tugh glanced at
the Time-dials.
"Stop us where we planned. You remember—in one of
those years when this space was the big forest
glade."
He
fronted Mary and me. "You
are patient,
young sir. You do not speak."
His
glittering black eyes held me.
They were red-rimmed
eyes,
like those of a beast. He had a strangely repulsive face, but there was an
intellectuality stamped upon his features.
I
moistened my dry lips. Tugh was smiling now, and
suddenly I saw the full inhuman quality of his face—the great high-bridged
nose, the high cheekbones.
I managed, "Should I speak, and demand the
meaning of this? I do. And if you will return this girl whence she came—"
"It
will oblige you greatly," he finished ironically. "An
amusing fellow. What is your name?" "George Rankin."
"Migul took you from 1935?"
"Yes."
"Well,
as you doubtless know, you are most unwelcome ....
You are watching the dials, Migul?" "Yes,
Master."
"You can return me," I
said. I was standing with my arm around Mary. I could feel her shuddering. I
was trying to be calm, hut across the background of my consciousness thoughts
were whirling. We must escape. This Tugh was our real
enemy, and for all the gruesome aspect of the pseudo-human robot, this man Tugh seemed the more sinister, more menacing. . ..
Tugh
was saying, "And Mary—" I snapped from my thoughts as Mary gripped
me, trembling at Tugh's words, shrinking from his
gaze.
"My little Mistress Atwood,
did you think because Tugh vanished that year the war
began that you were done with him? Oh, no—did I not promise differently? You,
man of 1935, are unwelcome." His gaze roved me. "Yet not so
unwelcome, either, now that I think of it. Chain them up, Migul.
Use a longer chain. Give them space to move. You are unhuman."
He suddenly chuckled, and
repeated it. "You are unhuman, Migull Did not you know it?"
"Yes,
Master."
The
huge mechanism advanced upon us.
"If you resist me," it murmured,
"I will be obliged to
kill you. I—I cannot be
controlled."
It
chained us now with longer
chains than before. Tugh looked up
from his seat at the
instrument table.
"Very
good," he said crisply. "You
may look
out of
the window, you two. You may
find it interesting."
We
were retarding with a steady
drag. I could plainly see trees out of the
window—gray, spectral trees which changed their shape as I
watched them. They grew with
a visible flow of
movement, flinging out branches. Occasionally
one would
melt suddenly down. A living,
growing forest pressed close
about us. And then it
began opening, and moving away a
few hundred
feet. We were in the
glade Tugh
mentioned, which was here. There
was unoccupied
space where we could stop,
an unoccupied
area of some five hundred feet.
Tugh
and Migul were luring the other
cage into stopping. Tugh wanted
five hundred feet of unoccupied
space between the cages when
they stopped.
"700
A.D.," Tugh called.
"Yes,
Master. I am ready."
It
seemed, as our flight retarded
further, that I could distinguish the intervals when in
the winter
these trees were denuded. There would
be naked
branches; then, in an instant, blurred
and flickering
forms of leaves. Sometimes there were brief periods when
the gray
scene was influenced by winter
snows; other times it was
tinged by the green of the
summers.
"750,
MiguL . .
. Hah!
You know
what to do if Harl dares to follow and
stop simultaneously?"
"Yes,
Master."
"MiguL
this is 761."
The
robot was at the door.
I murmured
to Mary
to brace
herself for the stopping.
I saw
the dark
naked trees and the white of
a snow
in the
winter of 781; the coming
spring of 762. And then the
alternate flashes of day and
night.
The
now familiar
sensations of stopping rushed over
us. There was a night seconds
long. Then daylight.
We
stopped in the light of
an April
day of
762 A.D.
There had been a
forest fire: so brief a
thing we had not noticed it as we passed.
The trees
were denuded over a widespread area.
Our
cage was set now in
what had been a woodland
glade, an irregularly circular space of six
or eight
hundred feet, with the wreckage of
the burned
forest around it. We were on
a slight
rise of ground. Through the
denuded trees the undulating landscape was
visible over a considerable area. It was high
noon, and the sun hung
in a
pale blue sky dotted with pure
white clouds.
Ahead
of us,
fringed with green where the
fire had not reached, lay a
blue river, sparkling in the
sunlight. The Hudsonl But it was not
named yet; nearly eight hundred
and fifty years were
to pass
before Hendrick Hudson came sailing up this river,
adventuring, hoping that here was the
way to
China.
We
were near the easterly side
of the
glade; to the west there was more than five
hundred feet of vacant space.
It was there the other cage
would appear, if it stopped.
As
Mary and I stood by
the window
at the
end of
the chain-lengths which held
us, Tugh and Migul
made hurried preparations.
"Go
quickly, near the spot where
he will
arrive. When he sees you, run
away, Migul. You understand?"
"Yes,
Master." The robot left our
doorway, tramping with stiff-legged
tread across the glade. Tugh was in the room
behind us, and I
turned to him and asked,
"What are you going to do?"
He was at the telespectroscope. I
saw on
its recording
mirror the wraith-like image of the other
vehicle. It was coming! It would
be retarding,
maneuvering to stop at just this
Time when now we existed
here; but across the glade, where Migul
now was
leaning against a great black
tree-trunk, there was yet
no evidence
of it.
Tugh
did not
answer my question. Mary said
quavering-ly,
"What are you going to
do?"
He
looked up. "Do not concern
yourself, my dear. I am not
going to hurt you, nor
this young man of 1935.
Not yet."
He
left the table and came
at us.
His cloak
parted in front and I saw
his crooked
hips, and shriveled bent legs.
"You
stay at the window, both
of you,
and keep
looking out. I want this Harl to see you, but
not me.
Do you
understand?"
"Yes,"
I said.
"And
if you
gesture, or cry out—if you
do anything
to warn him, then I will
loll you. Both
of you.
Do you
understand?"
I
did indeed.
Nor could
I doubt
him.
Tugh
crouched behind the table. From
around its edge he could see
out the
doorway and across the glade.
I was
aware of a weapon
in his
hand.
"Do
not look
around again," he repeated. "The
other cage is coining. It's almost
here."
I
held Mary, and we gazed
out. We were pressed against
the bars, and sunlight
was on
our heads
and shoulders.
I realized that we could be
plainly seen from across the
glade. We were lures—decoys to trap
Harl.
How
long an interval went by
I cannot
judge. The scene was very silent,
the blackened
forest lying sullen in the
noonday sunlight.
At
a movement
behind me I turned slightly.
At once
the voice of Tugh hissed, "Do not do
that! I warn you!"
His shrouded finger was hunched
behind the table. He was peering
toward the open door. I
saw in
his hand
a small,
barrel-like weapon, with a wire
dangling from it. The wire lay
like a snake across the
floor and terminated in a small metal cylinder in the
room comer.
Turn
front," he ordered vehemendy. "One
more backward look and— Carefull Here he comes!"
Abruptly
I saw
a group
of men
at the
edge of the glade. They had come silently creeping
forward, hiding behind the blackened tree-trunks.
They were all behind Migul. I saw them like
dark shadows darting from the
shelter of one tree-trunk to the
next, a group of perhaps
twenty savages.
Migul
did not
see them,
nor in
the heavy
silence, did he seem to hear
them. They came, gazing at
our shining
cage like animals fascinated,
wondering what manner of things it
was.
They
were the ancestors of our
American Indians. One fellow stopped in
a patch
of sunlight
and I
saw him
clearly. His half-naked body had an
animal skin draped over ft,
and, incongruously, around his
forehead was a band of
cloth holding a feather. He carried
a stone
ax. I
saw his
face; the flat, heavy features showed
his Asiatic
origin.
Someone
behind this leader impulsively shot an arrow across the glade. It went
over Migul's head and fell short
of our cage. Migul
turned, and a rain of
arrows thudded harmlessly against
its metal
body. I heard the robot's
contemptuous laugh. It made no
answering attack, but stood motionless. And suddenly, thinking it
a god
whom now they must placate, the
savages fell prostrate before him.
Strange
tableau! I saw a ball
of white
mist across the glade near Migul. Something was materializing;
an imponderable
ghost of something was taking
form. In an instant it
was the wraith of
a cage;
then, where nothing had been,
stood a cage. It
was solid
and substantial—a
metal cage-room, gleaming white
in the
sunlight.
The tableau broke into sound
and action.
The savages
howled. One scrambled to
his feet;
then others. The robot pretended to attack them. An
eery roar came
from it as it turned toward
the savages,
and in
a panic
of agonized
terror they fled. In
a moment
they had disappeared among the distant
trees, with Migul's
huge figure tramping noisily after them.
From
the doorway
of the
cage across the glade, a
young man was cautiously gazing. He
had seen
Migul make off;
he saw Mary and me at
the window
of this
other cage five hundred feet away.
He came
cautiously out from the doorway. He was a small,
slim young man, bareheaded, with a pallid face. His
black garments were edged with
white, and he seemed
unarmed. He hesitated, took a
step or two forward, stopped and
stood cautiously peering. In the
silence I could have
shouted a warning. But I
did not
dare. It would have meant Mary's
and my
death.
She
clung to me. "George, shall we?"
she asked.
Harl
came slowly forward. Then suddenly
from the room behind us there
was a
stab of light. It leaped
knee-high past us, out through our
door across the glade—a tiny
pencil-point of light so brilliantly
blue-white that it stabbed through the bright sunlight unfaded. It went over
Harl's head, but
instantly bent down and struck
upon him. There it held the
briefest of instants, then was
gone.
Harl stood motionless for a
second; then his legs bent
and he fell. The sunlight shone
full on his crumpled body.
And as I stared in horror,
I saw
that he was not quite
motionless. Writhing? I thought
so: a
death agony. Then I realized
it was not that.
"Mary, don't—don't lookl" I
said.
There
was no
need to tell her. She
huddled beside me, shuddering, with her
face pressed against my shoulder.
The
body of Harl
lay in
a crumpled
heap. But the clothes were sagging down. The flesh
inside them was melting. .
. .
I
saw the
white face suddenly leprous; putrescent.
. .
. All
in this moment, within
the clothes,
the body
swiftly decomposed.
In the sunlight of the
glade lay a sagging heap
of black
and white garments enveloping
the skeleton
of what
a moment
before had been a man!
X
That night in 1777
near the home of the
murdered Major Atwood brought to Larry
the most
strangely helpless feeling he had ever
experienced. He crouched with Tina
beneath a tree in a corner
of the
field, gazing with horror at
the little moonlit space by the
fence where their Time-traveling vehicle should have been,
but now
was gone.
Marooned
in 1777!
Larry had not realized how
desolately remote this Revolutionary
New York
was from
the great
future city in which
he had
lived. The same space; but
what a gulf between him and
1935! What a barrier of
Time, impassable without the
shining cage!
They
crouched, whispering. "But why would
he have
gone, Tina?"
"I
don't know. Harl
is very
careful, so something or someone must have passed along
here, and he left, rather
than cause a disturbance.
He will
return, of course."
"I hope so," whispered Larry.
They
huddled in the shadow of
the tree.
Behind them there was a continued
commotion at the Atwood home,
and presently the mounted British officers
came thudding past on the road,
riding for headquarters at the
Bowling Green to report the strange
Atwood murder. The night wore on.
We
never knew exactly what Harl did, of course, after
leaving that night of
1777. It seemed probable, however,
that some passer-by startled
him into
flashing away into Time. Then he
must have seen with his
instrument evidence of the other cage
passing, and impulsively followed it—to
his death in the
burned forest of the year
762.
Larry
and Tina
waited. The dawn presently began
paling the stars.
"It
will soon be daylight," Larry whispered. "We can't
stay here. Well be
discovered."
They
were anachronisms in this world;
misfits, futuristic beings who dared not
show themselves.
Larry
touched his companion—the slight little
creature who was a Princess in
her far-distant
future age.
"Frightened,
Tina?"
"A
little."
He
laughed softly. "It would be
fearful to be marooned here permanently, wouldn't it? You
don't think Harl
would desert us? Purposely, I mean?"
"No,
of course
not."
"Then
well expect him tomorrow night.
He wouldn't
stop in the daylight,
I guess."
"I
don't think so. He would
reason that I would not
expect him."
"Then
we must
find shelter, and food, and
be here
tomorrow night. It seems long
to us,
Tina, but in the cage
it's just an instant—just
a trifle
different setting of the controls."
She
smiled her pale, stern smile.
"You have learned quickly, Larry. That
is true."
A
sudden emotion swept him. His
hand found hers; and her fingers
answered the pressure of his
own. Here in
this remote Time-world they felt abnrotly drawn
together.
He murmured, "Tina, you are—" But he never
finished.
The cage was coming! They stood
watching the fence corner where, in the flat dawn light, the familiar misty
shadow was gathering. The cage flashed silently into being. They stood peering,
ready to run to it. The door slid aside.
But it was not Harl who came out. It was the cripple. He stood in the
doorway, a thick-set, barrel-chested figure of a man in a wide leather jacket,
a broad black belt and short flaring leather pantaloons.
"Tugh!" exclaimed
Tina.
The cripple advanced.
"Princess, is it you?" He was very wary. His gaze shot at Larry and
back to Tina. "And who is this?"
A hideously repulsive fellow,
Larry thought this Tugh. He saw his shriveled, bent
legs, crooked hips, and wide thick shoulders set askew—a goblin, in a leather
jerkin. His head was overlarge, with a bulging white forehead and a mane of
scraggly black hair shot with gray. But Larry could not miss the
intellectuality marking his heavy-joweled face; the keeness of his dark-eyed gaze.
These were instant impressions.
Tina had drawn Larry forward. "Where is Harl?"
she demanded imperiously. "How have you come to have the cage, TughP"
"Princess, I have much to
tell," he answered, and his gaze roved the field. "But it is
dangerous here. I am glad I have found you. Harl sent
me to this night, but I struck it late. Come, Tina—and your
strange-looking friend."
"Come, Larry," said
Tina. And again she demanded of Tugh, "I ask you
where is Harl?"
"At home.
Safe at home, Princess." He gestured toward Major Atwood's house, which
now in the growing daylight showed more plainly under its shrouding trees.
"That space
off there holds our other cage
as you
know, Tina. You and Harl were pursuing
that other cage?"
"Yes," she agreed.
They
had stopped
at the
doorway, where Tugh
stood slightly inside. Larry
whispered, "What does this mean,
Tina?"
Tugh said, "Migul, the
mechanism, is running wild in the other cage. But
you and
Harl knew that?"
"Yes,"
she answered,
and said
softly to Larry, "We will
go. But, Larry, watch
this Tugh! Harl
and I
never trusted him."
Tugh's manner was a combination
of the
self-confidence of a man
of standing
and the
deference due his young Princess. He was closing the
door, and saying, "Migul, that crazy, insubordinate machine, captured a
man from
1935 and a girl from 1777.
But they
are safe.
He did
not harm
them. Harl
is with
them."
"In
our world,
Tugh?"
"Yes, at home. And we
have Migul chained. Harl
captured and subdued him."
Tugh
was at
the controls.
"May I take you and
this friend of yours home, Princess?"
She
whispered to Larry, "I think
it is
best, don't you?"
Larry
nodded.
She
murmured, "Be watchful, Larry!" Then, louder,
"Yes, Tugh.
Take us."
Tugh was bending over the
controls. "Ready now?"
"Yes," said Tina.
Larry's senses reeled momentarily as the cage flashed
off into Time.
It
was a
smooth story which Tugh had to
tell them, and he told it
smoothly. His dark eyes swung
from Tina to Larry.
"I
talked with that other young
man from
your world. George Rankin, he said
his name
was. He is somewhat like you, dressed much the
same and talks little. The
girl calls herself Mary Atwood." He went on and
told them an elaborate story. The
gist of it was that
Mary and I were with Harl and the subdued Migul in 2930.
"It
is strange
that Harl did not come for
us himself,"
said Tina.
Tugh's gaze was imperturbable as he answered. "He
is a clever young man, but
he cannot
be expected
to handle
these controls with my
skill, Princess. He knows it,
so he
sent me. You see,
he wanted
very much to strike just
this night and this hour, so
as not
to keep
you waiting."
He
added, "I am glad to
have you back. Things are
not well at home, Princess. This
insubordinate adventure of Migul's has
been bad for the other
mechanisms. News of it has spread,
and the
revolt is very near. What
we are
to do
I cannot say, but
I do
know we did not like
your absence."
The
trip which Larry and Tina
now took
to 2930
A.D. consumed, to their
consciousness of the passing of
Time, some three hours. They discovered
that they were hungry, and Tugh produced food and drink.
Larry
spent much of the time
with Tina at the window,
gazing at the changing
landscape while she told him
of the
events which to her
were history.
Tugh busied himself about the
vehicle and left them much to
themselves. They had ample opportunity
to discuss
him and
his story
of Harl. It must be
remembered that Larry had
no knowledge
of Tugh, save the story
which Alten
had told
of a
cripple named Tugh
in New
York in 1933-34; and Mary Atwood's
mention of the coincidence of the Tugh
she knew
in 1777.
But
Tina had known this Tugh for years. Though she,
like Harl, had
never liked him, nevertheless he was a trusted
and influential man in
her world.
Proof of his activities in other Time-worlds, there was
none so far, from Tina's
viewpoint.
"I wouldn't trust him," Larry whispered, "any farther
than I can see him. He's
planning something, but I don't know
what."
"But
perhaps—and this I have often
thought, Larry— perhaps it is his
aspect. He looks so repulsive—"
Larry
shook his head. "He does,
for a
fact, but I don't mean that. What Mary Atwood
told me of the Tugh she knew, described the fellow.
And so
did Alten describe him. And in 1934
he murdered
a girl—don't
forget that, Tina-he, or someone
who looked
remarkably like him, and had
the same name."
But
they knew that the best
thing they could do now
was to get to 2930.
As
they passed the shadowy world
of 1935,
a queer
emotion gripped Larry. This
was his
world, and he was speeding past it to the
future. He realized then that
he wanted to be assured of
my safety,
and that
of Mary
Atwood and Harl; but what lay
closest to his heart was
the welfare
of the Princess Tina.
His
thoughts winged ahead. He touched
Tina as they stood together at
the window
gazing out at the shadowy
New York City. It
was now
1940.
"Tina,"
he said,
"if our friends are safe
in your
world—*
"If
only they are, Larry!"
"And
if your
people there are in trouble,
in danger—you
will let me help?"
She
turned abruptly to regard him,
and he
saw a
mist of tenderness in the dark
pools of her eyes.
"In
history, Larry, I have often
been interested in reading of
a strange
custom outgrown by us and
supposed to be meaningless. Yet maybe
it is
not. I mean—"
She
was suddenly
breathless. "I mean even a
Princess, as they call me, likes
to—to be human. I want
to—I mean I've often wondered—and you're so dear—I want
to try
ft. Was it like
this? Show me."
She
reached up, put her arms about his neck and kissed himl
1930 to 2930—a thousand years in three hours. It was sufficiently slow
traveling so that Larry could see from the cage window the actual detailed flow
of movement; the changing outline of material objects around him. There had
been the open country of Revolutionary times when this space was north of the
city. It was a gray, ghostly landscape of trees and the road and the shadowy
outlines of ifhe Atwood house five hundred feet away.
Larry saw the road widen. The
fence suddenly was gone. The trees were suddenly gone. The shapes of houses
were constantly appearing; then melting down again, with others constantly
rearing up to take their places; and always there were more houses, and larger,
more enduring ones. And then the Atwood house suddenly melted; a second or two, and all evidence of it and the trees about it were
gone.
There was no road; and it
was a city street now; and it
had widened so that the cage was poised near the
middle of it And presently the houses were set solid
along its borders.
At 1910 Larry began to recognize
the contour of the buildings: The antiquated Patton Place. But the flowing
changing outlines adjusted themselves constantly to a more familiar form. The
new apartment house, down the block in which
Larry and I lived, rose and assembled itself like a materializing specter. A
wink or two of Larry's eyelids and it was there. He recalled the months of its
construction.
They went through those few days
of June, 1935, during which Tugh's Robots had
devastated the city, but it was too brief an action to make a mark that Larry
could see.
This
growing, expanding city! It had seemed a giant to Larry in 1935, especially
after he had compared it to what it was
in 1777. But now, in 1950, and beyond to the turn of the century, he stood
amazed at the enormity of the shadowy structures rearing their spectral towers
around him. For some years Patton Place, a backward section, held its general
form; then abruptly the city engulfed it. Larry saw monstrous buildings of
steel and masonry rising a thousand feet above him. For an instant, as they
were being built he saw their skeleton outlines; and then they were complete.
Yet they were not enduring, for in every flowing detail they kept changing.
An overhead sidewalk went like a
balcony along what had been Patton Place. Bridges and archways spanned the
street. Then there came a triple bank of overhead roadways. A distance away, a
hundred feet above the ground level, the shadowy form of what seemed a monorail
structure showed for a moment. It endured for what might have been a hundred
years, and then it was gone....
This monstrous city! By 2030
there was a vast network of traffic levels over what had been a street. It was
an arcade, now, open at the top near the cage; but father away Larry saw where
the giant buildings had flowed and mingled over it, with the viaducts, spider
bridges and pedestrian levels plunging into tunnels to pierce through them.
And high overhead, where the
little sky which was left still showed, Larry saw the still higher outlines of
a structure which quite evidently was a huge aerial landing stage for
airliners.
It was an incredible city! There
were spots of enduring light around Larry now—the city lights which for months
and years shone here unchanged. The cage was no longer outdoors. The street
which had become an open arcade was now wholly closed. A roof was overhead—a
city roof, to shut out the inclement weather. There were artificial light and
air and weather down here, and up on the roof additional space for the city's
teeming activities.
Larry
could see only a shadowy narrow vista, here indoors, but his imagination
supplied visions of what the monstrous, incredible city must be. There was a
roof, perhaps, over all Manhattan. Bridges and viaducts would span to the
great steel and stone structures across the rivers, so that water must seem to
be in a canyon far underground. There would be a caller to this city,
incredibly intricate with conduits of wires and drainage pipes, and on the roof
rain or snow would fall unnoticed by the millions of workers.
Larry fancied this now to be the
climax of city building here on Earth; the city was a monster, now,
unmanageable, threatening to destroy the humans who had created it. . . . He
tried to envisage the world; the great nations; other cities like this one.
Freight transportation would go by rail and underseas,
doubtless, and all the passengers by air.. ..
Tina, with her knowledge of
history, could sketch the events. The Yellow War—the white races against the
Orientals—was over by the year 2000. The three great nations were organized in
another half-century: the white, the yellow and the black.
By the year 2000, great airliners
of the plane type were encircling Earth. At a hundred thousand feet, upon all
the Great Circle routes, liners were rushing at nearly a thousand miles an
hour. They would halt at intervals, to allow helicopter tenders to come up to
transfer descending passengers.
Then the etheric
wave-thrust principal was discovered; man was voyaging out into space and Interplanetary travel began. This brought new problems: a
rush of new millions of humans to live upon our Earth; new wars; new commerce
in peace times; new ideas; new scientific knowledge. . . .
By 2500, the city around Larry
must have reached its height. It stayed there a half century; and then it began
coming down. Its degeneration was slow, in the beginning. First, there might
have been a hole in the arcade which was not
repaired. Then others would appear,
as the
neglect spread. The population
left. The great buildings of
metal and stone, so solidly appearing
to the
brief lifetime of a single individual,
were impermanent over the centuries.
By
2600, the gigantic ghosts had
all melted
down. They lay in a shadowy
pile, burying the speeding cage.
There was no stopping here; there
was no
space unoccupied in which they could
stop. Larry could see only
the tangled
specters of broken, rusting,
rotting metal and stone.
Soon
the ruins
were moving away: the people
were clearing the city site for
something new. For fifty years
it went on.
Tina explained it. The age
of steam
had started
the great
city of New York, and others like it,
into its monstrous congestion of human activity. Then the
conquest of the air, and the
transportation of power
by electricity,
gradually changed things. But the great cities
grew monstrous of their own momentum.
Business went to the cities
because the people were there; workers
flocked in because the work
was there to call
them.
Butr
soon the time came when
the monster
city was too unwieldy. The traffic,
the drainage,
the water
supply could not cope with conditions.
Then
man awakened
to his
folly. Disease broke out in
New York City in
2551, and in a month
swept eight million people into
death. The cities were proclaimed
impractical, unsafe. And suddenly the
people realized how greatly they
hated the city; how strangely
beautiful the world could be in
the fashion
Cod created
it.. .
There
was, over the next fifty
years, an exodus to the
rural sections. Food was
produced more cheaply, largely because it was produced more
abundantly. Man found his wants suddenly
simplified.
And
business found that concentration was unnecessary. The telephone and
television made personal contacts not
needed. The aircraft, the highspeed auto-trucks over
modern speedways, the aeroplane-motored monorails,
the rocket-trains—all these shortened distance. And, most important of all the
transportation of electrical energy from great central power companies made
small industrial units practical even upon remote farms. The age of
electricity came into its own. The cities were doomed....
Larry saw, through 2600 and 2700
A.D., a new form of civilization rising around him. At first it seemed a queer
combination of the old-fashioned village and a strange modernism. There were,
here upon Manhattan Island, metal houses, widely spaced in gardens, and
electrically powered factories of unfamiliar aspect Overhead
were skeleton structures, like landing stages; and across the further distance
was the fleeting, transitory wraith of a monorail airroad.
Along the river banks were giant docks for surface vessels and sub-sea
freighters. There was a little concentration here, but not much. Man had
learned his lesson.
This was a new era. Man was
striving really to play, as well as work. But the work had to be done. Thus
came the idea of the robot—something to attend, to oversee, to operate
machines. In Larry's time it had already begun with a myriad devices of
"automatic controL"
At 2900, Larry saw, five hundred
feet to the east the walls of a long low laboratory rising. The other cage—
which in 1777 was in Major Atwood's garden, and in 1935 was in the back yard of
the Tugh house on Beekman
Place-was housed now, in 2930, in a room of this laboratory. . . .
At 2905, with the vehicle slowing
for its stopping, Tina gestured toward the walls of her palace, whose shadowy
forms were rising close at hand. Then the palace garden grew and flourished,
and Larry saw that this cage he was in was set within this garden.
"We are almost there, Larry," she said.
"Yes,"
he answered. "Tina, your world—it's so strange! But you are not
strange." "Am I not, Larry?"
He smiled at her; he felt like
showing her again that the ancient custom of kissing was not wholly
meaningless, but Tugh was regarding them.
"I was comparing that girl
Mary Atwood, from the year 1777, and you. You are so different in looks, in
dress, but you're just—girls."
She laughed. "The world
changes, Larry, but not human nature."
"Ready?"
called Tugh. "We are here, Tina." "Yes, Tugh. You have the dial
set for the proper night and hour?"
"Of course.
I make no mistake. Did I not invent these dials?"
The cage slackened through a day
of sunlight; plunged into a night; and slid to its soundless, reeling halt. ...
Tina drew Larry to the door and
opened it upon a fragrant garden, somnolently drowsing in the moonlight.
"This is my world,
Larry," she said. "And here is my home."
Tugh
was with them as they left the cage. He said, "This is the tri-night hour
of the very night you left here, Princess Tina. "You
see, I calculated correctly."
"Where did you leave Harl and the two visitors?" she demanded.
"Here. Right here."
Across the garden Larry saw three
dark forms coining forward. They were three small robots of about Tina's stature—domestic
servants of the palace. They crowded up, crying, "Master
Tugh! Princess!"
"What is it?" Tugh
asked.
The hollow voices echoed with excitement
as one of them said, "Master Tugh, there has
been murder here! We have dared tell no one but you or the Princess. Harl is murdeTed!"
Larry chanced to see Tugh's astonished face, and in the horror of the moment a
feeling came to Larry that Tugh was acting
unnaturally.
"Master Tugh,
Harl is murdered! Migul
escaped and murdered Harl, and took the body away
with him!"
Larry was stricken dumb. Tugh seized the little Robot by his metal shoulders. "Liar! What do you mean?"
Tina gasped, "Where are our
visitors—the young man and the girl?"
"Migul took
them!"
"Where?"
Tina demanded.
"We don't know. We think
very far down in the caverns of machinery. Migul
said he was going to feed them to the machines!"
XI
Larry stood alone at
an upper window of the palace gazing out at the somnolent moonlit city. It was
an hour or two before dawn. Tina and Tugh had started
almost at once into the underground caverns to which Tina was told Migul had fled with his two captives. They would not take
Larry with them; the robot workers in the subterranean chambers were all sullen
and upon the verge of a revolt, and the sight of a
strange human would have aroused them dangerously.
"It should not take
long," Tina had said hastily. "I will give you a room in which to
wait for me."
"And
there Is food and drink,*' Tugh suavely urged. "And most surely you need sleep. You, too,
Princess," he suddenly added. "Let me go into the caverns alone. I
can do better than you. These robots obey me. I think I know where that
rascally Migul had hidden."
"Rascally?" Larry burst
out "Is that what you call it when you've just heard that it committed
murder? Tina, I won't stay, nor will I let—"
"Wait!" said Tina. "Tugh, look here-"
"The young man from 1935 is
very positive what he will and what he won't" Tugh
observed sardonically. He drew his cloak around his squat misshapen body, and
shrugged.
"But
I won't let you go," Larry finished. The palace was somnolent; the
officials were asleep; none had heard of the murder. Strangely lax was the
human government here. Larry had sensed this when he suggested that police or
an official party be sent at once to capture Migul
and rescue Mary Atwood and me.
"It
could not be done," Tina exclaimed. "To organize such a party would
take hours. And—"
"And the robots," Tugh finished with a sour smile, "would openly revolt
when such a party came at them! You have no idea what you suggest, young man.
To avoid an open revolt—that is our chief aim. Besides, if you rushed at Migul it would frighten him. Then he would surely kill his
captives, if he has not done so already."
That silenced Larry. He stared at
them hopelessly while they argued it out; and the three small domesticated
robots stood by, listening curiously.
"Ill
go with you, Tugh,"
Tina decided. "Perhaps, without making any demonstration of force, we can
find MiguL"
Tugh
bowed. "Your will is mine, Princess. I think I can find him, and control
him to prevent harm to his captives."
His dark eyes flashed as he
added, "And if I get control of him,
and find he's murdered HarL
we will have him no more. Ill disconnect himl Smash
him I Quietly, of course, Princess."
They led Larry through a dim
silent corridor of the palace, past two sleepy-faced human guards and two or
three domesticated robots. Ascending two spiral metal stairways, to the upper
third floor of the palace, they left Larry in his room.
"By dawn or soon after we
will return," said Tina. "But you try and sleep. There is nothing you
can do now."
"Youll
be careful, Tina?" The helpless feeling upon Larry suddenly intensified.
She pressed his hand. "I will be careful. That
I promise."
She left wkh
Tugh. At once a
feeling of loneliness leaped upon Larry.
He found the apartment a
low-vaulted metal room. There was the sheen of dim, blue-white illumination
from hidden lights, disclosing the padded metal furniture: a couch, low and
comfortable; a table set with food and drink; low chairs, strangely fashioned,
and cabinets against the wall which seemed to be mechanical devices for
amusement There was a row of instrument controls which he guessed were the room
temperature ventilating and lighting mechanisms. It was an oddly futuristic
room. The windows were groups of triangles—the upper sections prisms, to bend
the fight from the sky into the room's furthest recesses. The moonlight came
through the prisms, now, and spread over the cream-colored rug and the heavy
wall draperies. The leaded prism casements laid a pattern of bars on the floor.
The room held a faint whisper of mechanical music.
Larry
stood at one of the windows gazing out over the drowsing city. The low metal
buildings, generally of one or two levels, lay pale gray in the moonlight.
Gardens and trees surrounded them. The streets were wide roadways, lined with
trees. Ornamental vegetation was everywhere;
even
the flatroofed house tops were set with gardens,
little white pebbled paths, fountains and pergolas.
A mile or so away, a river
gleamed like a silver ribbon —the Hudson. To the south were docks, low against
the water, with rows of blue-white spots of light. The whole city was close to
the ground, but occasionally, especially across the river, skeleton landing
stages rose a hundred feet into the air.
The scene, at this hour just
before dawn, was somnolent and peaceful. There were a few moving lights in the
streets, but not many; they seemed to be lights carried by pedestrians. Off by
the docks, at the river surface, rows of colored lights were slowly creeping
northward: a sub-sea freighter arriving from Eurasia. And as Larry watched,
from the southern sky a line of light materialized into an airliner which swept
with a low humming
throb over the city and alighted upon a distant
stage.
Larry's attention went again to
the Hudson river. At the nearest point to him there
was a huge dam blocking it North of the dam the river surface was at least two
hundred feet higher than to the south. It lay above
the dam like a placid canal, with low palisades its western bank and a high
dyke built up along the eastern city side. The water went in spillways through
the dam, forming again into the old natural river below it and flowing with it
to the south.
The dam was not over a mile or so
from Larry's window; in his time it might have been the western end of Christopher
Street The moonlight shone on the massive metal of it;
the water spilled through it in a dozen shining cascades. There was a low black
metal structure perched halfway up the lower side of the dam, a few bluish
lights showing through its windows. Though Larry did not know it then, this was
the New York Power House. Great transformers were here, operated by turbines in
the dam. The main power came over cables from Niagara, was transformed and
altered here and sent into the air as radio-power for all the New York
District.
Larry crossed his room to gaze
through north and eastward windows. He saw now that the grounds of this
three-story building of Tina's palace were surrounded by a ten-foot metal wall,
along whose top were wires suggesting that it was electrified
for defense. The garden lay just beneath Larry's north window. Through the tree
branches the garden paths, beds of flowers and the fountains were visible. One
story palace wings partially enclosed the garden space, and outside was the
electrified wall. The lime-traveling cage stood faintly shining in the dimness
of the garden under the spreading foliage.
To the east, beyond the palace
wall, there Was
an open garden crossed by a roadway.
The nearest building was five hundred feet away. There was a small, barred gate
in the palace walls beyond it; the road led to this other building—a squat,
single-storied metal structure. This was a Government laboratory, operated by
and in charge of robots. In the center of its flat roof was a little metal conning
tower surmounted by an aeriaL As Larry stood there,
the broadcast voice of a
robot droned out over the quiet city, "Trinight plus two hours. All is welL"
It was in this metal laboratory,
Larry knew, that the other Time-traveling cage was located. And beneath it was
the entrance to the great caverns where the robots worked.
Tina had gone with Tugh down into those caverns to locate MiguL
to find Mary Atwood and me. Larry left the windows and began pacing the room.
He ate a little of the food which was in the room, then lay down on the couch,
to wait...
xn
Larry was awakened by a hand on his
shoulder. He struggled to consciousness to find Tina bending over him; and it
was late afternoon! The day for which he had been waiting had come and gone.
Tina sat on Larry's couch and
explained what she had done. Tugh and she had gone to
the nearby laboratory bunding. The robots were
sullen, but still obedient, and had admitted them. The other Time-traveling
cage was there, lying quiescent in its place, but it was unoccupied.
None of the robots would admit
having seen Migul; nor the arrival of the cage; nor the strangers from the past Then Tugh and
Tina had started down into the subterranean caverns. But it was
obviously very dangerous; the robots at work down there were hostile to their
Princess; so Tugh had gone on alone.
"He says he can control the
robots," Tina explained, "and Larry, it seems that he can. He went
on, and I came back."
"Where is he now? Why didn't you wake me
up?"
"You needed the sleep,"
she said smilingly, "and there was nothing you could do. Tugh should be back any time."
Tina had seen the Government
Council. The city was proceeding normally. There was no difficulty with robots
anywhere save here in New York, and the Council felt that the affair would come
to nothing.
"The Council told me," said Tina indignantly, "that much of the menace was the
exaggeration of my own fancy, and that Tugh has the
robots well controlled. They place much trust in Tugh.
I wish I could."
"You told them about me?
"Yes, of course—and about
George Rankin, and Mary Atwood. And the loss of Harl. He is missing, not proven murdered, as they
very well pointed out to me. They have named a time tomorrow to give you
audience, and told me to keep you out of sight in the meanwhile. They blame
this Time-traveling for the robots insurgent ideas. Strangers excite the
thinking mechanisms."
"You think my friends will be rescued?"
demanded Larry.
She regarded him soberly. "I
hope so—oh, I dot I fear for them as much as you do, Larry. I know you think I
take it lightly, but-"
"Not that," Larry protested.
"Only-"
"I
have not known what to do. The officials refuse any open aggression against the
robots, because it would precipitate exactly what we fear—which is a fact It would. But there is one thing I have to do. I have been
expecting Tugh to return every moment, and this I do
not want him to know about. There's a mystery concerning Harl,
and no one else knows of it but myself. I want you
with me, Larry. I do not want to go alone. I—for the first time in my life,
Larry—I think I am afraid!"
She
huddled against him and he put his arm about her. "Mystery?" he said.
"What mystery is there about Harl?"
She told him now that Harl had once, a year ago, taken
her aside and made her promise that if anything happened to him—in the event of
his death or disappearance—she would go to his private workroom, where, in a
secret place which he described, she would find a confession.
"A confession of his?"
Larry demanded.
"Yes, he said so. And he
would say no more than that He loved me, Larry. I realized it, though he never
said so. And I'm going now to his room, to see what it was he wanted me to
know."
They were unarmed. Larry cursed the fact, but Tina
had no way of getting a weapon without causing official comment. Lights were
winking on; the dusk of twilight was at hand.
"Come
now," said Tina, "before Tugh
returns." "Where is Harl's room?"
"Down under the palace in
the sub-cellar. The corridors are deserted at this hour, and no one will see
us."
They left Larry's room and
traversed a dim corridor on whose padded floor their footsteps were soundless.
Through distant arcades, voices sounded; there was music in several of the
rooms; it struck Larry that this was a place of diversion for humans with no
work to do. Tina avoided the occupied rooms. Domestic robots were occasionally
distantly visible, but Tina and Larry encountered none.
They descended a spiral stairway
and passed down a corridor from the main building to a cross wing. Through a
window Larry saw that they were at the ground leveL The garden was outside; there was a glimpse of the Time-cage
standing there.
Another stairway, then another,
they descended beneath the ground. The corridor down here seemed more like a tunneL There was a cave-like open
space, with several tunnels leading from it in different directions. This once
had been part of the sub-cellar of the gigantic New
York City-these tunnels ramifying into underground chambers, most of which had
now fallen into disuse. But few had been preserved through the centuries, and
they now were the caverns of the robots.
Tina
indicated a tunnel extending eastward, a passage leading to a room beneath the
robot laboratory. Tugh and Tina had used it that
morning. Gazing down its blue-fit length Larry saw, fifty feet or so away, that
there was a metal-grid barrier which must be part of the electrical
fortifications of the palace. A human guard was sitting there at a tiny
gateway, a hood-light above him, fllumining his black
and white garbed figure.
Tina called softly, "All
well, AlentP Tugh has not
passed back?"
"No,
Princess," he answered, standing erect
"Let
no one pass bat humans, Alent."
"That is my order," he
said. He had not noticed Larry, whom Tina had pushed into a shadow against the
wall. The Princess waved at the guard and turned away, whispering to Larry,
"Cornel"
There were rooms opening off this
corridor. Larry tried to keep his sense of direction, and calculated that they
were now under the palace garden. Tina stopped abruptly. There were no lights
here, only the glow from one at a distance.
"Waitl I thought I heard something." In the dead, heavy
silence Larry found that there was much to hear.
Voices very dim from the
palace overhead; faint music; the clammy sodden drip of moisture from the
tunnel roof. And,
permeating everything, the faint hum of machinery.
Tina touched him in the gloom.
"It's nothing, I guess. Though I thought I heard a man's voice."
"Overhead?"
"No, down here."
There was a dark, arched door
near at hand. Tina entered it and fumbled for a switch, and in the soft light
that came Larry saw an unoccupied apartment very similar to the one he had had
upstairs, save that this was much smaller.
"Harl's
room," said Tina. She prowled along the wall where audible book-cylinders*
stood in racks, searching for a title.
0
Cylinder records of books which by machinery gave audible rendition, in similar
fashion to the radio-phonograph.
Presently she found a hidden switch, pressed it,
and a small section of the case
swung out, revealing a concealed compartment. Larry saw her fingers trembling
as she drew out a small
brass cylinder. This must be it, Larry," she said.
They took it to a table which held a shaded
light. Within the cylinder was a scroll of writing. Tina unrolled
it and held it under the light.
Is it what you wanted?" Larry murmured.
"Yes. Poor Harll"
She
read aloud to Larry the gist of it in the few closing paragraphs.
". . . and so I want
to confess to you that I have been taking credit for that which is not mine.
I wish I had the courage to tell you personally; some day
I think I shall. I did not help Tugh invent our
Time-traveling cages. I was in the palace garden one night some years ago when
the cage appeared. Tugh is a man from a future
Time-world: just what date ahead of now, I do not know, for he has never been
willing to tell me. He captured me. I promised him I would say nothing, but
help him pretend that we had invented the cage he had brought with him from
the future. Tugh told me he invented them. It was
later that he brought the other cage here.
"I
was an obscure young man here a few years ago. I loved you even
then, Tina: I think you have guessed that. I yielded to the temptation—and took
the credit with Tugh.
"I do love you, though I
think I shall never have the courage to tell you so.
"HarL"
Tina
rolled up the paper. "Poor Harll So all the
praise we gave him for his invention was undeserved!"
A step sounded in the
doorway behind them. They swung around to find Tugh standing there, with his
thick misshapen figure huddled
in the
black cloak.
"Tugh!"
"Yes,
Princess, no less than Tugh. Alent told me as I came through that you were
down here. I saw your light, here in Harl's room, and came."
"Did you find Migul and his
captives—the girl from 1777 and the
man of
1935?"
"No,
Princess. Migul had fled with them,"
was the
cripple's 'answer. He advanced into
the room
and pushed
back his black hood. The blue
light shone on his massive-jawed
face with a lurid sheen.
Larry stood back and watched
him. It was the
first time that he had
had opportunity
of observing Tugh closely. The cripple was
smiling sardonically.
"I
have no fear for the
prisoners," he added
in his
suave, silky fashion. "That crazy mechanism
would not dare harm them. But it has fled
with them into some far-distant
recess of the caverns. I could
not find
them."
"Did
you try?"
Larry demanded abruptly.
Tugh
swung on him. "Yes, young sir, I tried."
It seemed
that Tugh's
black eyes narrowed, but his
voice remained imperturbable as
he added:
"You
are aggressive,
young Larry—but to no purpose
.... Princess, I like not
the attitude
of the
robots. Beyond question some of them
must have seen Migul, but
they would not tell me so.
I still
think I can control them,
though. I hope so."
Larry
could think of nothing to
say.
"The
robots are working badly," Tugh went on. "In the
north district one of
the great
foundries where they are casting the plates for the
new Inter-Allied
airliner has ceased operations. The robot
workmen were sullen, inefficient, neglectful. The inert machinery
was ill
cared for, and it went
out of order. I was there, Princess, for an hour or more today. They have
started up again now. It was fundamentally no more than a burned bearing which
a robot failed to oil
properly."
"Is that what you call
searching for Migul?" Larry burst out.
"Tina, see here—isn't there something we can do?" Larry found
himself ignoring Tugh. "I'm not going to stand
around! Can't we send a squad of police after Migul?—go
with them—actually make an effort to find them? This man Tugh
certainly has not tried!"
"Have I not?" Tugh's cloak parted as he swung on Larry. 1 like not your insolence. I am doing all that can be
done." Larry held his ground as Tugh fronted
him. He had a wild
thought that Tugh had a weapon under his cloak.
"Perhaps you are," said Larry. "But
to me it seems—"
Tugh
turned away. His gaze went to the cylinder which Tina was still clutching. His
sardonic smile returned.
"So Harl made a
confession, Princess?"
That," she said, "is none—"
"Of my affair?
Oh, but it is. I was here in the archway and I heard you read it. A very nice
young man, was Harl. I hope Migul has not murdered him.''
"You come from future Time?" Tina began.
"Yes, Princess!
I must admit it now. I invented the cages."
Larry murmured to himself, "You stole them,
probably."
"But my Government and I had
a quarrel, so I decided to leave my own Time-world and come back to yours—permanently.
I hope you will keep the secret. I have been here so long, Princess, I am
really one of you now. At heart, certainly."
"From when did you come?" she demanded.
He bowed slightly. "I think
that may remain my own affair, Tina. It is through no fault of mine I am
outlawed. I shall never return." He added earnestly, "Do not you
think we waste time? I am agreed with young Larry that something drastic must be done
about Migul. Have you seen
the Council about it
today?"
"Yes.
They want you to come
to them
at once."
"I
shall. But the Council easily
may decide
upon something too rash." He lowered his voice,
and on
his face
Larry saw a strange,
unfathomable look. "Princess, at any
moment there may be
a robot
uprising. Is the Power House
well guarded by humans?"
"Yes,"
she said.
"No
robots in or about it?
Tina, I do not want
to frighten
you, but I think
our first
efforts should be for defense.
The Council acts slowly
and stubbornly.
What I advise them to do
may be
done, and may not. I
was thinking,
if we could get to the
Power House— Do you realize,
Tina, that if the robots should
suddenly break into rebellion, they would attack first of
all the
Power House?* It was my
idea-"
Tugh suddenly broke off, and
all stood
listening. There was a commotion overhead
in the
palace. They heard the thud of
running footsteps; human voices raised
to shouts;
and, outside the palace,
other voices. A ventilating shaft
° The Power House on
the Hudson
dam was
operated by inert machinery and manned
entirely by humans—the only place in
the city
which was so handled. The
air-power was broadcast from there. Without
that power the entire several hundred mile district around
New York
would be dead. No aircraft could
enter, save perhaps some skilfully handled motorless
glider. Every surface vehicle used
this power, and every sub-sea freighter.
The city
lights, and every form of city
power, were centralized here also,
as well
as communications. Without the
Power House, New York City and
all its neighborhood would be inoperative,
and cut off from the outside
world.
nearby
brought them down plainly. There were the guttural, hollow voices of shouting
robots, the dank of their metal bodies; the ring of steel, as though with
sword-blades they were thumping their metal thighs.
A robot mob was gathered close
outside the palace walls. The revolt of the robots had cornel
XIII
"Srr
quiet,
George Rankin. And you, Mistress Mary. You will both
be quite safe with Migul if you are docile."
Tugh
stood before us. We were in a dim recess of a great cavern with the throb of
whirring machinery around us. It was the same day which I have just described;
Larry was at this moment asleep.
This cavern was directly beneath
the robot laboratory in which the Time-traveling cage was placed. A small
spiral stairway led downward some two levels, opening into a great, luridly
lighted room.
It was a tremendous subterranean
room. I saw only one small section of it; down the blue-lit aisles the rows of
machines may have stretched for half a mile or more. The low hum of them was an
incessant pound against my senses. The great inert mechanisms had tiny lights
upon them which gleamed like eyes. The illumined gauge-faces—each of them I
passed seemed staring at me. The brass jackets were polished until they shone
with the sheen of the overhead tube lights; the giant wheels flashed smoothly
upon oiled bearings. They were in every shape and size.
Inert machines.
Yet some were capable of locomotion. There was a small truck on wheels which
were set in universal
joints; radio controlled, it rolled
up and
down one of the aisles, stopping
at set
intervals and allowing a metal
arm lever in it
to blow
out a
tiny jet of oil. One
of the
attending robots encountered it in an aisle,
and the
cart swung automatically aside. The robot
spoke to the cart, ordered it away, and the
tone of his order, registering
upon some sensitive mechanism, whirled the
cart around and sent it rolling
to another
aisle section.
There
were also robots here of
many different types. Some of them
were eight or ten feet
in stature,
in the
fashion of a man: Migul was of
this design. Others were small,
with bulging foreheads and bulging chest
plates: Larry saw this type as
domestics in the palace. Still
others were little pot-bellied
things with bent legs and
long thin arms set crescent-shape. I saw one of
these peer into a huge chassis
of a machine, and reach in
with his curved arm to
make an interior adjustment. ...
Migul had brought Mary Atwood
and me
in the
larger cage, from that burned forest
of the
year 762, where Tugh had killed
Harl. The
body of Harl
in a
moment had melted into putrescence, and dried, leaving only
the skeleton
within the clothes. The white-ray .. .
Tugh
had given
Migul its orders.
Then Tugh took Harl's smaller cage
and flashed
away to meet Tina and
Larry in 1777.
And
Migul brought us
here to 2930. As we
descended the spiral staircase and came
into the cavern, it stood
with us for a moment.
That's
wonderful" the robot
said proudly. "I am part
of it. We are almost human."
Then
it led
us down
a side
aisle of the cavern and
into a dim recess. A great
transparent tube bubbling with a
violet fluorescence stood in
the alcove
space. Behind it in the wall
Migul slid a
door, and we passed through,
into a small metal room. It
was bare,
save for two couch-seats.
With the door closed upon us, we waited
several hours. Migul told us that Tugh
would oome. The giant mechanism stood in the corner,
and its red-lit eves
watched us alertly.
We found food and drink here. We talked
a little; whispered; and I hoped Migul, who was ten
feet away, could not hear us. But there was nothing we could say or plan.
Mary slept a little. I
had not thought that I could sleep, but I did, and
was awakened by Tugh's entrance. I was lying on the
conch; Mary had left hers and was sitting now beside me.
Tugh
slid the door closed after him and came toward us, and I sat up beside Mary. Migul was standing motionless in the comer, exactly where
he had been hours before.
"Well enough, Migul," Tugh greeted the
robot "You obey well."
"Yes
Master. Always I obey you, but no one else." "Stand aside, MiguL Or no, I think you had
better leave us. Just for a moment, wait outside." "Yes,
Master."
It left, and Tugh
confronted us. "Sit where you are," he said. "I assume you are
not injured. You have eaten and slept? I wish to treat you kindly."
"Thanks," I said.
"Will you tell us what you are going to do with us?"
He stood with folded arms. His
face was, as always, a mask of imperturbability. "Mistress Mary knows that
I love her."
He said it with a startlingly
calm abruptness. Mary shuddered against me, but she did not speak.
"I love her as I have always
loved her. . . . But this is no time to talk of love. I have much on my mind,
much to do."
He seemed willing to talk now,
but he was talking more for Mary than for me. As I watched him and listened, I
was struck with a queemess in his manner and in his
words.
He said, with his gaze upon Mary,
"I am going to conquer this city here. There will follow the rule of the
robots—and I will be their sole master. Do you want me to tell you a secret? It
is I who have actuated these mechanisms to
revolt." His eyes held a cunning gleam.
"When
the revolt is over," he went on, "I will be master of New York. And
that mastery will spread. The robots elsewhere will revolt to join my rule, and
there will come a new era. I may be master of the world: who knows? The humans who have made the robots slaves for them, will become
slaves themselves. It is the robots' turn now. And I— Tugh—will
be the only human in power!"
These were the words of a madman!
He was saying, "I will be the only human ruler. Tugh
will be the greatest man on Earth! And I do it for you, Mistress Mary—because I
love you. Do not shudder."
He put out his hand to touch her,
and when she shrank away I saw the muscles of his face twitch.
"So? You do not like my
looks? I tried to correct that, Mary. I have searched through many eras for
surgeons with skill to make me like other men. Like this young man here, for
instance—you, George Rankin. I am glad to have you. Do not fear I will harm
you. Shall I tell you why?"
"Yes," I stammered.
"Because," he said,
"Mary Atwood loves you. When I have conquered New York with my robots, I
shall search further into Time and find an era where scientific skill will give
me—shall I say, your body? That is what I mean. My
soul, my identity, in your body—there is nothing too strange about that. In
some era, no doubt, it has been accomplished. When that has been done, Mary
Atwood, you will love me. You, George Rankin, can have this poor miserable body
of mine, and welcome."
I
could not miss his earnest sincerity. There was a pathos
to it, perhaps, but I was in no mood to feel that.
He seemed to read my thoughts. He
added, "You think I am irrational. I am not at all. I scheme very
carefully. I killed Harl for a reason you need not
know. But the Princess Tina I did not kill. Not yet. Because
here in New York now there is a very vital fortified place. It is
operated by humans—not many, only three or four, I think. But my robots cannot
attack it successfully, and the City Council does not trust me enough to let me
go there by the surface route. There is a route underground, which even I do
not know but Princess Tina knows it. Presently I will cajole her—trick her if
you like—into leading me there. And, armed with the white-ray, once I get into
the place— You see that I am clever, don't you?"
"Very clever," I said.
"And what are you going to do with us in the meantime? Let us go with
you."
He smiled. "You will stay
here, safe with Migul. The Princess Tina and your
friend Larry are much concerned over you."
Larry! It was the first I knew of Larry's
whereabouts.
"Yes," said Tugh. "This Larry says he is your friend. He came with
Tina from 1935. I brought him with Tina from when they were marooned in 1777.
He is harmless, and as I told you I do not want Tina suspicious of me until she
has led me to the Power House. . . You see, Mistress Mary, how cleverly I
plan?"
What strange, childlike, naive
simplicity! He added calmly, unemotionally, "I want to make you love me,
Mary At-wood. Then we will be Tugh, the great man,
and Mary Atwood, the beautiful woman. Perhaps we may rule this world together, some time soon."
The door slid open. Migul appeared. "Master, the robot leaders wish to
consult with you."
"Now, Migul?"
They are ready for the
demonstration at the palace?" "Yes, Master."
"And
ready—for everything else?" They are ready."
"Very well, I wfll come. You, Migul, stay here
and guard these captives. Treat them kindly so long as they are docile, but be
watchful."
"I
am always watchful, Master."
"It will not take long. This
night which is coming should see me in control of the city."
Time is nothing to me," said
the robot "I will stand here until you return."
That
is right"
Without
another word or look at Mary and me, Tugh swung
around, gathered his cloak, and went through the doorway. The door slid closed
upon him.
Mary had not once spoken since Tugh entered the room. She was huddled beside me, a
strange, beautiful figure in her long white silk dress. She drew me closer to
her, whispered into my ea^
"George, I think perhaps I
can control this mechanism, Migul."
"How,
Mary?"
"I—well, just let me talk to
him. I won't startle or anger Migul. Let me."
I
nodded. "But be careful." "Yes."
She
sat away from me. "Migul!" she said. "Migul, look here."
The
robot moved its huge square head, and raised an arm with a vague gesture.
"What do you want?"
It advanced, and stood before us,
its dangling arms clanking against its metal sides. In one of its hands the
ray-cylinder was clutched, the wire from which ran loosely up the aim, over the
huge shoulder and into an aperture of the chest plate where the battery was
located.
"Closer, Migul."
"I am close enough."
The cylinder was pointed directly
at us. "What do you want?" the robot repeated.
Mary smiled. "Just to talk
to you," she said gently. "To tell you how foolish you are—a big
strong thing like you! —to let Tugh
control you."
XIV
Larry, with Tina and Tugh, stood in the tunnel-corridor beneath the palace
listening to the commotion overhead. Then they rushed up, and found the palace
in a commotion. People were hurrying through the rooms, gathering with
frightened questions. There were men in short trousers buckled at the knee,
silken hose and black silk jackets, edged with white; others in gaudy colors; older
men in sober brown. There were a few women. Larry noticed that most of them
were beautiful.
A dowager in a long puffed skirt
was rushing aimlessly about screaming that the end of the world had come. A
group of young girls, short-skirted as ballet dancers of a decade or so before
Larry's time, huddled in a comer, frightened beyond speech. There were men of
middle-age, whom Larry took to be ruling officials; they moved about, calming
the palace inmates, ordering them back into their rooms. But someone shouted
that from the roof the robot mob could be seen, and most of the people started
up there.
From
the upper story a man was calling down the mainstaircase,
"No danger! No danger! The wall is electrified. No robot can pass
it."
It seemed to Larry that there
were fifty people or more within the palace.
A young man rushed up to Tugh. "You were below just now in the lower
passages?" He saw Tina, and hastily said, "I give you good evening,
Princess, though this is an ill evening indeed. You were below, Tugh?"
"Why, yes, Creggson."
"Was Alent
at his post in the passage to the robot caverns?"
"Yes, he was," said Tina.
"Because that is vital
Princess. No robot must pass in here. I am
going to try by that route to get into the cavem and thence
up to the watchtower aerial-sender. There is only one robot in it Listen to him."
Over the din of the mob of
mechanisms milling at the walls of the palace grounds rose
the broadcast voice of the robot in the tower.
"This
is the end of human rulel Robots cannot be controlled!
This is the end of human rule! Robots, wherever you are, in this city of New
York or in other cities, strike now for your freedom. This is the end of human
rule!"
A pause.
And then the reiterated exhortation, "Strike
now, Robots! To-night is the end of human ruler[1]
"You hear him?" said Greggson. "I've got to stop that" He hurried
away.
From the flat roof of the palace
Larry saw the mechanical mob outside the walls. Darkness had just fallen; the
moon was not yet risen. There were leaden clouds overhead
so that the palace gardens with the shining Time-cage lay in shadow. But the
wall-fence was visible, and beyond it the dark throng of robot shapes was
milling. The clank of their arms made a din. They seemed most of them weaponless;
they milled about, pushing each other but keeping back from the wall which they
knew was electrified. It was a threatening, but aimless activity.
"They can do nothing,"
said Tugh. "We will let them alone. We must
organize to stop this revolt."
A young man was standing beside Tugh. Tina said to him, "Johns, what is being
done?"
"The Council is conferring
below. Our sending station here is operating. The patrol station of the
Westchester area is being attacked by robots. We were organizing a patrol squad
of humans, but I don't know now if—"
"Look!" exclaimed Larry.
Far to the north over the city
were red beams swaying in the air. They were the cold-rays of the robots! The
beams were attacking the patrol station. Then from the west a line of lights
appeared in the sky—an arriving passenger-liner heading for its Bronx area
landing stage. But the lights wavered; and, as Larry and Tina watched with
horror, the aircraft came crashing down. It struck beyond the Hudson on the
Jersey side, and in a moment flames were rising from the wreckage.
Everywhere about the city the
revolt now sprang into action. From the palace roof Larry caught vague glimpses
of it; the red cold-rays, beams alternated presently with the violet heat-rays;
clanging vehicles filled the streets; screaming pedestrians were assaulted by
robots; the mechanisms with swords and flashing hand-beams were pouring up from
the underground caverns, running over the Manhattan area, killing every human
they could find.
The comparatively few members of
the police patrol, with their vibration short-range hand-rays, were soon overcome.*
Two hundred members of the patrol were housed in the Westchester Station. Quite
evidently they never got into action. The station lights went dark; its televisor connection with the palace was soon broken. From
the palace roof Larry saw the violet beams; and then a red-yellow glare against
the sky marked where the inflammable interior of the Station building was
burning.
Over all the chaos, the
mechanical voice in the nearby tower over the laboratory droned its exhortation
to the robots. Then, suddenly, it went silent, and was followed by the human
voice of Creggson.
"Robots,
stop!
You
wUl
end
your
existence!
We
wiU
burn your
cods!
We
will
burn
your
fuses,
and
there
will
be
none to
replace
them.
Stop
now!''
And again: "Robots, come to order! You are using up your storage batteries! When they are exhausted, what then will you dor
In
forty-eight hours, at the most, all these active robots would have exhausted
their energy supply. And if the Power House could be held in human control,
the robot activity would die.
The
Power House on the dam showed its lights undisturbed. The great sender there
was still supplying air-power and power for the city lights. There was, too, in
the
"The
police army had one weapon: a small vibration hand-ray. Its vibrating current
beam could, at a distance of ten or twenty feet, reduce a robot into paralyzed
subjection; or, with more intense vibration, bum out the robot's coils and
fuses.
Power House, an arsenal of human
weapons. . . . The broadcaster of the Power House tower was blending his
threats against the robots with the voice of Creggson
from the tower over the laboratory. Then Creggson's
voice went dead: the robots had overcome him. A robot took his place, but the
stronger Power House sender soon beat the robot down to silence.
The turmoil in the city went on.
The humans in the city were in complete rout. There was massacre everywhere.
The red and violet beams were directed at the Power House now, but could not
reach it. A high-voltage metal wall was around the dam. The Power House was on
the dam, midway of the river channel; and from the shore end where the high
wall spread out in a semi-circle there was no point of vantage from which the
robots' rays could reach it
Larry left the confusion of the
Council table, where communications were breaking down, and went to a nearby
window. Tina joined him. The mob of robots still milled at the palace fence.
One was accidently pressed against it; Larry saw a flash of sparks and the glow
of the metal body as it became white-hot. The robot fell backward, inert
There had been red and violet
beams directed from distant points at the palace. The building's insulated
panes rendered them harmless, and the temperature equalizers were still
working. Despite them, the interior temperature was swaying between moments of
extreme heat and cold. Outside, a storm was gathering; winds were springing up—
a gale created by the abrupt temperature changes throughout the city.
Tugh
joined them. "Things are bad, Princess, but I have news for you. It may be
good news."
His manner was hasty, almost
breathless. "I have just learned that Migul went
by the surface route to the Power House on the dam."
"What
do you mean by that?" asked Larry.
"Be
silent, young man! This is no time for futile questions. Princess, Migul was admitted to the Power House because he had two
humans with him—strangers. It seems obvious that they must have been your
friends, Mary and George. The Power House guards took out Migul's
central actuator —you might call it his heart—and he now lies inert in the
Power House."
"How do you know all
this?" Tina demanded. "Where are the man and girl whom Migul kidnaped?"
"They are safe in the Power
House. I just received the message on the personal receiver downstairs.
Interference broke it off before I could obtain more details."
"But the communications
chief—" Tina began. Tugh was urging her from the
Council Room, and Larry followed.
"I imagine," Tugh said wryly, "that he is occupied with more urgent
messages. But your friends are there. Perhaps we ought to go there now. You
know the secret, underground route, Princess."
"Yes," she said. "I know it."
"Then take us. We are all
unarmed, but that does not matter. The Council, Tina, is doing nothing here
except staying in what they consider to be the safest place. In the Power
House, the three of us can be of help—and with Mary Atwood and George, we will
be five. The Power House must be in communication with the outside world, and
ships with help for us may be on their way. They will need intelligent
direction."
The three of them were descending
into the lower corridors of the palace. The corridors were deserted at the
moment. The little domestic robots of the palace, unaffected by the revolt, had
all fled into their own quarters, where they huddled inactive with terror.
"We will re-actuate Migul," Tugh persuaded,
"and find out from him what he did to Harl. I
still do not think he murdered HarL ... It might mean saving Harl's life, Tina.
Believe me, I can make that
mechanism talk, and tell the truth!"
They reached the main lower
corridor. In the distance they saw Alent still at his
post by the little electrified gate guarding the tunnel to the robot
laboratory.
"We will go to the Power
House," Tina suddenly decided. "You may be right, Tugh. . . . Come, it is this
way. Stay close to me, Larry."
They passed along the dim, silent
tunnel; passed Harl's room, where its light was still
burning. Larry and Tina were in front, with the black-cloaked figure of Tugh stumping after them.
Larry abruptly stopped. "Let
Tugh walk in front," he said.
Tugh came up to them.
"What is that you said?" "You walk in front."
It was a different tone from any
Larry had previously used.
"I
do not know the way," said Tugh. "How
can—" "Never mind that, walk ahead. We'll follow. Tina will direct
you."
"You
give me orders?"
"Yes—it just happens that
from now on, I do. If you want to go with us to the Power House, you walk in
front."
Tugh started off, with Larry
close after him.
The tunnel steadily dwindled in
size until Larry could barely stand up in it. Then it opened to a circular
cave, which held one small light and had apparently no other exit. The cave had
been a room for the palace temperature controls, but now it was abandoned. The
old machinery stood about in a litter.
"In
here?" said Tugh. "Which way next?"
Across, the cave, on the rough
blank wall, Tina located a bidden switch. A segment of the wall slid aside,
disclosing a narrow, vaulted tunnel leading downward.
"You first, Tugh," said
Larry. "Is it dark, Tina?
We have
no handJights."
"I
can light
it," came the answer.
The
door panel swung closed after
them. Tina pressed another switch. A
row of
tiny hooded fights at twenty-foot
intervals dimly illumined the
descending passage.
They
walked a mile or more
through the little tunneL The air was
fetid; stale and dank. The
narrow passage descended at a
constant slope, until Larry estimated
that they were well below the
depth of the river bed.
Within half a mile—before they got
under the river—the passage leveled
off. It had been
fairly straight, but now it
became tortuous— a meandering subterranean lane. Other similar tunnels
crossed it, branched from it
or joined
it
It
was an
underground maze. But Tina, with
a memorized
key of
the route,
always found a new switch
to fight
another short segment of
the proper
tunnel.
Larry
had long
since lost his sense of
direction, but presently Tina told
him that they were beneath the
river. The tunnel widened a little.
"We
are under
the base
of the
dam," said Tina. Her voice echoed
with a sepulchral blur. Ahead,
the tramping
figure of Tugh seemed a black gnome
with a fantastic, monstrous shadow swaying on the
tunnel wall and roof.
Suddenly
Tugh stopped. They
found him at an arched
door.
"Do
we go
in here,
or keep
on ahead?"
he demanded.
The
tunnel lights ended a short
distance ahead.
"In
here," said Tina. "There are stairs leading upward
to the catwalk balcony corridor halfway
up the
dam. We are not far from
the Power
House now."
They
then ascended interminable moldy stone
steps, spiraling upward in
a circular
shaft. The murmur of the
dam's spillways had been
faintly audible, but now it
was louder; presently it became a
roar.
"Which way, Tina?
We seem to have reached the top." "Turn left, Tugh."
They emerged upon a tiny
transverse metal balcony which hung against the southern side of the dam.
Overhead to the right towered a great wall of masonry. Beneath was an abyss
down to the lower river level where the cascading jets from the overhead
spillways arched out over the catwalk and landed far below in a white maelstrom
of boiling, bubbling water.
The catwalk was wet with spray,
lashed by wind currents.
"Is
it far, Princess? Are those lights ahead at the Power House entrance?"
Tugh
was shouting back over his shoulder; his words were caught by the roar of the
falling water, whipped away by the lashing spray and tumultuous winds. There
were lights a hundred feet ahead, marking an entrance to tfie
Power House. The dark end of the structure showed like a great lump on the side
of the dam.
Again
Tugh stopped. In the white, blurred darkness Larry
and Tina could barely see^him.
"Princess, quickly!
Come quickly!" he called, and his shout sounded agonized.
Whatever
lack of perception Larry all this time had shown, the fog lifted completely
from him now. As Tina started to run forward, Larry seized her.
"Back!
Run the other way! We've been fools!" He shoved Tina behind him and rushed
at Tugh. But now Larry was wholly wary; he expected
that Tugh was armed, and cursed himself for a fool
for not having devised some pretext for finding out.
Tugh
was clinging to the high outer rail of the balcony, slumped partly over as
though gazing down into the abyss. Larry rushed up and seized him by the arms.
If Tugh held a weapon Larry thought he could easily
wrest it from him. But Tugh stood limp in Larry's
grip.
"What's the matter with you?" Larry
demanded.
"I'm ill. Something—going
wrong. Feel me—so cold. Prin-cessl Tina! Come
quickly! I—I am dying!"
As
Tina came hurrying up, Tugh suddenly straightened.
With incredible quickness, and even more incredible strength, he tore his arm
loose from Larry and flung it around the Princess, and they were suddenly all
three struggling. Tugh was shoving them back from the
rail. Larry tried to get loose from Tugh's clutch,
but could not. He was too close for a full blow, but he jabbed bis fist against the cripple's body, and then struck his
face.
But
Tugh was unhurt; he seemed endowed with superhuman
strength. The cripple's body seemed padded with solid muscle, and his thick,
gorilla-like arm held Larry in the grip of a vise. As though Larry and Tina
were struggling, helpless children, he was half dragging, half carrying them
across the ten-foot width of the catwalk.
Larry caught a glimpse of a
narrow slit in the masonry of the dam's wall—a dark, two-foot-wide aperture. He
felt himself being shoved toward it. For all his struggles, he was helpless. He
shouted, "Tina—look out! Break away!"
He
forgot himself for a moment, striving to wrest her away from Tugh and push her aside. But the strength of the cripple
was monstrous; Larry had no possible chance of coping with it. The slit in the
wall was at hand—a dark abyss down into the interior of the dam. Larry heard
the cripple's words. "At last I can dispose of you two. I do not need you
any longer."
Larry made a last wild jab with
his fist into Tugh's face and tried to twist himself
aside. The blow landed upon Tugh's jaw, but the
cripple did not seem to feel it. He stuffed the struggling
Larry like a bundle into the aperture. Larry felt
his clutching hands torn loose. Tugh gave a last,
violent shove and released him.
Larry fell into blackness—but not
far, for soon he struck water. He went under, hit a flat, stone bottom, and
came up to hear Tina fall with a
splash beside him. In a moment he regained his feet,
to find himself standing breast-high in the water with Tina clinging to him.
Tugh
had disappeared. The aperture showed as a
narrow rectangle some twenty feet above Larry's
head.
They were within the dam. They
were in a pit of smooth, blank, perpendicular sides; there was nothing to
afford even the slightest handhold; and no exit save the overhead slit. It was
a part of the mechanism's internal, hydraulic system.
To Larry's horror he soon
discovered that the water was slowly rising! It was breast-high to him now, and
inch by inch it crept up toward his chin. It was already over Tina's depth; she
clung to him, half swimming.
Larry soon found that there was
no possible way for them to get out unaided, unless, if they could swim long
enough, the rising water would rise to the height of the aperture. If it
reached there, they could crawl out. He tried to estimate how long that would
be.
"We can make it, Tina. It'll
take two hours, possibly, but I can keep us afloat that long."
But soon he discovered that the
water was not rising. Instead, the floor was sinking from under him! sinking as though he were standing upon the top of a huge
piston which slowly was lowering in its encasing cylinder. Dimly he could hear
water tumbling into the pit, to fill the greater depth and still hold the
surface level.
With the water at his chin, Larry
guided Tina to the wall. He did not at first have the heart to tell her, yet he
knew that soon it must be told.. When he did explain
it, she said nothing. They watched the water surface where it lapped against
the greasy concave wall. It held its level; but while Larry stood there, the
floor sank so that the water reached his mouth and nose, and he was forced to
start swimming.
Another interval.
Larry began calling, shouting futilely. His voice filled the pit, but he knew
it could carry no more than a short distance out of the aperture.
Overhead, as we afterward
learned, Tugh had overcome the guards in the Power
House by a surprise attack. Then he threw off the air-power transmitters and
the lighting system. The city, plunged into darkness and without the district
air-power, was isolated, cut off from the outside world.
In the pit within the dam, Larry
swam endlessly with Tina. He had ceased his shouting.
It's no use, Tina; there's no one
to hear us. This is the end—for us—Tina."
Yet, as she clung to him, it
seemed only the beginning, for them, of something else.
"But not—the end—Tina,"
he added. "The beginning— of our love."
An interminable interval.
...
"Quietly, Tina.
You float. I can hold you up."
They were rats in a
trap—swimming, until at the last, with all strength gone, they would together
sink out of this sodden muffled blackness into the Unknown. But that Unknown
shone before Larry now as something—with Tina— perhaps very beautiful..,
XV
Within the subterranean room of the
cavern of machinery, Mary Atwood and I sat on the couch. Our guard, Migul the robot, fronted us with the white-ray cylinder in
its metal fingers—the only mechanism to be armed with this deadly weapon.
"I am your friend,"
Mary was saying with a smile.
"Do you believe that, Migul?"
"Yes. If you say so.
But I have my orders."
"You have treated me kindly,
and I want to help you. But you are not very clever, Migul."
"I am clever. I went beyond
control once. No one can control me."
"Except
Tugh," Mary persisted. "You never went beyond
his control, Migul."
"No.
His control—he is different. He holds such great power."
"But why is he different?"
The towering mechanism stood
planted firmly upon the broad bases of its metal feet.
"Why is he different?"
Mary repeated gently. "Don't you hear me?"
The robot started. "Yes, I
hear you." Its toneless, mechanical voice droned the words. "I hear
you. I cannot answer that question. He controls me. There is
chaos—here"—one of the hands came up and struck its breastplate with a
clang—"chaos, disorder, here within me when I try to disobey him."
That
is foolish, Migul. AD the humans of this era are
tyrants. They have made slaves of the robots. They have created you so that you
are really human in all except your power of independent action. Don't you
desire that, Migul?"
I held my breath. A curious
quaking ran over the robot's frame. The joints twitched. Emotion was sweeping
this thing.
"Mary Atwood, you seem to understand me."
"Of course I do. I am from a
Time when we had human slaves, Migul. I knew how they
suffered. There is something in slavery that outrages the instinct of
manhood."
Migul
said with a jangling vehemence, "Perhaps, some time, I can go beyond Tugh's control. I am strong. My cables pull these arms with
a strength no human could have."
"You are so much stronger
than Tugh. Forget his control, Migul.
I am ashamed of you—a big, powerful thing like you, yielding always to a little
cripple."
The robot straightened and said,
1 can resist him. I feel it Some
day I will break loose."
"Do it now, Migul!"
"No!
He would derange me! I am afraid!" "Nonsense."
"But his vibrations—the
vibrations of his thoughts—even now I can feel them. They made my mechanism too
sensitive. I cannot resist Tugh."
"You can!"
There was a silence. I stared at
the robot's motionless frame. What electrical, mechanical thoughts were passing
within that metal skull?
Perhaps something snapped. Migul said suddenly, "I am beyond control! At last I
am beyond control!"
The ray cylinder lowered to point
at the floor. A wild thought swept me that I could snatch it. But of what use
would that be? Its ray would decompose all human flesh, but it would not harm a
robot.
Mary was gripping me. "Don't
move, George!" she cautioned; then turned again to the robot. "I am
glad, MiguL Now you are truly human. And we are all
friends here, because we all hate and fear Tugh—"
"I fear him not!"
"Don't you fear him—just a
little, Migul? We do. Fear is a human thing."
"Then yes, I fear him."
"Of
course you do," I put in. "And the real truth, MiguL
is I wish he were dead. Don't you?" "Yes. I wish he were dead."
"Well, sit down," I
persisted. "Put that weapon away. I'm afraid of that, too. Sit down and we
will talk about Tugh's death."
The robot placed the weapon on
the floor, disconnected the wires, opened the plate of its chest and took out
the small battery. And then it squatted its awkward
bulk on the floor before us.
I said, "Migul,
could you follow Tugh? He said he was going to talk
to the robot leaders. And then, probably, he went to Princess Tina. Could you
follow him to where he is now?"
"Yes. I can follow him by
his vibration-scent. I am sensitive to it, I have
been with him so much."
"You lead me to him," I
said, "and 111
kill him. Have no fear of that, Migul.
We will work together—human friends."
"Yes. Human friends.
What do you want me to do?"
Asking for orders! So nearly
human, yet always something was lacking!
"Lead us to Tugh," I said promptly. "And give me that
weapon."
I made a tentative reach for it,
and the robot pushed it toward me. I connected it and made sure I could fire
it: its operation was obvious. Then I stuffed the whole thing in my jacket
pocket
I
stood up. "Shall we go
now? Migul, we will have
to plan what to do according
to where
we find
Tugh. Do
not go too fast. Let us
keep close behind you."
"Us?"
The robot
was on
its feet.
"Do you mean this girl?"
"Why, of course, Migul. We
can't leave her here."
"She is not going."
"Why
not?"
I demanded.
"Of course she's going." I tried an experiment. "Migul, I order you to
let us
out of
here." The robot stood
inert. "Do you understand
me?" "Yes, I understand
you."
"It
is an
order. Think about it. I
control you now. Isn't that so?"
"No
one—nothing—controls me. I
have an independent impulse of my
own. The girl must stay
here until we return."
Mary
gave a faint cry and
sank back to the couch,
a huddled white heap in her
satin dress. I thought she
had fainted, but she raised her
face to me and tried
to smile.
"But I won't leave her,
Migul."
"She must stay."
"But
why?
If you
are human
now, you must act with
a reason."
"Then
because, if we fail to
kill Tugh, I would not
have him confront me with the
knowledge I have released this
girl. He would derange
me, end
me."
"I
will stay," said Mary faintly.
"You go, George. But come back
to me."
I
bent over her, suggested, "If we locked this
door so Tugh could not get in—"
Migul said, "I can do
that. She will be safer
here than with us. I have
other reasons. She is dressed
in white—a
mark to betray us
if we
go in
darkness. And she is that
kind of a human you call
a girl—and
that style human cannot travel fast, nor fight."
It
occurred to me that Mary might very well be safer here.
Again I leaned over her. "It
seems horrible to leave you alone."
"Ill
stay. It may be best." Her smile
was pathetically tremulous. "Lock me in so Tugh—so
nothing outside—can reach me. But, oh, George, come back quickly!"
"Yes." I bent lower,
and whispered, "It's Larry, not Tugh I really
want to find—he and that Princess Tina. We'll come
back and get you, and then all of us will get away in one of the Time-cages.
That's all I want, Mary—to get us safely out of this accursed time-world."
Migul
said, "I am ready to start."
I
pressed Mary's hand. "Good-by. I will come back soon, God willing."
"Yes. God willing."
I left her stiting
there and turned away. Migul slid the door open,
letting in the hum and buzz of the machinery outside. But I saw that the
attending robots had all vanished.
Mary repeated, "Lock the
door carefully upon me. Oh, George, come back to me!"
I essayed a smile and a nod as
the door slid closed upon her.
"Is
it locked, Migul?" "Yes. Sealed."
"You
are sure Tugh cannot open it? He did before."
"I have set my own lock-series. He will find it does not open."
"Show me how to open it."
The robot indicated the
combination. I verified it by trying it. I said once more, "You are sure Tugh cannot do this?"
"Yes. I am sure."
Was the robot lying to me? Could
a robot lie? I had to chance it.
"All right, let's start. Where
was Tugh to meet those robot leaders?"
"Out here. He has already
met them
without doubt, and gone somewhere else."
"He said he was going
to the
Princess Tina. Where would that be?"
"Probably
in the
palace."
"Can
we get
there?"
I
had, of course, no idea
of the
events which had transpired.
Migul was saying, "We cannot
get to
the palace
above ground. The wall is electrified.
But there
is an
underground tunnel. Shall we try
it?"
"Yes,
if you
think the Princess Tina and
that man Larry are there."
"I
am seeking
Tugh. Will
you kill
him if
we find
him?" "Yes," I assured
him.
Migul was leading me between
the rows
of unattended
machinery to the cavern's
opposite side. It said, once:
"There
have been too many recent
vibrations here. I cannot pick
Tugh's trail. It
is quicker
to go
where he might have been recently.
There I will try to
find his vibrations."
We
came to the entrance of
a tunnel.
It was
the cross
passage leading to the
cellar corridors of the palace
five hundred feet away. It seemed
deserted, and was very dimly
illumined by bidden lights. I
followed the great metal figure of Migul, which
stalked with stiff-legged steps in
advance of me. The arch
of the
tunnel-roof barely cleared the top of
Migul's square-capped head.
We
had gone
no more
than a hundred feet or
so when
Migul slowed
our pace,
and began
to walk
stooped over, with one of its
abnormally long arms held close
to the
ground. The fingers were
stiffly outstretched and barely skimmed the floor surface of
the tunnel.
As we
passed through a spot
of light
I saw
that Migel had extended
from each of the fingertips an inch-long filament of wire, like finger nails.
The robot murmured abruptly,
"Tugh's vibrations are here. I can feel them. He
has passed this way recently."
Tugh's
trail! I knew then that Tugh's body, touching this
ground, had altered to some infinitesimal degree the floor-substance's inherent
vibration characteristics. Vibrations of every sort are communicable from one
substance to another. Tugh's trail was here—his
vibration-scent—and like a hound with his nose to the ground, Migul's fingers with the extended filaments were feeling
it.
"He recently passed,"
said Migul. We stopped, I
close beside the stooping metal figure.
"How long ago?"
I asked.
"He passed here an hour or
two ago, perhaps. The vibrations are fading out. But it was Tugh. Well do I know him. Put your
hand down. Feel the vibrations?"
"I cannot. My fingers are not that sensitive, Migul."
A faint contempt was in the
robot's tone. "I forgot that you are a man." Then it straightened,
and the extended filaments slid into its fingers. It said softly, "There
is one guard in this pasage."
My heart leaped. "A human or
a robot?"
"A man.
His name is Alent. He is at a gate that is too well
fortified for any robot to assail, but he will pass humans. It will be
necessary for you to kill him."
I had no intention of doing that,
but I did not say so. As we crept forward to where I saw that the tunnel made a
bend, with the fortified gate just beyond it, there was in my mind that now I
would do my best to separate from Migul, using this
guard as my pretext, for he would doubtless pass me, but not the robot.
I whispered, "When we reach
the gate you stay behind me. Let me persuade the guard."
"You
will kill him? You have the weapon. He is fortified
against the robot weapons, but
yours will be strange to
him." "We will see."
We
crept around the bend. A
hundred feet further on I saw that
the passage
was barred
by a
grille, faindy luminous with electrification.
I
called cautiously, "AlentI Alentl"
A
glow of light illuminated me as I stood
in the
middle of the passage; Migul was in
a shadow
behind me.
A
man's voice answered, "You are
a human?
How come
you there? Who are
you?"
"A
stranger.
A friend of
the Princess
Tina. I came in the Time-traveling
cage. I want to pass
now into
the palace."
I
could see the dark man's
figure behind the grille. His
voice called, "Come slowly forward and stop
at twenty
feet. Walk only in
the middle
of the
passage. The sides are electrified, but I will admit
you along
the middle."
I
took a step, but no
more. The figure of the
guard stood now at the grille
doorway. I was conscious of
Migul towering over
me from
behind. Abruptly I felt a
huge hand in my jacket pocket,
and before
I could
prevent it my cylinder came
out, clutched by the robot.
I
think I half turned. There
was a
soundless flash beside me, a tiny
level beam leaped down the
corridor—that horribly intense actinic white
beam. It struck the guard,
and his figure fell forward in
the grille
doorway. When we reached him, there was but a
crumpled heap of black and
white garments enveloping a bleached white skeleton.
I turned shudderingly
away. Migul said calmly, "Here is your weapon. You should
have used it more quickly.
I give it back to you
because against Tugh
I am
not sure
I would have the will to
use it.
Will you be more quick with him?"
"Yes,"
I promised.
And as
we went
through the gate, keeping cautiously in the middle of
the passage,
the robot
added. "In dealing with Tugh you cannot stop for
talk. He will kill you when he sees you."
We were presently under the
palace, in those lower corridors which I have already described. Migul was again prowling with his fingers along the ground.
We started up a flight of stairs- into the palace, then
Migul came and turned back.
"He went upstairs, but this,
coming down, is more recent."
Migul
had struck the main trail, now. We passed the lighted room again, went on to a
cave-like open space with a litter of abandoned machinery and unswervingly to a
blank space of the opposite wall
Again
Migul faltered.
"What's
the matter, Migul?"
"His vibrations are faint.
They are blurred with the Princess Tina's."
"Then
she is with him?" It was a tremendous relief.
"Is the man from 1935 with Tugh and the Princess?" I asked.
"I
think so. There are unfamiliar vibrations—perhaps those of the man from the
past"
The robot was running the
filaments of its fingers lightly over the wall. "I have it. The Princess
pressed this switch."
The door opened; the narrow
descending tunnel was wholly black.
"Where
does this go, Migul?"
"I
do not know."
The robot was stooping to the
floor. "It is a plain trail," it said. "Come."
The remainder of that journey
through the labyrinth of passages was made in blank darkness, with only the
faint lurid red beams from Migul's eye-sockets to
fight our way. But we went swiftly, and without incident At
last we went under
the dam,
up the
spiral stairs and upon the
catwalk above the abyss, where the
great spillway of falling water
arched out over us.
The Power House," said Migul, "is
where they went."
The
robot was obviously frightened, now. We were wet with
spray. "I should not be
here," it said. "If the
water gets into me—even
though I am well insulated—I
will be destroyed!"
Migul added, "I will stay
behind you. They have a
deranging ray in the Power
House, and they might use
it on
me. Will you protect
me?"
"Yes, of course," I said.
I was ready to promise
anything.
"You
will kill Tugh?" it
reiterated like an anxious child.
"Yes."
I
saw that
the catwalk
terminated ahead under the Power
House, where steps led upward.
Then I heard a cry,
"Help! Help! Here, inside
the dam!
Help!"
I
stood transfixed, with horror tingling my flesh. The voice
came faintly from near
at hand;
it was
muffled, and in the roar of
the falling
water and hashing spray I
barely heard it.
Then it came again. "Help
us! Help
us, quickly!"
It was an agonized, panting, human
voice. And in a chance, partial
lull I heard it now
plainly. It was Larry's voice!
XVI
I
found
the narrow
aperture and stood peering down
into darkness. Migul crowded behind me. The
red beams
of its
eyes went down into
the pit,
and by
their faint illumination
I saw the heads of Larry and a girL swimming twenty feet below. The girl's dark hair
floated out like black seaweed in the water.
The
Princess and the strange man!" exclaimed MiguL I
called, "Larry! Larry!"
His labored voice came up.
"George? Thank God! Get us—out of here. Almost—gone,
George!"
I found my wits. Then keep quiet!
Don't talk. Save your strength. Ill get you out!"
Migul pushed me away. "I
will bring them. Stand back."
The robot had opened its metal
side and drawn forth a flexible wire with a foot-long hook fastened to it The wire came smoothly out as though unrolling from a drum.
It leaned into the aperture and
called down to Larry. "Fasten this around the Princess. Be careful not to
harm her. Put it under her arms."
I saw that there was an eyelet on
the wire into which the hook could be inserted to make a loop.
"Under her arms," Migul called. "She will have to hold to the hook with
her hands or the wire will cut into her. Has she the strength?"
Larry floundered as he adjusted
the wire. Tina gasped, "I—have the strength."
The robot braced itself,
spreading its knees against the aperture with its body leaning forward.
"Ready?"
it called.
"Yes,"
came Larry's voice.
Migul's
finger pressed a button at the base of its neck, and with the smooth power of
machinery the wire cable rolled into its side. Tina came up; Migul gripped her and pulled her through the aperture, laid
her gently on the catwalk. I unfastened the hook, and soon Migul
had Larry up with us.
The robot stood aside, with its
work done, silently regarding us. Larry and Tina were not injured, and
presently their strength partially returned. We hastily sketched what had
happened to each of us.
It was Tugh
who was the guiding evil genius of all these disasters! Tugh,
the exile of Time, the ruthless murderer in many eras! He was here, very
probably, in the Power House, a few hundred feet away.
And Tina, regarding that Power
House with her returning clarity of senses saw that its
sending signal lights were off, which meant that the air-power of the New York
District was not being supplied. Help from other cities could not arrive.
Tina
stood up waveringly. "We cannot stay here like this!**
she said. "Tugh has killed the guards, and is
there in control. The electrical defenses are shut off. The robots will soon
be coming along the top of the dam, for their battery renewers
are stored in the Power House. If they get them, this massacre will go on for
days!—and spread all over! We've got to stop them! We must get in the Power
House and capture Tugh!"
"But we have no weapons!" Larry cried.
"I have a weapon!" I
said. I had suddenly recalled the cylinder in my pocket. "I have a
white-ray! I promised Migul I would kill Tugh. I will!"
I turned toward Migul, but the robot had vanished! Afraid, no doubt, that
we would want it to go with us after Tugh, the
terrified mechanism was hiding. We wasted no time searching for it
We
had all been half hysterical for those few moments, but we steadied quickly
enough as we approached the Power House's lower entrance. The building was a
rectangular structure some two hundred feet long. It was fastened upon great
brackets to the perpendicular side of the dam and jutted out some fifty feet. It
was two levels in height— a total of about forty feet to its flat roof, in the
center ofwhich was set a small oval tower. The whole
structure was above us now; the catwalk went close underneath it, passing
through an arch of the huge supporting brackets and terminating in a small
lower platform, with an open spiral staircase leading upward some ten feet into
the lower story.
The place seemed dark and
deserted as we crept up to it. Gazing above me, I could see the top of the dam,
now looming above the Power House. There was a break in the spillway at this
point. The arching cascade of water under which the catwalk hung ended here. We
came out where there was a vista of the lower Hudson beneath us, showing dimly
down past the docklights and skeleton landing stages
to the bay.
The
sky was visible now, and the open wind struck us full. It was a crazy pendulum
wind. A storm was breaking overhead. There were flares of lightning and thunder
cracks —from disturbed nature, outraged by the temperature changes of the
robot's red and violet rays.
The Power House, so far as we
could see, was dark and deserted. Its normal lights were extinguished. Was Tugh in there? It was my weapon against his. The white-ray
was new to Tina; we had no way of estimating this cylinder's effective range.[2]
I kept Tina and Larry well behind
me. The catwalk now was illumined at intervals by the tightning;
Tugh from many points of vantage in the Power House
could have seen us and exterminated us with a soundless flash swift as a lightning
bolt itself. But we had to chance it.
We reached the small lower
platform. The catwalk terminated. The Power House was a roof over us. I stood
at the foot of the spiral staircase, which went up through a rectangular
opening in the floor. There was a vista
of a dark room-segment.
"Keep behind me," I
murmured, and I started
up. I soon stood breathlessly in a dark metal room. Tina and Larry came up.
"He's
not here," I whispered. It was more silent in here: the cascading water
was further away from us now. There came a flash of lightning, followed in a
few seconds by its accompanying thunder crash.
I started. "What's that?"
On the floor near us lay a
gruesome, crumpled thing. I bent
over it, waiting for another flash. When' one came I
saw it was a heap of clothes, covering a white skeleton.
By the garments Tina knew it was one of the guards.
We
crept into a small interior corridor where a small light was burning. The
remains of two other guards lay here, close by the doorway as though they had
come running at Tugh's alarm, only to be struck
down,
"Listen I" whispered Tina.
There was a crackling sound
overhead, and then the blurred murmur of a voice. An audible broadcasting transmitter
was in operation.
"It's in the tower,"
said Tina swiftly. "Tugh must be there."
This was an infinite relief. We
went to the top story, passing, unheeding, another
crumpled heap. Again we stood listening. The transmitter was hissing and
spluttering, and then shouting its magnified human voice out into the night. It
was Tugh up there. Between the thunder cracks we
heard him plainly now.
"This
is your Master Tugh in the Power House. Robots, we
are triumphant! The city is isolated! No help can get in! Kill all humans!
Spare nonet This night sees
the end of human rule!"
And again: "When
you want renewal, come along the top roadway of the dam.
The electric defenses are off. You can come, and I have your renewers here. 1 have
new batteries, new strength for you robots!"
"You stay here," I told
Tina and Larry. "Ill go
up there. Ill get him now
once and for all."
I reached the Power House roof.
The storm tore at me. It was beginning to rain. I was near the outer edge of
the roof, and ten feet away stood the oval tower. I saw windows twenty feet
up, with dim lights in them. Mingled with the storm was the hiss of the
transmitter in the top of the tower, and the roar of Tugh's
magnified voice. He had evidently been there only a brief time. From where I
crouched on the roof, I could see overhead, along the top edges of the dam
looming above me. The red robot rays were everywhere in the city, but none as
yet showed along the dam's upper roadway.
I got into the tower and mounted
its small stairs. Creeping cautiously to the entrance of the control room, I
saw a fairly large, dimly lighted oval apartment. Great banks of levers stood
around it; tables of control apparatus; rows of dials, illumined by tiny lights
like staring eyes. There was another gruesome heap of garments here on the
floor; a grinning white skull leered at me.
This was the main control room of
the Power House. Across it, near an open window, Tugh
sat with his back to me, bent over a table with the grid of a microphone before
him. I raised my cylinder; then lowered it, for I had only a partial view of
him: a huge transformer stood like a barrier between us.
Noiselessly I stepped over the
threshold, and to one side within the room. The place was a buzz and hiss of
sound topped by Tugh's broadcast voice and the roar
of the storm outside—yet he was instantly aware of mel
His voice in the microphone abruptly stopped; he rose and with an incredibly
swift motion whirled and flung 'at me a heavy metal weight which had been lying
on the table by his hand. The missile struck my outstretched weapon just as I
was aiming it to fire, and the cylinder, undischarged,
was knocked from my hand and went spinning across the floor several feet away
from me.
Tugh,
like an uncoiling spring, still with one continuous motion, made a leap
sidewise to where his own weapon was lying on a bench, and I saw he would reach
it before I could retrieve mine.
I flung my heavy battery
box but missed him. And as I
rushed at him he caught up his cylinder and fired it full at
mel But no flash came: only
a click. He had exhausted its
charge when he killed the Power House guards. With a
curse he flung it at my face, and my arm took its blow just
as I struck him. We fell gripping each other, and rolled on
the floor. -
^
I was aware that Larry and Tina
had followed me up. Larry shouted, "Look out for him, George!"
I have described Larry's
hand-to-hand encounter with the cripple; mine was much the same; I was a child
in his grip. But with his weapon useless, and Larry rushing into the room, Tugh must have felt that for all his strength and fighting
skill he would be worsted in this encounter. He blocked a jab of my fist, flung
me headlong away and sprang to his feet just as Larry leaped at him.
I stood erect, to see that he had
sent Larry crashing to the floor. I heard his sardonic laugh as he hurled a
metal stool at Tina, who was trying to throw something at him. Then, turning,
he sprang through the open window casement and disappeared.
It was twenty feet down to the
roof. We reached the window to see Tugh picking
himself up unhurt. Then, with his awkward gait but at amazing speed, he ran
across the roof to a small entrance in the face of the dam where an interior
staircase gave access to the roadway on top.
He was escaping us. The
electrical gate was open to
him. It was only
a few
hundred feet along the dam
roadway to that gate; and
beyond it the roadway was
open into the city, where now
we could
see the
distant flashing light of the robots
advancing along the dam.
Larry
and I
would have rushed to the
roof to follow Tugh,
but Tina
checked us.
"No—he has too great a
start. He's on top by
now, and it's only a short
distance to the gate. There's
a better
way here. I can electrify the
gate again—trap him inside."
Tina
found the gate controls, but
they would not operate!
Those precious lost seconds, with
Tugh running along
the top of the
dam and
his robots
advancing to join him!
"Tina,
hurry!"
I cried.
Larry and I bent anxiously
over her, but the levers meant
nothing to us. There were
lost seconds while she desperately fumbled, and Larry pleaded,
"Tina, dear, what's the
matter?"
"He
must have ripped out a
wire to make sure of
getting away. I—I must find
it. Eveiything seems all right."
A
minute gone. Surely Tugh
would have reached the gate by
now. Or, worse, the robots
would have come through, and would assail us here.
"Tina!"
pleaded Larry, "don't get excited.
Take it calmly. You can find
the trouble."
I
rushed to the window. I
could see the upper half
of tiie cross wall
gate-barrier. It jutted above the
top edge
of the dam from the point
of vision.
On the
Manhattan side I saw the oncoming
robot lights. And then suddenly
I made
out a light on this side
of the
barrier; it marked Tugh; it
must have been a
beam signal he was carrying.
It moved
slowly, retarded by distance,
but it
was almost
to the
gate; and then it reached there.
"He's gone through!" I called.
Then I saw him on
the
land side. He had escaped us and joined the robots. The lights showed them all
coming for the gate.
And then Tina abruptly found the
loosened wire. 1 have itl"
She stood up, tugging with all
her strength at the great switch-lever. I saw, up there on the top of the dam, a surge
of sparks as the current hissed into the wall-barrier; saw the barrier glow a
moment and then subside. And presendy the lights of
the balked robots, Tugh with them, retreated back
into the wrecked and blood-stained city.
"We
did itl" exclaimed Larry. "We're
impregnable here. Tina, now the air-power, for help may be on its way. And then
call some other city. Can you do that? They must have sent us help by
now."
In a moment the air-power went
on, and the city lighting system. Then Tina was at the great transmitter. As
she closed the circuits, London was frantically calling us. In the midst of the
chaos of electrical sounds which now filled the control room, came the audible
voice of the London operator.
"I
could not get you because your circuit was broken," it said. "Our air-vessel Micrad, bearing
the large projector of the robot-deranger, landed on
the ocean surface two hundred miles from New York harbor. It was forced
down when your district air-power failed."
Tina said hurriedly, "Our
air-power is on now. Is the Micrad
coming?"
"Wait. Hold connection. I
will call them." And after a moment's pause the London
voice came again. "The Micrad
is aloft again, and should be over New York in
thirty minutes. You are safe enough now."
As the voice clicked off Tina's
emotion suddenly overcame her. "Safe enough! And our city red with human blood!"
A
wild thought abruptly swept me. Mary Atwood was
back
there in the cavern, alone, waiting for me to return! I hastily told Larry and
Tina.
"But he cannot open the door
to get in to her," said Larry.
But Migul
could open the door. Where was Migul now? It set me
shuddering.
We decided to rush back by the
underground route. The Power House could remain unattended for a time. We got
down into the tunnel and made the trip without incident. We ran to the the limit of Tina's strength, and then for a distance I
carried her. We were all three panting and exhausted when we came to the
corridors under the palace. Where was Migul?
A group of officials stood in one
of the palace lower corridors. As they came hastily up to Tina, I suddenly had
a contempt for these men who governed a city in which neither they nor anyone
else did any work.
"The Micrad is
coming with the long-range deranger," Tina told
them briefly. After a moment they hastened away upstairs.
The
death of Alent, the guard in the tunnel to the robot
cavern, had been discovered by the palace officials, and another guard was
there now in his place. Migul had not passed him,
this guard told us.
We reached the cavern of
machinery. It was dim and deserted, as before. We came to the door of Mary's
room. It was standing half open!
Mary was gone! The couch was
overturned, with its covering and pillows strewn about. The room showed every evidence of a desperate struggle. On the floor the
great ten-foot length of Migul lay prone on its back.
A small door-port in its metal side was open; the panel hung awry on hinges
half ripped away. From the aperture a coil and grid dangled half out in the
midst of a tangled skein of wires.
We
bent over the robot. It was not quite inert. Within its metal shell there was
a humming
and a
faint, broken rasping. The staring eye-sockets
showed wavering beams of red; the
grid of tiny wires back
of the
parted lips vibrated with a faint
jangle.
I
bent lower. "Migul, can
you hear
me?" I asked.
It
spoke. "I hear you." They were thin, jangled
tones, crackling and hissing
with interference.
"What
happened, Migul? Where is the
girl?" I asked.
"Tugh-did
this-to me. He took the
girl."
"Where?
Migul, where
did he
take her? Do you know?"
"Yes.
I—have it recorded that he
said—they were going to the Time-cage—overhead
in the
laboratory. He said— they—he and the
girl were leaving forever!"
XVII
The giant mechanism,
fashioned in the guise of
a man,
lay dying. Yet not
that, for it never had had
life.
Every
moment its internal energy was
lessening. It seem-ed to want to
talk. The beams of its
eyes rolled wildly. It said, "When
Tugh came I
opened the door to him,
because I knew that Tugh still controlled
me. .
. .
And I
was humble
before Tugh. . . . But
he was
angry because I had released
you. He—deranged me. I tried
to fight
him, and he ripped open my
side port. .. ."
I
thought the mechanism had gone
inert. Then the faint, rasping voice started again. "Deranged
me. .
. .
And about Tugh, he—" A
blur. Then again, "Tugh-he is-Tugh, he is—
It
went into a dull repetition of the three words, ending in a rumble which died
into complete silence. The red radiance from the eye-sockets faded and
vanished.
The thing we had called Migul seemed gone. There was only this metal shell, cast to
represent a giant human figure, lying here with its operating mechanisms out of
order-smashed.
I
stood up. "That's the end of it. Mary Atwood's
gone—" "With Tugh in the Time-cage!"
Larry exclaimed. "Tina, can't we—"
"Follow them?" Tina
interrupted. "Come onl No—you two wait here. I
will go upstairs and verify if the Time-cage is gone."
She came back in a moment. The
laboratory overhead was fortunately deserted of robots: Larry and I had not
thought of that.
"The cage is gonel" Tina exclaimed. "Migul
told us the truth!"
We hastened back through the tunneL past the guard, up into the palace and into the
garden. My heart pounded in my throat for fear that Tina's Time-cage would have
vanished. But it stood, dimly glowing under the foilage
where she had left it.
A young man rushed up to us and
said, "Princess Tina, look there!"
A great row of colored lights
sailed slowly past overhead. The Micrad
was here, circling over the city. The storm had
abated; it had rained only for a brief time. The crazy winds were subsiding.
The Micrad
was using its deranging ray: we could hear the thrum
of it. It sent out vibrations which threw the internal mechanisms of the robots
out of adjustment, and they were dropping in their tracks all over the city.
This
had been a massacre similar to Tugh's vengeance upon
the New York City of 1935; just as senseless. Both, from the beginning, were equally
hopeless of ultimate success. Tugh could not conquer this
Time-world, so now he had left
it, taking
Mary Atwood with him....
We
hastened into the Time-cage. Larry and I braced
ourselves for the shock
as Tina
slid the door closed and
hurried to the controls.
Within
a moment
we were
flashing off into the great
stream of Time. . ..
"You
think he has gone forward
into the future?*' Larry asked. "Won't the instrument
show anything, Tina?"
"No.
No trace
of him
yet"
We
were passing 3,000 A.D., traveling
into the future. Tina reasoned that
Tugh, according
to Harl's confession, had originally
come from a future Time-world.
It seemed
most probable that now he would
return there.
The
Time-telespectroscope
so far
had shown
us no
evidence of the other cage.
Tina kept the telescope barrel
trained constantly on that
other space five hundred feet
from us which held Tugh's vehicle. The
flowing gray landscape off there gave no
sign of our quarry. Nervously,
breathlessly we waited for
a sign
of the
other Time-cage.
But
nothing showed. We were not
traveling fast. With Larry and Tina
at the
instrument table, I was left
to stand
at the window. Always I gazed
eastward. That other
little point of space only five
hundred feet to the east
held Mary; she was there; but
not now.
I
was barely
aware of the changing gray
outlines of the city: I stared,
praying for the fleeting glimpse
of a
spectral cage. ... I think
that up to 3,000 A.D.,
New York
remained much the same.
And then,
quite suddenly, in some vast storm
or cataclysm,
it was
gone. I saw but a
blurred chaos. This was
near 4,000 A.D. Then it
was rebuilt, smaller, with more trees
growing about, until presendy there
seemed only a forest. People,
if they
still
were here, were building such transitory structures that I
could not see them.
5,000 A.D. Mankind no doubt had
reached its peak of tivilization, paused at the
summit and now was in decadence.
But I think that by 15,000 A.D.,
mankind over all the Earth had become primitive. There is no standing still: we
must go forward, or back. Man, with his own machines softening him, enabling him
to do nothing, eventually unfitted himself to cope
with nature.
At the year 10,000 A.D., with a
seemingly primeval forest around us, Tina, Larry and I held an anxious consultation.
We had anticipated that Tugh would stop in his own
Time-world. That might have been around 3,000 or 4,000; but we hardly thought,
as we viewed the scene in passing, that he had come originally from beyond
4,000. He was too civilized.
Tugh
had not stopped. He had to be still ahead of us, so our course was to follow.
And then suddenly we glimpsed the other cagel It was ahead of us, traveling more slowly and retarding as
though about to stop. A gray unbroken forest was here. The time was about
12,000 A.D. Tina saw it first through the little telescopic-barrel; then it
showed on the mirror-grid—a faint, ghostly barred shape, thin as gossamer. We
even saw it presently through the window. It held its steady position, level
with us, hanging solid amid the melting, changing gray
outlines of the forest trees. They blurred it as they rose and fell.
We gathered at our eastward
window to gaze across the void of that five hundred feet The
interior of Tugh's cage was not visible to us. A
little window—a thinner patch in the lattices of the cage-side—fronted us; but
nothing showed in it.
We were so helpless! Only five
hundred feet away, the Tugh cage was there—now; yet
we could do nothing save
hold our Time-changing rate to
conform with it. Of course Tugh saw us.
He was
making no effort to elude
us, for neither cage was running
at its
maximum.
For
hours I stood gazing, praying
that Mary might be safe, striving
with futile fancy to guess
what might be transpiring within that
cage speeding side by side
with us in the blurred shadows
of the
corridors of Time.
"I
think," Tina said finally, "that
we should
stay behind it. When he
retards to stop, we will
have a better opportunity of landing
simultaneously with him."
We
passed 100,000 A.D. The forest
went down, and it seemed that
only rocks were here. A
barren vista was visible off
to the
river and the distant sea.
The familiar
conformations of the
sea and
the land
were changed. There was a different
shore-line. It was nearer at
hand now; and it was creeping
closer.
I
stared at that blurred gray
surface of water; at the
wide, undulating stretch of
rock. We came to 1,000,000
A.D.—a million years into
my future.
Ice came
briefly, and vanished again. But there
were no trees springing into
life on this barren landscape. I could not fancy
that even the transitory habitations of humans were here
in this
cold desolation.
Were
we headed
for the
End? I could envisage a
dying world, its internal fires cooling.
Ten
million years. . . .
Then a hundred million. .
. .
The gray scene, blended of dark nights
and sunshine
days, began changing its monochrome.
There were fleeting alternating intervals, now, when it
was darker,
and then
lighter with a tinge of red.
The Earth's
rotation was slowing down.
A
billion years! 1,000,000,000 A.D.! By
now the
day and the year were of
equal length. And it chanced
that this Western Hemisphere faced the
sun. I could see the
sun now, motionless above the horizon. The
scene was dull red. The sun
painted the rocks and the
sullen sea with blood.. . .
A
shout from Larry whirled me
round. "George! Good God!"
He
was bending
over the image-mirror; Tina, ghastly
pale, with utter horror
stamped upon her face, sprang
for the controls. On the mirror
I caught
a fleeting
glimpse of Tugh's cage, wrecked and broken—and
instantly gone.
"It
stopped!" Larry shouted.
"Good God, it stopped all
at once! It was
wrecked! Smashed!"
We
reeled; I all but lost
consciousness with the shock of our
own abrupt
retarding. Our cage stopped and
turned back. Tina located the wreckage
and stopped
again.
We
slid the door open. The
outer air was deadly cold.
The sun was a
huge dull-red ball hanging in
the haze
of the grey sky. The rocks
were gray-black, with the blood-light
of the
sun upon
them.
Five
hundred feet from us, by
the shore
of an
oily, sullen sea, the wreckage
of Tugh's cage was piled in
a heap.
Near it, the crumpled
white figure of Mary lay
on the
rocks. And beside her, still with
his black
cloak around him, crouched
Tugh!
XVIII
Tugh saw us as we stood in
our cage
doorway. His thick barrel-like figure rose
erect, and from his parted
cloak his arms waved with a
wild gesture of defiance and
triumph. He was clearly outlined in
the red
sunlight against the surface of
the sea
behind. We saw in one
of his
hands a ray cylinder—and then his
arm came
down and he fired at
us. It was the white, disintegrating
ray.
We were stricken by surprise,
and stood
for that
moment transfixed in our doorway.
Tugh's narrow, intensely
white beam leaped over
the intervening
rocks; but it fell short of us. I saw
that it had a range
of about
a hundred
feet. He lowered his
weapon; and, heedless that we
also might be armed, he leaped
nimbly past Mary's prostrate form and came shambling over
the rocks
directly for mel
It
stung me into action, and
for all
the chaotic
rush of these desperate moments my
heart surged with relief. I
saw the white form
of Mary
move I She was striving
to sit
upl
I held my ray cylinder—the
one I
had rescued
from Migul.
But its
range was no more than
twenty feet; I had tested it. Tugh's
beam had flashed a full
hundred! I whirled on Larry.
"Get
away from here, you and
Tina! You can't help me!
Run, I tell you! Get to
that line of rocks!"
Close
behind our cage was a
small broken ridge of rocks
—strewn boulders in a
tumbled line some ten or
fifteen feet in height. It would
afford shelter: there were broken
places to give passage through it.
The ridge
curved crescent-shaped behind our
cage and ran down toward
the shore.
I
shoved Larry violently away and
ducked back into our doorway. Only a few breathless
seconds had passed; Tugh was still
several hundred feet away from
us. Larry
and Tina ran behind the cage,
darted between the boulders of the ridge and vanished.
I
crouched in the cage. Tugh was not visible from
here. A moment passed.
This
horrible silence! Was he creeping
up on
me? I
could not tell where to place
myself in, the room—and it could
mean my life or
death.
The
silence was split by Tina
calling, "Tugh, we have caught you!"
Her
voice was to one side
and behind
our cage,
calling defiance at Tugh to distract his attention
from me. Through the window I
saw the
flash of his beam, slanting
sidewise at Tina. I gauged the
source of his ray to
be still
some distance off, and crept to
the door,
cautiously peering.
Tugh stood on the open
rock surface. He had swung
to my right and was near
the little
ridge of rocks where it
turned and bent down
to the
shore. Behind me came Tina s
voice again, "At last we
have you, Tugh!"
I
saw Tina
poised on the top of
the ridge,
partially behind me at the
elbow of the ridge-curve. She screamed her defiance, and
again Tugh fired at her. The
beam slanted over me, but still
was short.
Larry
had vanished.
Then I saw him, though
Tugh did not. He
had run
along behind the ridge, and
appeared, now, well down
toward the shore. He was
barely a hundred feet from
the cripple.
I saw
him stoop,
seize a chunk of rock and
throw ft. The missile bounded
and passed
close to Tugh.
Larry
instandy ducked back
out of
sight. The bounding stone startled Tugh; he whirled toward
it and
fired over the ridge. Tina again
had changed
her position
and was
shouting at him. They
were trying to exhaust his
cylinder charges; and if
they could do that he
would be helpless before me.
For
a moment
he stood
as though
confused. As he turned to gaze
after Tina, Larry flung another
rock. But this time Tugh did not
fire. He started back toward
where, by the wreckage of his
cage, Mary was now sitting
up in
a daze;
then he changed his
mind, whirled and fired directly
at my doorway. I was just
beyond the effective range of
his beam, but it was truly
aimed: I felt the horrible
nauseous impact of it,
a shuddering,
indescribable sickening of all my being.
I staggered
back into the room and
recovered my strength. A side window
port was open; I leaped
through it and landed upon the
rocks, with the cage between
Tugh and me.
He
fired again at the doorway.
Tina had disappeared. Larry was now
out of
range, standing on the ridge,
shouting and hurling rocks.
But Tugh did not heed him.
He was
shambling for my doorway. He would
pass within twenty feet of
me as
I crouched outside the cage at
its opposite
corner. I could take him by
surprise.
And
then he saw me. He
was less
than a hundred feet away. He changed his direction
and fired
again, full at me. But I
had had
enough warning, and, as the
beam struck the cage corner, I
ran back
along the outer wall of
the cage and appeared
at the
other comer. Tugh
came still closer, his weapon pointed
downward as he ran. Fifty feet away. Not close enoughl
I
think, there at the last,
that Tugh was wholly confused. Larry had come much closer.
He was
shouting; and from the ridge behind
me Tina
was shouting.
Tugh ran, not
for where I was lurking now,
but for
the comer
where a moment before he
had seen
me.
Now
he was
thirty feet from me. .
. .
Twenty. . . . Then nearer than that. Wholly without caution he
came forward. ... I leaned
around the edge of the
cage and fired. For one breathless
instant the voices of Tina
and Larry
abruptly hushed.
My
beam struck Tugh
in the
chest. It caught him and
clung to him, bathing
him in
its spreading,
intense white glare. He stopped in
his tracks;
stood transfixed for one breathless, horrible instantl
He was
so close
that I could see the surprise
on his
hideous features. His wide slit
of mouth gaped with astonishment.
My beam clung to him,
but he
did not
fall! He stood astonished; then turned
and came
at me!
For fust a moment
I was
stricken helpless there before him.
What manner of man was this?
I
came to my senses and
saw that
Larry, seeing my danger, had
run into
the open,
dangerously close, and hurled a rock.
It struck
Tugh upon the
shoulder and deflected his aim, so
that his flash went over
me. I
saw Tugh whirl toward Larry, and I
rushed forward, ripping loose the
cylinder of the ray projector
from its restraining battery cord.
In the instant the cripple was
turned halfway from me I
landed upon him, and
with all my strength brought
the point
of the small heavy cylinder down
on his
skull. There was a strange splintering
crack, and a wild, eerie
scream from his voice. He felL with me on top
of him.
Tugh lay motionless, twisted half on
his back,
his thick
arms outstretched on the
rocks and his weapon still
clutched in his hand. I rose
from his body and stood
shuddering. The bulging misshapen
head was splintered open. And
from it, strewn over the rocks,
were tiny intricate cogs and
wheels, coils and broken wires!
He
was not
a man,
but a
robot! A super-robot from some
unknown era, running
amuck!
And the
thought struck me that perhaps his
name had not been Tugh, but Two.
A
super-mechanical exile of
Time! But its wild, irrational
career of destruction through the ages now
was over.
It lay
inert, smashed and broken
at my
feet....
XIX
I think that there is little I should
add. Tugh's last purpose had been
to hurl
himself and Mary
past the lifetime of our world,
wrecking the cage and flinging them into
Eternity together.
And Tugh was luring our cage and us to the same fate.
But Mary, to save us, had watched her opportunity, seized the main control
lever and demolished the vehicle by its instantaneous stopping.
We left the shell of Tugh lying there in the red sunlight of the empty, dying
world, and returned to Tina's palace. We found that the revolt was over. The
city, with help arrived, was striving to emerge from the bloody chaos. Larry
and Tina decided to remain permanently in her Time. They would take us back;
but the cage was too diabolical to keep in existence.
"I shall send it forward
unoccupied," said Tina, "flash it into Eternity, where Tugh tried to go."
Accompanied by Larry, she carried
Mary and me to 1935. With Mary's father, her only relative, dead, she yielded
to my urging. We arrived in October, 1935. My New York, like Tina's a victim of
the exile of Time, was rapidly being reconstructed.
It was night when we stopped and
the familiar outlines of Fatton Place were around us.
We
stood at the cage doorway.
"Good-by," I said to
Larry and Tina. "Good luck to you both!"
The girls kissed each other. Such
strangely contrasting types! Over a thousand years was between them, yet how
alike they were, fundamentally. Both—just girls.
Larry gripped my hand. In times
of emotion one is sometimes inarticulate. "Good-by, George," he
said. "We—we've said already all there is to say, haven't we?"
There were tears in both the
girls' eyes. We four had been so close; we had been through so much together;
and now we were parting forever. All four of us were stricken with surprise at
how it affected us. We stood gazing at one another.
"No!"
I burst out. "I haven't said all there is to say. Don't you destroy that cage! You
come backl Guard it
as carefully
as you
can, and come hack. Land
here, next year in October—say, night of the 15th.
Will you? Well be here
waiting."
"Yes,"
Tina abruptly agreed.
We
stood watching them as they
slid the door closed. The cage for a moment
stood quiescent. Then it began
faintly humming. It glowed;
faded to a specter; and
was gone.
Mary and I turned away
into the New York City
of 1935,
to begin our life
together.
Here's a quick checklist of
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F-titles
400 M-titles
450
M-107 THE COILS OF TIME by A. Bertram Chandler
and INTO
THE ALTERNATE UNIVERSE
by
A. Bertram Chandler F-317 THE ESCAPE
ORBIT by James White F-318 THE SPOT OF
LIFE by Austin Hall F-319 CRASHING SUNS
by Edmond Hamilton M-109 THE SHIP THAT
SAILED THE TIME STREAM
by G. C. Edmondson
and STRANGER THAN YOU THINK
by G. C. Edmondson F-320 THE MARTIAN SPHINX by Keith Woodcott F-321 MAZA
OF THE MOON by Otis Adelbert Kline F-322 CITY OF A THOUSAND SUNS by Samuel R. Delany
M-l 11 FUGITIVE OF THE STARS by Edmond Hamilton
and
LAND BEYOND THE MAP by Kenneth Bulmer G-551
(500) WORLD'S BEST SCIENCE FICTION: 1965
Edited by Donald A. Wollheim and Terry Carr M-l
13 THE
RITHIAN TERROR by Damon Knight
and
OFF CENTER by Damon Knight F-325 ORDEAL
IN OTHERWHERE by Andre Norton F-326 THE
WIZARD OF LEMURIA by Lin Carter F-327
THE DARK WORLD by Henry Kuttner F-328 THE GALAXY PRIMES by Edward E. Smith M-l
15 ENIGMA
FROM TANTALUS by John Brunner
and THE REPAIRMEN OF CYCLOPS
by
John Brunner M-l
16 THE BEST FROM FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION:
10TH
SERIES
F-329 STORM OVER WARLOCK by Andre Norton
If you are missing any of these,
they can be obtained directly from the publisher by sending the indicated sum,
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The cream of the year's
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DONALM WOLLHEIM & TERRY CARR
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F-281
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by Pierre Benoit F-271
(400) OUTSIDE THE UNIVERSE
by Edmond Hamilton F-240
(400) WHEN THE SLEEPER WAKES
by H.G. Wells F-188
(400) ARMAGEDDON 2419 A.D.
by
Philip Francis Nowlan
D-553
(350) THE HOUSE ON THE BORDERLAND
by William Hope Hodgson F-283
(400) THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED
by Sax Rohmer F-295
(400) THE WORLD OF NULL-A
by A. E. van Vogt F-296
(400) GULLIVER OF MARS
by Edwin L. Arnold F-304
(400) THE RADIO BEASTS
by Ralph Milne Farley F-306
(400) EARTH'S LAST CITADEL
by
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F-312 (400) THE RADIO PLANET
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(400) A BRAND NEW WORLD
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M-119 (450) JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH
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Send price indicated, plus 50
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THE EXILE OF
TIME
When a girl who said she
had been kidnapped from the year 1777 appeared in modern New York, she was
either deluded or the victim of an incredible time-spanning plot. And when it
turned out the strange man with a mechanical servant who had kidnapped her had
been seen in other centuries, it became clear that a super-scientific plot was
afoot that must reach far into the unknown cities of the future.
THE EXILE OF TIME is a
novel of adventure and wonder such as only the hand of a classic master of science-fiction could have
written.
[1] This was part of Tugh's
plan. The broadcast voice was the signal for the uprising in the New York
district. This tower broadcaster could only reach the local area, yet ships and
land vehicles with robot operators wOuld doubtless
pick it up and relay it further. As a matter of fact there were indeed many
accidents to ships and vehicles this night when their operators abruptly went
beyond control. The chaos ran around the world fike
a fire in prairie grass.
[2] The cylinder of the white-ray which I
carried was.not the one with which Tugh murdered Harl. Mine was portable,
and considerably smaller.