Kastner ran to Schonerman and snatched the papers up, stuffing them into his briefcase.
‘Get them all!’
‘I have them all.’ Kastner pulled open the drawer. He grabbed the remaining papers in the drawer. ‘Every one of them.’
‘Let’s go. The gas will dissipate rapidly.’
They ran back outside. A few sprawled bodies lay across the entrance, workers who had come into the area.
‘Hurry.’
They ran through the town, along the single main street. People gaped at them in astonishment. Kastner gasped for breath, holding on tight to his briefcase as he ran. ‘I’m - winded.’
‘Don’t stop.’
They reached the edge of the town and started up the hillside. Ryan ran between the trees, his body bent forward, not looking back. Some of the workers would be reviving. And other guards would be coming into the area. It would not be long before the alarm would be out.
Behind them a siren whirred into life.
‘Here they come.’ Ryan paused at the top of the hill, waiting for Kastner. Behind them men were swelling rapidly into the street, coming up out of underground bunkers. More sirens wailed, a dismal echoing sound.
‘Down!’ Ryan ran down the hillside toward the time ship, sliding and slipping on the dry earth. Kastner hurried after him, sobbing for breath. They could hear orders being shouted. Soldiers swarming up the hillside after them.
Ryan reached the ship. He grabbed Kastner and pulled him inside. ‘Get the hatch shut. Get it closed!’
Ryan ran to the control board. Kastner dropped his briefcase and tugged at the rim of the hatch. At the top of the hill a line of soldiers appeared. They made their way down the hillside, aiming and firing as they ran.
‘Get down,’ Ryan barked. Shells crashed against the hull of the ship. ‘Down!’
Kastner fired back with his blast pistol. A wave of flame rolled up the hillside at the soldiers. The hatch came shut with a bang. Kastner spun the bolts and slid the inner lock into place. ‘Ready. All ready.’
Ryan threw the power switch. Outside, the remaining soldiers fought through the flame to the side of the ship. Ryan could see their faces through the port, seared and scorched by the blast.
One man raised his gun awkwardly. Most of them were down, rolling and struggling to rise. As the scene dimmed and faded he saw one of them crawling to his knees. The man’s clothing was on fire. Smoke billowed from him, from his arms and shoulders. His face was contorted with pain. He reached out, toward the ship, reaching up at Ryan, his hands shaking, his body bent.
Suddenly Ryan froze.
He was still staring fixedly when the scene winked out and there was nothing. Nothing at all. The meters changed reading. Across the time map the arms moved calmly, tracing their lines.
In the last moment Ryan had looked directly into the man’s face. The pain-contorted face. The features had been twisted, screwed up out of shape. And the horn-rimmed glasses were gone. But there was no doubt - It was Schonerman.
Ryan sat down. He ran a shaking hand through his hair.
‘You’re certain?’ Kastner said.
‘Yes. He must have come out of the sleep very quickly. It reacts differently on each person. And he was at the far end of the room. He must have come out of it and followed after us.’
‘Was he badly injured?’
‘I don’t know.’
Kasner opened his briefcase. ‘Anyhow, we have the papers.’
Ryan nodded, only half hearing. Schonerman injured, blasted, his clothing on fire. That had not been part of the plan.
But more important - had it been part of history?
For the first time the ramification of what they had done was beginning to emerge in his mind. Their own concern had been to obtain Schonerman’s papers, so that USIC could make use of the artificial brain. Properly used, Schonerman’s discovery could have great value in aiding the restoration of demolished Terra. Armies of workerrobots replanting and rebuilding. A mechanical army to make Terra fertile again. Robots could do in a generation what humans would toil at for years. Terra could be reborn.
But in returning to the past had they introduced new factors? Had a new past been created? Had some kind of balance been upset?
Ryan stood up and paced back and forth.
‘What is it?’ Kastner said. ‘We got the papers.’
‘I know.’
‘USIC will be pleased. The League can expect aid from now on. Whatever it wants. This will set up USIC forever. After all, USIC will manufacture the robots. Workerrobots. The end of human labor. Machines instead of men to work the ground.’
Ryan nodded. ‘Fine.’
‘Then what’s wrong?’
‘I’m worried about our continuum.’
‘What are you worried about?’
Ryan crossed to the control board and studied the time map. The ship was moving back toward the present, the arms tracing a path back. ‘I’m worried about new factors we may have introduced into past continuums. There’s no record of Schonerman being injured. There’s no record of this event. It may have set a different causal chain into motion.’
‘Like what?’
‘I don’t know. But I intend to find out. We’re going to make a stop right away and discover what new factors we’ve set into motion.’
Ryan moved the ship into a continuum immediately following the Schonerman incident. It was early October, a little over a week later. He landed the ship in a farmer’s field outside of Des Moines, Iowa, at sunset. A cold autumn night with the ground hard and brittle underfoot.
Ryan and Kastner walked into town, Kastner holding tightly onto his briefcase. Des Moines had been bombed by Russian guided missiles. Most of the industrial sections were gone. Only military men and construction workers still remained in the city. The civilian population had been evacuated.
Animals roamed around the deserted streets, looking for food. Glass and debris lay everywhere. The city was cold and desolate. The streets were gutted and wrecked from the fires following the bombing. The autumn air was heavy with the decaying smells of vast heaps of rubble and bodies mixed together in mounds at intersections and open lots.
From a boarded-up newsstand Ryan stole a copy of a news magazine, Week Review. The magazine was damp and covered with mold. Kastner put it into his briefcase and they returned to the time ship. Occasional soldiers passed them, moving weapons and equipment out of the city. No one challenged them.
They reached the time ship and entered, locking the hatch behind them. The fields around them were deserted. The farm building had been burned down, and the crops were withered and dead. In the driveway the remains of a ruined automobile lay on its side, a charred wreck. A group of ugly pigs nosed around the remains of the farmhouse, searching for something to eat.
Ryan sat down, opened the magazine. He studied it for a long time, turning the damp pages slowly.
‘What do you see?’ Kastner asked.
‘All about the war. It’s still in the opening stages. Soviet guided missiles dropping down. American disc bombs showering all over Russia.’
‘Any mention of Schonerman?’
‘Nothing I can find. Too much else going on.’ Ryan went on studying the magazine. Finally, on one of the back pages, he found what he was looking for. A small item, only a paragraph long.
SOVIET AGENTS SURPRISED
A group of Soviet agents, attempting to demolish a Government research station at Harristown, Kansas, were fired on by guards and quickly routed. The agents escaped, after attempting to slip past the guards into the work offices of the station. Passing themselves off as FBI men, the Soviet agents tried to gain entry as the early morning shift was beginning work. Alert guards intercepted them and gave chase. No damage was done to the research labs or equipment. Two guards and one worker were killed in the encounter. The names of the guards
Ryan clutched the magazine.
‘What is it?’ Kastner hurried over.
Ry
an read the rest of the article. He laid down the magazine, pushing it slowly toward Kastner.
‘What is it?’ Kastner searched the page.
‘Schonerman died. Killed by the blast. We killed him. We’ve changed the past.’
Ryan stood up and walked to the port. He lit a cigarette, some of his composure returning. ‘We set up new factors and started a new line of events. There’s no telling where it will end.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Someone else may discover the artificial brain. Maybe the shift will rectify itself. The time flow will resume its regular course.’
‘Why should it?’
‘I don’t know. As it stands, we killed him and stole his papers. There’s no way the Government can get hold of his work. They won’t even know it ever existed. Unless someone else does the same work, covers the same material—’
‘How will we know?’
‘We’ll have to take more looks. It’s the only way to find out.’
Ryan selected the year 2051.
In 2051 the first claws had begun to appear. The Soviets had almost won the war. The UN was beginning to bring out the claws in the last desperate attempt to turn the tide of the war.
Ryan landed the time ship at the top of a ridge. Below them a level plain stretched out, criss-crossed with ruins and barbed wire and the remains of weapons.
Kastner unscrewed the hatch and stepped gingerly out onto the ground.
‘Be careful,’ Ryan said. ‘Remember the claws.’
Kastner drew his blast gun. ‘I’ll remember.’
‘At this stage they were small. About a foot long. Metal. They hid down in the ash. The humanoid types hadn’t come into existence, yet.’
The sun was high in the sky. It was about noon. The air was warm and thick. Clouds of ash rolled across the ground, blown by the wind.
Suddenly Kastner tensed. ‘Look. What’s that? Coming along the road.’
A truck bumped slowly toward them, a heavy brown truck, loaded with soldiers. The truck made its way along the road to the base of the ridge. Ryan drew his blast gun. He and Kastner stood ready.
The truck stopped. Some of the soldiers leaped down and started up the side of the ridge, striding through the ash.
‘Get set,’ Ryan murmured.
The soldiers reached them, halted a few feet away. Ryan and Kastner stood silently, their blast guns up.
One of the soldiers laughed. ‘Put them away. Don’t you know the war’s over?’
‘Over?’
The soldiers relaxed. Their leader, a big man with a red face, wiped sweat from his forehead and pushed his way up to Ryan. His uniform was ragged and dirty. He wore boots, split and caked with ash. ‘That war’s been over for a week. Come on! There’s a lot to do. We’ll take you on back.’
‘Back?’
‘We’re rounding up all the outposts. You were cut off? No communications?’
‘No,’ Ryan said.
‘Be months before everyone knows the war’s over. Come along. No time to stand here jawing.’
Ryan shifted. ‘Tell me. You say the war is really over? But—’
‘Good thing, too. We couldn’t have lasted much longer.’ The officer tapped his belt. ‘You don’t by any chance have a cigarette, do you?’
Ryan brought out his pack slowly. He took the cigarettes from it and handed them to the officer, crumpling the pack carefully and restoring it to his pocket.
‘Thanks.’ The officer passed the cigarettes around to his men. They lit up. ‘Yes, it’s a good thing. We were almost finished.’
Kastner’s mouth opened. ‘The claws. What about the claws?’
The officer scowled. ‘What?’
‘Why did the war end so - so suddenly?’
‘Counter-revolution in the Soviet Union. We had been dropping agents and material for months. Never thought anything would come of it, though. They were a lot weaker than anyone realized.’
‘Then the war’s really ended?’
‘Of course.’ The officer grabbed Ryan by the arm. ‘Let’s go. We have work to do. We’re trying to clear this god damn ash away and get things planted.’
‘Planted? Crops?’
‘Of course. What would you plant?’
Ryan pulled away. ‘Let me get this straight. The war is over. No more fighting. And you know nothing about any claws? Any kind of weapon called claws?’
The officer’s face wrinkled. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Mechanical killers. Robots. As a weapon.’
The circle of soldiers drew back a little. ‘What the hell is he talking about?’
‘You better explain,’ the officer said, his face suddenly hard. ‘What’s this about claws?’
‘No weapon was ever developed along those lines?’ Kastner asked.
There was silence. Finally one of the soldiers grunted. ‘I think I know what he means. He means Dowling’s mine.’
Ryan turned. ‘What?’
‘An English physicist. He’s been experimenting with artificial mines, self-governing. Robot mines. But the mines couldn’t repair themselves. So the Government abandoned the project and increased its propaganda work instead.’
‘That’s why the war’s over,’ the officer said. He started off. ‘Let’s go.’
The soldiers trailed after him, down the side of the ridge.
‘Coming?’ The officer halted, looking back at Ryan and Kastner.
‘We’ll be along later,’ Ryan said. ‘We have to get our equipment together.’
‘All right. The camp is down the road about half a mile. There’s a settlement there. People coming back from the moon.’
‘From the moon?’
‘We had started moving units to Luna, but now there isn’t any need. Maybe it’s a good thing. Who the hell wants to leave Terra?’
‘Thanks for the cigarettes,’ one of the soldiers called back. The soldiers piled in the back of the truck. The officer slid behind the wheel. The truck started up and continued on its way, rumbling along the road.
Ryan and Kastner watched it go.
‘Then Schonerman’s death was never balanced,’ Ryan murmured. ‘A whole new past—’
‘I wonder how far the change carries. I wonder if it carries up to our own time.’
‘There’s only one way to find out.’
Kastner nodded. ‘I want to know right away. The sooner the better. Let’s get started.’
Ryan nodded, deep in thought. ‘The sooner the better.’
They entered the time ship. Kastner sat down with his briefcase. Ryan adjusted the controls. Outside the port the scene winked out of existence. They were in the time flow again, moving toward the present.
Ryan’s face was grim. ‘I can’t believe it. The whole structure of the past changed. An entire new chain set in motion. Expanding through every continuum. Altering more and more of our stream.’
‘Then it won’t be our present, when we get back. There’s no telling how different it will be. All stemming from Schonerman’s death. A whole new history set in motion from one incident.’
‘Not from Schonerman’s death,’ Ryan corrected.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Not from his death but from the loss of his papers. Because Schonerman died the Government didn’t obtain a successful methodology by which they could build an artificial brain. Therefore the claws never came into existence.’
‘It’s the same thing.’
‘Is it?’
Kastner looked up quickly. ‘Explain.’
‘Schonerman’s death is of no importance. The loss of his papers to the Government is the determining factor.’ Ryan pointed at Kastner’s briefcase. ‘Where are the papers? In there. We have them.’
Kastner nodded. ‘That’s true.’
‘We can restore the situation by moving back into the past and delivering the papers to some agency of the Government. Schonerman is unimportant. It’s his papers that matter.’
Ryan’s hand moved to
ward the power switch.
‘Wait!’ Kastner said. ‘Don’t we want to see the present? We should see what changes carry down to our own time.’
Ryan hesitated. ‘True.’
‘Then we can decide what we want to do. Whether we want to restore the papers.’
‘All right. We’ll continue to the present and then make up our minds.’
The fingers crossing the time map had returned almost to their original position. Ryan studied them for a long time, his hand on the power switch. Kastner held on tightly to the briefcase, his arms wrapped around it, the heavy leather bundle resting in his lap.
‘We’re almost there,’ Ryan said.
‘To our own time?’
‘In another few moments.’ Ryan stood up, gripping the switch. ‘I wonder what we’ll see.’
‘Probably very little we’ll recognize.’
Ryan took a deep breath, feeling the cold metal under his fingers. How different would their world be? Would they recognize anything? Had they swept everything familiar out of existence?
A vast chain had been started in motion. A tidal wave moving through time, altering each continuum, echoing down through all the ages to come. The second part of the war had never happened. Before the claws could be invented the war had ended. The concept of the artificial brain had never been transformed into workable practice. The most potent engine of war had never come into existence. Human energies had turned from war to rebuilding of the planet.
Around Ryan the meters and dials vibrated. In a few seconds they would be back. What would Terra be like? Would anything be the same?
The Fifty Cities. Probably they would not exist. Jon, his son, sitting quietly in his room reading. USIC. The Government. The League and its labs and offices, its buildings and roof fields and guards. The whole complicated social structure. Would it all be gone without a trace? Probably.
And what would he find instead?
‘We’ll know in a minute,’ Ryan murmured.
‘It won’t be long,’ Kastner got to his feet and moved to the port. ‘I want to see it. It should be a very unfamiliar world.’