There were only four persons left in the Hole. Steve Vannevar, the aeronautics expert, was one; and his beautiful wife Grace, whose work with the algae tanks had kept the scientists alive after the frozen and packaged food supplies gave out, was another. Dan Conroy, the red-haired, explosive electronics wizard, was the third. The fourth was Telford Lowe, who had wrung and twisted his brain until it yielded up the mathematical equations necessary to put a protective shell of force around the ships—and then slipped quietly into a world of complete unreality, while the others sweated out a working prototype.
That was five years ago, when there were still more than twenty scientists and technicians in the Hole, and while the corridors still echoed to the sounds of men at work. Now there was Telford Lowe, wandering around whispering to himself, thanking Grace with a gentle smile when she fed him; and the other three, near the breaking point in their frenzied, last-ditch attempt to conquer space and time . . . With ever the threat of the flesh-hungry savages on the prowl above their heads, and alarm signals which didn’t always work.
The four scientists were safe enough as long as they stayed underground in that elaborate, pitiful fortress-shelter they and men like them had made to hold back the death of civilization. Safe, and comfortable enough—if breathing air that stank of its thousand times of use, drinking water whose purifying chemicals corroded the tongue, eating capsule rations from which the very memory of flavor had departed—if these things were comforts, the scientists in the Hole had them. They had lived underground twenty years. The Hole was like a spaceship, even to its air lock entrances, self-contained and self-sufficient. But there were times when the desire to see the stars, to feel the sweet lifting wind and the warmth of sunlight on pallid flesh grew so strong that one of them would slip quietly away up the long, baffle-marked passageway. Sometimes he would come back. Oftener not. The rest worked on, grimly.
It was the twentieth year of the Hot War. The push button, guided missile war. Nation struck against nation in a frenzy of terror and revenge. Governments were destroyed, records lost; no one knew or cared who had launched the first treacherous blow. Readings of the radiation counters concealed above ground told them that no one had yet fired the ultimate bomb. Lying awake during his sleep period, Steve Vannevar often wondered why not. Each side had at least one J-bomb, maybe more. And so little was left of the sane, ordered world as man had known it, that it was a miracle some crazed warlord had not sanctioned the hurling of the bomb which would atomize the Earth. But perhaps the bombs were buried now beneath the rubble of cities, or forgotten in underground arsenals. Or perhaps fear of personal extinction prevented the irrevocable step. In the Atomic Age, even a blood-crazed brute could visualize and fear a total chain reaction.
Now it was F-day. Finality. The End. Finis. The last of the saucer ships sat in her launching cradle, waiting to make the impossible trip. Steve Vannevar leaned heavily against the workbench, staring at the shining disk on which rode humanity’s last chance of survival. Lowe’s force shell, a protective device, had had one of those amazing second effects more valuable than the desired primary use. In some incalculable way, it provided an increasing acceleration for the ship within its sphere, so that the rockets were necessary only for maneuvering around planets. Theoretically, it could attain better than twice the speed of light.
Steve rubbed his aching eyes with hands that trembled just a little. As soon as Conroy returned from a final reconnaissance and check of the area around the ejection port, Steve was going to take this last saucer back through time and space for a rendezvous with yesterday. Nothing could be done, now or ever, to save the radiation-rotted, dying world of the year 1980, but there was a million-to-one chance that Steve could succeed where the rest of the Suicide Squad had failed. Succeed, that is, in reaching back into the months or weeks before that first attack, and persuading the nations of the Earth to hold their fire for the sake of the human race.
Footsteps sounded behind Steve and he turned quickly. Conroy hurried into the lab. He was panting, and blood ran from a gash in his head.
“They’ve located us,” he said. “Hear them?”
The two men listened. Far above, deadened by the screens in the main passageway, was the sound of heavy blows.
“They’re battering the air lock with an old tank. They nearly caught me. Tag end of some sort of a war party. If they’d been better disciplined they’d have had me. They weren’t . . . like us.”
“You mean the Russians are over here with tanks?”
“Not Russian,” said Conroy. “Mutations. Nonhuman.”
Steve whistled soundlessly. “So soon—? Mature mutations?”
“You haven’t been topside lately.” Conroy’s face muscles twitched. “It’s—horrible. What isn’t burnt off is . . . loathsome.”
Grace Vannevar came in quietly with food on a plate and cups of some steaming beverage. Both the men stared and sniffed incredulously.
“Coffee, by the gods,” breathed Conroy, and held out hands which shook in spite of him. “I thought that had gone with tobacco and everything else.” The three sipped hungrily, savoring the delicious fragrance.
“I saved a small can of coffee for a celebration,” said Grace.
The tired lines in Steve’s face relaxed as he grinned at his wife. “I’m almost afraid to ask what we’re celebrating.”
She rested her hand lightly on his arm. “We’re drinking to your good luck, my darling.”
They finished the coffee quietly, munching on the grayish, flat crackers which contained the correct balance of vitamins and minerals and tasted like dried library paste. Then Conroy set down his cup. “I think you’ll make it,” he said. “We know the force shell works. Nothing—not even collision with a planet—can hurt you while the shell is on . . . although it’s goodbye, planet. Then when you pass the speed of light, your personal atoms and those of your ship interpenetrate with the atoms of anything you run across. Lowe plotted your course around the closed cosmic curve of the Einstein universe so as to bring you back to the area Terra occupied during that summer of 1958. At better than twice the speed of light, you should make it in twenty years, objective time; but at that speed, you’ll grow younger instead of older. Lowe figured it at about a fifteen years’ retrogression,” Conroy finished.
“That’ll make me a snappy twenty-five.” Steve grinned at his wife. “I’ll look you up, doll—give my younger self some competition.”
“That’s exactly what you won’t do,” growled Conroy. “Two Vannevars trying to occupy one space-time might wreck everything. That’s why you’ve got to stay away from North America. Pilot the saucer to Russia when you get back there, and try first to persuade the bosses of the Kremlin to hold their fire. They can invite some of the top men in Washington to meet with you in Moscow.”
“I still think Steve should go to England or Canada and ask the government there to mediate,” Grace said. “History doesn’t suggest the Russian leaders were especially cooperative.”
“That’s just it. We’d defeat our purpose. The Kremlin’d write off English or Canadian statements as propaganda. Steve’s got to give them the facts directly. They won’t want to be destroyed any more than we do. Above all, don’t go near the United States. We haven’t any idea how this time traveling works, or what the paradoxes will be, but at least we’ve avoided one glaring error the earlier experimenters made. How could they overlook the fact that while their machines traveling forward or backward in time stood still, geographically, the Earth itself wouldn’t be standing still? Even overlooking solar drift and rotation around its axis, there is still Earth’s orbital motion around the sun. The Earth of six months ago is as far distant from this present point in space as it is in time. If we sat still in space and tried to move back or forward in time, the Earth would move out from underneath us.”
“Einstein rubbed their noses in it, with his space-time continuum, but they were so busy applying his theories to everything else, that they forgot to apply them to
time travel,” Grace suggested.
“Time travel was a gimmick for the science fiction magazines, then,” said Conroy. “No reputable scientist would waste time on it.”
“All the scientists who are left in this country are betting all the time in the world on it, now,” Steve said grimly. “If this doesn’t work, the human race can shut up shop.”
“They have already,” gloomed Conroy. “The new births aren’t human.”
Grace turned her face away. Too late, Conroy remembered her child, born six months after she and Steve entered the Hole . . . what it had looked like and how it had died.
Steve put his arm gently around her shoulder. “I wish you’d come with me, Grace.”
“I want to, dear, but the scales are already loaded too heavily against you. Even with the oxygen converter and the nutrient tank, we aren’t sure—”
“We can’t be sure of anything!” Conroy burst out. “We’ve been sending old planes, rocket ships, anything we could get off the ground, forward into the past. Flying tin cans equipped with force shells and jets. And never a word of whether they reached twentieth-century Terra successfully or exploded in some godforsaken corner of the universe—” He broke off, shocked by the look on Grace’s face. “We do know some of them got through,” he tried to reassure her. “Remember those flying saucer sightings in the fifties? Those were our men: Billings, Jocelyn, Dewitt, Santos—some of them made it around the circle and back to Earth.”
“Then why didn’t they land, make themselves known, stop the war?” Grace’s voice trembled for the first time.
“Going too fast, perhaps,” Conroy said awkwardly. “My plus-gravity drag ought to take care of that.”
“Some of them hovered, slowed, turned—” Grace protested.
Steve put his arm around her. “Let’s face it. We’ve no idea what forces they’d run into, whirling through space and time. Perhaps they changed—mutated. We think they’d be younger. They might not even be human any more. But we’ve got to keep trying.”
Grace said, “We know none of our men succeeded in preventing the war. If they had, we four would have—winked out. Any major change in the course of history would automatically create an entirely different future. And we’re still here . . .”
Steve frowned. By making a success of this mission he’d destroy them both—and Lowe, before he created the force shell formula—Steve rubbed his forehead. “Why don’t we all go?”
“We’ve discussed that before,” Grace said steadily. “There isn’t enough nutrient or oxygen or fuel. There’s only one space harness and one cradle. And four returnees would be four times as likely to create a time paradox. We can’t jeopardize our chance of preventing—this.” She smiled. “And no matter what happens to us—now, there’s always us—then. You’ll be giving us a new lease on life.” But I might never meet you in the new time pattern, she thought miserably. Goodbye, my beloved.
She laced him into his space harness, thinking as she did that she could be a medieval countess helping her knight to don his armor before a battle. Her fingers were unusually clumsy.
Steve had been under so great a strain for so long that he felt drained of emotion. I love you, he thought, watching her intent face. I’d better tell you so. I won’t have another chance. He touched her cheek lightly with his fingertips.
“Be a good girl while I’m gone.” It wasn’t what he had intended to say, but she seemed to understand. Her smile was steady. Steve walked over to the saucer which rested in the launching rack. Everything was in place, checked and rechecked. As he climbed the wheel-up steps to the cabin, he said thankfully, “Our visitors seem to have given up.” It was true; the pounding on the air lock above had ceased. Conroy came up the steps after him, peering into the jet vents, poking nervously at the air lock seals, tapping the shell of the ship which the young technicians had called “The Crack of Doom” because they swore the saucer would last that long—or longer. Where were they now—Willis and Bates and Denby, who had created and molded that eternal material? They swore that no torch or explosive, not even the heat of suns nor the unimaginable stresses of space could warp it. Less durable than their creation, they were long gone: Willis of an undiagnosable fever, Bates a suicide, Denby never returning from a foray up to the surface. But their ship was here and protected with every safety gadget the scientists could devise.
The “cradle,” for instance, into which Conroy was helping Steve settle himself now. It consisted of a shell within a shell. The outer chamber was the hydraulic shock-recoil unit, in which the inner shell floated. No matter how severe the pressure of acceleration or deceleration, the sluggish fluid within the chamber neutralized it. Further to protect the occupant, the inner shell was a vacuum, in which the pilot floated, space-harnessed, warmed and nourished enough to sustain life, and constantly fed a trickle of pure oxygen.
Conroy had also devised a gadget which would stimulate the pilot back to full consciousness when the ship reached its goal—that is, maneuverable proximity to Earth in the summer of 1958. At this time, the fluid in the outer shell would drain into a reserve tank, oxygen would be pumped into the inner shell, the lid would open, and the pilot would receive stimulating massage from electrodes in the harness. As he adjusted the nutrient needles and electrodes carefully on Steve’s arms and legs, Conroy said, “At least you’ll arrive back there alive and kicking, even if the ship doesn’t.”
Steve chuckled. “That’s good to know. Now if you could just arrange for me to sprout wings in case of mechanical failure—”
Conroy frowned. He was always putting his foot in it. Then he met Steve’s grin with one of his own. “Grace,” he called, “you want to say so long to young spriggins here before I put the cork in his mouth?”
Grace appeared at the open air lock, waved a kiss from steadily smiling lips, and went down again. Conroy placed the oxygen mouthpiece between Steve’s teeth, clamped his nose shut, and lowered the helmet. At once Steve was in the faint, comfortable glow which would be his light till the ship reached its goal. Already he could feel the gentle drag of narcosis pulling down his eyelids. Pleasantly drowsy, he was aware only dimly of the noises as Conroy activated the pump to create a vacuum around Steve. When Conroy closed the outer shell, filled it with fluid, set the automatic controls, and stepped out of the saucer, Steve was already floating dreamily on a pale sea of light. He did not hear the ponderous slab door of the port swing shut; nor was he aware of the almost noiseless clicking as the automatics took over, those infinitely competent machines which would hold his life in their metal hands till the ship reached its goal.
To the two watching so tensely, the disc-shaped ship suddenly glowed into shimmering light; a strange, biting scent filled the air; far above, the ejection chute lock opened for the last time. The little ship quivered slightly, then began to glide slowly up the ramp toward the lock. As it went, the brightness increased until the watchers squinted against the glare. The trim outlines of the craft were lost; it seemed now to be a sphere of light as it flashed into the sky to begin its journey through the future into the past.
Steve floated endlessly, timelessly, on the sea of space. The Crack of Doom hurtled through the universe at better than twice the speed of light. To a human observer within the ship, had there been one capable of making observations, everything in the small, efficiently ordered cabin would have seemed as usual; but the mass of the ship was so great that its atomic structure swept like a giant net across the void—a net through which meteors and moonlets and even planets slipped like tiny, sparkling motes.
In the wake of the ship, the millennia fled away . . .
Steve Vannevar awoke with a tremendous sense of unease. There was something he had to do . . . HAD TO DO . . . right now! He tried to get up and experienced a moment of utter panic at finding himself encased in something rigid and unyielding. Then he remembered, and relaxed to let the automatic guardian finish its preset task. The hydraulic fluid drained away from the outer ca
sket, oxygen flowed into the inner vacuum, the inner lid lifted, and the vitalizer, whose electronic fingers had kept Steve’s body in tone through the long hibernation, clicked off. After a time the man sat up gingerly and detached the nutrient-supplying needles from his arm. Next the cathodes were removed from legs, throat, and wrists. Then, lumbering like a great bear, Steve hauled himself out of the casket and began to take off the space harness.
He felt fine. A little stiff perhaps, and a little shaky, but even those feelings were rapidly passing off as he moved around the control chamber. His first task was to determine his position. Within minutes he was staring through the forward visiplates at a large gray-green ball turning lazily in the void directly in front of him.
“I made it!” he cried softly, catching hold of the frame of the plate and peering elatedly at the familiar outlines of the continents. He knew a momentary regret that he had slept away the whole of that incredible odyssey. What sights a man could have seen! But the space medicine man had said no. Better to miss the scenery and the tensions—and to arrive sane and normal. Excitement caught him up again so that at first he did not notice just how fast the clouded ball was enlarging. In a few minutes it had filled the whole of the plate, and Steve realized that he was falling toward Earth at a speed of many thousand miles an hour. He put the ship into orbit and began breaking.
Hours later, shaking with weariness, he was still breaking, this time well into Earth’s atmosphere. It struck him as ironic that he had crossed the universe with less effort than these last few hundred miles required of him. As he came in over Russia, jet interceptors smoked up to challenge him, but he left them standing. At the last possible moment, he cut off the force shell around the ship. Hitting the rear jets, he swung the gyro handle. The little saucer swung obediently into proper landing position—but two of the jets misfired. The saucer sideslipped. Steve saw the tops of trees plunge up toward him. There was a splintering crash; the saucer slewed sideways, tore through the trunks of massive trees as though they were toothpicks, and ploughed into the ground in a little clearing. Steve’s head hit the visiplate.
He had been able to cut the jets before the crash. Even so, the forest around him was crackling with flame when he opened his eyes. Acrid smoke drifted into the saucer. He could feel the vibration of someone pounding on the hull. Staggering to his feet, he groped his way through the choking haze to the air lock. The inner door was ajar and opened easily at a touch of his hand; but the outer lock was wedged open about two inches. Smoke from the burning underbrush poured in through the crack. The voices of men shouting sounded loud above the crackling fire. Suddenly a crowbar was thrust through the opening. Someone barked orders in Russian.
“Right on the button!” thought Steve, and passed out again.
His second awakening was a rude one. Someone was slapping his face—relentless, savage blows. Steve tried to put his hands up to defend himself and found they were tied to the sides of his chair. He squinted and peered, trying to focus on the figure that swam disconcertingly in front of him.
“That’s enough,” growled a deep voice. “The capitalist spy has condescended to acknowledge our presence.”
Through a king-sized headache, Steve got the room into focus. It seemed to be a meeting place of some size, with rows of wooden chairs and a wood platform with a lectern. Back of the lectern, on the wall, a huge new-looking poster blazoned the face of the Leader. A group of roughly dressed men stood in a semicircle around the chair in which Steve was tied, and directly in front of him loomed a sneering giant, fists on hips.
“Talk, you!”
“I still think it would be better to send him directly to the city, Comrade Ivov,” said a gaunt-faced farmer, both of whose hands were wrapped in bandages.
“Who asks you to think?” taunted Ivov. “Am I not the man appointed by the Party to handle matters in this district? Just because you burnt your fingers rescuing the decadent foreigner, do you think you have some responsibility for him? Leave the decisions to those capable of making them.”
“You know the army will want to inspect the ship and question this man as soon as possible,” persisted the injured man. “He may know much that our country should learn—”
“And that’s exactly what I intend finding out,” bellowed Ivov. “Do you think I want to spend the rest of my life in this broken-down hamlet with mire on my boots? This is my territory, my discovery. I’m not likely to let some button-polishing Party messenger boy go running to the Leader with this meaty scoop as though he’d been responsible for the whole occurrence! When I’m through with this spy, I’ll know everything he does—even if I have to tear his tongue out to make him talk!”
“It is a good thing all the men in your village are not as stupid as you,” said a cold voice behind him. Ivov whirled. His heavy face drained of color. A lean man in a plain black suit stood inside the open door. At his shoulder ranged four Secret Police, also in black.
“Feodor!” Ivov breathed the dreaded name of the Chief of the Secret Police. The latter nodded emotionlessly.
“You are ready to surrender this political prisoner to my men?”
“But—but he’s an enemy soldier—a capitalist spy—!”
“Whom you intended to destroy before either the army or my staff had a chance to examine him. This will be remembered, Ivov.” Feodor gestured curtly to his men. “Place the Commissar under local arrest, to be forwarded to headquarters with the next bunch going through. Take the prisoner to my car. Two of you keep watch on him there till I join you. Some of you Comrades,” he turned to the ring of farmers, “lead my other two men to the crashed ship.” Ignoring the gray-faced Ivov, he continued, “The fate of the self-seeker, Ivov, may suggest to you that it is a mistake to allow personal ambition to come before service to the State. I was pleased to hear that you were urging an immediate report, Comrade,” he said to the bandaged man. “You may act as Commissar for this district until the Party has time to make permanent arrangements. Be assured that the eyes of the Party are upon you at all times—”
“As are those of the glorious Red Army,” added a new, jovial voice from the doorway. A chubby, red-faced Major stood there. Behind him, a dozen soldiers were disposed, seemingly casual, yet efficiently cutting off any exit from the room.
Feodor grimaced involuntarily. “Your spies are almost as efficient as mine,” he admitted grudgingly. “Who else knows about this?”
“Everyone from the Leader to his cook,” shrugged the jolly-looking Major, chuckling. “I’ve got a personal order from Himself to bring the prisoner and his ship to Depot One immediately. The ship is to be completely shrouded from sight while it travels. Some of my boys are already on their way with equipment to sling it on a truck. The crash area is to be combed clean of anything which might give us information. The Leader suggests that your men do a good clean-up job there, Feodor. Bring every scrap of metal, paper, cloth, anything which might have any connection with the prisoner or his equipment. But I don’t need to tell you how to do your job, do I?” Smiling around the group of silent farmers, he continued, “I have orders to bring everyone who has seen or talked to the prisoner, or seen his craft. Especially the man who entered the ship and burned his hands rescuing the pilot.”
“He knows even that?” whispered Ivov.
The Major shrugged and chuckled again, but didn’t bother to comment. Slowly the farmers filed from the room, Ivov shambling brokenly after them. Steve was so stiff from the tightness of his bonds that two of the soldiers had to take his arms to help him to walk. When he was seated in a huge sedan between the Major and a massive soldier, the car started off at once, leaving Feodor standing watching.
The Major leaned back and offered Steve a flask from a compartment beneath the window, saying in flawless English, “Tell me, my friend, has the Hot War finally started? Are you the first gun?”
Steve took a moment to gulp the scalding liquid. He was still groggy from the effects of the blow he had received when he
smashed against the visiplate. How much would it be advisable to tell this pleasant-seeming Major with the very shrewd back eyes? Well, he’d have to begin somewhere. And at least, the war hadn’t started yet, if the Major suspected him of being part of the opening attack. It was a cheering thought.
“I’m rather a special messenger,” he began slowly. “I’m more than willing to talk to you now, although what I’ve got to say must be addressed to all the top people in your government.”
“Curious Western misapprehension,” smiled the Major, “that it is necessary to have many people to make a decision. The democracies lose so much following that outworn ideology. Surely such a race of perfectionist-engineers as yourselves knows there must be one single leader to make decisions and obedient members to carry them out? Does the hand tell the head how to think? You of the West are even more foolish. You create a monstrous government entity with two heads, and then give it several self-interested advisors to further confuse the matter of decision.” He shrugged again, smiling. “But, all the better for us, eh, Comrade?” He accepted the flask from Steve and tipped it to his lips. “So. Try the story out on me first; I’ll tell you whether our beloved Leader will go for the propaganda line your leaders have worked out.”
Steve turned slightly sideways to face him. “It isn’t as easy as that,” he said slowly. “I’m not representing any Western government. Where I—come from, the governments have all broken down.” He took a deep breath. “I’ve come back from the future,” he finished quietly.
There was a long moment of silence in the car. The shrewd black eyes of the Major widened slightly. Without any trace of a smile on his face, he said quietly, “They won’t believe you, you know. Especially since it was your side that got back here . . . But I got a look at your ship. I know we haven’t anything to match it, and I doubt if your people have, yet. How did the war go?”
Steve told him.
The car drove slowly along a rutted country lane. They drew up in front of a well-camouflaged sentry box, facing the hostile snouts of a dozen guns concealed within plausible shrubbery. Then a wide metal gate swung open, and the big car inched between metal posts and continued across an open meadow toward a small grove of young trees. The Major explained, “The Depot’s underground, of course. And I think you’ll find most of the ‘top’ people down there to receive you. They’ve been itching for a chance to start things, and they think you may be it. Armed penetration of a peaceful country—a perfect excuse for retaliation. They certainly aren’t going to believe your story. I’m not sure I do myself—even after getting a glimpse of your saucer. It could be terribly good propaganda, to scare us off.” He shrugged. “One way or another, I’m afraid you’re in for a pretty rough time, my friend.”
The entrance to Depot One was screened by a pile of massive rocks. Inside a sort of cave was a checkpoint. The Major signed Steve in, touched his cap in a sketch of a salute, and walked off. Steve was marched down a wide, flood-lighted ramp between two soldiers, while two black-coated Secret Policemen padded along behind.
The ramp opened onto a busy passageway where white-coated technicians, worried-looking civilians, and lounging Secret Police guards were jostled by pairs of soldiers patrolling stolidly. Steve’s guards took him into an elevator which went down interminably. The door finally slid open on a narrow, gloomy corridor. Rows of heavy doors faced onto it, each one with a small steel mesh peephole. One of the soldiers opened a door. The other pushed Steve from behind. He stumbled forward into the cell and fell against the far wall. The door clanged shut.
The cell was small, cold, and completely empty except for Steve. They left him there for twenty-four hours—without light, heat, food, water, or the sound of any human activity. After the first few hours, Steve realized that this was part of a plan to weaken his resistance and make him more amenable to whatever suggestions his captors would care to make. His head ached and he was hungry, but there was nothing to do but wait, so he stretched himself out on the concrete floor and tried to relax. It was very cold and damp; after a time he was forced to get up and walk to restore warmth to his aching body. When many hours had passed without a sign from his captors, Steve began to wonder of it would not have been better to try to contact the United States of 1958. There, at least, he would have had a hearing.
When the cell door finally opened, the light blinded Steve momentarily. A soldier entered the cell with a rifle and prodded him out into the corridor, where two other soldiers took over and hustled him up a corkscrew ramp at the double, till his lungs were pumping with the unaccustomed exercise. Then they thrust him into a garishly lighted room and slammed the door behind him.
Facing Steve across a varnished table were three men—the Major, Feodor, and between them, a pudgy balding man with a sly smile and tiny eyes, whom Steve recognized from remembered newspaper cuts. The Leader looked him over carefully.
“This is the advance guard of the Invasion?” he asked. “Doesn’t seem so formidable.”
“My name is Steven Vannevar, Excellency. I am a scientist in the field of aeronautics. I have come back in time from approximately 1978 to warn the nations of the Earth that the Hot War, soon to begin, will end in the destruction of the human race.”
The three men stared at him. Then the Leader raised plump hands and clapped softly. “Excellent! Quite a dramatic performance! Are we now to determine, with twenty questions, what is your real employment? Are you an actor, or possibly a science fiction writer?” His cherubic smile vanished completely and he glared at the Major with cold little eyes. “What sort of nonsense is this? You bring me out here to listen to the puerile histrionics of a capitalist warmonger—”
“Except that I’m not a warmonger,” put in Steve. “I’m trying to stop a war, not—”
Something heavy crashed sickeningly into the small of Steve’s back, and he fell forward on his hands and knees. The Leader, restored to good humor by the action of the soldier, chided merrily, “You must not interrupt me when I am speaking. My loyal soldiers do not like it.”
Steve stared up at him through a haze of pain. “My ship has been brought to you by this time, Excellency. I am sure you must have seen it. In it, I returned from the ruined world of twenty years in the future. Your scientists will tell you that it has many features undreamed of by the science and technology of this day—”
“Undreamed of in the decadent democracies, perhaps; our own ships now flying are superior to the craft you try to palm off as a triumph of future science. No, my dramatic friend, you’ll have to do better than this. Your story is full of absurdities on the very face of it. Major Kerelin repeated to me the tale you told him, and while it is so farcical that it doesn’t deserve a rational reply, I will make one. I shall merely suggest that if your story were true, and you succeeded in persuading us to patch up some kind of peace with the warmongers, you would be dooming your own friends and the world as you knew it, to oblivion. The Major says you believe a change in the historical pattern will create an entirely different future—one in which all now living would share, but which would exclude as unassimilable paradoxes your own life and that of the wife and friends you left behind—all flung in the scales in a single altruistic gesture! I know men, Steven Vannevar. A man might betray his wife and friends, but to throw himself and his whole world into limbo—that’s too much altruism! So. We end this farce. Why are you really here? Feodor thinks you were on a reconnaissance flight and crashed due to some failure of your inefficient capitalistic machinery.”
Steve staggered to his feet and advanced toward the table. “Don’t you listen to your scientists? You blind fools, can’t you see—” but the rifle butts crashed into his body again, and he drowned in a sea of pain.
The interviews continued in a nightmare sequence, always in the same room but never with the same interrogators. After each one, Steve was led or carried back to the small dark cell. He had reached the point where it was difficult to distinguish between reality and hallucination. He wou
ld find himself standing in front of the wall in his cell, proving to the blind concrete the truth of his claims. The soldiers brought him a little water, and a hunk or two of grayish bread, but no one except the interrogators spoke to him, and there was neither light nor heat in his cell.
Then one day when the soldiers came for him, they took him to a different place. He was pushed under a shower and given a clean coarse shirt and trousers to put on. Then he was set down at a table and given a tin plate full of stew. Restored as much by hope as by the warm water and the clean clothing, he wolfed down a few bites ravenously. Then rising nausea made him push away from the table.
“I’ve had enough,” he muttered to the soldier who stood watchfully beside him.
“Come,” commanded the man, and led him out to where the inevitable two guards waited in the corridor. When he saw that he was entering the interrogation room again, Steve almost ran in panic. Then he saw the pudgy Leader flanked as once before by the Chief of the Secret Police and Major Kerelin. Steve pulled himself together. Something important must have been decided to bring these men together again in this room. Had the War started? He waited nervously for the Leader to finally speak.
The great man was shuffling through a thick file of papers petulantly. He brought his small cold eyes up to Steve’s face. “They tell me you persist in your fantastic story even under the influence of truth drugs,” he began abruptly. “My agents have investigated in your own country and tell me there is a Steve Vannevar working for your government on guided missiles. They have taken photographs.” He tossed several large glossy prints at Steve. “Enough like to be your twin brother, no?”
“Those are pictures of me as I was twenty years ago,” said Steve dully.
“Then why do you look like that now, if you claim to be twenty years older?” snarled Feodor.
The Leader held up a pudgy hand. “Enough of this nonsense! You confuse even yourself. I’d have you shot now, except that the scientists and the army are nagging day and night to have you explain to them some of the features of your craft. So I have made my decision.”
Feodor stared straight at Steve, his face impassive. The Major looked worried and hopeful at the same time.
“You will go with Major Kerelin, but under the constant surveillance of Feodor and his men. That way, the army won’t be able to steal any scientific secrets to use against me. You will answer all questions fully and demonstrate all your apparatus. When we have a full report, you will be transferred to another place to stand public trial as a spy. This will give me a valid excuse to launch an all-out offensive against the decadent democracies. It is a little ahead of the schedule I had set up; but your warmongering scientific gadgetry has disturbed my subordinates. Your country mustn’t be allowed to get any further ahead of us.”
Steve’s mind rocked under this blow. It was clear that his whole trip through time and space had not only not helped the world, but actually hastened the day of its destruction! Or worse—the thought came to him—he had handed the enemy a quick victory, clean-cut, overwhelming. When the operation of the force shell was explained to them, with its incredible by-product of acceleration at twice the speed of light, they would make short work of any power that tried to stand against them. His mind fumbled wearily at the disaster. There would be no terrible aftermath of radiation poisoning, no lingering horrible death for the race. While he had not succeeded in preventing the war, he had shortened it, rendered it less awful—saved humankind . . .
To be the slaves of the Enemy. Would their rule be for a thousand years, with the power he had given them—or for ten thousand? And what would become of the spirit of man when the Conqueror of Hungary got through with it? Preservation and enslavement—or liberty with death? What good was liberty to a dead man?
Steve knew what he had to do—but the idea appalled him. He staggered a little. “Could I—sit down? I’m . . . this last few days has been . . . rather a strain . . .”
For a moment he couldn’t believe his ears. The Leader was laughing, a high-pitched giggle of amusement and appreciation. Then the others were laughing too, watchful eyes on the Leader, and a soldier brought a chair in response to a gesture from the Major.
“I’ve just thought,” Steve said, “that in coming back through time to prevent a fatal war, I’ve given you the weapons to win a quick, comparatively harmless one.”
There was a sudden, complete silence. The Leader peered up at him with cold small eyes. “How’s that?”
Steve shrugged. “You get the force shell, which not only protects whatever’s inside it, but generates a drive faster than light. Shall we all go and look at my ship?”
“Why should you be all so suddenly happy about this?” The little pig eyes bored into his.
“Because, whether you believe it or not, I made quite a trip to get back here to save the human race from wiping itself out. I guess it doesn’t matter too much how I accomplish that—as long as I do it.”
“You want to bargain for your life?” suggested the Leader.
Steve found he could even grin. “Don’t let’s be naïve, Comrade Leader. We both know I’ll last about five minutes after I finish explaining the devices in my ship to your scientists. But what does it matter? I’m already living in the United States, in my body of 1958. So what you do with this one doesn’t really signify. You can’t touch that one.”
“Yet,” said Feodor.
The Leader struck him across the face. “Of course we won’t hurt any of your bodies, Mr. Vannevar. We are essentially a peace-loving nation. When we have demonstrated our supremacy in science and technology, we’ll find a place for all the weaker nations. There will be work for all.”
“I’ll bet,” agreed Steve. “Shall we get at it?”
The saucer was on an insulated stand in a huge underground machine shop laboratory. Scientists and technicians, each of whom had his attendant Secret Police guard, huddled around the enigmatic ship. They had made no effort to repair the crash-sprung air locks. Steve looked the damage over carefully. The Leader was practically breathing down his neck.
“Can it be repaired? Will the devices work?”
“I think so. I’ll have to check, of course, but nothing vital seems to be damaged. How do you want me to do this?”
“What do you mean?” The Leader looked suspicious.
“I imagine you wouldn’t like me to just get inside and start things running.” He grinned broadly. “I might escape.”
The Leader peered at him. “Through megatons of rock and concrete and steel and earth?” He jerked a thumb at the roof.
“I’ll go inside with him.” Feodor thrust forward eagerly.
The Leader looked at one of his personal guard. He nodded once. The soldier shot the Chief of the Secret Police in the back. No one said anything. Two stolid guards picked the body up and carried it away somewhere.
“Anybody else want to volunteer?” asked Steve.
“Potkin, Semerov, enter the ship with Vannevar. Major Kerelin, you will act as interpreter,” snapped the Leader. “The air lock will be left open. If Vannevar acts suspiciously, he is to be restrained and dragged out here.”
“Bring your notebooks,” Steve advised the eager scientists. “There are several equations you’ll want to write down.” He waited while they got their books and rejoined him beside the saucer. Then he motioned Major Kerelin to go ahead of him. “We call her ‘The Crack of Doom,’ ” he began conversationally, “because we believed her hull would last that long. The elements which were fused under terrific heat and pressure to make the amalgam were . . .” Kerelin was translating in a rapid undertone; the scientists scribbling as though their lives depended on their getting every word.
“Dr. Telford Lowe got the idea for the force shell about five years ago, our time—that is, roughly 1973. He was looking for something to protect our time and space travelers from accidental collisions with suns and planets. Incredibly, the gradual application of the force shell created ac
celerations up to more than twice the speed of light. The equation for the force shell was . . .”
An hour later, Steve was finishing his explanation. The scientists, avidly interested, were alternating between jotting hasty notes and tentatively handling the various levers and switches. “One more thing, and I believe you will have it all, gentlemen,” concluded Steve. “Then, if you wish, you may ask any questions which occur to you.” They nodded eagerly, hanging on his words like children at a play. “This last device is called the escape button.” Steve touched the small red manual switch which activated the force shell. Not the safe, carefully graduated automatic activator, but the instantaneous, full power switch-on Denby had called the “scram switch.”
“We never used it,” Steve continued in that quiet, even tone which had lulled them into forgetting everything but their interest in the fabulous machine. “Theoretically, it would bring the ship and its contents to twice the speed of light instantaneously. Perhaps in the interests of science, we should leave no possibility unexplored?”
Kerelin’s eyes went wide with terrified realization. Too late. Before he could move, or even cry out to warn the scientists, Steve had shot the switch over to Maximum.
In the thousandth of a second before the mass of the saucer expanded to infinite in a flaming explosion which detonated every bomb in the underground depot, Steve wondered if his action would save the human race, or release the dreaded chain reaction which could destroy the Earth.
And then came the cleansing flame. . . .
The Treasure of Mars