Science-Fiction Adventures in Dimension, page 15
Something of respect showed on Laddo’s face. “If you’ve got something good, bring it up,” he said. “But,” his voice changed, “if this is some kind of trick to gain time or something, forget it. I’ll not only accept your resignation, but I’ll recover the cost of my battery from you so quick it will make your head swim. Any jury in the world will give me damages when only two of us have the keys to this place.”
Tom turned without replying and took off his overalls. Sue him, would he? Take all his money. Any jury in the world. By George, with so much of this funny stuff happening, Laddo might be right. And he’d get his new battery invention, too. He’d have to think this over. He turned to Laddo, who was watching him.
“Don’t worry. I’ll bring my battery here at nine a.m. Monday.” Laddo nodded assent and left him.
Tom changed into his street clothes and went into the hall. Then he thought of something. He returned to the laboratory door and called to Laddo.
“How strong a battery do you need?”
“About a thousand K.W.H. to the pound.”
Still dazed by the events of the morning, Tom turned and left.
On his way home it gradually came over him that he was behind the eight ball. A thousand K.W.H. to the pound! That was five times as powerful as he could supply. Well, he had the rest of the day to think it out in peace.
Charlie was waiting for him, and over their lunch Garmot told him everything. “No one but Laddo would dream of a battery like that,” he said. “It will be hundreds of years before batteries that powerful are invented.”
“Well,” said Charlie, “why don’t you get him one?”
“Where?”
“Just take another trip in his machine tonight. Go as far as you can into the future, buy a battery, and bring it back with you.”
Tom studied the suggestion. Here was one way out. “It might be done, at that,” he finally said.
This, of course, brought on more talk. The discussion continued on into the afternoon. After the morning’s unusual happenings, which he vaguely associated with the preceding night’s adventure, Tom had been more or less afraid of the machine, but their talk crystallized some of his ideas. He boiled them down to this: “The long and short of it is that we aren’t where we started. Yesterday, if you’d looked through files of old newspapers, you never would have found a story about that watchman. Now you can find it, because it once happened. It’s like a switch on a railroad track. We were on one branch. We went back in the machine and threw a switch when we talked to the watchman. We came back on another branch.”
“Can we get switched off this track in the future?” asked Charlie.
“I can’t see how, but it’s a chance we’ll have to take.”
~ * ~
To have as many cells as possible, they hurriedly purchased the necessary materials. All Saturday evening and much of Sunday was spent assembling and charging. Sunday evening came, and the cells were loaded in the back of Tom’s coupe. They waited for night. Tom hoped he wouldn’t find a new lock on the laboratory door. After the way Laddo had talked, he wouldn’t be surprised at anything.
They drew up to the service entrance of the laboratory. Heavily loaded with the new battery, they used the freight elevator to get to the top floor. Tom noticed with relief that the lock seemed unchanged. He tried his key and the door opened.
Just as they entered, a blinding light flashed in their faces.
“What’s that?” Charlie blinked.
“Laddo set a trap for us. There’s a camera hidden somewhere with our picture in it. If I don’t deliver the goods now, my name is mud.”
“Then let’s go,” said Charlie, making for the machine.
They quickly replaced the old cells with the new ones and opened the skylight. Charlie turned out the lights, and they took their seats. With new power, the machine rapidly ascended. Tom stopped it the usual five hundred feet in the air.
“Ready, Charlie?” he asked.
“Gosh, yes.”
Tom pushed the time lever forward a little. Nothing happened. He pushed it farther. Still no effect. He yanked it all the way over. They still failed to experience the expected compression. Tom looked down. There was the laboratory, dim in the night, just as they had left it. But no—he recognized a car stopping in front of the building. It was Laddo’s sedan. Dr. Laddo stepped out and crossed the sidewalk.
“What’ll we do, Charlie? There’s Laddo coming. We can’t go into the future—Laddo’s right. It takes five times the power we’ve got! And if we go back down there, he’ll catch us red-handed.”
“Then for Pete’s sake, go into the past.”
It seemed the only course open to them, but what good would it do ? Garmot’s mind raced over possibilities and reached a decision. He eased off the power, and the machine began to descend.
“Now what?” demanded Thorne. “Don’t go back to the lab. If you are afraid to go into the past, edge her over close to our coupe, so we can scram.”
Rapidly Tom gave instructions. The machine dropped through the open skylight and settled on the floor. Flashlight on, Tom ran to the bookcase, selected the volume he wanted, and slipped it into his pocket. Charlie had gone to the nearest workbench and seized a radio tube. Almost as soon as they had come, they had gone up again. Just as Tom pushed the time lever back, Charlie, looking down, saw the laboratory lights flash on and Laddo enter the room.
Fighting the compression, Tom watched the time meter. No longer was he going as far as he could; he had a definite goal in view. As that goal neared, he moved the lever back toward neutral. The pointers moved slowly. He snapped it back into its notch. In an early dawn they floated over a suburban settlement. Directly below was one of the houses.
Garmot didn’t like this. He juggled the lever a trifle. It was night. Not a light showed below. Only the faint light of the stars told him they had come to rest on the stream of Time.
“Point the spotlight straight down,” Tom directed.
In the faint light, Tom let the machine settle, maneuvering until it rested on a flat porch roof.
“Where are we?” whispered Charlie.
“If the meter is right, this is July 1851. And you ought to recognize this house. You’ve seen it in the museum.”
“You mean the old Taggert house?”
“Yes, and if he’s at home, Thad Taggert is asleep in the back room, right now. This front room is his office. I hope the window isn’t locked.”
They had gotten out, and the tin roof crackled slightly beneath their feet. Charlie reached the window first. “No screen, anyway,” he whispered.
“Not in 1851,” replied Tom. He tried the sash. It slid up easily. Charlie held it while Garmot entered the room and found a window stick to hold it in place. Charlie followed.
Against the opposite wall was the famous Taggert desk. They recognized it. This entire house and all its furnishings would one day be moved bodily into the Taggert Museum. The money old Thad Taggert had earned would support the Taggert Foundation, Dr. Laddo —and build a Time machine.
Tom flashed his light over the desk top. Thaddeus Taggert had been there recently. An unfinished letter lay before them, pen and ink beside it. Tom started when he saw almost an entire sheet of postage stamps, the five-cent 1847 issue. What a find for a stamp collector! And there were almost as many of the ten-cent ones beneath, both weighted down with a pair of steel shears.
“These stamps will do—we couldn’t hope to find anything better. You take charge of them while I write the note.” He tore a page from his notebook and wrote:
Dear Mr. Taggert:
Travelers from the future leave for you a copy of the 1937 edition of the Electrical Handbook. We also leave a radio tube which is described in the book. We are taking your postage stamps as part payment. If you would help us, work like the devil on better storage batteries.
Carefully closing the window behind them, they got back in the machine. With a faint hum it rose into the night. Tom pushed the lever forward. The stars vanished. They were on their way—back to 1938.
When the machine stopped, the myriad lights of a great city shone beneath them in all directions. A huge factory building towered toward them. Tom let the machine settle on its roof.
“I suppose you call this 1938 again,” ventured Charlie, looking at the city around him.
“Yes, and about ten-fifteen p.m. Out watches ought to be all right again.”
“You don’t think we can get a single minute ahead of our watches, huh?”
“That’s the idea. See that clock tower.” Some blocks away a great illuminated dial indicated 10:15. “Now to get down off this roof.”
They walked to the parapet and looked over. There was a sheer drop of perhaps twenty stories. Charlie looked around for a penthouse. There were only a few closed scuttles.
“We’ll get into trouble if we try walking down through the building,” said Charlie. “It isn’t familiar to us, and may be full of people. Why don’t you drop the machine down into some shrubbery and hide it?”
“No,” said Tom, “we couldn’t find a better hiding place than right here. It’s a warm night. We’ll take turns sleeping, and early tomorrow, before daylight, you run me to the ground and then come back up here where you’ll not be seen.”
They were not sleepy, and spent most of the night whispering and wondering how things would turn out tomorrow. The story beneath them was occupied, judging from occasional sounds. It was well they had not tried to go down through the building. Eventually Charlie dropped off to sleep until awakened by Garmot.
“We’d better go now. It’s beginning to get light.”
They got into the machine, Charlie at the controls. He rose jerkily into the air and uncertainly descended to a fairly secluded place on the lawn.
“You know my plans—what few I have. I’ll be back as soon as I can. Maybe in three hours, maybe not until later. Watch for my signal.” Gar-mot held out his hand and Thorne clasped it tightly.
“Sure, Tom. I’ll be watching.” Charlie waved and began to rise. Tom watched him until he got the signal indicating a safe landing. Then he started walking toward the tall buildings several miles away.
Tom never forgot that journey. He felt like a country boy in New York. Later, when he recounted it to Charlie, he told him how he had tried out one of his coins on a newsboy and had been properly bawled out for attempting to pass fake money. How the buildings all seemed to be made chiefly of plastics; of the queer little one- and two-passenger fliers which, though not in common use, were occasionally seen dropping into parking spaces alongside automobiles. Of strangely silent autos, somehow suggestive of the old-fashioned electrics, but which raced along faster than anything Tom had ever seen before. He told Charlie of the odd words he overheard on the streets—idioms whose meanings he could not guess; of the yellow sodium lights that were used as much as the familiar neons.
~ * ~
It was day when he reached the business district. He neared a sign reading “City Recreation Hall No. 7.” People were entering and leaving. No one seemed to be taking tickets. In spite of his slightly odd clothing—which, by the way, no one had seemed to notice—he took a chance and entered. After all, they could do nothing worse than ask him to leave.
But Tom wasn’t stopped. The place was like a huge hotel lobby. There were comfortable seats, a restaurant, a barber shop, and all the rest. A number of people were seated before a television screen, watching and listening to a news commentator. Tom wanted to watch it too, but he had other things to do.
In the advertisements of a discarded newspaper he found what he wanted. Classified under “Birdie Wijits” he found “Power Boxes” advertised. Each dealer, true to form, had the best product obtainable. He copied some addresses in his memo book. The prices, he noted, ran into money. For an ordinary “birdie”—evidently one of the little fliers—a power box cost around $100. He might need as many as ten of them.
Next, to get the money. Tom hoped there were stamp collectors in these strange times. He consulted a city directory. This place was called Taggert City, he noticed. Yes, under “Postage, Antique,” he found the names of stamp dealers. One address he recognized—333 Taggert Avenue. That was the street on which he had walked downtown. No. 333 should be close. The name was “Nicodemus, the Stampman. Buyer and Seller of Antique Postage.” It was a little after eight. Nicodemus might be in his shop now.
No. 333 was an office building, and the directory listed Nicodemus on the ninth floor. Tom rode up in an elevator and went to the dealer’s room. The shop impressed him favorably. A gentleman was hanging up his coat and hat. Mr. Nicodemus had evidently just arrived.
“How much are you paying for the five-cent, U.S. 1847 issue—mint?” Tom asked him.
“Mint?” Nicodemus didn’t quite understand.
“Not used, with gum on the back.”
“Oh, you mean ‘pristine,’” said Nicodemus. “So you have one, eh? What did it cost you?”
“Nothing. An heirloom.”
“I hope it is not a counterfeit. A genuine copy is quite scarce. I could give you, say, fifty dollars.”
Tom shook his head. Stamp dealers were probably the same here as everywhere.
“How much did you expect?” Nicodemus asked, watching him closely.
Tom had no idea what they were worth here, although he well knew he could not get even fifty for a single, back where he came from. But he was expected to answer.
“I ought to get at least half of the selling price.”
“Yes,” Nicodemus admitted, “and for a genuine copy with wide margins, I’ll pay you that.” He consulted a price list, turning it around so Tom could see. There it was, picture and all, and the price was $200.
“You’ll pay me one hundred dollars?”
“For a good copy, yes.”
“And a block of four?”
“For a block of four, I’ll give you a thousand.”
Garmot agreed to return soon with the block, and left. Alone, he carefully cut it from the sheet. After a decent interval he returned. The dealer’s eyes gleamed. He had not thought such a specimen existed. He examined it carefully under a lens, and then by ultraviolet light.
“It’s genuine,” he announced. “I suppose you want cash.”
Tom nodded. Nicodemus went to the next room and returned with a handful of bank notes. Tom examined them curiously. They were odd, but seemed to be all right. Thanking Nicodemus, he left.
After referring to his memos, he was directed to the nearest “wijit” shop. He found it much like the familiar auto supply store, full of gadgets. That was it! He smiled. “Wijits” meant “gadgets,” without a doubt. An intelligent young man who knew all about power boxes waited on him. For $800 he purchased fifty pounds of concentrated electricity—an eight-unit power box containing over a thousand kilowatt-hours of energy, far in excess of Laddo’s requirements. With them he bought a power box handbook, describing charging, maintenance, and repairs.
“Where shall I deliver it?” the clerk asked.
Tom had been dreading the long tramp back out to the factory, lugging a heavy package. He said, “I’m to meet a friend at Taggert Avenue and Madison Street, but you can’t just leave them on the sidewalk. Could I go along with them?”
“Certainly, if you don’t mind riding in our delivery birdie.”
This was all right with Tom, and the clerk led him to a rear court where the flier was parked. Its driver moved over to make room for him, and, with a push on the accelerator, they rose, much as did Laddo’s machine, and flew rapidly out Taggert Avenue.
“I’m glad I’m not driving a ground car any more,” remarked the driver. “These birdies are the volts. Ten years from now, and the air will be full of them.”
Tom agreed. He would like to hear more, but the birdie was about to settle down. Selecting a parking space, the driver landed gently by the curb. Tom took his power box and got out. The driver waved him good-by and was off.
Across the street was the factory building. The sidewalks were alive with people. Tom could see no sign of Charlie on the roof. Well, it wasn’t yet nine o’clock. He’d just have to wait until Charlie happened to look down.
Tom was hungry, and when he saw the restaurant on the corner, he went in. He ordered sandwiches and coffee for himself and Charlie. The waiter brought Charlie’s coffee in a container made of white, celluloidlike material, and his sandwiches came covered with a transparent wrapping that must have been sprayed on. The food tasted good.
Refreshed, Tom crossed the street and stopped on the sidewalk near his rendezvous. He looked up. Was that Charlie’s head leaning over the parapet? He pointed his flashlight up and spelled out, “O.K. Land in the bushes on my right.”
