Science-Fiction Adventures in Dimension, page 21
Wilson said, “I’ll keep an eye on you.”
As Clair squeezed out into the passenger cabin, the stranger looked up. It seemed impossible that the fellow was able to see him, where there were only shadows, where the moonlight did not penetrate, but he must have. He smiled, said something to his lordship, and then stood up.
Clair’s fingers flashed to his gun, then relaxed as the man turned his back and, walking to the rear of the aisle, sank into a double seat that was there.
Once more he looked up, seemingly straight into Clair’s eyes. He beckoned Clair to the vacant seat beside him. The squadron leader approached hesitantly. There was something very strange here, but his mind wouldn’t quite hurdle over the strangeness.
He loomed over the man, then, frowning, sank down beside him. He said curtly, “How did you break out of those irons?”
There was no immediate answer, and, for the thousandth time in that long night, Clair grew conscious of the intense brilliance of the moon. Crescent-shaped, it raced high in the heavens to the south-southwest, and it did shining things to the broad, dark belly of the sea. The water seemed as near as the night and, like ridges of glass, sent up a shadowed blaze of reflections.
Reflections that caught his eyes and made it preternaturally hard for him to look intently at the stranger, as the man said, “I didn’t think you would believe me if I told you that the irons would be useless against me. Accordingly, I am letting the fact speak for itself.”
Clair made an impatient gesture. He felt a genuine irritation at the other for talking nonsense now, when the zone of danger was so incredibly near.
“Look here,” he snapped, “it is within my authority to put a bullet in you if I consider that your presence will endanger this ship. Who are you?”
“Let me understand you,” the man said, and his voice was curiously troubled. “You see nothing unusual in the fact that I have broken out of the irons?”
“Obviously,” said Clair, “you’re one of those people with very small hands.”
“I see.” The man was silent; then: “This is going to be even more difficult than I imagined. I thought that my escaping from your manacles would release you to a small degree from your normal mental inhibitions.”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’m afraid,” was the strangely sad reply, “I’m afraid you wouldn’t understand. If I could convince you I would tell you my identity, but your mind is too enthralled by the practical world in which you have your being. By a trick, by means of a moon-ray time reflector machine, I have established my existence in that world, and now you accept me. But I am afraid I shall have to plan my purpose around that limited fact. I had hoped you would free all my enormous strength but—”
He broke off, then finished, “Your friend searched me and found no weapons; therefore you should not object to letting me sit here till the destroyer planes come. Even under the terrible handicap of your reality, I think I can save you then.”
Clair had listened to the unfolding words with the growing, empty conviction that he was talking to a madman. Now, for a moment, he cursed silently the incredibly bad luck that had forced such a situation upon him in this, his most important flight. He began angrily, “I don’t know what kind of nonsense you’ve got in your mind, but I’ll tell you this much: if a flight of Messerschmitts attack us in the next forty minutes, our machine guns won’t be much good. In any event, they’ll be manned by Flying Officer Wilson, Colonel Ingraham, and Major Gray. If you have some queer idea that you—”
He cut himself off decisively: “I’m afraid I have no choice but to put the irons on you again. They’re adjustable, and this time I’ll see that they don’t slip off.”
The man nodded gravely and without a word led the way back to the baggage compartment.
Returning forward, Clair paused beside Lord Laidlaw. He said, “For your private information, sir, the man to whom you were talking a minute ago is a stowaway. I would like to ask you what he said to you.”
His lordship was a plump-faced man with keen, grayish eyes. He fixed them shrewdly on the squadron leader. “Funny chap,” he commented finally. “Had a hard time seeing him because of the way the moon kept shining in his face. I’m afraid his remarks were very trite, though they stirred some pleasant memories and generally titillated the idealistic side of my nature. He asked me how it went with me and my family.”
Frowning, Clair strode on to the cockpit.
~ * ~
The light in the east was stronger, a world of graying shadows that streaked the gray-dark waters, and all the horizon glowed with that first faint promise of a brilliant morning.
Some of the ice began to thaw out of Clair’s mind; the new lines of worry in his forehead smoothed, and an eager expectancy crept into his eyes.
“Well—” he finished the low-voiced discussion with Wilson, “we’re agreed. I’ve already set the ship in its new course. If anyone is seeking a rendezvous with us on the basis of secret knowledge of our planned course, they’ll have to look again. I—” He stopped as the cockpit door tilted open and the semibald head of Lord Laidlaw was outlined in the gloom of the door’s shadow.
“Er,” said his lordship, “that fellow has come back into the passenger cabin. You said you had put him in irons, so I thought I’d better mention it.”
Clair spun out of his seat. “By God!” he flared, “that fellow’s hands mustn’t actually be any larger than his wrists. He’s been selected for this job, and I’m going to find out what it is.”
His fury sustained him as he hurried along the aisle. But it died abruptly as he paused and stood, frankly nonplused, staring down at the fellow. The vague wish came that the moon would go behind a cloud so that he might get a really good look at the interloper.
Before he could narrow his complex thoughts into words, the stranger said in an astoundingly stern voice, “I hope you have sufficient imagination to be convinced that you cannot imprison me. I assure you that time is short.”
Clair sank down in the seat beside the other. “Look here,” he said in his most reasonable voice, “you don’t seem to realize the seriousness of your actions. Now tell me, how did you get out of those irons?”
Through the unnaturally radiant reflections of the crescent moon, Clair saw that the stranger was staring at him steadily. The man said finally, slowly, “Squadron Leader Clair—you see, I know your name —I am aboard this ship to save it from what will be, without my aid, certain destruction. There are two ways in which I can do that. The first is, if you remain ignorant of my identity and allow me, when the enemy comes, to operate one of your machine guns. This is by far the best method because it involves no mental contortions on the part of you or your passengers. You simply continue to accept me automatically as a physical entity. Do anything you please to protect yourself; keep pistols trained on me—anything; but in the final issue, do not try to stop me from using a machine gun.”
“Look here”—Clair spoke wearily—”you’ve already undermined my career simply by being aboard. I’ll have to explain my negligence in not discovering you before we took off, and I can just see myself adding that I substituted you for Colonel Ingraham on one of the machine guns.”
He stared at the other with earnest conviction in his mind that he was persuading an unbalanced person. “I’m putting it that way,” he said, “so that you will see my side and realize the impossibility of your request. You’ve got some idea that we have a valuable cargo aboard. You’re mistaken. You—”
He had intended to turn again to persuasion, but a new thought brought him to frowning pause: If he could slowly change the subject and— He said swiftly, “By the way, what do you think we have aboard?”
The man told him quietly, and Clair changed color. He sat for a moment as still as death, all purpose forgotten before the tremendous fact that the man actually did know. Then, white and grim, he said, “I admit it’s a valuable load, but only in the narrow sense of the word. Its value is little more than a hundred thousand dollars. I can’t see the German Air Command wasting time trying to trap a plane whose take-off time they could not possibly know, especially when their interceptor planes would be so much better occupied trying to sink the ships of that convoy we passed half an hour ago.”
He grew aware that the stranger was staring at him with a melancholy sardonicism. The man said, “Squadron Leader Clair, there has never been a more valuable cargo shipped. Its destruction changed the course of world history.”
“Its destruction!” echoed Clair; then he caught himself. He gathered the realities of his situation back into his brain. There was no longer any doubt: here beside him was a raving madman and— The man was speaking again. “In searching me, your friend refrained from removing a book which is in my right coat pocket. I had this book printed under great difficulties in what used to be New York City, and I would like you to glance at page twenty-seven, and read there part of the description of the flight of this ship, and what followed when it was shot down and lost with all on board.”
Clair took the book, and there was not a thought in his head as he stared down at it. There was a feeling in him that he was dreaming, and the unreal effect was augmented by the way he had to bring the book close to his eyes and hold it just so to let the moonlight fall on it.
Page 27, he saw, was heavily underscored. The first paragraph, so marked, read:
The two-engined transport NA-7044 left its Newfoundland airport at 9:00 p.m., November 26, and was shot down at 4:12 a.m. the following morning, both times being Greenwich, and in the year 1942 a.d., which was in the curious, old chronology. The chief pilot was Squadron Leader Ernest William Clair, a very practical and conscientious young man. The passengers included Thomas Ahearn, admiralty agent, John Leard Capper, American government physicist, Lord Laidlaw, who was returning to England after having failed in his mission to . . .
Clair tore his gaze from the page; his thought scurried madly back to the phrase that had struck him like a blow. “Good God!” he gasped. “Where did you get that plane number? No one knew definitely which plane was going out until late last night.”
“You poor fool!” the stranger said sadly. “You still think in terms of your reality. If you continue so blind, there is no hope.”
Clair scarcely heard. He was jerking up his wrist, peering at the watch that was strapped there. He felt a strange heady shock as he saw the time.
It was exactly seven minutes before four.
For Clair, the strange thing in that tensed, startled moment was that he became aware of the throbbing of the engines. The sound, so long subdued by familiarity that it scarcely ever touched his consciousness, was a whine that sawed along his nerves. His brain twanged with that poignant and ceaseless roar.
Through the fury of the beating motors, he heard himself say coldly, “I don’t know what your game is, but the very elaborateness of your preparations proves that the most drastic measures are in order. Therefore—”
He paused wildly, stunned by the dark and deadly intention in his brain: to shoot, not to kill but to incapacitate.
The stranger’s voice cut across his stark hesitation. “All this that you have seen and heard; and it means nothing to you. Does your mind simply reject the very intrusion of a new idea? What is there about Good that, at certain stages of its development, it falters and stands trembling and blind on the edge of the abyss, while Evil, ablaze with a rejuvenated imagination, strides to its dreadful victory?
“I can see now that for me, here, success in the great way is impossible. But try, try to lift your mind above this binding sense of duty and —let me handle the machine gun. Will you promise?”
“No!” Clair spoke with the distinct finality of one who was utterly weary of the subject. Squadron Leader Ernest William Clair, D.F.C., went on, “You will refrain from further attempts, please, to embellish on this fantastic story. When we reach England I shall have you arrested as a spy, and your explanation will have to be very good indeed if you hope even to account for what you have already revealed. It will be assumed—and it is you who will have to prove otherwise—that your purpose aboard this ship was destructive and—”
His voice faded. Clair swallowed hard, and the thought that came was like a black tidal wave that swept him to his feet with a cry. He drew his gun and backed hastily along the aisle, holding it tense.
From the corners of his eyes he saw heads jerk up and passengers twist in their seats. He had their attention, and he said swiftly, in a clear, ringing voice, “Gentlemen, we have a stowaway aboard; and, as I am unable to obtain a coherent story from him, I must assume that he might have smuggled a bomb aboard. He keeps repeating that this ship is to be destroyed within fifteen or twenty minutes—the exact hour he mentions is twelve minutes after four—so it could be a time bomb.
“Hunt for that bomb! Everyone, out of your seats! This is no time for niceties. Down on your knees, search every corner, every compartment—and someone scramble into the tail. Use flashlights, but keep them pointed at the floor. Now, hurry!”
An officer with a deep voice said quietly, “Sirs, let us make this thorough. Civilians and military are about equally represented aboard. The civilians take the rear, the soldiers the front.”
Clair added swiftly, “I suggest a cursory search of one minute, followed by a detailed examination. Is that satisfactory, Colonel Ingraham?”
“Excellent!” said the colonel.
It was the strangest thing in the world, standing there in that swift, darkened plane, half watching the shapes of the men as they crawled around, peering under seats, poking into bags, examining racks—half watching the stranger, who sat like a graven image, face turned into the flood rays of the moon, which was farther to the rear of the ship now, its strong, refulgent light pouring in through the windows at a distinct angle.
The man said slowly, without bitterness but with infinite sadness, “This futile search, when all you have to do is to look in your own minds. The seeds of your destruction are there. If this ship is lost, freedom goes with it. There are no other key points in our time. Once more: Will—you—let—me handle that machine gun?”
“No!” said Clair; and there was silence between them in that hurtling, moonlit ship.
The white moonlight made a network of dim light, casting long shadows across the dark cabin, doing distorting things to the straining faces of the men as they searched. Flashlights glowed cautiously at brief intervals, peering into dark corners, glaring hard against shiny surfaces.
Three—then five minutes; and they were all back in the cabin. They formed a dark cluster around Clair where he stood, his revolver trained on the interloper. Their faces, out of the direct line of moonlight that streamed through the faintly shuddering windows, formed a series of roughly circular light splotches.
Only the stranger was in the light, and he was silent. Clair explained briefly what had happened and what precautions he had taken. He finished, “So you see, we had him in irons twice; and each time he came out here. Did you examine them, Lord Laidlaw, when you were in the baggage room, as I suggested?”
“Yes.” The nobleman spoke briskly. “They were still locked. I should say that we have here one of those curious people who can contract their palms to the size of their wrists.”
“In my opinion,” said Colonel Ingraham, “this man is mad. The story he told you is definitely that of an unbalanced person. The solution is to put the irons on him out here, and have him under guard till we land.”
“There’s one point,” interrupted a very clear, incisive voice. “This is Ahearn speaking, by the way, Thomas Ahearn of the admiralty—one point: You mentioned that he showed you a book and that it contained—what?”
Clair handed the volume over quietly. “If you’ll bend down toward the floor,” he suggested, “you can use your flashlight on it.”
Men pushed past him to get around the admiralty man; then a light gleamed; then—
“Why, it contains some queer account of the flight of this plane, with all our names.”
“Is my name there?” came a new voice from the back of the mass. “Brown—Kenneth Brown!”
“Yes, it’s here.” It was Ahearn who answered.
“But that’s impossible!” Brown ejaculated. “I didn’t know until two hours before we left that I would be on this plane. How could anybody find that out, write it up, and publish a book about it—and, for heaven’s sake, why would they want to?”
Clair stood very still; and the queerest feeling came that he was listening to his own voice saying these shallow, useless words, making protests about the impossibility of it all, crying out to the idolatrous god of logic with a parrotlike fanaticism, and never once thinking about—anything.
He glanced automatically at his watch, tensed a little, and said tautly, “Gentlemen! If you will allow me, I shall ask the prisoner one question.”
