Science-Fiction Adventures in Dimension, page 22
It took a moment for silence to settle, but he needed the time to frame the incredible question that was in his mind. He said finally, “Stranger, when did you come aboard this ship? I said—when?”
The man’s eyes were steady pools; his face grew noticeably more distinct. “I heard you, Squadron Leader Clair. To you alone, for your consideration, I say: I came aboard about forty minutes ago. Think of that; think it through; don’t let it go.”
Exclamations blurred across his last words; then Colonel Ingraham snapped angrily, “Sir, we haven’t time to bother with this person. Let us iron him and set a guard over him.”
Clair’s brain was like rigid metal. The stiff feeling came that he ought to turn and apologize to the others for his utterly ridiculous question. But there was a fascination in his mind that held him spellbound; and finally a thought that was a twisting, irresistible force. He said, “What is your real reason for being aboard this ship?”
The reply was a shrug; then: “I’m sorry; I see I was mistaken about you. I’ve already told you in effect that this is a key flight in history. It must get through; it can only get through with my help.”
He shrugged again, then finished, “I notice that you have shifted the course of the ship. That is good, that is something. It has already broken the hard thrall of events, and the attack will be delayed. But that delay will be small—out of all proportion to the extent of your change of course. Seven, eight minutes at most.”
For a second time Clair was silent. The thought came that the shadows of the early morning and the dazzling crescent moon were affecting his mind. For, incredibly, he was not rejecting a single word; for him, for this moment, this man’s every word formed a species of reason and—
And he’d better be careful, or he’d be out of the service for being a credulous fool. He, whose nickname at training school had been Solid-head Clair, credulous!
So swiftly came revulsion. He shook himself and said, striving for coldness, “Now that we have verified that there are no bombs aboard, I think Colonel Ingraham’s suggestion is the best: In irons, under armed guard, out here. Colonel Ingraham and Major Gray, I suggest you man the machine guns to which you were previously assigned—”
His voice trailed off, for the stranger was staring at him with a bitter anguish. “You blind fool. I can only exist if you sustain the illusion that is me with your minds; and that illusion would collapse instantly if I had to sit out here in chains, under guard. Accordingly, I must leave; and the first hope, and the best, is gone. Now you must know my identity. When you need me, call—but there will be no answer unless you call with understanding. Good-by.”
For an instant, so determinedly did Clair’s mind refuse to accept the absence of the form that had been there that he blinked.
Then the thought came that the moon was too bright and that dazzling reflections of its white, too white rays were playing tricks with his eyes. And then—
Reality penetrated the absence, the utter absence, of the stranger.
They searched the ship as the dawn in the east grew noticeably stronger, casting its pale, wan glow over all the sky ahead and all the forward sea. Only the west behind them remained dark; and the moon was there, a shining, hurtling shape, yielding not yet to the brightness of the new day.
And it was exactly 4:12 by the glowing hands of Clair’s wrist watch as the men grudgingly gave up their vain search.
“Funniest thing that ever happened!” a voice tilted against the dimness. “Did we dream that?”
“I could swear he dived for the floor just before he vanished,” said a second voice. “He must be somewhere. If we could shift some of that baggage—”
“At least”—it was the man Brown—”we’ve still got his book.”
Twelve minutes after four.
Clair raced along the aisle to the cockpit. “Anything?” he said to Wilson. “See anything—any planes?”
He stared with Wilson and with Major Gray, who was at the port machine gun, into the brightening world. But there was nothing, not a speck, nothing but the sky and the sea and the—moon!
It glittered at him and hurtled along through the blue-dark heaven; and the thought came to Clair: the silvery crescent moon—creating— reflections—
4:14 A.M.
And he felt no relief; for he had changed the course, and the man had said it would mean only infinitesimal delay.
Minutes, and then—bullets crashing into them all, a terrible fusillade that would burn and tear and destroy the whole world—unless—
Unless he called with understanding of identity! But how could he ever understand? There were no clues, nothing but a scatter of meaningless words, nothing but—death.
A man whose hands flicked out of handcuffs, who talked of key points in history, who had a book that described this flight and the destruction of all on board, described it as a past event. The book—
He was out in the dimness that was the cabin. “The book!” he called. “Who’s got the book that chap left?”
“Right here,” said Kenneth Brown. The passengers were all in their seats. “I’ve been reading out passages. Damnedest, queerest book I ever laid eyes on. It’s actually got my name in it”—he couldn’t seem to get over the wonder of it—”my name, imagine that. You’ve got to give these Germans credit—”
The funny thing, Clair thought—no, the incredible tragedy of all this was that their minds wouldn’t accept what their eyes had seen. Something shaped like a human being had come into their midst, then vanished before their eyes—and their brains simply skittered over the impossible event; and now they sat here like so many spectators who had been entertained by a magician, wondering in a thrilled, unworried fashion how the devil the trick had been worked.
Danger, the black and deadly danger—they saw it not, but blindly chattered on about everything except the reality.
“Show him the frontispiece!” A voice cut into his burning reverie. “That’s the real giveaway. It’s in German.”
The man Brown echoed, “Absolutely, the whole frontispiece in German. Look, the name of that city.”
The book was held up into the light of the moon; a shadowed finger pointed. Clair strained and read:
Zweiundvierzigste Strasse
Hitlerstadt, Nord-Amerika
743 N.H.
“What gets me,” said Brown, “is that 743 N.H. at the bottom. It’s senseless.”
Clair said grayly, “Nach Hitler.” It was funny how he knew, but he did, with utter certainty— “After Hitler. Seven hundred and forty-three years after. Hitlerstadt is, of course, the city we now call New York.”
There was a ripple of laughter, and somebody said,” Wha’ did he say ? Wha’ did he say?”
The sentence was repeated, but the man did not echo the laughter. “Oh,” he said, “oh, I’m glad somebody’s got a sense of humor. I’ve just been sitting here thinking if this might not be some manifestation of a secret enemy weapon. And I must say, I couldn’t think of how they could have worked it.”
There was more laughter. It was amazing to Clair how good-humored they had become. Somebody whispered to him, “That’s Capper, the scientist.”
“I know!” Clair nodded. He was thinking desperately: If he could keep them thinking it was all humor, and yet gain information— He said, straining for lightness but heavy and cold with the import of his words:
“Professor Capper, we might as well carry this through: Is there a theory of time which would explain how an event which has already occurred can be changed, so that something entirely different would transpire?”
“Of course, of course.” The scientist spoke irritably. “The world is full of nonsensical ideas. Everything’s been thought of—everything. Trust human beings to waste their time with such stuff.”
Clair fought an inner battle to keep his fingers from grabbing the other’s neck and shaking the explanation out of him. The sense of urgency in him was so great that his voice trembled as he said, “For the sake of curiosity, what is the theory?”
“Why, it’s nothing but the old factor of—”
The plane swerved in a dizzy, twisting dive that sent Clair hurtling against a seat. He caught the plush back of the chair with a grip that nearly tore his muscles from his body.
There followed a sickening moment when the only sound was the shrill whine of the engines in the full fury of a power dive; and then—
Glass splintered. Bullets smashed against shiny woodwork and screeched on metal. From somewhere near, a man screamed in the agony of death. Clair cursed aloud with a terrible understanding. The great transport plane had been swept from tail to nose by machine-gun fire.
He managed to wedge his body into the comparative stability and safety of the seat opposite the scientist, Capper—and through the window he saw the silver thin planes of the crooked cross, black pencils against the lightening sky.
Three of them darted past his narrow line of vision, like black angels gleaming in the moonlight, reflections of malignant beauty—
The thought came to Clair that he ought to be struggling to reach the cockpit and that he was ruining himself by sitting here, ruining his great record, ruining himself in the eyes of the passengers.
Ruin—utter ruin—
And it mattered not. The thoughts were in his mind, but they were like burning phantoms, consuming their own substance, completely uncorrectable to physical action. In his brain was one purpose, one unquenchable and tremendous purpose.
He leaned over to the scientist; he half shouted, “What is this theory of time?”
He braced himself for a verbal explosion, a tongue flaying that would sear his brain, an opinion about an officer neglecting his duty that would sting in his memory throughout all time. And there was a picture in his mind, a vivid, terrifying picture, of how the question he had asked would sound in court-martial testimony.
It mattered not. All the certainties, the motivations that had ruled his brain in the past seemed remote and unreal. There was only—
“Professor Capper, that time theory of which you spoke?”
“Young man,” came the reply, “you amaze me; your courage, your calmness— Thank you, sir, for being so matter of fact. Your example saved me from making a cowardly fool of myself. But I’m under control now—and you’re right, there is no reason why we shouldn’t discuss science or pseudoscience—”
Clair stared blankly; then came a brief, dark astonishment at the other’s unexpected reaction. It was a form of hysteria, of course; and there was ego here, an utter acceptance that a plane commander would, in a crisis, waste his time talking to a passenger. But—
For his purpose, it was as if God Himself had reached forth His magic hand and rendered everything easy. Fighting for control, Clair said, “Professor, the time theory—give it to me as succinctly as possible.”
“A lot of nonsense, of course,” the man rumbled, “but fascinating to talk about under such conditions. Probable worlds! Imagine that—”
His voice trailed off; Clair heard him muttering something more about nonsense—and trembled so violently that he could hardly stay in his seat.
“Probable worlds? What do you mean?”
“What I said. Suppose the ancient Sea peoples had conquered Egypt; suppose Xerxes had defeated the Greek states; suppose the Moors had overrun Europe; suppose the Germans won this war; suppose—”
“But how does that fit the theory?”
In the light of the moon the thin face of the professor frowned at Clair. “Don’t be so impatient. There is no hurry. The attack isn’t over yet, and we might as well talk. I want to thank you again for making it possible for me to face this situation with a fearlessness I never expected was in me. It feels great, wonderful. It—”
The twisting thought came to Clair that he would have to tell this loquacious savant the truth. He parted his lips—and then, through the window, he saw the black shape swoop in from the north.
“Duck!” he yelled, and jerked himself flat on the aisle floor as the plane crackled and reverberated with the bullets that tore along its length.
A heavy body collapsed on top of Clair. At least, it felt unbearably heavy at the moment of fall, only it was surprisingly easy to lift the professor’s slight form back into his seat. The man crouched there, coughing a little, mumbling to himself.
Cold with the certainty of what had happened, Clair shook the drooping body. “Professor—”
The head lifted wearily, and a strong glow of moonlight reflected from a pair of small, watery eyes.
“Never so proud,” came the mumble. “Never thought I’d face death like this. How can we lose this war if even I—”
“The time theory!” Clair croaked.
“Oh, yes, the old business of probables— You’re the bravest man I ever met, Squadron Leader, to carry on such a conversation; and I’m not so bad myself. Tell them that, eh ? Tell them we talked about . . . about time theories, about worlds and men that might have existed if —something hadn’t happened. Of course, to the theorist, those worlds do exist; that is, some projection of them, something of the spirit that carried on—”
“Professor, that stranger—he claimed to be from the future that would exist if we lost this war—”
For an instant, after Clair had spoken, the scientist’s watery eyes brightened; he mumbled, “So that’s what you’ve been getting at. But it’s impossible. I’ll tell you why—if he was only from a probable world, he couldn’t have materialized here.”
“But he didn’t materialize. That’s what he said. That’s why he could slip out of our irons. He was only a reflection of—and this is his own phrase—of a moon-ray time reflector machine, and that we had to accept the illusion mentally before it would even exist as much as it did. Professor—”
“Impossible. You’ve forgotten the book he left. That was material.”
“But, sir”—Clair had a hopeless feeling—”he said he had that printed under great difficulties in Hitlerstadt.”
“Spirit”—the professor’s voice was a remote, husky thing, and it was all too obvious that his mind had gyrated back to an earlier theme— “that’s it, spirit like ours cannot die . . . proud that I personally took a bullet without flinching, and after all my fears, too . . . proud—”
He crumpled like a house of cards; and Clair, who had seen death too often to doubt its presence now, climbed over the contorted body in the aisle. He was shaking a little, but his mind was quite clear. Whatever hope there might have been of some mysterious superman coming to the rescue from a world that had yet to prove its right to exist—that hope was gone now.
The only man who knew enough to fill in the all-necessary details of identity was dead, and that meant—
The time had come to fight.
~ * ~
The two men in the cockpit snarled at him like beasts as he entered. Clair saw, from narrowing eyes, that Wilson’s right arm hung, a limp, tattered, bloody object at his side. Major Gray was at the port gun, hugging it to his shoulder. Both men flashed him the desperate expressions of human beings determinedly facing a hopeless martyrdom. It was Wilson who raged, “Where in hell do you think you’ve been, you damned—”
There was, Clair recognized in a biting self-condemnation, justice behind those lashing words. But they were born of maddening pain and served no useful purpose. He knew exactly what to do, what to say; his answer grew alive out of events.
“Silence!” He flared the words, because only anger could penetrate here. He sneered, “So you’ve given up in your hearts, both of you. Think we’re licked, eh ? Going to go on shooting to the last, but deep in your minds you know it’s all hopeless. What can a transport do against fighter planes?
“Shut up!” He snapped the words at Major Gray, whose lips were parting for speech. “I know exactly what you’re thinking, but I’ve just seen a man die who knew how, and if anybody in this cockpit disgraces him, I’ll take that person’s body and throw it out of the ship. Only men are going to have the honor of going down with this plane.”
Before that blazing tirade, the two men, Wilson and the major, exchanged one amazed glance. Gray shrugged his stocky shoulders with the unmistakable gesture of a man who recognized stark insanity when he saw it.
Clair didn’t feel mad. His whole body was aglow with life that quivered like an itching finger on a hair trigger. Never had he been more alert, more conscious of the utter joy of being.
He saw the torpedo-shape silhouette for an instant against the moon, and as the Messerschmitt dived toward them in a long, slanting curve, he crouched over the starboard gun, his mind rock-steady, his whole body intent on aiming.
