 Project Mastodon by Clifford D. Simack. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. Reading by Greg Marguerite. Project Mastodon by Clifford D. Simack. The chief of protocol said, Mr. Hudson of, uh, Mastodonia? The secretary of state held out his hand. I'm glad to see you, Mr. Hudson. I understand you've been here several times. That's right, said Hudson. I had a hard time making your people believe I was an earnest. And are you Mr. Hudson? Believe me, sir, I would not try to fool you. And this Mastodonia, said the secretary, reaching down to tap the document upon his desk. You will pardon me, but I've never heard of it. It's a new nation, Hudson explained, but quite legitimate. We have a constitution, a democratic form of government, duly elected officials, and a code of laws. We are a free, peace-loving people, and we are possessed of a vast amount of natural resources. And please tell me, sir, interrupted the secretary. Just where are you located? Technically, you are our nearest neighbors. But that is ridiculous, exploded protocol. Not at all, insisted Hudson. If you will give me a moment, Mr. Secretary, I have considerable evidence. He brushed the fingers of protocol off his sleeve and stepped forward to the desk, laying down the portfolio he carried. Go ahead, Mr. Hudson, said the secretary. Why don't we all sit down and be comfortable while we talk this over? You have my credentials, I see. Now, here is a prop- I have a document signed by a certain Wesley Adams. He is our first president, said Hudson. Our George Washington, you might say. What is the purpose of this visit, Mr. Hudson? We'd like to establish diplomatic relations. We think it would be to our mutual benefit. After all, we are a sister republic in perfect sympathy with your policies and aims. We'd like to negotiate trade agreements, and we'd be grateful for some .4 aid. The secretary smiled. Naturally. Who doesn't? We're prepared to offer something in return, Hudson told him stiffly, for one thing we could offer sanctuary. Sanctuary? I understand, said Hudson, that in the present state of international tensions a foolproof sanctuary is not something to be sneezed at. The secretary turned stone cold. I'm an extremely busy man. Protocol took Hudson firmly by the arm. Out you go. General Leslie Bowers put in a call to state and got the secretary. I don't like to bother you, Herb, he said, but there's something I want to check. Maybe you can help me. Glad to help you, if I can. There's a fellow hanging around out here at the Pentagon, trying to get in to see me. Said I was the only one he'd talked to, but you know how it is. I certainly do. Name of Houston or Hudson or something like that. He was here just an hour ago, said the secretary. Crackpot sort of fellow. He's gone now? Yes, I don't think he'll be back. Did he say where you could reach him? No, I don't believe he did. How did he strike you? I mean, what kind of impression did you get from him? I told you, a crackpot. I suppose he is. He said something to one of the colonels that got me worrying. Can't pass up anything, you know, not in the dirty tricks department. If it's crackpot these days, you've got to have a look at it. He offered sanctuary, said the secretary indignantly. Can you imagine that? He's been making the rounds, I guess, the general said. He was over at AEC, told them some sort of tale about knowing where there were vast uranium deposits. It was the AEC that told me he was heading your way. We get them all the time. Usually we can ease them out. He was just a little better than most of them. He got in to see me. He told the colonels something about having a plan that would enable us to establish secret bases anywhere we wished, even in the territory of potential enemies. I know it sounds crazy. Forget it, Les. You're probably right, said the general, but this idea sends me. Can you imagine the look in their iron curtain faces? The scared little government clerk darting conspiratorial glances all about him brought the portfolio to the FBI. I found it in a bar down the street. He told the man who took him in tow. Been going there for years, and I found this portfolio laying in the booth. I saw the man who must have left it there, and I tried to find him later, but I couldn't. How do you know he left it there? I just figured he did. He left the booth just as I came in, and it was sort of dark in there, and it took a minute to see this thing laying there. You see, I always take the same booth every day, and Joe sees me come in, and he brings me the usual, and you saw this man leave the booth you usually sit in? That's right. Then you saw the portfolio. Yes, sir. You tried to find the man thinking it must have been his? That's exactly what I did. But by the time you went to look for him, he had disappeared. That's the way it was. Now, tell me, why did you bring it here? Why didn't you turn it into the management so the man could come back and claim it? Well, sir, it was like this. I had a drink or two, and I was wondering all the time what was in that portfolio. So finally I took a peek, and what you saw decided you to bring it here to us. That's right. I saw. Don't, don't, don't tell me what you saw. Give me your name and address, and don't say anything about this. You understand that we're grateful to you for thinking of us, but we'd rather you said nothing. Mom's the word. The little clerk assured him, full of vast importance. The FBI phoned Dr. Ambrose Amberley, Smithsonian expert on paleontology. We've got something, doctor, that we'd like you to have a look at. A lot of movie film. I'll be most happy to. I'll come down as soon as I get clear. And the week, perhaps. This is very urgent, doctor. Damnedest thing you ever saw. Big shaggy elephants and tigers with teeth down to their necks. There's a beaver the size of a bear. Fakes, said Amberley, disgusted. Clever gadgets, camera angles. That's what we thought at first, but there are no gadgets, no camera angles. This is the real McCoy. I'm on my way, the paleontologist said, hanging up. Snide item in smug, smart alec gossip column. Saucers are passe at the pantagon. There's another mystery that's got the high brass. Very high. Chapter 2 President Wesley Adams and Secretary of State John Cooper sat glumly under a tree in the capital of Macedonia and waited for the ambassador extraordinary to return. I tell you, Wes, said Cooper, who, under various pseudonyms, was also the secretaries of commerce, treasury, and war. This is a crazy thing we did. What if Chuck can't get back? They might throw him in jail or something might happen to the time unit or the helicopter. We should have gone along. We had to stay, Adams said. You know what would happen to this camp and our supplies if we weren't around here to guard them. The only thing that's given us any trouble is that old mastodon. If he comes around again, I'm going to take a skillet and bang him in the brisket. That isn't the only reason, either, said President Adams, and you know it. We can't go deserting this nation now that we've created it. We have to keep possession, just planting a flag and saying it's ours wouldn't be enough. We might be called upon for proof that we've established residence, something like the old homestead laws, you know. We'll establish residence sure enough, Groud Secretary Cooper, if something happens to that time unit or the helicopter. You think they'll do it, Johnny? Who do what? The United States, do you think they'll recognize us? Not if they know who we are. That's what I'm afraid of. Chuck will talk them into it. He can talk the skin right off a cat. Sometimes I think we're going at this wrong. Sure, Chuck's got the long-range view and I suppose it's best, but maybe what we ought to do is grab a good, fast profit and get out of here. We could take in hunting parties at ten thousand ahead or maybe we could lease it to a movie company. We can do all that and do it legally and with full protection, Cooper told him, if we can get ourselves recognized as a sovereign nation. If we negotiate a mutual defense pact, no one would dare get hostile because we could squawk to Uncle Sam. All you say is true, Adams agreed, but there are going to be questions. It isn't just a matter of walking into Washington and getting recognition. They'll want to know about us, such as our population. What if Chuck has to tell them it's a total of three persons? Cooper shook his head. He wouldn't answer that way, Wes. He'd duck the question or give them some diplomatic double-talk. After all, how can we be sure there are only three of us? We took over the whole continent, remember? You know well enough, Johnny, there are no other humans back here in North America. The farthest back any scientist will place the migration from Asia is thirty thousand years. They haven't got here yet. Maybe we should have done it differently, mused Cooper. Maybe we should have included the whole world in our proclamation, not just the continent. That way we could claim quite a population. It wouldn't have held water. Even as it is, we went a little further than precedent allows. The old explorers usually laid claim to certain water sheds. They'd find a river and lay claim to all the territory drained by the river. They didn't go grabbing off whole continents. That's because they were never sure of exactly what they had, said Cooper. We are. We have what you might call the advantage of pinesight. He leaned back against the tree and stared across the land. It was a pretty place, he thought. The rolling ridges covered by vast grazing areas and small groves. The forest covered ten-mile river valley and everywhere one looked, the grazing herds of mastodon, giant bison and wild horses, with the less gregarious fauna scattered hit and miss. Old Buster, the troublesome mastodon, a lone bull which had been probably run out of a herd by a younger rival, stood at the edge of a grove a quarter-mile away. He had his head down and was curling and uncurling his trunk in an aimless sort of way while he teetered slowly in a lazy, crazy fashion by lifting first one foot and then another. The old cuss was lonely, Cooper told himself. That's why he hung around like a homeless dog, except that he was too big and awkward to have much pet appeal and, more than likely, his temper was unstable. The afternoon sun was pleasantly warm and the air, it seemed to Cooper, was the freshest he had ever smelled. It was altogether a very pleasant place an Indian summer sort of land, ideal for a Sunday picnic or a camping trip. The breeze was just enough to float out from its flagstaff before the tent, the national banner of mastodonia. A red, rampant mastodon upon a field of green. You know, Johnny, said Adams, there's one thing that worries me a lot. If we're going to base our claims on precedent, we may be way off base. The old explorers always claimed their discoveries for their nations or their king, never for themselves. The principal was entirely different, Cooper told him. Nobody ever did anything for himself in those days. Everyone was always under someone else's protection. The explorers either were financed by their governments or were sponsored by them or operated under a royal charter or a patent. With us it's different. Ours is a private enterprise. You dreamed up the time unit and built it. The three of us chipped in to buy the helicopter. We've paid all of our expenses out of our own pockets. We never got a dime from anyone. What we found is ours. I hope you're right, said Adams uneasily. Old Buster had moved out from the grove and was shuffling warily toward the camp. Adams picked up the rifle that lay across his knees. Wait! Cooper said sharply. Maybe he's just bluffing. It would be a shame to plaster him. He's such a nice old guy. Adams half raised the rifle. I'll give him three steps more, he announced. I've had enough of him. Suddenly a roar burst out of the air just above their heads. The two leaped to their feet. It's Chuck! Cooper yelled. He's back! The helicopter made a half turn of the camp and came rapidly to earth. Trumpeting with terror, Old Buster was a dwindling dot far down the grassy ridge. Chapter 3 They built the nightly fires circling the camp to keep out the animals. It'll be the death of me yet, said Adams wearily, cutting all this wood. We have to get to work on that stockade, Cooper said. We've fooled around long enough. Some night fire or no fire a herd of mastodon will come busting in here and if they ever hit the helicopter will be dead ducks. It wouldn't take more than just five seconds to turn us into robits and carousos of the Pleistocene. Well, now that this recognition thing has petered out on us, said Adams, maybe we can get down to business. Trouble is, Cooper answered. We spent about the last of our money on the chainsaw to cut this wood and on Chuck's trip to Washington. To build a stockade we need a tractor. We'd kill ourselves if we tried to rassle that many logs bare-handed. Maybe we could catch some of those horses running around out there. Have you ever broken a horse? No, that's one thing I never tried. Me either. How about you, Chuck? Not me, said the ex-ambassador, extraordinarily bluntly. Cooper squatted down beside the coals of the cooking fire and twirled the spit. Upon the spit were three grouse and a half dozen quail. The huge coffee pot was sending out a nose-tingling aroma. Biscuits were baking in the reflector. We've been here six weeks, he said, and we're still living in a tent and cooking on an open fire. We'd better get busy and get something done. The stockade first, said Adams, and that means a tractor. We could use the helicopter. Do you want to take that chance? That's our getaway once something happens to it. I guess not, Cooper admitted gulping. We could use some of that .4 aid right now, commented Adams. They threw me out, said Hudson, everywhere I went. Sooner or later they got around to throwing me out. They were real organized about it. Well, we tried, Adams said. And to top it off, added Hudson, I had to go and lose all that film and now we'll have to waste our time taking more of it. Personally, I don't ever want to let another saber-tooth get that close to me while I hold the camera. You didn't have a thing to worry about, Adams objected. Johnny was right there behind you with the gun. Yeah, with the muzzle about a foot from my head when he let go. I stopped him, didn't I? demanded Cooper. With his head right in my lap. Maybe we won't have to take any more pictures, Adams suggested. We'll have to, Cooper said. There are sportsmen up ahead who'd fork over ten thousand bucks easy for two weeks of hunting here. But before we could sell them on it, we'd have to show them movies. That scene with the saber-tooth would cinch it. If it didn't scare them off, Hudson pointed out, the last few feet showed nothing but the inside of his throat. Ex-Ambassador Hudson looked unhappy. I don't like the whole setup. As soon as we bring someone in, the news is sure to leak, and once the word gets out, there'll be guys lying in ambush for us, maybe even nations, scheming to steal the know-how, legally or violently. That's what scares me the most about those films I lost. Someone will find them, and they may guess what it's all about, but I'm hoping they either won't believe it or can't manage to trace us. We could swear the hunting parties to secrecy, said Cooper. How could a sportsman keep still about the mounted head of a saber-tooth or a record piece of ivory? And the same thing would apply to anyone we approached. Some university could raise dough to send a team of scientists back here, and a movie company would cough up plenty to use this place as a location for a caveman epic. But it wouldn't be worth a thing to either of them if they couldn't tell about it. Now, if we could have gotten recognition as a nation, we'd have been all set. We could make our own laws and regulations and be able to enforce them. We could bring in settlers and establish trade. We could exploit our natural resources. It would all be legal and aboveboard. We could tell who we were and where we were and what we had to offer. We aren't licked yet, said Adams. There's a lot we can do. Those river-hills are covered with ginseng. We can each dig a dozen pounds a day. There's good money in the root. Ginseng root? Cooper said. It's peanuts. We need big money. Or we could trap, offered Adams. The place is alive with beaver. Have you taken a good look at those beaver? They're about the size of a Saint Bernard. All the better, think how much just one pelt would bring. No dealer would believe that it was a beaver. He'd think you were trying to pull a fast one on him, and there are only a few states that allow beaver to be trapped. To sell the pelt, even if you could, you'd have to take out licenses in each of those states. Those mastodon carry a lot of ivory, said Cooper. And if we wanted to go north, we'd find mammoths that would carry even more. And get sucked in the jug for ivory smuggling. They sat, all three of them staring at the fire, not finding anything to say. The moaning complaint of a giant hunting cat came from somewhere up the river. Chapter 4 Hudson lay in his sleeping bag staring at the sky. It bothered him a lot. There was not one familiar constellation, not one star that he could name with any certainty. This juggling of the stars he thought emphasized more than anything else in this ancient land, the vast gulf of years which lay between him and the earth, where he had been, or would be, born. A hundred and fifty thousand years, Adams had said, give or take ten thousand. There was just no way to know. Later on there might be a measurement of the stars in a comparison with their positions in the twentieth century, might be one way of doing it, but at the moment any figure could be no more than a gas. The time machine was not something that could be tested for calibration or performance. Matter of fact, there was no way to test it. They had not been certain, he remembered, the first time they had used it, that it would really work. There had been no way to find out. When it worked, you knew it worked, and if it hadn't worked, there would be no way of knowing beforehand that it wouldn't. Adams had been sure, of course, but that had been because he had absolute reliance in the half-mathematical, half-philosophic concepts he had worked out. Neither Hudson nor Cooper could come close to understanding. That had always been the way it had been, even when they were kids, with Wes streaming up the deals that he and Johnny carried out. Back in those days, too, they had used time travel in their play. Out in Johnny's backyard, they had rigged up a time machine out of a wonderful collection of salvaged junk. A wooden crate, an empty five-gallon pink pail, a battered coffee maker, a bunch of discarded copper tubing, a busted steering wheel, and other odds and ends. In it, they had traveled back to Indian before the white man land, and mammoth land, and dinosaur land, and the slaughter, he remembered, had been wonderfully appalling. But in reality it had been much different. There was much more to it than gunning down the weird fauna that one found. And they should have known there would be, for they had talked about it often. He thought of the bull session back in university and the little, usually silent kid who sat quietly in the corner, a law school student whose last name had been Prichard. And after sitting silently for some time, this Prichard kid had spoken up. If you guys ever do travel in time, you'll run up against more than you bargained for. I don't mean the climate or the terrain or the fauna, but the economics and the politics. They all jeered at him, Hudson remembered. And then they had gone on with their talk, and after a short while the talk had turned to women, as it always did. He wondered where that quiet man might be. Someday Hudson told himself, I'll have to look him up and tell him he was right. We did it wrong, he thought. There were so many other ways we might have done it, but we'd been so sure and greedy, greedy for the triumph and the glory. And now there was no easy way to collect. On the verge of success they could have sought out help, gone to some large industrial concern or an educational foundation or even to the government. Like historic explorers, they could have obtained subsidization and sponsorship. Then they would have had protection, funds to do a proper job, and they need not have operated on their present shoe string, one beaten up helicopter and one time unit. They could have had several and at least one standing by in the 20th century as a rescue unit. Should that be necessary? But that would have meant a bargain. Perhaps a very hard one and sharing with someone who had contributed nothing but the money. And there was more than money in a thing like this. There were twenty years of dreams and a great idea in the dedication to that great idea. Years of work and years of disappointment and an almost fanatical refusal to give up. Even so, thought Hudson, they had figured well enough. There had been many chances to make blunders and they'd made relatively few. All they lacked in the last analysis was backing. Take the helicopter, for example. It was the one satisfactory vehicle for time traveling. You had to get up in the air to clear whatever upheavals and subsidences there had been through geologic ages. The helicopter took you up and kept you clear and gave you a chance to pick up proper landing place. Travel without it and granting you were lucky with land surfaces you still might materialize in the heart of some great tree or end up in a swamp or in the middle of a herd of startled savage beasts. A plane would have done as well, but back in this world you couldn't land a plane or you couldn't be certain that you could. A helicopter, though, could land almost anywhere. In the time distance they had traveled they almost certainly had been lucky, although one could not be entirely sure just how great a part of it was luck. Wes had felt that he had not been working as blindly as it sometimes might appear. He had calibrated the unit for jumps of 50,000 years. Finer calibration he had said realistically would have to wait for more developmental work. Using the 50,000 year calibrations they had figured it out. One jump, conceding that the calibration was correct, would have landed them at the end of the Wisconsin glacial period. Two jumps at its beginning. The third would set them down toward the end of the Sangamon interglacial and apparently it had, give or take, 10,000 years or so. They had arrived at a time when the climate did not seem to vary greatly either hot or cold. The flora was modern enough to give them a home-like feeling. The fauna, modern and Pleistocenic overlapped and the surface features were little altered from the 20th century. The rivers ran along familiar paths. The hills and bluffs looked much the same. In this corner of the earth at least 150,000 years had not changed things greatly. Boyhood dreams Hudson thought were wondrous. It was not often that three men who had daydreamed in their youth could follow it out to its end. But they had, and here they were. Johnny was on watch and it was Hudson's turn next and he'd better get to sleep. He closed his eyes then opened them again for another look at the unfamiliar stars. The east he saw was flushed with silver light. Soon the moon would rise, which was good. A man could keep a better watch when the moon was up. He woke suddenly, snatched upright and into full awareness by the marrow-chilling clamor that slashed across the night. The very air seemed curdled by the savage racket and for a moment he sat nom'd by it. Then slowly it seemed his brain took the noise and separated it into two distinct but intermingled categories, the deadly screaming of a cat and the maddened trumpeting of a mastodon. The moon was up and the countryside was flooded by its light. Cooper, he saw, was out beyond the watch-fires standing there and watching with his rifle ready. Adams was scrambling out of his sleeping bag swearing softly to himself. The cooking fire had burned down to a bed of modelled coals but the watch-fires still were burning and the helicopter parked within their circle picked up the glint of flames. It's Buster, Adams told him angrily. I'd know that bellowing of his anywhere. He's done nothing but parade up and down in bellow ever since we got here and now he seems to have gone out and found himself a saber-tooth. Hudson zipped down his sleeping bag, grabbed up his rifle and jumped to his feet following Adams in a silent rush to where Cooper stood. Cooper motioned at them. Don't break it up. You'll never see the likes of it again. Adams brought up his rifle. Cooper knocked down the barrel. You fool! he shouted. You want them turning on us? Two hundred yards away stood the mastodon and on his back the screeching saber-tooth. The great beast reared into the air and came down with a jolt a bucking to unseat the cat, flailing the air with his massive trunk and as he bucked the cat struck and struck again with his gleaming teeth, aiming for the spine. Then the mastodon crashed head downward as if to turn a somersault, rolled and was on his feet again closer to them now than he had been before. The huge cat had sprung off. For a moment the two stood facing one another. Then the tiger charged a flowing streak of motion in the moonlight. Buster wheeled away and the cat, leaping, hit his shoulder, clawed wildly and slid off. The mastodon whipped to the attack tusks slashing huge feet stamping. The cat caught a glancing blow by one of the tusks screamed and leaped up to land in a spread eagle fashion upon Buster's head. Maddened with pain and fright, blinded by the tiger's raking claws, the old mastodon ran straight toward the camp. And as he ran he grasped the cat in his trunk and tore him from his hold, lifted him high and threw him. Look out! yelled Cooper and brought his rifle up and fired. For an instant Hudson saw it all as if it were a single scene motionless one frame snatched from a fantastic movie epic. The charging mastodon with the tiger lifted and the soundtrack won great blast of bloodthirsty bedlam. Then the scene dissolved in a blur of motion. He felt his rifle thud against his shoulder knowing he had fired but not hearing the explosion. And the mastodon was almost on top of him bearing down like some mighty and remorseless engine of blind destruction. He flung himself to one side and the giant brushed past him. Out of the tail of his eye he saw the thrown sabertooth crash to earth within the circle of watchfires. He brought his rifle up again and caught the area behind Buster's ear with his sights. He pressed the trigger. The mastodon staggered then regained his stride and went rushing on. He hit one of the watchfires dead center and went through it scattering coals and burning brands. Then there was a thud and a screeching clang of metal. Oh no! shouted Hudson. Rushing forward they stopped inside the circle of flames. The helicopter lay tilted at a crazy angle. One of its rotor blades was crumpled half across it as if he might have fallen as he tried to bull his mad way over it. Lay the mastodon. Something crawled across the ground towards them. It's spitting snarling mouth gaping in the fire lake. It's back broken, hind legs trawling. Calmly, without a word, Adams put a bullet into the head of the saber-tooth. Chapter 5 General Leslie Bowers rose from his chair and paced up and down the room. He stopped to bang the conference table with a knotted fist. You can't do it. He bawled at them. You can't kill the project. I know there's something to it. We can't give it up. But it's been ten years, General, said the Secretary of the Army. If they were coming back, they'd be here by now. The General stopped his pacing, stiffened. Who did that little civilian squirt think he was? Talking to the military in that tone of voice. We know how you feel about it, General, said the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. I think we all recognize how deeply you're involved. You've blamed yourself all these years and there is no need of it. After all, there may be nothing to it. Sir, said the General, I know there's something to it. I thought so at the time, even when no one else did. And what we've turned up since serves to bear me out. Let's take a look at these three men of ours. We knew almost nothing of them at the time, but we know them now. I've traced out their lives from the time that they were born until they disappeared, and I might add that on the chance it might be all a hoax we've searched for them, for years, and we've found no trace at all. I've talked with those who knew them, and I've studied their scholastic and military records. I've arrived at the conclusion that if any three men could do it, they were the ones who could. Adams was the brains, and the other two were the ones who carried out the things that he dreamed up. Cooper was a bulldog sort of man who could keep them going, and it would be Hudson who would figure out the angles. And they knew the angles, gentlemen. They had it all doped out. What Hudson tried here in Washington is substantial proof of that. But even back in school, they were thinking of those angles. I talked some years ago to a lawyer in New York, name of Prichard. He told me that even back in university they talked of the economic and political problems they might face if they ever cracked what they were working at. Wesley Adams was one of our brightest young scientific men. His record at the university and his war work bears that out. After the war there were at least a dozen jobs that he could have had. But he wasn't interested. And I'll tell you why he wasn't. He had something bigger, something he wanted to work on. So he and these two others went off by themselves. You think he was working on a temporal? The army secretary cut in. He was working on a time machine. Rored the general. I don't know about this temporal business. Just plain time machine is good enough for me. Let's calm down, general. Said the general. Just calm down, general. Said the JCS chairman. After all, there's no need to shout. The general nodded. I'm sorry, sir. I get all worked up about this. I've spent the last ten years with it. As you say, I'm trying to make up for what I failed to do ten years ago. I should have talked to Hudson. I was busy, sure, but not that busy. It's an official state of mind that we're too busy to see anyone and I plead guilty on that score. And now that you're talking about closing the project, it's costing us money, said the army secretary. And we have no direct evidence, pointed out the JCS chairman. I don't know what you want, snapped the general, that there was any man alive who could crack time. That man was Wesley Adams. We found where he worked. We found the workshop and we talked to the neighbors who said there was something funny going on. But ten years, general, the army secretary protested. Hudson came here bringing us the greatest discovery in all history and we kicked him out. After that, do you expect him to come crawling back to us? Do you think they went to someone else? They wouldn't do that. They know what the thing they have found would mean. They wouldn't sell us out. Hudson came with a preposterous proposition, said the man from the State Department. They had to protect themselves, yelled the general. If you had discovered a virgin planet with its natural resources intact, what would you do about it? Come trotting down here and handed over to a government that's too busy to recognize general. Yes, sir. Apologize to general tiredly. I wish you gentlemen could see my view of it, how it all fits together. There were the films and we have the word of a dozen competent paleontologists that it's impossible to fake anything as perfect as those films. But even granting that they could be, there aren't certain differences that no one would ever think of faking because no one ever knew. Who, as an example, would put links tassels on the ears of a saber-tooth? Who would know that young mastodon were black? And the location? We tracked down the location of Adams's workshop from those films alone. They gave us clues so positive that we didn't even hesitate. We drove straight to the old deserted farm where Adams and his friends had worked. Don't you see how it all fits together? I presume, the man from the State Department said nastily, that you even have an explanation as to why they chose that particular location. You thought you had me there, said the general. But I have an answer, a good one. The southwestern corner of Wisconsin is a geologic curiosity. It was missed by all the glaciation. Why? We do not know. Whatever the reason, the glaciers came down on both sides of it and far to the south of it and left it standing there, a little island in a sea of ice. And another thing, except for a time in the Triassic, that same area of Wisconsin has always been dry land. And a few other spots are the only areas in North America which have not time and time again been covered by water. I don't think it necessary to point out the comfort it would be to an experimental traveler in time to be certain that in almost any era he might hit, he'd have dry land beneath him. The economics expert spoke up. We've given this matter a lot of study and while we do not feel ourselves competent to rule upon the possibility or capability of time travel, there are some observations I should like at some time to make. Go ahead right now, said the JCS Chairman. We see one objection to the entire matter. One of the reasons naturally that we had some interest in it is that if true it would give us an entire new planet to exploit, perhaps more wisely than we've done in the past. But the thought occurs to us that any planet has only a certain total of natural resources. If we go into the past and exploit them what effect will that have upon what is left of those resources for use in the present? Wouldn't we in doing this be robbing ourselves of our own heritage? That contention said the AEC Chairman. Wouldn't hold true in every case. Quite the reverse. In fact, we know that there was in some geologic areas in the past a great deal more uranium than we have today. Go back far enough and you'd catch that uranium before it turned into lead. In southwestern Wisconsin there is a lot of lead. Hudson told us he knew the location of vast uranium deposits and we thought he was a crackpot talking through his hat. If we'd known, let's be fair about this, if we had known and believed him about going back in time we'd have snapped him up at once and all this would not have happened. It wouldn't hold true with forests either said the Chairman of the JCS or with pastures or with crops. The economics expert was slightly flushed. There is another thing he said. If we go back in time and colonize the land we find there what would happen when that, well let's call it retroactive, when that retroactive civilization reaches the beginning of our historic period. What will result from that cultural collision? Will our history change? Is what has happened false? Is all... That's all poppycock, the General shouted. That and this other talk about using up resources, whatever we did in the past or are about to do has been done already. I've wane awake nights, Mr. thinking about all these things and there is no answer, believe me, except the one I give you. The question which faces us here is an immediate one. Do we give up all this or do we keep on watching at Wisconsin Farm waiting for them to come back? Do we keep on trying to find independently the process or formula or method that Adams found for traveling in time? We've had no luck in our research so far, General, said the quiet physicist who sat at the table's end. If you were not so sure and if the evidence were not so convincing that it had been done by you, I'd say flatly that it is impossible. We have no approach which holds any hope at all. What we've done so far might best be described as flounder, but if Adams termed the trick it must be possible. There may be, as a matter of fact, more ways than one. We'd like to keep on trying. Not one word of blame has been put on you for your failure, the Chairman told the physicist that you could do it seems to be more than can be humanly expected. If Adams did it, if he did, I say, it must have been simply that he blundered on an avenue of research no other man has thought of. You will recall, said the General, that the research program, even from the first, was thought of strictly as a gamble, or one hope was, and must remain that they will return. It would have been so much simpler all around, the State Department man said, if Adams had patented his method. The General raged at him, and had it published all neat and orderly in the patent office records so that anyone who wanted it could look it up and have it. We can be most sincerely thankful, said the Chairman, that he did not patent it. Chapter 6 The helicopter would never fly again, but the time unit was intact, which didn't mean that it would work. They held a paladin at their camp. It had been they decided simpler to move the camp than to remove the body of old Buster. So they had shifted at dawn, leaving the old mastodon still sprawled across the helicopter. In a day or two they knew the great bones would be cleanly picked by the carrion birds, the lesser cats, the wolves, and foxes, and the little skulkers. Getting the time unit out of the helicopter had been quite a chore, and finally had managed it, and now Adams sat with it, cradled in his lap. The worst of it, he told them, is that I can't test it. There's no way to know. You turn it on and it works or it doesn't work. You can't know till you try. That's something we can't help, Cooper replied. The problem seems to me is how we're going to use it without the whirly bird. We have to figure out some way to get up in the air, said Adams. We want to take the chance of going up into the twentieth century and arriving there about six feet underground. Common sense says that we should be higher here than up ahead. Hudson pointed out. These hills have stood here since Jurassic times. They probably were a good deal higher then and have weathered down. That weathering still should be going on, so we should be higher here than in the twentieth century. Not much, perhaps, but higher. Did anyone ever notice what the altimeter read? asked Cooper. I don't believe I did, Adams admitted. It wouldn't tell you anyhow, Hudson declared. It would just give our height then and now and we were moving, remember, and what about air pockets and relative atmosphere density and all the rest? Cooper looked as discouraged as Hudson felt. How does this sound? asked Adams. We'll build a platform twelve feet high. That certainly should be enough to clear us and yet small enough to stay within the range of the unit's force field. And what if we're two feet higher here? Hudson pointed out. A fall of fourteen feet wouldn't kill a man unless he's plain unlucky. It might break some bones. So it might break some bones. You want to stay here or take a chance on a broken leg? All right, if you put it that way we'll build a platform, you say. A platform out of what? Timber. There's lots of it. We just go out and cut some logs. A twelve foot log is heavy and how are we going to get that big log uphill? We drag it. We try to, you mean. Maybe we could fix up a cart, said Adams after thinking a moment. Out of what? Cooper asked. Rollers, maybe. Come and roll the logs up here. That would work on level ground, Hudson said. It wouldn't work to roll a log uphill. It would get away from us. Someone might get killed. The logs would have to be longer than twelve feet anyhow, Cooper put in. You'd have to set them in a hole and that takes away some footage. Why not the tripod principle, Hudson offered? Fasten three logs at the top and raise them. By primitive derrick it'd still have to be longer than twelve feet. Fifteen, sixteen, maybe. And how are we going to hoist three sixteen foot logs? We'd need a block and tackle. There's another thing, said Cooper. Part of those logs might just be beyond the effective range of the force field. Part of them would have to, have to, mind you, move in time and part couldn't. That would set up a stress. Another thing about it, added Hudson, is that we'd travel with the logs. I don't want to come out in another time with a bunch of logs flying all around me. Cheer up, Adams told them. Maybe the unit won't work anyhow. Chapter seven. The general sat alone in his office and held his head between his hands. The fools, he thought. The goddamn knuckle-headed fools. Why couldn't they see it as clearly as he did? Fifteen years now, as head of project mastodon, he had lived with it night and day, and he could see all the possibilities as clearly as if they had been actual fact. Not military possibilities alone, although as a military man, he naturally would think of those first. The hidden bases, for example, located within the very strongholds of potential enemies. Within, yet, centuries removed in time. Many centuries removed and only seconds distant. He could see it all, the materialization of the fleets, the swift, devastating blow, then the instantaneous retreat into the fastedness of the past. Terrific destruction, but not a ship lost, nor a man. Except that if you had the bases, you need never strike the blow. If you had the bases and let the enemy know you had them, there would never be a provocation. And on the home front you'd have air raid shelters to be effective. You'd evacuate your population not in space, but time. You'd have the sure and absolute defense against any kind of bombing, fission, fusion, bacteriological, or whatever else the labs had in stock. And if the worst should come, which it never would with a setup like that, you'd have a place to which the entire nation could retreat, leaving to the enemy the empty blasted cities and the lethally dusted countryside. Sanctuary. That had been what Hudson had offered the then Secretary of State 15 years ago. And the idiot had frozen up with the insult of it and had Hudson thrown out. And if war did not come, think of the living space and the vast new opportunities, not the least of which would be the opportunity to achieve peaceful living in a virgin world where the old hatreds would slough off and new concepts have a chance to grow. He wondered where they were those three men who had gone back into time. Dead perhaps? Run down by a mastodon? Or stalked by tigers? Or maybe done in by war-like tribesmen? No. He kept forgetting there weren't any in that era. Or trapped in time, unable to get back, condemned to exile in an alien time? Or maybe he thought just plain disgusted. And he couldn't blame them if they were. Or maybe, let's be fantastic about this, sneaking in colonists from some place other than the watched Wisconsin farm building up in actuality the nation they had claimed to be. They had to get back to the present soon or project mastodon would be killed entirely. Already the research program had been halted and if something didn't happen quickly, the watch that was kept on the Wisconsin farm would be called off. And if they do that, said the general, I know just what I'll do. He got up and strode around the room. By God, he said, I'll show him. Chapter 8 It had taken ten full days of backbreaking work to build the pyramid. They'd hauled the rocks from the creek bed half a mile away and had piled them stone by rolling stone to the height of a full twelve feet. It took a lot of rocks and a lot of patience, for as the pyramid went up, the base naturally kept broadening out. But now all was finally ready. Hudson sat before the burned out campfire and held his blistered hands before him. It should work, he thought, better than the logs and less dangerous. Grab a handful of sand, some trickled back between your fingers, but most stayed in your grasp. That was the principle of the pyramid of stones. When and if the time machine should work, most of the rocks would go along. Those that didn't go would simply trickle out and do no harm. There'd be no stress or strain to upset the working of the force field. And if the time unit didn't work? Or if it did? This was the end of the dream, thought Hudson, no matter how you looked at it. For even if they did get back to the twentieth century, there would be no money and with the film lost and no other taken to replace it, they'd have no proof they had traveled back beyond the dawn of history, back almost to the dawn of man. Although how far you traveled would have no significance. An hour or a million years would be all the same. If you could span the hour, you could span the million years. And if you could go back the million years, it was within your power to go back to the first tick of eternity, the first stir of time across the face of emptiness and nothingness. Back to that initial instant when nothing as yet had happened or been planned or thought, when all the vastness of the universe was a new slate waiting the first chalk stroke of destiny. Another helicopter would cost $30,000 and they didn't even have the money to buy the tractor they needed to build the stockade. There was no way to borrow. You couldn't walk into a bank and say you wanted $30,000 to take a trip back to the stage. You still could go to some industry or some university or the government and if you could persuade them you had something on the ball, why then they might put up the cash after cutting themselves in on just about all of the profits. And naturally they'd run the show because it was their money and all you had done was the sweating and the bleeding. There's one thing that still bothers me, said Cooper, breaking our spots so we'd miss the barn and house and all the other buildings. Don't tell me. The windmill, Hudson cried. No, I'm pretty sure we're clear of that, but the way I figure, we're right astride that barbed wire fence at the south end of the orchard. If you want we could move the pyramid over 20 feet or so. Cooper groaned. I'll take my chances with the fence. Adams got to his feet. The time unit tucked underneath his arm. Come on, you guys. It's time to go. They climbed the pyramid gingerly and stood unsteadily at its top. Adams shifted the unit around, clasped it to his chest. Stand around close, he said, and bend your knees a little. It may be quite a drop. Go ahead, said Cooper. Press the button. Adams pressed the button. Nothing happened. The unit didn't work. Chapter 9 The chief of Central Intelligence was white-lipped when he finished talking. You're sure of your information? Asked the president. Mr. President, said the CIA chief, I've never been more sure of anything in my entire life. The president looked at the other two who were in the room, a question in his eyes. The JCS chairman said, JCS or with everything we know. But it's incredible, the president said. They're afraid, said the CIA chief. They lie awake nights. They've become convinced that we're on the verge of traveling in time. They've tried and failed, but they think we're near success. To their way of thinking, they've got to hit us now or never, because once we actually get time travel, they know their numbers up. But we dropped the project mastodon entirely, almost three years ago. It's been all of ten years since we stopped the research. It was 25 years ago that Hudson... That makes no difference, sir. They're convinced we dropped the project publicly, but went underground with it. That would be the kind of strategy they could understand. The president picked up a pencil and doodled on a pad. Who was that old general? He asked. The one who raised fuss when we dropped the project. I remember I was in the Senate then. He came around to see me. Bowers, sir, said the JCS chairman. That's right. What became of him? Retired. Well, I guess it doesn't make any difference now. He doodled some more and finally said, gentlemen, it looks like this is it. How much time did you say we had? Not more than ninety days, sir. Maybe as little as thirty. The president looked up at the JCS chairman. We're as ready, said the chairman, as we will ever be. We can handle them, I think. There will, of course, be some... I know, said the president. Could we bluff? Asked the secretary of state, speaking quietly. I know it wouldn't stick, but at least we might buy some time. You mean, hint that we have time travel? The secretary nodded. It wouldn't work, said the CIA chief, tiredly. If we really had it, there'd be no question then, they'd become exceedingly well-mannered, even neighborly, if they were sure we had it. But we haven't got it, said the president gloomily. Chapter 10 The two hunters trudged homeward late in the afternoon with a deer slung from a pole they carried on their shoulders. Their breath hung visibly in the air as they walked along, for the frost had come and any day now they knew there would be snow. I'm worried about Wes, said Cooper, breathing heavily. He's taking this too hard, we gotta keep an eye on him. Let's take a rest, panted Hudson. They halted and lowered the deer to the ground. He blames himself too much, said Cooper. He wiped his sweaty forehead. There isn't any need to, unless with our eyes wide open. He's kidding himself and he knows it, but it gives him something to go on as long as he can keep busy with all his puttering around, he'll be all right. He isn't going to repair the time unit, Chuck. I know he isn't, and he knows it too. He hasn't got the tools or materials. Back in the workshop he might have had a chance, but here he hasn't. It's rough on him. It's rough on all of us. Yes, but we didn't get a brainstorm that marooned two old friends in this tail end of nowhere. And we can't make him swallow it when we say that it's okay. We don't mind at all. That's a lot to swallow, Johnny. What's going to happen to us, Chuck? We've got ourselves a place to live and there's lots to eat. Save our ammo for the big game. A lot of eating for each bullet and trap the smaller animals. I'm wondering what will happen when the flower and all the other stuff is gone. We don't have too much of it because we always figured we could bring in more. We'll live on meat, said Hudson. We got bisoned by the million. The plains Indians lived on them alone. Then in the spring we'll find roots and in the summer berries, and in the fall we'll harvest a half dozen kind of nuts. Someday our ammo will be gone no matter how careful we are with it. Bows and arrows, slingshots, spears. There's a lot of beasts here I wouldn't want to stand up to with nothing but a spear. We won't stand up to them. We'll duck when we can and run when we can't duck. Without our guns we're no lords of creation, not in this place. If we're going to live, we'll have to recognize that fact. And if one of us gets sick or breaks a leg or... We'll do the best we can. Nobody lives forever. But they were talking around the thing that really bothered them, Hudson told himself. Each of them afraid to speak the thought aloud. They'd live, all right, so far as food, shelter, and clothing were concerned, and they'd live most of the time in plenty, for this was a fat and open-handed land and a man could make an easy living. But the big problem, the one they were afraid to talk about, was their emptiness of purpose. To live they had to find some meaning in a world without society. A man cast away on a desert isle could always live for hope, but here there was no hope. A Robinson Caruso was separated from his fellow humans by, at the most, a few thousand miles. Here they were separated by a hundred and fifty thousand years. Wes Adams was the lucky one so far. Even playing his thousand-to-one shot held tightly to a purpose, feeble as it might be, the hope that he could repair the time machine. We don't need to watch him now, thought Hudson. The next time we'll have to watch is when he is forced to admit that he can't fix the machine. And both Hudson and Cooper had been kept sane enough, for there had been the cabin to be built and the winter supply of wood to cut and the hunting to be done. But then there would come a time when all the chores were finished and there was nothing left to do. You ready to go? Ask Cooper. Sure, all rested now, said Hudson. They hoisted the pole to their shoulders and started off again. Hudson had lean awake nights thinking of it, and all the thoughts had been dead ends. One could write a natural history of the Pleistocene, complete with photographs and sketches and it would be a pointless thing to do because no future scientist ever have a chance to read it. Or they might labor to build a memorial, a vast pyramid perhaps, which would carry a message forward across 1500 centuries, snatching with bare hands at a semblance of immortality. But if they did, they would be working against the shore in certain knowledge that it all would come to naught for they knew in advance that no such pyramid existed in historic time. Or they might set out to seek contemporary man, hiking across 4,000 miles of wilderness to bearing straight and over into Asia. And having found contemporary man cowering in his caves, they might be able to help him immeasurably along the road to his great inheritance. Except that they never make it and even if they did, contemporary man undoubtedly would find some way to do them in and might eat them in the bargain. They came out of the woods and there was the cabin just a hundred yards away. It crouched against the hillside above the spring with the sweep of grassland billowing beyond it to the slate-gray skyline. A trickle of smoke came up from the chimney and they saw the door was open. Wes oughtn't to leave it open that way, said Cooper. Note telling when a bear might decide to come visiting. Hey Wes! yelled Hudson. But there was no sign of him. Inside the cabin a white sheet of paper lay on the tabletop. Hudson snatched it up and read it with Cooper at his shoulder. Dear guys, I don't want to get your hopes up again and have you disappointed, but I think I may have found the trouble. I'm going to try it out. If it doesn't work I'll come back and burn this note and never say a word. But if you find the note, you'll know it worked and I'll be back to get you, Wes. Hudson crumpled the note in his hand. A crazy fool! He was gone off his rocker, Cooper said. He just thought the same thought struck them both and they bolted for the door. At the corner of the cabin they skidded to a halt and stood there, staring at the ridge above them. The pyramid of rocks they built two months ago was gone. CHAPTER XI The crash brought General Leslie Bowers retired up out of bed, about two feet out of bed. Old muscles tense, white clothing. Even at his age the General was a man of action. He flipped the covers back, swung his feet out to the floor and grabbed the shotgun leaning against the wall. Muttering, he blundered out of the bedroom, marched across the dining room and charged into the kitchen. There, beside the door, he snapped on the switch that turned on the floodlights. He practically took the door off its hinges getting to the stoop and he stood there, bare feet, gripping the planks, night-shirt, blowing in the wind. The shotgun poised and ready. What's going on out here? He bellowed. There was a tremendous pile of rocks resting where he'd parked his car. One crumpled fender and a drunken headlight peeped out of the rubble. A man was clamoring carefully down the jumbled stones, making a detour to dodge the battered fender. The General pulled back the hammer of the gun and fought to control himself. The man reached the bottom of the pile and turned around to face him. The General saw that he was hugging something tightly to his chest. Mr. the General told him, your explanation better be a good one. That was a brand new car and this was the first time I was set for a night's sleep since my tooth quit aching. The man just stood and looked at him. Who in thunder are you? roared the General. The man walked slowly forward. He stopped at the bottom of the stoop. My name is Wesley Adams, he said. I'm Wesley Adams, how'd the General? My God, man, where have you been all these years? Well, I don't imagine you'll believe me, but the fact is we've been waiting for you for 25 long years, or rather I've been waiting for you. Those other idiots gave up. I've waited right here for you, Adams, for the last three years ever since they called off the guard. Adams gulped. I'm sorry about the car, you see it was this way. The General, he saw, was beaming at him fondly. I had faith in you, the General said. He waved the shotgun by way of invitation. Come on in, I have to make a call. Adams stumbled up the stairs. Move, the General ordered shivering. On the double, you want me to catch my death of cold out here? Inside, he fumbled for the lights and turned them on. He laid the shotgun across the kitchen table and picked up the telephone. Give me the White House at Washington, he said. Yes, I said the White House. The President? Naturally, he's the one I want to talk to. Yes, it's all right. He won't mind my calling him. Sir, said Adams tentatively. The General looked up. What is it, Adams? Go ahead, say it. Did you say 25 years? That's what I said. What were you doing all that time? Adams grasped the table and hung on. But it wasn't? Yes, said the General to the Operator. Yes, I'll wait. He held his hand over the receiver and looked inquiringly at Adams. I imagine you'll want the same terms as before. Terms? Sure. Recognition, .4A, defense-packed. I suppose so, Adams said. You got these saps across the barrel, the General told him happily. You can get anything you want. You rate it, too, after what you've done and the bonehead treatment you got, but especially for not selling out. Chapter 12 The night editor read the bullet and just off the teletype. Well, what do you know? He said, we just recognized Mastodonia. He looked at the Copy Chief. Where the hell is Mastodonia? He asked. The Copy Chief shrugged. Don't ask me, you're the brains in this joint. Well, let's get a map for the next edition, said the night editor. Chapter 13 Tabby, the sabertooth, dabbed playfully at Cooper with his mighty paw. Cooper kicked him in the ribs and equally playful gesture. Tabby snarled at him. Show your teeth at me, will you? said Cooper. Raised you from a kitten and that's the gratitude you showed to it just once more and I'll belt you in the chops. Tabby laid down blissfully and began to wash his face. Some day, warned Hudson, that cat will miss a meal and that's the day you're in. Gentle as a dove, Cooper assured him, wouldn't hurt a fly. Well, one thing about it, nothing dares to bother us with that monstrosity around. Best watchdog there ever was. Got to have something to guard all this stuff we've got. When Wes gets back, we'll eat millionaires, all those furs and ginseng and the ivory. If he gets back, he'll be back, quit your worrying. But it's been five years, Hudson protested. He'll be back. Something happened, that's all. He's probably working on it right now. Could be that he messed up the time setting when he repaired the unit or it might have been knocked out of kilter when Buster hit the helicopter. That would take a while to fix. I don't worry that he won't come back. What I can't figure out is why did he go and leave us? I've told you, Hudson said. He was afraid it wouldn't work. Scared of that? We never would have laughed at him. No, of course we wouldn't. Then what was he scared of? Cooper asked. If the unit failed and we knew it failed, Wes was afraid we'd try to make him see how hopeless and insane it was. And he knew we'd probably convince him and then all his hope would be gone. And he wanted to hang on to that, Johnny. He wanted to hang on to his hope even when there wasn't any left. That doesn't matter now, said Cooper. What counts is that he'll come back. I can feel it in my bones. And here's another case, thought Hudson, of hope begging to be allowed to go on living. God, he thought, I wish I could be that blind. Wes is working on it right now, said Cooper confidently. Chapter 14 He was. Not he alone, but a thousand others working desperately knowing that the time was short. Working not alone for two men trapped in time but for the peace they all had dreamed about. That the whole world had yearned for through the ages. For to be of any use it was imperative that they could zero in the time machines they meant to build as an artillery man would zero in a battery of guns. That each time machine would take its occupants to the same instant of the past. That would extend over the same period of time to the exact second. It was a problem of control and calibration. Starting with a prototype that was calibrated as its finest adjustment for jumps of 50,000 years. Project Mastodon was finally underway. End of Project Mastodon by Clifford D. Symac. Time and time again by H. Beam Piper. To upset the stable mighty stream of time would probably take an enormous concentration of energy and it's not to be expected that a man would get a second chance at life but an atomic moment. That's all I have to say about Project Mastodon. That's all I have to say about Project Mastodon. That's all I have to say about Project Mastodon. It's not to be expected that a man would get a second chance at life but an atomic might accomplish both. Blended by the bomb flash and numbed by the narcotic injection he could not estimate the extent of his injuries but he knew that he was dying. Around him in the darkness voices sounded as through a thick wall. They might have left most of these joes where they was. So long as they are alive, they must be treated. Another voice, crisp and cultivated, rebuked, better start taking names, while we are waiting. Yes, sir. Fingers fumbled at his identity badge. Hartley, Allen, Captain, G-5, Chem Research, AN-slash-73-slash-D, Serial, SO-238-69-403-J. Allen Hartley, the medic officer, spoke in shock to surprise, why he is the man who wrote, Children of the Mist, Rose of Death, and Conqueror's Road. He tried to speak, and must have stirred, the corpsman's voice sharpened. Major, I think he's part-conscious. Maybe I better give him another shot. Yes, yes, by all means, sergeant. Everything jabbed, Allen Hartley, in the back of the neck. Soft billows of oblivion, closed in upon him, and all that remained to him was a tiny spark of awareness, glowing alone and lost in a great darkness. The spark grew brighter, he was more than a something that merely knew that it existed. He was a man, and he had a name, and a military rank, and memories, memories of the searing blue-green flash, and of what he had been doing, outside the shelter, the moment before, and memories of the month-long siege, and of the retreat from the north, and memories of the days before the war, back to the time when he had been little Allen Hartley, a schoolboy, the son of a successful lawyer, in Williamsport, Pennsylvania. His mother he could not remember. There was only a vague impression of the house full of people who had tried to comfort him for something he could not understand. But he remembered the old German woman who kept house for his father afterward, and he remembered his bedroom with its chents-covered chairs and the warm-colored patch quilt on the old sherry bed, and the fan-curtains at the windows edged with dusky red, and the morning sun shining through them. He could almost see them now. He blinked. He could see them. For a long time he lay staring at them unbelievably, and then he deliberately closed his eyes and counted ten seconds, and as he counted terror gripped him. He was afraid to open them again lest he find himself blind, or gazing at the filth and wreckage of a blasted city. But when he reached ten he forced himself to look, and gave a sigh of relief. The sunlit curtains and the sun-guilded mist outside were still there. He reached out to check one sense against another, filling the rough monk's cloth and the edging of maroon-soak thread. They were tangible as well as visible. Then he saw that the back of his hand was unscarred. There should have been a scar, souvenir of a rough-and-tumble brawl of his cub reporter days. He examined both hands closely. An instant later he had sat up in bed and thrown off the covers, partially removing his pajamas and inspecting as much of his body as was visible. It was the smooth body of a little boy. That was ridiculous. He was a man of forty-three, an army officer, a chemist, once a best-selling novelist. He had been married and divorced ten years ago. He looked again at his body. It was only twelve years old, fourteen at the very oldest. His eyes swept the room, wide with wonder. Every detail was familiar. The flower-splashed chair-covers, the table that served as desk and catch-all for his possessions. The dresser with its mirror stuck full of pictures of aircraft. It was the bedroom of his childhood home. He swung his legs over the edge of the bed. They were six inches too short to reach the floor. For an instant the room spun dizzily, and he was in the grip of utter panic, all confidence in the evidence of his senses lost. Was he insane or delirious, or had the bomb really killed him? As this wood-death was like, what was that thing about ye become as little children? He started to laugh, and his juvenile larynx made giggling sounds. They seemed funny too, and aggravated his mirth. For a little while he was on the edge of hysteria, and then, when he managed to control his laughter, he felt calmer. If he were dead, then he must be a discarnate entity, and would be able to penetrate matter. To his relief he was unable to push his hand through the bed, so he was alive. He was also fully awake, and he hoped rational. He rose to his feet and prowled about the room, taking stock of its contents. There was no calendar in sight, and he could find no newspapers or dated periodicals, but he knew that it was prior to July 18, 1946. On that day, his fourteenth birthday, his father had given him a light-twenty-two rifle, and it had been hung on a pair of rustic forks on the wall. It was not there now, nor ever had been. On the table he saw a boy's book of military aircraft, with a clean new dust-jacket. The fly-leaf was inscribed to Alan Hartley from his father on his thirteenth birthday, 71845. Glancing out the window at the foliage on the trees, he estimated the date at late July or early August, 1945. That would make him just thirteen. His clothes were draped on a chair beside the bed. Stripping off his pajamas, he donned shorts, then sat down and picked up a pair of lemon-colored socks, which he regarded with disfavor. As he pulled one on, a church-bill began to clang, St. Boniface, up on the hill, ringing for early mass. So this was Sunday. He paused, the second sock in his hand. There was no question that his present environment was actual, yet on the other hand he possessed a set of memories completely at variance with it. Now suppose, since his environment were not an illusion, everything else were. Suppose all these troublesome memories were no more than a dream. Why, he was just little Alan Hartley, safe in his room on a Sunday morning, badly scared by a nightmare. Too much science fiction, Alan, too many comic books. That was a wonderfully comforting thought, and he hugged it to him contentedly. It lasted all the while, he was buttoning up his shirt and pulling on his pants. But when he reached for his shoes, it evaporated. Ever since he had wakened, he realized he had been occupied with thoughts utterly incomprehensible to any thirteen-year-old, even thinking in words that would have been so much Sanskrit to himself at thirteen. He shook his head regretfully. To just a dream hypothesis went by the deep six. He picked up the second shoe and glared at it, as though it were responsible for his predicament. He was going to have to be careful. An unexpected display of adult characteristics might give rise to some questions he would find hard to answer credibly. Fortunately he was an only child. There would be no brothers or sisters to trip him up. Old Mrs. Stalber, the housekeeper, wouldn't be much of a problem, even in his normal childhood. He had balked like an intellectual giant in comparison to her. But his father—now there the going would be tough. He knew that shrewd attorney's mind wetted keen on a generation of lying and reluctant witnesses. Sooner or later he would forget for an instant and betray himself. Then he smiled, remembering the books he had discovered in his late teens, on his father's shelves and recalling the character of the open-minded agnostic lawyer, if he could only avoid the inevitable unmasking until he had a plausible explanatory theory. Blake Hartley was leaving the bathroom as Alan Hartley opened his door and stepped into the hall. The lawyer was bare-armed and in slippers. At forty-eight there was only a faint powdering of grey in his dark hair, and not a grey thread in his clipped mustache. The old Mary Whittower himself, Alan thought, grinning as he remembered the white haired but still vigorous men from whom he departed at the outbreak of the war. Morning, Dad! He greeted. Morning, son, you're up early, going to Sunday school. While there was the advantage of a father who'd cut his first intellectual tooth on Tom Payne and Bob Ingersoll, attendance at Divine Services was on a strictly voluntary basis. Why, I don't think so. I want to do some reading this morning. That's always a good thing to do, Blake Hartley approved. After breakfast suppose you take a walk down to the station and get me a times. He dug in his trouser-pocket and came out with a half-dollar. Get anything you want for yourself while you're at it. Alan thanked his father and pocketed the coin. Mrs. Dobber will be at mass, he suggested. Say, I get the paper now. Breakfast won't be ready till she gets here. Good idea, Blake Hartley nodded. Please, you'll have three-quarters of an hour at least. So far he congratulated himself. Everything had gone smoothly. Finishing his toilet, he went downstairs and on to the street, turning left at Brandon, to Campbell, and left again in the direction of the station. Before he reached the underpass, a dozen half-forgotten memories had revived. Here was a house that would, in a few years, be gutted by fire. Here were four dwellings standing where he had last seen a five-story apartment building, a gasoline station, and a weed-grown lot which shortly be replaced by a supermarket. The environs of the station itself were a complete puzzle to him, until he oriented himself. He bought a New York Times, glancing first of all at the date line. Sunday, August 5th, 1945, he'd estimated pretty closely. The Battle of Okinawa had been won. The Potsdam Conference had just ended. There were still pictures of the B-25 crash against the Empire State Building, a week ago Saturday, and Japan was still being pounded by bombs from the air and shells from offshore naval guns, why, tomorrow, Hiroshima was due for the big job. It amused him to reflect that he was probably the only person in Williamsport who knew that. On the way home, a boy, sitting on the top step of front porch, hailed him. Alan replied courgely, trying to remember who it was. Of course, Larry Morton. He and Alan had been buddies. They probably had been swimming or playing commandos and Germans the afternoon before. Larry had gone to Cornell the same year that Alan had gone to Penn State. They had both graduated in 1954. Larry had gotten into some government bureau, and then he had married a Pittsburgh girl and had become 12th Vice President of her father's firm. He had been killed in 1968 in a plane crash. You gone a Sunday school? Larry asked, mercifully unaware of the fate Alan foresaw for him. Why, no, I have some things I want to do at home. He'd have to watch himself. Larry would spot a difference quicker than any adult. Heck with it! he added. Golly! I wished I could stay home from Sunday school whenever I wanted to. Larry envied. How about us go and swimmin' at the canoe club? Safter. Alan thought fast. Gee! I wished could. He replied, lowering his grammatical sights. I got to stay home. Safter. We're expecting company. Cumpla ants of mine. Dad wants me to stay home when they come. That went over all right. Anybody knew that there was no rational accounting for the vagaries of the adult mind, and no appeal from adult demands. The prospect of company at the Hartley home would keep Larry away that afternoon. He showed his disappointment. Ah, Jeepers creepers! he blasphemed euphemistically. Maybe to-morrow, Alan said, if I can make it, I got to go now, ain't had breakfast yet. His guffed his feet boyishly, exchanged so long with his friend, and continued homeward. As he had hoped, the Sunday paper kept his father occupied at breakfast, to the exclusion of any dangerous table-talk. Blake Hartley was still deep in the financial section when Alan left the table and went to the library. There should be two books there to which he wanted badly to refer. For a while he was afraid that his father had not acquired them prior to 1945, but he finally found them and carried them on to the front porch along with the pencil and a rolled yellow scratch pad. In his experienced future, or his past to come, Alan Hartley had been accustomed to doing his thinking with the pencil. As reporter, as novelist, plotting his work, as amateur chemist in his home laboratory, as scientific warfare, research, officer, his ideas had always been clarified by making notes. He pushed a chair to the table and built up the seat with cushions, wondering how soon he would become used to the proportional disparity between himself and the furniture. As he opened the books and took his pencil in his hand, there was one thing missing. If he could only smoke a pipe now. His father came out and stretched in a wicker chair with the Times Book Review section. The morning hours passed. Alan Hartley lived through one book and then the other. His pencil moved rapidly at times. At others he doodled, absently. There was no question any more in his mind as to what or who he was. He was Alan Hartley, a man of forty-three, marooned in his own thirteen-year-old body, thirty years back in his own past. That was, of course, against all common sense, but he was easily able to ignore that objection. He had been made before, against the astronomy of Copernicus and the geography of Columbus, and the biology of Darwin and the industrial technology of Samuel Colt, and the military doctrines of Charles de Gaulle. Today's common sense had a habit of turning into to-morrow's utter nonsense. What he needed, right now, but bad, was a theory that would explain what had happened to him. Everything was beginning to dawn when Mrs. Stauber came out to announce mid-day dinner. "'I hope you won't mind having it so early,' she apologized. "'My sister, Jenny, offer a nip and nose. She is sick. I want to go see her this afternoon, yet I'll be back in plenty time to get supper, Mr. Hartley.' "'Hey, Dad,' Alan spoke up, "'why can't we get our own supper and have a picnic like? We can, and Mrs. Stauber could stay as long as she wanted to.' His father looked at him. Such consideration for others was a most gratifying deviation from the juvenile norm, dawn of altruism or something. He gave hearty assent. "'Why, of course, Mrs. Stauber. Alan and I can shift for ourselves this evening. Can't we, Alan? You needn't come back till to-morrow morning.' "'Ach, thank you—thank you so much, Mr. Hartley.' At dinner Alan got out from under the burden of conversation by questioning his father about the war and luring him into a lengthy dissertation on the difficulties of the forthcoming invasion of Japan. In view of what he remembered of the next twenty-four hours Alan was secretly amused. His father was sure that the war would run on to mid-1946. After dinner they returned to the porch, Hartley, pear, smoking a cigar and carrying out several law-books. He only glanced at these occasionally. For the most part he sat and blew smoke-rings, and watched them float away. Some thrice-guilty felon was about to be triumphantly acquitted by a weeping jury. Alan could recognize a courtroom masterpiece in the process of incubation. It was several hours later that the crunch of feet on the walk caused father and son to look up simultaneously. The approaching visitor was a tall man in a rumpled black suit. He had knobby wrists and big, awkward hands. Black hair flecked with gray and a harsh, bigoted face. Alan remembered him—Frank Gutchall—lived on Campbell Street, a religious fanatic, and some sort of lay preacher. Maybe he needed legal advice. Alan could vaguely remember some incident. "'Good afternoon, Mr. Gutchall. Lovely day, isn't it?' Blake Hartley said. Gutchall cleared his throat. "'Mr. Hartley, I wonder if you could lend me a gun and some bullets?' he began, embarrassedly. My little dog's been hurt, and it's suffering something terrible. I want a gun to put the poor thing out of its pain.' "'Why, yes, of course. How would a twenty-gauge shotgun do?' Blake Hartley asked. "'You wouldn't want anything heavy.' Gutchall fidgeted. "'Why, er, I was hoping you'd let me have a little gun.' He held his hands about six inches apart. A pistol that I could put in my pocket. It wouldn't look right to carry a hunting-gun on the Lord's Day. People wouldn't understand that it was for a work of mercy.' "'The law you're nodded. In view of Gutchall's religious beliefs, the objection made sense. "'Well, I have a Colt-38 special,' he said, but, you know, I belong to this auxiliary police outfit. If I were called out for duty this evening, I'd need it. How soon could you bring it back?' Something clicked in Alan Hartley's mind. He remembered now what that incident had been. He knew, too, what he had to do. "'Dad, aren't there some cartridges left for the Luger?' he asked. Alan Hartley snapped his fingers. "'By George, yes, I have a German automatic. I can let you have. But I wish you'd bring it back as soon as possible. I'll get it for you.' Before he could rise, Alan was on his feet. "'Sit still, Dad. I'll get it. I know where the cartridges are.' With that he darted into the house and upstairs. The Luger hung on the wall over his father's bed. Getting it down, he dismounted it, working with rapid precision. He used the blade of his pocket-knife to unlock the end-piece of the breech block, slipping out the firing-pen and buttoning it into his shirt-pocket. Then he reassembled the harmless pistol and filled the clip with nine-millimeter cartridges from the bureau drawer. There was an extension telephone beside the bed. Finding Gutschel's address in the directory, he lifted the telephone and stretched his handkerchief over the mouthpiece. Then he dialed police headquarters. "'This is Blake Hartley,' he lied, deepening his voice and copying his father's tone. Frank Gutschel, who lives at—take this down—he gave Gutschel's address, has just borrowed a pistol from me, ostensibly, to shoot a dog. He has no dog. He intends shooting his wife. Don't argue about how I know there isn't time. Just take it for granted that I do. I disabled the pistol, took out the firing-pen. But if he finds out what I did, he may get some other weapon. He's on his way home, but he's on foot. If you hurry, you may get a man there before he arrives, and grab him before he finds out the pistol won't shoot. "'Okay, Mr. Hartley, we'll take care of it, thanks. And I wish you'd get my pistol back, as soon as you can. It's something I brought home from the other war, and I shouldn't like to lose it. We'll take care of that, too. Thank you, Mr. Hartley.' He hung up, and carried the luger, and the loaded clip down to the porch. "'Look, Mr. Gotchell, here's how it works,' he said, showing it to the visitor. Then he slapped in the clip, and yanked up on the toggle, loading the chamber. It's ready to shoot now. This is the safety,' he pushed it on. "'When you're ready to shoot, just shove it forward and up, and then pull the trigger. You have to pull the trigger each time. It's loaded for eight shots, and be sure to put the safety back when you're through shooting.' "'Did you load the chamber?' Blake Hartley demanded. "'Sure. It's on safe now.' "'Let me see.' His father took the pistol, being careful to keep his finger out of the trigger guard, and looked at it. "'Yes, that's all right.' He repeated the instructions Allen had given, stressing the importance of putting the safety on after using. "'Understand how it works now?' he asked. "'Yes. I understand how it works. Thank you, Mr. Hartley. Thank you, too, young man.' Guchel put the luger in his hip-pocket, made sure it wouldn't fall out, and took his departure. "'You shouldn't have loaded it,' Hartley, Pair, reproved, when he was gone. Allen sighed. "'This was it. The masquerade was over.' "'I had to, to keep you from fooling with it,' he said. "'I didn't want you finding out that I'd taken out the firing-pin.' "'You what?' Guchel didn't want that gun to shoot a dog. He has no dog. He meant to shoot his wife with it. He's a religious maniac, sees visions, hears voices, receives revelations, talks with the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost probably put him up to this caper. I'll submit that any man who holds long conversations with a deity isn't to be trusted with a gun, and neither is any man who lies about why he wants one. And while I was at it, I called the police, on the upstairs phone. I had to use your name. I deepened my voice and talked through a handkerchief. "'You,' Blake Hartley jumped, as though bestung, "'why did you have to do that?' "'You know why. I couldn't have told them. This is little Allen Hartley, just thirteen years old. Please, Mr. Policeman, go and arrest Frank Guchel before he goes brute toot toot at his wife with my papa's luger. That would have gone over big now, wouldn't it?' "'And suppose he really wants to shoot a dog. What sort of mess will I be in?' "'No mess at all. If I'm wrong, which I'm not, I'll take the thumb for it myself. It'll pass for a dumb kid trick, and nothing will be done. But if I'm right, you'll have to front for me. They'll keep your name out of it, but they'd give me a lot of cheap boy-hero publicity, which I don't want.' He picked up his pencil again. He should have the complete returns in about twenty minutes. That was a ten-minute underestimate, and it was another quarter-hour before the detective sergeant, who returned the luger, had finished congratulating Blake Hartley and giving him the thanks of the department. After he had gone, the lawyer picked up the luger, withdrew the clip, and ejected the round in the chamber. "'Well,' he told his son, "'you were right. You saved that woman's life. He looked at the automatic, and then handed it across the table. Now let's see you put that firing-pin back.' Alan Hartley dismantled the weapon, inserted the missing part, and put it together again, then snapped it experimentally, and returned it to his father. Blake Hartley looked at it again, and laid it on the table. Now, son, suppose we have a little talk?' He said softly. "'But I explained everything,' Alan objected innocently. "'You did not,' his father retorted. "'Yesterday you'd never have thought of a trick like this, why you wouldn't even have known how to take this pistol apart. And at dinner I caught you using language and expressing ideas that were entirely outside anything you'd ever known before. Now I want to know, and I mean this literally.' Alan chuckled. "'I hope you're not toying with the rather medieval notion of obsession,' he said. Blake Hartley started. Something very like that must have been flitting through his mind. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it abruptly. "'The trouble is, I'm not sure you aren't right,' his son continued. You say you find me changed. When did you first notice a difference? Last night you were still my little boy. This morning,' Blake Hartley was talking more to himself than to Alan. "'I don't know. You were unusually silent at breakfast. And come to think of it, there was something strange about you when I saw you in the hall upstairs. Alan,' he burst out vehemently, "'what has happened to you?' Alan Hartley felt a twinge of pain. What his father was going through was almost what he himself had endured in the first few minutes after waking. I wish I could be sure of myself, dad,' he said. "'You see, when I woke this morning, I hadn't the least recollection of anything I'd done yesterday,' August 4, 1945, that is,' he specified. I was positively convinced that I was a man of forty-three, and my last memory was of lying on a stretcher, injured by a bomb explosion, and I was equitably convinced that this had happened in 1975.' "'Huh?' his father straightened. "'Did you say 1975?' he thought for a moment. "'That's right. In 1975, you will be forty-three. A bomb, you say?' Alan nodded. "'During the siege of Buffalo in the Third World War,' he said, "'I was a captain in G-5, Scientific Warfare, General Staff. There'd been a transpolar air-invasion of Canada, and I'd been sent to the front to check on service failures of a new lubricating oil for combat equipment. A week after I got there, Ottawa fell, and the retreat started. We made a stand at Buffalo, and that was where I copped it. I remember being picked up, and getting a narcotic injection. The next thing I knew, I was in bed, upstairs, and it was 1945 again, and I was back in my own little thirteen-year-old body. "'Oh, Alan, you just had a nightmare to end nightmares,' his father assured him, laughing a trifle too heartily. That's all!' "'That was one of the first things I thought of. I had to reject it. It just wouldn't fill the facts. Look, a normal dream is part of the dreamer's own physical brain, isn't it? Well, here is a part about two thousand percent greater than the whole from which it was taken, which is absurd. You mean all this battle of Buffalo stuff? That's easy. All the radio commentators have been harping on the horrors of World War III, and you couldn't have avoided hearing some of it. You just have an undigested chunk of H. V. Colton-born raising hell in your subconscious. It wasn't just World War III. It was everything. My four years at high school, and my four years at Penn State, and seven years as a reporter on the Philadelphia record, and my novels, Children of the Mist, Rose of Death, Conqueror's Road, they were no kid stuff. Why yesterday I'd never even have thought of some of the ideas I used in my detective stories that I published under a nom de plume. And my hobby, chemistry, I was pretty good at that, patented a couple of processes that made me as much money as my writing. You think a thirteen-year-old just dreamed all that up? Or here, you speak French, don't you? He switched languages and spoke at some length in good conversational slang-spice Parisian. De bad you don't speak Spanish, too, he added, reverting to English, except for a Mexican accent you could cut with a machete. I'm even better there than in French, and I know some German, and a little Russian. Mike Hartley was staring at his son, stunned. It was some time before he could make himself speak. I could barely keep up with you in French, he admitted. I can swear that in the last thirteen years of your life you had absolutely no chance to learn it. All right, you lived till 1975, you say. Then all of a sudden you found yourself back here, thirteen years old, in 1945. I suppose you remember everything in between, he asked. Did you ever read James Branch Cabell? Remember Florian de Poussin in the high place? Yes, you find the same idea in Jurgen, too, Alan said. You know, I'm beginning to wonder if Cable might have known something he didn't want to write. But it's impossible, Blake Hartley hit the table with his hand, so hard that the heavy pistol bounced. With a loose round he had ejected from the chamber, toppled over, and started to roll, falling off the edge. He stooped and picked it up. How can you go back against time? And the time you claim you came from doesn't exist now. It hasn't happened yet. He reached for the pistol magazine, to insert the cartridge, and as he did he saw the books in front of his son. Dunn's experiment with time, he commented, and J&M Tyrell's science and psychical phenomena. Are you trying to work out a theory? Yes. It encouraged Alan to see that his father had unconsciously adopted an adult-to-adult manner. I think I'm getting somewhere, too. You've read these books. Well looked at. What's your attitude on precognition? The ability of the human mind to exhibit real knowledge apart from logical inference of future events? You think Dunn is telling the truth about his experiences? Or that the cases in Tyrell's book are properly verified and can't be explained away on the basis of chance? Blake Hartley frowned. I don't know, he confessed. The evidence is the sort that any court in the world would accept, if it concerned ordinary, normal events, especially the cases investigated by the Society for Psychical Research. They have been verified. But how can anybody know of something that hasn't happened yet? If it hasn't happened yet, it doesn't exist, and you can't have real knowledge of something that has no real existence. Tyrell discusses that dilemma, and doesn't dispose of it. I think I can. If somebody has real knowledge of the future, then the future must be available to the present mind, and if any moment other than the bare present exists, then all time must be totally present. Every moment must be perpetually co-existent with every other moment, Allen said. Yes, I think I see what you mean. That was Dunn's idea, wasn't it? No, Dunn postulated an infinite series of time dimensions, the entire extent of each being the bare present moment of the next. What I'm postulating is the perpetual coexistence of every moment of time in this dimension, just as every graduation on a yard stick exists equally with every other graduation, but each at a different point in space. Well, as far as duration and sequence go, that's all right, the father agreed. But how about the passage of time? Well, time does appear to pass. So does the landscape you see from a moving car window. I'll suggest that both are illusions of the same kind. We imagine time to be dynamic, because we've never viewed it from a fixed point, but if it is totally present, then it must be static, and in that case we're moving through time. That seems all right, but what's your car window? If all time is totally present, then you must exist simultaneously at every moment along your individual lifespan. Allen said. Your physical body and your mind and all the thoughts contained in your mind each at its appropriate moment in sequence, but what is it that exists only at the very moment we think of as now? Blake Hartley grinned. Already he was expecting his small son as an intellectual equal. Please, teacher, what? Your consciousness, and don't say what's that. Teacher doesn't know, but we're only conscious of one moment, the illusory one. This is now, and it was now when you asked that question, and it'll be now when I stop talking, but each is a different moment. We imagine that all those nows are rushing past us. Really, they're standing still, and our consciousness is whizzing past them. His father thought that over for some time. Then he sat up. Hey! he cried, suddenly. If some part of our ego is time-free and passes from moment to moment, it must be extra-physical, because the physical body exists at every moment through which the consciousness passes. And if it's extra-physical, there's no reason whatever for assuming that it passes out of existence when it reaches the moment of the death of the body. Why? There's logical evidence for survival, independent of any alleged spirit communication. You can toss up patience worth, and Mrs. Osborne Leonard's Veda, and Sir Oliver Lodge's son, and Wilfred Brandon, and all the other spirit communicators, and you still have evidence. I hadn't thought of that, Alan confessed. I think you're right. Well, let's put that at the bottom of the agenda, and get on with this time-business. You lose consciousness, as in sleep. Where does your consciousness go? I think it simply detaches from the moment at which you go to sleep, and moves backward or forward along the line of moment sequence, to some prior or subsequent moment, attaching there. Well, why don't we know anything about that? Blake Hartley asked. It never seems to happen. We go to sleep tonight, and it's always tomorrow morning when we wake, never day before yesterday or last month or next year. It never, or almost never, seems to happen. You're right there. Know why? Because if the consciousness goes forward, it attaches at a moment when the physical brain contains memories of the previous, consciously, an unexperienced moment. You wake, remembering the evening before, because that's the memory contained in your mind at that moment, and back of it are memories of all the events in the interim. See? Yes, but how about backward movement, like this experience of yours? This experience of mine may not be unique, but I never heard of another case like it. What usually happens is that the memories carried back by the consciousness are buried in the subconscious mind. You know how thick the wall between the subconscious and the conscious mind is. These dreams of duns, and the cases in Tyrell's book, are leakage. That's why precognitions are usually incomplete and distorted, and generally trivial. The wonder isn't that good cases are so few. It's surprising that there are any at all. Alan looked at the papers in front of him. I haven't begun to theorize about how I managed to remember everything. It may have been the radiations from the bomb, or the effect of the narcotic, or both together, or something at this end, or a combination of all three. But the fact remains that my subconscious barrier didn't function, and everything got through. So you see, I am obsessed by my own future identity. And I'd been afraid that you'd been, well, taken over by some outsider. Blake Hartley, Grand Weekly, I don't mind admitting Alan that what's happened has been a shock, but that other I just couldn't have taken that. No, not and stayed sane. But really, I am your son. The same entity I was yesterday, I've just had what you might call an educational shortcut. I'll say you have," his father laughed in real amusement. He discovered that his cigar had gone out and relid it. Here, if you can remember the next thirty years, suppose you tell me when the war is going to end. This one, I mean. The Japanese surrender will be announced at exactly 1901, 701, present style, on August 14, a week from Tuesday. Better make sure we have plenty of grub in the house by then. Everything will be closed up tight till Thursday morning, even the restaurants. I remember, we had nothing to eat in the house but some scraps. Well, it is handy having a profit in the family. I'll see to it Mrs. Stalberg gets plenty of groceries in. Tuesday, a week, that's pretty sudden, isn't it? The Japs are going to think so. Helen replied, he went on to describe what was going to happen. His father swore softly. You know, I've heard talk about atomic energy, but I thought it was just Buck Rogers' stuff. Was that the sort of bomb that got you? That was a firecracker to the bomb that got me. That thing exploded a good ten miles away. Blake Hartley whistled softly. And that's going to happen in thirty years. You know, son, if I were you, I wouldn't like to have to know about a thing like that. He looked at Alan for a moment. Please, if you know, don't ever tell me when I'm going to die. Alan smiled. I can't. I had a letter from you just before I left for the front. You were seventy-eighth then, and you were still hunting and fishing and flying your own plane. But I'm not going to get killed in any battle of Buffalo this time, and if I can prevent it. And I think I can. There won't be any World War III. But you say all time exists, perpetually co-existent and totally present, his father said, then it's right there in front of you, and you're getting closer to it every watchtick. Alan Hartley shook his head. You know what I remembered. When Frank Gutchell came to borrow a gun, he asked, well, the other time I hadn't been home. I'd been swimming at the canoe club with Larry Morton. When I got home, about a half hour from now, I found the house full of cops. Gutchell talked the thirty-eight officers' model out of you, and gone home. He'd shot his wife four times through the body, finished her off with another one back of the ear, and then used his sixth shot to blast his brains out. The cops traced the gun. They took a very poor view of your lending it to him. You never got it back. You lost that gang to keep a good gun, the liar said. I didn't want to lose it this time, and I didn't want to see you lose face around City Hall. Gutchells, of course, are expendable, Alan said, but my main reason for fixing Frank Gutchell up with the padded cell was that I wanted to know whether or not the future could be altered. I have it on experimental authority that it can be. There must be additional dimensions of time, lines of alternative probabilities, something like William Seabrooks, which doctor friends, fan-shaped destiny. When I brought memories of the future back to the present, I added certain factors to the causal chain. That set up an entirely new line of probabilities. On no notice at all, I stopped a murder and a suicide. For thirty years to work, I can stop a world war. I'll have the means to do it, too. The means? Unlimited Wealth and Influence. Here Alan picked up a sheet and handed it to his father. Use properly. We can make two or three million on that alone. A list of all the Kentucky Derby, Prickness, and Belmont winners to 1970. That'll furnish us primary capital. Then remember, I was something of a chemist. I took it up, originally to get background material for one of my detective stories. It fascinated me, and I made it a hobby, and then a source of income. I'm thirty years ahead of any chemist in the world now. You remember, IG, Farben Industry? Ten years from now we'll make them look like pikers. His father looked at the yellow sheet. Assault at eight to one. He said, I can scrape up about five thousand for that. Yes, in ten years. Any other little operations you have in mind? He asked. About 1950 we start building a political organization here in Pennsylvania. In 1960 I think we can elect you, President. The world situation will be crucial by that time, and we had a good-natured non-entity in the White House, then, who let things go till war became inevitable. I think President Hartley can be trusted to take a strong line of policy. In the meantime, you can read Machiavelli. That's my little boy talking. Blake Hartley said softly, All right, son, I'll do just what you tell me. And when you grow up, I'll be President. Let's go get supper now. End of Time and Time Again by H.Beam Piper.