Never before in history had such an
amazing, baffling and faintly horrifying
thing happened to anyone as happened to
Galahad McCarthy ... but--whaddyamean, history?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Winter 1947.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"Don't you think you might look up from that comic book long enough
to get interested in a last minute briefing on the greatest adventure
undertaken by man? After all, it's your noodle neck that's going to be
risked." Professor Ruddle throbbed his annoyance clear up to his thin
white hair.
McCarthy shifted his quid and pursed his lips. He stared dreamily at an
enameled wash-basin fifteen feet from the huge, box-like coil of wire
and transparencies on which the professor had been working. Suddenly, a
long brown stream leaped from his mouth and struck a brass faucet with
a loud _ping_.
The professor jumped. McCarthy smiled.
"Name ain't Noodleneck," he drawled. "Gooseneck. Gooseneck McCarthy,
known and respected in every hobo jungle in the country, including here
in North Carolina. And looky, bub, all I wanted was a cup of coffee and
a pair of sinkers. Time machine's your notion."
"Doesn't it mean anything that you will shortly be one hundred and ten
million years in the past, a past in which no recognizable ancestors of
man existed? That your opportunities to--"
"Nawp!"
Blathersham University's greatest physicist grimaced disgustedly. He
stared through thick lenses at the stringy, wind-hardened derelict whom
he was shortly going to trust with his life's work. A granite-like head
set on a remarkably long, thin neck; a body whose limbs were equally
extended; clothes limited to a faded khaki turtleneck sweater, patched
brown corduroy pants and a worn-out pair of heavy brogans. He sighed.
"And the fate of human knowledge and progress depends on you! When you
wandered up the mountain to my shack two days ago, you were broke and
hungry. You didn't have a dime--"
"Had a dime. Only it was lead."
"All right. All right. So you had a lead dime. I took you in, gave you
a good hot meal and offered to pay you one hundred dollars to take my
time machine on its maiden voyage. Don't you think--"
_Ping!_ This time it was the hot water faucet.
"--that the very least you could do," the little physicist's voice was
rising hysterically, "the very least would be to pay enough attention
to the facts I make available to insure that the experiment will be a
success? Do you realize what fantastic disruption you might cause in
the time stream by one careless slip?"
McCarthy rose suddenly and the brightly-colored comic magazine slid to
the floor in a litter of coils, gauges and paper covered with formulae.
He advanced toward the professor whom he topped by at least a foot. His
employer gripped a wrench nervously.
"Now, Mister Professor Ruddle," he said with gentle emphasis, "if'n
you don't think I know enough, why don't you go yourself, huh?"
The little man smiled at him placatingly. "Now don't get stubborn
again, Swan-neck--"
"Gooseneck. Gooseneck McCarthy."
"You can be the most irascible person I've ever met. More stubborn
than Professor Dudderel for that matter. And he's that short-sighted
mathematician back at Blathersham who insisted in spite of irrefutable
evidence that a time machine would not work. Even when I showed him
quartzine and demonstrated its peculiar time-dissolving properties, he
wasn't convinced. The university refused to grant an appropriation for
my research and I had to come out here in North Carolina. On my own
time and money, too." He brooded angrily on unreasonable mathematicians
and parsimonious trustees.
"Still ain't answered my question."
* * * * *
Ruddle looked up. He blushed a little under the fine wild tendrils of
white hair. "Well, it's just that I'm rather valuable to society what
with my paper on intrareversible positrons still uncompleted. Whereas
everything points to the machine being a huge success, it's conceivable
that Dudderel considered some point which I've--er, overlooked."
"Meaning there's a chance I might not come back?"
"Uh--well, something like that. No danger, you understand. I've gone
over the formulae again and again and they are foolproof. It's just
barely possible that some minor error, some cube root that wasn't
brought out to the farthest decimal--"
The tramp put his hands in his pockets. "If'n that's so," he announced,
"I want that check before I leave. Not taking any chances on something
going wrong and you not paying me."