Humanity against the Arch-Brain of the
Future! Twentieth-Century Larry Wilson
and Sandra Day lead the Armageddon of
the Ages against Harg, crafty, vain
monster-intellect bent on warping
Man to his Inhuman Will!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Spring 1940.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
Larry Wilson was going to miss his train. He swung from his cab
at Philadelphia's Broad Street Station, glanced swiftly at his
wrist-watch, tossed a bill in the general direction of the cabby, then
dashed for the staircase that led to the train platform. His watch
showed exactly 10:59. The New York express was scheduled to leave at
eleven sharp.
Behind him, morning traffic made its customary din in the streets
of the Quaker City. Automobile horns _whonked_ belligerently. Radio
loudspeakers blared from the doorways of tiny Market Street shops. A
newsboy bellowed headlines on the European war situation. A bus chugged
into the station, disgorged its cargo of human freight, lumbered
ponderously on down the street. A vendor offered dried lavender; his
whine was a thin, discordant note in the hum of a busy city.
But Larry Wilson, intent only on gaining the train platform above, did
not notice these things. He brushed by a puffing matron at the foot of
the stairs, steamed past a descending red-cap, and noticed with only
casual interest as he took the steps three at a time a silken-clad calf
before him. He might make it yet, he thought hopefully, if--
Then, suddenly, something was indefinably _wrong_!
Larry had ascended these stairs dozens of times in the past, both
leisurely and, as now, at top speed. But at no time had they ever been
like this! His stride faltered; then, even as the first, tiny fingers
of wonderment plucked at his bewildered brain, he realized that the
bright electric lights that limned the staircase had vanished. That in
their place was a dull, unearthly, grayish glow that seemed to emanate
equally from the walls, the staircase, and from the roof above him.
His foot, reaching for the next step, encountered no support. He
staggered, thrown off balance, and stumbled forward to his hands and
knees. Yet he was not bruised. As he fell he realized, with numb
astonishment, that the steps were no longer there!
Wildly he scrambled to save himself. His shoulder collided with
something fragrantly yielding. His outthrust hand clutched warm, firm
flesh cased in sheer silk. Then he was falling helplessly, headlong,
dizzily, down a dim tunnel of spinning grayness--and he was rolling
over and over on a warm, grassy turf. The scent of flower-laden air was
in his nostrils.
And a voice was saying indignantly, "Well, really! _If_ you don't
mind--!"
* * * * *
In one hand Larry still clutched his bag. In the other--. He flushed,
relaxed his grip in swift embarrassment. The girl was the one whom
he had glimpsed before him on the steps of the Broad Street Station.
It was her ankle that, in his moment of blind groping, his hand had
clutched.
"I--I'm sorry!" gulped Larry. "I didn't mean to be--" Then he stopped,
staring about him transfixed. "But what's this? Where the he--I mean,
where in blazes are we?"
They were lying on a grassy plain horizoned by a forest of towering
trees that reached aimlessly toward a wan and cloudless sky. The girl,
her own blue eyes wide in astonishment, forgot her pique in amazement
that matched his.
"I don't know. I was running for the train--"
"So was I. I saw you on the steps. Just then the staircase seemed to
become strangely gray--"
"And it moved!" added the girl. "I remember now. Something like a
_ripple_ passed over it--"
"I didn't see that," admitted Larry. "I was too busy running. But--but
where are we, anyway?"
A touch of panic flickered in the girl's eyes.
"We--we couldn't be dead?"
Larry shook his head. "I thought of that. But it isn't likely. Not
both of us. One of us might have fallen down the steps and broken a
neck--but not two, together. And there was no explosion or anything
like that. I don't see--"
Suddenly the girl gasped, clutching his arm.
"Look! Over there in the trees!"
Larry looked--and moved swiftly. With a jerk, he ripped open his bag,
pawed through its contents, and came up with a snub-nosed automatic.
"Get behind me!" he shouted. "I don't know what's going on here, but--"
"Don't shoot!" The girl's hands tightened swiftly about his wrist,
dragged it down as he drew a careful bead on the towering beast that,
from the edge of the grassy glen, surveyed the two through tiny, myopic
eyes.
An incredible mountain of flesh it was. More than eighty feet long
with a rubbery, elephantine hide that draped its ugly carcass in
sinewy ripples. Its long neck, surmounted by a ridiculously minute
head, twitched nervously from one side to the other as its inadequate
nostrils strove to identify this strange, tantalizingly foreign scent.
As Larry watched spellbound, the gigantic monster broke into lumbering
motion. Its huge feet created thunder as it crashed blindly through the
forest, leaving in its wake a swath of broken young trees and trampled
underbrush.
"It won't attack us," explained the girl in answer to Larry's
questioning stare. "It's herbivorous. That is, if it's what I think it
is. It was probably more frightened than we were. But how it ever got
here, in _this_ age--"
"For Pete's sake, what was it?"
The girl shook her head. "Unless," she answered slowly, "I've gone
completely mad--and I may easily have done so--it was a brontosaurus!
An ancient reptile of the Mesozoic Age. _The last one should have died
over a hundred million years ago!_"
"Preposterous!" gasped Larry.
"I know it's preposterous. But we saw it. Which means--" The girl
turned a puzzled face to him. "Do you know anything about Time?"
"Time?" Larry glanced at his watch. "Why, it's exactly 10:59. Say,
that's funny! It was just 10:59 when I was running up those steps."
"I don't mean that kind of time. Though that may have something to
do with it. I mean, do you know anything about the scientific theory
of Time? For if our experience means anything ... if that really was
a brontosaurus we saw ... and if your wrist-watch has stopped at
10:59...."
"Yes?" said Larry.
"Then," said the girl solemnly, "somehow or other you and I have
experienced a temporal shift outside the ken of Earthly physics. We are
lost in Time!"
* * * * *
"Neatly put, young lady!" said a quiet, approving voice. "Very neatly
decided. I should not have expected such quick intelligence from one of
your era."
Larry and the girl turned swiftly. Standing near them was a tiny man,
no higher than Larry's shoulders. He wore a curious one-piece garment
of woven metal fabric, on the belt or harness of which depended a host
of studded instruments, pouches, and oddly shaped tools or ornaments.
Upon his overlarge, almost bulbous head was a sort of cap which
completely covered his scalp and ears. Strange telescopic glasses,
covering his bulging eyes, lent his face an elfin quality. There was a
pleased smile on his lips--one which disclosed a pale, double ridge of
cartilage in his upper and lower jaws where his teeth should have been.
His face was smooth and hairless.
"Who," demanded Larry, "are you? And how did you get here?"
"You were so engrossed in the brontosaurus," said the diminutive
stranger, "that you did not notice my approach. Permit me to introduce
myself. I am Harg-Ofortu, Chief Archeologist of the Planetary Museum.
And you?"
"Larry Wilson. Civil engineer. And this is Miss--Miss--"
"Sandra Day," supplied the girl. "I am--or was--assistant curator of
the Philadelphia Museum."
"So?" The little man nodded delightedly. "Don't tell me, now. Let me
guess!" He placed a wizened finger on his temple, studied the two
carefully. "Those garments ... and that antique firearm ... your early
Amerglish speech ... I should judge you to be from that period just
preceding the Communal World State. About the year--let me see--the
year 2000 A.D. Is that right?"
"You know damned well it's right!" snorted Larry. "This is the year
1940, of course. What's the gag?"
"Gag?" repeated Harg wonderingly. "Oh, yes--gag! A jest; a trick. Why,
there is no--er--gag. I was merely attempting to place your position in
the world line. You see, _this_ is the year M-62. You would call it--"
He pondered briefly. "You would call it--25,983 A.D."
"What!" Larry's fingers crept tighter about the butt of his automatic.
"Hey, Sandra, let's get out of here! This guy's nuts!"
Harg smiled upon the young engineer benignly, but his hand toyed
with one of the metallic studs on his harness. "I shouldn't attempt
anything--er--rash, if I were you," he suggested quietly. "I believe
the young lady is beginning to comprehend. Am I not right, Miss Day?"
"I--I think so," nodded the girl faintly. "Larry, this really is the
two-hundred-and-sixtieth century. Harg is not fooling us. Through some
incredible accident ... or maybe by design...."
Harg rubbed his wee hands together triumphantly.
"But by design!" he cried. "Oh, most assuredly by design! _I_ brought
you here! I, Harg-Ofortu! You are the results of my experiments."
"Experiments?" Larry didn't like the sound of the word. His eyes
narrowed.
"Yes. The results of my experiments with the Time warp. Surely you
know that Time can be warped? But, yes--of course you do. Even in your
unenlightened era men had begun to recognize that fact. Still, it has
taken all these intervening millenia for a human brain to unravel the
problem of utilizing this knowledge. And I, Harg-Ofortu, have done it!
I have brought you here, alive and unharmed, as a living proof of my
genius."
"And now that we're here--?" began Sandra.
Harg beamed.
"Ah, the glory that is yours! You most fortunate children of a
slumbrous past. From you we shall learn many things, things to fill
gaps in our history of mankind. From your infantile brains we can
extract racial memories stretching back to the early simian beginnings.
From your bodies we can learn the history of man's early structure.
"You have hair! Teeth! Ears! It would not even surprise me to find
that you have rudimentary gills. Maybe vermiform appendices! Oh, what
marvelous subjects you will make for the dissecting table!"
Sandra's color fled; her breath hissed sharply.
"Dissecting table! But surely you can't mean to use us for--"
Harg silenced her with a tiny gesture. "Come, now. Let us waste no more
time in idle chatter. We have delayed long enough, and I am afire with
impatience. We will go to the laboratory."
* * * * *
Until this morning, Larry had maintained an incredulous silence. But
now, with a sudden movement, he stepped before Sandra, his automatic
leveled.
"Not us, fella!" he rapped. "I'm not such a keen student of this Time
business, but I know when I'm behind the little black ball numbered
eight. You got us here, you say? Okay--we've had a nice visit but we
don't like the climate. So we'll be toddling off now. Send us back
where we belong. And--" He jiggled the gun threateningly. "And get
working on it before I make you look like a second-hand punch-board."
"My dear aborigine!" laughed Harg softly. His tiny fingers sought
and pressed one of his metal studs. A golden glow diffused about
him, forming a radiant mesh of shimmering light about his body.
"Certainly you do not think to harm _me_ with your elementary weapon of
destruction? Now, come, before I am compelled to use force."
"You," said Larry grimly, "asked for it!" And his finger tightened
on the trigger. The automatic barked leaden death directly at Harg's
breast. The little man of time yet-to-be smiled maddeningly. Before
Larry's stupefied gaze, a flattened, shapeless blob of lead _splatted_
against the golden haze, fell dully to the ground!
Again Larry fired. This time Harg moved slightly. The bullet glanced
off the lustrous force-armor, ricocheted from the ochre web to fly
screaming into the woods beyond. Larry flung his impotent weapon away.
"Well, if that won't do it, maybe _this_--" And he stepped toward the
smirking scientist, fists clenched. His arms touched the thin mist,
then his heaving chest.
And, strangely, his head was aswim with an overwhelming giddiness.
His limbs were numb with a creeping impotence that suffused his body,
dulled his senses. The gray sky above seemed to recede far, far
into the distance. There was mocking laughter in his ears, darkness
gathering before his eyes. The last sound he heard as he sank, weak and
helpless, into the swirling haze of unconsciousness, was the cry of
Sandra Day--
"_Larry!_"