_The Chase to the End of the World_
The giant mechanism, fashioned in the guise of a man, lay dying. Yet
not that, for it never had had life. It lay deranged; out of order;
its intricate cycle was still operating, but faintly, laboriously.
Jangling out of tune.
Every moment its internal energy was lessening. It seemed to want to
talk. The beams of its eyes rolled wildly. It said:
"Tugh--did this--to me. I came back here frightened because I knew
that Tugh still controlled me. You--hear me...."
There was a muffled, rumbling blur, then its voice clicked on again.
"When Tugh came I opened the door to him, even though the girl tried
to stop me.... And I was humble before Tugh.... But he was angry
because I had released you. He--deranged me. I tried to fight him, and
he ripped open my side porte...."
I thought the mechanism had gone inert. From within it was complete
silence. Larry murmured, "Good Lord, this is gruesome!"
Then the faint, rasping voice started again.
"Deranged me.... And about Tugh, he--" A blur. Then again, "Tugh--he
is--Tugh, he is--"
It went into a dull repetition of the three words, ending in a rumble
which died into complete silence. The red radiance from the
eye-sockets faded and vanished.
The thing we had called Migul seemed gone. There was only this metal
shell, cast to represent a giant human figure, lying here with its
operating mechanisms out of order--smashed.
* * * * *
I stood up. "That's the end of it. Mary Atwood's gone--"
"With Tugh in the Time-cage!" Larry exclaimed. "Tina, can't we--"
"Follow them?" Tina interrupted. "Come on! No--you two wait here. I
will go upstairs and verify if the Time-cage is gone."
She came back in a moment. The laboratory overhead was fortunately
deserted of Robots: Larry and I had not thought of that.
"The cage is gone!" Tina exclaimed. "Migul told us the truth!"
We hastened back through the tunnel, past the guard, up into the
palace and into the garden. My heart pounded in my throat for fear
that Tina's Time-cage would have vanished. But it stood, dimly glowing
under the foliage where she had left it.
A young man rushed up to us and said, "Princess Tina, look there!"
A great row of colored lights sailed slowly past overhead. The
_Micrad_ was here, circling over the city. The storm had abated; it
had rained only for a brief time.[6] The crazy winds were subsiding.
The _Micrad_ was using its deranging ray: we could hear the thrum of
it. It sent out vibrations which threw the internal mechanisms of the
Robots out of adjustment, and they were dropping in their tracks all
over the city.
[Footnote 6: It was afterward found that many of the Robots, heedless
of the rain as they ran about the city intent upon their murderous
work, had exploded by getting too wet.]
* * * * *
It chanced, as momentarily we stood there at the entrance to the
Time-cage while the great airliner swept by, that the top of the
nearby laboratory was visible through the trees. We saw a white
search-beam from the _Micrad_ come down and disclosed a group of
Robots on the laboratory roof. Then the spreading beam of the
deranging ray struck them, and they stood an instant transfixed,
stricken, with wildly flailing arms. Then one toppled and fell. Then
another. Two rushed together, locked in each other's grip, desperately
fighting because of some crazy, deranged thought-impulse. They swayed
and tore at each other until both wilted and sank inert. Another
tottered with jerky steps to the edge of the roof and plunged
headlong, crashing with a great metal clatter to the stone paving of
the ground....
The young man who had joined us dashed into the palace. We heard his
shouts:
"The revolt is over! The revolt is over!"
This had been a massacre similar to Tugh's vengeance upon the New York
City of 1935; just as senseless. Both, from the beginning, were
equally hopeless of ultimate success. Tugh could not conquer this
Time-world, so now he had left it, taking Mary Atwood with him....
We hastened into the Time-cage. Larry and I braced ourselves for the
shock as Tina slid the door closed and hurried to the controls.
Within a moment we were flashing off into the great stream of Time....
* * * * *
"You think he has gone forward into the future?" Larry asked. "Won't
the instrument show anything, Tina?"
"No. No trace of him yet."
We were passing 3,000 A.D., traveling into the future. Tina reasoned
that Tugh, according to Harl's confession, had originally come from a
future Time-world. It seemed most probable that now he would return
there.
The Time-telespectroscope so far had shown us no evidence of the other
cage. Tina kept the telescope barrel trained constantly on that other
space five hundred feet from us which held Tugh's vehicle. The flowing
gray landscape off there gave no sign of our quarry; yet we knew we
could not pass it, without at least a brief flash of it in the
telespectroscope and upon the image-mirror. Nervously, breathlessly we
waited for a sign of the other Time-cage.
But nothing showed. We were not traveling fast. With Larry and Tina at
the instrument table, I was left to stand at the window. Always I
gazed eastward. That other little point of space only five hundred
feet to the east held Mary; she was there; but not _now_. She was
remote, inaccessible. The thought of her with Tugh, so inaccessible,
set me shuddering.
I was barely aware of the changing gray outlines of the city: I
stared, praying for the fleeting glimpse of a spectral cage.... I
think that up to 3,000 A.D., New York remained much the same. And
then, quite suddenly, in some vast storm or cataclysm, it was gone. I
saw but a blurred chaos. This was near 4,000 A.D. Then it was rebuilt,
smaller, with more trees growing about, until presently there seemed
only a forest. People, if they still were here, were building such
transitory structures that I could not see them.
* * * * *
5,000 A.D. Mankind no doubt had reached its peak of civilization,
paused at the summit and now was in decadence, reverting to savagery.
Perhaps in Europe the civilized peak lasted longer. This was a
backward space during the ascent; perhaps now it was reverting faster
to the primitive.
But I think that by 15,000 A.D., mankind over all the Earth had become
primitive. There is no standing still: we must go forward; or back.
Man, with his own machines softening him, enabling him to do nothing,
eventually unfitted himself to cope with nature. That storm at 4,000
A.D. in New York, for instance, even in my own Time would have been
merely an incentive to reconstruct upon a greater scale. But the men
of 4,000 A.D. could not do that....
At the year 10,000 A.D., with a seemingly primeval forest around us,
Tina, Larry and I held an anxious consultation. We had anticipated
that Tugh would stop in his own Time-world. That might have been
around 3,000 or 4,000; but we hardly thought, as we viewed the scene
in passing, that he had come originally from beyond 4,000. He was too
civilized.
Tugh had not stopped. He had to be still ahead of us, so our course
was to follow. Whenever he stopped, we would see him. If he turned
back and flashed past us, that too would be evident. But if, from
2,930, he had gone into the past--!
* * * * *
And then suddenly we glimpsed the other cage! It was ahead of us,
traveling more slowly and retarding as though about to stop. A gray
unbroken forest was here. The time was about 12,000 A.D. Tina saw it
first through the little telescopic-barrel; then it showed on the
mirror-grid--a faint, ghostly-barred shape, thin as gossamer. We even
saw it presently through the window. It held its steady position,
level with us, hanging solid amid the melting, changing gray outlines
of the forest trees. They blurred it as they rose and fell.
This chase through Time! The two cages sped forward with the gray
panorama whirling around them. Of all the scene, only that other cage,
to us, was real. Yet it was the cages which were apparitions.
We gathered at our eastward window to gaze across the void of that
five hundred feet. The interior of Tugh's cage was not visible to us.
A little window--a thinner patch in the lattices of the
cage-side--fronted us; but nothing showed in it.
We were so helpless! Only five hundred feet away, the Tugh cage was
there--now; yet we could do nothing save hold our Time-changing rate
to conform with it. Of course Tugh saw us. He was making no effort to
elude us, for neither cage was running at its maximum.
For hours I stood gazing, praying that Mary might be safe, striving
with futile fancy to guess what might be transpiring within that cage
speeding side by side with us in the blurred shadows of the corridors
of Time.
And again, as so many times before, I was balked at guessing Tugh's
motives for his actions. He knew we could not assail him unless he
stopped. But to what destination was he going?
* * * * *
It was a chase--to our consciousness of the passing of Time--which
lasted several hours. Tugh altered his Time-rate and sped more
swiftly. My heart sank, for this showed he was not preparing to stop.
We lost direct sight of the other cage several times as it drew ahead
of us. But it was always visible on the image-mirror.
"I think," Tina said finally, "that we should stay behind it. When he
retards to stop, we will have a better opportunity of landing
simultaneously with him."
We passed 100,000 A.D. The forest went down, and it seemed that only
rocks were here. A barren vista was visible off to the river and the
distant sea. The familiar conformations of the sea and the land were
changed. There was a different shore-line. It was nearer at hand now;
and it was creeping closer.
I stared at that blurred gray surface of water; at the wide,
undulating stretch of rock. We came to 1,000,000 A.D.--a million years
into my future. Ice came briefly, and vanished again. But there were
no trees springing into life on this barren landscape. I could not
fancy that even the transitory habitations of humans were here in this
cold desolation.
Were we headed for the End? I could envisage a dying world, its
internal fires cooling.
Ten million years.... Then a hundred million.... The gray scene,
blended of dark nights and sunshine days, began changing its
monochrome. There were fleeting alternating intervals, now, when it
was darker, and then lighter with a tinge of red. The Earth's rotation
was slowing down. Through thousands of centuries the change had been
proceeding, but only now could I see the lengthening days and nights.
Perhaps now the day was a month long, and the night the same.
* * * * *
A billion years! 1,000,000,000 A.D.! By now the day and the year were
of equal length. And it chanced that this Western Hemisphere faced the
sun. I could see the sun now, motionless above the horizon. The scene
was dull red. The sun painted the rocks and the sullen sea with
blood....
A shout from Larry whirled me round. "George! Good God!"
He was bending over the image-mirror; Tina, ghastly pale, with utter
horror stamped upon her face, sprang for the controls. On the mirror I
caught a fleeting glimpse of Tugh's cage, wrecked and broken--and
instantly gone.
"It stopped!" Larry shouted. "Good God, it stopped all at once! It was
wrecked! Smashed!"
We reeled; I all but lost consciousness with the shock of our own
abrupt retarding. Our cage stopped and turned back. Tina located the
wreckage and stopped again.
We slid the door open. The outer air was deadly cold. The sun was a
huge dull-red ball hanging in the haze of a grey sky. The rocks were
grey-black, with the blood-light of the sun upon them.
Five hundred feet from us, by the shore of an oily, sullen sea, the
wreckage of Tugh's cage was piled in a heap. Near it, the crumpled
white figure of Mary lay on the rocks. And beside her, still with his
black cloak around him, crouched Tugh!