"Go on!" encouraged Bauml, while Dr. Edwards began to listen in some
surprise. "I agree so far! This is Earth, but where do we go from here?"
"Let us disregard, for the moment," said Henry, "that there is no
night. Just concentrate on the fact that we can't see the sun at
_any_ time, clouds or no clouds. Ergo, the ionosphere has changed its
composition. It would take millions of years to do that, just as it
took billions of years to build it up in the first place. I submit
that the sun has cooled and the ionosphere is much thicker than it
was before, thus acquiring different characteristics of refraction
which reflect light back to Earth. It is almost like a mirror. Just
as it once reflected radio waves back, it now shuts out the shorter
wavelengths, including light, itself. I submit further, that if the sun
were still bright we should notice a difference in relative brightness
between day and night. Inasmuch as there is no difference, I say that
the sun is now grown dim and feeble, and that we have traveled perhaps
a billion years into the future."
"Hey!" cried out another civilian. "I thought there were only five
psychos in camp! One billion years! What the--"
"Yes," put in Dr. Edwards, with an impatient scowl, "this business of
extrapolating is next to nothing, as it leads nowhere. By the boy's own
argument I could give the rebuttal that if a billion years have passed
then Venus may have had time to finally develop an ionosphere and thus
be able to support the higher forms of life. Behold! I submit that we
are on Venus!" This was followed by sympathetic laughter all around.
"Wait now," insisted Dr. Bauml. "Give the boy a chance! Henry, you
_have_ let me down into mere hypothesis, but we might as well have all
of it. Let me ask you a question. If the sun has cooled, why are we
surrounded by all this evidence of lush, tropical life? We should be
freezing!"
Henry replied immediately. "Either the ionosphere has developed a
sustained reaction that provides us with heat and the regular, life
sustaining quanta, while absorbing the hard radiations, or--" He
paused, groping suddenly for words.
"Or what!" demanded Dr. Edwards.
"Or _someone_ has set up nuclear heating plants all over the planet,
or their equivalents. Wait!" He held up his hand as Dr. Edwards joined
half the others in derisive laughter. "Go back to that alien creature
who stole the babies. Just before he disappeared, precipitating us into
our present environment, he spoke to us in a gutteral language that
was vaguely familiar. You were present, Doctor Bauml, when he spoke. I
understand you recognized that language. What was it?"
* * * * *
Dr. Edwards sobered. He and Merman and Burley and the others stared at
the diminutive astronomer. The latter looked embarrassed.
"I--am German, as you know," he said. "As such I was naturally familiar
with Middle High German, owing to my educational background. That is
what this alien spoke. I only caught a few words, which were to the
effect that no harm would come to any of us if we did something or
other."
"Why didn't you tell us this before?" queried Merman. "If that freak
spoke German--"
"Wait!" interrupted Henry. "Middle High German is a dead language.
It came into use in the dark ages before the Renaissance and it died
out with Martin Luther in the Sixteenth Century of our own era. The
fact that this alien spoke that language indicates that he is a time
traveler. He has been in our era before and I'll tell you where, when
and why!"
"_That_ is a tall order," put in Dr. Edwards.
Uncle Andy turned to Valerie Roagland and the air hostess. "This is the
tallest extrapolating I've ever heard from Henry."
By this time, many other people were gathering around to listen,
including servicemen and a number of Tommy Weston's men.
"All right!" said Merman. "Let's have it! Where, when and why?"
"The place?" said Henry. "Westphalia, Germany. The time? Twelve
eighty-four A.D. The reason? To kidnap children. Oh, I forgot to
mention the town...."
"Hamelin!" exclaimed Dr. Bauml, astounded. "You mean--"
"Yes," said Henry. "The Pied Piper of Hamelin--no legend. An actual
fact!"
"What is this?" asked one of Weston's construction stiffs. "A booby
hatch? Let's get on with the meeting. Weston'll be here any minute!"
"Wait!" said Henry again. "Analyze it for yourselves. What does _pied_
mean?"
"Mottled color," someone offered.
"Exactly!" Henry exclaimed. "But it was no clown suit worn in a
fairytale. Our alien's skin was definitely mottled. And he was a piper,
too!"
"What do you mean?" asked Dr. Edwards.
"I heard it, Martia heard it, and the two children who were kidnapped
heard it. I believe only younger ears can hear it owing to a greater
sensitivity of the hair cells in the spiral cochlea. The sound, of
course, has nothing to do with flutes. It was a phenomenon produced by
his equipment."
"Hold on, screwball!" said another one of Weston's gang. "I know all
about that Pied Piper yarn. What about the rats in Hamelin? How did he
get rid of those?"
"Legends," said Henry, "are twisted from the truth because people who
inherit such stories must always reduce the Unknown to the level of
their own understanding, just as the people of our own time insisted
that the flying saucers were everything from beer bottle tops to
weather balloons. People in following generations could not accept
the original story, so it degenerated gradually into a nice little
bedtime story. But the fact remains, this Pied Piper is a time traveler
who needs children for some purpose of his own. He represents a very
advanced science. It is possible that he is here, somewhere, and _if_
he is, we might have a chance of getting him to send us all back to
where we came from!"
Suddenly, the Indian Prince broke into their midst. His turban was
slightly awry, his eyes were large with anxiety, and he was sweating.
"Please!" he exclaimed, in a thick accent, wringing his fat hands in
supplication before Henry. "You are an older soul! You have a vision
beyond us all! I believe only you can save us! If you can bring me back
to my own world I will pay you anything! I am rich! My fortune is yours
if you will do it!"
This led to general confusion, but it also led to something else. One
of Weston's men separated himself from the crowd and went to find
his leader. Weston and Sceranka were back in camp, eating supper and
licking their wounds. But they were gratified by one salient fact.
Scarface was conspicuous by his absence. There would be no interference
from him tonight....
* * * * *
When the meeting took place, Weston and Sceranka came to it alone. The
rest of the gang, numbering about thirteen, were nowhere in sight.
Merman and Burley told him about the missing people and suggested a
postponement.
"To hell with that!" he told them. His mouth, though bruised by
Scarface's fists, grinned at them in a way that was not at all
reassuring, and his tawny eyes met theirs with a new confidence born
of secret knowledge. "We can send a search party later. Right now we're
concerned with--"
"In other words," Burley broke in, unsmilingly, "you insist on having
the meeting?" About fifteen officers and servicemen silently closed in
around the periphery of the group, but this did not appear to bother
Weston, although Sceranka kept looking at them nervously.
"Yes," Weston answered. "Let's have the meeting!"
"Then you are out of order!" snapped Burley. "We will follow those
rules of order which are befitting to a deliberative assembly. Captain
Merman is our Chairman. We have an agenda for discussion, which will
be introduced in proper sequence. Anyone wishing to speak will first
recognize the Chair."
"Oh can it!" fumed Weston. "That's why I'm here--to tell you we're
going to cut all the red tape and get down to facts--"
At a sign from Merman, two M.P.s stepped forward and tapped Weston on
the shoulder. Each carried a club. They smiled through their teeth.
"We are the Sergeants at Arms," said the largest of the two, who was at
least within twenty pounds of Weston's brawny mass. "Do you want to be
nice or be made to stand in a corner?"
Weston appeared to swell like a toad. When his eyes met Sceranka's,
over the M.P.'s shoulder, he nodded almost imperceptibly. Whereupon
Sceranka threw his hat into the air.
Within three seconds, six G.I.s on the outside of the circle yelled in
pain and fell to the ground. Protruding from their backs were crude
but sturdy arrows. Standing on the beach sand just outside the jungle
were twelve bowmen, all from Weston's gang. Two were Spaniards. One
was a Filipino law student who had flunked out of Oxford. One was a
pale, continental type, a non-descript foreigner traveling on a French
passport whom Merman had suspected of being a Communist spy. The rest
were American construction stiffs--not the ordinary kind who signed
up on a year's contract to save up and come home again, but the camp
drifters who had roamed the world since adolescence, men actually
without a country, uneducated, but capable of running heavy equipment
for American tax dollars. It was strictly a "cost-plus" crew, thought
Burley.
Women screamed. Men cursed. And there were cries of "Murderers!"
"Assassins!"
Weston and Sceranka ran to a position in front of their men, who handed
them the only two axes in camp.
"All right!" Weston shouted. "I thought this party would turn out this
way. From now on, _I'll_ run this show! You're going to shut your traps
and listen to _me_!"
* * * * *
The remaining officers and servicemen, plus many of the older male
civilian members of the camp, were gathering swiftly into a sullen
crowd, facing Weston's bowmen.
"When we charge 'em," whispered one officer, "throw sand in their eyes
and let 'em have it!"
"Just a minute," said Uncle Andy to all the members of his own group.
"All this happened because we failed to recognize the man's ignorance.
Let him talk! Talk is cheaper than human lives. Let's hear what he has
to say!"
"Well, Dearden," shouted Weston, "You're getting smart!--even if you
are insulting. But I'll take care of you later!"
"All right!" agreed Burley. "Let him jabber!"
"Spill it, Weston!" shouted Merman. "We've got plenty of time around
here. All our lives!"
"No we ain't!" Weston answered. "We ain't got no time at all. We think
there's a way of gettin' back to where we came from! Hey, Mohammed!" he
yelled at the Indian Prince. "You willing to come on my side and pay
off like you said if I get you back home?"
The Indian Prince, though frightened, separated himself from the crowd.
He stood there, hesitantly, looking first at Weston, then back at
Henry. "I will go with anyone," he said, "even assassins, if they lead
me home! And I will pay! But young Henry here--he's the one who--"
"Sure!" grinned Weston. "Henry's the boy with the answers! You didn't
think we were going to leave _him_ out, did you? He's going to help
us find that big, bad bogeyman who stole the babies. And then when we
find him we're going to sort of talk him into sending us back--that is,
those who are on my side!"
"What's the matter with you, Weston!" shouted Burley. "We all have the
same goal. If you had taken time to listen--"
"Pipe down! We been listening to you government guys all our lives and
never got nowhere. We don't want this party to turn into another Korean
truce talk. We want action!"
* * * * *
In that moment, Weston saw action, but of a totally unimagined kind.
Very suddenly, the world about them changed. Geologically, it was the
same. The same, eternal daylight sky was above them. Before them lay
the same, mysterious ocean with its plethora of unknown life forms. The
low hills, the jungles, the flowers, the colorful birds--almost all the
same.
* * * * *
But the jungle had been cleared away for several miles, and in its
place stood a modern city with tall, well-designed buildings, electric
power facilities, and motorized traffic. On the sea lay a fleet of
gray battleships and cruisers. In the sky were at least a hundred jet
aircraft, of strangely futuristic design, black and delta-shaped. The
latter were attacking the warships with bombs and rocket fire, and
their ears were assailed by the staccato reports of guns answering from
the ships--and from the land.
The city defenses were aimed also at the strange, black aircraft.
Ack-ack was all over the sky. Bombs and planes screamed through the
air, and the ground shook with the shock of explosions.
The castaways, including Weston's gang, stood on a great pier before
the sprawling city--a pier which lay half demolished around them,
smouldering from several recent hits. Nearby, out in the water, lay
a commuter vessel, semi-capsized, its crew and uniformed personnel
leaping overboard and attempting to swim back to shore.
Armed troops were all around the castaways, rushing to set up new
defenses on the pier, to repair loading derricks and put out fires with
portable equipment.
"Hey!" shouted one of the castaways. "It's just like back home!"
"Civilization!" shouted another. "That screwy Garden of Eden was all a
bad dream! We're back--thank God!"
Henry reasoned it was not the scene of battle they were welcoming. It
was rather the transition from an unknown situation to a comprehensible
one that they hailed with such relief.
"What is it?" queried Martia, close beside him. "What's happening?
Where are we?"
"We're _not_ back home," he said. "Still in the future--but an
alternate one. Keep your eyes open and we'll know very soon."
This was a pointed remark, inasmuch as an officered detail of troops
had turned its amazed attention on the heterogeneous group. Weston's
gang, especially, looked like a bunch of anachronisms with their crude
bows and arrows and their stupidly gaping mouths.
"Look!" cried Doctor Bauml, pointing over the heads of the approaching
soldiers. "On that distant hill!"
When everybody looked, they saw, unmistakably, a towering space ship,
its slender nose pointing skyward. Men swarmed over it like ants,
removing scaffolding. Some of the attacking planes were concentrating
on this point and were being met with the most determined counter-fire
observable in any part of the city.
"That rocket ship," said Uncle Andy, "seems to be the main issue of the
battle."
"Andy!" exclaimed Valerie Roagland. "Are all of us insane?"
"I say there!" cried the officer in charge of the detail surrounding
them. His accent was unmistakably British. "Who are you and whence came
you?"
"That would be a better question if _we_ asked it," replied Burley.
"What the devil _is_ this!" He waved his hand in an all-inclusive
gesture.
The officer's eyes narrowed. "Why do you evade the question?" he almost
growled. "You are certainly not of New Bretania. Therefore, you are
Texanian spies! You are under arrest!"
"Good Lord!" exclaimed Henry, turning pale. "Oh no!"
"What, Henry? What is it?" insisted Martia. Uncle Andy, Valerie, Miss
Hollenbeck and Pee Bee crowded close, listening to the two and watching
their captors at the same time.
* * * * *
Burley drew himself up and addressed the officer. "I am an official
representative of the government of the United States of America," he
said. "I demand--"
"My dear sir," flamed the officer. "You are not in a position to make
demands. You will follow me promptly and obey orders under penalty of
death! Can you not understand that we are under martial law here?"
"Git on wi' ye!" said one soldier nearby, prodding Weston and Sceranka
with a double-barreled, automatic rifle. "Or ye'll git a puck in the
lug!"
"Let's go, everybody," said Colonel Rogers. "Inasmuch as this is a
military situation I'll take charge of our group and be the spokesman.
When we're presented to the authorities for questioning we'll have
time enough to tell our story."
"And who would believe it?" asked Dr. Edwards, pessimistically.
"Who would believe _this_!" retorted Colonel Rogers.
They all marched along with their captors, including Weston and
company, simply because there was no alternative.
In a subterranean staff headquarters somewhere in the center of the
city, they faced an impatient Major in the service of Her Majesty,
Helena III, Empress of New Bretania.
"What is all this!" he complained, over an unprocessed pile of urgent
communiques, even as two visiphones on his desk glowed red call signals
simultaneously. "Who are you? I can't be bothered at a time like this--"
"We don't wish to bother you," interrupted Colonel Rogers. He could
appreciate the indescribable urgency of war and knew it would be best
not to antagonize the officer with too much verbage. "Our presence
here is not of our choosing and it would take too long to explain,
although we are perfectly wiling to do so at your convenience. Suffice
it to say, we are neither New Bretanians nor Texanians. So I suggest
you place us in protective custody for the time being, and if you need
volunteers for some of the manual work in the city you may call upon us
to help."
The Major ignored the visiphones and glared at Colonel Rogers. "I
said--who are you?"
"I am Colonel Rogers, attached to the Infantry of the United States
Army, and these are--"
"United States!" exclaimed the Major. "That's a myth! What in the devil
are you trying to say?"
Henry shook his head sadly, but with a grim expression of conviction on
his aquiline face.
Martia's eyes were wide as she drew closer to him. "Henry!" she
whispered. "I think I _know_!" Tears came to her eyes, and she said,
"Mother! I'll never see her again."
For answer, Henry pressed her hand, wordlessly, and continued looking
at the Major.
"Please!" said Dr. Bauml, pressing forward. "What is this battle all
about? What is that space ship for?"
* * * * *
The Major sprang to his feet, motioning to the guard detail that had
brought them in. "These strangers are some type of Fifth Column!" he
exclaimed. "They are obviously attempting to camouflage their true
identities and their purpose under a blanket of innocence! But no one
could be _that_ innocent of the facts!" He leaned forward, addressing
Dr. Bauml. "My dear sir, in case you have been reposing under a rock
somewhere, I'll bring you up to date! Earth is dying! The ionosphere is
shifting toward critical mass. Our race--the human race--is becoming
sterile under the hardening radiations. It is imperative that we
transport some of our kind to another world--Venus, to be specific! Or
hadn't you heard that Hardesty and Williams discovered an atmosphere
there under the upper dust strata? The Texanians could not build an ark
such as ours--so they want it!" His dark eyes blazed angrily. "_You_
want it! You are Texanians and you want our ship, but you're not going
to get it! Take them away! They are spies!"
"Irons, sir?" asked the officer in charge of the detail.
"Irons be damned! Execute them! This is war!"
They stood in a bleak prison yard, sixty-nine passengers of MATS flight
702, London to New York. But where they were just now did not matter.
A ganged battery of machine guns faced them, with one operator seated
apathetically at a bank of controls.
"_Ready--!_" cried the officer in charge.
Some of the women screamed, while others prayed. Uncle Andy had an arm
around Valerie Roagland, as well as Henry and Martia. Sceranka was
swearing in Polish. Pee Bee was hiding behind as many people as he
could find, shivering.
"_Aim--!_"
Henry thought: This is all impossible! I can't let it happen! But who
am I to--
Something began to happen inside his head. It felt like he had had
a cold and his ears were clearing up. But it was purely a mental
sensation. Suddenly, he saw everything with a new clarity. And in the
same instant he began to utilize that new faculty.
But before the word, "Fire!" could be given, a new change occurred with
the abruptness of an explosion....
* * * * *
They were back again at the old campsite on that timeless shore, with
the jungle all around them. The city was gone, as were the warships and
the planes and the soldiers--and the space ship. There stood Weston and
Sceranka as before, in front of their calloused bowmen.