"And you really mean to try it?" I asked incredulously.
"I do," Lantin quietly replied. "I am going to find that secret of
time-traveling and go after Cannell."
I stared at him doubtfully. A day had passed since we had seen Cannell
seized by the misty shape of horror he called the Raider, and now, in
the same room in Lantin's apartment, we were discussing what we had
seen. After the first hours of dazed terror following the seizure of
Cannell, I had fallen to sleep on a couch in that room, and when I woke
in late afternoon, the whole thing seemed only a tortured nightmare.
"It seems impossible," I told Lantin. "We saw Cannell taken, yes, and
we saw--the Raider. But after all, we have no proof that he was taken
into time. That thing, the Raider, may have merely thrown a veil of
invisibility around itself, and thus vanished. A crazy idea, I admit,
but not as wild as this one of time-traveling."
"You do not believe your own words, Wheeler," answered my friend. "You
heard Cannell's story, and in your heart you believe it. I believe
it utterly, for it is the only way of accounting for that three-year
disappearance. You noticed that Cannell seemed no older, after those
three years? And then, as further proof, came the thing he described to
us, the Raider itself."
"We saw that," I admitted, "but all argument aside, Lantin, this idea
of moving through time at will seems absurd. Of course, I've heard
fantastic ideas on the subject, but how could anyone really tamper with
time, the most unalterable and remorseless quantity in life?"
Lantin considered me before replying. "Such an achievement is beyond
our present science," he conceded, "but it may be quite possible to the
science of the future. You see my meaning? Remember, Wheeler, it is
only within the last few years that our science has learned anything at
all about time. Previously it was considered one of the last mysteries,
never to be investigated or explained. But now, with the recent work
of Einstein and Lorentz and Minkowski, we are beginning to learn
something about this time. We have learned, for instance, that it is
only another dimension of space itself, and that the four dimensions of
any object are thus length, breadth, thickness, and _duration_.
"We know now that time is not fixed and unchangeable, but relative and
varying, that the time of Venus is not the time of earth, and that the
time of Sirius is different from either. And remember, all of this we
have learned within the last few years.
"What, then, may not be learned in the next thousand years, the next
ten thousand, the next million? Is it not reasonable to suggest that
men will advance farther and farther in their knowledge concerning this
elusive thing, time, until they finally will advance so far that they
will be able to _control_ time, to travel in it at will, and thus sweep
back from their own day, back to our present age? Is it not possible
that men can do this, in some century to come?"
"That _men_ can do this?" I repeated. "_Men_, you say, but the thing
we saw was no man, Lantin. That thing, the Raider, was very far from
human."
"It is so," he admitted, "but that proves nothing. The Raider may be
some thing of the far future, either a strange product of ages of
change and evolution, or a visitor from another planet, racing through
time and snatching up victims in every age and land. You remember that
Cannell was seized at Angkor? And a thousand years ago, Angkor was a
mighty city, and who knows but the Raider was speeding back to the days
of Angkor's life and greatness, when it chanced on Cannell there? It is
a strange business, Wheeler; but one thing I am certain of, and that is
that the Raider does come from some time far in the future, and that it
has taken Cannell back with it to that time."
"But the method," I insisted, "the method of traveling through time?
How is that accomplished? Cannell spoke of a theory he had concerning
it. And he gave you those notes--"
"I've examined those notes," Lantin said, "and rough and fragmentary
as they are, I think that in them lies the secret of time-traveling.
Cannell knew something of modern science, Wheeler, and the conclusions
he drew concerning the Raider are significant. It was his theory that
as time is the fourth dimension of matter, there is no basic reason why
we can't move at will along that dimension. We can move as we wish in
the other three, up-and-down, right-and-left, and back-and-forward, so
why not in the fourth, that is, sooner-or-later?
"And his idea, as expressed in his notes, was that the Raider's
movement along the time-dimension was based on electronic acceleration.
You know the electronic system as well as I, and realize that the
smallest division of matter, the atom, is nothing but a number of
electrons, or particles of electricity, revolving around a nucleus.
Cannell believed, and I think he was right, that that movement of
electrons is the basis of the movement along the time-dimension.
"To make you understand that, let me take an example. Suppose all
motion on earth stopped entirely, so that there was not the least bit
of visible motion in earth or heavens. Sun, moon, stars, ships, clocks,
trains, rivers, people, every form of motion stopping completely, so
that the earth was a completely motionless world. Then would it not be
a timeless world also? In other words, without change there would be
no such thing as time, for time depends on and is measured by change.
So that all movement along the fourth or time-dimension is intimately
related to movement along the other three or space-dimensions.
"It is exactly the same with a single, isolated object. Take a metal
ball, for instance. It moves steadily along the time-dimension, _from_
the past _toward_ the future, only because the electrons that compose
it are constantly moving along the space-dimensions, are constantly
revolving around their nucleus, at the same unvarying speed. If you
stopped that revolving of electrons, the ball of metal would become
static, timeless, would cease to move along the time-dimension. But
suppose instead of stopping the electronic movement, you accelerated
it, speeded it up? Then the ball of metal whose electronic activity was
thus accelerated would move on through time _faster_. Everything around
it would still move along the time-dimension at the same rate, but it
would be going faster, would speed on into the future, ahead of the
things around it. And the more its electronic motion was accelerated,
the farther into the future it would go.
"In the same way, if the electronic motion was reversed, the metal
ball would go _backward_ along the time-dimension, would speed back
into the past. Thus you see how such a principle could be applied
practically and enable one to speed into past or future at will, simply
by accelerating or reversing the motion of the electrons making up his
vehicle, or car."
"It seems reasonable," I admitted, "but the difficulty remains, for
how could the movement of electrons be thus accelerated or reversed
at will? Why, no man has ever even seen an electron, or ever will,
they're so infinitesimally tiny. Then how affect their speeds, their
directions?"
"You mention a difficulty," Lantin replied, "but it could be overcome,
Wheeler. As you say, no man has ever seen an electron, but for all
that, men have done some strange things with electrons. They have shot
them through films of water-vapor and have thus been able to record
their speeds and courses, without seeing the actual electrons. And
just recently, an American scientist was able to change the course of
electronic motion entirely, and shoot a stream of electrons in any
direction at will, the so-called cathode rays. When that has been done,
it doesn't seem altogether impossible to change their motion in another
way, by accelerating or reversing it."
"But there's another thing, Lantin," I said; "even though you achieved
the impossible and found a way of time-traveling, how would you find
Cannell? How could you find him, without knowing what age or what place
the Raider has taken him to? It seems like hunting for a needle in a
haystack, a thousand times magnified in difficulty."
Without answering, Lantin went to a cabinet and brought forth a big
globe, which he placed on the table before me. "I have a theory on
that, too," he said. "Note the lines I've drawn on this globe," he
added, indicating some long black pencil-lines that had been drawn on
the round surface in the region of the Pacific Ocean.
"Cannell was seized at Angkor, as we know, and he was dropped in the
open Pacific at a point a few hundred miles east of Manila. I have
marked that point with a dot here, for Cannell learned the latitude
and longitude of the spot and jotted it down. Now is it not reasonable
to suppose that when the Raider dropped Cannell, through the pain or
surprize of his shot, it was progressing in a straight line toward
its own base, or home, or lair? Of course, it was moving through time
also, but in space it was probably heading straight toward its home. So
if we draw a straight line from Angkor to this dot, on the globe, and
then continue that line straight across the globe, it's reasonable to
assume that somewhere along that continued line is the Raider's home.
"Now, you heard Cannell say that when the thing came to the ship
and fled away with the two sailors it seized, it was heading due
north when it vanished from sight. So from this dot west of Panama,
representing the ship's position, I have drawn another line straight
north. You see, the same reasoning applies here, for the thing would
again head straight toward its lair with its victims. The two lines
cross each other, as you see, in southern Illinois. And if my theory is
correct, somewhere near that point of crossing is the Raider's home,
though in what age I do not know. So if one could find the secret of
time-traveling, and speed into the future, hovering near that spot,
there is a chance that you would find the Raider--and his victims. It
is a long chance, of course, but the only one."
I was silent, pondering the things he had said. But I felt the question
in his eyes, and sensed his appeal before he voiced it.
"And you, Wheeler, will you help me? Together we can do this, can find
this secret of time-traveling and go after Cannell, follow him as he
cried for me to do. I know that he was not your close friend, as he was
mine, but I am asking you to help, nevertheless, for you are the only
one I can go to for aid. Who would credit the thing we saw, if I told
it? But you saw, and you know, you understand. And if we could work on
this together--"
Without replying, I stepped to the window and looked out, inwardly
struggling for an answer. While we talked, night had fallen, and again
the brilliant lights of the city had blossomed, like burgeoning flowers
of flame. A day had passed since we had seen Cannell seized, from this
same window. Just twenty-four hours!
I must have spoken my thought aloud, for Lantin, who had come up and
was standing beside me, repeated it. "Just twenty-four hours--to us,
Wheeler. But how long to Cannell, I wonder? Where is he tonight, do
you think; what thousands, what tens of thousands of years ahead? And
wondering if we will come after him, if we will save him--"
He stopped, but the thought persisted. Where _was_ Cannell, now? Caught
in some web of utter evil, far in the future, some unholy lair of that
hellish thing, the Raider? I remembered the fear on Cannell's face, the
fear in my own heart when the Raider had flashed down on us. Could I
venture against such a creature, even though we found the way to cross
time? Would I dare to pit myself against a being like that?
There at the window I battled my own fear, and when I finally turned,
it was to extend my hand to Lantin.
"I'm with you," I told him shortly; "if we can discover the secret of
the Raider's power, we'll follow Cannell--into time!"
_CHAPTER 5_