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Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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Astounding Stories, March 1934, with "The Time Express"
THE rotund chaplain, black-gowned, closed his book softly and intoned: "May God have mercy on your soul!"
The warden nodded to him, professionally calm. There was a watch in his hand. "Everything ready?" he inquired of the impassively waiting guard.
"Everything, sir."
The warden gazed at the inexorable dial of his watch. "Thirty seconds yet," he said softly.
No one stirred. There was silence in the death chamber, a silence in which Derek Williams, reporter for the New York Globe, could hear the pounding in his veins. He had not thought it would be so hard, this first assignment of his to witness an execution.
The still, black-shrouded figure strapped to the chair was Mike Spinnot—the most powerful, sinister figure that had arisen in the United States for many a year. Ruthless, dominating, he had organized crime into a national organization, with secret squadrons of machine gunners, rifle men, armored cars. The government itself seemed helpless against his reign of terror.
Then came a great President, honest, vigorous, forthright. He met the challenge with a swift demand for State action. Failing that, he threatened martial law. The governor of the State clamped down on a rotten, politically complacent, city. The national guard marched against the crime lord, yanked him from behind his gunners, crushed the local organization with ruthless efficiency in a welter of blood.
And so Derek was waiting, as he had never waited before, for thirty small seconds to pass.
His eyes took in the silent black figure, enthroned apart, already not of this Earth. The black mask, the metal cap, the slit trousers revealing the bare, shaven leg, the deadly electrodes, struck a discordant unhuman note.
"Time!"
The warden snapped shut his old-fashioned watch; nodded imperceptibly to the waiting electrician. That worthy reached for the switch.
"Damn you all and blast you all to hell!"
Mike Spinnot, stubbornly silent throughout, was shrieking now, out of control, cursing obscenely at the swift approach of death.
The knife edges descended, approaching the copper flanges that meant contact. Derek could not remove his fascinated eyes from the inevitable copper. Even the raving blasphemies of the condemned man sounded thin against that awful vision.
Nearer! Nearer! In a split second the juice would be hurling itself through Mike Spinnot. Ah, there it was!
But even as Derek wordlessly anticipated the contact, saw the quick quiver of the voltmeter needle over its wide arc, felt rather than saw the first straining surge of the strapped body against its shackles, there came a queer, high, humming vibration, like the buzzing of a million bees.
The strange sound grew in strength, clothed itself in a faint luminescence that seemed to coalesce before his very eyes into a whirling ovoid of flaming light. It was patently slowing down from an unimaginably terrific speed. Its noise filled the chamber.
The men in the death chamber froze into strained immobility at the sudden apparition. No one spoke, nor could they have been heard against the high penetrating whine that seemed the wind of the ovoid's motion. Then it came to a sudden whirling stop.
An egg-shaped cage sprang into view, a barred cage through which could be seen banks of curious dials and green-glowing instruments. Something moved within, something that resolved itself to the dazzled spectators in the death chamber as a man. And directly behind him—another being—a girl.
DEREK shook his head to clear the fog away; he was sure that he was weltering in some nightmare. But the vision refused to disappear. The man and girl were flesh and blood, yet there was something strange about them, something that stamped them ineradicably as not of the same race as the dumfounded group in the chamber. Their clothes, for example, luminous pea-green garments, glowing with an inner iridescence, were kilted and caught up at the waist with bands of curious red metal.
A section of the cage slid smoothly open, and the man stepped out. He was tall, commanding; his brow thrust forward under a toss of silvery hair. But it was his eyes that held Derek. They were the eyes of an enthusiast, a fanatic.
Then the girl came out from behind him, and Derek gasped. She was slim and straight as an arrow; not tall, but the proud carriage of her head gave an effect of height. Her purple-flecked eyes looked out on the assemblage with an eager curiosity, while the color heightened through her olive-tinted skin.
It was the man, his eyes aflame, somehow menacing, who broke the hushed silence of the death chamber. He had taken a step forward, was completely out of the cage.
"What have you done with Michael Spinney?" His voice was vibrant, eager; the English was correct, yet curiously slurred.
There came no answer. No one of them had recovered yet from the shock of this strange intrusion.
The face of the man purpled with rage. He lifted a threatening hand. Mechanically, Derek observed tiny metal glints at the ends of the outstretched fingers.
"Answer, you men of an ancient time!" he roared. "Answer or it will be the worse for you!"
The warden came out of his stupor. "Who are you," he demanded, "and how did you get in here?"
The man was about to answer, when the girl tugged gently at his arm.
He turned to her with swift anxiety. "What is it, Merle?"
"Look, Thoron," she said softly, her voice like the tinkling of tiny bells. "Look yonder."
Her rounded bare arm pointed to the yet strapped-in murderer, miraculously reprieved; motionless, masked through all these untoward happenings. Heaven knows what thoughts were passing through the mind of Mike Spinnot behind that mask!
Thoron's eyes burst into exultant flame. "We've come in time to save our noble ancestor."
Heedless of aught else, he ran with great sobbing cries to the side of the crime king; knelt before the shrouded figure, and—yes—kissed the feet of Mike Spinnot, murderer, criminal extraordinary.
The man called Thoron rose again and with swift, deft fingers unstrapped Mike from the fatal chair.
The professional instinct of the warden came to the fore with a rush. Everything that had happened was forgotten, everything except the startling fact that a rescue of a condemned criminal was being attempted before his very eyes.
"Stop!" His voice was harsh with command. "Stop, or I shoot!"
The blue nose of an automatic gleamed in his hand. The two guards had drawn their weapons also and covered the amazing stranger.
But Thoron did not seem to hear him.
The warden's face grew black. "Seize him!" he barked.
The guards sprang forward. The man turned slightly at the noise of their attack, thrust out a careless hand. The guards reeled back as from an invisible impact; startled oaths ripped from them.
The veins swelled in the warden's neck. Very deliberately he raised his gun, squeezed the trigger.
The automatic spat in a single sharp explosion.
Nothing happened!
There was the light of utter incredulity in the warden's eyes as his gun barked again and again. The guards leveled their weapons and squeezed triggers. The chamber reverberated with almost continuous bursts of fire.
THORON paid no more heed to the hail of bullets than if they were a number of harmless flies. Mike Spinnot stood up from the chair, staggering a bit from the impact of the momentary current that had passed through him. Then a measure of strength seemed to flow through his body, and he ripped off the metal cap and mask in almost a single savage movement.
For a moment he stood there, his black shiny eyes, still filled with the vision of death, darting apprehensively over the mute assemblage. His brutal features were drawn and corpse-like. He was trembling; an uncontrollable spasm moved over him in ripples.
Thoron rested a kindly hand on his shoulder. Mike spun around with a hoarse cry at the impact.
"Do not fear, O Michael!" soothed the stranger. "You are free. Long years have I worked to this end. You will leave this age that mocked and scorned you; that martyred you like a common murderer. You will come with me to my own time where you shall be greatly honored and revered."
The girl darted forward and took up his hairy hands, hands that had wallowed in blood, and kissed them reverently, tenderly.
"Welcome, most glorious ancestor!" she whispered. "Your youngest descendant greets you."
Derek suffered a sudden nausea at the sight of the girl's obeisance. Again he strove to thrust himself forward, but the charmed invisible circle with which the three were surrounded held taut against his utmost efforts.
"Don't touch him!" Derek cried out desperately. "You are making a terrible mistake. That man is a condemned murderer; a criminal and public enemy of the worst type."
The girl drew herself up proudly; her eyes flashed indignation. "Of course the emissaries of the tyrant would accuse him of that," she cried. "That is how you fooled the people when he tried to rescue them from the slavery into which they had sunk."
Derek fell back. He felt his mind going.
"Again I say you are making a mistake," he repeated. "I don't know who you are or where you come from, nor how you managed to get into this room. But if you think this man"—he pointed an accusing finger at Mike—"is anything but a rat and a menace to society, you have been badly misinformed."
The girl looked at Derek, a bit puzzled and shaken. There had been an authentic ring of sincerity to his voice. Mike's face, that had been slowly changing to a certain savage exultation, went pasty white. He shifted a bit closer to his newfound protector.
"Don't let them take me," he said. "I was framed; that's the truth. They're murdering me for something I never did."
"Do not fear, O ancestor," Thoron assured him, "these hirelings cannot harm you. Come!" He beckoned to Mike and the girl. "It is time for us to depart."
He escorted Mike very respectfully into the interior of the cage, seated himself at the controls. The girl followed with a quick sidelong glance at Derek.
Thoron was already manipulating his levers. The door of the cage was closing slowly. In a minute it would be too late to do anything. They would be gone.
Derek did not pause to think things out. With every muscle tensed, he leaped forward, bracing himself for his crash against the impalpable wall. Every ounce of wiry strength was in that leap.
But to his surprise there was nothing to bar the surge of his rush. Braced as he was for resistance, he fell through the half-open door in a tumbling sprawl. His head crashed heavily against the metal base of the instrument board. Before he could recover his reeling senses he heard the click of the door behind him. He was shut within the cage, a prisoner.
Already the floor was heaving up at him as he lay, half stunned. In a groping gaze he descried dimly the spinning walls of the death chamber; flattened distorted faces that whirled in grinning arcs about him. Then came little flashes of flame that sprang toward him and whined thinly. That must be the guards shooting at them, he thought drowsily. He was fast losing consciousness. All the world seemed to be spinning dizzily around.
THE odor of something pungent brought Derek jerking back from waves of reeling blackness. He opened his eyes weakly. The girl was kneeling beside him, her eyes deep pools of pity. She was spraying his forehead with an odorous liquid that bit deep into his consciousness.
She gave a little cry of delight when she saw the first flutter of his eyelids. "He's alive, Thoron, he's alive," she said joyously.
But Thoron was not listening.
His regard was fixed firmly on banks of glowing tubes, that winked out and flared up again at the touch of his long mobile fingers on a row of shining buttons. Mike Spinnot was standing next to him, legs bowed to the steady sway of the floor, bewildered, yes—but with the dawning of a cunning look on his thickset features. His heavy brows were knit, as if he was trying to adjust himself mentally to the strange surroundings into which he had been catapulted.
Slowly Derek tottered to his feet and steadied himself against the bars of the cage. The girl watched him anxiously.
The cage was rotating and undulating in long heaves; slowly, it seemed, yet outside the open bars was only a gray blur, shot through with hurtling black streaks.
Derek took a deep breath and called softly, daringly: "Merle."
The girl smiled faintly. "What is it, man of long-ago?"
"Just that, Merle," he puzzled. "I am Derek Williams, alive and reasonably alert, yet you and your father—I believe Thoron is your father?" She nodded. "Yet you and your father both have referred to me and those others in the chamber as people of an earlier time, as if we were—dead."
She nodded gravely, a bit wistfully, he thought, and answered: "You are!"
The affirmation crushed him. The adventure had partaken right along of every element of unreality, but this was really laying it on a bit thick. He must be the victim of a gigantic hoax. He, Derek Williams, dead! Not if he knew it!
The girl was smiling now. She glanced backward and noticed her father and Mike in absorbed converse. Thoron was talking, explaining, and Mike was listening with a furtive expression, as if he were face to face with a lunatic. Then she brought her gaze back frankly on Derek.
"I really shouldn't tell you, because you are the avowed enemy of Michael Spinney, but you do not look as though you are all bad. It possibly wasn't your fault that you hounded him; just that you were deluded by the tyrant."
Derek opened his mouth to deny this puzzling reiterated imputation; but thought better of it.
"I am not of your time and age," Merle continued. "By now you must have realized that."
Derek felt his head shaking stupidly. Some dim piercings of light had come to him already, but he had not dared face the issue thus openly.
"We come from a time that is over six thousand years in the future from what you consider to be your present," she went on quietly. "To us you are all people of the long-forgotten past, men and women who have lived their lives and are now—dead." There was a sudden catch to her voice, a faltering on that last fateful word.
Derek grinned cheerfully. "I'm not yet dead, thank you, but go on."
"We have the history of your time, this early, dim year of 1932, and the stirring events that took place then are narrated with tolerable clearness."
Derek smiled wryly. "If only you knew how dull things really are—or were. It's rather confusing to use tenses; I don't know now whether I'm past, present, or future. But let me hear what these stirring events are that I've been missing."
She looked at him suspiciously, but his face was grave, attentive.
"You seek to mislead me," she stated firmly, "but you cannot; our record is authentic. You know as well as I that in 1932 the Earth was groaning under a tyranny more brutal, more horrible, than any in all recorded history. One man was in the saddle. Surrounded by bestial soldiery, he rode roughshod over the rights of man. All were slaves to do his bidding, and no one dared to raise his voice in protest."
To Derek it sounded as if she were repeating by rote some well-taught tale.
"But one arose who dared to brave the tyrant's vengeance. A hero he was, a great man with a dauntless soul in that far-off early day. Up and down the land he went, preaching revolt, calling upon the stupefied peoples to cast off their chains. But they were drugged, brutish slaves, and they did not heed him. At length the soldiers of the tyrant searched him out, and he was dragged to jail, there to be executed like any common felon."
She halted, manifestly overcome by the pathos of her own narration.
Derek gazed at her loveliness wonderingly. "A very pretty tale," he admitted. "And who was this mighty hero?"
Again she favored him with a glance filled with suspicion. "Michael Spinney!" She pointed with a splendid gesture to the crime king, still held in speech by Thoron. "The man you call Mike Spinnot."
Derek grinned cheerfully. He must humor her. "And the name of the tyrant?"
"Horver! Herbert Horver!"
He looked at her in amazed stupefaction. Surely he had not heard aright.
"What did you say that name was?" he asked hoarsely.
"Horver," she repeated impatiently. "Surely you know as well as I." The girl's face was clear and candid; she was not pulling his leg.
LITTLE things began to click together in orderly array in Derek's brain. A faint light was dawning on him, yet so fantastic was the hypothesis, so ridiculous in the extreme, that he was tempted to dismiss it immediately.
"You said you had a history of our time. Only one?"
"Yes; it is all that has survived. You see," she explained, "about the year 2050 the world went to war—the last war of mankind. It ended in catastrophe—the human race almost succeeded in wiping itself out. Every city, every community of any size, was buried in its own ruins. The few survivors reverted to primitive conditions; it was hundreds of years before civilization reasserted itself.
"Every book, every document of your time, and most of those of prior ages, were lost, destroyed, except for this one history that managed to escape the general disaster. It was found by archaeologists digging in the submerged ruins of a great city not many miles from here, securely embedded in a rusted steel box. Fortunately it gives a rather complete history of that age."
The faint light in Derek's brain exploded into brilliant flame. "The name of this veracious history?" he begged breathlessly.
"'Fronting the Tyrant.' The author was evidently a prominent contemporary historian—the preface so states—his name is Rosenzweig."
Derek sucked his breath in sharply. He knew the book, also its author, a penniless journalist friend of his who had noted with disgust the flood of books glorifying the American criminal. He wrote a book to end all crime books—a burlesque, written in the soberest style—a history, in fact!
Mike Spinnot became Michael Spinney, a sort of modern Robin Hood, tilting against the depression in the person of an arch-tyrant—Horver.
The book went over big, but not as a burlesque. Ironically, the people seized upon it as an agonized cry of protest and read it in good faith, to the great discomfiture of the author, but to the speedy enrichment of his pocket. It had a tremendous sale.
And now—the greatest irony of all—this one book of all extant volumes was to survive through the ages! To cap the climax, the book which had been written early in 1932, had ended with the execution of its hero, Michael Spinney, in the latter part of 1933 in the manner and for the reason the girl had given Derek. The newspapers had played up heavily the strange coincidence at Mike's trial and subsequent sentencing.
"And so," Derek managed to gasp out, "you came back to rescue him. Why you and your father?"
"Because," her eyes met his proudly, "we are his lineal descendants. We are Spinneys."
For the moment Derek was crushed. Then he reflected. "This is as true as the rest of it. Mike's name is not Spinney, of course." His gray eyes mused over her. "This machine, is it in common use in your time?"
"Oh, no; father invented it. You see," she explained, "father is a profound student of history. The story of his great ancestor has always held a fascination for him. Even in our day we are honored as descendants of the hero. He brooded over it, waxed indignant over the untimely end of Michael Spinney. Then one day he shut himself up, refused to talk, to disclose what he was doing.
"For two years he labored. This is the result. He had invented a time-traveling machine to take him back to the year 1933. The principle is surprisingly simple; it depends upon bringing the vibration of the molecules in cage and occupants to a speed approaching that of light. When that is done, time for the traveler slows down to minutes, while continuing for the universe at what is called normal speed."
Derek nodded. "We knew that. It explains traveling into the future. But how about returning to the past?"
Merle hesitated. "Father explained that, too," she said doubtfully, "but I'm not sure I understood. It has something to do with negative speeds, involving the square root of minus one. But it works. Thoron decided to rescue Michael the Great, bring him back to life. I went with him. We have succeeded."
Derek stared at the lovely flushed face of the girl. There was no doubt she was telling the truth—as she conceived it. His brain was turning mental somersaults. The future coming back to the present—the present going forth into the future!
"We have reached home," Thoron said joyfully, his face concentrated on the gleaming dials. He pressed buttons, pulled a little switch. Derek felt a sudden shifting of weight, as if he were getting heavier. The gray blur outside disintegrated into hurtling fragments. The machine was slowing down, coming to a halt from its tremendous journey through time.
The flying streaks gave way to a spinning wall, branches that moved swiftly, and a great yellow moon that circled in wheeling arcs. Slower and slower, and then a slight jar. The machine had come to complete rest.
Thoron slid open the door. "Come, O Michael," he urged respectfully; "we are in our own time again. Here you will be safe from the tyrant of your own day, and the world will do you fitting honor."
THEY were in a garden, but such a garden as was undreamed of in the year 1933. A wall of translucent red inclosed a bit of paradise. Fantastic trees overarched gracefully, strange blooms filled the night air with perfumed sweetness, fountains threw colored waters high into the air, waters sang and fluted in cadenced harmonies.
Derek watched the crime lord's reactions. That worthy's face was a study. Fear and dim comprehension succeeded each other in turn. He had treated Thoron's story as the ravings of an escaped madman. The rescue, the whole amazing interlude, had not yet penetrated his senses.
Now for the first time he began to believe. Derek saw a gleam light up Mike Spinnot's features.
Mike said: "Sure, Thoron, you're a good guy, and on the level. What'm I supposed to do here?"
"I have arranged for everything," Thoron answered promptly. "You shall remain as my guest. The council will welcome you to its deliberations. Festivities, ceremonies, will take place in your honor."
Mike's roving eye caressed Merle's shapely form. The girl flushed under the insolent gaze.
"Swell looker, that dame!" Mike winked at Derek. "Maybe I'll take her back with me to good old New York. I see possibilities."
Derek flamed at the unmistakable tenor of Mike's discourse. He took a quick step forward, shook a warning finger under Mike's nose.
"Listen, Spinnot!" His voice vibrated with cold fury. "You got away with murder in our time, and now you're trying the same stunt here. These people are not onto you yet, but they're going to be. In the meantime you lay off the girl, you hear me?"
His body was tense, alert.
Murder was writ large on Mike's face then, murder and sudden death. His hand went under his armpit, to come away empty. There was no room for a shoulder holster in the garb of a felon.
"You keep your trap shut!" he snarled. "I'm the big boss around here, and if you want to keep on living—"
Derek's fist shot out like lightning. It caught Mike off balance, lifted him clear off the ground. He went down in a twisted sprawl yards away. Merle screamed.
Derek turned to see her eyes wide with terrified warning; to see Thoron raging at him with hand outstretched. Little blue lights glinted from under the finger nails. Derek threw up his hand instinctively, but it did not save him. A dull roaring filled his ears; a million red-hot needles pierced his body, and his last consciousness was of falling heavily to the ground.
DEREK weltered out of a heaving sea. A dull pain suffused his being; a strong paralysis fettered his limbs. He groaned and opened his eyes.
"You poor boy!" The voice was warm with pity. "How you have been tortured."
Derek turned his head and gazed into Merle's limpid eyes. Her rounded arms were supporting him. He was in a small, high-ceiled chamber, glowing with invisible illumination—a girl's boudoir, simply yet luxuriously furnished.
Derek brushed a weak hand over his brow. For a moment everything was strange to him. His wounded body, the girl bending to him. Then it came back to him with a rush.
"How did I get here?"
"Father and Michael wished to kill you as you lay under the paralysis. I prevailed on Thoron to obtain the council's permission for your execution. While they were away attending the meeting, I caused you to be removed secretly to my chamber."
"Thank you!" he said simply. "But why did you save my life? I am only a tool of the tyrant, and Mike Spinnot is your heroic ancestor."
Merle flushed; she felt the sarcasm. "I am beginning to believe that you were telling the truth," she answered slowly. "This Michael Spinney does not act or talk like a great man. There were several things I caught—" She checked herself and burst out passionately: "Why does history lie like that—make heroes out of knaves, and real men die unknown, unheard-of?" She looked meaningly at Derek.
It was his turn to blush. He hid his confusion with a laugh. "I see history has not changed much in six thousand years. In our time we have the same complaint. But," he continued, "if you are now convinced that Mike Spinnot is, or was, justly sentenced to death, why don't you tell your father and have the man dealt with as he deserves?"
The girl was oddly embarrassed. "I've tried," she told him hesitatingly, "but it does no good. Thoron, my father, has almost all his life been absorbed in the theme of the greatness of his ancestor. It has become a passion to him, his very reason for existence. His mind is closed to all evidence; he refuses to see the manifest absurdity of the legend. Why, when I argued with him, he flew into a rage, threatened to cast me off as a disgrace to the Spinneys. And in the fanaticism, he has convinced the council, too, of the truth of his story."
Derek arose, still a bit shaky, wounds smarting painfully, but in full command of his faculties. "The only thing to do now," he said decisively, "is for me to think of some plan to show up Mike in his true colors."
She shook her head despairingly. "You don't know the members of the council. Once they definitely commit themselves to a course, nothing can make them admit that they are wrong."
"That sounds familiar, too." Derek smiled faintly. "Then I'll have to hide for a while and try for the machine."
"It is under heavy guard," she said hopelessly. "And as for hiding, I don't know where. Even now the guards of the council are searching for you. They have orders to kill at sight. No place is immune from their search; not even this chamber of mine. Their invisible search-beams can see through the thickest wall as if it were glass."
"Not a cheerful prospect for yours truly!" Derek grinned. "What would happen if I were caught here—I mean, as far as you are concerned?"
"That does not matter."
"I must know," he insisted.
"I should be put to death. Even my father would insist upon that penalty."
Derek considered a moment. "They won't find me here then," he said grimly. "I'm leaving right now."
"Where to?"
"Anywhere."
Merle shook her head decisively. Suddenly her eyes widened with alarm.
Derek spun around to follow her gaze. Set high on the wall was what appeared to be a burnished mirror. In it was seen the figure of a man swinging a metal tube in front of him. No light emanated from its orifice, yet the man's eyes were eagerly following its arc, as if searching for something. Then his eyes seemed to meet Derek's gaze in the mirror. His mouth opened in a soundless shout, and he dashed forward.
Involuntarily Derek whirled to meet the attack and found himself staring at a blank wall.
Merle tugged violently at his arm. "Quick, we must run for it now! He saw you with the search-beam."
"But how did I see him, too?" Derek wondered.
"That mirror on the wall is a search-mirror also. Come!"
She half pushed him straight for the opposite wall. An oblong patch opened miraculously in it at her approach. A long, twisting corridor extended ahead. The wall closed behind him, just in time to shut off the quick lunge of the guard.
FOR what seemed hours they hurried through interminable passageways and rooms; impenetrable walls opened before them and closed as swiftly behind. The noise of pursuit died away in the distance, but Merle would allow no slackening.
Another little door opened before them. Derek learned afterward that all these slides were actuated by photo-electric eyes. The presence of Merle's body at a certain angle cut off an invisible light ray and started the mechanism in motion.
The girl thrust him in quickly, closed the slide behind them. They were in a little cubicle, bare-walled.
Merle was whispering now. "Do not make the slightest noise," she warned. "Directly on the other side of that wall is the council chamber. They are meeting shortly to honor Michael Spinney. The guards won't dream of searching for you here. You are safe for a while."
Derek looked at her unsmilingly. "And you?"
She looked at him strangely, was about to speak, when suddenly she stiffened.
"What has happened?" Derek asked in alarm.
She waved to him for silence; her face strained forward as if she were hearing unseen voices. Then very swiftly she ripped a tiny metal ornament off the shoulder of her garment. Derek had not noticed it before.
She placed it on Derek's shoulder. "Listen!"
Faint in Derek's ears came a sibilant whisper, then as contact steadied, out of the air droned a voice.
"Merle Spinney, Merle Spinney. Your father Thoron is seeking you. He believes that you have met with foul play at the hands of the stranger from an ancient time. He has escaped and cannot be found. Answer if you can through the telerad or snap on the visualization. Do you hear, Merle Spinney?"
Derek snatched off the tiny bead, and faced Merle. "They are calling you. You won't go."
"I must!" she cried desperately, as she adjusted the telerad again on her shoulder. "You will surely be found if I stay with you. The search will be unrelenting. If I go back, I may throw them off the trail."
"They will harm you. It's a trap. They know you helped me."
"Perhaps not."
"That's impossible and you know it," he accused her flatly. "You're only going back to sacrifice yourself for me."
"No, no!" she panted. "Let me go; it is for both our sakes." She tried to duck around him.
Derek put himself squarely in front of her.
"If I must die, it certainly won't be at your expense," he stated grimly.
The girl shuddered and tried to get past him again.
"No, you don't," he said. "I told you I won't allow it." His arm reached out and grasped her gently but firmly by the shoulder.
She shuddered again, more violently. Her own arm extended, as if to support herself against his shoulder.
"Please forgive me!" she half sobbed. "But it is for your own good."
Her fingers straightened out. A warm shock quivered through Derek. He tried to move but could not. Merle darted past his helpless immobility with a little cry. The door slid silently open and closed behind her fleeing figure.
She was gone.
Derek stared at the blank wall. She was risking her life—for him. He had no illusions about the telerad call. It was a lure. The council knew by now quite definitely of her part in his escape. And Mike Spinnot, too!
The fetters of paralysis were slowly leaving him. Merle had used only a weak ray. Agonized, Derek waited for his limbs to recover their use. The seconds passed like eternities.
At long last his legs, his arms responded. The influence of the ray was gone.
He threw himself at the wall through which he had seen Merle vanish. A smooth unbroken surface met his frantic questing hands. He drew back to hurl himself despairingly upon it. Possibly he could jar the mechanism loose. As he shifted his position, there was a little whir, and the blessed slide opened. He had stepped unwittingly in the way of the ever vigilant photo-electric eye. He catapulted through, out into the pale dawn of morning.
For a moment he stopped dead. Before him stretched a magnificent vista of radiating boulevards, flanked by cloud-piercing structures, each set in its own parkland. The high spires glinted with delicate colorings in the first rays of the sun. Above glided noiselessly long, streamlined vehicles, swift on their appointed courses.
But his eyes were not for these, nor for the marvelous strangeness of the scene. Only Merle mattered now. Then he saw her, a running figure, far off.
He darted after her, heedless of possible discovery. He saw her stop short, twist something on her shoulder, pause for a moment, then off she was again.
"She's communicating with them," Derek said savagely, "the brave little fool!"
It was a nightmare of a chase; up one boulevard, down another. Never once did she look back; always she hurried ahead, intent on her errand of sacrifice. Derek gained on her, but not enough. He groaned, knowing that she would reach her destination before he could catch up. Never once did he think of his own danger in thus openly traversing the public highways. Luckily it was early yet. Hardly any one was stirring. Once or twice he met with a man of the future, who turned and stared curiously after the racing savage-looking figure. Once he heard a shout behind him, but he did not pause in his headlong pace.
IN the distance a high translucent wall reared itself. Derek recognized it. He saw Merle hesitate a moment; then brace herself as if for some ordeal. She disappeared through, and the wall gleamed blandly as before. So intent was Derek on marking the exact spot where she had entered that he collided violently with a man who had just emerged from an intersecting thoroughfare.
"Sorry!" Derek muttered automatically, and tried to disengage himself from the reeling figure. Then he stiffened suddenly. Recognition was mutual. A hoarse cry broke from the other: "The minion of the tyrant."
It was Thoron. His hand shot up to the familiar position, his fine old features twisted in fanatic rage.
Derek ducked as a blue flame sizzled harmlessly over his head. "You damned fool!" he gritted, and let him have it squarely on the chin. Thoron went down heavily.
"You asked for it," Derek panted as he ran on.
The wall loomed high in front. Behind him were gathering shouts. He shot a hasty glance backward.
There were men running toward him. Thoron was on his feet again, shaking a trembling fist.
Derek jumped for the little hollow where he had seen Merle stand. There was a little spurt, a streak of fire, and a round hole appeared in the wall, a little to one side. Another sizzle, and another hole appeared as if by magic. They were raying him. He swore violently, as the slide stubbornly refused to open. The wall had the appearance of a riddled fort by now. A ray scorched the hair on his head; there was a stab of heat at his side. Luckily it was a glancing thrust. But they were getting the range. The next beam would catch him square.
He shifted his position desperately. "Open sesame!" he shouted, as if the ancient incantation could help. Surprisingly, it did, or maybe it was the shift of his body to the right spot. The slide was open, revealing an oblong of garden.
There was a great shout behind him as he dived through. But the door had gone noiselessly shut again, and for the moment he was safe.
He cast about in the vast tree-clouded garden like a bloodhound on the trail. Where was Merle? She had disappeared. He raced through forest-like glades, calling her name, reckless of being overheard by others.
A thin scream came to him—it was Merle's voice, lifted in tearing fright and agony. To Derek it seemed to come in the direction of a particularly dense clump. He went crashing through it like a bolt from the blue. Behind there was a sudden swelling of sound. The men of the future had penetrated the wall, were in fierce pursuit. But this did not matter—not now. Derek's whole being was immersed in that last faint shriek of Merle's. What was happening to her?
He broke through at last, into the spacious, fountain-splashed sward where he had first come into this land of the future. There he saw something that made the heated blood boil in his veins.
The time-traveling machine lay like a monstrous egg on the close-cropped grass. Merle was struggling weakly in the powerful arms of Mike Spinnot. He was dragging her, one hairy hand over her mouth to silence her cries, into the interior of the machine. There was a thick oily grin on his ill-favored face.
Derek acted swiftly. The distance between them was about a hundred yards. He swung over in a wide circle so as to be behind the struggling pair. Mike was already tugging the girl's half-conscious body through the entrance to the cage when Derek let out a final burst of speed, throwing over all attempt at concealment. Once they were safely within, it would be too late.
WITH a final heave, Spinnot thrust the girl bodily into the machine, turned to pull the switch that closed the door. Then for the first time he saw Derek, bearing down upon the cage like a thunderbolt.
The startled crime king let out a yell and fumbled the switch. He recovered quickly and jammed it down. But that fumbled second had been enough. Derek had dived through, thrust Merle out of the cage onto the soft thick grass, in one swift clean movement. Then the slide shot home—behind him.
Mike's hand came up with a quick jerk, but the momentum of Derek's forward thrust carried him clutching against Spinnot's legs. Spinnot tottered, sagged against the instrument panel, and crashed heavily upon Derek's prone body.
The next instant the machine leaped into roaring, rocking life. Through the already swirling bars, Derek caught a glimpse of a horde of furious faces outside, in the foremost of which he recognized the fanatic gleam of Thoron's. He was shouting something unintelligible in the high whine the cage was developing. A spatter of blue flashes twisted harmlessly around the circling bars, then a swift blur, and the machine spun dizzily off into time.
Both men were on their feet almost simultaneously.
Mike's face was a mask of hate, his lips drawn back from his teeth in an animal snarl. "Damn you!" he roared. "I'll cut your heart out for this."
He lashed out. Derek ducked and bored in with a rapid one-two to the stomach that brought a grunt of pain from Spinnot. Mike reached out with his long arms and caught the reporter in a fierce bone-crushing hold. Derek squirmed to get loose, but all his squirmings seemed only to tighten the grip. He felt his ribs cracking under the strain of that bear-like hug. Mike's hot mouth breathed on his face, whistling with the effort.
Then the machine rocked heavily; there was a thump, as if it had met with some obstruction in its wild careening through time. Both were thrown heavily. Derek broke loose and tottered to his feet.
Back and forth they fought, bruised, battered, panting, swinging dizzily to the whining motion of the cage. Derek felt himself going. It could not last much longer. Stepping back suddenly, and putting every last ounce of his remaining strength behind the blow, he shot clean for the point of the chin.
Mike's eyes went glassy; he swayed drunkenly, and collapsed in a limp sprawling heap. Derek tottered in a daze, then the brutal punishment he had taken claimed his aching body. He, too, went down, sprawling over the motionless crime lord. His last weltering thought was that the machine seemed to be slackening in its tremendous motion.
DEREK came up for air to find the prison physician bending gravely over him. In the background were figures, familiar ones—the warden, the chaplain, the guards, his brother reporters, just as if the whole adventure had been merely a dream. Yes; and there was Mike Spinnot, masked, black-gowned, enthroned in the death chair, metal cap in place, the slit trousers revealing the bare, shaven leg, the deadly electrodes clamped into position.
"What happened?" he asked in a weak voice.
The warden told him "When you barged into that strange machine, the door closed, and the next instant it was gone, a whirling flash of light. We hardly had time to turn our guns on the disappearing cage when it appeared again, slowing down to a halt. We found you dead to the world on top of Spinnot, and the girl and the old man gone."
Derek shook his head dazedly. "But we've been gone over a day!" he protested.
The warden shook his head pityingly. "Not longer than it takes to say Jack Robinson," he said. "It was the clout on your head as you hit the cage and bowled Mike over that's giving you ideas."
Derek thought of all he had been through and opened his mouth to protest. Then he changed his mind. They would not believe him.
"Everything ready?" inquired the warden of the impassively waiting guard.
"Everything, sir."
He pulled out his huge old-fashioned watch, snapped open the case.
"Thirty seconds to go," he stated calmly, professionally.
A heavy breathing silence fell suddenly upon the chamber. Mike Spinnot was about to pay the extreme penalty of the law for his crimes.
Derek lay quietly, his eyes averted from the death chair. Merle Spinney was not born yet, would not be for thousands of years. His eyes turned to the resting ovoid. They lighted up with a strange gleam.
Then he caught his breath.
Spinnot—Spinney—Time often changed names more than that—
Once the current was turned on, Merle Spinney might never be born!
Roy Glashan's Library
Non sibi sed omnibus
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