Wonder Stories Group

As they watched, paralyzed, the building and air barge fell apart and hurtled toward the earth. The entire train had been split from end to end. The attacker now swung back and the then darted away.

True, he says, the Masters are far advanced, an’ able to do lots o’ thingsas a result. They’ve learnt everything there was to be learnt, they can live on the earth, in the air, in the water, or underground; they can travel to the other stars; they know how the world come about an’ when it’s ending, they think great thoughts an’things I couldn’t even understand, but, he says, what about the Robots?

We have purposely allowed our time travellers to become known to the people of the eras that they visit, for in this way the great drama of the story becomes apparent.

T =	t √ℓ - v²/c²

And do you ever think that present-day New York will some time be as fragmentary and fabulous as Troy or Zimbabwe? That archaeologists may delve in its ruins, beneath the sevenfold increment of later cities, and find a few rusting mechanisms of disputed use, and potteries of doubtful date, and inscriptions which no one can decipher?

It is a difficult situation, but I hope I shall convince you. Very few men can have had the chance of convincing their great-great-great grandfathers of anything. I am now an anachronism. You see, I was born in the year A.D. 2108,—or should it be, I shall be born in 2108?—and I am—or will be—a refugee from the twenty-second century. I assure you that you will be married shortly, but I can’t remember when—I think I told you I was bad at dates.

No man or woman of Eos has the authority to direct, check, or in any way influence the free decision and impulses of another without that other’s full and intelligent consent. We demand the right to follow the natural inclinations of our characters. We demand the right to marry.

The twentieth century. It had a remote sound, an unreal significance. In this age, with the sun a brick red ball and the city of Denver a mass of ruins, the twentieth century was a forgotten second in the great march of time, it was as remote as the age when man emerged from the beast.

Time was a fourth dimension, he had said. An extension as real as the three of what we call space, and not completely distinguishable from them. A direction in which motion would carry one into the past, or into the future.

Beyond the fourth there is a fifth dimension.. . . Eternity, I think you would call it. It is the line, the direction perpendicular to time.

You have always considered me a hopeless dreamer; and I am the last person who would endeavor or even wish to dispute your summary. It might be added that I am one of those dreamers who have not been able to content themselves with dreams. Such persons, as a rule, are unfortunate and unhappy, since few of them are capable of realizing, or even approximating, their visionary conceptions.

Down in my lead-walled room I shall drink my special drug and fall into a coma which would on the surface of the earth last (at most) a few hours. But down there, shielded from all change, I shall never wake until I am again subjected to radiation.

Certainly. . . . the Great Brain is infallible. Who would want to act contrary to reason?

Take our own single city, for the rest of the world is about the same, if not worse, how many people are alive . . . er . . . really alive and awake? Just four hundred and thirty by the last count. And these few people must feed themselves andprovide electrical energy and control the dream records for more than one million sleepers!

Furthermore, this young man can’t possibly be Adams Mayhew! Why Mayhew would be nearly eighty, if he were alive today, and this man is still in his twenties.

“Yes. You called them cities,” she explained, “and that is essentially what this is. You had many thousands of people in each city, it is true—I suppose you could not afford many cities?—while we have a city for every inhabitant. But otherwise they are, I should imagine, much the same.”

We must make him young again—what a chance to try out the full cell-cycle!

So it was with such thoughts that Pencill turned to the first page. “The End of Time by Hamil Edmondton,” he read aloud, as was his habit when alone. With but a causual interest he began the story; but as the clock ticked and he read on, this interest became more than a casual one, and soon he was reading carefully, keenly, and with much enjoyment. On and on he read, and inexorable Fate slowly marshalled her forces in favor of the heroes case into time, and Pencill became aware that soon the story must end. End it did, in a very logical and pleasing way, and Pencill reluctantly placed the manuscript on his desk.

Did you ever see a man suddenly materilize out of thin air directly in front of you, directly on the spot where you had been looking at nothing the instant before? If not, you must try it some time. It must be a very astonishing spectacle. That’s what happened to B. Lue Pencill . . .

Into the future she had gone, William said, and I had no reason to doubt him. The cat took the matter in a calm way and seemed in no wise injured by its uncanny transit.

In eternity, the Law of Chance functions perfectly. In eternity, sooner or later, every possible combinaton of things and events must happen. Must happen, if it’s a possible combination. I say, therefore, that in eterminty, whatever can happen will happen!

Time’s all mixed up. It’s as if the universe were the rim of a great wheel, whirling through Time. As if, somehow, we have left that rim, shot inward along different spokes whose outer ends are different years, far apart, and reached the wheel’s axis where all the year-spokes join. The center point of the hub, that doesn’t move at all through Time, because it is the center. Where there is no Time. Where the past and the present and the future are all one. A land, in some weird other dimension, where Time stands still.

Time traveling! And here, in this same space that now held Dora’s little bungalow and garden, Sah Groat’s home existed in the year 2536.

He stood on a flat plain that undulated gently. That much was understandable. The surface of the earth, if it really was changing rapidly, had become a mere blur to his senses. The solid ring of substance across the sky was the sun, traveling at a prodigious rate that kept pase with his transit through Time. The retina of the eye caught its image as a solid ring, so swift was the earth’s rotation. As the seasons altered the ring shifted lower or higher across the horizon, that was all.

You just trust your Uncle Jim! Everything’s going to be all right, sure as God made little apples. Just sit down over here, and powder your nose, or whatever they do in your time. Then you can tell me all about it.

Not ants of your time, however, but the rulers of the year ninety-sixteen, seven thousand of so years ahead of you—time enough for the busy creatures of your present day to have evolved into the significant might you see we have.

Suppose some fourth-dimensional phenomenon catapulted you back to the days of Caesar, with the possibility of a return to your own twentieth century entirely removed. Equipped with an elementary understanding of various sciences, how would you capitalize on your knowledge of future events and discoveries? Could you, with a head-start of two thousand years, earn a living?

“Yes, my boy. I understand your aversion to making any more trips into the historical Past. You have been a—um—lodestone for violent trouble . . .”

“Something always happens to me!” exclaimed Pete. “What if I she’d get bumped off in the Past? Nix. No more o’ that stuff for me.”

“Quite right, my son. And yet—” Mayhem’s benign tone and dreamy stare at the ceiling were pure ham. “I would never have invited you here again, Pete, knowing it to be a place of strange memories, except that occasionally in our lives there arise demands that transcend all selfish personal considerations. Do you follow me?”

But the strangest thing he had ever seen was the queer-looking mechanical apparatus in the center of the window. Johnny Bell’s gray eyes narrowed in perplexity as he read the advertising card atop it:

TIME MACHINE
FOR SALE—CHEAP

Within the Isles the children are transported,
The most of them despairing and forlorn,
Upon the soil their lives will be supported
While hope shall flee.. . .

Every man can have Temp and if you save your money you can have Permanent, which they say, is as close to heaven as man can get.

Your time scale has been altered. A minute in the outer world would be a year in this room.