The Time Travel Megapack: 26 Modern and Classic Science Fiction Stories Read online

  He was still alone and soon winter would come and the sky grow cold and empty…

  The Time machine materialized so suddenly before him that for an instant his mind refused to accept it as more than a torturing illusion conjured up by the turbulence of his thoughts. All at once it towered in his path, bright and shining, and he moved forward over the dew-drenched grass until he was brought up short by a joy so overwhelming that it seemed to him that his heart must burst.

  * * * *

  Rutella emerged from the machine with a gay little laugh, as if his stunned expression was the most amusing in the world.

  “Hold still and let me kiss you, darling,” her mind said to his.

  She stood in the dew-bright grass on tiptoe, her sleek dark hair falling to her shoulders, an extraordinarily pretty girl to be the wife of a man so tormented.

  “You found me!” his thoughts exulted. “You came back alone and searched until you found me!”

  She nodded, her eyes shining. So Time wasn’t too vast to pinpoint after all, not when two people were so securely wedded in mind and heart that their thoughts could build a bridge across Time.

  “The Bureau of Emotional Adjustment analyzed everything I told them. Your psycho-graph ran to fifty-seven pages, but it was your desperate loneliness which guided me to you.”

  She raised his hand to her lips and kissed it.

  “You see, darling, a compulsive fear isn’t easy to conquer. No man or woman can conquer it alone. Historians tell us that when the first passenger rocket started out for Mars, Space Fear took men by surprise in the same way your fear gripped you. The loneliness, the utter desolation of space, was too much for a human mind to endure.”

  She smiled her love. “We’re going back. We’ll face it together and we’ll conquer it together. You won’t be alone now. Darling, don’t you see—it’s because you aren’t a clod, because you’re sensitive and imaginative that you experience fear. It’s not anything to be ashamed of. You were simply the first man on Earth to develop a new and completely different kind of fear—Time Fear.”

  Moonson put out his hand and gently touched his wife’s hair.

  Ascending into the Time Observatory a thought came unbidden into his mind: Others he saved, himself he could not save.

  But that wasn’t true at all now.

  He could help himself now. He would never be alone again! When guided by the sure hand of love and complete trust, self-knowledge could be a shining weapon. The trip back might be difficult, but holding tight to his wife’s hand he felt no misgivings, no fear.

  OF TIME AND TEXAS, by William F. Nolan

  “In one fell swoop,” declared Professor C. Cydwick Ohms, releasing a thin blue ribbon of pipe-smoke and rocking back on his heels, “—I intend to solve the greatest problem facing mankind today. Colonizing the Polar Wastes was a messy and fruitless business. And the Enforced Birth Control Program couldn’t be enforced. Overpopulation still remains the thorn in our side. Gentlemen—” He paused to look each of the assembled reporters in the eye. “—there is but one answer.”

  “Mass annihilation?” quavered a cub reporter.

  “Posh, boy! Certainly not!” The professor bristled. “The answer is—TIME!”

  “Time?”

  “Exactly,” nodded Ohms. With a dramatic flourish he swept aside a red velvet drape—to reveal a tall structure of gleaming metal. “As witness!”

  “Golly, what’s that thing?” queried the cub.

  “This thing,” replied the professor acidly, “—is the C. Cydwick Ohms Time Door.”

  “Whillikers, a Time Machine!”

  “Not so, not so. Please, boy! A Time Machine, in the popular sense, is impossible. Wild fancy! However—” The professor tapped the dottle from his pipe. “—by a mathematically precise series of infinite calculations, I have developed the remarkable C. Cydwick Ohms Time Door. Open it, take but a single step—and, presto! The Past!”

  “But, where in the past, Prof.?”

  Ohms smiled easily down at the tense ring of faces. “Gentlemen, beyond this door lies the sprawling giant of the Southwest—enough land to absorb Earth’s overflow like that!” He snapped his fingers. “I speak, gentlemen, of Texas, 1957!”

  “What if the Texans object?”

  “They have no choice. The Time Door is strictly a one-way passage. I saw to that. It will be utterly impossible for anyone in 1957 to re-enter our world of 2057. And now—the Past awaits!”

  He tossed aside his professorial robes. Under them Cydwick Ohms wore an ancient and bizarre costume: black riding boots, highly polished and trimmed in silver; wool chaps; a wide, jewel-studded belt with an immense buckle; a brightly checked shirt topped by a blazing red bandana. Briskly, he snapped a tall ten-gallon hat on his head, and stepped to the Time Door.

  Gripping an ebony handle, he tugged upward. The huge metal door oiled slowly back. “Time,” said Cydwick Ohms simply, gesturing toward the gray nothingness beyond the door.

  The reporters and photographers surged forward, notebooks and cameras at the ready. “What if the door swings shut after you’re gone?” one of them asked.

  “A groundless fear, boy,” assured Ohms. “I have seen to it that the Time Door can never be closed. And now—good-bye, gentlemen. Or, to use the proper colloquialism—so long, hombres!”

  Ohms bowed from the waist, gave his ten-gallon hat a final tug, and took a single step forward.

  And did not disappear.

  He stood, blinking. Then he swore, beat upon the unyielding wall of grayness with clenched fists, and fell back, panting, to his desk.

  “I’ve failed!” he moaned in a lost voice. “The C. Cydwick Ohms Time Door is a botch!” He buried his head in trembling hands.

  The reporters and photographers began to file out.

  Suddenly the professor raised his head. “Listen!” he warned.

  A slow rumbling, muted with distance, emanated from the dense grayness of the Time Door. Faint yips and whoopings were distinct above the rumble. The sounds grew steadily—to a thousand beating drums—to a rolling sea of thunder!

  Shrieking, the reporters and photographers scattered for the stairs.

  Ah, another knotty problem to be solved, mused Professor Cydwick Ohms, swinging, with some difficulty, onto one of three thousand Texas steers stampeding into the laboratory.

  n one fell swoop,” declared Professor C. Cydwick Ohms, releasing a thin blue ribbon of pipe-smoke and rocking back on his heels, “—I intend to solve the greatest problem facing mankind today. Colonizing the Polar Wastes was a messy and fruitless business. And the Enforced Birth Control Program couldn’t be enforced. Overpopulation still remains the thorn in our side. Gentlemen—” He paused to look each of the assembled reporters in the eye. “—there is but one answer.”

  “Mass annihilation?” quavered a cub reporter.

  “Posh, boy! Certainly not!” The professor bristled. “The answer is—TIME!”

  “Time?”

  “Exactly,” nodded Ohms. With a dramatic flourish he swept aside a red velvet drape—to reveal a tall structure of gleaming metal. “As witness!”

  “Golly, what’s that thing?” queried the cub.

  “This thing,” replied the professor acidly, “—is the C. Cydwick Ohms Time Door.”

  “Whillikers, a Time Machine!”

  “Not so, not so. Please, boy! A Time Machine, in the popular sense, is impossible. Wild fancy! However—” The professor tapped the dottle from his pipe. “—by a mathematically precise series of infinite calculations, I have developed the remarkable C. Cydwick Ohms Time Door. Open it, take but a single step—and, presto! The Past!”

  “But, where in the past, Prof.?”

  Ohms smiled easily down at the tense ring of faces. “Gentlemen, beyond this door lies the sprawling giant of the Southwest—enough land to absorb Earth’s overflow like that!” He snapped his fingers. “I speak, gentlemen, of Texas, 1957!”

  “What if the Texans object?”
>
  “They have no choice. The Time Door is strictly a one-way passage. I saw to that. It will be utterly impossible for anyone in 1957 to re-enter our world of 2057. And now—the Past awaits!”

  He tossed aside his professorial robes. Under them Cydwick Ohms wore an ancient and bizarre costume: black riding boots, highly polished and trimmed in silver; wool chaps; a wide, jewel-studded belt with an immense buckle; a brightly checked shirt topped by a blazing red bandana. Briskly, he snapped a tall ten-gallon hat on his head, and stepped to the Time Door.

  Gripping an ebony handle, he tugged upward. The huge metal door oiled slowly back. “Time,” said Cydwick Ohms simply, gesturing toward the gray nothingness beyond the door.

  The reporters and photographers surged forward, notebooks and cameras at the ready. “What if the door swings shut after you’re gone?” one of them asked.

  “A groundless fear, boy,” assured Ohms. “I have seen to it that the Time Door can never be closed. And now—good-bye, gentlemen. Or, to use the proper colloquialism—so long, hombres!”

  Ohms bowed from the waist, gave his ten-gallon hat a final tug, and took a single step forward.

  And did not disappear.

  He stood, blinking. Then he swore, beat upon the unyielding wall of grayness with clenched fists, and fell back, panting, to his desk.

  “I’ve failed!” he moaned in a lost voice. “The C. Cydwick Ohms Time Door is a botch!” He buried his head in trembling hands.

  The reporters and photographers began to file out.

  Suddenly the professor raised his head. “Listen!” he warned.

  A slow rumbling, muted with distance, emanated from the dense grayness of the Time Door. Faint yips and whoopings were distinct above the rumble. The sounds grew steadily—to a thousand beating drums—to a rolling sea of thunder!

  Shrieking, the reporters and photographers scattered for the stairs.

  Ah, another knotty problem to be solved, mused Professor Cydwick Ohms, swinging, with some difficulty, onto one of three thousand Texas steers stampeding into the laboratory.

  THE EDGE OF THE KNIFE, by H. Beam Piper

  Chalmers stopped talking abruptly, warned by the sudden attentiveness of the class in front of him. They were all staring; even Guellick, in the fourth row, was almost half awake. Then one of them, taking his silence as an invitation to questions found his voice.

  “You say Khalid ib’n Hussein’s been assassinated?” he asked incredulously. “When did that happen?”

  “In 1973, at Basra.” There was a touch of impatience in his voice; surely they ought to know that much. “He was shot, while leaving the Parliament Building, by an Egyptian Arab named Mohammed Noureed, with an old U. S. Army M3 submachine-gun. Noureed killed two of Khalid’s guards and wounded another before he was overpowered. He was lynched on the spot by the crowd; stoned to death. Ostensibly, he and his accomplices were religious fanatics; however, there can be no doubt whatever that the murder was inspired, at least indirectly, by the Eastern Axis.”

  The class stirred like a grain-field in the wind. Some looked at him in blank amazement; some were hastily averting faces red with poorly suppressed laughter. For a moment he was puzzled, and then realization hit him like a blow in the stomach-pit. He’d forgotten, again.

  “I didn’t see anything in the papers about it,” one boy was saying.

  “The newscast, last evening, said Khalid was in Ankara, talking to the President of Turkey,” another offered.

  “Professor Chalmers, would you tell us just what effect Khalid’s death had upon the Islamic Caliphate and the Middle Eastern situation in general?” a third voice asked with exaggerated solemnity. That was Kendrick, the class humorist; the question was pure baiting.

  “Well, Mr. Kendrick, I’m afraid it’s a little too early to assess the full results of a thing like that, if they can ever be fully assessed. For instance, who, in 1911, could have predicted all the consequences of the pistol-shot at Sarajevo? Who, even today, can guess what the history of the world would have been had Zangarra not missed Franklin Roosevelt in 1932? There’s always that if.”

  He went on talking safe generalities as he glanced covertly at his watch. Only five minutes to the end of the period; thank heaven he hadn’t made that slip at the beginning of the class. “For instance, tomorrow, when we take up the events in India from the First World War to the end of British rule, we will be largely concerned with another victim of the assassin’s bullet, Mohandas K. Gandhi. You may ask yourselves, then, by how much that bullet altered the history of the Indian sub-continent. A word of warning, however: The events we will be discussing will be either contemporary with or prior to what was discussed today. I hope that you’re all keeping your notes properly dated. It’s always easy to become confused in matters of chronology.”

  He wished, too late, that he hadn’t said that. It pointed up the very thing he was trying to play down, and raised a general laugh.

  As soon as the room was empty, he hastened to his desk, snatched pencil and notepad. This had been a bad one, the worst yet; he hadn’t heard the end of it by any means. He couldn’t waste thought on that now, though. This was all new and important; it had welled up suddenly and without warning into his conscious mind, and he must get it down in notes before the “memory”—even mentally, he always put that word into quotes—was lost. He was still scribbling furiously when the instructor who would use the room for the next period entered, followed by a few of his students. Chalmers finished, crammed the notes into his pocket, and went out into the hall.

  Most of his own Modern History IV class had left the building and were on their way across the campus for science classes. A few, however, were joining groups for other classes here in Prescott Hall, and in every group, they were the center of interest. Sometimes, when they saw him, they would fall silent until he had passed; sometimes they didn’t, and he caught snatches of conversation.

  “Oh, brother! Did Chalmers really blow his jets this time!” one voice was saying.

  “Bet he won’t be around next year.”

  Another quartet, with their heads together, were talking more seriously.

  “Well, I’m not majoring in History, myself, but I think it’s an outrage that some people’s diplomas are going to depend on grades given by a lunatic!”

  “Mine will, and I’m not going to stand for it. My old man’s president of the Alumni Association, and.…”

  * * * *

  That was something he had not thought of, before. It gave him an ugly start. He was still thinking about it as he turned into the side hall to the History Department offices and entered the cubicle he shared with a colleague. The colleague, old Pottgeiter, Medieval History, was emerging in a rush; short, rotund, gray-bearded, his arms full of books and papers, oblivious, as usual, to anything that had happened since the Battle of Bosworth or the Fall of Constantinople. Chalmers stepped quickly out of his way and entered behind him. Marjorie Fenner, the secretary they also shared, was tidying up the old man’s desk.

  “Good morning, Doctor Chalmers.” She looked at him keenly for a moment. “They give you a bad time again in Modern Four?”

  Good Lord, did he show it that plainly? In any case, it was no use trying to kid Marjorie. She’d hear the whole story before the end of the day.

  “Gave myself a bad time.”

  Marjorie, still fussing with Pottgeiter’s desk, was about to say something in reply. Instead, she exclaimed in exasperation.

  “Ohhh! That man! He’s forgotten his notes again!” She gathered some papers from Pottgeiter’s desk, rushing across the room and out the door with them.

  For a while, he sat motionless, the books and notes for General European History II untouched in front of him. This was going to raise hell. It hadn’t been the first slip he’d made, either; that thought kept recurring to him. There had been the time when he had alluded to the colonies on Mars and Venus. There had been the time he’d mentioned the secession of Canada from the British Co
mmonwealth, and the time he’d called the U. N. the Terran Federation. And the time he’d tried to get a copy of Franchard’s Rise and Decline of the System States, which wouldn’t be published until the Twenty-eighth Century, out of the college library. None of those had drawn much comment, beyond a few student jokes about the history professor who lived in the future instead of the past. Now, however, they’d all be remembered, raked up, exaggerated, and added to what had happened this morning.

  He sighed and sat down at Marjorie’s typewriter and began transcribing his notes. Assassination of Khalid ib’n Hussein, the pro-Western leader of the newly formed Islamic Caliphate; period of anarchy in the Middle East; interfactional power-struggles; Turkish intervention. He wondered how long that would last; Khalid’s son, Tallal ib’n Khalid, was at school in England when his father was—would be—killed. He would return, and eventually take his father’s place, in time to bring the Caliphate into the Terran Federation when the general war came. There were some notes on that already; the war would result from an attempt by the Indian Communists to seize East Pakistan. The trouble was that he so seldom “remembered” an exact date. His “memory” of the year of Khalid’s assassination was an exception.

  Nineteen seventy-three—why, that was this year. He looked at the calendar. October 16, 1973. At very most, the Arab statesman had two and a half months to live. Would there be any possible way in which he could give a credible warning? He doubted it. Even if there were, he questioned whether he should—for that matter, whether he could—interfere.…

  * * * *

  He always lunched at the Faculty Club; today was no time to call attention to himself by breaking an established routine. As he entered, trying to avoid either a furtive slink or a chip-on-shoulder swagger, the crowd in the lobby stopped talking abruptly, then began again on an obviously changed subject. The word had gotten around, apparently. Handley, the head of the Latin Department, greeted him with a distantly polite nod. Pompous old owl; regarded himself, for some reason, as a sort of unofficial Dean of the Faculty. Probably didn’t want to be seen fraternizing with controversial characters. One of the younger men, with a thin face and a mop of unruly hair, advanced to meet him as he came in, as cordial as Handley was remote.