The Wonder Effect (9 page)

Trouble In Time

To begin at the beginning everybody knows that scientists are crazy. I may be either mistaken or prejudiced, but this seems especially true of mathematico-physicists. In a small town like Colchester gossip spreads fast and furiously, and one evening the word was passed around that an outstanding example of the species Doctissimus Dementiae had finally lodged himself in the old frame house beyond the dog-pound on Court Street, mysterious crates and things having been unloaded there for weeks previously.

Abigail O'Liffey, a typical specimen of the low type that a fine girl like me is forced to consort with in a small town, said she had seen the Scientist. "He had broad shoulders," she said dreamily, "and red hair, and a scraggly little moustache that wiggled up and down when he chewed gum."

"What would you expect it to do?"

She looked at me dumbly. "He was wearing a kind of garden coat," she said. "It was like a painter's, only it was all burned in places instead of having paint on it. I'll bet he discovers things like Paul Pasteur."

"Louis
Pasteur," I said. "Do you know
his
name,
by any chance?"

"Whose – the Scientist's? Clarissa said one of the express-men told her husband it was Cramer or something."

"Never heard of him," I said. "Good night." And I slammed the screen door. Cramer, I thought – it was the echo of a name I knew, and a big name at that. I was angry with Clarissa for not getting the name more accurately, and with Abigail for bothering me about it, and most of all with the Scientist for stirring me out of my drowsy existence with remembrances of livelier and brighter things not long past.

So I slung on a coat and sneaked out the back door to get a look at the mystery man, or at least his house. I slunk past the dog-pound, and the house sprang into sight like a Christmas tree – every socket in the place must have been in use, to judge from the flood of light that poured from all windows. There was a dark figure on the unkempt lawn; when I was about ten yards from it and on the verge of turning back it shouted at me : "Hey, you! Can you give me a hand?"

I approached warily; the figure was wrestling with a crate four feet high and square. "Sure," I said.

The figure straightened. "Oh, so he's a she," it said. "Sorry, lady. I'll get a
hand truck from inside."

"Don't bother," I assured it. "I'm glad to help" And I took one of the canvas slings as it took the other, and we carried the crate in, swaying perilously. "Set it here, please," he said, dropping his side of the crate. It was a
he, I saw in the numerous electric bulbs' light, and from all appearances the Scientist Cramer, or whatever his name was.

I looked about the big front parlor, bare of furniture but jammed with boxes and piles of machinery. "That was the last piece," he said amiably, noting my gaze. "Thank you. Can I offer you a scientist's drink?"

"Not – ethyl?" I cried rapturously.

"The same," he assured me, vigorously attacking a crate that tinkled internally. "How do you know?"

"Past experience. My Alma Mater was the Housatonic University, School of Chemical Engineering."

He had torn away the front of the crate, laying bare a neat array of bottles. "What's a C.E. doing in this stale little place?" he asked, selecting flasks and measures.

"Sometimes she wonders," I said bitterly. "Mix me an Ethyl Martini, will you?"

"Sure, if you like them. I don't go much for the fancy swigs myself. Correct me if I'm wrong." He took the bottle labeled CH
₂
OH. "Three cubic centimeters?"

"No – you don't start with the ethyl!" I cried. "Put four minims of fusel oil in a beaker." He complied. "Right – now a tenth of a grain of saccharine saturated in theine barbiturate ten per cent solution." His hands flew through the pharmaceutical ritual. "And
now
pour in the ethyl slowly, and stir, don't shake."

He held the beaker to the light. "Want some color in that?" he asked, immersing it momentarily in liquid air from a double thermos.

"No," I said. "What are you having?"

"A simple fusel highball," he said, expertly pouring and chilling a beakerful, and brightening it with a drop of a purple dye that transformed the colorless drink into a sparkling beverage. We touched beakers and drank deep.

"That," I said gratefully when I had finished coughing, "is the first real drink I've had since graduating three years ago. The stuff has a nostalgic appeal for me."

He looked blank. "It occurs to me," he said, 'that I ought to introduce myself. I am Stephen Trainer, late of Mellon, late of Northwestern, late of Cambridge, sometime fellow of the Sidney School of Technology. Now you tell me who you are and we'll be almost even."

I collected my senses and announced, "Miss Mabel Evans, late in practically every respect."

"I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Evans," he said. "Won't you sit down?"

"Thank you," I murmured. I was about to settle on one of the big wooden boxes when he cried out at me.

"For God's sake – not there!"

"And why not?" I asked, moving to another. "Is that your reserve stock of organic bases?"

"No," he said. "That's part of my time machine."

I looked at him. "Just a nut, huh?" I said pityingly. "Just another sometimes capable fellow gone wrong. He thinks he knows what he's doing, and he even had me fooled for a time, but the
idee fixe
has come out at last, and we see the man for what he is – mad as a hatter. Nothing but a time-traveller at the bottom of that mass of flesh and bone." I felt sorry for him, in a way.

His face grew as purple as the drink in his hand. As though he too had formed the association, he drained it and set it down. "Listen," he said. "I only know one style of reasoning that parallels yours in its scope and utter disregard of logic. Were you ever so unfortunate as to be associated with that miserable charlatan, Dr. George B. Hopper?"

"My physics professor at Housatonic," I said, "and whaddya make of that?"

"I am glad of the chance of talking to you," he said in a voice suddenly hoarse. "It's no exaggeration to say that for the greater part of my life I've wanted to come across a pupil of Professor Hopper. I've sat under him and over him on various faculties; we even went to Cambridge together — it disgusted both of us. And now at last I have the chance, and now you are going to learn the
truth
about physics."

"Go on with your lecture," I muttered skeptically.

He looked at me glassily. "I
am
going on with my lecture," he said. "Listen closely. Take a circle. What is a circle?"

"You tell me," I said.

"A circle is a closed arc. A circle is composed of an infinite number of straight lines, each with a length of zero, each at an angle infinitesmally small to its adjacent straight lines."

"I should be the last to dispute the point," I said judiciously. He reached for the decanter and missed. He reached again grimly, his fist opening and closing, and finally snapping shut on its neck. Will you join me once more?" he asked graciously.

"Granted," I said absently, wondering what was going around in my head.

"Now —
one point which we must get quite clear in the beginning is that all circles are composed of an in—"

"You said that already," I interrupted.

"Did I?" he asked with a delighted smile. "I'm brighter than I thought." He waggled his head fuzzily. "Then do you further admit that, by a crude Euclidean axiom which I forget at the moment, all circles are equal?"

"Could be — but so help me, if —" I broke off abruptly as I realized that I was lying full length on the floor. I shuddered at the very thought of what my aunt would say to
that.
"The point I was about to make," he continued without a quaver, "was that if all circles are
equal, all
circles can be traversed at the same expenditure of effort, money, or what have you." He stopped and gasped at me, collecting his thoughts. "All circles can be traversed, also, with the same amount of
time!
No matter whether the circle be the equator or the head of a pin! Now do you see?"

"With the clarity appalling. And the time travelling .. .?"

"Ah — er — yes. The time travelling. Let me think for a moment." He indicated thought by a Homeric configuration of his eyebrows, forehead, cheeks and chin. "Do you know," he finally said with a weak laugh, "I'm afraid I've forgotten the connection. But my premise is right, isn't it? If it takes the same time to traverse any two circles, and one of them is the universe, and the other is my time wheel —" His voice died under my baleful stare.

"I question your premise vaguely," I said. "There's nothing I can exactly put my finger on, but I
believe
it's not quite dry behind the ears."

"Look," he said. "You can question it as much as you like, but it
works.
I'll show you the gimmicks."

We clambered to our feet. "There," he pointed to the box I had nearly sat upon, "there lies the key to the ages." And he took up a crowbar and jimmied the top off the crate.

I lifted out carefully the most miscellaneous collection of junk ever seen outside a museum of modern art. "What, for example," I asked, gingerly dangling a canvas affair at arms' length, "does this thing do?"

"One wears it as a belt," he said. I put the thing on and found that it resolved itself into a normal Sam Browne belt with all sorts of oddments of things dangling from it. "Now," he said, "I have but to plug this into a wall socket, and then, providing you get on the time wheel, out you go like a light —
pouf!"

"Don't be silly," I said. "I'm practically out now in the first place, in the second place I don't care whether I go out pouf or
splash –
though the latter is more customary – and in the third place I don't believe your silly old machine works anyway. I dare you to make me go pouf – I just dare you!"

"All right," he said mildly. "Over there is the time wheel. Get on it."

The time wheel reminded me of a small hand-turned merry-go-round. I got on it with a good will, and he made it turn. Then he plugged in the lead to a wall socket, and I went out like a light –
pouf !

There are few things more sobering than time-travel. On going
pouf
I closed my eyes, as was natural. Possibly I screamed a little, too. All I know is when I opened my eyes they were bleary and aching, and certainly nowhere very near the old house past the dog-pound on Court Street. The locale appeared to be something like Rockefeller Center, only without fountains.

I was standing on polished stones – beautifully polished stones which seemed to set the keynote of the surroundings. Everything was beautiful and everything was polished. Before me was a tall, tall building. It was a dark night, and there seemed to be a great lack of illumination in this World of Tomorrow.

I followed my nose into the building. The revolving door revolved without much complaint, and did me the favor of turning on the lights of the lobby.

There were no people there; there were no people anywhere in sight. I tried to shout, and the ghastly echo from the still darkened sections made me tremble to my boots. I didn't try again, but very mousily looked about for an elevator or something. The something turned out to be a button in a vast column, labeled in plain English, "Slavies' ring."

I rang, assuring myself that doing so was no confession of inferiority, but merely the seizing of an offered opportunity.

All the lobby lights went out, then, but the column was glowing like mother-of-pearl before a candle. A sort of door opened, and I walked through. "Why not?" I asked myself grimly.

I seemed to be standing on a revolving staircase – but one that actually revolved! It carried me up like a gigantic corkscrew at a speed that was difficult to determine. It stopped after a few minutes, and another door opened. I stepped through and said "Thank you" nicely to the goblins of the staircase, and shuddered again as the door slammed murderously fast and hard.

Lights go again at my landing place – I was getting a bit more familiar with this ridiculous civilization. Was everybody away at Bermuda for the summer? I wondered. Then I chattered my teeth.

Corpses! Hundreds of them! I had had the bad taste, I decided, to land in the necropolis of the World of Tomorrow.

On slabs of stone they lay in double rows, great lines of them stretching into the distance of the huge chamber into which I had blundered. Morbid curiosity moved me closer to the nearest stiff. I had taken a course in embalming to get my C.E., and I pondered on the advances of that art.

Something hideously like a bed-lamp clicked on as I bent over the mummified creature. Go above! With a rustling like the pages of an ancient
book it moved – flung its arm over its eyes!

I'm afraid I may have screamed. But almost immediately I realized that the terror had been of my own postulation. Corpses do not move. This thing had moved – therefore it was not a corpse, and I had better get hold of myself unless I was determined to go batty.

It was revolting but necessary that I examine the thing. From its fingers thin, fine silver wires led into holes in the slab. I rolled it over, not heeding its terrible groans, and saw that a larger strand penetrated the neck, apparently in contact with its medulla oblongata. Presumably it was sick – this was a
hospital. I rambled about cheerfully, scanning cryptic dials on the walls, wondering what would happen next, if anything.

There was a chair facing the wall; I turned it around and sat down.

"Greetings, unknown friend," said an effeminate voice.

"Greetings right back at you," said I.

"You have seated yourself in a chair; please be advised that you have set into motion a sound track that may be of interest to you."

The voice came from a panel in the wall that had lit up with opalescent effects.

"My name," said the panel, "is unimportant. You will probably wish to know first, assuming that this record is ever played, that there are duplicates artfully scattered throughout this city, so that whoever visits us will hear our story."

"Clever, aren't you?" I said sourly. "Suppose you stop fussing around and tell me what's going on around here."

"I am speaking," said the panel, "from the Fifth Century of Bickerstaff."

"Whatever that means," I said.

"Or, by primitive reckoning, 2700 A.D."

"Thanks."

To explain, we must begin at the beginning. You may know that Bickerstaff was a poor Scottish engineer who went and discovered atomic power. I shall pass over his early struggles for recognition, merely stating that the process he invented was economical and efficient beyond anything similar in history.

"With the genius of Bickerstaff as a prod, humanity blossomed forth into its fullest greatness. Poetry and music, architecture and sculpture, letters and graphics became the principal occupations of mankind."

The panel coughed. "I myself," it said, modestly struggling with pride, "was a composer of no little renown in this city.

"However, there was one thing wrong with the Bickerstaff Power Process. That is, as Bickerstaff was to mankind, so the element yttrium was to his process. It was what is known as a catalyst, a substance introduced into a reaction for the purpose of increasing the speed of the reaction."

I, a Chemical Engineer, listening to that elementary rot! I didn't walk away. Perhaps he was going to say something of importance.

"In normal reactions the catalyst is not changed either in quantity or in quality, since it takes no real part in the process. However, the Bickerstaff process subjected all matter involved to extraordinary heat, pressure, and bombardment, and so the supply of yttrium has steadily vanished.

"Possibly we should have earlier heeded the warnings of nature. It may be the fault of no one but ourselves that we have allowed our race to become soft and degenerate in the long era of plenty. Power, light, heat – for the asking. And then we faced twin terrors: shortage of yttrium – and the Martians."

Abruptly I sat straight. Martians! I didn't see any of
them
around.

"Our planetary neighbors," said the panel, "are hardly agreeable. It came as a distinct shock to us when their ships landed this year –
my
year, that is – as the bearers of a message.

"Flatly we were ordered: Get out or be crushed. We could have resisted, we could have built war-machines, but what was to power them? Our brain-men did what they could, but it was little enough.

"They warned us, did the Martians. They said that we were worthless, absolutely useless, and they deserved the planet more than we. They had been watching our planet for many years, they said, and we were unfit to own it.

"That is almost a quotation of what they said. Not a translation, either, for they spoke English and indeed all the languages of Earth perfectly. They had observed us so minutely as to learn our tongues!

"Opinion was divided as to the course that lay before us. There were those who claimed that by hoarding the minute quantity of yttrium remaining to us we might be able to hold off the invaders when they should come. But while we were discussing the idea the supply was all consumed.

"Some declared themselves for absorption with the Martian race on its arrival. Simple laws of biogenetics demonstrated effectively that such a procedure was likewise impossible.

"A very large group decided to wage guerilla warfare, studying the technique from Clausewitz's "Theory and Practise". Unfortunately, the sole remaining copy of this work crumbled into dust when it was removed from its vault.

"And then ...

"A man named Selig Vissarion, a poet of Odessa, turned his faculties to the problem, and evolved a device to remove the agonies of waiting. Three months ago – my time, remember –he proclaimed it to all mankind.

"His device was – the Biosomniac. It so operates that the sleeper – the subject of the device, that is – is thrown into a deep slumber characterized by dreams of a pleasurable nature. And the slumber is one from which he will never, without outside interference, awake.

"The entire human race, as I speak, is now under the influence of the machine. All but me, and I am left only because there is no one to put me under. When I have done here – I shall shoot myself.

"For this is our tragedy: Now, when all our yttrium is gone, we have found a device to transmute metals. Now we could
make
all
the yttrium we need, except that ...

"The device cannot be powered except by the destruction of the atom.

"And, having no yttrium at all left, we can produce no such power ...

"And so, unknown friend, farewell. You have heard our history. Remember it, and take warning. Be warned of sloth, beware of greed. Farewell, my unknown friend."

And, with that little sermon, the shifting glow of the panel died and I sat bespelled. It was all a puzzle to me. If the Martians were coming, why hadn't they arrived? Or had they? At least I saw none about me.

I looked at the mummified figures that stretched in great rows the length of the chamber. These, then, were neither dead nor ill, but sleeping. Sleeping against the coming of the Martians. I thought. My chronology was fearfully confused. Could it be that the invaders from the red planet had not yet come, and that I was only a year or two after the human race had plunged itself into sleep? That must be it.

And all for the want of a little bit of yttrium!

Absently I inspected the appendages of the time travelling belt. They were, for the most part, compact boxes labeled with the curt terminology of engineering. "Converter," said one. "Entropy gradient," said another. And a third bore the cryptic word, "Gadenolite." That baffled my chemical knowledge. Vaguely I remembered
something
I had done back in Housatonic with the stuff. It was a Scandinavian rare earth, as I remember, containing tratia, eunobia, and several oxides. And one of them, I slowly remembered…

Then I said it aloud, with dignity and precision "One of the compounds present in this earth in large proportions is yttrium dioxide."