Alien Earth and Other Stories Read online

  "We're ready to go," Cameron announced. "I've checked everything."

  "You give me the willies." Yancey spoke flatly. "Checking and rechecking."

  "Got to make sure," Cameron told him. "Can't take any chances, not on a trip like this."

  Cabot shoved up his hat and scratched his head.

  "Are you sure that the theory and the mechanism are all right, Hugh?" he asked anxiously. "I still have a feeling we're all crazy."

  Cameron nodded.

  "Near as I can make out, Jack, it will work. I've gone over it step by step. Pascal has something here that's unique. A theory that has no precedent. Treating time as something abstract, but using that very basis for time-travel."

  "It would take a guy who got kicked out of Oxford for saying Einstein's relativity theory was all haywire to make something like this," observed Yancey.

  Cameron pointed at a crystal globe atop a mass of intricate machinery.

  "The whole answer is in that time-brain," he said. "That's the one thing I can't figure out. How he made it I don't know. But it works. I have proof of that. The rest all checks out.

  "Pascal has taken the position that time is purely subjective. That it has no existence in fact. That it is only a mental concept, but something that is entirely necessary for orientation."

  "That's the part I can't get my teeth into," protested Cabot. "It seems to me that if a man were going to travel in time there'd have to be existent time to travel in. Time would have to be an actual factor. Otherwise it would not obey

  mechanical rules. There'd be no theater for mechanical operation. In other words, just how in hell are we going to travel through something that doesn't exist?"

  Cameron lit a cigarette and tried to explain.

  "Your mind sticks on the mechanical part," he said. "Pascal's theory isn't all mechanics or all mathematics, although there's plenty of both. There're a lot of psychological concepts and that's one place where they come in. He figures that even if time is non-existent, even if it has no factual identity, that the human brain has a well-developed time-sense. Time seems entirely natural to us. Viewed from the commonplace point of view, there is absolutely no mystery about it. It is firmly embedded in the human consciousness.

  "Pascal figured that if you constructed a mechanical brain you could construct it in such a manner that its time-sense would be enormously magnified. Maybe ten thousand times that of a human mind. Maybe more. There's no way to tell. So Pascal not only constructed the mechanical counterpart of a human brain, but he constructed it with an. exaggerated time-sense. That brain over there knows more about time right now than the human race will ever know. Nobody else on Earth could have done it. No twentieth-century man. Pascal's a wizard. That's what he is."

  "Listen, Hugh," said Cabot, "I want to be sure. I sent over to America, had you come out to London because I knew that if any man could tell me anything about this pipe-dream it would be you. I want you to feel absolutely certain. I can't understand it myself. I figure you can. If you have any doubt, say so now. I don't want to get stuck halfway back in time."

  Cameron puffed away at his smoke.

  "It isn't a pipe-dream, Jack. It's the goods. The time-sense in the brain is developed to a point where it has an ability to assume mastery over time. It can move through time. What's more, it can move the time-tractor through time— with all of us inside the tractor. Not hypnotism, because in hypnotism you only think you're some place or doing something that isn't so.

  "The brain actually can move back and forth in time and it can move us back and forth in time. It develops some sort of a force. Not electricity. Pascal thought it was that at first. But it isn't, although it's related to electricity. For want of a better term we might call it a time-force. That describes it well enough. It develops this force in sufficient amount to operate the control mechanism that guides the brain's movement through time."

  He flipped his hands helplessly.

  "That's all I can tell you. The rest of it is mathematics that would be pure Greek to you and mechanics that you'd have to take eight years of college to understand."

  He looked at Cabot.

  "You have to take my word for it, Jack, that the damn thing will run." Cabot smiled.

  'That's good enough for me, Hugh," he said.

  A shadow blotted out the sunlight on the floor. The three looked toward the door.

  Dr. Thomas Pascal stood there, a white-haired man with a face that was almost childish in its simplicity. He was one of 1940's scientific wizards.

  "All ready to, start?" he asked cheerfully.

  Cameron nodded.

  "Everything seems all right, Doctor," he said. "I've checked every cable, every cog, every contact. They're all in perfect order."

  "All right, then," growled Yancey. "What are we waiting for? I'm all set to slaughter me a saber-tooth."

  "You'll find plenty of them," Pascal told him. "I told you I'd take you to a virgin game field. A place where a rifle shot had never been fired. That's what I'm going to do."

  Cameron laughed.

  "Doctor," he asked, "how did you ever get the idea of selling these two mad hunters on this proposition? A hunting trip back into time. That's one for the records."

  "I needed money to finish the tractor," Pascal told him, "so I cast around for someone who might be interested, but interested in such a way that my invention would not be used for base ends. Then I heard of Mr. Cabot and Mr. Yancey. Plenty of money. Famous hunters. What could be more appealing to them than a hunting trip back into the past? But they weren't easy to convince. They listened only when I consented to let you check the entire machine."

  Cabot shook his head stubbornly.

  "Doctor, you still have to show me those game fields back in the Riss-Wurm interglacial period. It's fifty-thousand years or more back there. A long ways to go."

  "You'll eat mammoth steak for dinner tonight," Pascal told him.

  "If you're going to make good on that promise," Cameron suggested, "we had better get started. All our supplies are stored, the machinery is checked. We're ready."

  "All right," agreed Pascal. "Will someone shut the door and make sure the ports are closed?"

  Yancey walked to the doorway, reached out to pull the door shut and lock it. For a moment he stood still, staring out over the green hills. There, only a few miles away, lay the village of Aylesford. And beyond lay the valley of the Thames. A country steeped in legend and history. In a few minutes they would be moving back, through and beyond the days which had given rise to that legend and history. Two American hunters on the maddest hunting trip the world had ever known.

  Yancey closed the door, chuckling.

  "Wonder how much lead it takes to stop a saber-tooth?" he mused.

  Turning back to the interior of the great tractor, he saw that the time-brain was glowing greenly. Dr. Pascal, standing before it, seemed like a tiny, misshapen gnome, working before a fiery furnace.

  "Door closed and locked," Yancey reported.

  "Ports all tight," said Cabot.

  "Okay," replied Pascal.

  Machinery hummed faintly, nothing more than a whisper of a sound.

  There was nothing to indicate they had left the present, were moving backward through time, but when Yancey looked through a port, he choked back an exclamation.

  There was nothing outside the port. Just a blank, flat, gray plane of nothingness, with now and then shadows that flitted and were gone.

  Pascal sucked in his breath as the tractor rocked and bumped. The gray outside the port became less dense. Objects became faintly discernible.

  "We're going too fast," Pascal explained. "Ground seems to be rising. Have to take it slower. We might hit something. Most things wouldn't stop us, but there's no use taking chances."

  "Sure the ground is rising," Cameron told him. "Maybe by this time there isn't any English Channel. Back in the Riss-Wurm period the British Isles were connected with the continent. The Thames flowed north through the N
orth Sea basin to reach the North Sea."

  The gray outside the ports thinned even more. The tractor rocked like a boat in a gentle swell. Then the grayness turned to white, a dazzling white that blinded Yancey. The tractor moved sharply upward, seemed to be riding a huge wave, then dropped, but more slowly.

  "We just passed the Wurm glacier," Pascal told them. "We're in the Riss-Wurm now."

  "Take it just a little easier," Cameron warned him. "That last bump busted a tube in the field radio. We can fix that, but we may need that radio. We don't want to smash it entirely."

  Outside the port now Yancey could make out objects. A tree became clearer, was sharply defined and beyond it Yancey saw solid landscape, bathed in a rising sun.

  He heard Pascal's voice.

  "Seventy thousand years, approximately," he said. "We should be where we intended to go."

  But Yancey was intent on the scene outside. The tractor stood on the top of a high knoll. Below unfolded a panorama of wild beauty. Rolling hills fell away to a wide valley, green with lush grass, while in the distance a stream caught the sunlight of early dawn and glinted like a ribbon of silver. And on the hills and in the valley below were black dots, feeding game herds, some so close he could make out individual animals. Others mere black spots.

  Yancey whistled soundlessly.

  He wheeled from the port.

  "Jack," he began breathlessly, "there are thousands of herds out there—"

  But Cabot, he saw, had already unlocked the door.

  The four of them stood grouped in the doorway and stared out. Pascal smiled.

  "You see," he reminded them, "that I told you the truth." Cabot drew in his breath sharply.

  "You sure did," he admitted. "I doubt if Africa in its prime was better than this."

  "An overlapping of fauna," said Pascal. "The old Stone Age merging with the modern. One type dying out, another coming in. The most diversified and plentiful game herds that ever existed on the face of the earth before or since. The cave bear, the saber-tooth, the cave hyena, the mammoth and woolly rhinoceros living coincidentally with vast herds of wild ox, reindeer, Irish elk and other animals of more recent times."

  "Some hunting!" said Yancey.

  Cabot nodded in agreement. He stepped down from the door onto the ground.

  "Let's stretch our legs," he suggested.

  "Can't right now," said Cameron. "Have to check the machinery over. I want to be sure everything's all right."

  Yancey jumped to the ground.

  "You fellows had better take your rifles," warned Cameron, Cabot laughed.

  "We have our revolvers," he said. "We aren't going far away."

  The two hunters walked slowly, wonderingly, away from the tractor. The ground beneath their feet was soft to the tread with thick grass. Head-high thickets spotted the hillsides that sloped away toward the river. On some of the hills reared great, grotesque rock formations. And everywhere was game.

  Yancey halted and lifted a pair of binoculars to his eyes. For several minutes he stood, studying the landscape. Then he lowered the glasses and slipped the thong from his neck. He handed them to Cabot.

  "Take a look, Jack," he invited.

  "You won't believe it until you see it with your own eyes. There's a herd of mammoth down by the river. That dark spot just this side of the big grove. And there's another big bunch up the river a bit. I picked up a few woolly rhinos. And bison, something like the old American buffalo."

  "Bos priscus," said Cabot. "I read up some on Stone Age animals the last few weeks. Primitive form of bison. Maybe we'll be able to get a few Bos latifrons. Big brutes with a horn spread of ten feet. But maybe they're extinct. They're the grandpappies of those fellows out there."

  "What's that big bunch across the river?" Yancey asked.

  Cabot trained the glasses in the'direction of Yancey's pointing finger.

  "Irish elk," he pronounced.

  A coughing roar brought the two men halfway around. What they saw held them petrified for a moment.

  Less than a hundred feet away, at the edge of a thicket, through which he must have come without a sound, stood a massive bear. A huge beast, six feet at the shoulders. He was dark brown in color and he was angry. He rocked gently from side to side and champed his jaws. From his chest rumbled a growl that seemed to shake the earth.

  "For God's sake," hissed Cabot, "don't move fast! Edge over toward the tractor easy. That boy is ready to charge!"

  Yancey's hand dropped to his gun butt. Out of the tail of his eye Cabot caught the motion.

  "Yancey, you damn fool," he whispered huskily, "keep your hand away from that. A forty-five slug wouldn't more than tickle him."

  Slowly the two men backed away from the bear, back toward the towering gray form of the time-tractor, their eyes never leaving the monstrous beast that stood swaying before them. The bear was working himself into a rage. His chest rumbling was almost continuous now, like a train crossing a long trestle. He snarled and the snarl was a sound of raw fury that sent cold shivers up Cabot's spine.

  Tensely they paced their slow backward march. Yancey's heel caught in a root and he stumbled, but righted himself quickly. The bear growled thunderously and shook his head. Foam from his drooling jaws flecked the massive brown shoulders.

  Then the bear charged. With no apparent preliminary move he launched into full motion, with the speed of an avalanche.

  "Run," shrieked Cabot, but his cry was drowned out by a blasting report. The charging bear lurched forward, struck head and shoulders on the ground and somersaulted.

  Cabot, racing toward the time-tractor, saw Cameron and Pascal framed in the doorway, heavy elephant guns at their shoulders.

  "Wait," roared Cabot. "Make that second shot count!" In three leaps he was beside the tractor door. Pascal shoved the gun at him. "Never shot one before in my life," he told Cabot, Cabot spun about, gun in hand.

  The bear was on its feet, swaying heavily from side to side. Its small pig eyes gleamed balefully and red foam flecked its jaws and shoulders.

  Deliberately Cabot brought the gun barrel up, centered the sights squarely between the two eyes and squeezed the trigger. The bear coughed gently and rolled over.

  Yancey wiped his brow with the back of his hand.

  "Closest shave I've ever had," he confessed.

  "Cave bear," said Pascal. "Just one of the big life-forms you will find here."

  Cameron stepped down from the tractor.

  "You'll find out these animals aren't the gun-shy brutes you two have been hunting," he stated. "These babies don't fear man. They figure man isn't dangerous, if in fact they've ever seen a man. The Neanderthalers that are living somewhere in this country right now are no match for a brute like that."

  Yancey wiped his brow again.

  "This is the damnest place I ever saw," he declared. "Jack and me just step out for a smoke and a look-around. We aren't gone five minutes and a bear jumps us."

  Cameron guffawed.

  "Picked you out for breakfast," he said.

  Yancey grimaced, but made no reply.

  Suddenly Cabot hunched forward, finger pointing to a patch of tall grass beyond the dead bear.

  "There's something in there!" he whispered harshly.

  A tawny shape raced from the grass, landed on top of the bear's brown body. With glinting claws and powerful teeth it laid back the hide on the great shoulder. Then, seeing the men, it backed away, its face twisted into a blood stained snarl.

  Yancey's .45 leaped out of its holster and exploded almost as it cleared. One explosion blending with another, the gun set up a roll of thunder that beat against the ears of the four men.

  Still snarling, the tawny beast jerked to the impact of the heavy slugs. Then it sprawled and tumbled as Yancey's gun clicked on an empty cartridge.

  But it was not dead. Snarling and spitting, it regained its feet, slunk low in a deadly slouch, razor-sharp, foot-long fangs bared in a murderous sneer.

  Cabot whipp
ed out his revolver as Yancey rapidly clicked new cartridges into the cylinder. Cameron snapped the elephant gun to his shoulder. The rifle bellowed and the cat rolled over. Cabot slid his gun back into the holster.

  "Saber-tooth," said Pascal coolly.

  "He sure carries lead," Yancey commented, breathing hard. Cameron cradled the rifle in his arm and stared at the two animals.

  "Hunting," he said. "Hell, this isn't hunting. This is an eternal Custer's last stand—a continuous battle in self-defense." 'Those critters sure are blood-thirsty," agreed Yancey. "And," he added, "not afraid of us." Cameron blew smoke through the gun barrel. "Wonder how cave bear steaks taste," he mused. Yancey looked the huge animal over. "Probably tougher than hell," he said appraisingly.

  Chapter II—The Centaurians

  From the office of Time Travel, Inc., on the 600th story of the Berkley stratosphere building, New York lay stretched below, a fairy city. Under the soft glow of millions of lights it took on an unearthly beauty. It was a city of slender pinnacles of pure white beauty, looping arches of rainbow hues, formal gardens and parks, gleaming towers of argent, black domes.

  Steve Clark liked the view. He often came here at night to sit and talk with his friend, Andy Smith, one of the ace pilots of the Time Travel service.

  Smith was reading the last edition of the Daily Rocket. Steve Clark had brought it in only a moment before, fresh from the press, and thrown it on the desk. Smith had it spread in the white circle thrown by the lone light. The rest of the office was in darkness. Beyond the desk lockers, other desks and record files loomed darkly. The time-machines themselves were in an adjoining room, ready for launching from the face of the building.

  "How's business?" asked Clark, with his feet fixed firmly on top of the desk.

  Andy Smith grunted.

  "Not so good. It's the fifty-sixth century, time-travel isn't a novelty any more and our rates are too high. Didn't have more than a dozen or two trips all week." He jabbed his finger at the purple headlines. "Times seem to be all right for you newspaper fellows," he said. "Lots of big news this afternoon."

  "Yeah," Steve Clark agreed. "The Centaurians again. They're always good for a banner-line any day. Made a real haul this time."