Nelson S. Bond

“ So scared that his voice was a thin, bleating yammer.
"Lieutenant, you can at least send us back to our proper time! You can't let us die like this! Without a chance—like trapped rats!"
"Rats!" I said scornfully. "Speak for yourself, Hallowell!" But Lancelot Biggs nodded.
"He's right. We still have twenty minutes. It is not right that you of another age should share our fate. We must get the temporal deflector into operation, send all of you back—"
Hank cried sharply, "Just us? Why not everybody, Lanse? Let's all escape to the twentieth century. ”

“ Biggs sighed. "And I've always considered myself a logical man! What you did was turn on every available, ounce of energy and thrust the Saturn at full speed toward the planet, realizing that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and that the planet's terrific repelling force would throw us completely back out of negative space—is that it?" ”

“ Hank said seriously, "Well, reckon as how you might call it the after-world, Jim. In a way. It's the world which is to be. But here comes the feller that can explain everything."
For the door had opened, and in walked the chap whom we had seen thrice in my apartment, the effervescent spirit of electricity, the blue-green mystic, the first mate of the Saturn—Lancelot Biggs! ”

“ But about us now we see nothing but a dull, endless gray. There are no cosmic clouds, no meteor mists, no stars; neither light nor dark. Only nothingness, complete and unresponsive to our best instruments!"
"Huh!" broke in Hank. "Whazzat you say?"
"Apparently," explained the young lieutenant, "our delicate instruments were broken during the explosion. That is the factor making more perilous our position. We are not able to orient ourselves, discover into what portion of the universe our moment of wild flight flung us. ”

“ The incredible readings on our instruments, the weird surroundings in which we find ourselves—" He stared at my friend sombrely. "But what are we going to do? How shall we get out of here?"
Hank said, "Same way we come in. We blast out."
"But I've tried that, Hank," Biggs defended. "Before I realized the full extent of our situation. And nothing happened. There's something strange in the response of the motors. Don't ask me what. It's hard to say, when the Saturn is plunging into beaconless, starless nothing. But stepped-up acceleration is just a waste of fuel." ”

“ I hope both those fellows will return to their original places on Earth. Rather amazing, wouldn't it be," he chuckled, "if something went wrong with the machine and Hallowell appeared suddenly on the campus of Midland University with some gadget from the future—his future—which fell into his pocket in his transit through space and time!"
"Campus?" exclaimed H. Logan MacDowell. "Don't tell me that time-travel thing of yours will actually set us down again in our own time!"
"If it doesn't," grinned Lancelot Biggs, "a lot of faces are going to be very red indeed." ”

“ And it was Hank, gulping and grinning and shaking my hand.
"Kinda worried about you, Jim. You shouldn't ought to have allowed yourself to be drawed into the power-field."
But seeing Hank had made me think of Helen; and now, looking for Helen, I found something that completed my mental collapse. Helen was standing shoulder to shoulder with—none other than her old man, himself, in person! And right behind H. Logan MacDowell stood the missing professors, Hallowell and Tomkins. ”

“ About the campus it was commonly rumored that the president of Midland had a little China doll into which, each midnight, he jabbed many red hot needles.
The plaything wore coveralls and bulldog shoes, just like Hank Cleaver!
I said, "So you're going to call in 'Horse-sense' Hank." [1]
"Don't talk about him!" growled MacDowell savagely. "Find him! If we don't solve this mystery soon, we're going to have F.B.I. men romping all over our campus. The reputation of glorious Midland will be ruined. ”

“ Space is an ebon, eternal night, pricked by a myriad glowing sparks. The stars wheel in their courses. Comets scream through the infinitude. The planets, firmly shining in the reflected glory of their several suns are colored gems upon a velvet pall. ”

“ Biggs exclaimed, "I see! In our positive universe, it is axiomatic that all objects attract each other in direct ratio to their masses. But in a negative universe—"
"They'd repel each other," nodded Hank. "Right. I guess we was dumb, though. We done the one thing we shouldn't have ever done. Put out anti-gravs and repellor-beams against the upstart planet! Which was the one thing calc'lated to drag us to it! In this backward universe, mathematics an' physics worked in reverse. ”

“ The block at the upper right intersection o' them two lines is the is universe. The one we live in. Ain't that right?"
Biggs nodded. "That's a simple way of graphing existence, yes. The horizontal line would represent existence in space, the vertical line existence in time. At any given moment, a man's position in space and time is coördinated in the positive sector. But—"
He stopped abruptly, looking at Hank with startled eyes.
"But you don't mean, Hank, we're in the bottom sector of the graph!"
Hank sighed. "'Fraid that's 'zackly what I do mean, Lanse. ”

“ But Biggs shook his head.
"I'm afraid that is impossible, Hank. There are limitations to temporal transmission. You and your friends can enter our time because there is no natural barrier, but we cannot violate the established world-line of things that have been. We never were in your time, therefore we cannot now go there. But, wait—"
He spun swiftly to a wall-audio, spoke to the engine room below.
"Get the deflector ready. We're sending our guests back!" Then, nodding to all of us, "If you will come with me—"
We started for the door. ”

“ The gadget you invented worked even better'n you expected. It worked so durn well that it give the Saturn one whale of a kick in the pants. Made it accelerate at a speed greater than that of light!
"So then what? Why, then the plus universe warn't big enough to hold the Saturn any more! That wild minute or two you talked about was when you exceeded the limitin' velocity. An' then here you was in the minus universe! Which is, so to speak, the negative matrix of the normal plus universe we ordinarily live in."
It didn't make sense to me, but apparently it did to Lieutenant Biggs. ”

“ For the object in the visiplate loomed larger and ever larger.
Lancelot Biggs had wasted very little time scanning charts. Despairing of finding any record of this cosmic visitant, he had grabbed paper and pencil, and was now scrawling hasty calculations. Hank Cleaver was watching him. I glanced at Helen. She was watching Hank. Rather hopefully, I thought.
Hank said, "What's it show, Lanse?"
Biggs looked up at him haggardly.
"The mass of that planet must be terrific. It has a heavy gravitational attraction. We're accelerating by leaps and bounds. ”

“ What he did with his feet could never, by the wildest stretch of the imagination, be called walking. Oh, he progressed forward, yes—but there are no words to describe his locomotion. Think of a polar bear on a pogo stick. Or a secretary bird on skates. A two-footed octopus, even. ”

“ Hank persisted gravely, "I want you should git up steam. An' push for'rd as hard an' as fast as you can. With—" He swallowed hard. "With the auxil'ry use o' that new speed gadget Lootenant Biggs invented."
Garrity almost strangled, but he got the words out.
"Yes ... sorr!" Then he faded from the plate. Biggs stared at Hank.
"You—you're sure you know what you're doing, Cleaver?"
"I think I do," said Horse-sense Hank. "It's the only thing makes sense. I figgered an' figgered, and it looks to me like there's only one logical way to act. We'll know in a minute if I'm right." ”

“ Hank, a dirt farmer never subjected to education, has an amazing ability to fix things of a mechanical nature when they go wrong, make infinitely accurate mathematical calculations and, above all, foretell the future in his own homely and intimate fashion.—Ed. ”

“ The second mate aboard the Saturn, space freighter plying between Earth and other colonized planets under the somewhat bilious leadership of Cap Hanson, Lancelot Biggs got himself promoted to first mate after getting the space freighter out of a bad fix. Author Bond, now one of the top-notchers in popular fiction, has in this story combined two of his best-liked scientifictional characters—Lancelot Biggs and Horse-sense Hank.—Ed. ”

“ It used to be Bert Donovan. I'm the radio operator aboard this ship."
"Ship?" He was beginning to talk sense now.
"Lugger, I should say. This is the Saturn, friend. IPS freight lugger, operating on the Earth-Mars shuttle. Or, anyhow, we used to. Till he got monkeying around with that new power drive of his—"
"IPS?" I strangled. "Earth-Mars? He?"
"Take it easy, friend. IPS—interplanetary space ship. Earth-Mars—round-trip route, originally. Navigator, Lancelot Biggs, the first mate. [3] Didn't you know—"
"Omigod!" I bleated. "Don't tell me, but I—we—all of us are in the future!" ”

“ The voice of the announcer was clear, crisp, ominous.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we interrupt this program of dance music to bring you a special bulletin. Flash! Midland University campus. Dr. H. Logan MacDowell, president of this institution, vanished suddenly five minutes ago from the midst of a group of friends gathered at his home to discuss two similar occurrences at Midland within the past week.
"Police efforts to solve the mystery were hampered by the ensuing panic. A diabolic plot against the persons of eminent American educators is feared by observers—"
The rest was lost to us. ”