Ray Cummings

“ A city, roofed over. The roof was over the tower now. The buildings had long since flowed over the park. No trees here now. No sky; no light from nature. The persisting man-made lights now were visible, blurred spots of dull yellow-red glow. It seemed suddenly a city infernal. Teeming multitudes here under one vast roof. Spider-like aerial bridges and viaducts were everywhere.
The tower presently was set in the space of a street. Alan could see very little of the city's extent—a street of many pedestrian levels one above the other, flanked with great lights. ”

“ We dropped nearly down to the roof level. The roof-structure was gone now over a segment of fully a mile. The beam, with Alan oscillating it, bathed the whole shattered area in white light. Indescribable scene of ruin! A vast honeycomb of metal city, shaken into ruins as though by some persistent earthquake; girders of metal piled in a tangled mass like jackstraws. Stone and mortar; plaster; wood—all the innumerable shattered substances strewn in a wreck inconceivable. Fires were starting in a dozen places; lurid glare of red-yellow flames; black smoke rolling up. ”

“ The tower materialized all in an instant. It stood gray and silent. We were on our feet—Alan and Nanette off to one side.
The tower doorway opened. The young man stood there with the light behind him. Stood gazing—
No vision this! Reality! Empty space, two moments ago. Then a phantom, a moment ago. But a real tower, now! Solid. As real, as existent—now—as these rocks, these trees!
Suddenly, even nearer at hand, another shape materialized. The Turber vehicle! It came from nothing into visibility. It settled like a giant airship upon the lawn. Its door opened. Figures sprang out. ”

“ But even they were of an aspect somehow different. Moving visibly? For an instant I thought so.
Time passed as we sat there gazing—time marked only by my dim knowledge that Alan was talking with Nanette. Changes were sweeping the scene. The gray mist of background under the stars held a distance unfathomable. A space, inconceivable, empty to my straining vision.
And then, presently, there were things to see. It seemed that the infinite had suddenly contracted. The wraith of the tower stood unchanged. But abruptly I saw that it stood in a deep wooded area, rearing itself above a tangled forest. ”

“ Every tiny fragment of everything is restless—and every thing, in its entirety, is in motion. We move in space about our tiny Earth. Our Earth whirls us all along; and the Sun sweeps onward, dragging the Earth, itself following some distant Star, which with other Stars is going somewhere. We know all this, now in 1945.
We know, too, that nothing has a continuous existence. Your body, as you now sit reading what you may feel are idle theories, at one instant is existing and at the next is blotted out. And lives again another instant. ”

“ The forest was a black wall of silence about the tower. Lea often stood in the doorway, staring out. Small, graceful figure in flowing blue robe and golden hair. We had seen her on the television like that—our first sight of her.
San would not be still. As always when the tower was at rest in a strange Time-world, he constantly paced the room; peering alternately from each of its windows; always within a few feet of the tower controls so that at any hostile sign outside, in a second or two the tower would speed away.
Time dragged by. Lea grew increasingly worried. Alan should be back by now. ”

“ Jewels fashioned in strange devices of beaten gold and silver; anklets of gold, garlanded with insets of rubies and emeralds; a heap of sapphires glowing like the tropic sea at night; gemmed bangles of a myriad designs; great metal vases, ornate with hydra-headed images—religious trappings of a heathen age, and fabulous Eastern riches.
The aero started almost as soon as Turber and Nanette came aboard. It flashed forward in Time; and flew slowly in Space. Not far in Space—south down the Hudson River, across the harbor until it poised over Staten Island. ”

“ The atoms, the very electrons of all matter in the universe, are breaking down or building up. All changing. All are nothing but manifestations of Energy. And Matter itself? Take a fragment of solid gold—we find it built of loosely massed molecules, all in movement; and each molecule a group of agitated atoms; and each atom, whirling electrons and a nucleus—infinitely tiny things to which we give these arbitrary names—things which in themselves in their essence are nothing at all save Energy! ”

“ He saw, off where Broadway traversed its diagonal path, a roof appear over the street. A great shadowy spread of roof—over Broadway—then over other streets. Growing giant of a city. The outlines of the huge buildings came nearer. The park was dwindling as the city flowed over it. Structures which Alan fancied might be great airplane stages rose high on stilted tower legs. One was quite near. It came up all in an instant—twice the tower's height, with an enormous platform upon its top. Once, for just an instant, Alan fancied he saw the shape of an airliner resting there. ”

“ Or, to be just a trifle closer to fact, perhaps, the stream of Time might be imagined as a beam of light—red at one end and violet at the other—with every tint and shade merging along the way.
Something then—like a Thought—is put into the pipe-line of Time at the Beginning. If you have conceived the fluid of Time as being hot at the Beginning—then imagine that this foreign, intangible substance which has been placed there is the same temperature. Because of that, let us say, it can remain there. But only for an instant! Because the foreign substance instantly desires to change its character. ”

“ A day passed—then another—and on the third a message came which took Lea and Alan and me in shuddering trembling haste to where now workmen were cleaning away the wreckage of the shattered area.
Nanette!
Three workmen had seen it happen. They were working just now, close beside the mangled pile of metal which was Turber's vehicle. From the air a few feet above their heads—the empty air—a human form came hurtling. They saw it all in an instant materialize. A shadow—a ghost—but in a second, when it struck the ground almost at their feet, it was solid. A human form. ”

“ Desperate plan! Just a chance to wreck the aero and still to save her own life. She had no knowledge of the controls' operation. She leaped for the table. Her fingers tore at the delicate wires—her clenched little fists smashed the fragile vacuum globes.
She felt the aero sway crazily; she felt it flash as she flung her body through the window. She fell into the black emptiness of insensibility—
The aero had lurched a few seconds into the future, and with every law of Nature transgressed by its derelict flight it had stopped and crashed into ruins. ”

“ Alan had always been one to walk alone in life. He made few friends; his friendship for me, his love for Nanette—to these he could now add an emotion, as yet barely understood, his feeling for Lea.
Into this, his world, Turber had suddenly thrust himself, abducting Nanette; capturing, perhaps killing me. What could Alan do about it? Suppose they located the Time-world to which Turber had gone? Alan could go there—with this girl Lea to help him and San to guard the tower. Hopeless adventure! He had one small weapon, his revolver. And a frail girl for companion. ”

“ Through the windows here the black woods crowded like a wall.
"Tell them, Lentz, to watch closely. At any sign of trouble, tell them to take the tower and escape."
Lentz told them. They nodded solemnly. Lea gave Alan her hand. Again, as always, its touch thrilled him. She said:
"Good-by, Alan. Good—luck."
"Good-by, Lea."
In the woods, Lentz and Alan crept through the underbrush.
"You lead," Alan whispered. He felt safer with Lentz in front of him. But he told himself that was foolish; Lentz seemed perfectly friendly.
"Quiet, we make no noise. In these woods, it seems, savages are everywhere." ”

“ The crowd milled and fought for place in the inadequate cars. Every level, every smallest bridge, was thronged. From a line of doorways and trans-corridors up near the roof a horde of advancing Turberites appeared—a mob of bloodstained villains with the blood-lust upon them. They came clambering and leaping through a hundred doors and windows; they spread down the inclines, the stairways, running over the spider-bridges. Within a moment they seemed everywhere.
I saw a low, unroofed kiosk upon the edge of a sidewalk level. Tables and chairs were there, as though this were a street cafe. ”

“ Apes of pseudo-human form skulking in these lush jungles.
The stage was set for man.
I saw all life here driven away into defeat with a glacial sweep of ice coming down. It enveloped the aero for an instant. We must have been within it—glaciers over us with our phantom vehicle speeding through them.
The ice age passed. The land and the sea sprang once more into shadowy form. The gray phantom jungles were here again. The living things, driven elsewhere, came back. The giant mammals like all the giants were losing the battle. The smaller creatures were surviving. ”

“ If they were left there—if evil came to them—then evil would fall upon all this forest.
He listened. Abruptly he stood up and flung his gray braids with a toss of his head; and wound his vivid blanket around him. Dignified, venerable figure. But he was afraid of Lea. Her curse upon these, his forests—his people—
"It shall be as you command. You shall have thirty of my braves. In a moment they will be ready."
The little blockhouse stood in the trees on a rise of ground. Lea, with her Indians about her, moved silently through the underbrush. ”

“ There is only one portion of Time—one instant of Time—to which that vibratory rate is compatible. Time sorts us out; starts each consciousness in its proper niche.
We become thus, part of the Great Pattern. We are aware only of the Time-intervals between our changes. And so it seems to us that we move forward in Time—or that Time ticks past us, as you will. But in reality, upon the great Record of Time, is engraven as it were a myriad pictures of us in our progressive changes—and we have the consciousness to be aware of them. ”

“ But we will win. We will conquer Great New York of 2445. And you'll live out your life five hundred years in the future of that world in which you and I were born."
He turned to the window. "This is a backward Space, Nanette. Elsewhere on the earth man now in these eras before Christ is leaving the impress of his struggle. But not here. It's all still empty—no evidence of civilized man. But its outlines are familiar. Why, if you could see it, Nanette, you'd recognize it now. The ocean is to the east of us. The shores; the islands. This is Manhattan Island beneath us. Slower, Bluntnose! ”

“ We lay in the darkness. In the next room when most of them departed, we fancied some half a dozen had been left to guard us. We heard their voices; the light from their candles showed through the chinks of the interior log wall.
We whispered to each other. We were worried about Nanette but she was unhurt.
"Yes, all right, Alan. But I'm so frightened."
"At least it's better than being in Turber's hands, Nanette." If we could escape now, there might still be time to get back to the tower. If not—well, we might be stranded here to live out our lives in New Amsterdam. ”

“ I became aware that we were standing in a patch of starlight. "Not here, Alan! Don't stand here!"
Almost in a panic we left the hillock and crouched in a thicket at its foot.
Lentz whispered: "That river—that's to the east. Then Turber's aero is off there—the western river." He pointed behind us. "And then the tower would be this way."
It seemed so. We started again at almost right angles to our former course. For what might have been half an hour we crept along. It was eerie. The woods seemed empty of all human life save ourselves. ”

“ It is as though Time, like a whirling knife-blade, were slashing through us—blotting us out, letting us live only in the progressive instants between the whirling blades.
"Time" is the factor of all this which we find most unnatural to envisage in its true aspect. I would have you imagine now, what I might term the physical aspect of Time. Consider it, for instance, as an all-pervading etheric fluid. Consider it strewn in a line from the Beginning to the End. Our minds are so limited that we must conceive everything in terms of tangibility—even the intangible. ”

“ Rooms with busy workers were everywhere.
This giant beehive!
I heard once above the mingled commotion of sounds: "Turberites expect to buy city—" A broadcasting voice; and as we sped over a bridge, dangling now from a single overhead track, I saw in the blur of light far beneath us a giant oblong area of light, with moving letters. A news-bulletin. I read:
Four Hundred and Fifty Thousand Billions—Wolf Turber's price—payable in minted gold, silver, platinum and ancient jewels. ”

“ There was a broad, front doorway up a stone flight of steps.
And I became aware now of what I had not noticed before: the gardens surrounding the tower were inclosed with a high wall of masonry. A segment of it was visible now as a background to the scene. A wall, looped and turreted at intervals as though this were some fortress.
The whole lay quiet and calm in the starlight. No sign of human movement. Nanette said:
"But, Edward, isn't any one in sight? No people—"
And Alan: "Ed, look! There—back there on the wall—"
It seemed on the distant wall that a dark figure was moving. A guard? ”

“ THE WOMAN JOSEFA
This Time-voyage in the Turber aero seemed in duration four or five hours. Crowded hours! A cosmorama of whirling eons. Turber flung us far backward in Time. I did not see any of this part of the trip. I lay in the cabin, pondering what Turber had said—wondering what I could do to escape with Nanette. And wondering if Alan really were dead. ”