Robert Moore Williams

“ We built into it the apparatus to warp space—an adaptation of the drive we once used on our space ships. Then, on the brain substance housed in the heart of this sphere, we impressed the individual consciousness of each living person, and the knowledge that each person had in his own mind, which included all the knowledge that the human race has gained in more than two million years. We blended into one mind the minds of the two hundred humans who remained alive. Housed in a substance that was eternal, sheltered in a sphere that could not be destroyed, it became an almost perfect mind. ”

“ Run, Garth thought. It wouldn't do much good, but the instinct was to run, to preserve life as long as possible. Run! Through the trees, up the hillside. Men were coming. Run. Was this the right turning? It was. Up the hill, up the nearer hill.
Only he couldn't run much farther. His heart was beginning to hurt. Didn't matter. Death came to everything eventually, to Xerxes, to Leonidas, to Charles Martel, to Copernicus, and Galileo. Death was coming to him at the hands of those angry, frightened men, coming quickly, unless he found what he sought, what he knew was here, somewhere. ”

“ Tompkins leaned back in his chair. Viciously he bit the end off of a cigar.
"Then Garth is crazy, instead of you!" he said.
Railton's face turned white. "Well—" He made futile noises deep in his throat. "Well, you may be right. Because, well—if Garth has discovered atomic power—it—it doesn't mean much to him. He isn't interested in it. He isn't working on it. He's working on something else, something bigger, and atomic power is just one of the little things he needs to reach the goal he wants...." ”

“ Suddenly, to the occupants of the car, the tower seemed to lean toward them. The trees seemed to shiver in a blast of passing air.
But there was no wind. The air was very quiet.
How could trees dance in a wind when there was no wind?
The ground seemed to writhe. It seemed to twitch.
Men screamed.
The car left the drive, plunged forward into a tree. The motor sputtered, coughed indignantly, died. Then the night was silent, except for the deep, bull-throated roar pounding from the tower which Lee Garth had constructed.
There wasn't a man in the car.
Scoop Martin never wrote his story that night. ”

“ Energy was leaking from the sphere, a little by a little. Somehow we had erred in its construction.
"Somehow we had gone down the wrong road, had taken the wrong turning.
"We could not anticipate that this would happen, we could not see what would happen tomorrow. But we knew that our race, and your race, was dying here, that you, back in the mists of time, were moving down a road with death as your destiny.
"The drive that carries a race is not lightly ended.
"But the human race ended in us, in our error. ”

“ The last rays of the sun washed down over the planet, over the low rounded hills and the trees that grew on them, through the shallow valleys where the grass grew rank and luxurious. The last songs of the birds came undisturbed through the dusk. ”

“ Scoop Martin twisted at his desk, ran another sheet of paper into his typewriter. Two million years. Why, recorded history didn't run back over five thousand years. That guy Garth was nuts. Or was he? Those scientists talked damned funny at times. What would the earth look like in two million years? A baked, waterless plain, broken by jagged mountains? Dead, deserted, lifeless? Man and all of man's achievements gone? ”

“ It stopped abruptly and Martin read his lead.
"Secrecy shrouds new scientific development at Valley Park, where Lee Garth, the world's outstanding physicist, has a large crew at work on the construction of a large steel and concrete—"
Martin swore at himself, ripped the paper out of the typewriter. What a hell of a lead for a story. It didn't tell anything. Vague, ambiguous.
But where in the hell could he start this story?
He remembered that steam shovel, ripping the earth down to bed rock. Gangs of men, drilling into the rock and driving reinforcing steel into it. ”

“ Martin insisted. "You've got twice as many men as you can really use. You're working your crews twenty-four hours a day. What is it you need? What are you doing?"
Fretfully, Garth answered. "I can't tell you about it. It wouldn't make sense because it doesn't exist now. It exists two million years from now."
Two millions years! What the hell? Garth was cracked, he was bugs, he was off his nut.
Garth punched a button. To that plain secretary he said, "Stella, show Mr. Martin out. And see that no one else without business here gets in. Hire guards." ”

“ No man could know for certain what the morrow would bring. Tomorrow was a dark reality and the paths to the future were uncertain and tortuous.
But if Xerxes had ravaged the peninsula of Greece in 480 B.C. in all probability Plato would not have been born in 427, and he would not have had as his pupil a youth named Aristotle, and the thinking of the scientists of twenty-five coming centuries would have lacked the guidance of these two men. Into the dark reality of the future the human race would have followed other paths and the man-world of 1940 would not have come into being. ”

“ What was this?
"Prominent scientist forecasts doom of earth in two million years. Lee Garth...."
He read the article through. He thought heavily for a few moments. Then he spoke into the box on his desk.
"Get me Sullivan on the phone."
The bell of an invisible alarm clock was ringing in Lee Garth's mind. He turned over, tried to go back to sleep. Sleep was such a wonderful sensation, especially when you were so tired. He wanted to sleep forever, and forever. There wasn't enough time left for him to get rested. Days and yet more days the driving pressure of screaming energy had run through him. ”

“ The phone rang again. He grabbed it, listened. "We'll do all we can," he said.
He hung up, looked at his own men, at the reporters. "Another one gone."
His fist came down on the desk.
"I'm going to see Lee Garth. Come on, men."
He led the way. Scoop piled into the car. Those who couldn't get into the car, hung on the sides.
They came in sight of the tower of concrete. It was a squat fortress in the starlight. There wasn't a light in it.
"There it is, men," the chief of police said. "Drive up to it. We'll find out if Garth knows anything about this." ”

“ This is Tompkins. There's a fellow out at Valley Park by the name of Lee Garth. I don't know but I suspect that somewhere in his house you would find blueprints, if you look. If I were you, I would have one of your boys do a little looking. Yes, the financial arrangements will be taken care of to your satisfaction."
Tompkins hung up the phone. He turned his mind to other matter.
Sullivan ran a detective agency. If you didn't like your wife, he would make it easy for you to get a divorce. If your employees were demanding a higher wage rate, he could handle that too. Divorces, strikes, anything. ”

“ Ask him if he will accept a ten day extension on the delivery date of certain items of his order. That is your excuse for getting in to see him."
"Lee Garth? He's a big shot theoretical physicist," Railton said. "Worth a mint. Made his money on a bunch of inventions. The papers call him another Einstein, but I personally think they over-rate him. What has he been ordering from us and what am I to find out?"
"Find out why he needs solid copper bus-bars twenty-four inches in diameter, but don't let him find out that's what you want to know." ”

“ That would be his lead. A darned good one too. But he couldn't figure it out. All he could say was that out at Valley Park men were tumbling over each other getting done a job of work. They didn't walk. They ran. If a worker gave out, he stepped back out of place, and a fresh man took over his job while he rested.
It was costing a fortune. That didn't matter much. Lee Garth had a fortune. He was spending it.
Martin thought of Lee Garth. In getting in he had practically forced himself past an overworked secretary. Once in, he had found Garth in front of a desk covered with papers. ”