Nightmares & Geezenstacks Page 5

  But that was different. Earth was ready-not, of course, made ready in the few minutes since the invaders’ arrival in the solar system, but ready because Earth was then—in 2820—at war with her Martian colony, which had grown half as populous as Earth itself and was even then battling for independence. At the moment of the attack on Venus, the fleets of Earth and Mars had been maneuvering for combat near the moon.

  But the battle ended more suddenly than any battle in history had ever ended. A joint fleet of Terrestrial and Martian ships, suddenly no longer at war with one another, headed to intercept the invaders and met them between Earth and Venus. Our numbers were overwhelmingly superior and the invading ships were blasted out of space, completely annihilated.

  Within twenty-four hours peace between Earth and Mars was signed at the Earth capital of Albuquerque, a solid and lasting peace based on recognition of the independence of Mars and a perpetual alliance between the two worlds—now the only two habitable planets of the solar system—against alien aggression. And already plans were being drawn for a vengeance fleet, to find the base of the aliens and destroy it before it could send another fleet against us.

  Instruments on Earth and on patrol ships a few thousand miles above her surface had detected the arrival of the aliens—though not in time to save Venus—and the readings of those instruments showed the direction from which the aliens had come and indicated, although not showing exactly how far they had come, that they had come from an almost incredible distance.

  A distance that would have been too great for us to span had not the C-plus drive—which enabled a ship to build up to a speed many times the speed of light—just been invented. It had not yet been used because the Earth-Mars war had taken all the resources of both planets, and the C-plus drive had no advantages within the solar system since vast distances were required for the purpose of building up to faster-than-light speeds.

  Now, however, it had a very definite purpose; Earth and Mars combined their efforts and their technologies to build a fleet equipped with the C-plus drive for the purpose of sending it against the aliens’ home planet to wipe it out. It took ten years, and it was estimated that the trip would take another ten.

  The vengeance fleet—not large in numbers but incredibly powerful in armament—left Marsport in 2830.

  Nothing was ever heard of it again.

  Not until almost a century later did its fate become known, and then only by deductive reasoning on the part of Jon Spencer 4, the great historian and mathematician.

  “We now know,” Spencer wrote, “and have known for some time, that an object exceeding the speed of light travels backward in time. Therefore the vengeance fleet would have reached its destination, by our time, before it started.

  “We have not known, until now, the dimensions of the universe in which we live. But from the experience of the vengeance fleet, we can now deduce them. In one direction, at least, the universe is Cc miles around—or across; they mean the same thing. In ten years, traveling forward in space and backward in time, the fleet would have traversed just that distance—186,334186,334 miles. The fleet, traveling in a straight line, circled the universe, as it were, to its point of departure ten years before it left. It destroyed the first planet it saw and then, as it headed for the next, its admiral must have suddenly recognized the truth—and must have recognized, too, the fleet that came to meet it—and must have given a cease-fire order the instant the Earth-Mars fleet reached them.

  “It is truly startling—and a seeming paradox—to realize that the vengeance fleet was headed by Admiral Barlo, who had also been admiral of the Earth fleet during the Earth-Mars conflict at the time the Earth and Mars fleets combined to destroy what they thought were alien invaders, and that many other men in both fleets on that day later became part of the personnel of the vengeance fleet.

  “It is interesting to speculate just what would have happened had Admiral Barlo, at the end of his journey, recognized Venus in time to avoid destroying it. But such speculation is futile; he could not possibly have done so, for he had already destroyed it—else he would not have been there as admiral of the fleet sent out to avenge it. The past cannot be altered.”

  ROPE TRICK

  Mr. and Mrs. George Darnell—her first name was Elsie, if that matters—were taking a honeymoon trip around the world. A second honeymoon, starting on the day of their twentieth anniversary. George had been in his thirties and Elsie in her twenties on the occasion of their first honeymoon—which, if you wish to check me on your slide rule, indicates that George was now in his fifties and Elsie in her forties.

  Her dangerous forties (this phrase can be applied to a woman as well as to a man) and very, very disappointed with what had been happening—or, more specifically, had not been happening—during the first three weeks of their second honeymoon. To be completely honest, nothing, absolutely nothing had happened.

  Until they reached Calcutta.

  They checked into a hotel there early one afternoon and after freshening up a bit decided to wander about and see as much of the city as could be seen in the one day and night they planned to spend there.

  They came to the bazaar.

  And there watched a Hindu fakir performing the Indian rope trick. Not the spectacular and complicated version in which a boy climbs the rope and—well, you know the story of how the full-scale Indian rope trick is performed.

  This was a quite simplified version. The fakir, with a short length of rope coiled on the ground in front of him, played over and over a few simple notes on a flageolet—and gradually, as he played, the rope began to rise into the air and stand rigid. This gave Elsie Darnell a wonderful idea—although she did not mention it to George. She returned with him to their room at the hotel and, after dinner, waited until he went to sleep—as always, at nine o’clock.

  Then she quietly left the room and the hotel. She found a taxi driver and an interpreter and, with both of them, went back to the bazaar and found the fakir.

  Through the interpreter she managed to buy from the fakir the flageolet which she had heard him play and paid him to teach her to play the few simple repetitious notes which had made the rope rise.

  Then she returned to the hotel and to their room. Her husband George was sleeping soundly—as he always did.

  Standing beside the bed Elsie very softly began to play the simple tune on the flageolet.

  Over and over.

  And as she played it-gradually—the sheet began to rise, over her sleeping husband.

  When it had risen to a sufficient height she put down the flageolet and, with a joyful cry, threw back the sheet.

  And there, standing straight in the air, was the drawstring of his pajamas!

  FATAL ERROR

  Mr. Walter Baxter had long been an avid reader of crime and detective stories, so when he decided to murder his uncle he knew that he must not make a single error.

  And that, to avoid the possibility of making an error, simplicity must be the keynote. Utter simplicity. No arranging of an alibi that might be broken. No complicated modus operandi. No red herrings.

  Well—one small herring. A very simple one. He’d have to rob his uncle’s house, too, of whatever cash it contained so the murder would appear to have been incidental to a burglary. Otherwise, as his uncle’s only heir, he himself would be too obvious a suspect.

  He took his time in acquiring a small crowbar in such a manner that it could not possibly be traced to him. It would serve him both as a tool and a weapon.

  He planned carefully every trifling detail, knowing he dared make no single error and certain that he would not. He chose the night and the hour with care.

  The crowbar opened a window easily and without noise. He entered the living room. The door to the bedroom was ajar, but as no sound came from it he decided to get the details of burglary over with first. He knew where his uncle kept the cash, but he’d have to make it look as though a search had been made. There was enough moonlight to let him see his wa
y; he moved silently…

  At home two hours later he undressed quickly and got into bed. No chance of the police learning of the crime before tomorrow, but he was ready if they did come sooner. The money and the crowbar had been disposed of; it had hurt him to destroy several hundred dollars but it was the only safe way, and it would be nothing to the fifty thousand or more he’d inherit.

  There was a knock at the door. Already? He made himself calm; he went to the door and opened it. The sheriff and a deputy pushed their way in.

  “Walter Baxter? Warrant for your arrest. Dress and come with us.”

  “A warrant for my arrest? What for?”

  “Burglary and grand larceny. Your uncle saw and recognized you from the bedroom doorway—stayed quiet till you left and then came downtown and swore out—”

  Walter Baxter’s jaw dropped. He had made an error after all.

  He’d planned the perfect murder but, in his engrossment with the burglary, had forgotten to commit it.

  THE SHORT HAPPY LIVES OF EUSTACE WEAVER I

  When Eustace Weaver invented his time machine he was a very happy man. He knew that he had the world by the tail on a downhill pull, as long as he kept his invention a secret. He could become the richest man in the world, wealthy beyond the dreams of avarice. All he had to do was to take short trips into the future to learn what stocks had gone up and which horses had won races, then come back to the present and buy those stocks or bet on those horses.

  Y The races would come first of course because he would need a lot of capital to play the market, whereas, at a track, he could start with a two-dollar bet and quickly parlay it I into the thousands. But it would have to be at a track; he’d too quickly break any bookie he played with, and besides he didn’t know any bookies. Unfortunately the only tracks operating at the present were in Southern California and in Florida, about equidistant and about a hundred dollars worth of plane fare away. He didn’t have a fraction of that sum, and it would take him weeks to save that much out of his salary as stock clerk at a supermarket. It would be horrible to have to wait that long, even to start getting rich.

  Suddenly he remembered the safe at the supermarket where he worked—an afternoon-evening shift from one o’clock until the market closed at nine. There’d be at least a thousand dollars in that safe, and it had a time lock. What could be better than a time machine to beat a time lock?

  When he went to work that day he took his machine with him; it was quite compact and he’d designed it to fit into a camera case he already had so there was no difficulty involved in bringing it into the store, and when he put his coat and hat into his locker he put the time machine there too.

  He worked his shift as usual until a few minutes before closing time. Then he hid behind a pile of cartons in the stock room. He felt sure that in the general exodus he wouldn’t be missed, and he wasn’t. Just the same he waited in his hiding place almost a full hour to make sure everyone else had left. Then he emerged, got his time machine from the locker, and went to the safe. The safe was set to unlock itself automatically in another eleven hours; he set his time machine for just that length of time.

  He took a good grip on the safe’s handle—he’d learned by an experiment or two that anything he wore, carried, or hung onto traveled with him in time—and pressed the stud.

  He felt no transition, but suddenly he heard the safe’s mechanism click open—but at the same moment heard gasps and excited voices behind him. And he whirled, suddenly realizing the mistake he’d made; it was nine o’clock the next morning and the store’s employees—those on the early shift—were already there, had missed the safe and had been standing in a wondering semicircle about the spot where it had stood—when the safe and Eustace Weaver had suddenly appeared.

  Luckily he still had the time machine in his hand. Quickly he turned the dial to zero—which he had calibrated to be the exact moment when he had completed it—and pressed the stud.

  And, of course, he was back before he had started and…

  THE SHORT HAPPY LIVES OF EUSTACE WEAVER II

  When Eustace Weaver invented his time machine he knew that he had the world by the tail on a downhill pull, as long as he kept his invention a secret. To become rich all he had to do was take short trips into the future to see what horses were going to win and what stocks were going up, then come back and bet the horses or buy the stocks.

  The horses came first because they would require less capital—but he didn’t have even two dollars to make a bet, let alone plane fare to the nearest track where horses were running.

  He thought of the safe in the supermarket where he worked as a stock clerk. That safe had at least a thousand dollars in it, and it had a time lock. A time lock should be duck soup for a time machine.

  So when he went to work that day he took his time machine with him in a camera case and left it in his locker. When they closed at nine he hid out in the stock room and waited an hour till he was sure everyone else had left. Then he got the time machine from his locker and went with it to the safe.

  He set the machine for eleven hours ahead—and then had a second thought, That setting would take him to nine o’clock the next morning. The safe would click open then, but the store would be opening too and there’d be people around. So instead he set the machine for twenty-four hours, took hold of the handle of the safe and then pressed the button on the time machine.

  At first he thought nothing had happened. Then he found that the handle of the safe worked when he turned it and he knew that he’d made the jump to evening of the next day. And of course the time mechanism of the safe had unlocked it en route. He opened the safe and took all the paper money in it, stuffing it into various pockets,

  He went to the alley door to let himself out, but before he reached for the bolt that kept it locked from the inside he had a sudden brilliant thought. If instead of leaving by a door he left by using his time machine he’d not only increase the mystery by leaving the store tightly locked and thereby increasing the mystery, but he’d be taking himself back in time as well as in place to the moment of his completing the time machine, a day and a half before the robbery.

  And by the time the robbery took place he could be soundly alibied; he’d be staying at a hotel in Florida or California, in either case over a thousand miles from the scene of the crime. He hadn’t thought of his time machine as a producer of alibis, but now he saw that it was perfect for the purpose.

  He dialed his time machine to zero and pressed the button.

  THE SHORT HAPPY LIVES OF EUSTACE WEAVER III

  When Eustace Weaver invented his time machine he knew that he had the world by the tail on a downhill pull, as long as he kept his invention a secret. By playing the races and the stock market he could make himself fabulously wealthy in no time at all. The only catch was that he was flat broke.

  Suddenly he remembered the store where he worked and the safe in it that worked with a time lock. A time lock should be no sweat at all for a man who had a time machine.

  He sat down on the edge of his bed to think. He reached into his pocket for his cigarettes and pulled them out—but with them came paper money, a handful of ten-dollar bills! He tried other pockets and found money in each and every one. He stacked it on the bed beside him, and by counting the big bills and estimating the smaller ones, he found he had approximately fourteen hundred dollars.

  Suddenly he realized the truth, and laughed. He had already gone forward in time and emptied the supermarket safe and then had used the time machine to return to the point in time where he had invented it. And since the burglary had not yet, in normal time, occurred, all he had to do was get the hell out of town and be a thousand miles away from the scene of the crime when it did happen.

  Two hours later he was on a plane bound for Los Angeles—and the Santa Anita track—and doing some heavy thinking. One thing that he had not anticipated was the apparent fact that when he took a jaunt into the future and came back he had no memory of whatever it w
as that hadn’t happened yet.

  But the money had come back with him. So, then, would notes written to himself, or Racing Forms or financial pages from newspapers? It would work out.

  In Los Angeles he took a cab downtown and checked in at a good hotel. It was late evening by then and he briefly considered jumping himself into the next day to save waiting time, but he realized that he was tired and sleepy. He went to bed and slept until almost noon the next day.

  His taxi got tangled in a jam on the freeway so he didn’t get to the track at Santa Anita until the first race was over but he was in time to read the winner’s number on the tote board and to check it on his dope sheet. He watched five more races, not betting but checking the winner of each race and decided not to bother with the last race. He left the grandstand and walked around behind and under it, a secluded spot where no one could see him. He set the dial of his time machine two hours back, and pressed the stud.

  But nothing happened. He tried again with the same result and then a voice behind him said, “It won’t work. It’s in a deactivating field.”

  He whirled around and there standing right behind him were two tall, slender young men, one blond and the other dark, and each of them with a hand in one pocket as though holding a weapon.

  “We are Time Police,” the blond one said, “from the twenty-fifth century. We have come to punish you for illegal use of a time machine.”

  “B-b-but,” Weaver sputtered, “h-how could I have known that racing was—” His voice got a little stronger. “Besides I haven’t made any bets yet.”

  “That is true,” the blond young man said. “And when we find any inventor of a time machine using it to win at any form of gambling, we give him warning the first time. But we’ve traced you back and find out your very first use of the time machine was to steal money from a store. And that is a crime in any century.” He pulled from his pocket something that looked vaguely like a pistol.