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“Wait!” Diyan called out hoarsely. “The needle, it no longer points.”
I waved everyone to a stop in a wide passage we were traversing, and they dropped, covering the flanks. I looked at the time energy detector that Diyan had been carrying.
“Which way was it pointing when you looked at it last?”
“Straight ahead, down the corridor. And there was no angle to the needle at all, as though this machine it points to were on this level.”
“It only works when the time-helix is operating. It must be off now.”
“Could He have gone?” Angelina asked, speaking aloud the words I was trying to keep out of my thoughts.
“Probably not,” I said with mock sincerity. “In any case we have to push on as long as we can. One last effort now, dead ahead.”
We pushed. And had another casualty when we attempted to cross a layer of writhing branches that were covered with thorns. Tipped with poison. I finally had to burn the stuff with our last thermite grenade. Ammunition and grenades were ru
“You have lost, the final time,” He said, gri
“I’m always willing to talk,” I said, then spoke to Angelina in a language I was sure He did not speak. “Any concussion grenades left?”
“I am talking, you will listen,” He said.
“One,” Angelina told me.
“I’m all ears,” I said to him. “Take that door out,” I said to her.
“I have dispatched all the people I need to a safe place in the past where we will never be found. I have sent the machines we will need, I have sent everything that will be needed to build a time-helix as well. I am the last to go, and when I leave, the time machinery will be destroyed behind me.”
The grenade exploded, but the door was thick and remained stuck in the frame. Angelina sprayed it with explosive bullets. He talked on as though this weren’t happening.
“I know who you are, little man from the future, and I know where you come from. Therefore I shall destroy you before you have a chance to be born. I will destroy you, my only enemy; then the past and the future and all eternity will be mine, mine, mine!”
He was screaming and slavering before he finished, and the door went down, and I was the first one through.
My bullets were exploding in the delicate machinery of the time-helix as my He-bomb arced through the air.
But he had already actuated the time-helix. Its green glow was gone; He was gone, the machinery left behind no longer needed. My hell-bomb exploded in empty air and was more of a danger to us than to the vanished one it had been intended for. We dropped to the floor as death whizzed overhead, and when we looked next, the machinery was dissolving and smoking.
He spoke again, and the muzzle of my gun locked for him.
“I made this recording in case I had to leave abruptly, so sorry.” He chuckled insanely at his own bad humor. “I have gone now; you ca
“In one hour every nuclear weapon on this planet will be triggered.
“Earth will be destroyed.”
Chapter 22
There was very little satisfaction to be gained from blowing up the recording machine that had He’s hateful voice coiled in its guts, but I did it anyway, one shot. The thing exploded in a cloud of plastic bits and electronic components, and the insane laughter was cut off in mid-cackle. Angelina patted my hand.
“You did your best,” she said.
“But just not good enough. I’m sorry I got you involved in this.”
“I wouldn’t want it any other way. What happens to us happens together.”
“This sounds like something very terrible will be done to your people,” Diyan said. “I am very sorry.”
“Nothing to feel sorry about. We’re all in the same boat.”
“In one sense, yes. One hour from now. But Mars is saved, and we who die here know that we accomplished at least that much. Our families and our people will live on.”
“I wish I could say the same,” I said with utmost gloom, borrowing his gun and picking off two of the enemy who tried to rush in through the broken door. “When we lost here, we lost for all time. I’m surprised we are still around at all, should have snuffed out like candles.”
“Isn’t there anything we can do?” Angelina asked. I shrugged.
“Nothing I can think of. You can’t outrun H-bombs. The time-helix equipment is kind of melted, so that is out. What we need is a new time-helix, which we are not going to get unless one appears out of thin air.”
In echo to my words there was the sudden crack of displaced air above, and I rolled and ducked, thinking it was a new attack. It wasn’t. It was a large green metal case that hung, unsupported in midair. Angelina looked at me in the strangest ma
“If that is a time-helix, you must tell me how you did it.”
For once in my outspoken life I was silent, even more so when the box began to drift down before us, and just before it grounded, I read the lettering on the side.
“Time-helix—open with care.”
I didn’t move. It all seemed too unbelievable. The two grav-chutes strapped to the top of the case, the timing device that had caused them to lower the whole thing to the floor, the small recording apparatus also fixed to the case with the boldly lettered words “Play me” lettered across it. I boggled and gaped and it was ever practical Angelina who stepped forward and pressed the starting button. Professor Coypu’s rotund voice rolled out to us.
“I suggest you get moving rather quickly. The bombs, you know, go off quite soon. I have been asked to tell you Jim, that the bomb control apparatus is concealed in a cabinet on the far wall behind the dehydrated rations. It has been disguised to look like a portable radio because it really is a portable radio. With additions. If mishandled, it will set all the bombs off now. Which would be uncomfortable. You are to set the three dials to the numbers six six six, which, I believe, is the number of the beast. Set them in sequence from right to left. When they have been set, press the off button. Now turn me off until you have done that. Be quick about it.”
“All right, all right,” I said, irritated, and switched him off. He had quite a commanding tone for an individual who wouldn’t be born for another 10,000 years or so. And how come he knew so much? I complained, but I went and did the job, hurling the dehydrated rations to the floor, where they obviously belonged. They looked like lengths of yellowish-green desiccated octopus tentacles. Suckers and all. The radio was there. I did not attempt to move it but set the dials as instructed and pressed the button. Nothing happened.
“Nothing happened,” I said.
“Which is just the way we want it,” Angelina said, standing on tiptoe to give me an appreciative kiss on the cheek. “You have saved the world.”
Feeling very proud of myself, I swaggered back to the recorder before the admiring gazes of the Martians and switched it on again.
“Don’t think you have saved the world,” Coypu said. Party-pooper. “You have just averted its destruction for approximately twenty-eight days. Once activated, the bombs wait that period, then self-destruct. But your Martian associates can profit from this delay. I believe they have supply ships on the way?”