The Time Axis

“Well, I believe there is movement but along still another dimension, beyond this theoretical fourth which is time—or supertime. Call it a fifth. This much I’m sure of—if you could stay in the time axis indefinitely the ultra-time drift would carry you into another era, through era beyond era, wherever other ages intersect the time axis.” He shook his head.

“I admit I don’t understand it too clearly. It’s a science beyond ours. However, I think I can explain the presence of the Record box now. I believe the people of the Face sent it back in a direction parallel to the time-axis—which, remember, intersects the same area in space always, at any given moment. They sent it very far back, mille

“Look.” He held up his hand, thumb and forefinger touching at the tips. “Two times—my finger and thumb. But they touch at one point only. There you can cross. From the time of the Face to, let us say, some thousands of years B.C. This is vague again, and it is something I don’t understand.

“The extension is along still another dimension, possibly the ultra-sphere, this figurative fifth. But it’s logical to suppose there would be such a limitation. There is in space. You can step spatially only into areas spatially adjoining yours. And in time—well, it may apply there too.”

“All right,” I said. “Okay up to now. I’ll accept it. Now let’s have the kicker. What was it you saw in your cave?”

De Kalb leaned back in his chair, regarding me with a grin.

“I saw you, Mr. Cortland.”

I gaped at him.

His grin broadened.

“Yes, I saw you, lying alseep on the floor of the—the egg. I saw myself there too, asleep. I saw Dr. Essen. And lastly I saw Colonel Harrison Murray.”

He looked at me with obscure triumph, his grin very wide.

“You’re crazy,” I said bluntly.

“You’re thinking you’ve never been in a cavern under a Laurentian mountain, I suppose. Very likely. Nor has Dr. Essen. Nor, I imagine, Murray. But you will be, my friend. So will we all.” The grin faded. Now the deep voice was graver. “And we are all changed, there in the egg. You understand that?

“We are older, by a little, not temporally, but in experience. You can see that on our faces. We have all passed through strange experiences—good, bad, awe-inspiring, perhaps. And the men look—tired, older. But Dr. Essen looks strangely younger.” He shrugged heavily. “I don’t attempt to explain it. I can only report what I saw,” He smiled at me.

“Well, so much for that. Don’t look so stu

“Believe? I know it. Those people lying asleep in the time-axis, with instruments on the floor around them to regulate their slumbers, will go forward in time—have gone forward. And they will return in the end to here and now.

“They will go as the box went. From the here and now, forward through the time-axis to the world of the Face. But there is no backward flow along that axis. No one can risk meeting himself in his own past, even if such a thing were possible. So when we return, we must come as the box did, along a path which is parallel to the axis, to that continuous point in time which may be mille

“In effect, one goes forward with the flow along the time axis and back around the circumference of the sphere which is time. And there we enter the time-axis chamber again, and are carried forward along the flow to our own present time.” He smiled.

“Do you see what that means? It means that one day those four in the Laurentian cavern will waken. And as they wake, as they step out, three men and a woman will enter the chamber and begin their journey into time!”

I gave my head a quick shake. Images were whirling in it like sparks from a Fourth-of-July pinwheel. None of them made sense to me, or perhaps only one. But that one was definite.

“Oh no they won’t,” I said.

“Why not?”

“I will quote you a vulgarism,” I said meticulously. “There may be flies on some of you guys, but there ain’t no flies on me. I’m not going. I know when I’m well off. Jerry Cortland is staying right here with both feet firm upon his own temporal axis. I will write you the best story you ever saw about yourself, Mr. De Kalb, but I won’t climb on any merry-go-rounds with you. Is that clear?”

He chuckled deeply.

“But you did, Mr. Cortland—you did!”

6. The Military Mind

Colonel Harrison Murray, at sixty, still had a fine military figure and was proud of it. You could see him remember to throw his shoulders back and pull in his waist about once every ten minutes. Then age and the subject at hand would gradually divert him and he would sag slowly—until he remembered again.

He had a discontented drooping mouth, a face all flat slab-shaped planes and an incongruously high thin voice that got higher when he was angry, which was most of the time. He was angry now.

“A man can’t help it if he was born a fool, De Kalb,” he said. “But luckily we’re not all fools. You’re going to drop this idiotic sideline of yours, whatever it is, and go back to work on our current job. You agreed to assist the War Department—” He gave me a quick, wary glance. “You agreed to do a certain job.”

“I’ve done it,” De Kalb told him. I’ve set up the Bureau and laid out all the plans. Oh, it’s no secret—we’re not the only ones who’ve been experimenting along this line. I’ll be willing to bet Mr. Cortland knows more than you think about this top-secret Bureau of ours. How about that?”

He was looking at me. I said, “Well, I’ve heard rumors on the grapevine. Hypnotism, isn’t it?”

Murray swore softly. De Kalb chuckled.

“Subliminal hypnosis,” he said. “It doesn’t matter, Colonel. The important secrets are the specialized techniques that have been worked out and they’re still under cover—I hope. The Bureau is operating efficiently now. I’ve set up the plan. Now there are competent researchers doing quite as much as I could do. If I stayed on now it would simply be as a figurehead. My usefulness was over when I explained my theories to the technicians and psychologists who were able to apply them.”

“Allow me to decide that,” Murray said angrily and there was a pause.

Quietly, from her chair by the window, Dr. Essen spoke. “Ira, perhaps if Colonel Murray saw the Record—”

“Of course,” De Kalb said. “No use squabbling any further. Cortland, will you do the honors this time?”

I opened the cupboard door. I took down the wrapped bundle which was the box. I set it on the table between De Kalb and Murray. The Colonel looked suspiciously at it.

“If this is some childish joke—” he began.

“I assure you, sir, it’s no joke. It is something the like of which you’ve never seen before, but there’s nothing humorous about it. I think when you’ve looked into this—this package—you’ll have no further objections to the problem I’m working on.”

De Kalb undid the wrappings. The stained and battered box, blue-white, imperishable as the time-currents upon which it had drifted so long, lay there before us, the universe and the destiny of man locked inside it.

De Kalb’s fingers moved upon its surface. There was a faint, distant ringing as if the hinges moved to a sound of music and the box unfolded like a flower.

I didn’t watch. I knew I’d get nothing further from it now until my mind had rested a little. I looked at the ceiling instead, where the lights from the unfolded leaves and facets of the Record moved in intricate patterns on the white plaster. Even that was hypnotic.