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+Project Gutenberg's The Day Time Stopped Moving, by Bradner Buckner
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Day Time Stopped Moving
+
+Author: Bradner Buckner
+
+Illustrator: Thomas Beecham
+
+Release Date: October 26, 2008 [EBook #27053]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DAY TIME STOPPED MOVING ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Greg Weeks, Stephen Blundell and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+ THE DAY
+ TIME
+ STOPPED
+ MOVING
+
+ By BRADNER BUCKNER
+
+
+    _All Dave Miller wanted to do was commit suicide in peace. He tried,
+    but the things that happened after he'd pulled the trigger were all
+    wrong. Like everyone standing around like statues. No St. Peter, no
+    pearly gate, no pitchforks or halos. He might just as well have
+    saved the bullet!_
+
+
+Dave Miller would never have done it, had he been in his right mind. The
+Millers were not a melancholy stock, hardly the sort of people you
+expect to read about in the morning paper who have taken their lives the
+night before. But Dave Miller was drunk--abominably, roaringly so--and
+the barrel of the big revolver, as he stood against the sink, made a
+ring of coldness against his right temple.
+
+Dawn was beginning to stain the frosty kitchen windows. In the faint
+light, the letter lay a gray square against the drain-board tiles. With
+the melodramatic gesture of the very drunk, Miller had scrawled across
+the envelope:
+
+"This is why I did it!"
+
+[Illustration: Dave Miller pushed with all his strength, but the girl
+was as unmovable as Gibraltar.]
+
+He had found Helen's letter in the envelope when he staggered into their
+bedroom fifteen minutes ago--at a quarter after five. As had frequently
+happened during the past year, he'd come home from the store a little
+late ... about twelve hours late, in fact. And this time Helen had done
+what she had long threatened to do. She had left him.
+
+The letter was brief, containing a world of heartbreak and broken hopes.
+
+"I don't mind having to scrimp, Dave. No woman minds that if she feels
+she is really helping her husband over a rough spot. When business went
+bad a year ago, I told you I was ready to help in any way I could. But
+you haven't let me. You quit fighting when things got difficult, and put
+in all your money and energy on liquor and horses and cards. I could
+stand being married to a drunkard, Dave, but not to a coward ..."
+
+So she was trying to show him. But Miller told himself he'd show her
+instead. Coward, eh? Maybe this would teach her a lesson! Hell of a lot
+of help she'd been! Nag at him every time he took a drink. Holler bloody
+murder when he put twenty-five bucks on a horse, with a chance to make
+five hundred. What man wouldn't do those things?
+
+His drug store was on the skids. Could he be blamed for drinking a
+little too much, if alcohol dissolved the morbid vapors of his mind?
+
+Miller stiffened angrily, and tightened his finger on the trigger. But
+he had one moment of frank insight just before the hammer dropped and
+brought the world tumbling about his ears. It brought with it a
+realization that the whole thing was his fault. Helen was right--he was
+a coward. There was a poignant ache in his heart. She'd been as loyal as
+they came, he knew that.
+
+He could have spent his nights thinking up new business tricks, instead
+of swilling whiskey. Could have gone out of his way to be pleasant to
+customers, not snap at them when he had a terrific hangover. And even
+Miller knew nobody ever made any money on the horses--at least, not when
+he needed it. But horses and whiskey and business had become tragically
+confused in his mind; so here he was, full of liquor and madness, with a
+gun to his head.
+
+Then again anger swept his mind clean of reason, and he threw his chin
+up and gripped the gun tight.
+
+"Run out on me, will she!" he muttered thickly. "Well--this'll show
+her!"
+
+In the next moment the hammer fell ... and Dave Miller had "shown her."
+
+Miller opened his eyes with a start. As plain as black on white, he'd
+heard a bell ring--the most familiar sound in the world, too. It was the
+unmistakable tinkle of his cash register.
+
+"Now, how in hell--" The thought began in his mind; and then he saw
+where he was.
+
+The cash register was right in front of him! It was open, and on the
+marble slab lay a customer's five-spot. Miller's glance strayed up and
+around him.
+
+He was behind the drug counter, all right. There were a man and a girl
+sipping cokes at the fountain, to his right; the magazine racks by the
+open door; the tobacco counter across from the fountain. And right
+before him was a customer.
+
+Good Lord! he thought. Was all this a--a dream?
+
+Sweat oozed out on his clammy forehead. That stuff of Herman's that he
+had drunk during the game--it had had a rank taste, but he wouldn't have
+thought anything short of marihuana could produce such hallucinations as
+he had just had. Wild conjectures came boiling up from the bottom of
+Miller's being.
+
+How did he get behind the counter? Who was the woman he was waiting on?
+What--
+
+The woman's curious stare was what jarred him completely into the
+present. Get rid of her! was his one thought. Then sit down behind the
+scenes and try to figure it all out.
+
+His hand poised over the cash drawer. Then he remembered he didn't know
+how much he was to take out of the five. Avoiding the woman's glance, he
+muttered:
+
+"Let's see, now, that was--uh--how much did I say?"
+
+The woman made no answer. Miller cleared his throat, said uncertainly:
+
+"I beg your pardon, ma'am--did I say--seventy-five cents?"
+
+It was just a feeler, but the woman didn't even answer to that. And it
+was right then that Dave Miller noticed the deep silence that brooded in
+the store.
+
+Slowly his head came up and he looked straight into the woman's eyes.
+She returned him a cool, half-smiling glance. But her eyes neither
+blinked nor moved. Her features were frozen. Lips parted, teeth showing
+a little, the tip of her tongue was between her even white teeth as
+though she had started to say "this" and stopped with the syllable
+unspoken.
+
+Muscles began to rise behind Miller's ears. He could feel his hair
+stiffen like filings drawn to a magnet. His glance struggled to the soda
+fountain. What he saw there shook him to the core of his being.
+
+The girl who was drinking a coke had the glass to her lips, but
+apparently she wasn't sipping the liquid. Her boy friend's glass was on
+the counter. He had drawn on a cigarette and exhaled the gray smoke.
+That smoke hung in the air like a large, elongated balloon with the
+small end disappearing between his lips. While Miller stared, the smoke
+did not stir in the slightest.
+
+There was something unholy, something supernatural, about this scene!
+
+With apprehension rippling down his spine, Dave Miller reached across
+the cash register and touched the woman on the cheek. The flesh was
+warm, but as hard as flint. Tentatively, the young druggist pushed
+harder; finally, shoved with all his might. For all the result, the
+woman might have been a two-ton bronze statue. She neither budged nor
+changed expression.
+
+Panic seized Miller. His voice hit a high hysterical tenor as he called
+to his soda-jerker.
+
+"Pete! _Pete!_" he shouted. "What in God's name is wrong here!"
+
+The blond youngster, with a towel wadded in a glass, did not stir.
+Miller rushed from the back of the store, seized the boy by the
+shoulders, tried to shake him. But Pete was rooted to the spot.
+
+Miller knew, now, that what was wrong was something greater than a
+hallucination or a hangover. He was in some kind of trap. His first
+thought was to rush home and see if Helen was there. There was a great
+sense of relief when he thought of her. Helen, with her grave blue eyes
+and understanding manner, would listen to him and know what was the
+matter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He left the haunted drug store at a run, darted around the corner and up
+the street to his car. But, though he had not locked the car, the door
+resisted his twisting grasp. Shaking, pounding, swearing, Miller
+wrestled with each of the doors.
+
+Abruptly he stiffened, as a horrible thought leaped into his being. His
+gaze left the car and wandered up the street. Past the intersection,
+past the one beyond that, on up the thoroughfare until the gray haze of
+the city dimmed everything. And as far as Dave Miller could see, there
+was no trace of motion.
+
+Cars were poised in the street, some passing other machines, some
+turning corners. A street car stood at a safety zone; a man who had
+leaped from the bottom step hung in space a foot above the pavement.
+Pedestrians paused with one foot up. A bird hovered above a telephone
+pole, its wings glued to the blue vault of the sky.
+
+With a choked sound, Miller began to run. He did not slacken his pace
+for fifteen minutes, until around him were the familiar, reassuring
+trees and shrub-bordered houses of his own street. But yet how strange
+to him!
+
+The season was autumn, and the air filled with brown and golden leaves
+that tossed on a frozen wind. Miller ran by two boys lying on a lawn,
+petrified into a modern counterpart of the sculptor's "The Wrestlers."
+The sweetish tang of burning leaves brought a thrill of terror to him;
+for, looking down an alley from whence the smoke drifted, he saw a man
+tending a fire whose leaping flames were red tongues that did not move.
+
+Sobbing with relief, the young druggist darted up his own walk. He tried
+the front door, found it locked, and jammed a thumb against the
+doorbell. But of course the little metal button was as immovable as a
+mountain. So in the end, after convincing himself that the key could not
+be inserted into the lock, he sprang toward the back.
+
+The screen door was not latched, but it might as well have been the
+steel door of a bank vault. Miller began to pound on it, shouting:
+
+"Helen! Helen, are you in there? My God, dear, there's something wrong!
+You've got to--"
+
+The silence that flowed in again when his voice choked off was the dead
+stillness of the tomb. He could hear his voice rustling through the
+empty rooms, and at last it came back to him like a taunt: "_Helen!
+Helen!_"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+_Time Stands Still_
+
+
+For Dave Miller, the world was now a planet of death on which he alone
+lived and moved and spoke. Staggered, utterly beaten, he made no attempt
+to break into his home. But he did stumble around to the kitchen window
+and try to peer in, anxious to see if there was a body on the floor. The
+room was in semi-darkness, however, and his straining eyes made out
+nothing.
+
+He returned to the front of the house, shambling like a somnambulist.
+Seated on the porch steps, head in hands, he slipped into a hell of
+regrets. He knew now that his suicide had been no hallucination. He was
+dead, all right; and this must be hell or purgatory.
+
+Bitterly he cursed his drinking, that had led him to such a mad thing as
+suicide. Suicide! He--Dave Miller--a coward who had taken his own life!
+Miller's whole being crawled with revulsion. If he just had the last
+year to live over again, he thought fervently.
+
+And yet, through it all, some inner strain kept trying to tell him he
+was not dead. This was his own world, all right, and essentially
+unchanged. What had happened to it was beyond the pale of mere
+guesswork. But this one thing began to be clear: This was a world in
+which change or motion of any kind was a foreigner.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Fire would not burn and smoke did not rise. Doors would not open,
+liquids were solid. Miller's stubbing toe could not move a pebble, and a
+blade of grass easily supported his weight without bending. In other
+words, Miller began to understand, change had been stopped as surely as
+if a master hand had put a finger on the world's balance wheel.
+
+Miller's ramblings were terminated by the consciousness that he had an
+acute headache. His mouth tasted, as Herman used to say after a big
+night, as if an army had camped in it. Coffee and a bromo were what he
+needed.
+
+But it was a great awakening to him when he found a restaurant and
+learned that he could neither drink the coffee nor get the lid off the
+bromo bottle. Fragrant coffee-steam hung over the glass percolator, but
+even this steam was as a brick wall to his probing touch. Miller started
+gloomily to thread his way through the waiters in back of the counter
+again.
+
+Moments later he stood in the street and there were tears swimming in
+his eyes.
+
+"Helen!" His voice was a pleading whisper. "Helen, honey, where are
+you?"
+
+There was no answer but the pitiful palpitation of utter silence. And
+then, there was movement at Dave Miller's right!
+
+Something shot from between the parked cars and crashed against him;
+something brown and hairy and soft. It knocked him down. Before he could
+get his breath, a red, wet tongue was licking his face and hands, and he
+was looking up into the face of a police dog!
+
+Frantic with joy at seeing another in this city of death, the dog would
+scarcely let Miller rise. It stood up to plant big paws on his shoulders
+and try to lick his face. Miller laughed out loud, a laugh with a
+throaty catch in it.
+
+"Where'd you come from, boy?" he asked. "Won't they talk to you, either?
+What's your name, boy?"
+
+There was a heavy, brass-studded collar about the animal's neck, and
+Dave Miller read on its little nameplate: "Major."
+
+"Well, Major, at least we've got company now," was Miller's sigh of
+relief.
+
+For a long time he was too busy with the dog to bother about the sobbing
+noises. Apparently the dog failed to hear them, for he gave no sign.
+Miller scratched him behind the ear.
+
+"What shall we do now, Major? Walk? Maybe your nose can smell out
+another friend for us."
+
+They had gone hardly two blocks when it came to him that there was a
+more useful way of spending their time. The library! Half convinced that
+the whole trouble stemmed from his suicide shot in the head--which was
+conspicuously absent now--he decided that a perusal of the surgery books
+in the public library might yield something he could use.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+That way they bent their steps, and were soon mounting the broad cement
+stairs of the building. As they went beneath the brass turnstile, the
+librarian caught Miller's attention with a smiling glance. He smiled
+back.
+
+"I'm trying to find something on brain surgery," he explained. "I--"
+
+With a shock, then, he realized he had been talking to himself.
+
+In the next instant, Dave Miller whirled. A voice from the bookcases
+chuckled:
+
+"If you find anything, I wish you'd let me know. I'm stumped myself!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+From a corner of the room came an elderly, half-bald man with tangled
+gray brows and a rueful smile. A pencil was balanced over his ear, and a
+note-book was clutched in his hand.
+
+"You, too!" he said. "I had hoped I was the only one--"
+
+Miller went forward hurriedly to grip his hand.
+
+"I'm afraid I'm not so unselfish," he admitted. "I've been hoping for
+two hours that I'd run into some other poor soul."
+
+"Quite understandable," the stranger murmured sympathetically. "But in
+my case it is different. You see--I am responsible for this whole tragic
+business!"
+
+"You!" Dave Miller gulped the word. "I--I thought--"
+
+The man wagged his head, staring at his note pad, which was littered
+with jumbled calculations. Miller had a chance to study him. He was
+tall, heavily built, with wide, sturdy shoulders despite his sixty
+years. Oddly, he wore a gray-green smock. His eyes, narrowed and intent,
+looked gimlet-sharp beneath those toothbrush brows of his, as he stared
+at the pad.
+
+"There's the trouble, right there," he muttered. "I provided only three
+stages of amplification, whereas four would have been barely enough. No
+wonder the phase didn't carry through!"
+
+"I guess I don't follow you," Miller faltered. "You mean--something you
+did--"
+
+"I should think it was something I did!" The baldish stranger scratched
+his head with the tip of his pencil. "I'm John Erickson--you know, the
+Wanamaker Institute."
+
+Miller said: "Oh!" in an understanding voice. Erickson was head of
+Wanamaker Institute, first laboratory of them all when it came to
+exploding atoms and blazing trails into the wildernesses of science.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Erickson's piercing eyes were suddenly boring into the younger man.
+
+"You've been sick, haven't you?" he demanded.
+
+"Well--no--not really sick." The druggist colored. "I'll have to admit
+to being drunk a few hours ago, though."
+
+"Drunk--" Erickson stuck his tongue in his cheek, shook his head,
+scowled. "No, that would hardly do it. There must have been something
+else. The impulsor isn't _that_ powerful. I can understand about the
+dog, poor fellow. He must have been run over, and I caught him just at
+the instant of passing from life to death."
+
+"Oh!" Dave Miller lifted his head, knowing now what Erickson was driving
+at. "Well, I may as well be frank. I'm--I committed suicide. That's how
+drunk I was. There hasn't been a suicide in the Miller family in
+centuries. It took a skinful of liquor to set the precedent."
+
+Erickson nodded wisely. "Perhaps we will find the precedent hasn't
+really been set! But no matter--" His lifted hand stopped Miller's
+eager, wondering exclamation. "The point is, young man, we three are in
+a tough spot, and it's up to us to get out of it. And not only we, but
+heaven knows how many others the world over!"
+
+"Would you--maybe you can explain to my lay mind what's happened,"
+Miller suggested.
+
+"Of course. Forgive me. You see, Mr.--"
+
+"Miller. Dave Miller."
+
+"Dave it is. I have a feeling we're going to be pretty well acquainted
+before this is over. You see, Dave, I'm a nut on so-called 'time
+theories.' I've seen time compared to everything from an entity to a
+long, pink worm. But I disagree with them all, because they postulate
+the idea that time is constantly being manufactured. Such reasoning is
+fantastic!
+
+"Time exists. Not as an ever-growing chain of links, because such a
+chain would have to have a tail end, if it has a front end; and who can
+imagine the period when time did not exist? So I think time is like a
+circular train-track. Unending. We who live and die merely travel around
+on it. The future exists simultaneously with the past, for one instant
+when they meet."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Miller's brain was humming. Erickson shot the words at him
+staccato-fashion, as if they were things known from Great Primer days.
+The young druggist scratched his head.
+
+"You've got me licked," he admitted. "I'm a stranger here, myself."
+
+"Naturally you can't be expected to understand things I've been all my
+life puzzling about. Simplest way I can explain it is that we are on a
+train following this immense circular railway.
+
+"When the train reaches the point where it started, it is about to
+plunge into the past; but this is impossible, because the point where it
+started is simply the caboose of the train! And that point is always
+ahead--and behind--the time-train.
+
+"Now, my idea was that with the proper stimulus a man could be thrust
+across the diameter of this circular railway to a point in his past.
+Because of the nature of time, he could neither go ahead of the train to
+meet the future nor could he stand still and let the caboose catch up
+with him. But--he could detour across the circle and land farther back
+on the train! And that, my dear Dave, is what you and I and Major have
+done--almost."
+
+"Almost?" Miller said hoarsely.
+
+Erickson pursed his lips. "We are somewhere partway across the space
+between present and past. We are living in an instant that can move
+neither forward nor back. You and I, Dave, and Major--and the Lord knows
+how many others the world over--have been thrust by my time impulsor
+onto a timeless beach of eternity. We have been caught in time's
+backwash. Castaways, you might say."
+
+An objection clamored for attention in Miller's mind.
+
+"But if this is so, where are the rest of them? Where is my wife?"
+
+"They are right here," Erickson explained. "No doubt you could see your
+wife if you could find her. But we see them as statues, because, for us,
+time no longer exists. But there was something I did not count on. I did
+not know that it would be possible to live in one small instant of time,
+as we are doing. And I did not know that only those who are hovering
+between life and death can deviate from the normal process of time!"
+
+"You mean--we're dead!" Miller's voice was a bitter monotone.
+
+"Obviously not. We're talking and moving, aren't we? But--we are on the
+fence. When I gave my impulsor the jolt of high power, it went wrong and
+I think something must have happened to me. At the same instant, you had
+shot yourself.
+
+"Perhaps, Dave, you are dying. The only way for us to find out is to try
+to get the machine working and topple ourselves one way or the other. If
+we fall back, we will all live. If we fall into the present--we may
+die."
+
+"Either way, it's better than this!" Miller said fervently.
+
+"I came to the library here, hoping to find out the things I must know.
+My own books are locked in my study. And these--they might be cemented
+in their places, for all their use to me. I suppose we might as well go
+back to the lab."
+
+Miller nodded, murmuring: "Maybe you'll get an idea when you look at the
+machine again."
+
+"Let's hope so," said Erickson grimly. "God knows I've failed so far!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+_Splendid Sacrifice_
+
+
+It was a solid hour's walk out to West Wilshire, where the laboratory
+was. The immense bronze and glass doors of Wanamaker Institute were
+closed, and so barred to the two men. But Erickson led the way down the
+side.
+
+"We can get in a service door. Then we climb through transoms and
+ventilators until we get to my lab."
+
+Major frisked along beside them. He was enjoying the action and the
+companionship. It was less of an adventure to Miller, who knew death
+might be ahead for the three of them.
+
+Two workmen were moving a heavy cabinet in the side service door. To get
+in, they climbed up the back of the rear workman, walked across the
+cabinet, and scaled down the front of the leading man. They went up the
+stairs to the fifteenth floor. Here they crawled through a transom into
+the wing marked:
+
+"Experimental. Enter Only By Appointment."
+
+Major was helped through it, then they were crawling along the dark
+metal tunnel of an air-conditioning ventilator. It was small, and took
+some wriggling.
+
+In the next room, they were confronted by a stern receptionist on whose
+desk was a little brass sign, reading:
+
+"Have you an appointment?"
+
+Miller had had his share of experience with receptionists' ways, in his
+days as a pharmaceutical salesman. He took the greatest pleasure now in
+lighting his cigarette from a match struck on the girl's nose. Then he
+blew the smoke in her face and hastened to crawl through the final
+transom.
+
+John Erickson's laboratory was well lighted by a glass-brick wall and a
+huge skylight. The sun's rays glinted on the time impulsor.[1] The
+scientist explained the impulsor in concise terms. When he had finished,
+Dave Miller knew just as little as before, and the outfit still
+resembled three transformers in a line, of the type seen on power-poles,
+connected to a great bronze globe hanging from the ceiling.
+
+"There's the monster that put us in this plight," Erickson grunted. "Too
+strong to be legal, too weak to do the job right. Take a good look!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+With his hands jammed in his pockets, he frowned at the complex
+machinery. Miller stared a few moments; then transferred his interests
+to other things in the room. He was immediately struck by the
+resemblance of a transformer in a far corner to the ones linked up with
+the impulsor.
+
+"What's that?" he asked quickly. "Looks the same as the ones you used
+over there."
+
+"It is."
+
+"But-- Didn't you say all you needed was another stage of power?"
+
+"That's right."
+
+"Maybe I'm crazy!" Miller stared from impulsor to transformer and back
+again. "Why don't you use it, then?"
+
+"Using what for the connection?" Erickson's eyes gently mocked him.
+
+"Wire, of course!"
+
+The scientist jerked a thumb at a small bale of heavy copper wire.
+
+"Bring it over and we'll try it."
+
+Miller was halfway to it when he brought up short. Then a sheepish grin
+spread over his features.
+
+"I get it," he chuckled. "That bale of wire might be the Empire State
+Building, as far as we're concerned. Forgive my stupidity."
+
+Erickson suddenly became serious.
+
+"I'd like to be optimistic, Dave," he muttered, "but in all fairness to
+you I must tell you I see no way out of this. The machine is, of course,
+still working, and with that extra stage of power, the uncertainty would
+be over. But where, in this world of immovable things, will we find a
+piece of wire twenty-five feet long?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was a warm, moist sensation against Miller's hand, and when he
+looked down Major stared up at him commiseratingly. Miller scratched him
+behind the ear, and the dog closed his eyes, reassured and happy. The
+young druggist sighed, wishing there were some giant hand to scratch him
+behind the ear and smooth _his_ troubles over.
+
+"And if we don't get out," he said soberly, "we'll starve, I suppose."
+
+"No, I don't think it will be that quick. I haven't felt any hunger. I
+don't expect to. After all, our bodies are still living in one instant
+of time, and a man can't work up a healthy appetite in one second. Of
+course, this elastic-second business precludes the possibility of
+disease.
+
+"Our bodies must go on unchanged. The only hope I see is--when we are on
+the verge of madness, suicide. That means jumping off a bridge, I
+suppose. Poison, guns, knives--all the usual wherewithal--are denied to
+us."
+
+Black despair closed down on Dave Miller. He thrust it back, forcing a
+crooked grin.
+
+"Let's make a bargain," he offered. "When we finish fooling around with
+this apparatus, we split up. We'll only be at each other's throat if we
+stick together. I'll be blaming you for my plight, and I don't want to.
+It's my fault as much as yours. How about it?"
+
+John Erickson gripped his hand. "You're all right, Dave. Let me give you
+some advice. If ever you do get back to the present ... keep away from
+liquor. Liquor and the Irish never did mix. You'll have that store on
+its feet again in no time."
+
+"Thanks!" Miller said fervently. "And I think I can promise that nothing
+less than a whiskey antidote for snake bite will ever make me bend an
+elbow again!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For the next couple of hours, despondency reigned in the laboratory. But
+it was soon to be deposed again by hope.
+
+Despite all of Erickson's scientific training, it was Dave Miller
+himself who grasped the down-to-earth idea that started them hoping
+again. He was walking about the lab, jingling keys in his pocket, when
+suddenly he stopped short. He jerked the ring of keys into his hand.
+
+"Erickson!" he gasped. "We've been blind. Look at this!"
+
+The scientist looked; but he remained puzzled.
+
+"Well--?" he asked skeptically.
+
+"There's our wire!" Dave Miller exclaimed. "You've got keys; I've got
+keys. We've got coins, knives, wristwatches. Why can't we lay them all
+end to end--"
+
+Erickson's features looked as if he had been electrically shocked.
+
+"You've hit it!" he cried. "If we've got enough!"
+
+With one accord, they began emptying their pockets, tearing off
+wristwatches, searching for pencils. The finds made a little heap in the
+middle of the floor. Erickson let his long fingers claw through thinning
+hair.
+
+"God give us enough! We'll only need the one wire. The thing is plugged
+in already and only the positive pole has to be connected to the globe.
+Come on!"
+
+Scooping up the assortment of metal articles, they rushed across the
+room. With his pocket-knife, Dave Miller began breaking up the metal
+wrist-watch straps, opening the links out so that they could be laid
+end-to-end for the greatest possible length. They patiently broke the
+watches to pieces, and of the junk they garnered made a ragged foot and
+a half of "wire." Their coins stretched the line still further.
+
+They had ten feet covered before the stuff was half used up. Their metal
+pencils, taken apart, gave them a good two feet. Key chains helped
+generously. With eighteen feet covered, their progress began to slow
+down.
+
+Perspiration poured down Miller's face. Desperately, he tore off his
+lodge ring and cut it in two to pound it flat. From garters and
+suspenders they won a few inches more. And then--they stopped--feet from
+their goal.
+
+Miller groaned. He tossed his pocket-knife in his hand.
+
+"We can get a foot out of this," he estimated. "But that still leaves us
+way short."
+
+Abruptly, Erickson snapped his fingers.
+
+"Shoes!" he gasped. "They're full of nails. Get to work with that knife,
+Dave. We'll cut out every one of 'em!"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+In ten minutes, the shoes were reduced to ragged piles of tattered
+leather. Erickson's deft fingers painstakingly placed the nails, one by
+one, in the line. The distance left to cover was less than six inches!
+
+He lined up the last few nails. Then both men were sinking back on their
+heels, as they saw there was a gap of three inches to cover!
+
+"Beaten!" Erickson ground out. "By three inches! Three inches from the
+present ... and yet it might as well be a million miles!"
+
+Miller's body felt as though it were in a vise. His muscles ached with
+strain. So taut were his nerves that he leaped as though stung when
+Major nuzzled a cool nose into his hand again. Automatically, he began
+to stroke the dog's neck.
+
+"Well, that licks us," he muttered. "There isn't another piece of
+movable metal in the world."
+
+Major kept whimpering and pushing against him. Annoyed, the druggist
+shoved him away.
+
+"Go 'way," he muttered. "I don't feel like--"
+
+Suddenly then his eyes widened, as his touch encountered warm metal. He
+whirled.
+
+"There it is!" he yelled. "The last link. _The nameplate on Major's
+collar!_"
+
+In a flash, he had torn the little rectangular brass plate from the dog
+collar. Erickson took it from his grasp. Sweat stood shiny on his skin.
+He held the bit of metal over the gap between wire and pole.
+
+"This is it!" he smiled brittlely. "We're on our way, Dave. Where, I
+don't know. To death, or back to life. But--we're going!"
+
+The metal clinked into place. Live, writhing power leaped through the
+wire, snarling across partial breaks. The transformers began to hum. The
+humming grew louder. Singing softly, the bronze globe over their heads
+glowed green. Dave Miller felt a curious lightness. There was a snap in
+his brain, and Erickson, Major and the laboratory faded from his senses.
+
+Then came an interval when the only sound was the soft sobbing he had
+been hearing as if in a dream. That, and blackness that enfolded him
+like soft velvet. Then Miller was opening his eyes, to see the familiar
+walls of his own kitchen around him!
+
+Someone cried out.
+
+"Dave! Oh, Dave, dear!"
+
+It was Helen's voice, and it was Helen who cradled his head in her lap
+and bent her face close to his.
+
+"Oh, thank God that you're alive--!"
+
+"Helen!" Miller murmured. "What--are--you--doing here?"
+
+"I couldn't go through with it. I--I just couldn't leave you. I came
+back and--and I heard the shot and ran in. The doctor should be here. I
+called him five minutes ago."
+
+"_Five minutes_ ... How long has it been since I shot myself?"
+
+"Oh, just six or seven minutes. I called the doctor right away."
+
+Miller took a deep breath. Then it _must_ have been a dream. All
+that--to happen in a few minutes-- It wasn't possible!
+
+"How--how could I have botched the job?" he muttered. "I wasn't drunk
+enough to miss myself completely."
+
+Helen looked at the huge revolver lying in the sink.
+
+"Oh, that old forty-five of Grandfather's! It hasn't been loaded since
+the Civil War. I guess the powder got damp or something. It just sort of
+sputtered instead of exploding properly. Dave, promise me something!
+You won't ever do anything like this again, if I promise not to nag
+you?"
+
+Dave Miller closed his eyes. "There won't be any need to nag, Helen.
+Some people take a lot of teaching, but I've had my lesson. I've got
+ideas about the store which I'd been too lazy to try out. You know, I
+feel more like fighting right now than I have for years! We'll lick 'em,
+won't we, honey?"
+
+Helen buried her face in the hollow of his shoulder and cried softly.
+Her words were too muffled to be intelligible. But Dave Miller
+understood what she meant.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He had thought the whole thing a dream--John Erickson, the "time
+impulsor" and Major. But that night he read an item in the _Evening
+Courier_ that was to keep him thinking for many days.
+
+    POLICE INVESTIGATE DEATH OF SCIENTIST HERE IN LABORATORY
+
+    John M. Erickson, director of the Wanamaker Institute, died at his
+    work last night. Erickson was a beloved and valuable figure in the
+    world of science, famous for his recently publicized "time lapse"
+    theory.
+
+    Two strange circumstances surrounded his death. One was the presence
+    of a German shepherd dog in the laboratory, its head crushed as if
+    with a sledgehammer. The other was a chain of small metal objects
+    stretching from one corner of the room to the other, as if intended
+    to take the place of wire in a circuit.
+
+    Police, however, discount this idea, as there was a roll of wire
+    only a few feet from the body.
+
+
+THE END
+
+
+FOOTNOTES:
+
+[1] Obviously this electric time impulsor is a machine in the nature of
+an atomic integrator. It "broadcasts" great waves of electrons which
+align all atomic objects in rigid suspension.
+
+That is to say, atomic structures are literally "frozen." Living bodies
+are similarly affected. It is a widely held belief on the part of many
+eminent scientists that all matter, broken down into its elementary
+atomic composition, is electrical in structure.
+
+That being so, there is no reason to suppose why Professor Erickson may
+not have discovered a time impulsor which, broadcasting electronic
+impulses, "froze" everything within its range.--ED.
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Note:
+
+    This etext was produced from _Amazing Stories_ April 1956 and was
+    first published in _Amazing Stories_ October 1940. Extensive
+    research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on
+    this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical
+    errors have been corrected without note.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Day Time Stopped Moving, by Bradner Buckner
+
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