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+This eBook, including all associated images, markup, improvements,
+metadata, and any other content or labor, has been confirmed to be
+in the PUBLIC DOMAIN IN THE UNITED STATES.
+
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+Project Gutenberg (https://www.gutenberg.org) public repository for
+eBook #64172 (https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/64172)
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-The Project Gutenberg eBook of Scrambled World, by Basil Wells
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-most other parts of the world 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. If you are not located in the United States, you
-will have to check the laws of the country where you are located before
-using this eBook.
-
-Title: Scrambled World
-
-Author: Basil Wells
-
-Release Date: December 29, 2020 [eBook #64172]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed
- Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
-
-*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SCRAMBLED WORLD ***
-
-
-
-
- Redskins! Boston tealeggers! Jeep men! Time
- traveler Devin Orth clutched his temples,
- battling insanity. Some "genius" had waved
- a wand over Terran history and produced a--
-
- Scrambled World
-
- By BASIL WELLS
-
- [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
- Planet Stories Spring 1947.
- Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
- the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
-
-
-The sun was dying. About its sullen shadow-streaked red globe thousands
-of miniature artificial worlds clustered like a swarm of night-chilled
-midges. So thickly did they hug the great globe of dulling flame that
-it seemed Sol had acquired an outer husk of interlocked asteroids and
-moonlets.
-
-Of all the planets and their satellites only Earth remained--a shrunken
-and changed planet. And Earth too had shifted its orbit until it now
-swung but a few million miles from its molten primary.
-
-In the huge ovoid of metal that was the _Time Bubble_ the three men
-making up its crew had by now grown accustomed to the changes that
-three million years had brought to the solar system. They had expected
-great changes--and found them. This was to be their first stop in their
-time quest for an efficient shield against the deadly radiations of
-atomic disintegration's side effects.
-
-Devin Orth, the lean, dark-haired young scientist sharing the
-control blister with his employer and friend, Norris Horn, studied
-the expanding green wilderness of what had once been northern Ohio.
-He turned to the big bald man in whose brain the plans for the time
-spanner had been born.
-
-"The continents are there," he said unbelieving, "almost exactly as we
-left them. And yet Earth is smaller. Its diameter has dwindled more
-than a thousand miles!"
-
-Horn's broad thick body quivered as he loosed a volcanic chuckle.
-
-"I know," he said. "And the oceans, big though they are, are probably
-very shallow. A thousand feet at the most. Water will be growing
-precious."
-
-"But," puzzled Orth, "why are there no cities and why have the
-continents changed so little? Surely three million years...."
-
-"I'd say the inhabitants of those small globes near the sun," suggested
-Horn, "are descendants of Earthmen. They have used their superb command
-of science to make of Earth a beautiful park or preserve as it was in
-our own primitive age.
-
-"Surely, if they have such knowledge, they can give us the secret
-of atomic control that will overcome the sterility threatening
-mankind. We cannot return now to the limited culture afforded by
-the lesser power-sources of coal or gas without great damage to
-civilization--perhaps its utter downfall."
-
-"They have it all right," said Orth, scowling down at the open parklike
-meadow toward which Horn was blasting, "but I'm worried about getting
-back. So far this time travel is simply negation--outside the _Time
-Bubble_ three million years pass and to us it seems less than two
-hours."
-
-Horn thrummed the landing jets smoothly and laughed his deep booming
-bellow. The grassy glade came up to meet them.
-
-"A minor detail," he said as he cut the jets and the ship jolted
-abruptly to an uneven grounding. The deck was slightly tilted and from
-below there sounded a muffled explosion.
-
-"You all right, Neilson?" shouted Orth into the intercom.
-
-The third member of their crew sounded breathless as he answered from
-the power compartment.
-
-"Thought the mixer was going for a bit," he gasped. "A forward jet went
-kafoo. Boulder maybe blocking off that last blast."
-
-Orth told Horn what Neilson had said. The big man unzipped his safety
-harness and came over to his side, his big capable hand on Orth's
-shoulder.
-
-"Don't worry about getting home," he said, taking up the thread of
-conversation the explosion had disrupted. "In three million years all
-the secrets of time and matter will have been discovered. We'll return
-with the shield."
-
-He released the young scientist's bruised shoulder and slapped a great
-paw of a hand on his back, pushing him down toward the airlock.
-
-"Better replace that jet tip, Devin," he said. "Can't tell but we
-may have to take off in a hurry. This future civilization might be
-unfriendly and," he paused thoughtfully, "even non-humanoid."
-
-Orth checked the gauges at the lock and found the outer atmosphere to
-be a heady oxygen-rich mixture. Horn had gone down to help Neilson in
-the power compartment and he was alone. He stuffed the jet tip into his
-bag of tools and pushed through the inner port into the airlock. There
-he snapped on the invisible, but oddly tingling, radiations that would
-destroy any alien spores of deadly growth that might find their way
-into the ship.
-
-He swung open the thick oval outer door and dropped the short
-grounding ladder to the blast-blackened turf. Down the eight rigid
-metal rungs of the ladder he went to the ground. He stumbled awkwardly
-and almost fell. The unaccustomed gravity, after the past twelve
-days in space--twelve days that had actually been thirty thousand
-centuries--had tricked him.
-
-A moment later his muscles had quickly remedied this unbalance and he
-found the fused jet that had blown back. As Neilson had guessed, the
-_Time Bubble_ had grazed a boulder in landing and the expanding rocket
-gases' escape had been blocked off.
-
-It was good to feel the spring of turf underfoot. Even the feeble
-warmth of the ancient sun was pleasant on his bared flesh. He had not
-realized how homesick he had grown for Earth until now.
-
-He put down his tools and headed toward a clump of oddly-shaped trees
-near the forest's rim. As he neared them he whistled. The temperature
-of the Lakes region must have changed. They were palms!
-
-It was only then that he turned to look back at the _Time Bubble_. He
-was thinking that Horn would be interested in his discovery of this
-tropical growth so far north.
-
-His eyes blinked stupidly. He blinked again.
-
-The _Time Bubble's_ ugly ovoid of space-scarred metal was gone!
-
- * * * * *
-
-Several hours had passed since the space ship's uncanny disappearance.
-The Earthman was picking his way along a narrow game trail in the
-semi-twilight of the mighty forest that crowded close up to Lake Erie's
-shoreline.
-
-Caution had impelled him to seek safety in the wilderness until the
-truth about the spacer's disappearance was revealed.
-
-The trail cut across a rock-strewn highway, deeply-rutted by wheeled
-vehicles. Just across the way, half-hidden by a tangle of wild vines
-and brush, was a small log cabin. Smoke oozed slowly skyward from its
-mud-daubed stick chimney.
-
-The odor of cooking meat sent Orth trotting hungrily across the road.
-He had forgotten any possible danger until an arrow hissed viciously
-past his ear. He dropped forward on his belly in a shallow depression
-soggy with dead leaves. A second arrow thwocked lightly through the
-gray-barked tangle of brush that his head was ramming into.
-
-His fingers went to the flat pocket machine gun that all three
-scientists aboard the _Time Bubble_ carried. This weapon, complete with
-ten thousand tiny explosive cartridges, and a compact kit of tools and
-essential equipment, they carried with them at all times when away from
-the space ship.
-
-Behind a light gray shaft of scaly bark, a huge tree's bole, something
-red moved. His machine gun slapped a dozen needle-sized slugs at the
-half-seen target. The explosions splintered and ripped at the tree's
-thick trunk. The red thing leaped clear, yelling. Before Devin could
-stop his weapon, it stepped into several small incredibly bright
-explosions.
-
-[Illustration: _Before Devin could stop firing, the thing leaped clear,
-yelling._]
-
-Then, from the cabin, a broad-shouldered young man emerged. He was
-clad somewhat after the fashion of the early American pioneers: fur
-cap, shapeless brown homespun shirt, rough skinny-legged trousers, and
-thick-soled moccasins. In his hands he lifted a cumbersome weapon,
-having six wooden barrels or tubes, from each of which protruded a
-sharp-pointed metal dart.
-
-"There been trouble?" he cried out in badly mangled but understandable
-English.
-
-For an instant Orth was stunned by the wonder of it. After three
-million years--a man speaking English!
-
-"Shot at me from over there," he told the frontiersman warily.
-
-The man catfooted over to the scarred tree, his clumsy weapon poised
-ready. He grunted something in badly garbled English. Then he motioned
-to the Earthman to join him.
-
-"Redskin," he told Orth.
-
-The hairy apelike savage crouching in bloody death behind the tree was
-indeed clad in flapping, red-dyed garments of skin. His skin, however,
-was as white beneath its matted covering of black hair as Orth's own.
-Yet the other had called the savage a redskin.
-
-As Orth watched the tall young giant stamped his foot down on the
-fallen warrior's middle, shook the long chestnut hair out of his
-handsome brown face, and opening his mouth let out a prolonged hideous
-screech. As he did so his fists hammered drumlike on his distended
-chest.
-
-From the distance a hideous snarling and trumpeting answered the
-ear-splitting sound. The man grinned at Orth and nodded toward the
-forest. He stepped down and held up two fingers.
-
-"Vello," he said, continuing to make the V sign that first saw birth in
-the Second World War. "Me, I am Dun Horgan. Horgan of the wilderness.
-Those are my friends you hear, the hairy apes of Afri County."
-
-Orth held out his hand. "Shake," he said, "Horgan. I'm named Orth. I
-hail from Meadville in Pennsylvania."
-
-"Pennsylvania over that way," and Horgan pointed, "but no village that
-name. Maybe small?"
-
-Orth nodded. "Small," he agreed wryly. After three million years he
-wondered that the states retained their original names.
-
-Horgan reached down to jerk an intricately woven necklace of hair,
-from which depended a crudely carved locket of bone, from the fallen
-savage's neck.
-
-"Scalp locket is worth fifteen bits bounty," he said offering it to
-Orth. "It is yours."
-
-Orth shook his head. "No, you keep it. I'll trade it for some food and
-a bed." He eyed the other thoughtfully.
-
-"And some information too," he added.
-
- * * * * *
-
-Over a well cooked slab of venison and a plate of corn bread, washed
-down by a muddy brown brew that Horgan served hot and sweetened, they
-talked. Corn likker the frontiersman called the steaming tasteless
-fluid when Orth mistakenly named it coffee.
-
-And when they had finished his host produced squares of a fine brown
-paper which he deftly filled, one-handed, with shredded greenish
-tobacco, and presented the fat cigar-sized bundles to Orth. He shrugged
-at the Earthman's refusal, eyeing with amusement the slender whiteness
-of Orth's own cigarettes.
-
-"Shipped from France maybe," he suggested, "or China?"
-
-Orth handed over the pack. Horgan studied the markings that showed they
-were manufactured in Kentucky. He shook his head.
-
-"Don't reckon you'll be getting no more," he said. "General Lee ain't
-been licked yet, and until Washington and Pershing break through to the
-South...." He lifted his big arms in a half-shrug of doubt.
-
-"What's all this about Lee and Pershing? Some sort of Civil War over
-again? Or is this continent being invaded?"
-
-Horgan eyed the Earthman curiously. "Maybe I'll have to tell you what
-year it is," he said dryly, "and who's Boss of the States now. You're
-powerful ignorant, Orth."
-
-"Go ahead," invited Orth. "My memory's fuzzy."
-
-"This's 1927, June the third." Horgan tugged absent-mindedly at his
-long brown locks. "Our boss now is Tyad Roosfald. His third year as
-Boss."
-
-"Teddy Roosevelt." Orth studied his knuckles thoughtfully. "And I
-suppose General Eisenhower is invading Germany to win our independence!"
-
-"Not Germany," corrected the frontiersman, "but Great Britain. We have
-accepted Churchill's challenge to land there and fight. Of course the
-war with Germany and Japan are going on too."
-
-Orth groaned. "What about this other thing--Lee and Washington down
-South? Don't tell me it's Civil War revival week too. What kind of a
-gag are you trying to pull on me, Horgan?"
-
-Horgan rubbed a rasping palm thoughtfully along his jaw.
-
-"There is war between the States," he said at last. "Everywhere there
-is war. The broadcast drums warn us that soon we must fight Cuba."
-Smoke puffed from his nostrils. "Helping Spain."
-
-One of Orth's hands covered his eyes and he felt his face growing hot
-with a mingling of anger and bewilderment. He stuttered as he tried to
-talk. He swallowed smoke and coughed, choking.
-
-"Good afternoon," called a fresh young voice, a feminine voice, from
-the cabin's rude door.
-
- * * * * *
-
-Their heads twisted smartly toward the opening. Horgan's bared sword
-was in his fist even before he was on his feet. Together they stood
-facing the tall round-bodied woman who had walked in upon them. Despite
-her stature she was remarkably beautiful.
-
-She was pale of skin and her great mass of intricately braided hair was
-of a softly radiant silver hue. The simple garment of golden-hued cloth
-covered her adequately--but no more than that. Even her sandals were
-simple, accessories of comfort and utility rather than fashion.
-
-"I am Ayna of Globe 64BA," she told them briskly. "I wish one or both
-of you to escort me to Ivath's headquarters."
-
-She was eyeing Orth's zippered shirt and glassid trousers curiously.
-
-"Ivath must be slipping," she said. "You are definitely out of the
-wrong century. More likely the Twenty-first. I cannot be mistaken for I
-have majored in Ancient American Mythology."
-
-"I was born in 1960!" Orth snapped, "and I definitely must be in the
-wrong century. Or I'm out of my head! That's more like it. All this
-pother about the Civil War and the World Wars going on at the same
-time. Maybe just the names are the same. Or--what?"
-
-"There must be a short circuiting of your memory cells," said Ayna
-soothingly, "but Ivath and his helpers will soon set that right. Take
-me to him and I will help you." She looked at Horgan.
-
-Horgan was shaking his head. "Sorry," he said, "but until the Civil War
-is ended--here I stay."
-
-The girl frowned. She turned to Orth. "How about you?" she demanded.
-"Are you part of the local scenery too, or can you travel?"
-
-"I have no idea what this is all about," Orth told her, "but I go where
-I please. Maybe you can set me right on a few things, Ayna. Then I'll
-go along with you."
-
-"Fine!" Her teeth flashed.
-
-"I can go with you to Hardpan City," Dun Horgan said slowly. "That's
-where I trade off my furs and gold dust. We can thump a ride on one of
-the waggons going to New Yok."
-
-"What are we waiting for then?" demanded Ayna. "Bring extra slugs for
-your six guns." She looked at Orth. "Don't you have a gun?"
-
-Orth tugged out his compact machine pistol. Apparently the clumsy
-spring-powered weapons with six barrels were what the girl called six
-guns, for Horgan belted a second weapon around his waist. The girl
-examined his hand gun with curious eyes and fingers.
-
-"Unusual design," she commented. "Not authentic for your period
-costume."
-
-"Come along," said Horgan, cutting across Orth's protesting words.
-"About time for the afternoon waggon train."
-
- * * * * *
-
-"Here they come!" cried Horgan as they quitted the path for the rutted
-highway.
-
-He seized a long length of pole and started beating at the road with
-it. Dust clouded up about them. And further down the road a growing
-cloud of dust neared. These must be the waggons Horgan was going to
-hail, Orth decided.
-
-"Why is he pounding the ground, Ayna?" demanded Orth.
-
-The woman laughed. "He is thumping for a ride," she explained. "It is a
-peculiar custom of this age. In this way he asks assistance."
-
-Orth's dark face reddened with sudden mirth that he choked back. The
-twisted idiomatic expressions of this strange world were taking a
-familiar pattern. Even the scrambled pattern of wars and their military
-leaders began to make sense. _Thumping_ a ride, six shooters, and scalp
-_lockets_ linked up with Ayna's reference to Ancient American Mythology.
-
-"You're from the little globes clustering around the sun," he said,
-"and you were visiting Earth--or this primitive duplication of it. Sort
-of a park for your people, this. Your spacer crashed or you've lost it."
-
-Ayna frowned at Orth. "Yes," she said slowly, "I landed on Earth,
-contrary to the regulations, and a herd of mammoths wrecked my ship.
-But how could you, a creature of Ivath's great workship, know anything
-of spacers?"
-
-"I do not know Ivath," Orth said angrily, "and I came here in a spacer
-that has vanished.... Now, how do we get out of this make believe world
-of yours to your home?"
-
-"But this is real," the girl protested. "If a redskin's arrow or a
-tearunner's slug cuts you down you will die. Until the war is ended, or
-you take me to Ivath's headquarters, we are not safe."
-
-"All I can say is human beings are as crazy as they were three million
-years ago," grunted Orth.
-
-Meanwhile the dust cloud rolled closer and slowed. Horgan's thumping
-had halted them. Orth saw three great waggons, their twenty foot-high
-metal-tired wheels fitting deep down into the rutted way.
-
-Sixty feet in length they were, and beneath a low roof, that Ayna
-called a hood, there was a broad treadmill geared up with the eight
-huge wheels. Between eighty and a hundred thick-bodied little ponies
-were tied upon this raised moving belt. Above the hood lifted a sort of
-tower, its roof twenty feet above the ground, and here the two waggon
-drivers sat, steering the cumbersome vehicle with a spoked wooden wheel.
-
-Back of the cab was the covered cargo deck of the waggon where bags of
-grain, hides and other produce were heaped.
-
-One of the wooden blocks that had braked the enormous wheels was
-smoking and now it burst into flame. One of the drivers hastily tossed
-a bucket of water on the block and put it out.
-
-"Going through Hardpan City?" Horgan asked.
-
-"Climb aboard," cheerfully answered a runty driver with a huge dusty
-red moustache. He jabbed his thumb at the ladder bolted to the waggon's
-side.
-
-"You ride this waggon," Horgan said to Ayna and Orth. "I'll hop the
-next one."
-
-The red-moustached man helped them into the cab, his squinted pale
-eyes studying the girl appreciatively, and then he spoke to his
-hulking companion. This driver was a hairy apish giant without ears.
-Now he slowly released the brakes that locked the treadmill while Red
-Moustache freed the wheels.
-
-The treadmill revolved faster and faster and they went clanking and
-bumping off down the highroad, the miniature horses sweating in their
-involuntary struggle to keep on their feet. The great hooded vehicle
-had a pace of perhaps ten miles an hour.
-
-"I hear," shouted the little driver at Orth and Ayna, "that the Boss
-is sending a hundred men to New Yok soon. They're to hunt down the red
-jitterbugs and outlaws that range the highways."
-
-He paused long enough to catch his breath and curse the thick fog of
-dust that filled the cab.
-
-"A hundred soldiers to wipe out three or four thousand tea sellers and
-their gunmen!" He snorted. "Of course they're jeep men--Hoovers, you
-know--but they can't do any good."
-
-"The Boss is all wise," said the earless man, bumping his clenched fist
-against his nose. "He is the Boss."
-
-Orth turned to Ayna. "Now," he said, "who is Ivath?"
-
-The girl shrugged. "For a creation of Ivath's laboratories," she said,
-"you are refreshingly human. So I will treat you as one of us." Her
-eyes were thoughtful. "After all a robot does possess a limited power
-of reasoning."
-
-"Ivath!" Orth barked the word at her. "Forget the insults for the time
-being. I may look funny but I'm human."
-
-"Ivath is the director of our theater of space," she said. "This, as
-you know, is a huge hollow globe on whose surface world-wide dramas
-from the ages past are brought to life. He is painstakingly accurate in
-his depiction of the bygone dress, customs and speech."
-
-Orth laughed shortly. "Even to vehicles with horses for power," he
-said, "and guns without gunpowder."
-
-The girl disregarded him. "But Ivath has surpassed other directors
-of the past. He uses androids, living robots, and impresses on their
-memory cells the accurate thought and instinct patterns of their own
-chosen age. It is really amazing how closely their actions follow the
-historical patterns of the ancient past."
-
-"You mean he sprinkles cities, forests and--robots, all around and
-watches what happens? No script for them to follow? No deadline or time
-to end it all?"
-
-"He usually changes the entire surface of the globe every fifty years,"
-Ayna told him. "The next drama will be that of ancient Mars before the
-Earthmen came, and shortly afterward."
-
-"If it is as accurate as this mess," said Orth dryly, "it will be
-something to see, and worse to hear. I lived in the years of the first
-Martian exploration, Ayna. And I came from the Twentieth Century that
-your director is supposed to be presenting here!"
-
-Ayna's face was serious. Orth felt a curious prickling sensation in his
-head and then everything went hazy for a time....
-
-Eventually the blur faded. He found that they had left the forest
-behind and were entering a region of cultivated fields and little
-huddles of log and sod dwellings. The clumsy vehicle in which they
-sat was slowing until it was barely crawling between two rows of
-brick-fronted cabins.
-
-"You are not lying," Ayna said. "I probed your mind, Devin Orth. You
-are not an android. And I believe that your space ship has been seized
-by Ivath. It was an alien object on the vast canvas of his pictured
-world."
-
-"Here's Hardpan," Red Moustache said, leering slack-jawed at Ayna.
-"Sorry you couldn't go along to New Yok," he added to Orth, "you and
-your squirt. She's some fowl."
-
-Orth choked and gulped twice. He thanked the driver and climbed down
-the ladder. Horgan was already standing in the shadow of a doorway
-above which swung a dust-grimed sign. _Two Drik Tony's_, the sign read.
-
-"Wait for us in that store," said Horgan, pointing out a door across
-the street that was flanked by barrels of fruit and other produce.
-"Orth and me needs a drink."
-
-Orth started to protest and then desisted as he saw the girl's
-eyelid twitch and her head motion toward the door. He followed the
-frontiersman. Ayna was talking softly to herself as they left her.
-
- * * * * *
-
-They joined the men bellied up to the bar. Dun Horgan ordered two shots
-of alcohol which were brought to them in shallow saucers of glass.
-Horgan dropped three bits on the bar.
-
-"How about a shot of tea?" he whispered to the bartender.
-
-The man's flabby pink face whitened. Imperceptibly he nodded toward the
-back room and scooped up the three shining coins. The two men downed
-their fiery drinks and then elbowed their way toward the closed door.
-
-"It's this accursed Volsad Law," said Horgan. "All a result of the
-Boston tea runners. Tried to smuggle it in and then the reform crowd
-took it up. Blamed tea for crime and poverty. Pushed the laws through
-outlawing its sale."
-
-Orth grinned. "So now the bootleggers, or tealeggers, maybe, are
-getting rich."
-
-Horgan nodded. Inside the door the bartender met them and slipped a
-small bottle of cold tea into Horgan's pocket. Then he motioned toward
-the half-open door leading into the alley beyond.
-
-"Please," he said. "There may be jeep men watching my bar."
-
-They quitted the building and leaving the alley reached the main
-street. Ayna was waiting in the store's door and as she saw them she
-started to walk in their direction.
-
-A bony stoop-shouldered man with a naked skull beneath his
-droopy-brimmed hat lurched into her path. His sunken dark eyes were
-bloodshot and hot. He jerked her arm.
-
-"Looking for someone?" he demanded. "I'm here."
-
-Ayna's fist landed flush on the man's jaw. He staggered back, but still
-gripped her. Orth seized the man's shoulder and spun him about. With
-the same movement his other fist crashed the bony man backward for
-several paces.
-
- * * * * *
-
-But he had not been alone. With him were three other hard-faced men.
-They helped him to his feet and came pacing toward Orth and Horgan.
-Their hands were inching down toward their big holstered spring guns.
-Orth reached for his own hand machine gun, and with his movement their
-four enemies went for their own weapons.
-
-Horgan was slapping his bolts at the quartet. Ayna was hugging the
-dirty street. Orth felt one smashing impact before his weapon started
-sewing the explosive little pellets across the four men's middles.
-Pain was just starting to throb in his left elbow when the last of the
-others slumped, dead, into the dusty street. Horgan staggered toward
-him, a six gun bolt in his right side.
-
-"Just nicked me," he said calmly, his hand holding back the blood that
-seeped through his coarse-woven shirt.
-
-Orth found it hard to believe that these fallen men were actually but
-pseudo-men, robots. Their laboratory-given life blood was as red and
-sticky as a true man's, and their dying struggles were as realistic as
-his own might have been.
-
-The bartender came sidling up to Orth. He was but one of a score of
-muttering, staring onlookers.
-
-"Better clear outta town," he advised. "Krepp's brother is sheriff. And
-if he don't hang you Krepp's mob will do you up."
-
-"Thanks," Orth said. There were a dozen horses, saddled and bridled,
-drooping at a nearby hitchrail, and toward these he moved.
-
-"Come on," he told Horgan and Ayna. "We're riding out of here."
-
-Horgan shrugged. "Might as well get neckties for rustling a horse as
-for killing Krepp," he conceded, reloading his two spring guns.
-
-They climbed into the saddles, Orth snapping a warning burst of
-explosive slugs into the road and Horgan menacing the glowering knot
-of townspeople and riders, and went riding eastward out of the village
-street.
-
-Once they were free of the town and climbing a long easy grade into the
-low tree-clad hills the men of Hardpan City organized their pursuit.
-Orth saw horses, light waggons, and high-wheeled vehicles resembling
-bicycles come streaming up the highway after them.
-
-Drums began to boom all along the cleared valley they had left and in
-the hills ahead.
-
-"News broadcasters," Horgan informed him, "warning all cruising scout
-waggons and squad carts of our escape. Their squad carts are fast--they
-have pulley drives that can be shifted. If we can only reach the
-forests again...."
-
-"We'll make it," Orth said. He grinned encouragingly at Ayna. "Maybe
-we'll find your precious Ivath, too," he added.
-
-At that moment they were riding up a short grade, tree-lined and
-stony, beyond which they could see nothing but an endless stretch of
-undulating tree-tops. Nothing, Orth was thinking, could now keep them
-from achieving safety.
-
-Suddenly the ground swayed underfoot and their horses spilled them from
-the saddles.
-
- * * * * *
-
-There was a moment of rushing blackness, as though they were falling
-into a pit of tar, and then they felt themselves being whirled
-horizontally along for a time into a blurring twilight, only to slide
-softly to a stop.
-
-Orth heard a click and a whir from somewhere above him and saw a
-vast square section of grayness detach itself from the sky above and
-disappear. He lay quietly for a long minute but the ground was solid
-underfoot and so he stood up.
-
-"That," said Ayna, laughing rather breathlessly, "was some of Ivath's
-work. He's brought this section of the crust inside for repairs." She
-hesitated. "Or perhaps because of you, Devin Orth."
-
-"Me? I get it. If he took the _Time Bubble_ this same way.... Yeah."
-
-Orth swallowed thickly. No telling what the mysterious Ivath might be
-planning to do with them. He was glad Ayna was along. She knew this
-insane future world.
-
-"Here he comes now," said Ayna, low-voiced. "Ivath, I mean. And, by the
-way, he is my great grandfather. So don't mind him too much."
-
-Orth found himself looking at a transparent bubble of plastic, with
-a puffy over-sized belt of jade-green metal fixed about its middle.
-It floated a few feet above the ground, sparks buzzing faintly as it
-dropped too low and was forced upward again.
-
-Inside there was a bony little parody of a man's body, or rather, its
-upper torso. Below the arms there was nothing save a shining metallic
-cylinder. The huge blue-veined skull was supported by soft wide bands
-of plastic material, and the bony arms rested on cushioned ledges.
-
-"Greetings, Earthman," something inside his brain seemed to say. "I
-have your fellows here, my honored guests. You will join them."
-
-"They are here, my companions?" asked Orth stupidly. "You mean Horn and
-Neilson? Did you say that to me?"
-
-"He speaks only in thoughts," said Ayna. "When our people reach the age
-of two hundred they submit to this operation. With their lungs gone
-there is, of course, no vocal speech. But we live on for centuries
-untroubled by bodily breakdowns."
-
-Ivath motioned with his feeble old arms.
-
-"Come," he flashed at them, "we will join them."
-
- * * * * *
-
-As they sat in a small spacer cruising within the vast hollow of
-Ivath's world-sized stage, Ayna explained more of the mysteries of this
-future world. How the planets had been cut up into smaller spheres and
-moved into the dwindling radiations of Sol. How their fleets of space
-ships crossed the void to trade and mine the precious elements they
-required, and of the other galactic cultures they met.
-
-"It is sad," said the girl at last, "that you can never return to the
-past. It is there that our science has utterly failed. Travel in time
-is but a one-way voyage."
-
-"You mean, Ayna," Orth said slowly, "we can't carry back the knowledge
-of an atomic shield that will arrest the spread of sterility--that
-mankind must abandon his use of atomic power?"
-
-"You cannot go back," smiled Ayna, putting her hand on his shoulder as
-she spoke. "But there is no need. In 1980--if our records are not too
-wrong--Eric Ensamoff discovered such a shield."
-
-"Great!" cried Orth. "I won't mind being stranded here. There's
-Ivath to set right on his ancient history. There's your perfected
-civilization to study." He swallowed his tongue momentarily and
-recovered it.
-
-"And then there's you, Ayna," he blurted. "You're...."
-
-The girl slid her fingers across a toggle-switch in the wall. "No use
-letting all the worlds hear us," she said softly, "much less see us.
-You see, I was sent to interview you and get your reactions. All the
-world was watching while you explored."
-
-Orth took the girl and pulled her closer. He studied her face. She
-smiled.
-
-"Sure it's turned off?" he demanded. She nodded.
-
-"Fine ... no, they don't need to see _this_ reaction...."
-
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-
-<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Title: Scrambled World</div>
-
-<div style='display:block; margin-top:1em; margin-bottom:1em; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Author: Basil Wells</div>
-
-<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Release Date: December 29, 2020 [eBook #64172]</div>
-
-<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Language: English</div>
-
-<div style='display:block; margin:1em 0'>Character set encoding: UTF-8</div>
-
-<div style='display:block; margin-left:2em; text-indent:-2em'>Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net</div>
-
-<div style='margin-top:2em; margin-bottom:4em'>*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SCRAMBLED WORLD ***</div>
-
-
-<div class="titlepage">
-
-<p>Redskins! Boston tealeggers! Jeep men! Time<br />
-traveler Devin Orth clutched his temples,<br />
-battling insanity. Some "genius" had waved<br />
-a wand over Terran history and produced a&mdash;</p>
-
-<h1>Scrambled World</h1>
-
-<h2>By BASIL WELLS</h2>
-
-<p>[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from<br />
-Planet Stories Spring 1947.<br />
-Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that<br />
-the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]</p>
-
-</div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<p>The sun was dying. About its sullen shadow-streaked red globe thousands
-of miniature artificial worlds clustered like a swarm of night-chilled
-midges. So thickly did they hug the great globe of dulling flame that
-it seemed Sol had acquired an outer husk of interlocked asteroids and
-moonlets.</p>
-
-<p>Of all the planets and their satellites only Earth remained&mdash;a shrunken
-and changed planet. And Earth too had shifted its orbit until it now
-swung but a few million miles from its molten primary.</p>
-
-<p>In the huge ovoid of metal that was the <i>Time Bubble</i> the three men
-making up its crew had by now grown accustomed to the changes that
-three million years had brought to the solar system. They had expected
-great changes&mdash;and found them. This was to be their first stop in their
-time quest for an efficient shield against the deadly radiations of
-atomic disintegration's side effects.</p>
-
-<p>Devin Orth, the lean, dark-haired young scientist sharing the
-control blister with his employer and friend, Norris Horn, studied
-the expanding green wilderness of what had once been northern Ohio.
-He turned to the big bald man in whose brain the plans for the time
-spanner had been born.</p>
-
-<p>"The continents are there," he said unbelieving, "almost exactly as we
-left them. And yet Earth is smaller. Its diameter has dwindled more
-than a thousand miles!"</p>
-
-<p>Horn's broad thick body quivered as he loosed a volcanic chuckle.</p>
-
-<p>"I know," he said. "And the oceans, big though they are, are probably
-very shallow. A thousand feet at the most. Water will be growing
-precious."</p>
-
-<p>"But," puzzled Orth, "why are there no cities and why have the
-continents changed so little? Surely three million years...."</p>
-
-<p>"I'd say the inhabitants of those small globes near the sun," suggested
-Horn, "are descendants of Earthmen. They have used their superb command
-of science to make of Earth a beautiful park or preserve as it was in
-our own primitive age.</p>
-
-<p>"Surely, if they have such knowledge, they can give us the secret
-of atomic control that will overcome the sterility threatening
-mankind. We cannot return now to the limited culture afforded by
-the lesser power-sources of coal or gas without great damage to
-civilization&mdash;perhaps its utter downfall."</p>
-
-<p>"They have it all right," said Orth, scowling down at the open parklike
-meadow toward which Horn was blasting, "but I'm worried about getting
-back. So far this time travel is simply negation&mdash;outside the <i>Time
-Bubble</i> three million years pass and to us it seems less than two
-hours."</p>
-
-<p>Horn thrummed the landing jets smoothly and laughed his deep booming
-bellow. The grassy glade came up to meet them.</p>
-
-<p>"A minor detail," he said as he cut the jets and the ship jolted
-abruptly to an uneven grounding. The deck was slightly tilted and from
-below there sounded a muffled explosion.</p>
-
-<p>"You all right, Neilson?" shouted Orth into the intercom.</p>
-
-<p>The third member of their crew sounded breathless as he answered from
-the power compartment.</p>
-
-<p>"Thought the mixer was going for a bit," he gasped. "A forward jet went
-kafoo. Boulder maybe blocking off that last blast."</p>
-
-<p>Orth told Horn what Neilson had said. The big man unzipped his safety
-harness and came over to his side, his big capable hand on Orth's
-shoulder.</p>
-
-<p>"Don't worry about getting home," he said, taking up the thread of
-conversation the explosion had disrupted. "In three million years all
-the secrets of time and matter will have been discovered. We'll return
-with the shield."</p>
-
-<p>He released the young scientist's bruised shoulder and slapped a great
-paw of a hand on his back, pushing him down toward the airlock.</p>
-
-<p>"Better replace that jet tip, Devin," he said. "Can't tell but we
-may have to take off in a hurry. This future civilization might be
-unfriendly and," he paused thoughtfully, "even non-humanoid."</p>
-
-<p>Orth checked the gauges at the lock and found the outer atmosphere to
-be a heady oxygen-rich mixture. Horn had gone down to help Neilson in
-the power compartment and he was alone. He stuffed the jet tip into his
-bag of tools and pushed through the inner port into the airlock. There
-he snapped on the invisible, but oddly tingling, radiations that would
-destroy any alien spores of deadly growth that might find their way
-into the ship.</p>
-
-<p>He swung open the thick oval outer door and dropped the short
-grounding ladder to the blast-blackened turf. Down the eight rigid
-metal rungs of the ladder he went to the ground. He stumbled awkwardly
-and almost fell. The unaccustomed gravity, after the past twelve
-days in space&mdash;twelve days that had actually been thirty thousand
-centuries&mdash;had tricked him.</p>
-
-<p>A moment later his muscles had quickly remedied this unbalance and he
-found the fused jet that had blown back. As Neilson had guessed, the
-<i>Time Bubble</i> had grazed a boulder in landing and the expanding rocket
-gases' escape had been blocked off.</p>
-
-<p>It was good to feel the spring of turf underfoot. Even the feeble
-warmth of the ancient sun was pleasant on his bared flesh. He had not
-realized how homesick he had grown for Earth until now.</p>
-
-<p>He put down his tools and headed toward a clump of oddly-shaped trees
-near the forest's rim. As he neared them he whistled. The temperature
-of the Lakes region must have changed. They were palms!</p>
-
-<p>It was only then that he turned to look back at the <i>Time Bubble</i>. He
-was thinking that Horn would be interested in his discovery of this
-tropical growth so far north.</p>
-
-<p>His eyes blinked stupidly. He blinked again.</p>
-
-<p>The <i>Time Bubble's</i> ugly ovoid of space-scarred metal was gone!</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>Several hours had passed since the space ship's uncanny disappearance.
-The Earthman was picking his way along a narrow game trail in the
-semi-twilight of the mighty forest that crowded close up to Lake Erie's
-shoreline.</p>
-
-<p>Caution had impelled him to seek safety in the wilderness until the
-truth about the spacer's disappearance was revealed.</p>
-
-<p>The trail cut across a rock-strewn highway, deeply-rutted by wheeled
-vehicles. Just across the way, half-hidden by a tangle of wild vines
-and brush, was a small log cabin. Smoke oozed slowly skyward from its
-mud-daubed stick chimney.</p>
-
-<p>The odor of cooking meat sent Orth trotting hungrily across the road.
-He had forgotten any possible danger until an arrow hissed viciously
-past his ear. He dropped forward on his belly in a shallow depression
-soggy with dead leaves. A second arrow thwocked lightly through the
-gray-barked tangle of brush that his head was ramming into.</p>
-
-<p>His fingers went to the flat pocket machine gun that all three
-scientists aboard the <i>Time Bubble</i> carried. This weapon, complete with
-ten thousand tiny explosive cartridges, and a compact kit of tools and
-essential equipment, they carried with them at all times when away from
-the space ship.</p>
-
-<p>Behind a light gray shaft of scaly bark, a huge tree's bole, something
-red moved. His machine gun slapped a dozen needle-sized slugs at the
-half-seen target. The explosions splintered and ripped at the tree's
-thick trunk. The red thing leaped clear, yelling. Before Devin could
-stop his weapon, it stepped into several small incredibly bright
-explosions.</p>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<div class="figcenter">
- <img src="images/illus.jpg" alt=""/>
- <div class="caption">
- <p><i>Before Devin could stop firing, the thing leaped clear, yelling.</i></p>
- </div>
-</div>
-
-<hr class="chap" />
-
-<p>Then, from the cabin, a broad-shouldered young man emerged. He was
-clad somewhat after the fashion of the early American pioneers: fur
-cap, shapeless brown homespun shirt, rough skinny-legged trousers, and
-thick-soled moccasins. In his hands he lifted a cumbersome weapon,
-having six wooden barrels or tubes, from each of which protruded a
-sharp-pointed metal dart.</p>
-
-<p>"There been trouble?" he cried out in badly mangled but understandable
-English.</p>
-
-<p>For an instant Orth was stunned by the wonder of it. After three
-million years&mdash;a man speaking English!</p>
-
-<p>"Shot at me from over there," he told the frontiersman warily.</p>
-
-<p>The man catfooted over to the scarred tree, his clumsy weapon poised
-ready. He grunted something in badly garbled English. Then he motioned
-to the Earthman to join him.</p>
-
-<p>"Redskin," he told Orth.</p>
-
-<p>The hairy apelike savage crouching in bloody death behind the tree was
-indeed clad in flapping, red-dyed garments of skin. His skin, however,
-was as white beneath its matted covering of black hair as Orth's own.
-Yet the other had called the savage a redskin.</p>
-
-<p>As Orth watched the tall young giant stamped his foot down on the
-fallen warrior's middle, shook the long chestnut hair out of his
-handsome brown face, and opening his mouth let out a prolonged hideous
-screech. As he did so his fists hammered drumlike on his distended
-chest.</p>
-
-<p>From the distance a hideous snarling and trumpeting answered the
-ear-splitting sound. The man grinned at Orth and nodded toward the
-forest. He stepped down and held up two fingers.</p>
-
-<p>"Vello," he said, continuing to make the V sign that first saw birth in
-the Second World War. "Me, I am Dun Horgan. Horgan of the wilderness.
-Those are my friends you hear, the hairy apes of Afri County."</p>
-
-<p>Orth held out his hand. "Shake," he said, "Horgan. I'm named Orth. I
-hail from Meadville in Pennsylvania."</p>
-
-<p>"Pennsylvania over that way," and Horgan pointed, "but no village that
-name. Maybe small?"</p>
-
-<p>Orth nodded. "Small," he agreed wryly. After three million years he
-wondered that the states retained their original names.</p>
-
-<p>Horgan reached down to jerk an intricately woven necklace of hair,
-from which depended a crudely carved locket of bone, from the fallen
-savage's neck.</p>
-
-<p>"Scalp locket is worth fifteen bits bounty," he said offering it to
-Orth. "It is yours."</p>
-
-<p>Orth shook his head. "No, you keep it. I'll trade it for some food and
-a bed." He eyed the other thoughtfully.</p>
-
-<p>"And some information too," he added.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>Over a well cooked slab of venison and a plate of corn bread, washed
-down by a muddy brown brew that Horgan served hot and sweetened, they
-talked. Corn likker the frontiersman called the steaming tasteless
-fluid when Orth mistakenly named it coffee.</p>
-
-<p>And when they had finished his host produced squares of a fine brown
-paper which he deftly filled, one-handed, with shredded greenish
-tobacco, and presented the fat cigar-sized bundles to Orth. He shrugged
-at the Earthman's refusal, eyeing with amusement the slender whiteness
-of Orth's own cigarettes.</p>
-
-<p>"Shipped from France maybe," he suggested, "or China?"</p>
-
-<p>Orth handed over the pack. Horgan studied the markings that showed they
-were manufactured in Kentucky. He shook his head.</p>
-
-<p>"Don't reckon you'll be getting no more," he said. "General Lee ain't
-been licked yet, and until Washington and Pershing break through to the
-South...." He lifted his big arms in a half-shrug of doubt.</p>
-
-<p>"What's all this about Lee and Pershing? Some sort of Civil War over
-again? Or is this continent being invaded?"</p>
-
-<p>Horgan eyed the Earthman curiously. "Maybe I'll have to tell you what
-year it is," he said dryly, "and who's Boss of the States now. You're
-powerful ignorant, Orth."</p>
-
-<p>"Go ahead," invited Orth. "My memory's fuzzy."</p>
-
-<p>"This's 1927, June the third." Horgan tugged absent-mindedly at his
-long brown locks. "Our boss now is Tyad Roosfald. His third year as
-Boss."</p>
-
-<p>"Teddy Roosevelt." Orth studied his knuckles thoughtfully. "And I
-suppose General Eisenhower is invading Germany to win our independence!"</p>
-
-<p>"Not Germany," corrected the frontiersman, "but Great Britain. We have
-accepted Churchill's challenge to land there and fight. Of course the
-war with Germany and Japan are going on too."</p>
-
-<p>Orth groaned. "What about this other thing&mdash;Lee and Washington down
-South? Don't tell me it's Civil War revival week too. What kind of a
-gag are you trying to pull on me, Horgan?"</p>
-
-<p>Horgan rubbed a rasping palm thoughtfully along his jaw.</p>
-
-<p>"There is war between the States," he said at last. "Everywhere there
-is war. The broadcast drums warn us that soon we must fight Cuba."
-Smoke puffed from his nostrils. "Helping Spain."</p>
-
-<p>One of Orth's hands covered his eyes and he felt his face growing hot
-with a mingling of anger and bewilderment. He stuttered as he tried to
-talk. He swallowed smoke and coughed, choking.</p>
-
-<p>"Good afternoon," called a fresh young voice, a feminine voice, from
-the cabin's rude door.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>Their heads twisted smartly toward the opening. Horgan's bared sword
-was in his fist even before he was on his feet. Together they stood
-facing the tall round-bodied woman who had walked in upon them. Despite
-her stature she was remarkably beautiful.</p>
-
-<p>She was pale of skin and her great mass of intricately braided hair was
-of a softly radiant silver hue. The simple garment of golden-hued cloth
-covered her adequately&mdash;but no more than that. Even her sandals were
-simple, accessories of comfort and utility rather than fashion.</p>
-
-<p>"I am Ayna of Globe 64BA," she told them briskly. "I wish one or both
-of you to escort me to Ivath's headquarters."</p>
-
-<p>She was eyeing Orth's zippered shirt and glassid trousers curiously.</p>
-
-<p>"Ivath must be slipping," she said. "You are definitely out of the
-wrong century. More likely the Twenty-first. I cannot be mistaken for I
-have majored in Ancient American Mythology."</p>
-
-<p>"I was born in 1960!" Orth snapped, "and I definitely must be in the
-wrong century. Or I'm out of my head! That's more like it. All this
-pother about the Civil War and the World Wars going on at the same
-time. Maybe just the names are the same. Or&mdash;what?"</p>
-
-<p>"There must be a short circuiting of your memory cells," said Ayna
-soothingly, "but Ivath and his helpers will soon set that right. Take
-me to him and I will help you." She looked at Horgan.</p>
-
-<p>Horgan was shaking his head. "Sorry," he said, "but until the Civil War
-is ended&mdash;here I stay."</p>
-
-<p>The girl frowned. She turned to Orth. "How about you?" she demanded.
-"Are you part of the local scenery too, or can you travel?"</p>
-
-<p>"I have no idea what this is all about," Orth told her, "but I go where
-I please. Maybe you can set me right on a few things, Ayna. Then I'll
-go along with you."</p>
-
-<p>"Fine!" Her teeth flashed.</p>
-
-<p>"I can go with you to Hardpan City," Dun Horgan said slowly. "That's
-where I trade off my furs and gold dust. We can thump a ride on one of
-the waggons going to New Yok."</p>
-
-<p>"What are we waiting for then?" demanded Ayna. "Bring extra slugs for
-your six guns." She looked at Orth. "Don't you have a gun?"</p>
-
-<p>Orth tugged out his compact machine pistol. Apparently the clumsy
-spring-powered weapons with six barrels were what the girl called six
-guns, for Horgan belted a second weapon around his waist. The girl
-examined his hand gun with curious eyes and fingers.</p>
-
-<p>"Unusual design," she commented. "Not authentic for your period
-costume."</p>
-
-<p>"Come along," said Horgan, cutting across Orth's protesting words.
-"About time for the afternoon waggon train."</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>"Here they come!" cried Horgan as they quitted the path for the rutted
-highway.</p>
-
-<p>He seized a long length of pole and started beating at the road with
-it. Dust clouded up about them. And further down the road a growing
-cloud of dust neared. These must be the waggons Horgan was going to
-hail, Orth decided.</p>
-
-<p>"Why is he pounding the ground, Ayna?" demanded Orth.</p>
-
-<p>The woman laughed. "He is thumping for a ride," she explained. "It is a
-peculiar custom of this age. In this way he asks assistance."</p>
-
-<p>Orth's dark face reddened with sudden mirth that he choked back. The
-twisted idiomatic expressions of this strange world were taking a
-familiar pattern. Even the scrambled pattern of wars and their military
-leaders began to make sense. <i>Thumping</i> a ride, six shooters, and scalp
-<i>lockets</i> linked up with Ayna's reference to Ancient American Mythology.</p>
-
-<p>"You're from the little globes clustering around the sun," he said,
-"and you were visiting Earth&mdash;or this primitive duplication of it. Sort
-of a park for your people, this. Your spacer crashed or you've lost it."</p>
-
-<p>Ayna frowned at Orth. "Yes," she said slowly, "I landed on Earth,
-contrary to the regulations, and a herd of mammoths wrecked my ship.
-But how could you, a creature of Ivath's great workship, know anything
-of spacers?"</p>
-
-<p>"I do not know Ivath," Orth said angrily, "and I came here in a spacer
-that has vanished.... Now, how do we get out of this make believe world
-of yours to your home?"</p>
-
-<p>"But this is real," the girl protested. "If a redskin's arrow or a
-tearunner's slug cuts you down you will die. Until the war is ended, or
-you take me to Ivath's headquarters, we are not safe."</p>
-
-<p>"All I can say is human beings are as crazy as they were three million
-years ago," grunted Orth.</p>
-
-<p>Meanwhile the dust cloud rolled closer and slowed. Horgan's thumping
-had halted them. Orth saw three great waggons, their twenty foot-high
-metal-tired wheels fitting deep down into the rutted way.</p>
-
-<p>Sixty feet in length they were, and beneath a low roof, that Ayna
-called a hood, there was a broad treadmill geared up with the eight
-huge wheels. Between eighty and a hundred thick-bodied little ponies
-were tied upon this raised moving belt. Above the hood lifted a sort of
-tower, its roof twenty feet above the ground, and here the two waggon
-drivers sat, steering the cumbersome vehicle with a spoked wooden wheel.</p>
-
-<p>Back of the cab was the covered cargo deck of the waggon where bags of
-grain, hides and other produce were heaped.</p>
-
-<p>One of the wooden blocks that had braked the enormous wheels was
-smoking and now it burst into flame. One of the drivers hastily tossed
-a bucket of water on the block and put it out.</p>
-
-<p>"Going through Hardpan City?" Horgan asked.</p>
-
-<p>"Climb aboard," cheerfully answered a runty driver with a huge dusty
-red moustache. He jabbed his thumb at the ladder bolted to the waggon's
-side.</p>
-
-<p>"You ride this waggon," Horgan said to Ayna and Orth. "I'll hop the
-next one."</p>
-
-<p>The red-moustached man helped them into the cab, his squinted pale
-eyes studying the girl appreciatively, and then he spoke to his
-hulking companion. This driver was a hairy apish giant without ears.
-Now he slowly released the brakes that locked the treadmill while Red
-Moustache freed the wheels.</p>
-
-<p>The treadmill revolved faster and faster and they went clanking and
-bumping off down the highroad, the miniature horses sweating in their
-involuntary struggle to keep on their feet. The great hooded vehicle
-had a pace of perhaps ten miles an hour.</p>
-
-<p>"I hear," shouted the little driver at Orth and Ayna, "that the Boss
-is sending a hundred men to New Yok soon. They're to hunt down the red
-jitterbugs and outlaws that range the highways."</p>
-
-<p>He paused long enough to catch his breath and curse the thick fog of
-dust that filled the cab.</p>
-
-<p>"A hundred soldiers to wipe out three or four thousand tea sellers and
-their gunmen!" He snorted. "Of course they're jeep men&mdash;Hoovers, you
-know&mdash;but they can't do any good."</p>
-
-<p>"The Boss is all wise," said the earless man, bumping his clenched fist
-against his nose. "He is the Boss."</p>
-
-<p>Orth turned to Ayna. "Now," he said, "who is Ivath?"</p>
-
-<p>The girl shrugged. "For a creation of Ivath's laboratories," she said,
-"you are refreshingly human. So I will treat you as one of us." Her
-eyes were thoughtful. "After all a robot does possess a limited power
-of reasoning."</p>
-
-<p>"Ivath!" Orth barked the word at her. "Forget the insults for the time
-being. I may look funny but I'm human."</p>
-
-<p>"Ivath is the director of our theater of space," she said. "This, as
-you know, is a huge hollow globe on whose surface world-wide dramas
-from the ages past are brought to life. He is painstakingly accurate in
-his depiction of the bygone dress, customs and speech."</p>
-
-<p>Orth laughed shortly. "Even to vehicles with horses for power," he
-said, "and guns without gunpowder."</p>
-
-<p>The girl disregarded him. "But Ivath has surpassed other directors
-of the past. He uses androids, living robots, and impresses on their
-memory cells the accurate thought and instinct patterns of their own
-chosen age. It is really amazing how closely their actions follow the
-historical patterns of the ancient past."</p>
-
-<p>"You mean he sprinkles cities, forests and&mdash;robots, all around and
-watches what happens? No script for them to follow? No deadline or time
-to end it all?"</p>
-
-<p>"He usually changes the entire surface of the globe every fifty years,"
-Ayna told him. "The next drama will be that of ancient Mars before the
-Earthmen came, and shortly afterward."</p>
-
-<p>"If it is as accurate as this mess," said Orth dryly, "it will be
-something to see, and worse to hear. I lived in the years of the first
-Martian exploration, Ayna. And I came from the Twentieth Century that
-your director is supposed to be presenting here!"</p>
-
-<p>Ayna's face was serious. Orth felt a curious prickling sensation in his
-head and then everything went hazy for a time....</p>
-
-<p>Eventually the blur faded. He found that they had left the forest
-behind and were entering a region of cultivated fields and little
-huddles of log and sod dwellings. The clumsy vehicle in which they
-sat was slowing until it was barely crawling between two rows of
-brick-fronted cabins.</p>
-
-<p>"You are not lying," Ayna said. "I probed your mind, Devin Orth. You
-are not an android. And I believe that your space ship has been seized
-by Ivath. It was an alien object on the vast canvas of his pictured
-world."</p>
-
-<p>"Here's Hardpan," Red Moustache said, leering slack-jawed at Ayna.
-"Sorry you couldn't go along to New Yok," he added to Orth, "you and
-your squirt. She's some fowl."</p>
-
-<p>Orth choked and gulped twice. He thanked the driver and climbed down
-the ladder. Horgan was already standing in the shadow of a doorway
-above which swung a dust-grimed sign. <i>Two Drik Tony's</i>, the sign read.</p>
-
-<p>"Wait for us in that store," said Horgan, pointing out a door across
-the street that was flanked by barrels of fruit and other produce.
-"Orth and me needs a drink."</p>
-
-<p>Orth started to protest and then desisted as he saw the girl's
-eyelid twitch and her head motion toward the door. He followed the
-frontiersman. Ayna was talking softly to herself as they left her.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>They joined the men bellied up to the bar. Dun Horgan ordered two shots
-of alcohol which were brought to them in shallow saucers of glass.
-Horgan dropped three bits on the bar.</p>
-
-<p>"How about a shot of tea?" he whispered to the bartender.</p>
-
-<p>The man's flabby pink face whitened. Imperceptibly he nodded toward the
-back room and scooped up the three shining coins. The two men downed
-their fiery drinks and then elbowed their way toward the closed door.</p>
-
-<p>"It's this accursed Volsad Law," said Horgan. "All a result of the
-Boston tea runners. Tried to smuggle it in and then the reform crowd
-took it up. Blamed tea for crime and poverty. Pushed the laws through
-outlawing its sale."</p>
-
-<p>Orth grinned. "So now the bootleggers, or tealeggers, maybe, are
-getting rich."</p>
-
-<p>Horgan nodded. Inside the door the bartender met them and slipped a
-small bottle of cold tea into Horgan's pocket. Then he motioned toward
-the half-open door leading into the alley beyond.</p>
-
-<p>"Please," he said. "There may be jeep men watching my bar."</p>
-
-<p>They quitted the building and leaving the alley reached the main
-street. Ayna was waiting in the store's door and as she saw them she
-started to walk in their direction.</p>
-
-<p>A bony stoop-shouldered man with a naked skull beneath his
-droopy-brimmed hat lurched into her path. His sunken dark eyes were
-bloodshot and hot. He jerked her arm.</p>
-
-<p>"Looking for someone?" he demanded. "I'm here."</p>
-
-<p>Ayna's fist landed flush on the man's jaw. He staggered back, but still
-gripped her. Orth seized the man's shoulder and spun him about. With
-the same movement his other fist crashed the bony man backward for
-several paces.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>But he had not been alone. With him were three other hard-faced men.
-They helped him to his feet and came pacing toward Orth and Horgan.
-Their hands were inching down toward their big holstered spring guns.
-Orth reached for his own hand machine gun, and with his movement their
-four enemies went for their own weapons.</p>
-
-<p>Horgan was slapping his bolts at the quartet. Ayna was hugging the
-dirty street. Orth felt one smashing impact before his weapon started
-sewing the explosive little pellets across the four men's middles.
-Pain was just starting to throb in his left elbow when the last of the
-others slumped, dead, into the dusty street. Horgan staggered toward
-him, a six gun bolt in his right side.</p>
-
-<p>"Just nicked me," he said calmly, his hand holding back the blood that
-seeped through his coarse-woven shirt.</p>
-
-<p>Orth found it hard to believe that these fallen men were actually but
-pseudo-men, robots. Their laboratory-given life blood was as red and
-sticky as a true man's, and their dying struggles were as realistic as
-his own might have been.</p>
-
-<p>The bartender came sidling up to Orth. He was but one of a score of
-muttering, staring onlookers.</p>
-
-<p>"Better clear outta town," he advised. "Krepp's brother is sheriff. And
-if he don't hang you Krepp's mob will do you up."</p>
-
-<p>"Thanks," Orth said. There were a dozen horses, saddled and bridled,
-drooping at a nearby hitchrail, and toward these he moved.</p>
-
-<p>"Come on," he told Horgan and Ayna. "We're riding out of here."</p>
-
-<p>Horgan shrugged. "Might as well get neckties for rustling a horse as
-for killing Krepp," he conceded, reloading his two spring guns.</p>
-
-<p>They climbed into the saddles, Orth snapping a warning burst of
-explosive slugs into the road and Horgan menacing the glowering knot
-of townspeople and riders, and went riding eastward out of the village
-street.</p>
-
-<p>Once they were free of the town and climbing a long easy grade into the
-low tree-clad hills the men of Hardpan City organized their pursuit.
-Orth saw horses, light waggons, and high-wheeled vehicles resembling
-bicycles come streaming up the highway after them.</p>
-
-<p>Drums began to boom all along the cleared valley they had left and in
-the hills ahead.</p>
-
-<p>"News broadcasters," Horgan informed him, "warning all cruising scout
-waggons and squad carts of our escape. Their squad carts are fast&mdash;they
-have pulley drives that can be shifted. If we can only reach the
-forests again...."</p>
-
-<p>"We'll make it," Orth said. He grinned encouragingly at Ayna. "Maybe
-we'll find your precious Ivath, too," he added.</p>
-
-<p>At that moment they were riding up a short grade, tree-lined and
-stony, beyond which they could see nothing but an endless stretch of
-undulating tree-tops. Nothing, Orth was thinking, could now keep them
-from achieving safety.</p>
-
-<p>Suddenly the ground swayed underfoot and their horses spilled them from
-the saddles.</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>There was a moment of rushing blackness, as though they were falling
-into a pit of tar, and then they felt themselves being whirled
-horizontally along for a time into a blurring twilight, only to slide
-softly to a stop.</p>
-
-<p>Orth heard a click and a whir from somewhere above him and saw a
-vast square section of grayness detach itself from the sky above and
-disappear. He lay quietly for a long minute but the ground was solid
-underfoot and so he stood up.</p>
-
-<p>"That," said Ayna, laughing rather breathlessly, "was some of Ivath's
-work. He's brought this section of the crust inside for repairs." She
-hesitated. "Or perhaps because of you, Devin Orth."</p>
-
-<p>"Me? I get it. If he took the <i>Time Bubble</i> this same way.... Yeah."</p>
-
-<p>Orth swallowed thickly. No telling what the mysterious Ivath might be
-planning to do with them. He was glad Ayna was along. She knew this
-insane future world.</p>
-
-<p>"Here he comes now," said Ayna, low-voiced. "Ivath, I mean. And, by the
-way, he is my great grandfather. So don't mind him too much."</p>
-
-<p>Orth found himself looking at a transparent bubble of plastic, with
-a puffy over-sized belt of jade-green metal fixed about its middle.
-It floated a few feet above the ground, sparks buzzing faintly as it
-dropped too low and was forced upward again.</p>
-
-<p>Inside there was a bony little parody of a man's body, or rather, its
-upper torso. Below the arms there was nothing save a shining metallic
-cylinder. The huge blue-veined skull was supported by soft wide bands
-of plastic material, and the bony arms rested on cushioned ledges.</p>
-
-<p>"Greetings, Earthman," something inside his brain seemed to say. "I
-have your fellows here, my honored guests. You will join them."</p>
-
-<p>"They are here, my companions?" asked Orth stupidly. "You mean Horn and
-Neilson? Did you say that to me?"</p>
-
-<p>"He speaks only in thoughts," said Ayna. "When our people reach the age
-of two hundred they submit to this operation. With their lungs gone
-there is, of course, no vocal speech. But we live on for centuries
-untroubled by bodily breakdowns."</p>
-
-<p>Ivath motioned with his feeble old arms.</p>
-
-<p>"Come," he flashed at them, "we will join them."</p>
-
-<hr class="tb" />
-
-<p>As they sat in a small spacer cruising within the vast hollow of
-Ivath's world-sized stage, Ayna explained more of the mysteries of this
-future world. How the planets had been cut up into smaller spheres and
-moved into the dwindling radiations of Sol. How their fleets of space
-ships crossed the void to trade and mine the precious elements they
-required, and of the other galactic cultures they met.</p>
-
-<p>"It is sad," said the girl at last, "that you can never return to the
-past. It is there that our science has utterly failed. Travel in time
-is but a one-way voyage."</p>
-
-<p>"You mean, Ayna," Orth said slowly, "we can't carry back the knowledge
-of an atomic shield that will arrest the spread of sterility&mdash;that
-mankind must abandon his use of atomic power?"</p>
-
-<p>"You cannot go back," smiled Ayna, putting her hand on his shoulder as
-she spoke. "But there is no need. In 1980&mdash;if our records are not too
-wrong&mdash;Eric Ensamoff discovered such a shield."</p>
-
-<p>"Great!" cried Orth. "I won't mind being stranded here. There's
-Ivath to set right on his ancient history. There's your perfected
-civilization to study." He swallowed his tongue momentarily and
-recovered it.</p>
-
-<p>"And then there's you, Ayna," he blurted. "You're...."</p>
-
-<p>The girl slid her fingers across a toggle-switch in the wall. "No use
-letting all the worlds hear us," she said softly, "much less see us.
-You see, I was sent to interview you and get your reactions. All the
-world was watching while you explored."</p>
-
-<p>Orth took the girl and pulled her closer. He studied her face. She
-smiled.</p>
-
-<p>"Sure it's turned off?" he demanded. She nodded.</p>
-
-<p>"Fine ... no, they don't need to see <i>this</i> reaction...."</p>
-
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