24

The Attorney General's visitor was an old and valued friend. They had been roommates at Harvard and in the years since then had kept in touch. Reilly Douglas knew that, in large part, he owed his cabinet appointment to the good offices and, perhaps, the political pressure that could be commanded by Clinton Chapman, a man who headed one of the nation's most prestigious industrial complexes and a heavy contributor to the party's funds.
"I know this must be a busy time for you," Chapman told Douglas, "and under the circumstances I'll take very little of your time."
"It's good to see a friendly face," said Douglas. "I don't mind telling you I don't go along with this. Not that there's nothing to it, for there is. But we're rushing into it. The President has accepted at face value this story of time traveling and while I can see, at the moment, no other explanation, it seems to me there should be some further study of the matter before we commit ourselves."
"Well, now," said Chapman, "I agree with you - I couldn't agree more completely with you. I called in some of my physicists this afternoon. You know, of course, that among our several branches, we have a respectable corps of research people. Well, as I was saying, I called a few of them together earlier today and we did some brain-storming on this time tunnel business. . .'
"And they told you it was impossible."
"Not exactly that," said Chapman. "Not quite that at all. Not that any of them can see quite how it's done, but they told me, and this is something that surprised me, that the matter of the direction in which time flows and precisely why it flows that way has been a subject of some quiet study and very scholarly dispute for a number of years. They talked about a lot of things I didn't understand and used terms I'd never heard before. Arrows of time and boundary conditions, for example, and it seems that the arrows of time they talk about can be viewed from a number of different points - statistical, biological, thermodynamical, and I suppose other terms that have slipped my mind. They talked about the principle of wave retardation and causality and there was quite a lot of discussion about time-symmetrical field equations and the upshot of it all seemed to be that while, on the basis of present knowledge and research it all seems plain impossible, there is really nothing hard and fast that says it can't be done. The gate, it appears, is just a little bit ajar. Someone come along and give that gate a little push and it might be possible."
"You mean that in another hundred years or so. . ."
Chapman nodded. "I guess that's what it means. They tried to explain some of it to me, but it didn't take. I haven't the background to understand what they were telling me. These people have a lingo of their own and so far as people like you and I may be concerned it's a foreign language we never knew existed."
"So it could be true," said Douglas. "On the face of what is happening, it quite clearly is true. There seems no other explanation, but my point was that we should not move until we know it's true. And, personally, while I could think of no other explanations, I found a great deal of difficulty in believing it."
"Just exactly what," asked Chapman, "is the government thinking about doing? Building new tunnels, I understand, and sending the people of the future still farther back in time. Do they have any idea of what it's going to cost? Or how much time it might take? Or..."
"They have no idea," said Douglas. "Not a single figure. No inkling of what's involved. But if anything can be done, we will have to do it. The people from the future can't be kept here. It would be impossible to do it. Somehow we must get rid of them."
"My hunch," said Chapman, "is that it will cost a bundle. And there'll be hell's own uproar about the cost of it. The public is more tax-conscious than it has ever been, and something like this could bring about a confiscatory tax."
"You're getting at something, Clint."
"Yes, I suppose I am. A gamble, you might say."
"You always gambled well," said Douglas. "You have a natural poker face."
"It's going to cost a lot of money," Chapman said.
"Tax money," Douglas said.
"I know. Tax money. And that could mean we'd lose the election a year from now. You know I've always been rather generous in my campaign contributions and have very rarely asked for favors. I'm not asking for one now. But under certain circumstances, I would be willing to make what I might think of as a somewhat more substantial contribution. Not only to the party, but to the country."
"That would be very generous of you," said Douglas, not entirely sure that he was happy with the turn the talk had taken.
"I'd have to have some figures and some facts, of course," said Chapman, "but unless the cost is higher than I could manage, I think I would be agreeable to taking over the construction of the tunnels. That is, if the tunnels can be built."
"In return for which?"
"In return for which," said Chapman, "I should like exclusive future license for the building of tunnels and the operation of them."
Douglas frowned. "I don't know," he said. "I can't be certain of the legality of an arrangement of that sort. And there is the international angle. . ."
"If you applied yourself to it," said Chapman, "you could figure out a way. I am sure you could. You're a damn good lawyer, Reilly."
"There must be something I am missing. I don't see why you should want the license. What good would the tunnels be?"
"After all of this is over," Chapman said, "people will be considerably intrigued with the idea of traveling in time. A brand new way of traveling. A way of getting places they could never get before."
"But that's insane!"
"Not as insane as you might think. Imagine what a sportsman would be willing to pay for the privilege of going back to prehistoric days for a spot of hunting. Universities would want to send teams of paleontologists back to the Age of Reptiles to study and photograph the dinosaurs. Classical historians would sell their souls to go back and learn what really happened at the siege of Troy."
"And the church," said Douglas rather acidly, "might want a first-class ticket for a seat at the Crucifixion."
"I suppose that, too," Chapman agreed, "and, as you imply, there would be times when it might get slightly sticky. There'd have to be rules and regulations worked out and certain safeguards set up not to change the course of history, but. . ."
"It wouldn't work," said Douglas flatly. "Time traveling, we are told, works in only one direction, back toward the past. Once you go back, you can't return. You can't move futureward."
"I'm not so sure of that," said Chapman. "Maybe that's what you were told. Maybe that's true now. But my physicists assured me this afternoon that if you can move in time at all, you can move in both directions. They were sure of that. Sure it could be worked out. It simply makes no sense, they said, for the flow to go only one way. If you can go into the past, you certainly can go futureward for that would seem the preferred direction. That's what we have right now."
"Clint, I can't go along on this."
"You can think about it. You can see how things develop. You can keep me well informed. If it should work out, there would be something very worthwhile in it for you."

25

"So now you'll explain to me, perhaps," said Alice Gale, "what a picnic is. You told me this afternoon you had been going on a picnic."
The Secret Service man hunched forward on the seat. "Has Steve been talking picnic to you? Don't ever chance it with him. . ."
"But, Mr. Black," she said, "I don't even know what a picnic is."
"It's fairly simple," Wilson told her. "You pack a lunch and you go out in a park or woods and you eat it there."
"But we did that up in our time," she said. "Although we did not call it picnic. I don't think we called it anything at all. I never heard it called anything at all."
The car rolled slowly down the drive, heading for the gate. The driver, in the seat up front, sat erect and straight. The car slowed to a halt and a soldier came up to the driver's window. There were other military men stationed by the gate.
"What is going on?" asked Wilson. "I had not heard of this."
Black shrugged. "Someone got the wind up. This place is closed in tight. It's stiff with military. There are mortars scattered through the park and no one knows what else."
"Does the President know about it?"
"I'm not sure," said Black. "No one might have thought to tell him."
'The soldier stepped back and the gate came open and the car went through. It proceeded silently along the street, heading for the bridge.
Wilson peered out the window. "Where is everyone?" he asked. "A Sunday night and the tourist season and there's no one here."
"You heard the news," said Black.
"Of course I heard the news."
"Everyone's holed up. Everyone's indoors. They expect a monster to come leaping out at them."
"We had such lovely places we could go out on picnics," said Alice Gale. "So many parks, so much wild land. More open spaces than you have. Not as crowded as you have it now, although somehow I like it crowded. There are so many people; there is so much to see."
"You are enjoying it," said Wilson.
"Yes, of course, enjoying it. Although I have the feel of guilt in my enjoyment. My father and I should be with our people. But I was telling you of our time. It was a good time to live in. Until the aliens came, of course. And even then part of the time, in the earlier days, before there were so many of them. They were not at our throats all the time, you know, except in the last few years. Although I don't think we ever were unaware of them. We always talked about them. We never really forgot them, no matter what. All my life, I think, they have been in my mind. There were times, in the later years, when we were obsessed with them. We continually looked over our shoulders to see if they were there; we were never free of them. We talked of them and studied them..."
"You say you studied them," said Wilson. "Exactly how did you study them? Who studied them?"
"Why," she said, "biologists, of course. At times they came into possession of an alien's body. And the psychologists and psychiatrists, as well. The evolutionists. . ."
"Evolutionists?"
"Certainly, evolutionists. For these aliens were very strange evolutionarily. They seemed to be creatures that were consciously in control of their evolutionary processes. There are times when you are inclined to suspect they can order their evolutionary processes. My father, I think, explained some of this to you. In all their long history of evolution they apparently gave up no evolutionary advantage they had gained. They made no compromises, trading one thing for another. They kept what they had and needed and added whatever else they could develop. This, of course, means they are adaptive creatures. They can adapt to almost any condition or situation. They respond almost instantly to stresses and emergencies..."
"You almost sound," said Black, "as if you-well, not you, perhaps, but your people-might admire these creatures."
She shook her head. "We hated them and feared them. That is quite apparent, for we ran away from them. But, yes, I suppose we might have felt something like awed admiration, although we did not admit it. I don't think anyone ever said it."
"Lincoln is coming up ahead," said Wilson. "Naturally, you know Lincoln."
"Yes," she said. "My father has Lincoln's bedroom."
The memorial loomed ahead, softly lit against the night-black sky. The statue sat deep within the recess, brooding in the marble chair. The car moved past and the memorial was left behind.
"If we can find the time," said Wilson, "in the next few days, we'll go out and see it. Or, perhaps, you may have seen it. But you said the White House..."
"The memorial, too," she said. "Part of it is left, but less than half of it. The stones are fallen down."
"What is this?" asked Black.
"Up in the time the people of the tunnel came from," said Wilson, "Washington had been destroyed. The White House is a wilderness."
"But that's impossible. I don't understand. A war?"
"Not a war," said Alice Gale. "It's hard to explain, even if you know it and I have little understanding of it - I have read little of it. Economic collapse, perhaps, is the best name for it. Probably some ethical collapse as well. A time of mounting inflation that reached ridiculous heights, matched by a mounting cynicism, a loss of faith in government, which contributed to the failure of government, a growing gap of resources and understanding between the rich and poor. It all grew up and up and then it all collapsed. Not this nation only, but all the major powers. One after one they fell. The economy was gone and government was gone and mobs ran in the street. Blind mobs striking out, not at anything in particular, but at anything at all. You must excuse me, please; I tell it very badly."
"And this is all ahead of us?" asked Black.
"Not now," said Wilson, "Not any more it isn't. Or at least it doesn't have to be. We're on a different time track now."
"You," said Black, "are as bad as she is. You don't, either one, make sense."
"I'm sorry, Mr. Black," said Alice. "Don't mind me," said Black. "I'm not the intellectual sort. I'm just an educated cop. Steve will tell you that."

26

The Reverend Dr. Angus Windsor was a good man. He stood in grace and was distinguished in good works. He was pastor of a church that had its roots in wealth, a long history and a certain elegance and yet this did not prevent him from going where the need was greatest - outside his own parish, certainly, for in that particular parish there was little need. He was seen in the ghettos and he was present where the young demonstration marchers fell beneath the rain of clubs wielded by police. When he heard of a family that had need of food he showed up at the door with a bag of groceries and before he left managed to find a few dollars in his pockets that he could get along without. He was a regular visitor at prisons, and the lonely old folks put away to die in rest homes were familiar with his stately tread, his stooped shoulders, his long white hair and patient face. That he was not at all averse to good publicity, sometimes even seemed to court it, was held against him by some of the influential members of his congregation, who subscribed to the belief that this characteristic was unseemly in him, but he went his way with no attention paid to this criticism; once he was supposed to have told an old, dear friend that it was a small price to pay for the privilege of doing good - although whether he meant the publicity or the criticism was not entirely clear.
So it was thought by the newsmen present not at all unusual when, late in the evening, he appeared at the site where the tunnel had been closed upon the emergence of the monsters.
The newsmen clustered around the old man.
"What are you doing here, Dr. Windsor?" asked one of them.
"I came," said Dr. Angus, "to offer to these poor souls the small shreds of comfort it is in my power to dispense. I had a slight amount of trouble with the military. I understand they are letting no one in. But I see they let you people in."
"Some of us talked our way in. Others parked a mile or so away and walked."
"The good Lord interceded for me," said Dr. Angus, "and they let me through the barricade."
"How did He intercede for you?"
"He softened their hearts toward me and then they let me go. But now I must speak to these poor folks."
He motioned at the scattered groups of refugees standing in the yards and along the street.
The dead monster lay upon its back, with its clawed feet sticking in the air and its limp tentacles lying snakelike along the ground. Most of the human bodies at the tunnel mouth had been moved. A few still lay here and there, shadowed lumps upon the grass, covered by blankets. The gun lay where it had been toppled on its side.
"The army is sending out a team" said one of the newsmen, "to haul in the monster. They want to have a good look at him."
The spotlights mounted in the trees cast a ghastly radiance over the area where the tunnel mouth had lain. Off in the darkness the generator engine coughed and sputtered. Trucks pulled in, loaded up and left. On occasion the bullhorn still roared out its orders.
Dr. Windsor, with an instinct born of long practice, headed unerringly for the largest group of refugees, huddled at an intersection beneath a swaying streetlamp. Most of them were standing on the pavement, but others sat upon the curbs and there were small groups of them scattered on the lawns.
Dr. Windsor came up to a group of women - he always zeroed in on women; they were more receptive to his particular brand of Christianity than were men.
"I have come," he said, making a conscious effort to hold down his pomposity, "to offer you the comfort of the Lord. In times like this, we should always turn to Him."
The women stared at him in some amazement. Some of them instinctively backed away.
"I'm the Reverend Windsor," he told them, "and I came from Washington. I go where I am called. I go to meet a need. I wonder, would you pray with me?"
A tall, slender grandmotherly woman stepped to the forefront of the group. "Please go away," she said.
Dr. Windsor fluttered his hands, stricken off balance. "But I don't understand," he said. "I only meant..."
"We know what you meant," the woman told him, "and we thank you for the thought. We know it was only kindness in you."
"You can't mean what you are saying," said Dr. Windsor, who, by now, was flustered. "You cannot hope, by your word alone, to deprive all the others..."
A man came thrusting through the crowd and seized the pastor by the arm. "My friend," he said, "let us keep it down."
"But this woman..."
"I know. I heard what you said to her. It is not her choice only. She speaks for the rest of us."
"I fail to understand."
"There is no need for you to understand. Now will you please go."
"You reject me?"
"Not you, sir. Not personally. We reject the principle you stand for."
"You reject Christianity?"
"Not Christianity alone. In the Logic Revolution of a century ago, we rejected all religions. Our non-belief is as firm a faith as is your belief. We do not thrust our principles on you. Will you please not thrust yours on us?"
"This is incredible," said the Reverend Dr. Windsor. "I can't believe my ears. I will not believe it. There must be some mistake. I had only meant to join with you in prayer."
"But, parson, we no longer pray."
Dr. Windsor turned about, went blundering up the street, toward the waiting newsmen, who had trailed after him. He shook his head, bewildered. It was unbelievable. It could not be right. It was inconceivable. It was blasphemous.
After all the years of man's agony, after all the searching for the truth, after all the saints and martyrs, it could not come to this!

27

General Daniel Foote, commandant at Fort Myer, was waiting for them with the three men in his office.
"You should not have come alone," he said to Wilson. "I said so to the President, but he would not listen. I offered to send an escort, but he vetoed the idea. He said he wanted to draw no attention to the car."
"There was little traffic on the road," said Wilson.
The commandant shook his head. "These are unsettled times," he said.
"General Foote, may I present Miss Alice Gale. Her father is the man who contacted us."
The general said, "I am glad to make your acquaintance, Miss Gale. These three gentlemen have told me something of your father. And Mr. Black. I'm glad you are along with them."
"Thank you, sir," said Black.
"I should like the privilege," Alice said, "of introducing my own people. Dr. Hardwicke, Dr. Nicholas Hardwicke, Mr. Wilson, Mr. Black. Dr. Hardwicke is a sort of Albert Einstein of our time."
The big, ungainly, bear-like man smiled at her. "You must not praise me unduly, my dear," he said. "They'll expect far too much of me. Gentlemen, I am very pleased to be here and to meet you. It is time we were getting on in this matter which must be somewhat unpleasant to you. I am glad to see you reacting so promptly and so positively. Your president must be a most unusual man."
"We think so," Wilson said.
"Dr. William Cummings," said Alice. "Dr. Hardwicke was a fellow townsman of ours, but Dr. Cummings came from the Denver region. My father and the others thought it would be best if he were with Dr. Hardwicke when they met your scientists."
Cummings was a shrimp - small, bald, with a wrinkled, elfin face. "I am glad to be here," he said. "We all are glad to be here. We must tell you how deeply we regret what happened at the tunnel."
"And, finally," said Alice, "Dr. Abner Osborne. He is a longtime family friend."
Osborne put an arm about the girl's shoulders and hugged her. "These other gentlemen," he said, "are physicists, but I'm a more lowly creature. I am a geologist. Tell me, my dear, how is your father? I looked for him after we came through, but couldn't seem to find him."
The commandant plucked at Wilson's sleeve and the press secretary moved to one side with him.
"Tell me," said General Foote, "what you know of the monster."
"We've heard nothing further. We have assumed it would head for the mountains."
Foote nodded. "I think you may be right. We have had a few reports. Not reports, really. More like rumors. They all came from the west. Harpers Ferry. Strasburg. Luray. They must be wrong. Nothing could travel that fast. Are you absolutely sure there was only one of them?"
"You should know," said Wilson, curtly. "Your men were there. Our report was that one was killed. The other got away."
"Yes, yes, I know," said Foote. "We are bringing in the dead one."
The general was upset, thought Wilson. He was jittery. Was there something he knew that the White House did not know?
"Are you trying to tell me something, General?"
"No. Not at all," he said.
The son of a bitch, Wilson told himself. All he was doing was trying to wangle something straight out of the White House. Something that, at some later time, he could talk about when he was sitting in the officers' club.
"I think," said Wilson, "that we had best get started."
Outside they got into the car, Black in front with the driver, Wilson and Osborne on the jump seats.
"You may think it strange," said Osborne, "that there's a geologist in 'the group."
"I had wondered," Wilson said. "Not that you aren't welcome."
"It was thought," said Osborne, "that there might be some questions about the Miocene."
"About us going there, you mean. About us going back as well as you."
"It is one way in which the problem could be solved."
"Are you trying to tell me that you were fairly sure some of the monsters would get through? That enough of them might get through that we'd be forced to leave?"
"Certainly not," said the geologist. "We had hoped none would get through. We'd set up precautions. I can't imagine what could have happened. I'm not inclined to think that this single monster..."
"But you don't know."
"You're right. They're monstrous clever things. Very capable. Some of our biologists could tell you more."
"Then why this feeling we should go back into the Miocene?"
"You're nearing a danger point," said Osborne. "Our historians could explain it better than I can, but all the signs are there. Oh, I know that now you've been switched over to a different time track and will travel a different road than we. But I think that the changeover may have come too late."
"What you're talking about is the economic and social collapse. Alice told us Washington, up in your time, is gone. I suppose New York, as well, and Chicago and all the rest. . ."
"You're top-heavy," said Osborne "You've gotten out of balance. I think it's gone too far to stop. You have a runaway economy and the social cleavages are getting deeper by the day and..."
"And going back to the Miocene would put an end to it?"
"It would be a new start."
"I'm not so sure," said Wilson.
Up in the front, Black raised his voice. "It's time for the President's speech. Shall I turn on the radio?"
He didn't wait for anyone to say he should. He turned it on.
The President was talking.
". . . little I can tell you. So I shall not keep you long. We still are in the process of sorting out the facts and I would be doing you a disservice if I told you less, or more, than facts. You may be assured that your government will level with you. As soon as we know anything for certain, you shall know it, too. We'll pass it on to you."
"These things we do know. Up in the future, some five hundred years from now, our descendants were attacked by an alien race. For twenty years or more our people held them off, but it became apparent that they could not stand against them indefinitely. Retreat was called for, out there was only one place they could retreat. Quite fortunately, they had been able to develop time travel and so it was possible for them to retreat in time. This they did, coming back to us. They do not intend to stay here; as soon as possible they intend to go back, far deeper into time. But to do this they need our help. Not only our help in building the time tunnels they will need, but our help in supplying the bare basics which will enable them to start over again. For economic reasons which everyone must understand, we, in conjunction with the rest of the world, cannot refuse to help them. Not that we would refuse in any case. They are our children's children, several times removed. They are our flesh and blood and we cannot withhold assistance. How we will go about the helping of them is now under consideration. There are problems and they must and will be solved. There must be no delay and our effort must be wholehearted. It will call for sacrifice and devotion from every one of you. There are many details which you should be told, many questions which must occur to you. These all will be fully given and fully answered later; there is not the time to put them all before you this evening. After all, this all began happening only a few hours ago. It has been a busy Sunday."
The voice was confident, resonant, with no hint of desperation - and, thought Wilson, there must be in the man a certain sense of desperation. But he was still the old competent campaigner, the polished politician. He still could sell himself, still could reassure the nation. Hunched forward on the jump seat, Wilson felt a sudden surge of pride in him.
"All of you know by now," the President was saying, "that two of the aliens came through a tunnel in Virginia. One of them was killed, the other one escaped. I must be honest with you and say that we have had no subsequent word of it. We are pressing all efforts to find and destroy it and while it may take a little time, we will do exactly that. I ask you most urgently not to place too much emphasis upon the fact that an alien is loose upon the Earth. It is only one of the many problems that we face tonight, and not the most important. Given the sort of cooperation that I know we can expect from you, we will solve them all."'
He paused and for a moment Wilson wondered if that was all - although he knew it wasn't all, for the President had not said good night.
The voice took up again. "I have one unpleasant thing to say and, unpleasant as it may be, I know that, on due consideration, you'll realize that it must be done, that it is the least that I can do. You'll realize, I think that it is necessary for the good of all of us. I have, just a few minutes ago, signed an executive order declaring a national emergency. Under that order, a bank and trading holiday has been declared. This means that no banks or other financial institutions will open their doors for business, or transact any business, until further notice. Under the order all trading in stocks shares and bonds, or in any commodities, will be suspended until further notice. All prices, salaries and wages will be frozen. This, of course, is an intolerable situation and cannot exist for long. Because of this, it is only an emergency order that will be lifted as soon as the Congress and other branches of the government can implement rules and regulations imposing such restraints as are necessary under the situation which has been imposed upon us. I hope that you will bear with us over the few days the executive order will be in force. It was only with the utmost reluctance that I decided it was necessary."
Wilson let out his breath slowly, not realizing until he let it out that he had caught and held it.
There'd be unsheeted hell to pay, he knew. From the country and from the White House press corps. For Christ's sake, Steve, you could have tipped us off. You could have let us know. And they would not believe him when he told them he had not known himself.
It was such a logical step that they should have guessed it; he, himself, should have thought of it. But he hadn't. He wondered if the President had talked it over with anyone and he doubted he had. There hadn't been much time and there'd been other things he had to talk about.
The President was saying good night to his listeners. "Good night, Mr. President," said Wilson, and wondered why the others looked at him so strangely.

28

The pressroom office was dark except for the feeble light from the clacking wire machines ranged along the wall. Wilson crossed to his desk and sat down. He leaned forward to snap on the desk lamp, then pulled back his hand. There was no need of light and there was healing in the dark. He leaned back in his chair; for the first time this afternoon there was nothing he should do, but there was still inside him the nagging sense that he should be up and doing.
The President, he thought, should long since be in bed. It was nearly midnight and well past his usual bedtime and he had missed his nap in the afternoon. Samuel Henderson, he thought, was getting old, too old for this sort of thing. He had seemed drawn and haggard when the refugee scientists were escorted to his office to be introduced to the men from the National Academy.
"You heard my speech, Steve?" the President had asked him when the men were gone.
"In the car."
"What do you think? Will the country go along?"
"Not at first. Not willingly. But when they think about it, I believe they will. Wall Street will raise a lot of dust."
"Wall Street," said the President, "is something I can't afford to give my time to right now."
"You should be heading for bed, Mr. President. It's been a long, hard day."
"Directly," said the President. "First I have to talk with Treasury and Sandburg phoned in to ask if he could come over."
Directly, he had said, but it still would be hours, more than likely, before he got to sleep.
Somewhere, in some secret room, the scientists were talking; out there, in the vastness of the nation, of the world, in fact, people from the future were walking from their tunnels; in the mountains to the west a monster was skulking in the darkness.
It still was unbelievable. It had happened all too fast. A man had not been given time to catch up with it. In a few hours now the people would be waking to a new day that, in many respects would be utterly unlike any day before, unlike any day in all of human history, faced by problems and dilemmas no man had ever faced before.
Light showed through the crack underneath the doors that led into the press lounge. Some members of the press would still be there, although they were not working. There was no sound of typewriters. He remembered that he'd never gotten to eat the sandwiches. He'd put two of them upon a plate and had taken a bite out of one of them when Brad Reynolds had come bursting through the door. Now that he thought of it, he realized that he was hungry. There might be some sandwiches left, although they'd be dry by now, and for some reason, he wanted to stay here in the dark, alone, with no necessity of talking to anyone at all. Although, perhaps, he thought, he should see what was on the wires. He sat for a moment longer, unwilling to move, then got up and went across the room to the bank of teletypes. AP first, he thought. Good, old stolid AP. Never sensational, usually fairly solid.
Yards of copy had been fed out of the machine, running down into wads of folded paper back of the machine.
A new story was just starting. . .

WASHINGTON (AP)-A search is being pressed tonight in the mountains west of here for the monster that escaped from a time tunnel in Virginia a few hours ago. There have been numerous reports of sightings, but none can be confirmed. There is reason to believe that most of them arose from fertile and concerned imaginations. A number of troops and contingents from many police and sheriff's departments are being deployed into the area, but there is little hope that a great deal can be done before daylight. . .

Wilson hauled in the copy paper, letting it fall and curl up before his feet, checking rapidly.

LONDON, ENGLAND (AP)-As dawn came this morning ministers still were in conference at the residence of the Prime Minister. Throughout the night, there had been a steady coming and going.
NEW DELHI, INDIA (AP)-For the last ten hours people and wheat have continued to pour out of the tunnels from the future. Both present problems. . .
NEW YORK, N.Y. (AP)-Evidences multiplied throughout the night that dawn may bring an explosion of protest and rioting, not only in Harlem, but in many of the other minority areas of the city. Fear that the heavy influx of refugees from the future may bring about a reduction in food allotments and other welfare benefits are expected to spark widespread demonstrations. All police leaves have been canceled and the police force has been notified that its personnel must be prepared to work around the clock. . .
WASHINGTON. D.C. (AP)-The President's action declaring a business holiday and freezing wages and prices was both attacked and praised. . .

Moscow, Madrid, Singapore, Brisbane, Bogota, Cairo, Kiev-and then:

NASHVILLE, TENN. (AP)-The Rev. Jake Billings, noted evangelist, today called for a crusade to "bring the people of the future back into the arms of Christ."
He issued the call from his headquarters here after learning that a group of refugees who had come through the now-closed time tunnel near Falls Church, Va., had refused the ministrations of the Rev. Dr. Angus Windsor, a celebrated churchman of Washington, D.C., giving as their reason that they had turned their backs, not on Christianity alone, but on all religion.
"They came to us for help," said the Rev. Billings, "but the help that they are seeking is not the help they should be given. Rather than helping them, as they ask, to go further back in time, we should help them to return to the brotherhood of Christ. They are fleeing from the future for their lives, but they have already lost a thing far more precious than their lives. How their rejection of Christ may have come about, I have no way of knowing; I do know that it is our duty to point out to them the road of devotion and of righteousness. I call upon all Christians to join me in my prayers for them."

Wilson let the long sheaf of paper fall and went back to his desk. He switched on the light and picking up the phone, dialed the switchboard.
"Jane - I thought I recognized your voice. This is Steve Wilson. Will you put in a call to Nashville for the Reverend Jake Billings? Yes, Jane, I know what time it is. I know he probably is asleep; we'll simply have to wake him up. No, I don't know his number. Thank you, Jane. Thank you very much."
He settled back in the chair and growled at himself. When he'd talked with the President early in the afternoon, Jake Billings had been mentioned and he'd promised he would call him, then it had not crossed his mind again. But who in hell would have thought a thing like this would happen?
Windsor, he thought. It would take an old busybody, a meddling fool like Windsor to go messing into it. To go messing into it and then when he got his face pushed in, to go bawling to the newsmen, telling what had happened.
Christ, that's all we need, he thought, to get the Windsors and the Billings of the country all mixed up in it, wringing their hands in pious horror and crying for a crusade. A crusade, he grimly told himself, was the last thing that was needed. There was trouble enough without a gang of pulpit thumpers adding to the dust-up.
The phone tinkled at him and he picked up the receiver.
Jane said, "The Reverend Mr. Billings is on the line, sir."
"Hello," said Wilson. "Is this the Reverend Billings?"
"Yes, God bless you," said the deep, solemn voice. "What can I do for you?"
"Jake, this is Steve Wilson."
"Wilson? Oh, yes, the press secretary. I should have known that it was you. They didn't say who was calling. They just said the White House."
The bastard, Wilson told himself. He's disappointed. He thought it was the President.
"It's been a long time, Jake," he said.
"Yes," said Billings. "How long ago? Ten years?"
"More like fifteen," said Wilson.
"I guess it is, at that," said Billings. "The years do have the habit..."
"I'm calling you," said Wilson, "about this crusade you're drumming up."
"Crusade? Oh, you mean the one to get the future people back onto the track. I am so glad you called. We need all the help that we can get. I view it as fortunate that they came back to us, for whatever reason. When I think of the human race, a mere five hundred years from now, forsaking the good old human faith, the faith that has sustained us all these years, I get a cold shiver up my spine. I'm so glad that you are with us. I can't tell you how glad I am that you..."
"I'm not with you, Jake."
"You're not with us? What do you mean, you're not with us?"
"I'm not with you, Jake - that is what I mean. I'm calling to ask that you call this silly crusade off.".
"But I can't..."
"Yes, you can. We have trouble enough without some damn fool crusade. You'll be doing the country a disservice if you keep it up. We have problems up to here and we don't need any more. This isn't just a situation that will allow Jake Billings to show off his piety. This is life and death, not only for the refugees, but for every one of us."
"It seems to me, Steve, you're using an approach that is unnecessarily rough."
"If I am," said Wilson, "it's because I'm upset at what you're doing. This is important, Jake. We have a job - to get the refugees back to where they want to go before they upset our economy. And while we do that we'll be getting plenty of flak. We're going to get it from industry, from labor, from people on welfare, from politicians who will grab the chance to take cheap shots at us. With all of this, we can't face flak from you. What difference can it possibly make to you? You're not dealing with a present situation, a present people. You are dealing with the future, with a segment of time that ordinarily would be out of your reach. The refugees are back here, sure, but the windmill you are tilting at wasn't even built until long after you and I were dead."
"God moves," said Billings, "in many mysterious ways..."
"Look," said Wilson, "climb down off your pulpit. Someone else, maybe, but not me. You're not going to impress me, Jake. You never did."
"Steve, are you calling for the President?"
"If you mean did he ask me to make this call, the answer is no. He probably doesn't know as yet what you have done. But when he finds out about it, he is going to be sore. The two of us talked about you earlier in the day. We were afraid you might take some sort of hand in this. We couldn't, of course, foresee what happened. But you do take a hand in everything that happens. I was supposed to phone you, to head you off beforehand. But so many things were happening. I never found the time."
"I can see your position," said Billings soberly. "I think I can even understand it. But you and I see things from different viewpoints. To me the thought that the human race became a godless people is a personal agony. It goes against everything I have been taught, everything I've lived by, all that I've believed in."
"You can rest easy," Wilson said. "It will go no further. The human future is ending, up there five hundred years ahead."
"But they'll be going back in time. . ."
"We hope they will," said Wilson bitterly. "They'll go back, if we aren't completely hogtied by people such as you."
"If they go back," protested Billings, "they'll make a new start. We'll give them what they need to make a new start. Into a new land and a new time where they'll build a godless culture. They may, in time, go out in space, out to other stars, and they'll go as godless people. We can't allow that, Steve."
"Maybe you can't. I could. It wouldn't bother me. There are a hell of a lot of other people it wouldn't bother, either. You're blind if you can't see the beginning, the roots of their rejection of religion in the present. Maybe that is what is really bugging you. You're asking yourself if there was anything you could have done to prevent its happening."
"That may be it," Billings admitted. "I haven't had the time to think it through. Even if it were true, it would make no difference. I still would have to do exactly what I'm doing."
"You mean you intend to go ahead? Even knowing what it means to all of us. Stirring up the people, riding that great white horse..."
"I have to do it, Steve. My conscience..."
"You'll think it over? I can call again?"
For there was no use arguing further. No point in trying to talk reason to this pious madman. He'd known him, Wilson reminded himself, ever since their undergraduate years. And he should have known from the very first that it would be useless to try to make him see another point of view.
"Yes, call again," said Billings, "if you wish. But I won't reconsider. I know what I must do. You cannot persuade me otherwise."
"Good night, Jake. Sorry that I woke you up."
"You didn't wake me up. I expect no sleep this night. It was good to hear your voice, Steve."
Wilson hung up and sat quietly in his chair. Maybe, he thought, if he'd done it differently, if he'd not come on so strong, he might have accomplished something. Although he doubted it. There was no such thing as talking reason to the man; there had never been. Perhaps if he'd called him this afternoon, after he first had talked with the President, he might have been able at least to moderate Billing's action, but he doubted that as well. It had been, he told himself, a hopeless business from the start. Billings himself was hopeless.
He looked at his watch. It was almost two o'clock. Picking up the phone, he dialed Judy's number. Her sleepy voice answered.
"Did I wake you up?"
"No, I've been waiting for you. Steve, you're awful late. What happened?"
"I had to go to Myer and pick up some refugees. Scientists. They're here, talking to the Academy people. I won't make it, Judy."
"You're not coming out?"
"I should stay in touch. There's too much happening."
"You'll be dead on your feet, come morning."
"I'll stretch out on a couch in the lounge and get some rest."
"I could come down. Stand watch."
"No need of it. Someone will get hold of me if I'm needed. You go to bed. Be a little late if you want. I can get along."
"Steve?"
"Yes?"
"It's not going good, is it?"
"It's too soon to tell."
"I saw the President on TV. It'll be an awful mess. We've never faced anything like this before."
"No, not quite like this before."
"I'm scared, Steve."
"So am I," said Wilson. "It'll be different in the morning. We'll feel different in the morning."
"I have a terrible feeling," Judy said. "As if the solid ground were slipping out beneath my feet. I've been thinking about my mother and sister out in Ohio. I haven't seen Mom in a long, long time."
"Phone her. Talk with her. You'll feel better."
"I tried to. I tried and tried. But the circuits are jammed. Everyone is calling everyone. Like a holiday. The country is upset."
"I just made a long-distance call."
"Sure you did. You're the White House. They'd clear the lines for you,"
"You can call her tomorrow. Things will quiet down tomorrow."
"Steve, you're sure you can't come out? I need you."
"Sorry, Judy. Truly sorry. I have this horrible feeling that I should stay in reach. I don't know why, but I do."
"I'll see you in the morning, then."
"Try to get some sleep."
"You, too. Try to shut this out, try to get some sleep. You'll need it. Tomorrow will be bad."
They said good night and he put the receiver back into its cradle. He wondered why he was staying here. There was, at the moment, no real need to stay. Although one could never know. Hell could break loose any time.
He should try to get some sleep, he told himself, but somehow he resisted sleep. He didn't need it; he was too strung out, too tense to sleep. Later he'd need sleep, when there was no chance of sleep. Later, a few hours from now, it would all catch up with him. But right now his nerves were too tight, his brain too busy to allow for sleep.
He went out the door and around the walk to the front lawn. The night was soft, resting for the heat and turmoil of the coming day. The city was quiet. Far off a motor growled, but there were no cars on the avenue. The pillars of the portico gleamed softly in the night. The sky was clear and a million stars hung there. A red light went blinking across the sky and from far overhead came the thrum of motors.
A dark figure stirred at the edge of a group of trees.
"You all right, sir?" a voice asked.
"Yes," said Wilson. "Just out for a breath of air."
He saw now that the dark figure was a soldier, his rifle held aslant his chest.
"Don't go wandering," said the soldier. "There are a lot of us out here. Some of the boys might be a little nervous."
"I won't," said Wilson. "I'll go back in directly." He stood listening to the quietness of the city, feeling the softness of the night. It was not the same, he told himself; there was something different. Despite the quiet and softness, a certain tenseness seemed to reach out to touch him.

29

A sound brought Elmer Ellis out of a sound sleep, sitting up in bed, befuddled, unable for a moment to orient himself. On the night table beside the bed, the clock was ticking loudly and beside him his wife, Mary, was levering herself up on her elbows.
Her sleepy voice asked, "What is it, Elmer?"
"Something's at the chickens," he said, for now the reason for his waking came churning up into his consciousness.
The sound came again, the frightened, flapping, squawking of the chickens. He threw the covers back and his feet hit the cold floor so hard it hurt.
He groped for his trousers, found them, got his legs into them, pulled them up, slid his feet into his shoes, did not stop to tie the laces. The squawking still went on.
"Where is Tige?" asked Mary.
"Damn dog," he growled. "He's off chasing possum."
He charged out the bedroom door and into the kitchen. Groping, he found the shotgun, lifted it down off the pegs. From the game bag that hung beneath the pegs, he got a handful of shells, jammed them in a pocket, found two more and thrust them into the chambers of the double barrel.
Bare feet pattered toward him. "Here's the flashlight, Elmer. You can't see a thing without it."
She thrust it at him and he took it.
It was pitch black outside and he switched on the light to see his way down the porch steps. The squawking in the henhouse continued and there was no sign of Tige. Although it was strange. In a flare of anger, he had said the dog was out hunting possum and that couldn't be true. Tige never went out hunting on his own. He was too old and stiff in the joints and he loved his bed underneath the porch.
"Tige," he said, not too loudly.
The dog whined from underneath the porch.
"What the hell is wrong with you?" asked Elmer. "What is out there, boy?"
Suddenly, he was afraid - more afraid than he'd ever been before. Even more afraid than that time he had run into the Vietcong ambush. A different kind of fear - like a cold hand reaching out and gripping him and holding him and knowing he'd never get away.
The dog whined again.
"Come on, boy," said Elmer. "Come on out and get them."
Tige did not come out.
"All right, then," said Elmer. "Stay there."
He went across the farmyard, shining his light ahead of him, picking out the henhouse door.
The frightened squawking was louder than ever now, insane and frantic.
Long ago, he told himself, he should have repaired the henhouse, plugging up the holes. With the shape that it was in, a fox would have no trouble gaining entry. Although it was strange, if it were a fox, that it should still be there. At the first flash of light, the first sound of a human voice, a fox would have been gone. A weasel, maybe, or a mink. Even a raccoon.
Outside the door he paused, reluctant to go on. But he couldn't turn back now. He's never be able to live with himself if he did. Why, he wondered, should he be so frightened? It was Tige, he thought. Tige was so scared that he refused to come from beneath the porch, and some of that fright had rubbed off on him.
"Damn that dog," he said.
He reached out and lifted the latch, slammed the door back against the side of the building. He balanced the gun in his right hand and directed the flash with his left.
The first thing he saw in the circle of light were feathers - feathers floating in the air. Then the running, squawking, flapping chickens and in among the chickens..."
Elmer Ellis dropped the flash and screamed and in mid-scream jerked the gun to his shoulder and fired blindly into the henhouse, first the right barrel, then the left, the shots so close together that they sounded as one explosion.
Then they were coming at him, leaping from the open door, hundreds of them, it seemed, faintly seen in the light of the flash that lay upon the ground - horrible little monsters such as one would never see except in some sweating dream. He reversed the gun, scarcely realizing that he did it, grasping the barrels in both his hands, using it as a club, flailing with it blindly as they came swarming out at him.
Jaws fastened on an ankle and a heavy body struck him in the chest. Claws raked his left leg from hip to knee and he knew that he was going down and that once he was down they would finish him.
He sagged to his knees and now one of them had him by the arm and he tried to fight it off, while another clawed his back to ribbons. He tipped over on one side and ducked down his head, covering it with his one free arm, drawing up his knees to protect his belly.
And that was all. They no longer chewed or ripped him. He jerked up his head and saw them, flitting shadows, moving out into the dark. The beam of the fallen flashlight caught one of them momentarily and for the first time he really saw the sort of creatures that had been in the henhouse and at the sight of it he bawled in utter terror.
Then it was gone - all of them were gone - and he was alone in the yard. He tried to get up. Halfway erect, his legs folded under him and he fell heavily. He crawled toward the house, clawing at the ground to pull himself along. There was a wetness on one arm and one leg, and a stinging pain was beginning in his back.
The kitchen window glowed with a lighted lamp. Tige came out from beneath the porch and crawled toward him, belly flat against the ground, whining. Mary, in her nightgown, was running down the stairs.
"Get the sheriff," he yelled at her, gasping with the effort. "Phone the sheriff!"
She raced across the yard and knelt beside him, trying to get her hands beneath his body to lift him.
He pushed her away. "Get the sheriff! The sheriff has to know."
"But you're hurt. You're bleeding.,"
"I'm all right," he told her fiercely. "They're gone. But the others must be warned. You didn't see them. You don't know."
"I have to get you in. Call the doctor."
"The sheriff first," he said. "Then the doctor,"
She rose and raced back to the house. He tried to crawl, covered a few feet, and then lay still. Tige came crawling out to meet him, edged in close to him, began to lick his face.

30

Once the men were seated around the table in the conference room, Dr. Samuel Ives opened the discussion.
"This meeting," he said, "despite the solemnity of the occasion which brings us together in the dead of night, marks what for all of us of the present must be an exciting event. All of our professional lives most of us have at times puzzled over the fundamental nature of time irreversibility. A couple of us, myself and Dr. Asbury Brooks, have spent a great deal of time in its study. I am of the opinion that Dr. Brooks will not take it badly if I say we have made little, if any, progress in our studies of this fundamental question. While the lay person may question the validity of such study, viewing time as a philosophical rather than a physical concept, the fact remains that the physical laws with which all of us work are embedded in this somewhat mysterious thing that we call time. We must ask ourselves, if we are to completely understand the concepts that we employ, both in our daily lives and our continuing investigations into many areas of science, what may be the physical interrelationships underlying the expansion of the universe, information theory, and the thermodynamic, electromagnetic, biological and statistical arrows of time. In the description of any physical phenomenon, the time variable is a parameter, at the most elementary level. We have wondered if there were such a thing as universal time or whether it may be only a feature of boundary conditions. There are some of us who think that the latter may be the true explanation, that in the universe the time factor was perhaps rather randomly set at the moment of the beginning of the universe and has persisted ever since. And all of us, I think, are aware that our thinking about time must be overwhelmingly prejudiced by our intuitive notions about the direction of time flow and that this may be one of the factors which has made it so difficult for us to understand and formulate any real theories about this thing that we call time."
He looked across the table at the three men from the future. "I must beg your indulgence for this sort of introduction to our discussion, remarks that, in view of what you have learned, may sound somewhat silly. But I did think it important to set out our own views and study into some sort of perspective. But now that I have said this much, I think that it is your turn to talk and I assure you that all of us will listen most attentively. Which one of you would like to begin?"
Hardwicke and Cummings looked at each other questioningly. Finally Hardwicke said "Perhaps I might as well. I must express the deep appreciation all three of us feel for your willingness to meet with us at this unusual hour. And I am afraid that we are about to disappoint you, for I must tell you that we know very little more about the fundamental nature of time than you do. We have asked ourselves some of the same questions you have asked and have found no real answers. . ."
"But you can travel in time," said Brooks. "That would argue that you must know something of it. You must have at least a basic understanding. . ."
"What we found," said Hardwicke, "is that we are not the only universe. There are at least two universes coexisting within the same space, but universes so fundamentally different from one another that neither would be ordinarily aware of the other. At the moment I will not go into the manner in which this other universe was detected or what we know of it. It is not, however, a contraterrene universe, so there is, so far as we know, no danger from it. I might add that the first hint of its existence came from a study of the strangeness of certain particles. Not that the particles themselves are a part of this other universe, but because, in certain instances, they can react to certain not-entirely-understood conditions in the other universe. Two totally different universes. The other made up of particles and interactions which have little to do with the particles and interactions of our universe, although, as I have indicated, there can be interactions, but on so small a scale that only blind, dumb luck could bring them to one's notice. Fortunately, researchers experienced that blind luck.
And it was mostly luck, too, that revealed to us something else about the second universe. I often wonder if luck, for want of a better word, might not be a factor that should be in itself the subject of a study with a view to a better determination of its parameters. As I say, we found out one thing else about the other universe, a very simple thing and yet, when one thinks about it, a rather devastating concept. What we found was that the arrow of time in the second universe was flowing in exactly the opposite direction to the one it traveled in our universe. While undoubtedly in that universe it was moving from the universe's past toward its future, in relation to this universe, it was traveling from our future toward our past."
"There is one thing that puzzles me," said Ives. "You were dealing with a very complex matter and yet in twenty years or so..."
"It is not as remarkable as you think," said Cummings. "There was a crash project, certainly, to achieve time travel, but before the project was begun we were in possession of the knowledge that Dr. Hardwicke has outlined. On your old time track the fact of the second universe was discovered somewhat less than a hundred years from now. It had been investigated for almost four centuries before we finally put the time arrow of the second universe to work. As a matter of fact, much significant work had been done on the possibility of using the opposite time direction of the second universe as a time travel medium. All we had to do was give the investigation a final push. I think the method might have been worked out earlier, even before the invasion by the aliens, if there had been any reason for it. But, aside from scientific curiosity, there wasn't. Under ordinary circumstances, there's not much attraction to time travel if you can move in only the one direction and there's no possibility of returning."
"Once we decided," said Hardwicke, "that the only way in which we could survive was to travel backwards into time, much of the real work already had been done. In all the history of scientific inquiry there always has been a certain segment of the population that questions the validity of pure research. What is the good of it, they ask. How is it going to help us? What can we use it for? I think that our situation is a perfect example of the value of basic research. The work that had been done on the second universe and its opposite direction time flow had been pure research, the spending of effort and funds on something that seemed to offer no chance at all of any benefit or return. And yet, as things turned out, it did have a return. It offered the human race a chance to save itself."
"As I understand it," said Brooks, "what you have done is to make use of the opposite time flow of the other universe to bring you here. Somehow or other your time tunnels trap the opposite flow. You step into the opposite flow in your own present time and step out of it at our present time. But to do this you must manage to speed up the time flow tremendously and must be able to control it."
"That," said Hardwicke, "was the hard part of the job. Not the theory of it, for the theory had been worked out, but the implementation of the theory. As it turned out, it was unbelievably simple, although on the face of it complex."
"You think it is in the range of our present technology?"
"We are sure of it," said Hardwicke. "That is why we chose this particular time. We had to select a time target that held men who would understand and accept the theory and other men, engineers, who could build the necessary equipment. There were other factors, as well, that we took into consideration. We needed to reach a time where the intellectual and moral climate was such that there would be a willingness to provide us the help we needed. We also had to find time where the productivity of the economy was such that it could supply us with the implements and tools we would need to start life over in the Miocene. Perhaps we are being unfair to hope for so much from you. We have one justification. If we had not come back to this time bracket or some other, the race of man would have ended some five hundred years from now. As it is, you have been shifted to a new time track, a phenomenon we can take the time later to discuss, if you should wish, and there now is a chance, although no certainty, that you can continue into the future with no alien invasion."
"Dr. Osborne," said Ives, "has so far taken no part in this discussion. Is there something you might like to add?"
Osborne shook his head. "All of this is beyond my competence, gentlemen. I'm not a physicist, but a geologist, with leanings toward paleontology. I'm simply along for the ride. Later, if some of you might want to discuss the Miocene, which is our eventual destination, that is something I could talk about."
"I, for one," said Brooks, "would be interested in hearing you right now. I have heard there is some proposal that the present population of the Earth go back into the Miocene with you. This is something, I would imagine, that might appeal to some of the more venturesome among us. There is always a feeling in many people that they have lost something by being born after the age of geographic pioneering. There would be a strong appeal to the idea of going back to a time where many of the present-day restrictions might be shed. I wonder if you would be willing to tell us something of what we might expect to find in the Miocene."
"If you feel it is appropriate," said Osborne, "I would be glad to. You must understand, of course, that we are dealing in some suppositions, although we can be fairly sure of certain facts. The main reason we picked the Miocene is that this was the time when grass first appeared upon the Earth. There are reasons we believe this, although I won't go into them right now. For one thing, it is the time when true grazing animals acquired a kind of teeth adapted for grass eating. Grazing animals, in the early part of the epoch, seem to have increased rapidly. The climate became somewhat more arid, although by our calculations there still would be plenty of rainfall for agriculture. Many of the huge forest tracts gave way to grassy plains, supporting huge herds of herbivores. We know something of these herbivores, although I think it may be possible there may have been many species of which we have no paleontological evidence.
"There would be great herds of oreodonts, sheep-sized animals that may have been remote relatives of the camels. There would be camels, too, although far smaller than the ones we know today. We could expect to find small horses, the size of ponies. There might be a number of rhinos. Sometime during the Miocene, probably in its early days, elephants migrated to North America over the Bering land bridge. They'd be four-tuskers, smaller than today's elephants. One of the more dangerous animals would be the giant pig, big as an oxen and with skulls that measure four feet long. They could be ugly customers to meet. With so many herbivores running in herds on the prairies, the Miocene could be expected to have its full quota of carnivores, both canines and cats. Probably you'd find the old ancestors of the sabretooths. That's only a quick rundown. There is much more. The point is that we believe the Miocene was a time of rather rapid evolutionary development, with the fauna expanding into new genera and species, characterized, perhaps, by a tendency for animals to increase in size. There might be a number of holdovers from the Oligocene, even from the Eocene. I suppose some of the mammals might be dangerous. There could be poisonous snakes and insects - I'm not entirely sure of that. As a matter of fact, we have little evidence along those lines."
"In your estimation, however," said Brooks, "it would be livable. Man could get along."
"We are sure he can," said Osborne. "The great forests of past ages would be giving way to prairies, and while there still would remain plenty of wood for man's use, there would be great open spaces waiting for the plow. There would be grass to support man's livestock. The heavy rainfall that characterized some of the earlier epochs would have decreased. Until he got started, man could live off the land. There would be plenty of game, nuts, berries, fruit, roots. Fishing should be good. We're not as certain about the climate as we'd like to be, but there is some evidence that it would be more equable than now. The summers probably would be as warm, the winters not so cold. You understand this can't be guaranteed."
"I understand that," said Brooks, "but in any case, you are set on going."
"We have," said Osborne, "very little choice."

31

Steve Wilson came back into the pressroom. The desk lamp still was lit, painting a circle of light in the darkened room. The teletypes muttered against the wall. Almost three o'clock, he thought. He'd have to get some sleep. Even with the best of luck, even if he could go to sleep, he had at the most four hours or so before he'd have to be back on the job again.
As he approached the desk, Alice Gale rose from the chair where she had been sitting in the dark. She still wore the white robe. He wondered if it was all she had. Perhaps it was, he told himself, for the people from the future had carried little luggage with them.
"Mr. Wilson," she said, "we have been waiting for you, hoping that you would return. My father wants to talk with you."
"Certainly," said Wilson. "Good morning, Mr. Gale."
Gale came out of the darkness and laid his attaché case upon the desk top.
"I am somewhat embarrassed," he said, "I find myself in a position that could be awkward. I wonder if you would listen to me and tell me how to go about this thing I want to do. You appear to be a man who knows his way around."
Wilson, moving to the desk, stiffened. The whole thing, he sensed, as Gale had said, had an awkwardness about it. He sensed he was going to be placed in a difficult position. He waited.
"We are well aware," said Gale, "that our coming from the future has placed a terrible burden upon the governments and the peoples of the world. We did the little that we could. In areas where we knew there would be food shortages, we arranged the delivery of wheat and other foodstuffs. We stand ready to supply any labor that will be required, for we represent a large, and idle, labor force. But the building of the tunnels and the supplying to us of the tools we will need in the Miocene will represent a vast expenditure of funds..."
He reached down into the circle of light on the desk top and, unlatching the case, opened it. It was packed with small leather bags. Lifting one of these, he pulled it open and poured out on the desk top a shower of cut stones that flashed and glittered in the light.
"Diamonds," he said.
Wilson gulped. "But why?" he whispered. "Why diamonds? Why bring them to me?"
"It was the only way," said Gale, "that we could bring anything of value in small enough volume to be conveniently transported. And we know that, if dumped upon the market all at once, these stones would ruin prices. But if they were fed into the market a few at a time surreptitiously they would have but small effect. This especially would be true if their existence were kept secret And we have been very careful that there be no duplications, that there are no paradoxes. It would have been possible to have brought from the future many of the famous gems that now exist and are well known. We have not done this All the stones in this case are ones which were found and cut in your future. None of them is known at the present day.
"Put them back" said Wilson horrified. "Good God man, can you imagine what might happen if it became known what was in that case. Billions of dollars..."
"Yes many billions" Gale said calmly. "At the going prices in this age perhaps as much as a trillion. Worth much more than they were in our time. We five hundred years from now did not place as great a value on such things as you do now..."
Unhurriedly he picked up the stones put them back into the bag fitted the bag back into the case closed and latched it.
"I wish most heartily" said Wilson "that you had not told me of this."
"But we had to" Alice said. "Don t you see? You are the only one we know, the only one that we can trust. We could safely tell you and you could tell us what to do."
Wilson struggled to put some calmness into his words. "Let us all sit down," he said, "and talk this over. Let's not speak too loudly. I don't think there is anyone around, but someone could walk in on us."
They went back beyond the circle of light, pulled three chairs together and sat down.
"Now suppose you tell me," Wilson said, "what this is all about."
"We had thought," said Gale, "that the proceeds from these stones, wisely marketed, could compensate in part some of the actual costs that helping us entails. Not one government, not one people, but all the governments and all the peoples of the Earth. Putting the proceeds into a fund, perhaps, and once all the stones are sold, allocating the monies in proportion to the actual costs involved."
"In that case..."
"I anticipate your question. Why were the stones not divided and offered each government involved? There are two reasons this was not done. The more people who are involved, the greater the possibility that the news would leak out. Our only chance was to keep the number who knew of it at a minimum. Among us there are not more than six who know. Here, you are the only one so far. There is, as well, the matter of trust. On the basis of history, we knew there were few governments we could trust - actually, only two, you and the British. On the basis of our study, we decided on the United States. There had been some feeling the United Nations should be the organization entrusted with the gems. But, quite frankly, we had little confidence in the UN. I was supposed to hand the stones to the President. I decided against this when I realized how many problems he had weighing on his mind, how he was forced to depend upon the judgment of so many people."
"I know only one thing," said Wilson. "You can't keep on carrying this case around with you. You have to be placed under security until it has been put into some safe place. Fort Knox, probably, if the government is willing to accept it."
"You mean, Mr. Wilson, that I'll have to be placed under guard. I'm not sure I like that."
"Christ, I don't know," said Wilson. "I don't even know where to begin."
He reached for the phone and dialed. "Jane, you still on duty? Do you know - has the President retired?"
"An hour ago," said Jane.
"Good," said Wilson. "He should have long before then."
"Is it important, Steve? He left orders if there was anything important that he should be called."
"No, this can wait. Do you think you can get hold of Jerry Black?"
"I'll try. I think he's still around."
The room was silent except for the teletypes. Gale and Alice sat unstirring in their chairs. Light still shone beneath the press lounge doors, but there was no sound of typing.
"We're sorry to upset you so," Alice said to Wilson. "But we were at our wits' ends. We didn't know what to do."
"It's all right," said Wilson.
"You don't know how much this means to us," she said. "The rest of the people may not know till later, but we'll know. That we did not come as beggars. That we paid our way. That's important to us."
Footsteps came down the corridor and turned in at the door.
"What's going on, Steve?" asked Jerry Black. "We need a couple of men," said Wilson. "I'm one of them," said Black. "I can find another." "It'll be a favor," said Wilson. "I have no jurisdiction. I'm acting on my own. It'll be until tomorrow morning, as soon as I can see the President."
"It's OK," said Black, "if it's for the President." "I think," said Wilson, "that it might be for him."
"All right," said Black. "What is it?" "Mr. Gale has an attaché case. I won't tell you what is in
it. You wouldn't want to know. But it's important. And I want him to keep it - him and no one else. Until we know what to do with it."
"That can be managed. You think it needs two of us?"
"I'd feel better if there were two of you."
"No trouble," said Black. "Let me use your phone."

32

Dawn was graying in the eastern sky when Enoch Raven sat down to his typewriter. Outside the window lay the green Virginia hills, and in the trees and shrubs a few awakening birds began their twittering and chirping.
He flexed his fingers over the keyboard and then began to type, writing steadily, without pause for thought. He had made it a rule, these many years, to have it all thought out before he sat down to write, to have run the subject matter through his mind, refining it and sharpening it so that the readers of his column need never search for meaning. The meaning must be there for all to see, the logic well developed.
He wrote:

The world today faces what may be its greatest crisis and the strangeness of this lies in the fact that the crisis comes not by the ordinary channels we have come to associate with crisis. Although, when one thinks it through, it becomes apparent that it does parallel a crisis situation we long have recognized - overpopulation and the economic problems which could spring from it As short a time ago as last Sunday morning, however, no one in his right mind could remotely have imagined that the overpopulation which had been feared and preached against so long, could have come upon us overnight.
Now that it has, we are faced with a situation that must be solved, not over a long period of careful planning, but in a matter, perhaps, of weeks. The brutal fact of the matter is that we can feed the hordes of people who have come to us for help over only a very limited span of time. They, themselves, are frank in admitting that they were aware of the problems their coming would create and in consequence of this have brought us the knowledge and the tools we will need in solving them. All that remains is that we use these tools forthwith. For this to be done requires the willing cooperation of every one of us. This phrase is not used lightly, nor in its hortatory political sense, but in a very personal way. Every one of us, each of us, all of us.
What is needed from the most of us is forbearance, a willingness to bear certain sacrifices, to tolerate certain inconveniences. It may mean that there will be less food, and not so good, for us to eat. We may have to wait for delivery of that new car. We may not be able to buy a new lawn mower when the old one that is now on its last legs finally breaks down. The economic energy and direction that under normal circumstances would be channeled into the production and distribution of items and services we need must be cancelled not only into sending our far descendants back deeper into time, but into providing them with the equipment, tools and supplies they will need to build a viable culture. It may be that Detroit may be called upon to turn out plows and other implements rather than cars. It may be that, voluntarily, or by government decree, we may have to ration ourselves. Wise as the actions taken by President Henderson may have been in calling for a bank and transactions holiday and a price and wage freeze, a case can be made that he should have taken one further step by issuing a strong warning against hoarding. While we can ill afford to deal in a bureaucratic manner with the press of events that have been forced upon us, it would seem that some move toward a strict rationing of food and other items vital to the continuing economy should be taken at once. It is quite understandable, for political reasons, why Mr. Henderson might have been reluctant to do this. But it is upon such unpopular actions, or the failure to take these actions, that we will stand or fall.
It would seem scarcely necessary to point out that such actions as the President has taken should be taken by other nations as well. It is reliably understood that Britain, Russia, France, Germany, Japan, China, and possibly other nations may have already taken corresponding actions before these words see the light of print. But the action must be worldwide rather than the actions of just a few of the more powerful nations. The problem that we face is a worldwide problem and for it to be solved temporary economic strictures must be imposed not only upon the larger economic units, but upon the entire world.
The appearance of the people from the future undoubtedly will call forth from the various intellectual factions a wide variety of opinions, many of which undoubtedly will be ill-founded. This is well illustrated by the public agony which is being exhibited by the Rev. Jake Billings, one of the more colorful of our evangelists, over the revelation that the people of five hundred years from now have forsaken religion as a rather footless factor in the lives of mankind. Distressing as this may be to the professional religionists, it is scarcely a consideration which has any bearing upon the matter now immediately at hand. Not only on this point, but on many other points, profound questions will be raised, but now is not the time to expend any noticeable amount of energy in trying to answer or resolve them. They will do no more than to further divide a population which, under the best of circumstances, is bound to be divided by the basic task which has been brought upon us.
We have not as yet had the time, nor indeed the facts, to enable us at this moment to form a true evaluation of the situation. While we have been made aware of some of the basic facts, there may be other facts that are as yet unknown, or perhaps some which, in the press of other considerations, have not become apparent. It may well be that some of the emphasis may be at fault - not as a result of someone trying to obscure the importance of any fact, but simply because there has not been the opportunity to assess the various factors and give each the weight of importance which rightly belongs to it.
There is no time, of course, for deliberate consideration of the crisis; in essence, the world must act with more expediency than may be entirely wise. The very fact that expediency is necessary calls for a public forbearance that is usually not desirable when great issues are at stake. A storm of criticism and a violent putting forward of opinions at variance with official opinion and action will accomplish nothing other than an impedance to a solution which must come quickly if it is to come at all. The men in Washington, at Whitehall and in the Kremlin may be wrong on many points, but their various publics must realize that they are acting not out of the perversity of stupidity, but in honest good faith, doing what they consider proper to be done.
Insofar as the republics of the world are concerned, this is not the way things should be done. Democracy demands, and rightly, that all men should have a voice in their government and in governmental decisions and actions, that all viewpoints be given full consideration, that there be no arbitrary decisions counter to the public will. But today we cannot afford the luxury of such an idealistic concept. The situation may not be handled as many of us would wish that it would be handled, some toes undoubtedly will be trod upon, certain ideas of justice and propriety may be outraged. But to accept all of this, if not in silence, at least without raising too great an outcry, is a part of that forbearance that is called for.
This is not one country that is threatened, not one political party nor one political fortune, not one people nor one region, but the entire world. This commentator has no way of knowing what will happen. I cannot even guess. I am aware that there may be much that I will not like, much that I will consider might have been done differently or better. In the past there has been no hesitancy on my part to place personal opinion upon record and at a later date, after this is over, I suppose I might not be above the pointing out of glaring errors as I may have perceived them. But from this day forward I shall, as a personal contribution to the forbearance which appears to me so necessary, exercise stern censorship upon, if not my thoughts, at least upon my typewriter. I am hereby enrolling myself as charter member in the Keep Your Mouth Shut, Enoch Club. The membership is wide open and I invite all of you to join.

33

He had somehow climbed a tree and got out on a limb and had been hanging onto it, for no reason that seemed quite logical, when a sudden violent wind had come up and now he was hanging grimly to the branch which was whipping in the wind. He knew that at any moment his grasp might be torn loose and he'd be thrown to the ground. But when he looked down, he saw, with horror, that there wasn't any ground.
From somewhere far off a voice was speaking to him, but he was so intent on maintaining his grip upon the branch that he was unable to distinguish the words. The shaking became even more violent. "Steve," the voice was saying. "Steve, wake up." His eyes came open a slit and he realized that he was in no tree. A distorted face swam crazily just above him. No one had such a face.
"Wake up, Steve," said a voice that was Henry Hunt's. "The President is asking for you." Wilson lifted a fist and scrubbed his eyes. The face, no longer distorted, was the face of Henry Hunt.
The face receded into the distance as the Times man straightened up. Wilson swung his feet off the couch, sat up. Sunlight was streaming through the windows of the press lounge.
"What time is it?" he asked.
"Almost eight."
Wilson squinted up at Hunt. "You get any sleep?" he asked.
"I went home for a couple of hours. I couldn't sleep. Things kept spinning in my head. So I came back." He picked a jacket off the floor. "This yours?" he asked.
Wilson nodded groggily. "I got to get washed up," he said. "I got to comb my hair."
He rose to his feet, took the jacket from Hunt and tucked it underneath his arm. "What's going on?" he asked.
"What you might expect," said Hunt. "The wires are clogged with screams of anguish over the business holiday. How come you didn't tip us off, Steve?"
"I didn't know. He never said a word about it."
"Well, that's all right," said Hunt. "We should have guessed it. Can you imagine what would have happened if the exchanges were open?"
"Any word about the monster?"
"Rumor. Nothing solid. One rumor says another got through in Africa. Somewhere in the Congo. Christ, they'll never find it there."
"The Congo's not all jungle, Henry."
"Where it's supposed to have happened, it is." Wilson headed for the washroom. When he returned, Hunt had a cup of coffee for him.
"Thanks," he said. He sipped the hot brew and shuddered. "I don't know if I can face the day," he said. "Any idea of what the President has in mind?"
Hunt shook his head.
"Judy in yet?"
"Not yet, Steve."
Wilson put the cup, still half full, down on the coffee table. "Thanks for getting me up and going," he said. "I'll see you later."
He went through the door into the pressroom. The lamp he had forgotten to turn off still shone feebly down upon the desk. In the corridor outside footsteps went smartly up and down. He straightened his jacket and went out.
Two men were with the President. One was General Daniel Foote, the other was one of the refugees, rigged out in a mountain-man outfit.
"Good morning, Mr. President," said Wilson.
"Good morning, Steve. You get any sleep?"
"An hour or so."
"You know General Foote, of course," said the President. "The gentleman with him is Isaac Wolfe. Dr. Wolfe is a biologist. He brings us rather frightening news. I thought that you should hear it."
Wolfe was a heavy man - heavy of body, deep in the chest, standing on short, solid legs. His head, covered by a rat-nest of graying hair, seemed oversize.
He stepped quickly forward and shook Wilson's hand. "I am sorry," he said, "to be the bearer of such disturbing facts."
"Last night," said the President, "rather sometime this morning, a farmer not far from Harper's Ferry was wakened by something in his chicken coop. He went out and found the henhouse full of strange beasts, the size, perhaps, of half-grown hogs. He fired at them and they got away, all except one which the shotgun blast almost cut in two. The farmer was attacked. He's in the hospital. He'll live, I'm told, but he was fairly well chewed up. From what he says there can be little doubt the things in the henhouse were a new batch of the monsters."
"But that's impossible," said Wilson. "The monster escaped only a few..."
"Dr. Wolfe came to me last evening," said Foote, "shortly after the monster escaped from the tunnel. I frankly didn't believe what he told me, but when the report of the henhouse episode came in from an officer of a search party out in West Virginia, I looked him up and asked him to come to the White House. I'm sorry, Doctor, for not believing you to start with."
"But it's still impossible," said Wilson.
"No, no," said Wolfe. "It is not impossible. We are dealing here with an organism entirely different from anything you've ever known. The evolutionary processes of these monsters are like nothing you have ever guessed. Their reaction to environmental stress is beyond all belief. We had known something of it and had deduced the rest, but I am convinced that under stresses such as the escaped monster is experiencing, the developmental procedures can be speeded up to a fantastic rate. An hour or so to hatch, an hour later hunting food. The same pressure that is placed upon the parent is transmitted to the young. For both the parent and the young this is a crisis situation. The parent is aware of this, of course; the young, of course, would not be. But in some strange manner which I can't pretend to know, a sense of desperate urgency is transmitted to the egg. Hatch swiftly, grow up quickly, scatter widely, reach the egg-laying stage as soon as possible. It is a genetic reaction to a survival threat. The young monsters would be driven by an evolutionary force that in an earthly life form would be inconceivable. They are members of a strange race that has a unique, an inborn, capability to use every trick in the evolutionary pattern to its advantage."
Wilson found a chair and sat down limply. He looked at the President. "Has any of this leaked out?"
"No," said the President, "it has not. The farmer's wife phoned the sheriff. The military search party had just reached the area and was talking with the sheriff when the call came in. The officer in charge clamped on a security lid. That is why you're here, Steve. We can't keep this buttoned up. It'll leak out - if not this particular incident, then others. There may be hundreds of these tiny monsters out there in the mountains. They'll be seen and reported. The reports will begin to pile up. We can't sit on all of them, nor should we."
"The problem," said Wilson, "is how to release the news without scaring the pants off everybody."
"If we don't tell them," said the President, "we create a credibility gap that will make everything we do suspect. And there is, as well, the matter of public safety."
"In a few days," said Foote, "all the mountains will be full of full-grown monsters. They probably will scatter. We can hunt some of them down, but not all of them. Probably only a small percentage of them. The only way we can manage it is to put in every man we can lay our hands on to hunt them down."
"They will scatter, that is right," said Wolfe. "By scattering, they will insure their chances of survival. And they can travel fast. By another day, perhaps, they'll be up in New England, down into Georgia. They will keep, at first, to the mountainous terrain because it would give them the best concealment. In time they'll begin branching out from the mountains."
"How long would you guess," asked Wilson, "before they begin laying eggs?"
Wolfe spread his hands. "Who can know?" he said.
"Your best guess."
"A week. Two weeks. I do not know."
"How many eggs in a clutch?"
"A couple of dozen. You must understand we do not know. We found only a few nests."
"When will they begin their killing?"
"Now. Right now. They must eat to grow. They must do a lot of killing. Wild animals, farm animals, occasionally humans. Not many humans to start with. By killing men they draw attention to themselves. Warlike as they may be, they still will know they are vulnerable because there are so few of them. They may be psychopathic killers, but they aren't stupid."
"We have some troops out now," said the President. "We'll have to use many more. Get planes and helicopters up to spot the monsters. I talked to Sandburg just a while ago. He is coming in. He'll know what we can do. This means we call out the reserves, perhaps call back some troops from abroad. Not only do we have to hunt the monsters, but we have to maintain the camps for the refugees."
"We do not wish to stand idly by," said Wolfe. "There are many thousands of us. Give us arms and we'll go in side by side with your military. We know about these creatures and we were the ones who brought them here. We have a duty and. . ."
"Later," said the President, "there'll be plenty you can do. Getting you into the field would be a tremendous task. Right at the moment we must depend upon our own men."
"How about the people out there in the mountains?" asked Wilson. "Do we pull them out?"
The President shook his head. "I don't think so, Steve. We have, right now, all the refugees we can handle. And I'm inclined to think that at the moment our monsters may not be too aggressive. They're probably concentrating on staying out of sight. There may be some incidents, but we must be prepared to accept those. It's all that we can do."
"I think, sir, that you are right," said Wolfe. "They are outnumbered now and must build up their strength. In any event, the young aliens will not, for a time, be too great a menace. They'll have to put on some size and weight. I suppose that, as well, they may know that they face more deadly weapons, in much greater numbers, than we could ever bring against them. We had lived in peace so long we had lost most of the military techniques and we started from scratch in weapon building."
"You face a busy day, Mr. President," said Foote. "If there is nothing further that you wish from us..."
The President rose and came around the desk. He shook both by the hand. "Thanks for coming by," he said. "This is something we must get busy on immediately."
Wilson rose to leave. "Do I call in the press immediately?" he asked. "Or should I wait until after you have talked with Defense?"
The President hesitated, considering. "I. should think right away," he said. "I'd like for us to be the first to tell them. The military has the lid clamped down, but it won't stay clamped for long. Some of the people from the Hill are coming in to see me. It would be better if they knew about this before they arrived."
"There's another matter," said Wilson. "You were asleep and I didn't want to wake you. There's a dispatch case full of diamonds. . ."
"Diamonds? What have diamonds got to do with this?"
"It's a rather awkward business, sir," said Wilson. "You recall that case Gale was carrying. . ."
"There were diamonds in that case?"
"It was packed with sacks. He opened one sack and poured out diamonds on the desk. He told me the rest of the sacks also contained diamonds and I'm inclined to believe him. The refugees had the idea they could turn them over to us to pay whatever was laid out to send them back to the Miocene."
"I would like to have seen your face," said the President, "when he poured out the diamonds. What, may I ask, did you do about it?"
"I called in Jerry Black and put Gale under guard. I insisted that he keep the diamonds."
"I guess," said the President, "that was all that you could do. I think maybe I should call in the Treasury to take temporary custody and check with Reilly Douglas about the legality of it all. Did you get any idea how much the diamonds might be worth?"
"Gale said, at present prices, perhaps a trillion dollars. That is, if they can be fed into the market slowly, without depressing prices. They're not, you understand, for us alone, but for the entire world. Gale wants to leave them with us, in trust for all the governments. He said we were the only government they felt that they could trust."
"You realize, of course, how sticky this could be? If word of this leaked out. . ."
"To be entirely fair," said Wilson, "we still must realize that they are only trying to be helpful. They want to pay their way."
"Yes, I know," said the President. "We'll have to see what Reilly says about it."

34

Since early morning the crowd had been gathering in Lafayette Park across the avenue from the White House. It was still the quiet and watchful group that had stood the Sunday vigil, with its stolid watchfulness. But now there were a few placards and there had been none before. One of the placards, crudely lettered, read BACK TO THE MIOCENE. Another read BRING ON YOUR SABERTOOTHS. Still another: LET US LEAVE THIS LOUSY WORLD.

A newsman pushed his way through the crowd, zeroing in on the whiskered youth who bore the BACK TO THE MIOCENE placard.
"Would you mind telling me," he asked, "what is going on?"
"Man," said the youth impatiently, "it is there for you to read. It says it loud and clear."
"It puzzles me," said the newsman, "what you are trying to prove. Or don't you have a point to make?"
"No points this time," the sign carrier told him. "In the past we have tried to prove some points and have mostly gotten nowhere." He made a thumb in the direction of the White House. "The man don't listen too good. No one listens too good."
"This time," said a girl who stood beside the sign carrier, "we're not proving anything at all. We're simply saying what we want to do and that's go back to the Miocene."
"Or the Eocene," said another girl. "Or the Paleocene. Just anywhere at all to get away from this scruffy place. We want to leave this crummy world and get another start. We want to go back and build the kind of world we want. We've been trying for years to change this society and we've gotten just exactly nowhere. And when we saw we couldn't change it, we tried to get out of it. That's what the communes are all about. But the society won't let us go. It reaches out and hauls us back. It will not let us go."
"Finally," said the sign carrier, "here's a way to get shut of it. If these people from the future can travel to the past, there's no reason why we shouldn't. There aren't many people who would be sorry to see us go. Most of them would be glad to see us go."
"I suppose," said the newsman, "that this could be called a movement. Most of the other things you people have done have been labeled movements. Would you mind telling me how many of you. . ."
"Not at all," said the first girl. "Not more than fifteen or twenty of us now. But you write your story and let us get a news spot on television and there'll be thousands of us. They'll be coming from Chicago and New York, from Boston and Los Angeles. There'll be more of us than this town can hold. Because, you see, this is the first real chance we've had to get away."
"That's all right," the newsman said. "I can see your point. But how do you go about it? Storm across the street and pound on the White House door?"
"If you mean," said the sign carrier, "that no one will pay attention to us, you may be right. But twenty-four hours from now they'll pay attention to us. Forty-eight hours from now they'll be out here in the street talking with us."
"But you realize, of course, there are no time tunnels yet. There may never be. It will take materials and manpower ..."
"They got their manpower right here, mister. All anyone has to do is ask. Hand us picks and shovels. Hand us wrenches. Hand us anything at all and tell us what to do. We'll work until we drop. We'll do anything to get away from here. We don't want any pay for working; we don't want anything at all except to be allowed to go."
"You tell them that," said the second girl. "You put it just the way we say."
"We're not out to kick up any trouble," said the sign carrier. "We don't want to cause any fuss. We just want to let them know. This is the only way we can."
"We won't ask anything if they'll only let us leave," said the first girl. "We would like some hoes and axes, maybe some pots and pans. But if they won't give us anything, we'll go empty-handed."
"Prehistoric men made out with stone," said the sign carrier. "If we have to, we can do the same."
"Why stand there listening to them?" asked a burly individual with a cigar stuck in his mouth. "Hell, all they do is talk. They all are full of crap. They don't want to go anywhere. They just want to stir up trouble."
"You're wrong," said the man with the sign. "We mean exactly what we say. What makes you think we want to stay here, along with jerks like you?"
The man with the cigar made a grab at the sign and one of the girls kicked him in the shin. Wincing from the kick, his reaching fingers missed the sign. The carrier clunked him on the head with it. A man who had been standing beside the man with the cigar hit the sign carrier on the jaw. A scuffle exploded and the police came in and broke it up.

35

Judy was at her desk. Notes were beginning to accumulate on the spindle. The lights on the console were blinking.
"You get any sleep?" asked Wilson.
She looked up at him. "A little. I lay awake thinking, scared. It's not good, is it, Steve?"
"Not good," he said. "It's too big for us to handle. If it weren't for the time element, it wouldn't be so bad. If we only had a little time."
She gestured toward the door leading to the lounge. "You won't tell them that, will you?"
He grinned. "No, I won't tell them that."
"They've been asking when you're going to see them."
"Fairly soon," he said.
"I might as well tell you," she said. "No use waiting. I am going home. Back to Ohio."
"But I need you here."
"You can get a girl from the secretarial pool. Couple of days and you won't know the difference."
"That's not what I mean. . ."
"I know what you mean. You need me to shack up with. It's been like that for how long - six months? It's this damn town. It makes everything dirty that it touches. Somewhere else it might have worked for us. But it isn't working here."
"Damn it, Judy," he said, "what's got into you? Because I didn't come out last night. . ."
"Partly that, perhaps. Not all that, of course. I know why you had to stay. But it was so lonely and so many things had happened and I sat there thinking and got scared. I tried to call my mother and the lines were busy. A poor scared girl, for Christ's sake, running back to Mama. But suddenly everything was different. I wasn't a sleek, competent Washington hussy, any longer; I was a kid in pigtails in a little town deep in Ohio. It all started with my getting scared. Tell me honest now, I had a right to be scared."
"You had a right," he said soberly. "I'm half scared myself. Everyone is scared."
"What's going to happen to us?"
"Damned if I know. But that wasn't what we were talking about."
"Monsters running loose," she said. "Too many mouths to feed. Everyone fighting one another or getting set to fight."
"We were talking about you going to Ohio. I'm not going to ask you do you really mean it, because I know you do. I suppose that you are lucky to have a place to run to. Most of us have no place. I'd like to ask you to stay, but that would be unfair. What's more, it would be selfish. But I still wish you would."
"I have a plane reservation," she said. "With the phone tied up and all, I was surprised to get one. The country's in a panic. In a time like this you get that terrible helpless feeling."
"You won't like Ohio. Once you get there, you won't like it. If you're scared in Washington, you'll be scared in Ohio."
"I still am going, Steve. Come six-fifteen tonight and I'll be on that plane."
"There's nothing I can say?"
"There's nothing you can say," she said.
"Then you'd better let the press in. I have some news for them."

36

Senator Andrew Oakes hitched himself up slightly from the depths of the chair in which he'd sank. "I'm not right sure, Mr. President," he said, "that it's wise to bring home all the troops. We need to keep our bases manned. And it seems to me we're allowing ourselves to get flustered just a mite too soon. Some itty bitty monsters raid a chicken coop out in West Virginia and we start bringing home the troops. It don't seem scarcely right. And I'm not sure it was too smart, either, to tell the newsmen about these little monsters. We'll get the country all up tight."
"Senator," said Congressman Nelson Able, "I think you may have gotten your protocol somewhat twisted. We were not invited here to decide whether the troops were to be brought back home, but rather to learn that they were being brought back and to be told the reason for it."
"I still believe," said Senator Oakes, "that President Henderson would want to know our thoughts. He might not agree with them, but I think that he should hear them."
"That's right, Andy," said the President. "You know that through the years I have listened to you often and almost as often have been fascinated by what you had to say. Which is not to say I agreed with you. Most commonly I don't."
"I am well aware of that," said Oakes, "but it has not stopped me from saying what I think. And I think it's plain damn foolishness to fly back the troops. It's not going to take the total strength of our military might to run down some little chicken-killing monsters."
"I think the point has been made," said Senator Brian Dixon, "that the monsters will not stay little monsters. The only sensible way for us to tackle them is to run them down before there get to be any more of them and before they have a chance to grow."
"But how do we know," persisted Oakes, "that they will really grow or increase in numbers? We're taking the word of people who came scurrying back to us because they couldn't face them. And they couldn't face them because they had let down their guard. They had no military and they had no weapons..."
"Now just a minute, Senator," protested Congressman Able. "It's all right for you to make your military speeches up on the Hill. You get a good press there and can impress the public. But this is just among ourselves. We won't be impressed."
"Gentlemen," said the President, "as I see it, this is all beside the point. With all due deference to the Senator, the military will be brought back home. It will be brought home because the Secretary of Defense and the Chiefs of Staff have told me the forces are needed here. Among ourselves, we discussed it very thoroughly earlier in the day. The feeling was that we cannot take the chance of anything going wrong. We may be aiming at overkill, but that is better than negligence. It may be true that we have been given poor information by the people from the future, but I am not inclined to think so. They have faced the monsters for twenty years and it seems to me that they would know far more of them than we do. I have talked with members of the Academy of Sciences and they tell me, while the characteristics attributed to the monsters may be unusual, that these characteristics do not go contrary to any established biologic rule. So I don't think that you can say there has been any lack of responsibility in the reaching of our decisions. Because of the press of circumstances, we have moved faster than we ordinarily would, but we simply haven't got the time to go at any of this with due deliberation."
Oakes did not reply, but settled back in his chair, grunting softly to himself.
"There was a report of a monster loose in the Congo," said Congressman Wayne Smith. "Have you, sir, any further information?"
"None," said the President. "We can't be sure one did get through. The reports are unreliable."
"There has been no request for aid to hunt it down?"
"No request," said the President. "Nothing official at all."
"How about the tunnels, sir? The news reports seem to be in some conflict. Some of them, we know, have closed, but I can't seem to get a clear idea of what is going on."
"You probably know as much as we do here, Wayne. Here at home, the Virginia tunnel is closed, of course. Two more were closed without our intervention, one in Wisconsin, the other down in Texas. I suppose those were shut down by the people up in the future when the monsters were coming in too close, Either that or there were malfunctions. Otherwise than that, all the tunnels in the United States still are operating."
"Would you think that the two you mentioned as closing may have done so because all the people had come through? There has to be an end to all these people sometime?"
"We know the Wisconsin tunnel closed because of an attack at the other end. The last of the people who came through told us that. I don't know about the Texas closing. But as to the implied question of all the people through - yes, I would hope that soon the tunnels would start closing because they've done their job."
"Mr. President," said Senator Dixon, "what do you know about the practical side of tunnel building? Can we build the tunnels so the people can go back into the past?"
"I am told we can," said the President. "Our physicists and engineers are working with refugee scientists and engineers right now. The refugees have picked out the sites where the tunnels should be built. One encouraging feature is that not as many tunnels need be built as they used in getting here. There isn't the immediate time pressure to get back into the Miocene that there was in getting here. They built a lot of tunnels up in the future because they knew they must get out quickly if they were to get any appreciable part of the population out at all. Also, as I understand it, there will be no need to build tunnels in all the smaller countries. Transportation can be used to get the people to tunnels several hundred miles away. The same situation applies here. It will be easier to transport the refugees to the tunnels than to build the tunnels. The one thing that is difficult about it is that we must get some tunnels built and the people moving out before the refugees eat us out of house and home."
"The construction of the tunnels, then, isn't beyond our capability? All we need is time, money and labor."
"That is right, Brian. Labor is no problem. The refugees represent a huge and willing labor force and just an hour or so ago I had word from Terry Roberts that our labor people will raise no objection to our using them on what must be viewed as a federal project. Terry assures me that organized labor will cooperate in every way, even to the extent of waiving union rules, if that should be necessary, in the employment of their own members. Labor is no problem. Money is. Even should industry be as willing to go along with us as labor is, a vast amount of retooling will be necessary before we can start fabricating the components for the tunnels. Ordinarily retooling is a time-consuming process and a costly one. The fact that we must get at it immediately and around the clock, and. must get it completed within a fraction of the time it would customarily take, makes it expensive beyond anything that can be imagined. When that is done, the components themselves will be costly items. You must remember this is not a problem that we face alone. It is faced by the entire world. The brunt of the work must be borne by the predominantly industrial nations-we, Germany, Russia, France, Britain, China, Japan, and a few others must build the components, not only for ourselves, but for the rest of the world. While we do not need to match the number of tunnels the future people built to get here, we do need to build enough so that there will be a fairly consistent regional distribution when they go back to the Miocene. While the population of the future is not as great as ours, it still is great enough that it must be scattered. The building of a new civilization in the past would be defeated if we dumped too many people in one area. And the building of the components is only part of the industrial problem that we face. Although it is the greatest and the most important part. We must also furnish the refugees with the tools and livestock and seed they will need to make a new beginning. Furnishing the tools is going to call for a significant industrial capacity."
"Have you talked with anyone in the industrial community?"
"Not personally. Commerce is making some tentative approaches to see what sort of reaction is forthcoming. I have no word as yet. But it seems to me there should be some positive reaction. I should be disappointed if there weren't. This is their neck as well as the rest of us."
Oakes hunched up out of his chair. "Have you any idea yet, Mr. President, what all of this might cost? Any good round figure?"
"No," said the President, "I haven't."
"But it's going to be costly."
"It is going to be costly."
"Maybe a great deal more than the defense budget, which everyone seems so horrified about."
"You want me to say it, of course," said the President, "so I will. Yes," it is going to be more costly than the defense budget, many times more costly. It will be even more costly than a war. It will maybe break us. It may bankrupt the world, but what would you have us do? Go out and shoot down all the refugees? That would solve the problem. Is that a solution you would like?"
Grumbling, Oakes let himself sink back into the chair.
"One thing has occurred to me," said Able. "There is just the possibility that no matter what it costs us, we may get value received. The refugees come from a time period where many technological problems have been worked out, new approaches have been developed. One thing that has been mentioned is fusion power. We are nowhere near that yet; it may take us years to get there. If we had fusion power that would be a great leap forward. Undoubtedly there are many others. I would assume that, in return for what we propose to do for them, they'd be willing to acquaint us with the basis of these technological advances..."
"It would ruin us," Oakes said wrathfully. "It would finish up the job they've started. Take fusion power, for instance. There, gentlemen, in the twinkling of an eye, the gas and oil and coal industries would go down the drain."
"And," said Able, "I suppose the medical profession as well if up in the future they had found the cause and cure of cancer."
Dixon said, "What the Congressman says is true. If we had the advantages of all their scientific and technological advances, perhaps their social and political advances, that have been made, or will be made, in the next five hundred years, we would be much better off than we are today. To whom, I wonder, would the new knowledge and principles belong? To the man who was able to acquire the information, by whatever means? Or to the governments? Or to the world at large? And if to the governments and the world, how would it be handled or implemented? It seems to me that, at best, we would have many thorny problems to work out."
"This is all in the future," said Congressman Smith, "It is speculative at the moment. Right now, it seems to me, we have two immediate problems. We have to somehow dispose of the monsters and we must do whatever is possible to send the future people back to the Miocene. Is this the way you read it, Mr. President?"
"Exactly," said the President, "as I read it."
"I understand," Oakes rumbled, "that the Russian ambassador is coming over to have a powwow with you."
"You were not supposed to know that, Andy."
"Well, you know how it is, Mr. President. You stay up on the Hill long enough and you get a lot of pipelines. You get told a lot of things. Even things you were not supposed to know."
"It's no secret," said the President. "I have no idea why he's coming. We are trying to work closely with all the governments in this matter. I have had phone conversations with a number of heads of state, including the Russian head of state. I take it that the ambassador's visit is no more than an extension of these talks."
"Perhaps," said Oakes. "Perhaps. I just tend to get a mite nervous when the Russians become too interested in anything at all."

37

There was something in the hazel thicket at the edge of the tiny cornfield - a vague sense of a presence, a tantalizing outline that never quite revealed itself. Something lurked there, waiting. Sergeant Gordy Clark was quite sure of that. Just how he knew he could not be sure. But he was sure - or almost sure. Some instinct born out of hundreds of patrols into enemy country, something gained by the sharp, hard objectivity that was necessary for an old soldier to keep himself alive while others died-something that he nor no one else could quite define told him there was a lurker in the thicket.
He lay silent, almost unbreathing in his effort to be quiet and still, stretched out on the little ridge that rose above the cornfield, with his rocket launcher steadied on an ancient, rotted log and the cross-hairs centered on the thicket. It could be a dog, he told himself, or a child, perhaps even nothing, but he could not bring himself to think that it was nothing.
The drooping sumac bush bent close above him, shielding-him from the view of whatever might be in the thicket. He could hear the faint mutter of the mountain brook that ran just beyond the cornfield, and from up the hollow hugged between the hills, where the farm buildings were located, came the senseless cackling of a hen.
There was no sign of any other member of the patrol. He knew several of them must be close, but they were being careful not to betray their presence. They were regulars, every one of them, and they knew their business. They could move through these woods like shadows. They would make no noise, disturb no brush or branch to give away their presence.
The sergeant smiled grimly to himself. They were good men. He had trained them all. The captain thought that he had been the one who had trained them, but it had not been the captain. It had been Sergeant Gordon Fairfield Clark who had beaten their business into them. They all hated him, of course, and he'd have it no other way. For out of hatred could sometimes come respect. Fear or respect, he thought - either one would serve. There were some of them, perhaps not now, but sometime in the past - had cherished the fantasy of putting a bullet through his skull. There must have been opportunities, but they had never done it. For they needed him, the sergeant told himself - although not really him, of course, but the hatred that they had for him. There was nothing like a good strong hatred for a man to cling to.
The farmer at the buildings up the hollow thought he had seen something. He couldn't tell what it was, but it had been awful, the glimpse he had gotten of it. A sort of thing that he had never seen before. Something that no man could imagine. The farmer had shivered as he talked.
The thing that had been in the thicket came out. It came out with a rush so fast that it seemed to blur. Then, as quickly as it had moved, it stopped. It stood in the little open space of ground between the thicket and the corn.
The sergeant caught his breath and his guts turned over, but even so he swiveled the launcher barrel around so that the cross hairs centered on the great paunch of the monster and his finger began the steady squeeze.
Then it was gone. The cross hairs centered on nothing except the ragged clump of brush beyond the cornfield's edge. The sergeant didn't stir. He lay looking through the sight, but his finger slacked off from the trigger.
The monster had not moved. He was sure of that. It had simply disappeared. One microsecond there, the next microsecond gone. It could not move that fast. When it had come out of the thicket there had been a blur of rapid movement. This time there had been no blur.
Sergeant Clark raised his head, levered himself to his knees. He put up a hand and wiped his face and was astonished to find that his hand came away greasy wet. He'd not been aware that he had been sweating.

38

Fyodor Morozov was a good diplomat and decent man, the two not being incompatible, and he hated what he had to do. Besides, he told himself, he knew Americans and it simply would not work. It would, of course, embarrass them and point out their sins for all the world to see and, under ordinary circumstances, he would not have been averse to this. But under present conditions, he knew, the Americans (or anyone else, for that matter) were in no position to observe the niceties of diplomatic games, and because of this, there was no way one could gauge reaction.
The President was waiting for him when he was ushered in and beside the President, as was to be expected, stood the Secretary of State. The President was all open blandness, but Thornton Williams, Fyodor could see, was a somewhat puzzled man, although he was doing an excellent job of hiding it.
When they had shaken hands and sat down, the President opened the conversation. "It's always good to see you, Mr. Ambassador," he said, "for any reason, or even for no reason. But tell me, is there something we can do for you?"
"My government," said Fyodor, "has asked me to confer with your government, as unofficially as our official positions can make possible, concerning a matter of security which I would assume is of some concern to both of us, in fact, to everyone."
He paused and they waited for him to go on. They did not respond; they asked no question; they were no help at all.
"It is the matter," he said, "of the alien monster that escaped from the Congo tunnel. There is no question, knowing what we do, that the monsters must be hunted down. Since the Congo does not have sufficient military or police forces to accomplish this, my government is offering to supply an expeditionary force and we are about to sound out both Britain and France and perhaps other nations as well to determine if they might want to contribute to a joint expeditionary force against the monster."
"Certainly, Ambassador," said Williams, "your government does not feel compelled to seek our permission to embark upon so neighborly an undertaking. I would imagine that you are prepared to make guarantees that you'll withdraw all forces immediately the monster had been taken."
"Of course we are."
"Then I fail to grasp your point."
"There is also," said Fyodor, "the matter of the monster, or the monsters - I understand that now there are a number of them - on your own territory. We are prepared to make the same offer to you as we will make the Congo."
"You mean," said the President, amused, "that you would be willing to lend us some of your forces to hunt down the monsters."
"We would go, I think," said the ambassador, "somewhat beyond the word you use - willing. I would think that unless you can guarantee absolute effectiveness in containing and disposing of the monsters, we might possibly insist. This is not a national matter; the international community is concerned. The creatures must be obliterated. If you can't accomplish this, then you must accept any help that's offered."
"You know, of course," said Williams, "that we are bringing home our troops."
"I know that, Mr. Secretary, but the question is how quickly can you bring them home. Our military people estimate it will take you thirty days at least and that may not be fast enough. There also is the question of whether you have personnel enough to cover the required territory."
The President said, "I can assure you that we appreciate your concern."
"It is the position of my government," said Fyodor, "that while naturally you wish to use your own troops, many more men would be placed upon the ground and more quickly if you would accept the aid that we offer and which I am sure other nations as well would offer if you made known your willingness. . ."
"Mr. Ambassador," said the President, interrupting, "I am certain you know better than to come to us with such an impudent suggestion. If there had been genuine good will on the part of your government, surely you are aware that a different approach would have been employed. There is no question in my mind that the sole purpose of this call is to embarrass us. In that, of course, you've failed. We are not in the least embarrassed."
"I am delighted that you're not," said Fyodor, unruffled. "We thought that it was only the decent thing to approach you first, in private."
"I assume," said Williams, "you mean you now will bring the matter up before the UN, where you'll seek to embarrass us in public."
"You gentlemen," said the ambassador, "persist in placing a wrong interpretation upon the matter. It is true, of course, that our countries have had their differences in the past. We have not always seen exactly eye to eye. Under present circumstances, however, the entire world need stand together. It is only with this thought that we bring the matter forward. It is quite clear to us, if it is not to you, that solving the monster problem quickly is in the international interest and that it is your duty to accept such aid as may be needed. We should be reluctant to report to the United Nations that you neglect your duty."
"We would not attempt," said Williams stiffly, "to suggest what you might tell the UN."
"If you should decide to accept our offer," said the ambassador, "it would be agreeable to us to leave the initiative with you. If you should ask other nations - perhaps Canada, Britain, France and us - to supply the additional forces that you need, there need be nothing said concerning this particular conversation. The newsmen, of course, will know that I am here and will ask me about it, but I shall tell them it was only a part of the continuing discussion which is going on between our two countries concerning the refugee situation. That sort of answer, it seems to me, would be a logical one and probably acceptable."
"I suppose," said the President, "that you will want an answer to relay to your government."
"Not necessarily now," said Fyodor. "We would imagine you might want to deliberate upon it. The UN does not meet until tomorrow noon."
"I imagine that if we asked some of our friends among the community of nations to supply us forces and did not include your government among them, you would feel slighted and be indignantly offended."
"I cannot speak to that with any surety, but I would presume we might be."
"It seems to me," said the Secretary of State, "that all of this is no more than official mischief-making. I have known you for some years and have held a high regard for you. You have been here among us for three years, or is it four - more than three years, anyhow - and surely you have grown to know us in that length of time. I think that your heart may not be entirely in these proceedings."
Fyodor Morozov rose slowly to his feet. "I have delivered the message from my government," he said. "Thank you both for seeing me."

39

In New York, in Chicago, in Atlanta mobs hurled themselves against police lines. The signs read: WE DIDN'T ASK THEM TO COME. They read: WE HAVE LITTLE ENOUGH AS IT is. They read: WE REFUSE TO STARVE. The crowds threw objects, stones, bricks, tin cans battered into tin-shinny pucks so they had cutting edges, plastic bags filled with human excrement. The ghetto areas were filled with shouting and with violence. Some died; many were injured. Bonfires were kindled. Houses burned and when fire rigs tried to reach the blazes, they were stopped by barricades. Great areas were given over to looting.
In little towns throughout the country grim-faced men talked sitting on benches in front of general stores, filling stations, feed stores, stopping at street corners, gathering for coffee in the corner drugstore, waiting their turns in barbershops. They said to one another, among themselves, bewildered: It don't seem right, somehow. It don't seem possible. It ain't like the old days, when one knew what was going on. There ain't no telling, these days, what is about to happen, what will happen next. There is too much new-fangled now. The old days are going fast. There is nothing left for a man to hang to... They said judiciously: Of course, if it is the way they say, we got to do our best for them. You heard the President say it last night. Children of our children. That is what he said. Although I don't know how we are going to do it. Not with taxes what they are. We can't pay no more taxes than we are and them tunnels are about to cost a mint. Taxes on everything you buy. On everything you do. On everything you own. Seems no matter how hard a man may scratch he can't keep ahead of taxes...
They said sanctimoniously: That preacher down in Nashville hit it on the head. If a man loses his religion he has lost everything worthwhile. He has nothing left to live for. You lose the Good Book and you have lost it all. It don't seem possible that even in five hundred years men would have given up their God. It's the evil in the world today, right now, that made it possible. It's big-city living. The meanness of big-city living. Out here you could never lose your God. No, sir. He's with you all the time. You feel Him in the wind. You see Him in the color of the eastern sky just before the break of dawn. You sense Him in the hush of evening. I feel sorry for these people from the future. I do feel purely sorry for them. They don't know what they lost...
They said angrily of the riots: They ought to shoot them down. I wouldn't fool around with stuff like that. Not for a minute would I. Those people, some of them ain't never done a lick of work in all their entire lives. They just stand there with their hands out. You can't tell me, if a man really wants to work, or a woman either, they can't find a job. Out here we scratch and dig and sweat and we get next to nothing, but we don't riot, we don't burn9 we don't stand with hands out...
They said of the young people with the signs in Lafayette Park: If they want to go to the Miocene or whatever this place is, why don't we let them go? We won't never miss them. We would be better off without them. . .
The village banker said, with ponderous judiciousness: Mark my word, we'll be lucky if these future folks don't ruin the entire country. Yes, sir, the entire country; maybe the entire world. The dollar will be worth nothing and prices will go up... And inevitably they got around to it, whispering the blackest of their thoughts: You just wait and see. It's a Commie plot, I tell you. A dirty Commie plot. I don't know how they worked it, but when the wash comes out, we'll find these Russians at the bottom of it. . .
There was marching in the land, a surge toward Washington - by hitchhiking, by bus, by old beat-up clunkers of cars. An inward streaming of the countercultural young. Some of them reached the city before the fall of night and marched with banners saying: Back To The Miocene; Bring On The Sabretooths! Others continued through the night or rested in the night to continue with first light, sleeping in haystacks or on park benches, wolfing hamburgers, seeking out alliances, talking in hushed tones around campfires.
Other bands marched as well in the streets of Washington, bands in the center of which were young men staggering under the weight of heavy crosses, stumbling and falling, then staggering up again to continue on their way. Some wore crowns of thorns, with blood trickling down their foreheads. Late in the afternoon a furious fight broke out in Lafayette Park when an indignant crowd, among them many of the hopefully Miocene-bound youngsters, moved to stop a crucifixion, with the victim already lashed to the cross and the hole half dug for its planting. Police charged in and after a bloody fifteen minutes cleared the park. When all were gone, four crudely fashioned crosses were gathered up and carted off. "These kids are crazy," said one panting officer. "I wouldn't give you a dime for the entire lot of them."

Senator Andrew Oakes phoned Grant Wellington. "Now is the time," he said in a conspiratorial voice, "to lie extremely low. Don't say a word. Don't even look as if you were interested. The situation, you might say, is fluid. There is nothing set. No one knows which way the cat will jump. There is something going on. The Russian was at the White House this morning and that bodes no good for anyone. Something we don't understand is very much afoot."

Clinton Chapman phoned Reilly Douglas. "You know anything, Reilly?"
"Nothing except that there really is time travel and we have the blueprints for it."
"You have seen the blueprints?"
"No, I haven't. It all is under wraps. No one is saying anything. The scientists who talked with the future people aren't talking."
"But you..."
"I know, Clint. I'm the Attorney General, but, hell, in a thing like this that doesn't count for anything. This is top secret. A few of the Academy crowd and that is all. Not even the military, and even if the military wanted it, I have my doubts . . ."
"But they have to let someone know. You can't build a thing until you know."
"Sure, how to build it, but that is all. Not how it works. Not why it works. Not the principle."
"What the hell difference does that make?"
"I should think it would," said Douglas. "I, personally, would be distrustful of building something I didn't understand."
"You say it is time travel. No doubt of that, it is really time travel."
"No doubt at all," said Douglas.
"Then there's a mint in it," said Chapman, "and I mean to..."
"But if it only works one way -"
"It has to work both ways," said Chapman. "That's what my people tell me."
"It will take a lot of financing," said Douglas. "I've talked to a lot of people," said Chapman. "People I can trust. Some of them are interested. Enough of them. Definitely interested. They see the possibilities. There'll be no lack of funds if we can put it through."

Judy Gray got on the plane and found her seat. She looked out the window, saw the scurrying trucks - saw them mistily and quickly put up a hand to wipe her eyes. She said to herself, almost lovingly, through clenched teeth: "The son of a bitch. The dirty son of a bitch!"

40

Tom Manning spoke guardedly into the phone. "Steve," he said, "I have been hearing things."
"Put them on the wire, Tom," said Wilson. "That is why you are there. Put them on the wire for the glory of dear old Global News."
"Now," said Manning, "that you've had occasion to show off your shallow sense of humor, shall we get down to business?"
"If this is a ploy," said Wilson, "to trick me into seeming confirmation of some rumor you have heard, you know that it won't work."
"You know me better than that, Steve."
"That's the trouble, I do know you."
"All right, then," said Manning, "if that's the way of it, let's start at the beginning. The President had the Russian ambassador in this morning. . ."
"The President didn't have him. He came in on his own. The ambassador made a statement to the press. You know about that."
"Sure, we know what the ambassador said and what you said in this afternoon's briefing, which, I might say, added very little light to the situation. But no one in town, no one in his right mind, that is, buys what either of you said." "I'm sorry about that, Tom. I told all I knew."
"OK," said Manning. "I'll take your word for that. It's just possible that you weren't told. But there's a very nasty story being whispered up at the UN in New York. At least, it was whispered to our man up there. I don't know how much farther it has gone. Our man didn't put it on the wire. He phoned me and I told him to hold it until I talked with you."
"I don't have the least idea, Tom, of what you're talking about. I had honestly assumed the ambassador told all that could be told. There have been some conversations with Moscow and it sounded reasonable. The President didn't tell me differently. We mentioned it, I guess, but we didn't talk about it. There were so many other things."
"All right, then," said Manning, "here's the story as I heard it. Morozov talked to Williams and the President and offered troops to help hunt down the monster and the offer was rejected..."
"Tom, how good is your source? How sure are you of this?"
"Not sure at all. It's what our man at the UN was told this afternoon."
"You're talking about Max Hale. He's your man up there."
"One of the best," said Manning. "He's fairly good at sorting out the truth."
"Yes, he is. I remember him from Chicago days."
"Hale's informant told him that tomorrow the UN will be told of our refusal and a demand made that we be forced to accept troops from other nations. It'll be said that we are negligent in not accepting them."
"The old squeeze play," said Wilson.
"And that's not all of it. If other troops are not accepted and the monsters can't be controlled, then, the UN will be told, the entire area must be nuclearly destroyed. The world can't take a chance. . ."
"Wait a minute," said Wilson quickly. "You're not putting this on the wires, you say?"
"Not yet. Probably never. I hope that it is never. That's the reason I phoned. If Hale heard it, there's a likelihood someone else will hear it and, sure as God, it will get on a wire or be published somewhere."
"There's no truth in it," said Wilson. "I am sure of it. Christ, we're all in this together. For the moment, political power plays should be set aside. Or it seems to me they should. Tom, I simply can't believe it."
"You know nothing of this? Of any of it? There hasn't been a breath?"
"Not a breath," said Wilson.
"You know," said Manning, "I wouldn't have your job, Steve. Not for a million dollars."
"You'll hold off, Tom. You'll give us a little time to check."
"Of course. Only if the pressure gets too great. Only if someone else - I'll let you know."
"Thanks, Tom. Someday. . ."
"Someday, when this is all over," said Manning, "we'll go off in some dark corner in an obscure bar, where no one possibly can find us, and we'll hang one on."
"I'll stand the drinks," said Wilson. "All the drinks."
After hanging up, he sat slumped. Just when another day was about to end, he thought. But hell, some days never ended. They just kept on and on. Yesterday and today had not been two days, but a nightmare-haunted eternity that seemed, when one thought of it, to have no reality at all. Judy gone, kids marching in the street, the business community bitching loudly because it was prevented from using the economic disruptions to go out and make a killing, pulpit-thumping preachers hell-bent to make another kind of killing, monsters running in the hills and the future still emptying its humanity upon this moment in the time track.
His eyelids slid down and stuck and he forced himself erect. He had to get some sleep tonight - he had to find the time to get some sleep.
Maybe Judy had the right idea. Just up and walk away from it. Although, he told himself, quite honestly, there still remained the question of what she'd walked away from. He missed her - gone no more than an hour or two and he was missing her. Quite suddenly, he realized he'd been missing her all day. Even while she still had been here, he had been missing her. Knowing she would be leaving, he had started missing her. Maybe, he thought, he should have asked her once again to stay, but there hadn't been the time and he'd not known how to do it - at least he had not known how to do it gracefully and you did things gracefully or you did them not at all. More than likely, had he known, she'd not have listened to him.
He picked up the phone. "Kim, you still there? I'll need to see the President. It is rather urgent. The first chance you have to squeeze me in."
"It may be some time, Steve," she said. "There is a cabinet meeting."

41

Sergeant Gordon Fairfield Clark said to Colonel Eugene Dawson, "I had it in my sights and then it wasn't there. It disappeared. It went away. I'm sure it didn't move. I saw it move before it stopped. It blurred when it moved. Like a cartoonist drawing something moving fast, lettering in a SWISH, but this was without a swish. When it disappeared there wasn't any swish. The first time I could see that it was moving. But not when I had it in my sights. It didn't move then. It didn't blur. It didn't swish."
"It saw you, Sergeant," said the colonel.
"I would think not, sir. I was well hidden. I didn't move. I moved the launcher barrel a couple of inches. That was all."
"One of your men, then."
"Sir, all those men I trained myself. No one sees them, no one hears them."
"It saw something. Or heard something. It sensed some danger and then it disappeared. You're sure about this disappearance, Sergeant?"
"Colonel, I am sure."
Dawson was sitting on a fallen log. He reached down and picked up a small twig from the duff of the forest floor, began breaking it and rebreaking it, reducing the twig to bits of wood. Clark stayed squatting to one side, using the launcher, its butt resting on the ground, as a partial support to his squatting pose.
"Sergeant," Dawson said, "I don't know what the hell we're going to do about all this. I don't know what the army's going to do. You find one of these things and before you can whap it, it is gone. We can handle them. I am sure of that. Even when they get big and rough and mean, like the people from the future say they will, we still can handle them. We've got the firepower. We have the sophistication. If they'd line up and we'd line up and they came at us, we could clobber them. We have more and better armaments than the people of future had and we can do the job. But not when they're trying to keep clear of us, not in this kind of terrain. We could bomb ten thousand acres flat and get, maybe, one of them. God knows how much else we'd kill, including people. We haven't the time or manpower to evacuate the people so that we can bomb. We got to hunt these monsters down, one by one. . ."
"But even when we hunt them down, sir..."
"Yes, I know. But say that you are lucky. Say you bag one now and then. There still will be hundreds of them hatching and in a week or so, a month or so, thousands of them hatching. And the first ones growing bigger and meaner all the time. And while we hunt for them, they wipe out a town or two, an army camp or two. . ."
"Sir," said Sergeant Clark, "it is worse than Vietnam ever was. And Vietnam was hairy."
The colonel got up from the log. "There hasn't nothing beat us yet," he said. "Nothing has ever beat us all the way. It won't this time. But we have to find out how to do it. All the firepower in the world, all the sophistication in the world is of no use to you until you can find something to aim the firepower and the sophistication at and it stays put until you pull the trigger."
The sergeant got to his feet, tucked the launcher underneath his arm. "Well, back to work," he said.
"Have you seen a photographer around here?"
"A photographer?" said the sergeant. "What photographer? I ain't seen no photographer."
"He said his name was Price. With some press association. He was messing around. I put the run on him."
"If I happen onto him," said the sergeant, "I'll tie a knot into his tail."

42

The Reverend Jake Billings was in conference with Ray MacDonald, formerly his assistant public relations manager, who had been appointed, within the last twelve hours, to the post of crusade operations chief.
"I really do not think, Ray," said the Reverend Billings, "that this business of crucifixion will advance our cause. It strikes me as being rather crude and it could backlash against us. As witness what one paper had to say of the attempt at Washington. . ."
"You mean someone has already gotten around to editorializing on it? I had not expected such prompt reaction."
"The reaction is not good," said the Reverend Billings, with some unaccustomed heat. "The editorial called it a cheap trick and a pantywaisted effort. The young man's arms, it turns out, were fastened to the crossbar with thongs - not nails, but thongs. The entire editorial, of course, is in a somewhat facetious vein, but nevertheless. . ."
"But they are wrong," MacDonald said.
"You mean that you used nails!"
"No, that's not what I mean. I mean that thongs were the way that it was done. The Romans ordinarily did not use nails..."
"You are trying to tell me that the Gospels erred?"
"No, I'm not trying to tell you that. What I am saying is that ordinarily - ordinarily, mind you, perhaps not always - the arms were tied, not nailed. We did some research on it and..."
"Your research is no concern of mine," said Billings icily.
"What I do care about is that you gave some smart-assed editorial writer the chance to poke fun at us. And even if that had not happened, I think the whole idea stinks. You didn't check with me. How come you didn't check with me?"
"You were busy, Jake. You told me to do my best. You told me I was the man who could come up with ideas and I did come up with ideas."
"I had this call from Steve Wilson," Billings said. "He chewed me out. There is no doubt that official Washington - the White House, at least - is solidly against us. When he gets around to it, Wilson will brand us as sensationalists. He brushed us off contemptuously in his press briefing this afternoon. That was before this silly crucifixion business. Next, time around, he'll blast us out of the water."
"But we have a lot of people with us. You go out to the countryside, to the little towns..."
"Yes, I know. The rednecks. They'll be for us, sure, but how long do you think it is before redneck opinion can have any significant impact? What about the influential pastors in the big city churches? Can you imagine what the Reverend Dr. Angus Windsor will tell his congregation and the newspapers and the world? He's the one who started all of this, but he'll not go along with solemn young men packing crosses through the street and getting crucified on a public square. For years I have tried to conduct my ministry with dignity and now it's been pulled down to the level of street brawling. I have you to thank for this and..."
"It's not too different," protested MacDonald, "from the stunts we've used before. Good old circus stuff. Good old show biz. It's what you built the business on."
"But with restraint."
"Not too much restraint. Skywriting and parades and miles of billboards..."
"Legitimate advertising," said Billings. "Honest advertising. A great American tradition. The mistake you made was to go out in the streets. You don't know about the streets. You ran up against the experts there. These Miocene kids know about the streets. They have been there, they have lived there. You had two strikes on you before you started out. What made you think you could compete with them?"
"All right, then, what shall we do? The streets are out, you say. So we pull off the streets. Then what do we do? How do we get attention?"
The Reverend Jake Billings stared at the wall with glassy eyes. "I don't know," he said. "I purely do not know. I don't think it makes much difference what we do. I think that gurgling noise you hear is our crusade going down the drain."

43

It was the dog that did it. Bentley Price hadn't had a drink all day. The road was a narrow, winding mountain road, and Bentley, exasperated beyond endurance at what had happened to him, was driving faster than he should. After hours of hunting for it, he had finally found the camp - a very temporary camp by the looks of it, with none of the meticulous neatness of the usual army camp, simply a stopping place in a dense patch of woods beside a stream that came brawling down the valley. Filled with a deep sense of duty done and perseverance paying off, he had slung cameras around his neck and gone plodding toward the largest of the tents and had almost reached it when the colonel had come out to stop his further progress. "Who the hell are you," the colonel had asked, "and where do you think you're going?" "I am the Global News," Bentley had told him, "and I am out here to take some pictures of this monster hunt. I tell the city editor it isn't worth the time, but he disagrees with me and it's no skin off my nose no matter where I'm sent, so leave us get the lead out and do some monster hunting so I can get some pictures."
"You're off limits, mister," the colonel had told him. "You are way off limits, in more ways than one. I don't know how you got this far. Didn't someone try to stop you?" "Sure, said Bentley, up the road a ways. A couple of soldier boys. But I pay no attention to them. I never pay attention to someone who tries to stop me. I got work to do and I can't fool around..."
And then the colonel had thrown him out of there. He had spoken in a clipped, military voice and had been very icy-eyed. "We've got trouble enough," he said, "without some damn fool photographer mucking around and screwing up the detail. If you don't leave under your own power, I'll have you escorted out". While he was saying this, Bentley snapped a camera up and took a picture of him. That made the situation even worse, and Bentley, with his usual quick perception, could see his cause had worsened, so had beat a dignified retreat to avoid escort. When he had passed the soldier boys who had tried to stop him they had yelled at him and thumbed their noses. Bentley had slowed down momentarily, debating whether to go back and reason with them, then had thought better of it. They ain't worth the time, he told himself.
Now the dog.
The dog came bursting out of high weeds and brush that grew along the road. His ears were laid back, his tail tucked in and he was kiyodeling in pure, blind panic. The dog was close and the car traveling much too fast. Bentley jerked the wheel, the car veered off the road, smashed through a clump of brush. The tires screamed as Bentley hit the brakes. The nose of the car slammed hard into a huge walnut tree and stopped with a shuddering impact. The left-hand door flew open and Bentley, who held a lofty disdain for such copouts as seat belts, was thrown free. The camera which he wore on a strap around his neck, described a short arc and brought up against his ear, dealing him a blow that made his head ring as if there were a bell inside it. He landed on his back and rolled, wound up on hands and knees. He surged erect and found that he had ended up on the edge of the road.
Standing in the middle of the road was a monster. Bentley knew it was a monster; he had seen two of them only yesterday. But this one was small, no bigger than a Shetland pony. Which did not mean the horror of it was any less.
But Bentley was of different fiber from other men. He did not gulp; his gut did not turn over. His hands came up with swift precision, grabbed the camera firmly, brought it to his eye. The monster was framed in the finder and his finger pressed the button. The camera clicked and as it clicked the monster disappeared.
Bentley lowered the camera and let loose of it. His head still rang from the blow upon the ear. His clothes were torn; a gaping rent in a trouser leg revealed one knobby knee. His right hand was bloody from where his palm had scraped across some gravel. Behind him the car creaked slightly as twisted metal settled slowly into place. The motor pinged and sizzled as water from the broken radiator ran across hot metal.
Off in the distance the still-running dog was yipping frantically. In a tree up the hillside an excited squirrel chattered with machine-gun intensity. The road was empty. A monster had been there. From where he stood, Bentley could see its tracks printed in the dust. But it was no longer there.
Bentley limped out into the road, stared both up and down it. There was nothing on the road.
It was there, said Bentley stubbornly to himself. I had it in the finder. It was there when I shot the picture. It wasn't until the shutter clicked that it disappeared. Doubt assailed him. Had it been there or not when he'd shot the picture? Was it on the film? Had he been robbed of a photo by its disappearance?
Thinking about it, it seemed that it had been there, but he could not be sure.
He turned about and started limping down the road as rapidly as he could. There was one way to find out. He had to get to a phone, he had to somehow get a car. He must get back to Washington.

44

"We have made three contacts with the monsters," Sandburg said. "There are yet to be results. No one has had a chance to fire at them. They disappear and that's the end of it."
"You mean," said Thorton Williams, "that they duck away..."
"No, I don't mean that," said the Secretary of Defense. "They just aren't there, is all. The men who saw them swore they didn't move at all. They were there and then they weren't. The observers, all reporting independently, not knowing of the other reports, have been very sure of that. One man could be wrong in his observation; it's possible that two could be. It seems impossible that three observers could err on exactly the same point."
"Have you, has the military, any theory, any idea of what is going on?"
"None," said Sandburg. "It must be a new defensive adaptation that they have developed. These creatures, as you all by now must understand, are very much on the defensive. They know they have to survive. For the good of the species, they can't take any chances. Cornered, I suppose that they would fight, but only if they were cornered and there was no way out. Apparently they have come up with something new under this sort of situation. We have talked with Dr. Isaac Wolfe, the refugee biologist who probably knows more about the monsters than any other man, and this business of disappearing is something he has never heard of. He suggests, simply as a guess, that it may be an ability that only the juvenile monsters have. A sort of juvenile defense mechanism. It may have gone on unobserved up in the future because the people up there had little opportunity to observe the juveniles; they had their hands full fighting off the adult monsters."
"How are you doing with getting men into the area?" asked the President.
"I haven't any figures," said Sandburg, "but we're piling them in as fast as we can get them there. The refugee camps have formed their own caretaking committees and that takes off some of the pressure, frees some troops. Agriculture and Welfare are taking over a lot of the transport that is needed to get food and other necessities into the camps and that, as well, has freed military personnel. We expect the first overseas transport planes to begin landing sometime tonight and that will give us more men."
"Morozov was in this morning," said Williams, "with an offer to supply us men. In fact, he rather insisted upon it. We, of course, rejected the offer. But it does raise a point. Should we, perhaps, ask for some assistance from Canada, perhaps Mexico, maybe Britain, France, Germany - others of our friends?"
"Possibly we could use some of their forces," said Sandburg. "I'd like to talk with the Chiefs of Staff and get their reactions. What we need, and haven't been able to manage, are some rather substantial forces, both north and south - down in Georgia, say, and in upstate New York. We should try to seal off the monsters' spread, if they are spreading, and I suppose that is their intention. If we can contain them, we can handle them."
"If they stand still," said the President.
"That is right," said Sandburg. "If they stand still."
"Maybe we should move on to something else," suggested the President. "Reilly, I think you have something to report."
"I'm still not too solid on it yet," said Reilly Douglas, "but it is a matter that should be discussed. Frankly, I am inclined to think there may be a rather tricky legal question involved and I've had no chance to go into that aspect of it. Clinton Chapman came to see me last night. I think most of you know Clint."
He looked around the table. Many of the men nodded their heads.
"He came to me," said Douglas, "and since then has phoned three or four times and we had lunch today. I suppose some of you know that we were roommates at Harvard and have been friends ever since. I suppose that's why he contacted me. On his first approach he proposed that he, himself, would take over the building of the tunnels, financing the cost with no federal funds involved. In return he would continue in ownership of them once the future people had been transported back to the Miocene and would be licensed to operate them. Since then..."
"Reilly," Williams interrupted, "I can't quite understand why anyone would want to own them. What in the world could be done with them? The time force, or whatever it is, as I understand it, operates in only one direction - into the past."
Douglas shook his head. "Clint won't buy that. He has talked with his research men - and the research staff he has is probably one of the best in the world - and they have assured him that if there is such a thing as time travel, it can be made to operate in two directions - both into the past and futureward. As a matter of fact, they told him it would seem easier to operate it futureward than into the past because time's natural flow is futureward."
Williams blew out a gusty breath. "I don't know," he said. "It has a dirty sound to it. Could we conscientiously turn over two-way time travel, if two-way time travel is possible, to any one man or any group of men? Think of the ways it could be used. . ."
"I talked to Clint about this at lunch," said Douglas. "I explained to him that any such operation, if it were possible, would have to be very strictly controlled. Commissions would have to be set up to formulate a time travel code, Congress would have to legislate. Not only that, but the code and the legislation would have to be worldwide; there would have to be some international agreement, and you can imagine how long that might take. Clint agreed to all of this, said he realized it would be necessary. The man is quite obsessed with the idea. As an old friend, I tried to talk him out of it, but he still insists he wants to go ahead. If he is allowed to do it, that is. At first he planned to finance it on his own, but apparently is beginning to realize the kind of money that would be involved. As I understand it, he is now very quietly trying to put together a consortium to take over the project."
Sandburg frowned. "I would say no on impulse. Time travel would have to be studied closely. It's something we've never thought seriously of before. We'd have to think it through."
"It could have military applications," said Williams. "I'm not just sure what they would be."
"International agreements, with appropriate safeguards, would have to be set up to keep it from being used militarily," said the President. "And if these agreements should fail at some time in the future, I can't see that it would make much difference who held the license for time travel. National needs would always take precedence. No matter how it goes, time travel is something that we're stuck with. It's something we have to face. We have to make the best of it."
"You favor Clint's proposal, Mr. President?" Douglas asked in some surprise. "When I talked with you..."
"I wouldn't go so far as to say I favored it," said the President. "But under the situation we face, it seems to me we should consider all possibilities or proposals. We are going to be hard pressed to find the kind of money or credit that is needed to build the tunnels. Not only us, but the world. Perhaps the rest of the world even more than us."
"That brings us to another point," said Williams, "I would suppose Chapman and his consortium are proposing only the tunnels in the United States."
"I can't say as to that," said Douglas. "I would imagine that if Chapman could put his consortium together it might include some foreign money, and agreements could be made with other nations. I can't see a country like the Congo or Portugal or Indonesia turning its back on someone who wants to build its tunnels. Other nations might be hesitant, but if we went along with the plan and a couple of the other major nations joined us, say Germany or France, then most of the others, I would think, would follow. After all, if everyone else were going ahead with the plan, no nation would want to be left out in the cold without a tunnel."
"This is going to cost a lot of money," said Manfred Franklin, Secretary of the Treasury. "Tunnels for the entire world would run into billions."
"There are a lot of gamblers in the financial world," observed Ben Cunningham, of Agriculture. "But mostly it is smart gambling, smart money. Chapman must be fairly certain of himself. Do you imagine he may know something that we don't know?"
Douglas shook his head. "I am inclined to think not. He has this assurance, you see, from his research people, principally the physicists, I understand that if time travel is possible it has to be a two-way street. By now it is apparent that it is possible. You see, this is the first new idea, the first really new idea that has real technological and engineering potential, that has come along in fifty years or more. Clint and his gang want to get in on the ground floor."
"The question," said Williams, "is should we let them."
"Much as we may regret to do so," said the President, "we may have to. If we refused, word would be leaked to the public and you can imagine what the public reaction would be. Oh, a few would oppose it, but they would be drowned out by those who would see it as allowing someone to pay a huge expenditure that otherwise would come out of the treasury and be paid by taxes. Frankly, gentlemen, we may find ourselves in a position where opposing the consortium would be political suicide."
"You don't seem to be too upset about it," said Williams somewhat acidly.
"When you have been in politics as long as I have been, Thornton, you don't gag too easily at anything that comes up. You learn to be practical. You weigh things in balance. I admit privately that I gag considerably at this, but I am politically practical to the point, where I can recognize it may not be possible to fight it. There are times when you simply cannot take pot shots at Santa Claus."
"I still don't like it," said Williams.
"Nor do I," said Sandburg.
"It would be a solution," said Franklin. "Labor is ready to go along with us in the emergency. If the financial interests of the world would go along with us, which is actually what would happen under this consortium setup, our basic problem would be solved. We still have to feed the people from the future, but I understand we can do that longer than we had thought at first. We'll have to supply the future folks with what they'll need to establish themselves in the past, but that can be done under normal manufacturing processes and at a fraction of the tunnel cost. Someone will have to do some rather rapid planning to calculate how much of our manufacturing processes and resources will have to be converted for a time to the making of wheelbarrows, hoes, axes, plows and other similar items, but that's simply a matter of mathematics. We'll have to face up for the next few years to considerable shortages of meat and dairy products and other agricultural items, I suppose, because we'll have to send breeding stock to the Miocene, but all of this we can do. It may pinch us a bit, but it can be done. The tunnels were the big job and Chapman's consortium will do the job there, if we let them."
"How about all those banner-carrying kids who say they want to go back in time?" asked Cunningham. "I say let them go. It would clear the streets of them and for a long time a lot of people have been yelling about population pressure. We may have the answer here."
"You're being facetious, of course," said the President, "but. . ."
"I can assure you, sir, I'm not in the least facetious. I mean it."
"And I agree with you," said the President. "My reasons may not be yours, but I do think we should not try to stop anyone who wants to go. Not, perhaps, back to the era where the future people plan to go. Maybe to an era a million years later than the future people. But before we allow them to go they must have the same ecological sense and convictions the future people have. We can't send people back who'll use up the resources we already have used. That would make a paradox I don't pretend to understand, but I imagine it might be fatal to our civilization."
"Who would teach them this ecological sense and conviction?"
"The people from the future. They don't all need to go back into the past immediately. The most of them, of course, but some can stay here until later. In fact, they have offered to leave a group of specialists with us who will teach as much of what has been - no, I guess that should be 'will be' - learned in the next five hundred years. For one, I think this offer should be accepted."
"So do I," said Williams. "Some of what they teach us may upset a few economic and social applecarts, but in the long run we should be far ahead. In twenty years or less we could jump five hundred years ahead, without making the mistakes that our descendants on the old world line made."
"I don't know about that," said Douglas. "There's too many factors in a thing like that. I'd have to think about it for awhile."
"There's just one thing that we are forgetting," Sandburg said. "We can go ahead and plan, of course. And we have to do it fast. We have to be well along to a working, operating solution to the crisis that we face in a month or so or time will begin running out. But the point I want to make is this - the solution, the planning may do us little good if we aren't able to wipe out, or at least control, the monsters."

45

The kids out in the street might be the ones. Wilson told himself, with the right idea. There was some well-founded fascination in starting over once again, with the slate wiped clean and the record clear. Only trouble was, he thought, that even starting over, the human race might still repeat many of its past mistakes. Although, going back, it would take some time to make them and there'd be the opportunity, if the will were there, to correct them before they got too big, too entrenched and awkward.
Alice Gale had talked about the wilderness where the White House once had stood and Dr. Osborne, on the ride from Fort Myer to the White House, had expressed his doubt that the trend which had made the White House park a wilderness could be stopped - it had gone too far, he said. You are too top-heavy, he had said; you are off your balance.
Perhaps the trend had gone too far, Wilson admitted to himself - big government growing bigger; big business growing fatter and more arrogant; taxes steadily rising, never going down; the poor becoming ever poorer and more and more of them despite the best intentions of a welfare-conscious society; the gap between the rich and poor, the government and the public, growing wider by the year. How could it have been done differently, he wondered. Given the kind of world there was, how could circumstances have been better ordered?
He shook his head. He had no idea. There might be men who could go back and chart the political, economic and social growth and show where the errors had been made, putting their fingers on certain actions in a certain year and saying here is where we made one error. But the men who could do this would be theorists, working on the basis of many theories which in practice would not stand the test.
The phone on his desk rang and he picked it up.
"Mr. Wilson?"
"Yes."
"This is the guard at the southwest gate. There is a gentleman here who says that he must see you on a matter of importance. Mr. Thomas Manning. Mr. Bentley Price is with him. Do you know them, sir?"
"Yes. Please send them in."
"I'll send an escort with them, sir. You'll be in your office?"
"Yes. I'll wait here for them."
Wilson put the receiver back into its cradle. What could bring Manning here, he wondered. Why should he have to come in person? A matter of importance, he had said. And Bentley - for the love of God, why Bentley?
Was it, he wondered, something further about the UN business?
He looked at his watch. The cabinet meeting was taking longer than he'd thought. Maybe it was over and the President had gotten busy with some other matters. Although that would be strange - Kim ordinarily would have squeezed him in.
Manning and Bentley came into the room. The guard stopped at the door. Wilson nodded at him. "It's all right. You can wait outside."
"This is an unexpected pleasure," he said to the two, shaking their hands. "I seldom see you, Tom. And Bentley, I almost never see you."
"I got business elsewhere," Bentley said. "I get my legs run off. I'm running all the time."
"Bentley just got in from West Virginia," Manning said. "That's what this visit is about."
"There was this dog in the the road," said Bentley, "and then a tree came up and hit me."
"Bentley took a picture of a monster standing in the road," said Manning, "just as it disappeared."
"I got her figured now," said Bentley. "It saw the camera pointed at it and it heard it click. Them monsters don't stay around when they see something pointed at them."
"There was another report or, two of one disappearing," Wilson said. "A defense mechanism of some sort, perhaps. It's making it tough for the boys out hunting them."
"I don't think so," said Manning. "Forcing them to disappear may be as good as hunting them."
He unzipped a thin briefcase he was carrying and took out a sheaf of photos. "Look at this," he said.
He slid the top photo across the desk to Wilson.
Wilson took a quick look, then fixed his gaze on Bentley. "What kind of trick photography is this?" he asked.
"There ain't no tricks," said Bentley. "A camera never lies. It always tells the truth. It shows you what is there. That's what really happens when a monster disappears. I was using a fast film..."
"But dinosaurs!" yelled Wilson.
Bentley's hand dipped into his pocket and brought out an object. He handed it to Wilson. "A glass," he said. "Take a look with it. There are herds of them, off in the distance. You can't do tricks of that sort."
The monster was hazed, a sort of shadow monster, but substantial enough that there could be no doubt it was a monster. Back of it, the dinosaurs, three of them, were in sharp focus.
"Duckbills," said Manning. "If you showed that photograph to a paleontologist, I have every expectation he could give you an exact identification."
The trees were strange. They, looked like palm trees, others like gigantic ferns.
Wilson unfolded the magnifier, bent his head close above the photo, shifted the glass about. Bentley had been right. There were other strange creatures spread across the landscape, herds of them, singles, pairs. A small mammal of some sort cowered in hiding underneath a shrub.
"We have some blowups," Manning said, "of the background. Want to look at them?"
Wilson shook his head. "No, I'm satisfied."
"We looked it up in a geology book," said Bentley. "That there is a Cretaceous landscape."
"Yes, I know," said Wilson.
He reached for, the phone. "Kim," he said, "is Mr. Gale in his room? Thank you. Please ask him to step down."
Manning laid the rest of the photos on the desk. "They are yours," he said. "We'll be putting them on the wire. We wanted you to know first. You thinking the same thing that I am?"
Wilson nodded. "I suppose I am," he said, "but no quotation, please."
"We don't need quotes," said Manning. "The picture tells the story. The monster, the mother monster, I would suppose you'd call it, was exposed to the time travel principle when it came through the tunnel. The principle was imprinted on its mind, its instinct, whatever you may call it. It transmitted knowledge of the principle to the young - a hereditary instinct."
"But it took time tunnels, mechanical contraptions, by the humans to do it," Wilson objected. "It took technology and engineering. . ."
Manning shrugged. "Hell, Steve, I don't know. I don't pretend to know. But the photo says the monsters are escaping to another time. Maybe they'll all escape to another time, probably to the same time. The escape time bracket may be implanted on their instinct. Maybe the Cretaceous is a better place for them. Maybe they have found this era too tough for them to crack, the odds too great."
"I just thought of something," said Wilson. "the dinosaurs died out. . ."
"Yeah, I know," said Manning. He zipped the briefcase shut. "We better go," he said. "We have work to do. Thanks for seeing us."
"No, Tom," said Wilson. "The thanks are yours and Bentley's. Thanks for coming over. It might have taken days to get this puzzled out. If we ever did ."
He stood and watched them go, then sat down again.
It was incredible, he thought. Yet it did make a lopsided sort of sense. Humans were too prone to think in human grooves. The monsters would be different. Again and again the people from the future had emphasized they must not be regarded as simple monsters, but rather as highly intelligent beings. And that intelligence, no doubt, would be as alien as their bodies. Their intelligence and ability would not duplicate human intelligence and ability. Hard as it might be to understand, they might be able to do by instinct a thing that a human would require a machine to accomplish.
Maynard Gale and Alice came into the room so quietly that he did not know they were there until he looked up and saw them standing beside the desk.
"You asked for us," said Gale.
"I wanted you to look at these," said Wilson. "The top one first. The others are detail blowups. Tell me what you think."
He waited while they studied the photos. Finally, Gale said, "This is the Cretaceous, Mr. Wilson. How was the photo taken? And what has the monster to do with it?"
"The photographer was taking a picture of the monster. As he took it, at the moment he took it, the monster disappeared."
"The monster disappeared?"
"This is the second report of one disappearing. The second that I know of. There may have been others. I don't know."
"Yes," said Gale, "I suppose that it is possible. They're not like us, you know. The ones that came through the tunnel experienced time travel - an experience that would have lasted for only a fraction of a second. But that may have been enough."
He shuddered. "If that is true, if after such an exposure, they are able to travel independently in time, if their progeny are able to travel independently in time, if they can sense and learn and master such a complex thing so well, so quickly, it's a wonder that we were able to stand up against them for these twenty years. They must have been playing with us, keeping us, protecting us for their sport. A game preserve. That is what we must have been. A game preserve."
"You can't be sure of that," said Wilson.
"No, I suppose not. Dr. Wolfe is the man you should consult about this. He would know. At least, he could make an educated guess."
"But you have no doubt?"
"None," said Gale. "This could be a hoax?"
Wilson shook his head. "Not Tom Manning. We know one another well. We worked on the Post, right here, together. We were drinking companion. We were brothers until this damn job came between us. Not that he has no sense of humor. But not in a thing like this. And Bentley. Not Bentley. The camera is his god. He would use it for no unworthy purpose. He lives and breathes his cameras. He bows down before them each night before he goes to bed."
"So then we have evidence the monsters flee into the past. Even as we fled."
"I think so," said Wilson. "I wanted your opinion. You know the monsters and we do not."
"You'll still talk with Wolfe?"
"Yes, we'll do that."
"There is another matter, Mr. Wilson, that we have wanted to talk with you about. My daughter and I have talked it over and we are agreed."
"What is that?" asked Wilson.
"An invitation," said Gale. "We're not sure you will accept. Perhaps you won't. We may even offend you with it. But many other people, I think, would accept the invitation. To many it would have a great attraction. I find it rather awkward to phrase it, but it is this: When we go back into the Miocene, if you wish to do so, you would be welcome to go along with us. With our particular group. We should be glad to have you."
Wilson did not move. He tried to find words and there were no words.
Alice said, "You were our first friend, perhaps our only real friend. You arranged the matter of the diamonds. You have done so many things."
She stepped quickly around the desk, bent to kiss him on the cheek.
"We do not need an answer now," said Gale. "You will want to think about it. If you decide not to go with us, we'll not speak of it again. The invitation, I think, is issued with the knowledge that in all probability, your people will be using the time tunnels to go back into an era some millions of years in the past. Much as it might be hoped, I have the feeling you will not be able to escape the crisis that overtook our ancestors (which are you, of course) on the original time track."
"I don't know," said Wilson. "I honestly do not know. You will let me think about it."
"Certainly," said Gale.
Alice bent close, her words a whisper. "I do so hope you'll decide to come with us," she said.
Then they were gone, as silently, as unobtrusively as they had come.
The dusk of evening was creeping into the room. In the press lounge a typewriter clicked hesitantly as the writer sought for words. Against the wall the teletypes muttered querulously. One button on Judy's phone console kept flashing. But not Judy's console anymore, he thought. Judy was gone. The plane that was taking her to Ohio was already heading westward.
Judy, he said to himself. For the love of God, what got into you? Why did you have to do it?
It would be lonely without her, he knew. He had not known until now, he realized, how much she had kept him from loneliness, had been a bulwark against the loneliness a man could feel even when with people he thought of as his friends. She had not needed to be with him, only the thought that she was somewhere nearby was quite enough to banish loneliness, to bring gladness to the heart.
She still would be near, he thought. Ohio was not distant; in this day, nowhere in the world was distant. Phones still worked and letters went by mail, but there was a difference now. He thought of how he might phrase a letter if he wrote her, but he knew he'd never write.
The phone rang. Kim said, "The meeting's over. He can see you now."
"Thank you, Kim," said Wilson. It had slipped his mind that he'd asked to see the President. It seemed so long ago, although it hadn't been. It just had been that so much had happened.
When he came into the office, the President said, "I'm sorry you were kept waiting, Steve. There was so much that had to be talked over. What is it that you have?"
Wilson grinned. "Not quite so grim as when I tried to reach you. I think it's better now. There was a rumor out of the U.N."
"This Russian business?"
"Yes, the Russian business. Tom Manning phoned. His UN man - Max Hale, you know him."
"I don't think I've ever met him. I read him. He is sound."
"Hale heard that the Russians would push for the international dropping of nuclear weapons on the areas where the monsters might be."
"I had expected something of this sort," said the President. "They'd never be able to pull it off."
"I think it's academic now, anyhow," said Wilson. "These just came in." He laid the photos on the desk. "Bentley Price took the shot."
"Price," said the President. "Is he the one..."
"He's the one all the stories are about. Drunk a good part of the time, but a top-notch photographer. The best there is."
The President studied the top photo, frowning. "Steve, I'm not sure I understand this."
"There's a story that goes with it, sir. It goes like this. . ."
The President listened closely, not interrupting. When Wilson finished, he asked. "You really think that's the explanation, Steve?"
"I'm inclined to think so, sir. So does Gale. He said we should talk with Wolfe. But there was no question in Gale's mind. All we have to do is keep pushing them. Push enough of them into the past and the rest will go. If there were more of them, if we had as few weapons as the people of five hundred years from now had when they first reached Earth, they probably would try to stay on here. We'd offer plenty of fighting, be worthy antagonists. But I think they may know when they are licked. Going back to the Cretaceous, they'll still have worthy opponents. Formidable ones. Tyrannosaurus rex and all his relatives. The Triceratops. The coelurosaurs. The hunting dinosaurs. Hand-to-hand combat, face-to-face. They might like that better than what humans have to offer. More glory in it for them."
The President sat thoughtfully silent. Then he said, "As I recollect, the scientists have never figured out what killed off the dinosaurs. Maybe now we know."
"That could be," said Wilson.
The President reached for the callbox, then pulled back his hand.
"No," he said. "Fyodor Morozov is a decent sort of man. What he did this morning was in the line of duty, on orders that he had to carry out. No use to phone him, to point it out to him. He'll find out when the picture hits the street. So will the people up at the UN. I'd like to see their faces. I'd say it spikes their guns."
"I would say so, sir," said Wilson. "I'll take no more of your time. . ."
"Stay for a minute, Steve. There's something you should know. A sort of precautionary knowledge. The question may come up and you should know how to field it. No more than half a dozen of our men know this and they won't talk. Neither will the future people. It's top secret, unofficially top secret. There is no record. State doesn't know. Defense doesn't know."
"I wonder, sir, if I should. . ."
"I want you to know," said the President. "Once you hear it you are bound by the same secrecy as the others. You've heard of the Clinton Chapman proposal?"
"1 have heard of it. I don't like it. The question came up this morning and I refused comment. Said it was only rumor and I had no knowledge of it."
"Neither do I like it," said the President. "But so far as I am concerned, he's going to be encouraged to go ahead. He thinks he can buy time travel; he thinks he has it in his hand; he can fairly taste it. I have never seen a more obvious case of naked greed. I'm not too sure his great, good friend Reilly Douglas may not have a touch of that same greed."
"But if it's greed..."
"It's greed, all right," said the President. "But I know something that he doesn't know and if I can manage it, he won't know it until it's too late to do him any good. And that is this: What the future people used was not time travel as we think of it; it is something else. It serves the same purpose, but it's not time travel as traditionally conceived. I don't know if I can explain this too well, but it seems there is another universe, coexistent with ours. The people of the future know it's there, but there is only one thing they really know about it. That is that the direction of time's flow in the second universe is exactly the opposite of ours. Its future flows toward our past. The people of the future traveled into their past by hooking onto the future flow of this other universe. . ."
"But that means. . ."
"Exactly," said the President. "It means that you can go into the past, but you can't come back. You can travel pastward, but not futureward."
"If Chapman knew this, the deal would be off."
"I suppose it would be. He's not proposing to build the tunnels from patriotic motives. Do you think badly of me, Steve, for my deception - my calculated dishonesty?"
"I'd think badly of you, sir, if there really were a chance for Chapman to do what he means to do and you did not stop him. This way, however, the world gets help and the only ones who are hurt are men who, for once, overreached themselves. No one will feel sorry for them."
"Someday," said the President, "it will be known. Someday my dishonesty will catch up with me."
"When it does," said Wilson, "and sometime, of course, it will, a great guffaw will go around the world. You'll be famous, sir. They'll build statues of you."
The President smiled. "I hope so, Steve. I feel a little sneaky."
"One thing, sir," said Wilson. "Just how tight is this secret of yours?"
"I feel it's solid," said the President. "The people you brought up from Myer told our National Academy people - only three of them. They reported back to me. The future scientists and the men who talked with them. To me alone. By this time, I had gotten wind of Chapman's deal and I asked them to say nothing. Only a few of the future scientists worked on the project that sent the people back; only a handful of them know what actually is involved. And as it happens, they all are here. Something like the diamonds. They all are here because they felt we were the one nation they could trust. The word has been passed along at Myer. The future scientists won't talk. Neither will our men"
Wilson nodded. "It sounds all right. You mentioned the diamonds. What became of them?"
"We have accepted temporary custody. They are locked away. Later, after all of this is over, we'll see what can be done with them. Probably rather discreet sales of them, with a suitable cover story provided. A few at a time. With the money put in escrow for later distribution to the other nations."
Wilson rose and moved toward the door. Halfway there, he stopped and turned. "I'd say, Mr. President, that it's going very well."
"Yes," said the President. "After a bad start, it is going well. There's still a lot to do, but we are on the way."
Someone was at Judy's desk when Wilson returned. The room was dark. There were only the flashing lights on the console and they were not being answered.
"Judy?" asked Wilson hesitantly. "Judy, is that you?" Knowing that it couldn't be, for by now she was probably landing in Ohio.
"I came back," said Judy. "I got on the plane and then got off again. I sat at the airport for hours, wondering what to do. You are a son of a bitch, Steve Wilson, and you know you are. I don't know why I got off the plane. Getting off, I don't know why I came here."
He strode across the room and stood beside her.
"You never asked me to stay. You never really asked me."
"But I did. I asked you."
"You were noble about it. That's the trouble with you. Noble. You never got down on your knees and begged me. And now my baggage is headed for Ohio and I. . ."
He reached down and lifted her from the chair, held her close.
"It's been a rough two days," he said. "It's time for the two of us to be going home."