The Third Time Travel Page 19

  Merena frowned.

  “I remember,” she said, “a legend told to me about an orange god when I was a child in the compounds. It is a very old legend.” She turned away, walking to a pile of brush a few yards distant.

  Returning with the brush, Merena placed it on the ground.

  “Now,” she said. “Touch the orange god to this.”

  Kogar obeyed. Flames crackled as a small fire grew. The two stood back, awed.

  “It brings great warmth,” Kogar said, pleased.

  Merena nodded.

  “Over it we can warm the flesh of our kill,” she said. “We must never let this orange god die.”

  Kogar turned the glittering object over in his hand. It stopped spurting orange. But there was still the fire at their feet. There was something cut into the side of the glittering object. And looking at it, Kogar failed to understand what the strange symbols meant.

  “To Schmidt,” they read, “From the Leader. To mark loyalty and devotion in our Cause. And to bind our future, greater Civilization.”

  Kogar shook his head bewilderedly. Then turned to Merena. The warmth from the orange god at their feet was incredibly pleasant.

  Kogar said, “You are right. We must never let this die.”

  1 Science has many instances on record of human beings, who, when placed in a savage environment, developed the faculties of the beast to a high degree. The ability to stalk a quarry, to move noiselessly, and to remain hidden from the eyes of an intended victim, is thought by some scientists to be an ingrained heredity, handed down to man by his ancestral past, when he was in the process of evolving from the actual beast, to the true man. But other scientists deny this, and insist that-it is environment alone that makes a man develop animalistic abilities. In this story we have an interesting commentary on this scientific conception.

  Here, the author’s characters, placed by a terrible, civilization-wrecking war in a very primitive environment, forced to use mind, muscle, and stealthy cunning to procure food and to satisfy the most powerful of all urges, hunger, have slipped back in a few years to an animalistic plane that is actually not any different from that of the dawn man himself. Kogar and Merena are the products of our own civilization—yet, after the greatest of all wars, they become savages on a swift swoop back through time. Are we really as civilized as we think we are? And are we really as savage as we ever were in the past? Are men like Hitler really throwbacks?

  DINOSAUR GOES HOLLYWOOD, by Emil Petaja

  Originally published in Amazing Stories, November 1942.

  Everything happens to me! First some slap-happy character gets me so jumpy I can’t even go out on the piazza and look at the stars with Susie May any more, without shuddering. It’s about that gargantuan space-ship that is going to smash up the whole world next April. So he said.

  Then it happened again. Susie May dragged me over to Hollywood to a Colossus Production premiere of Never Never, at the Cathay Square Theatre. We sat on crowded benches outside for a dime, watching the celebrities parade in. Susie May loved it.

  Afterward she said for me to wait for her, while she ran over to get Percy Parrish’s autograph. I told her I’d be in the Xotik bar-room, having a drink.

  I sat at a corner table, sipping my sarsaparilla, and minding my own business—when all at once somebody slapped me hard on the back, making me give a stout gentleman at the next table a free shower bath.

  “Hyah, chum!” this brawny individual said, grinning.

  “I don’t know you,” I said coldly, looking him up and down through my heavy bifocals as if I had trouble even seeing him.

  This individual was six-foot-four, at least. He had a beef-and-gravy appearance. Ex-football tackle, was my first impression.

  He wasn’t put out, as I had hoped.

  “I’m Jock Wemple!” he grinned jovially, extending an oversize hand. “Shake!”

  I shook, then removed what was left of my hand, and massaged it tenderly, saying “Damn!” under my breath.

  “Want I should tell you a story?” the individual named Jock Wemple suggested. He ordered three beers—to save the waiter trips.

  “That premiere reminds me of one. About another premiere here at Cathay Square—some years ago. A scientific picture called Back To The Dawn. Remember?”

  “No!” I said decisively. “And I don’t care to—”

  “Come on, chum! It’ll pin your ears back!”

  “Et tu, Brute,” I interposed sadly.

  “Say, I know I ain’t no Tyrone Power,” he grinned crookedly. “But you don’t need to call me no brute! Who are you, anyhow?”

  “Lemuel Mason is my name,” I told him. “I’m a bookkeeper by profession. Consolidated Cement.” I restrained a smile so as not to encourage him.

  He nodded amiably. He seemed to take my introduction as a sign of approval, for he immediately swung into his story—

  * * * *

  “Like I already told you, I’m Jock Wemple. I used to be bodyguard and handy man for the big-shot scientist Stanton Greylock. Of course that was after I’d spent the best nine years of my life on a college football team. Learning pursuing—as they say…”

  “Stanton Greylock was a small size guy with a droopy straw moustache. He always looked kind of sad, like as if he just got a letter edged in black. Maybe it was his cloudy gray eyes. I don’t know what he had to be sad about, though. He wasn’t married.

  “Anyhow Greylock was one of the smartest guys in this country, or any place. Why, he won the Nobel prize twice running, with one hand tied behind his back!

  “Me, I don’t know anything about science. I thought it meant ‘No Smoking’ until I took this job with Greylock.”

  I cleared my throat importantly:

  “Until he disappeared so strangely four years ago, Stanton Greylock was considered the world’s foremost authority of certain phases of physics and related sciences,” I put in, from my store of library magazine knowledge. “He was also keenly interested in paleontology.”

  “Is that a fact?” Wemple blinked, somewhat put out. “Well, to get back to my story—

  “That morning Greylock and me drove out to the La Brea Pits. Our station wagon was loaded to the roof with all kinds of scientific junk, including what looked like an old-time radio set, mounted on wheels.

  “‘What gives with all this junk, Doc?’ I asks.

  “‘I am going to try an experiment in Time,’ he told me solemnly. ‘Scientists have frequently dreamed of traveling backward or forward in Time. Personally, my research convinces me that it can be done. But the risks involved are so great that one would be foolhardy to attempt it.

  “‘I have another plan—a much less dangerous plan. Simpler, and yet it presents an infinite variety of fascinating possibilities…’

  “‘What I propose to do,’ Doc says, his face kind of shining, ‘is to employ what I call a Time-Net to snare—from out of the past—something that will be of value to science. Preferably a living creature.’

  “‘Such as?’ I asks.

  “‘Mmmm,’ Doc answered. I didn’t get it. But if Doc wanted to snare around for something out of back-time it was okay with me.

  “I turned the station wagon off Wilshire Boulevard, and eased gently down a bump that led us into the La Brea Park. Where the big stone lizards are.

  “‘Ah, here we are, Jock,’ Doc says, rubbing his hands together anxiously. ‘Park over by those bushes. Then help me unload and prepare the Time-Net.’

  “It was a lulu of a gold-spangled morning. And it was bright and early. Traffic on Wilshire wasn’t heavy yet.

  “I carted out all that heavy apparatus, and set it out just the way Doc directed me to. He picked a nice clear spot on the other side of a low footbridge, near one of those scummy dank-looking tar holes.

  “I lugged for a while, and got pretty fagged.

  “‘Say, Doc,’ I says. ‘Why don’t we pick some place what’s easier to get to. Where there ain’t no marshes. I know a swell stre
tch down by the beach—’

  “‘You don’t understand, Jock,’ he says, waggling his head. ‘I don’t imagine that you even know what La Brea is famous for?’

  “He eyed me hopefully, while he fiddled with gadgets on the machine that looked something like a radio.

  “I blushed, and looked away. Over at one of those stone lizards.

  “‘I’ll take a moment to explain,’ Doc said kindly. ‘La Brea Pits is famous as being the site of a remarkable discovery of dinosaur fossils from the Mesozoic Age. You really ought to avail yourself of the collection of fossils at the Exposition Museum, which were taken from La Brea.

  “‘You see, Jock—a long, long time ago there were great pits of tar right here. And many of these great lumbering lizard creatures became mired in this tar. They died in the tar, and it preserved their bones remarkably well through the ages, in fossil form.

  “‘Paleozoologists have been able to reconstruct these fossils into replicas of these Mesozoic dinosaurs. We know just about exactly what they looked like…

  “‘What is most important to us, Jock, is that we know positively that dinosaurs were evident at this exact spot, in the Mesozoic Age. That’s why I chose this place for my first experiment…’”

  “You have a remarkable memory, Mr. Wendt,” I observed, astonished at his use of words.

  “That’s nothing,” Wendt said sheepishly, wiping a moustache of beer foam off his upper lip. “After what happened later I made it a point to find out about them.”

  “Now,” I said, sliding toward the door. “If you don’t mind I’ll just—”

  “Siddown!” Wendt growled. His vexed look vanished right away, and he went on—“Doc Greylock told me exactly how to rig up his Time-Net, while for the next half hour he kept tinkering with the knobs and wheels on his gadget.

  “Finally he announced that he was all ready to start, and told me to get outside the circle which his Time-Net enclosed.

  “Then he lugged out a special metal box from the station wagon—he wouldn’t let me lay a finger on it—and unlocked it. Very carefully he unwrapped a round white thing that looked like a big egg.

  “‘Stand back!’ he yelled to me. ‘Away from the Net zone!’ And he tossed this egg into the middle of the circle.

  “It burst. Clouds of vapor shot out on all sides of it. Pretty soon the circle was covered with a queer yellow fog, thick as pea soup.

  “‘Now what?’ I asks, looking at the yellow fog warily.

  “‘There’s nothing we can do but wait,’ Doc says. ‘My Time-Net is all set. If my calculations are correct we should snare something very soon. That circle of space enclosed by my Net has been transferred back to the Mesozoic Age!’

  * * * *

  “We waited. And waited.

  “Nothing happened. Doc sent me out for lunch, and to bring him back a ham-and from a delicatessen. And then we waited some more.

  “Doc had arranged to have cops guard all the entrances to the little park, so that no curious bystanders would get into anything.

  “Toward evening I commenced to get restless. I had a torrid date with a dame called Ethel. One of those ravaging blondes. What that babe can do with a sweater—boy!

  “We were planning on going to the big Back To The Dawn premiere, using passes Doc gave me. The studio sent them to him, on account he was what you call a—uh—I dunno. A scientific stooge on the picture. They’d ask him if such-and-such was authentic, and when he said no, they’d go right ahead and put it in anyhow.

  “It was sure a break for me. I was borrowing Doc’s low-slung Dusenberg. Make a big splash with Ethel.

  “So about five o’clock, I reminded the Doc.

  “He heaved a couple sighs. ‘You’re right, Jock,’ he says sadly. ‘We may as well go home. The yellow fog is almost gone, and nothing’s appeared yet. I must have made a mistake somewhere. I’ll go over to my laboratory and check over my computations.’

  “He asked the cops to stand guard for a couple hours more just in case. Then we packed up the Time-Net, and scrammed.

  “Back home, I slipped into my tux, looking pretty zoot-suit if I do say so. Then I drove over and picked up Ethel.

  “She had poured herself into one of those Dorothy LaMarr slinkers, and made me wish I had on dark glasses. Did she glitter!

  “We stopped for dinner at the Brown Derby, me blowing half a week’s pay to make a good impression. Then I lit a Corona-Corona, and sent the hack purring down Wilshire Boulevard toward the Cathay Square Theatre. I was all set for a large evening…

  “I slid Ethel a shy-violet look, and then all of a sudden saw her pretty pan change into a mask of surprised horror.

  “‘What’s the beef?’ I inquired.

  “‘Look!’ she screamed, pointing out the side window. ‘A monster!’

  * * * *

  “I looked.

  “She wasn’t kidding! We were right near the La Brea Pits again, and, shambling out of the Doc’s Time-Net circle on mammoth earth-shaking pins, flopping a gigantic tail behind him, was a dinosaur!

  “I knew right away that was what he was because he looked a lot like one of them stone lizards in the park, only ten times bigger. Also he looked like a model of a dinosaur what was worked by a man inside it—that I saw when I was out at a Colossus Picture’s set, when they were shooting Back To The Dawn.

  “Ethel shrieked again, blotting the sight away with her red-nailed fingers.

  “I braked the car at the curb, and sat rubbering at the dino. What a sight he was! Must have been fifty feet high, and bigger than six elephants rolled into one.

  “He made a kind of slobbering noise with his mouth, and weaved his long serpentine neck slowly from side to side. He looked like he was plenty surprised, too, to find himself in the middle of Hollywood—instead of among a lot of funny looking fern trees back in the Mesozoic Age.

  “He was brilliantly colored—sort, of orange and vivid green shades—and from him there came an ugly swamp odor…

  “He looked around with his silly little eyes, and that simpery smile on his homely snake’s puss. He didn’t seem much bothered by the gaping crowd that stopped their cars to stand around him and look—but nobody got very close.

  “There was a couple minor smash-ups, and three or four frails passed out cold, but nothing very serious happened.

  “At last he headed out, seeming to know just where he wanted to go. He lumbered thunderously out into the middle of Wilshire Boulevard, which was blocked off for the big premiere. He paid no attention to the frantic drivers, just shuffled nonchalantly toward the Cathay Square Theatre, his long snaky neck still weaving slowly from side to side.

  “It was almost like daylight, on account of all the searchlights. They stabbed up into the dark sky. Hollywood’s way of telling everybody what’s coming off.

  “Ethel shuddered, putting her taffy hair up close to me. I was making the most of the situation when a cop poked his head in the window and barked,

  “‘Say, you’re Doctor Greylock’s handy man, aren’t you?’

  “‘I’m his assistant,’ I corrected him.

  “‘This is his car, ain’t it?’ he snapped. ‘Where is the Doc? He told three of my boys to stand guard over the La Brea Pits entrances, but he didn’t let on this was going to happen! That monster’s on the loose! You’d better get hold of Greylock right away!’

  “‘Sure,’ I says, letting loose of Ethel. ‘Right now!’

  * * * *

  “I found Doc Greylock puttering away in his lab.

  “‘I think I know what was wrong now,’ he said almost happily, nodding to me as I stepped in. ‘My calculations were inaccurate by only a few hours. If we hurry right over to La Brea—’

  “‘Doc!’ I yells. ‘You found out too late! It’s come already!’

  “‘What—’ he started to say.

  “‘The dinosaur! One of those giant lizards! He’s lumbering along up Wilshire toward the premiere! Holy sugar-bags—if we don’t get up the
re and do something, I don’t know what’ll break loose in that mob up there!’

  He jumped back a little, looking at me kind of funny, then started frantically building one of his Time-Bombs.

  “‘Jock, we must hurry!’ he rasps, his hands flying around the table, mixing chemicals. ‘Not a minute to lose! I’ll never forgive myself if—’

  “‘Take it easy, Doc,’ I warns him. ‘You’ll blow a fuse if you don’t slow down. I’ll get all the junk loaded in the station wagon, and send Ethel home in a cab.’

  “I went out, and done it. I was plenty excited, myself, but I knew somebody better keep on the beam, else we’d never even get over there.

  “Ethel was glad to go home. She said her mother would kick her out in the street if she went cavorting around with a mess of zoic monsters. Hollywood woof-woofs was bad enough.

  “It wasn’t long until we were spinning burn-rubber down side streets. I wanted to make time. We finally got within a couple blocks of the theatre. There the crowds stopped us.

  “I used a little Hollywood lip-magic about being chauffeur to a movie mogul who had to get through. That got us a ways in, but then the crowd wouldn’t budge.

  “The crowd was gabbing hilariously. I heard one slick haired bozo shout to his red-head gal, ‘This here Brindell van Hastings sure does things up right! Imagine a mechanical monster what’s that big! I wouldn’t have believed it had I not seen it!’

  “‘Ain’t it the truth, Joe,’ the redhead wagged, gleefully. ‘You wouldn’t know it from a real whatdumacallus, wouldja?’

  “Doc groaned.

  “‘Get them, Doc!’ I yelled in exasperation. ‘They all think it’s part of the show! They think it’s a studio prop, built for use in the movie, and lumbering around as an advertising stunt!’

  “Still groaning, Doc stepped out of the car, pulling me with him.

  “‘We’ve got to get further in, through this crowd!’ he yells. ‘But how?’

  “‘Follow me!’ I tells him. I wasn’t a football tackle nine years just for fun.

  “It wasn’t long before we were in the dress circle.

  “We gave the dinosaur a close-up look.

  “‘A brontosaurus!’ Doc yells delightedly.