Murray Leinster - Sidewise in Time

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Sidewise in Time

FOREWORD

LOOKING BACK, IT seems strange that no one but Professor Minott figured the thing out in advance.

The indications were more than plain, In early December of 1934 Professor Michaelson announced his

finding that the speed of light was not an absolute could not be considered invariable. That, of

course, was one of the first indications of what was to happen.

A second indication came on February 15th, when at 12:40 p.m., Greenwich mean time, the

sun suddenly shone blue-white and the enormously increased rate of radiation raised the

temperature of the earth's surface by twenty-two degrees Fahrenheit in five minutes. At the end of

the five minutes, the sun went back to its normal rate of radiation without any other symptom of

disturbance.

A great many bids for scientific fame followed, of course, but no plausible explanation of

the phenomenon accounted for a total lack of after disturbances in the sun's photosphere.

For a third clear forerunner of the events of June, on March 10th the male giraffe in the

Bronx Zoological Park, in New York, ceased to eat. In the nine days following, it changed its

form, absorbing all its extremities, even its neck and head, into an extraordinary, eggshaped mass

of still-living flesh and bone which on the tenth day began to divide spontaneously and on the

twelfth was two slightly pulsating fleshy masses.

A day later still, bumps appeared on the two masses. They grew, took form and design, and

twenty days after the beginning of the phenomenon were legs, necks, and heads. Then two giraffes,

both male, moved about the giraffe enclosure. Each was slightly less than half the weight of the

original animal. They were identically marked. And they ate and moved and in every way seemed

normal though immature animals.

An exactly similar occurrence was reported from the Argentine Republic, in which a steer

from the pampas was going through the same extraordinary method of reproduction under the critical

eyes of Argentine scientists.

Nowadays it seems incredible that the scientists of 1935 should not have understood the

meaning of these oddities. We now know something of the type of strain which produced them, though

they no longer occur. But between January and June of 1935 the news service's of the nation were

flooded with items of similar import.

For two days the Ohio River flowed upstream. For six hours the trees in Euclid Park, in

Cleveland, lashed their branches madly as if in a terrific storm, though not a breath of wind was

stirring. And in New Orleans, near the last of May, fishes swam up out of the Mississippi River

through the air, proceeded to "drown" in the air which inexplicably upheld them, and then turned

belly up and floated placidly at an imaginary water level some fifteen feet above the pavements of

the city.

But it seems clear that Professor Minott was the only man In the world who even guessed

the - meaning of these_Lto us-clear-cut indications of the later events. Professor Minott was

instructor in mathematics on the faculty of Robinson College in Fredericksburg, Va. We know that

he anticipated very nearly every one of the things which later startled and frightened the world,

and not only our world. But he kept his mouth shut.

Robinson College was small. It had even been termed a "jerkwater". college without

offending anybody but the faculty and certain sensitive alumni. For a mere professor of

mathematics to make public the theory Minott had formed would not even be news. It would be taken

as stark insanity. Moreover, those who believed it would be scared. So he kept his mouth shut.

Professor Minott possessed courage, bitterness, and a certain cold-blooded daring, but

neither wealth nor influence. He had more than a little knowledge of mathematical physics and his

calculations show extraordinary knowledge of the laws of probability, but he had very little

patience with problems in ethics. And he was possessed by a particularly fierce passion for Maida

Hayns, daughter of the professor of Romance languages, and had practically no chance to win even

her attention over the competition of most of the student body. So much of explanation is

necessary, because no one but just such a person as Professor Minott would have forecast what was

to happen and then prepare for it in the fashion in which he did.

We know from his notes that he considered the probability of disaster as a shade better

than four to one. It is a very great pity that we do not have his calculations. There is much that

our scientists do not understand even yet. The notes Professor Minott left behind have been

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invaluable, but there are obvious gaps in them. He must have taken most of his notes-and those the

most valuable into that unguessed at place where he conceivably now lives and very probably works.

He would be amused, no doubt, at the diligence with which his most unconsidered scribble

is now examined and inspected and discussed by the greatest minds of our time and space. And

perhaps it is quite probable he may have invented a word for the scope of the catastrophe we

escaped. We have none as yet.

There is no word to describe a disaster in which not only the earth but our whole solar

system might have been destroyed; not only our solar system but our galaxy; not only our galaxy

but every other island universe in all of the space we know; more than that, the destruction of

all space as we know it; and even beyond that the destruction of time, meaning not only the

obliteration of present and future but even the annihilation of the past so that it would never

have been. And then, besides, those other strange states of existence we learned of, those other

universes, those other pasts and futures all to be shattered into'nothingness. There is no word

for such a catastrophe.

It would be interesting to know what Professor Minott termed it to himself, as he coolly

prepared to take advantage of the one chance in four of survival, if that should be the one to

eventuate. But it is easier to wonder how he felt on the evening before the fifth of June, in

1935. We do not know. We cannot know. All we can be certain of is how we felt and what happened.

It was half past seven a.m. of June 5, 1935. The city of Joplin, Missouri, awaked from, a

comfortable, summer-night sleep. Dew glistened upon grass blades and leaves and the filmy webs of

morning spiders glittered like diamond dust in the early sunshine. In the most easternly suburb a

high-school boy, yawning, came somnolently out of his house to mow the lawn before schooltime. A

rather rickety family car roared, a block away. It backfired, stopped, roared again, anti

throttled down to a steady, waiting hum. Then, voices of children sounded among the houses. A

colored washerwoman appeared, striding beneath the trees which lined this strictly residential

street.

From an upper window a radio blatted: "one, two, three, four! Higher, now three, four! Put

your weight into it! two, three, four!" The radio suddenly squawked and began to emit an

insistent, mechanical shriek which changed again to a squawk and then a terrific sound as of all

the static of ten thousand thunderstorms on the air at once. Then it was silent.

The high-school boy leaned mournfully on the pushbar of the lawn mower. At the instant the

static ended, the boy sat down suddenly on the dew-wet grass. The colored woman reeled and grabbed

frantically at the nearest tree trunk. The basket of wash toppled and spilled in a snowstorm of

starched, varicolored clothing. Howls of terror from children. Sharp shrieks from women.

"Earthquake! Earthquake!" Figures appeared running, pouring out of houses. Someone fled out to a

sleeping porch, slid down a supporting column, and tripped over a rosebush in his pajamas. In

seconds, it seemed, the entire population of the street was out of doors. And then

there was a queer, blank silence. There was no earthquake. No house had fallen. No chimney had

cracked. Not so much as a dish or windowpane had made a sound in smashing. The sensation every

human being had felt was not an actual shaking of the ground. There had been moyement, yes, and of

the earth, but no such movement as any human being had ever dreamed of before. These people were

to learn of that movement much lafer. Now they stared blankly at each other.

And in the sudden, dead silence broken only by the hum of an idling car and the wail of a

frightened baby, a new sound became audible. It was the tramp of marching feet. With it came a

curious clanking and clattering noise. And then a marked command, which was definitely not in the

English language.

Down the street of a suburb of Joplin, Missouri, on June 5, in the Year of Our Lord 1935,

came a file of spear-armed, shield-bearing soldiers in the short, skirtlike togas of ancient Rome.

They wore helmets upon their heads. They peered about as if they were as blankly amazed as the

citizens of Joplin who regarded them. A long column of marching men came into view, every man with

shield and spear and the indefinable air of being used to just such weapons.

They halted at another barked order. A wizened little man with a short sword snapped a

question at the staring Americans. The high-school boy jumped. The wizened man roared his question

again. The high-school boy stammered, and painfully formed syllables with his lips. The wizened

man grunted in satisfaction. He talked, articulating clearly if impatiently. And the highschool

boy turned dazedly to the other Americans.

"He wants to know the name of this town," he said, unbelieving his own ears. "He's talking

Latin, like I learn in school. He says this town isn't on the road maps, and he doesn't know where

he is. But all the same he takes possession of it in the name of the Emperor Valerius Fabricius,

emperor of Rome and the far corners of the earth." And then the school-boy stuttered, "He-he says

these are the first six cohorts of the Forty second Legion, on garrison duty in Messalia. "That-

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that's supposed to be two days march up that way." He pointed in the direction of St. Louis.

The idling motor car roared suddenly into life. Its gears whined and it came rolling out

into the street. Its horn honked peremptorily for passage through the shield-clad soldiers. They

gaped at it. It honked again and moved toward them. A roared order, and they flung themselves upon

it, spears thrusting, short swords stabbing. Up to this instant there was not one single

inhabitant of Joplin who did not believe the spear-armed soldiers were motion picture actors, or

masqueraders, or something else equally insane but credible. But there was nothing make-believe

about their attack on the car. They assaulted it as if it were a strange and probably deadly

beast. They flung themselves into battle with it in a grotesquely reckless valor.

And there was nothing at all make-believe in the thoroughness and completeness with which

they speared Mr. Horace B. Davis, who had only intended to drive down to the cotton-brokerage

office of which he was chief clerk. They thought he was driving this strange beast to slaughter

them, and they slaughtered him instead. The high-school boy saw them do it, growing whiter and

whiter as he watched. When a swordsman approached the wizened man and displayed the severed head

of Mr. Davis, with the spectacles dangling grotesquely from-one ear, the high-school boy fainted

dead away.

It was sunrise of June 5, 1935. Cyrus Harding gulped down his breakfast in the pale-gray dawn. He

had felt very dizzy and sick for just a moment, some little while since, but he was himself again

now. The smell of frying filled the kitchen. His wife cooked. Cyrus Harding ate.

He made noises as he emptied his plate. His hands were. gnarled and work-worn, but his

expression was of complacent satisfaction. He looked at a calendar hung on the wall, a Christmas

sentiment from the Bryan Feed & Fertilizer Co., in Bryan, Ohio.

"Sheriff's goin' to sell out Amos today," he said comfortably. "I figger I'll get that

north forty cheap."

His wife said tiredly, "He's been offerin' to sell it to you for a year."

"Yep," agreed Cyrus Harding more complacently still. "Comin' down on the price, too. But

nobody'll bid against me at the sale. They know I want it bad, and I ain't a good neighbor to have

when somebuddy takes somethin' from under my nose. Folks know it. I'll git it a lot cheaper'n Amos

offered it to me for. He waited to sell it to meet his interest and hold on another year. I'll git

it for half that."

He stood up and wiped his mouth. He strode to the door.

"That hired man shoulda got a good start with his harrowin'," he said expansively. "I'll

take a look and go over to the sale."

He went to the kitchen door and opened it. Then his mouth dropped open. The view from this

doorway was normally that of a not especially neat barnyard, with beyond it farmland flat as a

floor and cultivated to the very fence rails, with a promising crop of corn as a border against

the horizon. Now the view was quite otherwise. All was normal as far as the barn. But beyond the

barn was delirium.

Huge, spreading tree ferns soared upward a hundred feet. Lacy, foliated branches formed a

roof of incredible density above sheer jungle such as no man on earth had ever seen before. The

jungles of the Amazon basin were parkilke by comparison with its thickness. It was a riotous

tangle of living vegetationin which growth was battle, and battle was life, and life was deadly,

merciless conflict.

No man could have forced his way ten feet through such a wilderness. From it came a fetid

exhalation which was part decay and part lush, rank, growing things, and part the overpowering

perfumes of glaringly vivid flowers. It was jungle such as paleobotanists have described as

existing in the Carboniferous period; as the source of our coal beds.

"It-it ain't so!" said Cyrus Harding weakly. "It ain't so!"

His wife did not reply. She had not seen. Wearily, she began to clean up after her lord

and master's meal.

He went down the kitchen steps, staring and shaken. He moved toward this impossible

apparition which covered his crops. It did not disappear as he neared it. He went within twenty

feet of it and stopped, still staring, still unbelieving, beginning to entertain the monstrous

supposition that he had gone insane.

Then, something moved in the jungle. A long, snaky neck, feet thick at its base and

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Murray Leinster - Sidewise in Time

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