Campbell, John W Jr - Twilight

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TWILIGHT

“Speaking of hitch-bikers,” said Jim Bendell in a rather bewildered way, “I picked up a man the other day that

certainly was a queer cuss.” He laughed, but it wasn’t a real laugh. “He told me the queerest yarn I ever heard, Most of

them tell you how they lost their good jobs and tried to find work out here in the wide spaces of the West. They don’t

seem to realize how many people we have out here. They think all this great beautiful country is un-inhabited.”

Jim Bendell’s a real estate man, and I knew how he could go on. That’s his favorite line, you know. He’s real

worried because there’s a lot of homesteading plots still open out in our state. He talks about the beautiful country,

but he never went further into the desert than the edge of town. ‘Fraid of it actually. So I sort of steered him back on

the track.

“What did he claim, Jim? Prospector who couldn’t find land to prospect?”

“That’s not, very funny, Bait No; it wasn’t only what he claimed. He didn’t even claim it, just said it. You know,

he didn’t say it was true, he just said it. That’s what gets me. I know it ain’t true, but the way he said it—Oh, I don’t

know.”

By which I knew he didn’t. Jim Bendell’s usually pretty careful about ‘his English—real proud of it. When he

slips, that means he’s disturbed. Like the time he thought the rattlesnake was a stick of wood and wanted to put it on

the fire.

Jim went on: And he had funny clothes, too. Thy looked like silver, but they were soft as silk. And at night they

glowed just a little.

I picked him up about dusk. Really picked him up. He was lying off about ten feet from the South Road. I thought,

at first, somebody had hit him, and then hadn’t stopped. Didn’t see him very clearly, you know. I picked him up, put

him in the car, and started on. I had about three hundred miles to go, but I thought I could drop him at Warren Spring

with Doc Vance. But he came to in about five minutes, and opened his eyes. He looked straight off, and he looked first

at the car, then at the Moon. “Thank God!” he says, and then looks at me. It gave me a shock. He was beautiful. No; he

was handsome.

He wasn’t either one. He was magnificent. He was about six feet two, I think, and his hair was brown, with a

touch of red-gold. It seemed like fine copper wire that’s turned brown. It was crisp and curly. His forehead was wide,

twice as wide as mine. His features were delicate, but tremendously impressive; his eyes were gray, like etched iron,

and bigger than mine—a lot.

That suit he wore—it was more like a bathing suit with pajama trousers. His arms were long and muscled

smoothly as an Indian’s. He was white, though, tanned lightly with a golden, rather than a brown, tan.

But he was magnificent. Most beautiful man I ever saw. I don’t know, damn it!

“Hello!” I said. “Have an accident?”

“No; not this time, at least.”

And his voice was magnificent, too. It wasn’t an ordinary voice. It sounded like an organ talking, only it was

human.

“But maybe my mind isn’t quite steady yet. I tried an experiment. Tell me what the date is, year and all, and let me

see,” he went on.

“Why—December 9, 1932,” I said.

And it didn’t please him. He didn’t like it a bit. But the wry grin that came over his face gave way to a chuckle.

“Over a thousand—” he says reminiscently. “Not as bad as seven million. I shouldn’t complain.”

“Seven million what?”

“Years,” he said; steadily enough. Like he meant it. “I tried an experiment once. Or I will try it. Now I’ll have to try

again. The experiment was—in 3059. I'd just finished the release experiment. Testing space then. Time—it wasn’t that, I

still believe. It was space. I felt myself caught in that field, but I couldn’t pull away. Field gamma-H 481, intensity 935 in

the Peilman range. It sucked me in, and I went out.

“I think it took a short cut through space to the position the solar system will occupy. Through a higher

dimension, effecting a speed exceeding light and throwing me into the future plane.”

He wasn’t telling me, you know. He was just thinking out loud. Then he began to realize I was there.

“I couldn’t read their instruments, seven million years of evolution changed everything. So I overshot my mark a

little coming back. I belong in 3059.”

“But tell me, what’s the latest scientific invention of this year?”

He startled me so, I answered almost before I thought.

‘Why, television, I guess. And radio and airplanes.”

“Radio—good. They will have instruments.”

“But see here—who are you?”

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Campbell, John W Jr - Twilight

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