Murray Leinster - Time Tunnel

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The affair of the time-tunnel began, so far as
Harrison was concerned, with a series of events so im-
probable as to seem lunacy, but which appear to have been
inevitable. In a cosmos designed to have human beings
live in it, though, there would have to be some sort of
safeguards against the consequences of their idiocy. The
time-tunnel may have been such a safeguard. To some
people, that seems a reasonable guess.
It was a brisk, sunshiny Parisian afternoon when the
matter really turned up. Harrison sat at a sidewalk table
outside the little cafe in the Rue Flamel. He'd never hap-
pened to notice its name. He sipped at an aperitif, thinking
hard and trying not to believe what he was thinking about.
He'd come from the Bibliotheque Nationale a good how
before. Today he'd found more of the completely incred-
ible. He didn't believe it, but he knew it was true.
His series of discoveries had reached the point where he
simply couldn't tell himself any longer that they were
coincidences. They weren't. And their implications were
of a kind to make cold chills run up and down anybody's
spine. A really sensible man would have torn up his notes,
gotten drunk to confuse his memories, and then departed
7 -
on the earliest possible plane for home. There he would
have denied to himself forever after that he had found
what Harrison had discovered in the dusty manuscript
section of the Bibliotheque Nationale.
But Harrison sipped at a drink and noted the small
cold chills running up and down his spine. He resented them
because he didn't believe in what caused them. But there
they were. They had to do with the cosmos in general.
Most men develop convictions about the cosmos and such
beliefs come in two varieties. One kind is a conviction
that the cosmos does not make sense. That it exists by
chance and changes by chance and human beings do not
matter. This view produces a fine complacency. The other
kind is a belief that the cosmos does make sense, and was
designed with the idea that people were going to live in
it, and that what they do and what happens to them is
important. This theory seems to be depressing.
Harrison had accepted the second view, but he was
beginning to be frightened because of what he'd found in
dusty, quill-pen-written pages in a library reading room.
And he didn't like to be frightened.
It was a very pleasant autumn afternoon, though. Leaves
had been falling, and they blew erratically about the pave-
ment in appropriate fall colorings, and the sky showed
through the nearly denuded branches of the trees that
lined the Rue Flamel. There was nobody on the sidewalks.
For minutes there had been no traffic going past the
small cafe. It was just cold enough so that Harrison was the
only customer at any of the outdoor tables.
Around him there were houses which had stood in their
places for centuries and thereby acquired a self-satisfied air.
From high overhead there came a rumbling, distant thunder.
A jet had made the sound, but there was no use in trying to
sight it. It had left its noise-trail far behind. It was now un-
doubtedly hidden by roofs or chimney-pots.
Then, at last, someone did come down the street. It was
an extremely improbable occurrence, not that somebody
should walk down the street, but who it happened to be. The
odds against anything that actually happens are always enor-
mous, when one considers the number of other things that
could have happened instead. But certainly the odds were
incalculably great that Pope Ybarra, who had been at Brevard
University with Harrison and had shared one course in statisti-
cal analysis with him, would not be walking down the Rue
Flamel at this particular moment, when Harrison had come
upon the preposterous and doubted his own sanity.
But there he was. He came briskly toward the cafe. Har-
rison hadn't seen him for four years. The last time had been in
Uxbridge, Pennsylvania, when Pepe was being hauled out
of the Roland River by an also-dripping policeman who was
going to arrest him within minutes, but was forced to accept
Pepe's warmly grateful handshake beforehand. Now he was
walking down the Rue Flamel on an autumn afternoon. It
was not a probable occurrence, but it was the kind of thing
that happens.
He greeted Harrison with a glad outcry.
"For the love of heaven! What are you doing here?
Where've you been? What gives? How long have you been in
Paris? Do you know any interesting girls?"
Harrison shook hands and Pepe dropped into a chair op-
posite him. He regarded Harrison with approving eyes.
"I've been here for two months," said Harrison wrily. "I
don't know any girls, and I think I'm going to try to forget
what I came for."
Pepe rapped on the table. He ordered a drink over his
shoulder. To Harrison he said warmly, "Now we have fun!
Where are you living? What are you doing? Why don't you
knotJeany girls?"
"I've been busy," said Harrison. He explained. "I've an
elderly aunt. She offered to stake me to a Ph.D. And she said
that since I lived here when I was a small boyuntil I was
twelve1 ought to try to get back my French. And I had a
crazy sort of idea that fitted into the proposal. It was some-
thing Professor Carroll said once in a lecture. Remember
him? So I came over to get back my French and dig up
the material for my thesis. My aunt is pleased. I wish I'd
never thought of it." Harrison was silent a moment. Then he
changed the subject. "What have you been doing?"
Pepe sketched, with enthusiasm, his activities since Har-
rison had last seen him. He'd been home in Mexico. For a
while he was in Tehuantepec. She was a lovely girl! Then he'd
been in Tegucigalpa. She was charming! And then he'd been
in Aguascalientes, and the name fitted! She was una rubaya,
a red-head. Mmmmmmmh! But there'd been trouble there.
His family had sent him to France until the affair blew over.
Now he was being very virtuous. Seriously, what was Harrison
doing in Paris?
"I've been digging," said Harrison, "in the manuscript
section of the Bibliotheque Nationale. Did you know, Pepe,
that a century and a half before Pasteur, there was someone
who described in detail the idea that living things too small
to be seengerms, in factcould be responsible for con-
tagious diseases?"*
Pepe accepted his drink, beaming. He nodded as he put
it to his lips. Overhead, the dull rumble of the jet-sound
died gradually away. A taxicab crossed the Rue Flamel at
the next corner. Blowing fallen leaves made faint whispering
sounds on the pavement.
"Pues?" said Pepe. He put down his glass. "What of it?"
"That's a freak," said Harrison. "But I just found in Cuvier's
notesthe naturalist, you knowthat in 1804 a man named
de Bassompierre wrote him a theory which might be of in-
terest to a savant concerned with natural history. And he out-
lined, very clearly and simply, the Mendelian laws of heredity.
But it happened to be more than half a century before Mendel
discovered them."
Pepe said, "That is not a freak?"
"No," said Harrison with some grimness. "Last week I
found in the laboratory notes of Amperethe man who dis-
covered so much about electricity, you knowthat someone
named de Bassompierre wrote him in 1805 to tell him very
respectfully that there were such things as alternating cur-
rents. He explained in words of one syllable how they could
be generated and what they could be used for."
Pepe raised his eyebrows.
"This Bassompierre," he observed, "was quite a character!
You interest me strangely. In tact . . ."
"He was more than a character," said Harrison. "He
wrote to Laplace, the astronomer, assuring him that Mars
had two moons, very small and very close to its surface. He
also said that there were three planets beyond Saturn, and
that the one next out had a period of eighty-four years and
two moons, one retrograde. He suggested that it should be
called Uranus. He added that in the year 1808 there would be
a nova in Persis, (which there was!) and he signed himself
very respectfully, de Bassompierre."
"I am getting interested," said Pepe. "There is a de
Bassompierre in . . ."
-Note: This is historical fact. The theory was recorded
with derisive gestures by John Asdruc, physician to
Louis XIV of France. The germ theory was held by
Augustine Hauptman and Christian Longius, among
others M. L.
"Someone wrote to Jean-Francois Champollion." Harrison
went on morbidly, "the Egyptologist. The Rosetta stone had
just been discovered, but nobody could make use of it yet.
The letter told him exactly how to decipher the Egyptian
inscription. Champollion paid no attention for sixteen years.
Then he tried the system suggested, but without referring to
the letter, which be may have forgotten. It worked. But it
had been described in 1806 by de Bassompierre."
"Evidently a universal genius," agreed Pepe. "But . . ."
"Lagrange, the mathematician," Harrison went on, dis-
tastefully, "had a correspondent who explained to him the
principles of statistical analysis. He died before finishing
his Mkchanique Analytique, so there's no way to know if he
paid any attention. But the description was so clear that you'd
swear Professor Carroll wrote it. But it happened to be de
Bassompierre. It was also de Bassompierre who around 1812
corresponded with the Academic des Sciences, and offered
the interesting theory that atoms might be compared to min-
iature solar systems, with negatively charged particles orbit-
ing complex nuclei of different masses. He added that all the
elements heavier than bismuth would be found to be unstable,
breaking down at different rates to other and lighter ele-
ments."
"Such statements," said Pepe with reserve, "are not easy to
believe. After all, Madame Curie . . ."
"I know!" said Harrison fretfully. "It isn't possible. But
this same de Bassompierre, who, by the way, died in 1858 at
the age of liinety-one, also wrote to Desmarest, the geologist,
and told him the facts of life about petroleum, including the
products of fractional distillation. Do you see why I wish
I'd never thought of looking up this stuff?"
Pepe sipped at his drink and put it down.
"I confess." be observed, "that I am interested in this de
Bassompierre! I knew nothing of this! But where does it
lead?"
"I'm afraid to find out," admitted Harrison. "But Talleyrand
is said to have been his close friend, and Talleyrand never
made a real mistake in guessing what would come next. Na-
poleon said he was possessed of a devil. Instead, he possessed
the friendship of de Bassompierre. I can show you in Talley-
rand's papers that he'd predicted the American civil war.
Look, Pepe! De Bassompierre knew that there'd be a Maxi-
milian. Emperor of Mexico, fifty years in what was -then the
future!"
He stopped. He felt queer. He had experienced a momentary
giddiness. It was almost unnoticeable, but it seemed as if the
street changed subtly and the branches of the trees were no
longer exactly as they had been. There was a doorway in a
house on the opposite side of the street which abruptly
looked wrong.
Pepe looked at him curiously.
"What's that?" he asked. "An Emperor Maximilian of
Mexico? What are you talking about?"
Harrison turned pale. He remembered saying the words,
"Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico." When he'd said them,
they'd seemed perfectly reasonable. They were meaningful.
But now they weren't. They were associated with somebody
named Napoleon the Third, to be sure. And of course there'd
been a Napoleon the Third, just as there'd been a Napoleon the
Fourth, and so on. But somehow it had seemed wrong. And
there had never been a Maximilian of Mexico.
"I suspect," he said in a sudden mixture of aversion and
relief, "that I've cracked up. I've been talking nonsense."
But Pope's expression had changed, also. He looked puzzled.
"I am not sure, but now it comes to me. I have a memory,
a vague one. It seems to me that there was some story, per-
haps a novel, about a Maximilian. His wife was named . . ."
"Carlotta," said Harrison.
"Pero si!" agreed Pepe, relievedly. "Certainly! We read
the same novel at some time or another! There have only
been four Emperors of Mexico and none Of them was
named..."
He stopped short. His mouth dropped open. There was
again a faint feeling of giddiness in the air. Again one could
not be sure that he felt it. The branches of the trees again
seemed changed, as if they'd grown differently from the way
they'd looked before. A door across the street looked right
again, where before it hadn't.
"Now, why the devil," demanded Pepe, "why did I say
that? Of course there was an Emperor Maximilian! He was a
fool! He spent his time compiling an official book of the
etiquette to be observed in his court, while he and all his
followers were being besieged by Juarez, who presently
had him shot!** And Carlotta went mad and lived in
Belgium until 19271 Why did I say there was no Emperor
**The writing of a book of etiquette was, histori-
cally, the principal interest of Maximilian while he was
being besieged in Queretaro, before his capture and
execution. M.L.
Maximilian? Why did I suspect that we had both merely
read the same novel? AndDios miolwhere did I get the
idea that there had been four Mexican emperors? Am I in-
sane?"
Harrison was still very pale.
"Let's find out." He rapped on the table. The waiter came.
Harrison paid and tipped him. Then he said: "Do you know if
there was ever an Emperor of Mexico?"
The waiter beamed.
"Mais ouU He was the Archduke Maximilian of Hapsburg,
placed on the throne of Mexico by Napoleon the Third. He
was shot by the Republicans at Queretaro. It is part of
history, m'sieur, which I read as an amusement."
Harrison gravely doubled the tip. He said, "Merci," and
he and Pepe rose from the table. As they went down the street
together, Pepe said ruefully:
"Now, I wonder how many waiters in Mexico could have
told us that! And it is our history! But why did I make
such a fool of myself? Why did I? Do I seem to act strangely?
Should I see a doctor? A psycho-analyst?"
Harrison said with some grimness:
"Remember Professor Carroll? I'd like to see him! He said
something that started me off on this business. Remember?
He said that the cosmos as known is merely the statistical
probability that has the value of unity? I'd like to see him
analyze the statistical probability of de Bassompierre!"
"Ah, yes! De Bassompiere! I . . ." Then Pepe stopped. After
an instant he <aid, "I also thought of Professor Carroll
today. There is a shop, a very curious one. The name is
Carroll, Dubois et Cie. The window says that they are
importers and exporters d'ans 1804. They display incredible
objects, apparently from the Napoleonic period, but abso-
lutely new and in perfect condition. They even offer reprints
of the Moniteur of 1804. But they say, 'exporters and im-
porters'!"
Then he said indignantly:
"But why did I make so insane a statement about four
emperors of Mexico? For seconds I believed tranquilly that
that was the history of my country!"
Harrison shrugged. He remained absorbed in his own prob-
lem. Presently he said with a sort of mirthless amusement,
"Would you like to hear something really insane, Pepe?
Make one impossible assumption, and the matter of de
Bassompierre and his correspondence becomes quite impos-
sible. There is only one fact to make the assumption unthink-
able."
"What is the assumption?"
"If it were possible to travel in time," said Harrison, "and
one had evidence that a man in the early 1800s knew about
Mendel's laws, and that alternating current could be useful
when at the time even D.C. was of no use to anybody
and facts about astronomy the telescopes weren't good
enough to find out, and how hieroglyphics could be deci-
phered, and perfectly valid principles of statistical analysis,
and the real structure of atoms, and radioactivity, and what
could be done with petroleum. // it were possible to travel in
time, all those bits of information could be known to a man
of Napoleon's era if he happened to be moderately well-
informed and had traveled back to then from here and now."
"But you don't believe that!" protested Pepe.
"Of course not. But it explains every fact but one."
"The one fact it does not explain," said Pepe, "should be
interesting."
"The fact is," Harrison told him, "that there was a man
named Bassompierre, and he was a friend of Talleyrand's. He
was born in 1767, he travelled in the Orient for several years,
and he returned to France to discover that an imposter had
assumed his identity and looted his estates. The imposter at-
tacked him when he was unmasked, and was killed. So de
Bassompierre resumed his station in society, corresponded
with men of scienceall this is in the official biographical
material about himand he was useful to Napoleon on one or
two occasions but was highly regarded by the Bourbons when
they returned. You see?"
Pepe frowned.
"There was a man named de Bassompierre!" said Harrison
harassedly. "He was born two hundred-odd years ago! He
died in 1858! He's authentic! There's no mystery about
him. He couldn't be a time-traveller!"
"Ah, I am relieved!" said Pepe amiably. "You see, I under.
stood that if one travelled into the past, he might by bad
fortune happen to kill his grandfather as a youth. In such a
case, he would not be born to go back in time to kill his
grandfather. But if he were not born, he could not kill his
grandfather, so he would be born to kill his grandfather.
So he would not. So he would. And so on. I have considered
that one could not travel into the past because of that little
difficulty about one's grandfather."
"But in an exceptional case," said Harrison, "a case, for
instance, in which a time-traveller did not happen to kill his
grandfather, that argument doesn't hold."
They went down the street together. Pepe made a grand
gesture.
"Again, if one could travel in time, then even without
killing one's grandfather one might change the past and
therefore the present. Even the history books would have
to change!"
"Yes," agreed Harrison wrily. "There might not be an
Emperor Maximilian, for example. There might not be a you.
Or a me. We might not ever have existed. I'd deplore that!"
"But do you mean," protested Pepe, "that because for a
few seconds it seemed to us that an historical character did not
exist" He grimaced. "Because for a few moments we were
confused, do you mean that during those few moments
history waswas other than as it is? That something else
was temporarily true?"
"No-o-o-o," admitted Harrison. "But if it had been, who'd
have noticed it? I agree that we went through a freak
occurrence, a shared delusion, you might say. But if it bad
been real, how many people would have been talking about a
thing when their memories changed and they could notice
it?"
"That is nonsense," said Pepe with decision, "and it is
not even amusing nonsense. You don't believe it any more
than I do."
"Of course not," said Harrison. But he added unhappily,
"At least I hope not. But this de Bassompierre business does
stretch the long arm of coincidence completely out of joint.
It's all in the library. I wish it weren't."
They strolled together. Pigeons flew overhead, careened
and came back, and coasted down to where two or three
energetic flappings would land them lightly. They began to
inspect a place where a tiny wind-devil had heaped fallen
leaves into a little pile. They moved suspiciously aside when
Harrison and Pepe walked by.
"No," said Pepe firmly. "It is all quite ridiculous! I shall
take you to the shop I mentioned, which reminded me of
Professor Carroll. It is foolish that anyone should pretend
to be in the business of importing and exporting commercial
articles between now and the year eighteen hundred and
four! Yet if time-traveUwere possible, there would certainly
be somebody to make a business of it! And I have a grand-
mother who adores snuffboxes. We will go to the shop. If
the snuffboxes are not too bad, I will buy her one, and you
will see if they still claim to import and export to 1804. But
I will bet the snuffboxes are marked made in Japan!"
Harrison shrugged. He'd been worried. He'd come very
close to being frightened. In fact, he had been frightened. But
anticipations of modem discoveries had been made before.
There'd been a bronze, planetary-gear computer brought up
by a scuba diver from a Greek ship wrecked in the year
100, B.C. It could compute sunrise and sunset times and
even eclipses. There'd been objects discovered near Damascus
which were at least seven centuries old, and which were
definitely and inexplicably electroplated. A craftsman pre-
sented a crystal goblet to the Emperor Nero, and then
dashed it to the ground. It dented, but did not break. He
hammered out the dent and gave it to the Emperor, who had
him executed because his discovery would ruin the glass
blowers of Rome. The goblet was possibly a plastic one.***
Yes. Anticipations of modern knowledge were not uncom-
mon. But this was unusually disturbing.
It was a relief to have told Pepe about it, though. It
was even reassuring for Pepe to have made that peculiar er-
ror about the history of his country. Of course the con-
sequences of changes in the present brought about by time-
travellers to the past would be horrifying to think about, if
time-travel were possible. But Harrison now saw that it was
wholly foolish. The evidence that had disturbed him wasn't
explained away. But since he'd told about it he was able
to be skeptical. Which was consoling.
Very, very thin and straight, a white pencil-line of vapor
moved across the sky. It was the contrail of a )et, flying so
high that even its roaring did not reach the ground. It was
probably a member of that precautionary patrol which
most of the larger cities of the earth maintained overhead
night and day. There was no particular diplomatic crisis in
the world at the moment-there were only two small brush-
fire wars smouldering in the Far East and one United Nations
force sitting on a trouble-spot nearer, with the usual turbu-
lences in Africa and South America. A jet patrol above
Paris did not mean that an unwarned atomic attack was more
** "These items are reported in reputable histories,
except the computer, which exists in an Athens museum
and which I heard about from someone working on it
from photographs, in the Princeton Institute for Ad-
vanced Studies. M.L.
likely than usual. But there was a jet patrol. There were also
atomic submarines under the Arctic ice-pack, ready to send
annihilation soaring toward predetermined targets in case
of need, and there were NATO ships at sea prepared to
launch other missiles, and there were cavernous missile bases
in divers countries, ready to send intercontinental rockets
beyond the atmosphere should the occasion require it.
But Harrison was used to hair-trigger preparations for
mutual suicide by the more modern countries of the world.
Such things didn't frighten him. They weren't new. Yet the
idea that history might be changed, so that a totally different
now might come about without warning, and that in that sub-
stituted present he might not even happen to have been born
. . . That was something to send cold tingles down his spine!
He was consciously glad that he'd talked it over with Pepe.
It was absurd! He was glad that he could see it as absurd!
A second contrail, miles high, made another white streak
across the sky. Harrison didn't notice.
"The shop I mentioned," said Pepe, "is just around the next
corner. I did not go into it, because I saw a woman inside
and she was stout and formidable and looked like a
shopkeeper. Truly practical shopkeepers should realize that
even reproductions of antiques should be sold by per-
sonable girls. But we will go there. We will inquire if they do
import from and export to another century. It will be in-
teresting. They will think us insane."
They turned the corner, and there was the shop. It was not
a large one, and the sign, "Carroll, Dubois et Cie" was not
conspicuous. The smaller lettering, saying that the firm
were importers and exporters to the year 1804, looked
strictly matter-of-fact. The shop seemed the most common-
place of all possible places of business.
Harrison looked in the window. There were flint-lock
pistols of various sizes. No two were alike, except a pair of
duelling-pistols of incredibly fine workmanship. There were
sporting guns, flint-locks. There was a Jaeger, also a flint-
lock. But more than that, there was a spread-open copy of the
Moniteur for April 7th, 1804, announcing the suicide of
someone named Pichegru in his prison cell. He bad strangled
himself with a silk handkerchief. It was an amazingly per-
fect replica of the official Napoleonic newspaper. But the
paper itself was perfectly new and fresh. It simply could
not be more than weeks old. At that, it would be a consid-
erable publishing enterprise to find the type and the paper and
make a convincing replica of any newspaper nearly two
hundred years old. And there were Moniteurs of other
dates in the window. Harrison suddenly realized that there
was seemingly a file for a month or more. And that was un-
reasonable!
He found himself reluctantly slipping back into the con-
dition ot mental stress and self-doubt that confiding in Pepe
had seemed to end. There had been a man named de Bas-
sompierre back in the days of Napoleon Bonaparte. He had
given important people important, exact, and detailed in-
formation about various things that nobody knew until fifty
and a hundred and a hundred and fifty years later. So Har-
rison felt acutely uncomfortable.
When Pepe opened the shop door and a bell tinkled he
followed dismally inside. Then a girl, a very pretty girl,
came out of the back of the shop and said politely:
"Messieurs?"
And Harrison's eyes popped wide. Against all reason and
all likelihood, he knew this sirl. Against all common sense,
she was somebody he recognized immediately. The fact was,
again, one of those that one evaluates according to whether
he believes the cosmos makes sense, or that it does not.
There were so many other things that could have happened
instead of this, that it was almost unbelievable that at this
exact moment he should meet and know this girl.
He said, startled:
"Valeric!"
She stared. She was astounded. Then she laughed in pure
pleasure and held out both hands to him.
And all this was improbable in the extreme, but it was the
sort of thing that does happen. The combination ot im-
probability with commonplaceness seems to have been
characteristic ot the whole affair ot the time-tunnels. It ap-
pears that inevitability was a part of the pattern, too.
When Harrison woke next morning, before he
opened his eyes he was aware ol' violently conflicting emo-
tional states. On the one hand, be wished bitterly that he
had never essayed to write a doctoral thesis that called for
research in the Bibliotheque Nationale. On the other, he
felt a pleasant glow in recalling that through that research
he'd sat down to brood where Pepe would find him, and
because of the research Pepe had carried him to the shop of
CarroU, Dubois et Cie, where he'd seen Valerie, and that she
remembered him with pleasure approaching affection.
Neither of the feelings could be justified. The only possible
explanation of his discoveries required either the acceptance
of an idea that was plainly insane, or that he abandon his
belief that the cosmos made sense. In the matter of Valerie
. . . But there is never a rational reason for a man to rejoice
that a certain pretty girl exists and that he has found her.
The experience, however, is universal.
When he was clothed, it was still hard to be sure that
he was in his right mind. Still, when he had his morning
coffee he felt a definite exhilaration because Valerie had
remembered him. They had lived in the same building
when they were children. They both knew people lone
gone to a better world. Valerie remembered the smaU
black dog he'd owned more than a dozen years before,
and he remembered a kitten she'd forgotten, they recalled
19
fStes, they recalled a Twelfth Night celebration of which
Valerie became queen at the age of eleven by virtue of hav-
ing the slice of cake with the bean in it, and they re-
membered the eccentricities of the concierge whom they had
occasionally outwitted. In general, they'd reminisced with a
fine enthusiasm. But it was not likely they'd have felt such
really great pleasure if, say, Harrison had married somebody
else in the years between or if Valerie had been less satis-
factory to look at.
Now, today, Harrison finished his morning coffee and
was pleased to remember that they would meet presently,
secretly, because Valerie's aunt, Madame Carroll, did not ap-
prove of her knowing young men. The prospect made Harrison
feel fully capable of facing a new day.
Then Pope arrived, fuming.
"The French," he said bitterly, "they are a noble race! I've
been asking about this Carroll, Dubois et Cie, and it's a
monstrous thing! You saw me buy a snuffbox yesterday. I
intended to send it to my grandmother. It would be just the
thing for her handbag, to hold her hay-fever pills. But I
examined it. And it is an outrage!"
Harrison biinked at him.
"What's the matter with it?"
"It is a work of art!" said Pepe indignantly. "It was made
by an artist! A craftsman! If it were an antique, it would be
priceless! But it was one of a drawer-full of similar snuff-
boxes, some inferior, to be sure, but others equally good. And
I bought it for peanuts!"
Harrison biinked again. "I don't quite see . . ."
"Somebody made it!" said Pepe. "By hand! He is capable
of magnificent work! This is magnificent! But he is turning
out things to be sold by Carroll, Dubois et Cie as curios!
Which is a crime! He should be found and told the facts of
life! Your Valerie says that her uncle, M. Dubois, is off on a
trip to secure more stock for the shop. She does not know
where he went. You may remember that I was enthusiastic
and asked where such things were manufactured. She does
not know that, either! Don't you see what has happened?"
Harrison shook his head. He was unreasonably pleased at
having rediscovered Valerie. It was something so unlikely
that he wouldn't have dreamed of it occurring.
"I've no idea what you're talking about," he admitted.
摘要：

Theaffairofthetime-tunnelbegan,sofarasHarrisonwasconcerned,withaseriesofeventssoim-probableastoseemlunacy,butwhichappeartohavebeeninevitable.Inacosmosdesignedtohavehumanbeingsliveinit,though,therewouldhavetobesomesortofsafeguardsagainsttheconsequencesoftheiridiocy.Thetime-tunnelmayhavebeensuchasafeg...

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