The Legion of Time Read online

  “With the substitution of waves of probability for concrete particles, the world lines of objects are no longer the fixed and simple paths they once were. Geodesies have an infinite proliferation of possible branches, at the whim of subatomic indeterminism.

  “Still, of course, in large masses, the statistical results of the new physics are not much different from those given by the classical laws. But there is a fundamental difference. The apparent reality of the universe is the same— but it rests upon a quicksand of possible change.

  “Certainty is abolished. Let a man stand on a concrete floor. It is no longer certain that he will not fall through it. For he is sustained only by the continual reaction of atomic forces, and they are governed by probability alone.

  “It is merely a very excellent statistical probability that keeps the man from radiating heat until his body is frozen solid, or absorbing it until he bursts into flame, or flying upward into space in defiance of Newtonian gravitation, or dissolving into a cloud of molecular particles.

  “Mere probability is all we have left. And my first actual invention was a geodesic tracer, designed for probability analysis. It was a semi-mathematical instrument, essentially a refinement of the old harmonic analyzer. Tracing the possible world lines of material particles through time, it opened a window to futurity.”

  The hoarse whisper paused, and old Wil McLan limped to the side of the dome. His scarred trembling hands lifted a black velvet cover from a rectangular block of some clear crystal mounted on the top of a metal cabinet.

  “Here is the chronoscope,” he said. “A sort of window into time. It creates special fields, that bend radiation into the

  tune-axis. We get a stereoscopic image in the crystal screen—there’s a selective fluorescence to the beat frequencies projected from below.”

  The old man snapped a switch, manipulated dials at the end of the crystal block. It lit with a cloudy green. The green cleared, and a low cry escaped Lanning’s lips. Within the crystal, microscopically clear, he saw a new world in miniature.

  A broad silver river cut a fertile green plain dotted with villages. Beyond the river rose two hills. One was crowned with a tremendous citadel. Its mighty walls gleamed like the strange red metal of Sorainya’s mail. Above the frowning towers were flowing banners of yellow and crimson and black. A wide gate opened, as he watched, in the foot of the hill. An armored troop poured out.

  “Watch the marchers,” rasped McLan.

  Lanning bent closer to the crystal block. It seemed suddenly that he was looking through a window, into an 38

  actual world. He found the soldiers again, and uttered a muffled cry.

  “They aren’t men!” he gasped. “They’re—insects!”

  “Half ant,” whispered the shattered man. “Half human. Sorainya’s biologists have made some diabolical experiments. Those monsters are her warriors, bred to terrorize her slaves. That’s her castle, where I was jailed. But look at the other hill.”

  Lanning found it, topped with a temple of ebon black. The building was vast, but squat and low, faced with endless colonnades of thick square columns. From the center of it rose a beam of blackness, of darkness thick and tangible, that widened into the sky like the angry funnel of some unimaginable tornado.

  “The temple of the gyrane,” husked Wil McLan, “where Glarath rules.” He was adjusting the dials again. “But watch!”

  A village of flimsy huts swam closer. The marching column of gigantic anthropoid ants was swiftly surrounding it, driving the villagers—a fair-skinned sturdy-looking folk, although ragged and starved—before them from the fields.

  “This cruel thing happened while I was in prison,” the old man rasped. “The offense of the people was that they had not paid their taxes to Sorainya and their tithes to the gyrane. The reason they had no grain to pay them, is that Sorainya and her lords, hunting a convict for sport, had trampled and destroyed the fields.”

  Armed with heavy golden axes and short thick guns of crimson metal, as well as their own frightful mandibles, the six-limbed fighters made a monstrous ring about the frightened village. And now an armored vehicle came lumbering down from the red citadel, and through the line of giants. A hot white beam flickered out of it, and miserable buildings exploded into flame. The wind carried a wall of fire across the village.

  An entirely human figure, in black-plumed scarlet armor, sprang from the tank to join the great black half-human ants.

  A thin yellow sword played swiftly, cutting down men and women and children as they fled from the flames, until the slaughter was done. Then the human figure turned back from the new desolation, flung up the crimsoned sword in triumph, and slipped off the helmet. A flood of yellow hair fell down across the scarlet mail. Lanning’s breath sucked in, and a bright pain stabbed his heart.

  “Why, that—” he gasped. “That’s Sorainya!”

  “Sorainya,” whispered Wil McLan. “The lovely queen of Gyronchi.”

  He snapped a switch, and Sorainya dissolved, with her black warriors, into the pellucid transparency of the crystal block. His hollow eyes lifted slowly to Lanning, and in them was his slumberous hate. His gnarled hands knotted and relaxed, and lifted once more to fondle the little worn bright cylinder of silver that hung from his throat.

  “It happened,” the hoarse voiceless gasp went on, “that Gyronchi was the first future world, out of those possible, that the chronoscope revealed. Happened that I found Sorainya, splendid in her armor, fencing with one of her human ants.

  “You can see that she is—well, attractive. At first the range of the instrument was limited to her youth, where scenes of such barbarity are less frequent. Remember, Denny, I was thirty years younger when I first saw her, back in 1945. Her glorious beauty, the military pomp of her empire—I was swept away.

  “Neglecting all the other possible worlds, I followed her, for months—years. I didn’t know, then, all the harm the temporal searchbeam was doing.” His white head bowed; for a moment he was speechless. “But no process whatever can reveal the state of an electron without changing that state. The quanta of my scanning ray were absorbed by the atoms that refracted them. The result was an increase in the probability factor of Gyronchi—that is the root of all the tragedy.”

  The scarred face made a grimace of pain.

  “The blame is mine. For, before I was aware of it, the absorption had cut down the probability of all other possible worlds, so that Gyronchi was the only one the limited power of my instrument could reach. That blinded me to the crime that I was doing.

  “But I’m afraid you can’t understand my passion for Sorainya.”

  Lanning’s hoarse and breathless whisper was an echo of his own: “I can.”

  The sunken eyes flamed again, and McLan fondled the silver tube.

  “I watched her, with the chronoscope,” the rasping words ran. “Sometimes I was driven to despair by her remoteness in time and probability—and sometimes to desperate effort. For I had resolved to conquer time, and join her in Gyronchi.

  “In 1952, after seven years of effort, I was able to communicate. By increasing the power and focal definition of the temporal radiation, I was able to project a speaking image of myself to Sorainya’s fortress.”

  Agony stiffened McLan’s scarred face. His lean jaw set. His breath came in rasping gusts, and it was half a minute before he could speak again.

  “And so I made suit to Sorainya. At first she seemed puzzled and alarmed. But, after I had made several bodiless visits to her apartments, her attitude changed suddenly—perhaps she had got advice from Glarath.”

  His clenched hands cracked.

  “She smiled,” the old man rasped. “She welcomed me and asked me to return. And she began to ask about my discoveries—saying that perhaps the priests of the gyrcme, being themselves able scientists, could solve my remaining problems. If I could come to Gyronchi, she promised, I might share her throne.”

  Lanning bit his lip and caught a gasping breath. Memory
of Sorainya’s visits mocked him. But he did not interrupt.

  “A mistrust of the priests, fortunately,” McLan went on, “kept me from divulging very much. But Sorainya’s encouragements redoubled my efforts. There is a terrific resistance to the displacement of any body in time. For the geodesies are anchored in the future, as well as in the past. The removal of a living person, which might warp all futurity, is impossible. And even to dislodge inert matter requires tremendous power.

  “Nothing less than atomic energy, I soon perceived, could even begin to overcome that resistance. I set out, therefore, with the searching ray of the chronoscope, to study the atomic science of the future. But there I met a curious difficulty. . =

  “For the instrument, which, after all, can only trace out probabilities, sometimes queerly blurred the fine detail of script or printing. Los Alamos and the Kremlin were equally open to the searching beam. I studied the works of many future scientists—of John Barr and Ivor Gyros and many more. But essential words always faded.

  “There is a law of sequence and progression, I found at last, operating along a fifth rather than the temporal dimension, which imposes inexorable limits. It is that progression which actually creates reality out of possibility. And it is that higher law which prohibits all. the trite absurdities met with in the old speculation about travel in time, such as the adventurer in time who returns to kill himself. The familiar logic of cause and effect is not abolished, but simply advanced to a higher dimension.

  “With the search beam, I was able to look through the curtains of military secrecy. I studied uranium and hydrogen bombs, and found them useless to me. The first crude atomic heat engines, that ran on fission energy, were no better.

  “It was only through independent research into atomic probability that I learned how to cause and control the fusion of ordinary hydrogen into heavier elements. I built the first hydrogen converter in 1958. It developed eight thousand horsepower, and I could carry it in one hand. But listen!”

  He paused, to let Lanning hear the soft thrumming that vibrated through the deck. A weary triumph lit his emaciated features.

  “The power of three hundred Niagaras!” he whispered. “From only a spoonful of water. Energy enough to break the wall of time! And I found a lever—the very absorption of the temporal ray, that had troubled me so much, is due to a resisting field, against which our drive reacts. For two years I worked desperately on the Chronion. Designed only for travel in time—not for a fighting machine—it was finished in June, 1960.

  “At once, from my lonely laboratory in the Colorado Rockies, I set out for Gyronchi.” The rasping whisper turned raw with bitterness. “I was a fool. I hoped to reach Sorainya and share her diamond throne.”

  A spasm of agony racked the white, tortured face.

  CHAPTER VII - COMMANDER OF THE LEGION

  The rasoing whisper paused. Old Wil McLan limped swiftly about the dome, reading dials and gauges. His gnarled scarred hands deftly set controls, and moved the shining wheel. Aware of the soft steady thrum of the converter beneath, Lanning realized that the Chronion was moving again, through the blue nickering chasm. Through time?

  “I went alone,” Wil McLan looked back to him, with hollow, haunted eyes. “For the Chronion, with all her millions of horsepower, could not have drawn a crew of sound men from their places in time. Even alone, I had difficulty. An overloaded field coil burned out. The laboratory caught fire, and I was badly injured. The very accident, however, so weakened my future geodesies that the time-drive could pull me out. At the very instant the burning building collapsed, we broke free into the tune stream.”

  The dark, smouldering eyes stared away into the shimmering abyss beyond the crystal dome.

  “You have seen Gyronchi, in the chronoscope.” The old man shuddered. “And one look at my body can tell you enough of what reception I had from Sorainya, when at last I came to her red citadel.”

  The lean, white-wealed face went hard again with agony and hate. Great tears burst suddenly from the sunken eyes. The broken, bloodless claws of hands came up again, unconsciously, to the bright silver tube. Lanning looked quickly away, until McLan went on:

  “Excuse my self-pity, Denny. And I shall spare you the humiliating details of Sorainya’s treachery. The instant she had lured me off the ship, her monsters seized me. She mocked me for daring to desire the queen of Gyronchi, and offered me my life for the secrets of the time ship.

  “When I wouldn’t talk, she threw me into her dungeons, and turned the Chronion over to the priests of the gyrane.” The whisper had become a thin, dry sobbing. “For ten years, in her torture vaults, Sorainya tried to extract my secrets, while her priests studied the ship.”

  The sobbing ceased. The dreadful eyes went shut. The seamed, livid face of Wil McLan, terrible with its web of white scars, became a mask of death. His twisted body quivered, and his breath was a hurried gasping. Lanning looked away again, until at last the old man whispered:

  “It was Lethonee who set me free; I think you know her.”

  A little tremor of eagerness and dread ran over Dennis Lanning. He tried to speak, made only a little gulping sound, and waited silently.

  “She came to me in Sorainya’s dungeons,” said Wil McLan. “White and beautiful, holding her time crystal—that’s another geodesic tracer, somewhat like my chronoscope.

  “Lethonee forgave all the harm my experiments had done Jonbar. She planned my escape. She searched time for the hour when the disposition of the guarding giants would make it possible. She examined the locks, and brought me measurements, for the keys, which I carved, there in the cell, from the bones of a previous occupant.

  “When the chosen night came, she guided me out of the dungeons, through the quarters of Sorainya’s sleeping soldiers—the queen had them roasted alive when she found that I was gone. Lethonee picked out a safe way for me down the cliff, and across Gyronchi to the black temple.

  “Glarath and his priests had taken the Chronion there. Apparently they had dismantled and studied the drive. Perhaps they had not understood it completely, however, for they had not ventured on any time trips of their own. But with what they learned, and power from the gyrane, they had made a golden shell–– “

  Lanning caught his breath.

  “I’ve seen that!” he gasped. “Carrying Sorainya!”

  “Her projected image,” said Wil McLan. “But Lethonee guided me to the temple,” he resumed his whispered narrative. “The alarm spread. The fighting things roused the priests. With seconds to spare, I got aboard the Chronion, started the converters, and escaped into time. I returned to the early twentieth century. And then at last, guided by Lethonee down the fainter geodesies of her possible world, I came to Jonbar.”

  “Jonbar—” Lanning interrupted again, with a quick gesture at the crystal block of the chronoscope. “Can we see Jonbar, in that? And—Lethonee?”

  Very gravely, Wil McLan shook his white, haggard head.

  “Presently, we shall try,” he whispered. “But the probability factor of Jonbar has become so small that I can reach it only with the utmost power of the scanning beam, and then the images are very poor. For Jonbar is at the brink of doom.”

  His broken fingers touched the thin white cylinder that hung from his throat.

  “But there is still one chance.” A stern light flashed in his hollowed eyes. “Jonbar hasn’t given up. It was Lethonee’s father, an archeologist digging in the Rockies where my laboratory used to be, who found there the charred books and age-rusted mechanisms from which he rediscovered the secret of time.

  “He made the time crystal. With it, Lethonee soon discovered the menace born of my unwitting tampering with probability. And she brought me to Jonbar to aid the defense. That is why I have been gathering up you and your men, Denny.”

  Lanning was staring at him, frowning.

  “I don’t understand,” he muttered. “What can we do?”

  “These two possible worlds, each armed with the sec
ret of time, are fighting for survival.” A fierce glint burned in the old man’s eyes. “Either Jonbar or Gyron-chi—either Lethonee or Sorainya—may exist. But not both. The battle is on, all along the front of time. The outcome will be fixed by that higher progression, in the fifth dimension.”

  “But you can see the future,” broke in Lanning. “Can’t you tell?”

  “The chronoscope reveals no certainties,” said McLan. “Only probabilities—which it changes even as it reveals them.” His white head shook. “I know, though, that the balance of probability is far in favor of Sorainya.”

  Desperately, Lanning had clutched at his thin shoulder.

  “But we can help?” he demanded. “What is our part?”

  “No direct geodesies link Jonbar and Gyronchi,” explained McLan. “Therefore they have no common reality. They are contradictory. They can explore each other’s trains of probability. But there can be no physical contact, because the existence of each is a denial of the other. Their forces, therefore, can never come directly to grips.

  “Our contemporary world, however, joined by direct geodesies with all possible futurities, has a common existence with both Lethonee and Sorainya. That’s how you get into the picture, Denny.”

  “Huh?” Lanning leaned forward desperately. “They both talked of destiny. You can tell me what they meant?”

  The blue haunted eyes looked at him steadily, from beneath that startling shock of snowy hair.

  “You are in the key position, Denny,” breathed McLan. “Fate has made you the champion of Jonbar. Your triumph alone can save it. If you fail, it is lost.”

  “And that’s why they came to me?”

  “Sorainya has sought to cause your death.” The old man nodded. “To carry you to Gyronchi, where your aid would insure her victory. And Lethonee took it upon herself to watch over you, until the moment we could pull you aboard the Chronion.”

  “Death…” Lanning whispered the echo. “Then we are—dead?”

  “I came back to find you and a band of your contemporaries, to serve Jonbar. Since it is impossible to draw a sound, living man from his place in time—to do so might wrap the whole continuum—we had to wait until the moment when each of you was actually dead, to draw you aboard through the temporal field. Jonbar has provided a corps of surgeons, who were able to revive you immediately, with dynat”