The Best Time Travel Stories of the 20th Century (17 page)

The Raja was running up with his gun at high port, ready to snap it to his shoulder the instant he got a clear view. When he saw James running headlong toward him, he hesitated, not wishing to shoot James by accident. The latter plunged ahead, blundered into the Raja, and sent them both sprawling among the ferns. The tyrannosaur collected what little wits it had and stepped forward to snap them up.

And how about Holtzinger and me on the other side of the palmettos? Well, the instant James yelled and the tyrannosaur’s head appeared, Holtzinger darted forward like a rabbit. I’d brought my gun up for a shot at the tyrannosaur’s head, in hope of getting at least an eye; but, before I could find it in my sights, the head was out of sight behind the palmettos. Perhaps I should have fired at hazard, but all my experience is against wild shots.

When I looked back in front of me, Holtzinger had already disappeared round the curve of the palmetto clump. I’d started after him when I heard his rifle and the click of the bolt between shots:
bang
—click-click—
bang
—click-click, like that.

He’d come up on the tyrannosaur’s quarter as the brute started to stoop for James and the Raja. With his muzzle twenty feet from the tyrannosaur’s hide, Holtzinger began pumping .375s into the beast’s body. He got off three shots when the tyrannosaur gave a tremendous booming grunt and wheeled round to see what was stinging it. The jaws came open, and the head swung round and down again.

Holtzinger got off one more shot and tried to leap to one side. As he was standing on a narrow place between the palmetto clump and the nullah, he fell into the nullah. The tyrannosaur continued its lunge and caught him. The jaws went
chomp,
and up came the head with poor Holtzinger in them, screaming like a damned soul.

I came up just then and aimed at the brute’s face, but then realized that its jaws were full of my sahib and I should be shooting him, too. As the head went on up like the business end of a big power shovel, I fired a shot at the heart. The tyrannosaur was already turning away, and I suspect the ball just glanced along the ribs. The beast took a couple of steps when I gave it the other barrel in the back. It staggered on its next step but kept on. Another step, and it was nearly out of sight among the trees, when the Raja fired twice. The stout fellow had untangled himself from James, got up, picked up his gun, and let the tyrannosaur have it.

The double wallop knocked the brute over with a tremendous crash. It fell into a dwarf magnolia, and I saw one of its huge birdlike hindlegs waving in the midst of a shower of pink-and-white petals. But the tyrannosaur got up again and blundered off without even dropping its victim. The last I saw of it was Holtzinger’s legs dangling out one side of its jaws (he’d stopped screaming) and its big tail banging against the tree trunks as it swung from side to side.

The Raja and I reloaded and ran after the brute for all we were worth. I tripped and fell once, but jumped up again and didn’t notice my skinned elbow till later. When we burst out of the copse, the tyrannosaur was already at the far end of the glade. We each took a quick shot but probably missed, and it was out of sight before we could fire again.

We ran on, following the tracks and spatters of blood, until we had to stop from exhaustion. Never again did we see that tyrannosaur. Their movements look slow and ponderous, but with those tremendous legs they don’t have to step very fast to work up considerable speed.

When we’d got our breath, we got up and tried to track the tyrannosaur, on the theory that it might be dying and we should come up to it. But, though we found more spoor, it faded out and left us at a loss. We circled round, hoping to pick it up, but no luck.

Hours later, we gave up and went back to the glade.

Courtney James was sitting with his back against a tree, holding his rifle and Holtzinger’s. His right hand was swollen and blue where he’d pinched it, but still usable.

His first words were:

“Where the hell have you two been?”

I said: “We’ve been occupied. The late Mr. Holtzinger. Remember?”

“You shouldn’t have gone off and left me; another of those things might have come along. Isn’t it bad enough to lose one hunter through your stupidity without risking another one?”

I’d been preparing a warm wigging for James, but his attack so astonished me that I could only bleat: “What?
We
lost...?”

“Sure,” he said. “You put us in front of you, so if anybody gets eaten it’s us. You send a guy up against these animals undergunned. You—”

“You Goddamn’ stinking little swine!” I said. “If you hadn’t been a blithering idiot and blown those two barrels, and then run like the yellow coward you are, this never would have happened. Holtzinger died trying to save your worthless life. By God, I wish he’d failed! He was worth six of a stupid, spoiled, muttonheaded bastard like you—”

I went on from there. The Raja tried to keep up with me, but ran out of English and was reduced to cursing James in Hindustani.

I could see by the purple color on James’s face that I was getting home. He said:

“Why, you—” and stepped forward and sloshed me one in the face with his left fist.

It rocked me a bit, but I said: “Now then, my lad, I’m glad you did that! It gives me a chance I’ve been waiting for....”

So I waded into him. He was a good-sized bod, but between my sixteen stone and his sore right hand he had no chance. I got a few good ones home, and down he went.

“Now get up!” I said. “And I’ll be glad to finish off!”

James raised himself to his elbows. I got set for more fisticuffs, though my knuckles were skinned and bleeding already. James rolled over, snatched his gun, and scrambled up, swinging the muzzle from one to the other of us.

“You won’t finish anybody off!” he panted through swollen lips. “All right, put your hands up! Both of you!”

“Do not be an idiot,” said the Raja. “Put that gun away!”

“Nobody treats me like that and gets away with it!”

“There’s no use murdering us,” I said. “You’d never get away with it.”

“Why not? There won’t be much left of you after one of these hits you. I’ll just say the tyrannosaur ate you, too. Nobody could prove anything. They can’t hold you for a murder eighty-five million years old. The statute of limitations, you know.”

“You fool, you’d never make it back to the camp alive!” I shouted.

“I’ll take a chance—” began James, setting the butt of his .500 against his shoulder, with the barrels pointed at my face. Looked like a pair of bleeding vehicular tunnels.

He was watching me so closely that he lost track of the Raja for a second. My partner had been resting on one knee, and now his right arm came up in a quick bowling motion with a three-pound rock. The rock bounced off James’s head. The .500 went off. The ball must have parted my hair, and the explosion jolly well near broke my eardrums.

Down went James again.

“Good work, old chap!” I said, gathering up James’s gun. 

“Yes,” said the Raja thoughtfully, as he picked up the rock he’d thrown and tossed it.

“Doesn’t quite have the balance of a cricket ball, but it is just as hard.”

“What shall we do now?” I said. “I’m inclined to leave the beggar here unarmed and let him fend for himself.”

The Raja gave a little sigh. “It’s a tempting thought, Reggie, but we really cannot, you know. Not done.”

“I suppose you’re right,” I said. “Well, let’s tie him up and take him back to camp.”

We agreed there was no safety for us unless we kept James under guard every minute until we got home. Once a man has tried to kill you, you’re a fool if you give him another chance.

We marched James back to camp and told the crew what we were up against. James cursed everybody.

We spent three dismal days combing the country for that tyrannosaur, but no luck. We felt it wouldn’t have been cricket not to make a good try at recovering Holtzinger’s remains. Back at our main camp, when it wasn’t raining, we collected small reptiles and things for our scientific friends. The Raja and I discussed the question of legal proceedings against Courtney James, but decided there was nothing we could do in that direction.

When the transition chamber materialized, we fell over one another getting into it. We dumped James, still tied, in a corner, and told the chamber operator to throw the switches.

While we were in transition, James said: “You two should have killed me back there.”

“Why?” I said. “You don’t have a particularly good head.”

The Raja added: “Wouldn’t look at all well over a mantel.”

“You can laugh,” said James, “but I’ll get you some day. I’ll find a way and get off scot-free.”

“My dear chap!” I said. “If there were some way to do it, I’d have you charged with Holtzinger’s death. Look, you’d best leave well enough alone.”

When we came out in the present, we handed him his empty gun and his other gear, and off he went without a word. As he left, Holtzinger’s girl, that Claire, rushed up crying:

“Where is he? Where’s August?”

There was a bloody heartrending scene, despite the Raja’s skill at handling such situations.

We took our men and beasts down to the old laboratory building that the university has fitted up as a serai for such expeditions. We paid everybody off and found we were broke. The advance payments from Holtzinger and James didn’t cover our expenses, and we should have precious little chance of collecting the rest of our fees either from James or from Holtzinger’s estate.

And speaking of James, d’you know what that blighter was doing? He went home, got more ammunition, and came back to the university. He hunted up Professor Prochaska and asked him:

“Professor, I’d like you to send me back to the Cretaceous for a quick trip. If you can work me into your schedule right now, you can just about name your own price. I’ll offer five thousand to begin with. I want to go to April twenty-third, eighty-five million B.C.”

Prochaska answered: “Why do you wish to go back again so soon?”

“I lost my wallet in the Cretaceous,” said James. “I figure if I go back to the day before I arrived in that era on my last trip, I’ll watch myself when I arrived on that trip and follow myself around till I see myself lose the wallet.”

“Five thousand is a lot for a wallet,” said the professor.

“It’s got some things in it I can’t replace,” said James.

“Well,” said Prochaska, thinking. “The party that was supposed to go out this morning has telephoned that they would be late, so perhaps I can work you in. I have always wondered what would happen when the same man occupied the same stretch of time twice.”

So James wrote out a check, and Prochaska took him to the chamber and saw him off.

James’s idea, it seems, was to sit behind a bush a few yards from where the transition chamber would appear and pot the Raja and me as we emerged.

Hours later, we’d changed into our street clothes and phoned our wives to come and get us. We were standing on Forsythe Boulevard waiting for them when there was a loud crack, like an explosion, and a flash of light not fifty feet from us. The shock wave staggered us and broke windows.

We ran toward the place and got there just as bobby and several citizens came up. On the boulevard, just off the kerb, lay a human body. At least, it had been that, but it looked as if every bone in it had been pulverized and every blood vessel burst, so it was hardly more than a slimy mass of pink protoplasm. The clothes it had been wearing were shredded, but I recognized an H. & H. .500 double-barreled express rifle. The wood was scorched and the metal pitted, but it was Courtney James’s gun. No doubt whatever.

Skipping the investigations and the milling about that ensued, what had happened was this: nobody had shot at us as we emerged on the twenty-fourth, and that couldn’t be changed. For that matter, the instant James started to do anything that would make a visible change in the world of eighty-five million B.C., such as making a footprint in the earth, the space-time forces snapped him forward to the present to prevent a paradox.

And the violence of the passage practically tore him to bits.

Now that this is better understood, the professor won’t send anybody to a period less than five thousand years prior to the time that some time traveler has already explored, because it would be too easy to do some act, like chopping down a tree or losing some durable artifact, that would affect the later world. Over longer periods, he tells me, such changes average out and are lost in the stream of time.

We had a rough time after that, with the bad publicity and all, though we did collect a fee from James’s estate. Luckily for us, a steel manufacturer turned up who wanted a mastodon’s head for his den.

I understand these things better now, too. The disaster hadn’t been wholly James’s fault. I shouldn’t have taken him when I knew what a spoiled, unstable sort of bloke he was. And if Holtzinger could have used a really heavy gun, he’d probably have knocked the tyrannosaur down, even if he didn’t kill it, and so have given the rest of us a chance to finish it.

So, Mr. Seligman, that’s why I won’t take you to that period to hunt. There are plenty of other eras, and if you look them over I’m sure you’ll find something to suit you. But not the Jurassic or the Cretaceous. You’re just not big enough to handle a gun for dinosaur.

POUL ANDERSON

A winner of multiple Hugo and Nebula Awards, Poul Anderson (1926–2001) wrote
more than fifty novels and hundreds of short stories since his science-fiction debut in
1947. His first novel,
Brain Wave,
is a classic example of the techniques of traditional
science fiction, extrapolating the impact that an abrupt universal rise in intelligence
would have on the totality of human civilization in the twentieth century. Anderson is
highly regarded for the detail of his stories. His vast Technic History saga, a multibook
chronicle of interstellar exploration and empire building, covers fifty centuries of future
history spread out over the rise and fall of three empires of a galactic federation. The
vast scope of the series gave Anderson the opportunity to develop colorful, well-developed characters and to explore the long-term impact of certain ideas and attitudes