A Traveler in Time Read online

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  A TRAVELER IN TIME

  by August Derleth

  [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Orbit volume 1number 2, 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that theU.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

  [Sidenote: YOU CAN'T ALWAYS ESCAPE EVILS BY RUNNING AWAY FROM THEM...BUTIT MAY HELP!]

  "Tell me what time is," said Harrigan one late summer afternoon in aMadison Street bar. "I'd like to know."

  "A dimension," I answered. "Everybody knows that."

  "All right, granted. I know space is a dimension and you can moveforward or back in space. And, of course, you keep on aging all thetime."

  "Elementary," I said.

  "But what happens if you can move backward or forward in time? Do youage or get younger, or do you keep the status quo?"

  "I'm not an authority on time, Tex. Do you know anyone who traveled intime?"

  Harrigan shrugged aside my question. "That was the thing I couldn't getout of Vanderkamp, either. He presumed to know everything else."

  "Vanderkamp?"

  "He was another of those strange people a reporter always runs into.Lived in New York--downtown, near the Bowery. Man of about forty, I'dsay, but a little on the old-fashioned side. Dutch background, andhipped on the subject of New Amsterdam, which, in case you don't know,was the original name of New York City."

  "Don't mind my interrupting," I cut in. "But I'm not quite straight onwhat Vanderkamp has to do with time as dimension."

  "Oh, he was touched on the subject. He claimed to travel in it. The factis, he invented a time-traveling machine."

  "You certainly meet the whacks, Tex!"

  "Don't I!" He grinned appreciatively and leaned reminiscently over thebar. "But Vanderkamp had the wildest dreams of the lot. And in the endhe managed the neatest conjuring trick of them all. I was on theBrooklyn _Enterprise_ at that time; I spent about a year there. Specialfeatures, though I was on a reporter's salary. Vanderkamp was somethingof a local celebrity in a minor way; he wrote articles on the earlyDutch in New York, the nomenclature of the Dutch, the history of Dutchplace-names, and the like. He was handy with a pen, and even handierwith tools. He was an amateur electrician, carpenter, house-painter, andclaimed to be an expert in genealogy."

  "And he built a time-traveling machine?"

  "So he said. He gave me a rather hard time of it. He was a glib talkerand half the time I didn't know whether I was coming or going. He keptme on my toes by taking for granted that I accepted his basic premises.I got next to him on a tip. He could be close-mouthed as a clam, but hissister let things slip from time to time, and on this occasion shepassed the word to one of her friends in a grocery store that herbrother had invented a machine that took him off on trips into the past.It seemed like routine whack stuff, but Blake, who decided what wentinto the _Enterprise_ and what didn't, sent me over to Manhattan to getsomething for the paper, on the theory that since Vanderkamp waswell-known in Brooklyn, it was good neighborhood copy.

  "Vanderkamp was a sharp-eyed little fellow, about five feet or so inheight, and I hit him at a good time. His sister said he had just comeback from a trip--she left me to draw my own conclusions about what kindof trip--and I found him in a mild fit of temper. He was too upset, infact, to be truculent, which was more like his nature.

  "Was it true, I wanted to know, that he'd invented a machine thattraveled in time?

  "He didn't make any bones about it. 'Certainly,' he said. 'I've beenusing it for the last month, and if my sister hadn't decided to blabnobody would know about it yet. What about it?'

  "'You believe it can take you backwards or forwards into the past or thefuture?'

  "'Do I look crazy? I said so, didn't I?'

  "Now, as a matter of fact, he _did_ look crazy. Unlike most of thecandidates for my file of queer people, Vanderkamp actually looked likea nut. He had a wild eye and a constantly working mouth; he blinked agood deal and stammered when he was excited. In features he was as Dutchas his name implied. Well, we talked back and forth for some time, but Istuck with him and in the end he took me out into a shed adjoining hishouse and showed me the contraption he'd built.

  "It looked like a top. The first thing I thought of was Brick Bradford,and before I could catch myself, I'd asked, 'Is that pure BrickBradford?'

  "He didn't turn a hair. 'Not by a long shot,' he answered. 'H. G. Wellswas there first. I owe it to Wells.'

  "'I see,' I said.

  "'The hell you do!' he shot back. 'You think I'm as nutty as afruit-cake.'

  "'The idea of time travel is a little hard to swallow,' I said.

  "'Sure it is. But me, I'm doing it. So that's all there is to it.'

  "'If you don't mind, Mr. Vanderkamp,' I said, 'I'm a dummy in scientificmatters. I have all I can do to tell a nut from a bolt.'

  "'That I believe,' he said.

  "'So how do you time travel?'

  "'Look,' he said, 'time is a dimension like space. You can go up or downthis ruler,' he snatched a steel ruler and waved it in front of me,'from any given point. But you move. In the dimension of time, you onlyseem to move. You stand still; time moves. Do you get it?'

  "I had to confess that I didn't.

  "He tried again, with obviously strained patience. Judging by what Icould gather from what he said, it was possible for him--so hebelieved--to get into his machine, twirl a few knobs, push a fewbuttons, relax for any given period, and end up just where heliked--back in the past, or ahead in the future. But wherever he endedup, he was still in this same spot. In other words, whether he was backin 1492 or ahead in 2092, the place he got out of his time machine wasstill his present address.

  "It was beyond me, frankly, but I figured that as long as he was alittle touched, it wouldn't do any harm to humor him. I intimated that Iunderstood and asked him where he'd been last.

  "His face fell, his brow clouded, and he said, 'I've been ahead thirtyyears.' He shook his head angrily. 'What a time! I'll be seventy, andyou won't even be that, Mr. Harrigan. But we'll be in the middle of theworst atomic war you ever dreamed about.'

  "Now this was before Hiroshima, quite a bit. I didn't know what he wastalking about, but it gives me a queer feeling now and then when I thinkof what he said, especially since it's still short of thirty years sincethat time.

  "'It's no time to be living here,' he went on. 'Direct hits on theentire area. What would you do?'

  "'I'd get out,' I said.

  "'That's what I thought,' he said. 'But that kind of warfare carries along way. A long way. And I'm a man who loves his comforts, reasonably.I don't intend to set up housekeeping in equatorial Africa or theforests of Brazil.'

  "'What did you see thirty years from now, Mr. Vanderkamp?' I asked him.

  "'Everything blown to hell,' he answered. 'Not a building in allManhattan.' He leered and added, 'And everybody who'll be living here atthat time will be scattered into the atmosphere in fragments no biggerthan an amoeba.'

  "'You fill me with anticipation,' I said.

  "So I went back to my desk and wrote the story. You could guess whatkind it had to be. 'Time Travel Is Possible, Says AmateurScientist!'--that kind of thing. You can see it every week, in largedoses, in the feature sections of some of the biggest chain papers. Itwent over like an average feature about life on the moon or prehistoricanimals surviving in remote mountain valleys, or what have you. Justwhat Vanderkamp went back to after I left, I don't know, but I have anidea that he gave his sister a devil of a time."

  * * * * *

  _Vanderkamp stalked into the house and confronted
his sister._

  _"You see, Julie--a reporter. Can't you learn to hold your tongue?"_

  _She threw him a scornful glance. "What difference does it make?" shecried. "You're gone all the time."_

  _"Maybe I'll take you along sometime. Just wait."_

  _"Wait, wait! That's all I've been doing. Since I was ten years old