“Is it likely to be dangerous. Doctor?” He shrugged his shoulders. “The process isn’t — just a deep sleep and a phonograph record — But the world of the time track you visit will be as real as the world of this time track. You are all over twenty-one. I am not urging you, I am merely offering you the opportunity.”
Monroe stood up. “I’m going, Doctor.” “Good! Sit here and use these earphones.
Anyone else?”
“Count me in.” It was Helen Fisher.
Estelle Martin joined them. Howard Jenkins went hastily to her side. “Are you going to try this business?”
“Most certainly.”
He turned to Frost. “I’m in. Doc.”
Martha Ross finally joined the others. Frost seated them where they could wear the ear-phones and then asked, “You will remember the different types of things you could do; branch off into a different world, skip over into the past or the future, or cut straight through the maze of probable tracks on a path of extreme improbability. I have records for all of those.”
Monroe was first again. “I’ll take a right angle turn and a brand new world.”
Estelle did not hesitate. “I want to — How did you put it? — climb up a bank to a higher road somewhere in the future.”
“I’ll try that, too.” It was Jenkins.
“I’ll take the remote-possibilities track,” put in Helen Fisher.
“That takes care of everybody but Miss Ross,” commented the professor. “I’m afraid you will have to take a branch path in probability. Does that suit you?”
She nodded. “I was going to ask for it.”
“That’s fine. All of these records contain the suggestion for you to return to this room two hours from now, figured along this time track. Put on your earphones. The records run thirty minutes. I’ll start them and the ball together.”
He swung a glittering many-faceted sphere from a hook in the ceiling, started it whirling, and turned a small spotlight on it. Then he turned off the other lights, and started all the records by throwing a master switch. The scintillating ball twirled round and round, slowed and reversed and twirled back again. Doctor Frost turned his eyes away to keep from being fascinated by it.
Presently he slipped out into the hall for a smoke. Half an hour passed and there came the single note of a gong. He hurried back and switched on the light.
Four of the five had disappeared.
The remaining figure was Howard Jenkins, who opened his eyes and blinked at the light. “Well, Doctor, I guess it didn’t work.”
The Doctor raised his eyebrows. “No? Look around you.”
The younger man glanced about him. “Where are the others?”
“Where? Anywhere,” replied Frost, with a shrug, “and way when.”
Jenkins jerked off his earphones and jumped to his feet. “Doctor, what have you done to Estelle?”
Frost gently disengaged a hand from his sleeve. “I haven’t done anything,
Howard. She’s out on another time track.”
“But I meant to go with her!”
“And I tried to send you with her.”
“But why didn’t I go?”
“I can’t say-probably the suggestion wasn’t strong enough to overcome your skepticism. But don’t be alarmed, son-we expect her back in a couple of hours, you know.”
“Don’t be alarmed! — that’s easy to say. I didn’t want her to try this damn fool stunt in the first place, but I knew I couldn’t change her mind, so I wanted to go along to look out for her-she’s so impractical! But see here, Doc-where are their bodies? I thought we would just stay here in the room in a trance.”
“Apparently you didn’t understand me. These other time tracks are real, as real as this one we are in. Their whole beings have gone off on other tracks, as if they had turned down a side street.”
“But that’s impossible-it contradicts the law of the conservation of energy!”
“You must recognize a fact when you see one — they are gone. Besides, it doesn’t contradict the law; it simply extends it to include the total universe.”
Jenkins rubbed a hand over his face. “I suppose so. But in that case, anything can happen to her — she could even be killed out there. And I can’t do a damn thing about it. Oh, I wish we had never seen this damned seminar!”