“I slunk around holes in that place,” she continued, “for a couple of weeks before I recovered the trick of jumping the time track. I was desperate, for I thought that the suggestion to return to now hadn’t worked. I couldn’t find much to eat and I was lightheaded part of the time. I drank out of what I suspect was their drainage system, but there was nobody to ask and I didn’t want to know. I was thirsty.”
“Did you see any human beings?”
“I’m not sure. I saw some shapes that might have been men squatting in a circle down in the tunnels under the city, but something frightened them, and they scurried away before I could get close enough to look.”
“What else happened there?”
“Nothing. I found the trick again that same night and got away from there as fast as I could-I am afraid I lost the scientific spirit. Professor-I didn’t care how the other half lived.
‘This time I had better luck. I was on earth again, but in pleasant rolling hills, like the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was summer, and very lovely. I found a little stream and took off my clothes and bathed. It was wonderful. After I had found some ripe berries, I lay down in the sun and went to sleep.
“I woke wide awake with a start. Someone was bending over me. It was a man, but no beauty. He was a Neanderthal. I should have run, but I tried to grab my clothes first, so he grabbed me. I was led back into camp, a Sabine woman, with my new spring sports outfit tucked fetchingly under one arm.
“I wasn’t so bad off. It was the Old Man who had found me, and he seemed to regard me as a strange pet, about on a par with the dogs that snarled around the bone heap, rather than as a member of his harem. I fed well enough, if you aren’t fussy-I wasn’t fussy after living in the bowels of that awful city.
“The Neanderthal isn’t a bad fellow at heart, rather good-natured, although inclined to play rough. That’s how I got this.” She fingered the scar on her cheek, “I had about decided to stay a while and study them, when one day I made a mistake. It was a chilly morning, and I put on my clothes for the first time since I had arrived. One of the young bucks saw me, and I guess it aroused his romantic nature. The Old Man was away at the time and there was no one to stop him.
‘ He grabbed me before I knew what was happening and tried to show his affection. Have you ever been nuzzled by a cave man, Howard? They have halitosis, not to mention B.O. I was too startled to concentrate on the time trick, or else I would have slipped right out into space-time and left him clutching air.”
Doctor Frost was aghast. “Dear God, child! What did you do?”
“I finally showed him a jiu jitsu trick I learned in Phys. Ed. II, then I ran like hell and skinned up a tree. I counted up to a hundred and tried to be calm.
Pretty soon I was shooting upstairs in a nightmare again and very happy to be doing it.”
“Then you came back here?”
“Not by a whole lot-worse luck! I landed in this present all right, and apparently along this time dimension, but there was plenty that was wrong about it — I was standing on the south side of Forty-second street in New York. I knew where I was for the first thing I noticed was the big lighted letters that chase around the TIMES building and spell out news flashes. It was running backwards.
I was trying to figure out DETROIT BEAT TO HITS NINE GET YANKEES’ when I saw two cops close to me running as hard as they could-backwards, away from me.” Doctor Frost smothered an ejaculation. “What did you say?”
“Reversed entropy-you entered the track backwards-your time arrow was pointing backwards.”
“I figured that out, when I had time to think about it. Just then I was too busy. I was in a clearing in the crowd, but the ring of people-was closing in on me, all running backwards. The cops disappeared in the crowd, and the crowd ran right up to me, stopped, and started to scream. Just as that happened, the traffic lights changed, cars charged out from both directions, driving backwards. It was too much for little Helen. I fainted.