He stumped upstairs to Loring’s loft in the West 70’s.
Loring was badly overplaying the role of casual roughneck. Gangling, redheaded and unshaved, he grinned at Born and said: “Watcha think of soy futures, W. J.? Hold or switch?”
W. J. Born began automatically: “If I knew I wouldn’t —oh, don’t be silly. Show me the confounded thing.”
Loring showed him. The whining generators were unchanged; the tall Van de Graaf accumulator still looked like something out of a third-rate horror movie. The thirty square feet of haywired vacuum tubes and resistances were still an incomprehensible tangle. But since his last visit a phone booth without a phone had been added. A sheet-copper disk set into its ceiling was connected to the machinery by a ponderous cable. Its floor was a slab of polished glass.
“That’s it,” Loring said. “I got it at a junkyard and fixed it up pretty. You want to watch a test on the mice?”
“No,” W.,J. Born said. “I want to try it myself. What do you think I’ve been paying you for?” He paused. “Do you guarantee its safety?”
“Look, W. J.,” Loring said, “I guarantee nothing. I think this will send you two years into the future. I think if you’re back in it at the end of two hours you’ll snap
back to the present. I’ll tell you this, though. If it does send you into the future, you had better be back in it at the end of two hours. Otherwise you may snap back into the same space as a strolling pedestrian or a moviBg_car— and an H-bomb will be out of your league.”
W. J. Bern’s ulcer twinged. With difficulty he asked: “Is there anything else I ought to know?”
“Nope,” Loring said after considering for a moment. “You’re just a paying passenger.”
“Then let’s go.” W. J. Born checked to make sure that he had his memorandum book and smooth-working pen in his pocket and stepped into the telephone booth.
Loring closed the door, grinned, waved and vanished— literally vanished, while Born was looking at him.
Born yanked the door open and said: “Loring! What the devil—” And then he saw that it was late afternoon instead of early morning. That Loring was nowhere hi the loft. That the generators were silent and the tubes dark and cold. That there was a mantle of dust and a faint musty smell.
He rushed from the big room and down the stairs. It was the same street in the West 70’s. Two hours, he thought, and looked at his watch. It said 9:55, but the sun unmistakably said it was late afternoon. Something had happened. He resisted an impulse to grab a passing high-school boy and ask him what year it was. There was a newsstand down the street, and Born went to it faster than he had moved in years. He threw down a dime and snatched a Post dated—September llth, 1977. He had done it.
Eagerly he riffled to the Post’s meager financial page. Moon Mining and Smelting had opened at 27. Uranium at 19. United Com at 24. Catastrophic lows! The crash had come!
He looked at his watch again, in panic. Nine-fifty-nine. It had said 9:55. He’d have to be back in the phone booth by 11:55 or—he shuddered. An H-bomb would be out of his league.
Now to pinpoint the crash. “Cab!” he yelled, waving
his paper. It eased to the curb. “Public library,” W. J. Born grunted, and leaned back to read the Post with glee. The headline said: 25000 RIOT HERE FOR UPPED JOBLESS DOLE. Naturally; naturally. He gasped as he saw who had won the 1976 presidential election. Lord, what odds he’d be able to get back in 1975 if he wanted to bet on the nomination! NO CRIME WAVE, SAYS COMMISSIONER. Things hadn’t changed very much after all. BLONDE ‘MODEL
HACKED IN TUB/ MYSTERY BOYFRIEND SOUGHT. He read
that one all the way through, caught by a two-column photo of the blonde model for a hosiery account. And then he noticed that the cab wasn’t moving. It was caught in a rock-solid traffic jam. The tune was 10:05.
“Driver,” he said.
The man turned around, soothing and scared. A fare was a fare; there was a depression on. “It’s all right, mister. We’ll be out of here in a minute. They turn off the Drive and that blocks the avenue for a couple of minutes, that’s all. We’ll be rolling in a minute.”