“Give me the entire information on an invention entered by Robert Benton, 34500-D,” he said. The clerk nodded and left the desk. In a few minutes he returned with a metal box.
“This contains the plans and a small working model of the invention,” he stated. He put the box on the desk and opened it. Benton stared at the contents. A small piece of intricate machinery sat squatly in the center. Underneath was a thick pile of metal sheets with diagrams on them. “Can I take this?” Benton asked.
“If you are the owner,” the clerk replied. Benton showed his identification card, the clerk studied it and compared it with the data on the invention. At last he nodded his approval, and Benton closed the box, picked it up and quickly left the building via a side exit.
The side exit let him out on one of the larger underground streets, which was a riot of lights and passing vehicles. He located his direction, and began to search for a communications car to take him home. One came along and he boarded it. After he had been traveling for a few minutes he began to carefully lift the lid of the box and peer inside at the strange model. “What have you got there, sir?” the robot driver asked.
“I wish I knew,” Benton said ruefully. Two winged flyers swooped by and waved at him, danced in the air for a second and then vanished. “Oh, fowl,” Benton murmured, “I forgot my wings.” Well, it was too late to go back and get them, the car was just then beginning to slow down in front of his house. After paying the driver he went inside and locked the door, something seldom done. The best place to observe the contents was in his “consideration” room, where he spent his leisure time while not flying. There, among his books and magazines he could observe the invention at ease.
The set of diagrams was a complete puzzle to him, and the model itself even more so. He stared at it from all angles, from underneath, from above. He tried to interpret the technical symbols of the diagrams, but all to no avail.
There was but one road now open to him. He sought out the “on” switch and clicked it.
For almost a minute nothing happened. Then the room about him began to waver and give way. For a moment it shook like a quantity of jelly. It hung steady for an instant, and then vanished.
He was falling through space like an endless tunnel, and he found himself twisting about frantically, grasping into the blackness for something to take hold of. He fell for an interminable time, helplessly, frightened. Then he had landed, completely unhurt. Although it had seemed so, the fall could not have been very long. His metallic clothes were not even ruffled. He picked himself up and looked about.
The place where he had arrived was strange to him. It was a field. . . such as he had supposed no longer to exist. Waving acres of grain waved in abundance everywhere. Yet, he was certain that in no place on earth did natural grain still grow. Yes, he was positive. He shielded his eyes and gazed at the sun, but it looked the same as it always had. He began to walk.
After an hour the wheat fields ended, but with their end came a wide forest. He knew from his studies that there were no forests left on earth. They had perished years before. Where was he, then?
He began to walk again, this time more quickly. Then he started to run. Before him a small hill rose and he raced to the top of it. Looking down the other side he stared in bewilderment. There was nothing there but a great emptiness. The ground was completely level and barren, there were no trees or any sign of life as far as his eyes could see, only the extensive bleached out land of death.
He started down the other side of the hill toward the plain. It was hot and dry under his feet, but he went forward anyway. He walked on, the ground began to hurt his feet — unaccustomed to long walking — and he grew tired. But he was determined to continue. Some small whisper within his mind compelled him to maintain his pace without slowing down.
“Don’t pick it up,” a voice said.
“I will,” he grated, half to himself, and stooped down.
Voice! From where! He turned quickly, but there was nothing to be seen. Yet the voice had come to him and it had seemed — for a moment — as if it were perfectly natural for voices to come from the air. He examined the thing he was about to pick up. It was a glass globe about as big around as his fist.
“You will destroy your valuable Stability,” the voice said.
“Nothing can destroy Stability,” he answered automatically. The glass globe was cool and nice against his palm. There was something inside, but heat from the glowing orb above him made it dance before his eyes, and he could not tell exactly what it was.
“You are allowing your mind to be controlled by evil things,” the voice said to him. “Put the globe down and leave.”
“Evil things?” he asked, surprised. It was hot, and he was beginning to feel thirsty. He started to thrust the globe inside his tunic.
“Don’t,” the voice ordered, “that is what it wants you to do.”
The globe was nice against his chest. It nestled there, cooling him off from the fierce heat of the sun. What was it the voice was saying?
“You were called here by it through time,” the voice explained. “You obey it now without question. I am its guardian, and ever since this time-world was created I have guarded it. Go away, and leave it as you found it.”
Definitely, it was too warm on the plain. He wanted to leave; the globe was now urging him to, reminding him of the heat from above, the dryness in his mouth, the tingling in his head. He started off, and as he clutched the globe to him he heard the wail of despair and fury from the phantom voice.
That was almost all he remembered. He did recall that he made his way back across the plain to the fields of grain, through them, stumbling and staggering, and at last to the spot where he had first appeared. The glass globe inside his coat urged him to pick up the small time machine from where he had left it. It whispered to him what dial to change, which button to press, which knob to set. Then he was falling again, falling back up the corridor of time, back, back to the graying mist from whence he had fallen, back to his own world.
Suddenly the globe urged him to stop. The journey through time was not yet complete: there was still something that he had to do.
“You say your name is Benton? What can I do for you?” the Controller asked. “You have never been here before, have you?”
He stared at the Controller. What did he mean? Why, he had just left the office! Or had he? What day was it? Where had he been? He rubbed his head dizzily and sat down in the big chair. The Controller watched him anxiously.
“Are you all right?” he asked. “Can I help you?”
“I’m all right,” Benton said. There was something in his hands.
“I want to register this invention to be approved by the Stability Council,” he said, and handed the time machine to the Controller.
“Do you have the diagrams of its construction?” the Controller asked.
Benton dug deeply into his pocket and brought out the diagrams. He tossed them on the Controller’s desk and laid the model beside them.
“The Council will have no trouble determining what it is,” Benton said. His head ached, and he wanted to leave. He got to his feet.
“I am going,” he said, and went out the side door through which he had entered. The Controller stared after him.
“Obviously,” the First Member of the Control Council said, “he had been using the thing. You say the first time he came he acted as if he had been there before, but on the second visit he had no memory of having entered an invention, or even having been there before?”
“Right,” the Controller said. “I thought it was suspicious at the time of the first visit, but I did not realize until he came the second time what the meaning was. Undoubtedly, he used it.”
“The Central Graph records that an unstabilizing element is about to come up,” the Second Member remarked. “I would wager that Mr. Benton is it.”
“A time machine!” the First Member said. “Such a thing can be dangerous. Did he have anything with him when he came the — ah — first time?”