THE WRONG END OF TIME BY JOHN BRUNNER

He completed each drawing with quick, sure strokes; he had studied these enigmatic pictures-or at least the

photos of them brought back from Pluto’s orbit, smeared a little with free-space cosmic radiation, but with pretty good detail surviving-and they were branded on his memory. Of course, pen-sketches like these were hard to makke clear. He added a’ caption to each, summarising what the experts had deduced about them.

Finally, when the others had finished their food, he gestured for a space to be cleared and laid them out in sequence in front of Danty.

“This first one is obviously a view of our galaxy,” he said. “One can see the spiral arms. Then there’s a clear view of the alien ship, which is a plain ovoid, but quite unlike anything of ours, so it’s unmistakable. Then there’s a view of the sun from a long way out in space-from about where the alien ship is orbiting, in fact. You can be certain of that because the constellations in the background match. I don’t know astronomy well enough to do more than dot them in. Then there’s a view of Earth, here; the continents are perfectly recognizable, though they’re partly masked by cloud, as though the aliens are working from a particular picture.

“After that, there’s a human-built rocket, possibly a satellite-launcher, possibly one of our own ships that made the Pluto trip first. That’s interesting; apparently the engineers have spotted some detail-refinements in the design, and they seem promising. It’s rather as though you were to try to draw a Model T from memory and absentmindedly make it look like a much more recent make of car.

“Then there’s this. An explosion. Notice it’s centred on

the United States. And in the original I’m afraid I

haven’t drawn this very well-in the actual picture you

can see it’s nuclear. The likeliest explanation, the one that

frightens us so much, and drove my superiors to send me

here, is that it’s a strike by the aliens.”

Magda was staring, fascinated, although Lora was leaning back in her chair with her eyes half-closed and Danty was bestowing only casual glances on each successive picture. Suddenly irritated by his lack of interest, Sheklov let his tone grow sharper.

“Next is this one, a plain circle. That puzzled us terribly. But the logical conclusion is that it’s the Earth again, wiped out by clouds of dust and smoke. Because here . . .” He reached for the last two drawings.

“This is fire. No mistake about it. Something burning violently. And last of all there’s-this.”

He laid down the caveman picture, the figure draped in skins waving a stone axe. And sat back.

There was a dead silence.

Eventually Danty picked up the drawings, like Magda gathering her tarot cards, and reversed them. He laid them out again on the table in the opposite order, turning each around as he set it down so as to be the correct way up from Sheklov’s viewpoint the other side of the table.

“No,” he said. “This way.”

For a long moment Sheklov stared at them. Then he raised his eyes to Danty’s calm, amused face.

“Are you-sure?” he said huskily.

“As sure as I am that we’re going to find a way over the border. dodge the guards. dodge the mines, get to safety. And that’s close to 100 per cent. I only got one life, Vassily, and I’m fond of it in spite of everything.”

Sheklov sat frozen. In his mind he could hear words, as clear as though someone were uttering them aloud:

The last shall be first, and the first . . .

“Right,” Danty said with a chuckle. “Let’s move on.”

. xacvn .

“But he was wrong,” Bratcheslavsky murmured, taking from its.pack yet another of his endless series of papyrosi and bending its cardboard tube to a right angle preparatory to lighting it at the flame of the hanging brass lamp that swung from the centre of the small room’s white ceiling.

Standing by the window that gave such a fine view of the city of Alma-Ata, shrouded at the moment in the pale gray mists of early evening, Sheklov said without looking around, “Of course he wasn’t He was simply lying.”

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