Part 1

DICTATOR OF TIME

_An Exciting Novel_

By NELSON S. BOND

Humanity against the Arch-Brain of the Future! Twentieth-Century Larry Wilson and Sandra Day lead the Armageddon of the Ages against Harg, crafty, vain monster-intellect bent on warping Man to his Inhuman Will!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories Spring 1940. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Larry Wilson was going to miss his train. He swung from his cab at Philadelphia's Broad Street Station, glanced swiftly at his wrist-watch, tossed a bill in the general direction of the cabby, then dashed for the staircase that led to the train platform. His watch showed exactly 10:59. The New York express was scheduled to leave at eleven sharp.

Behind him, morning traffic made its customary din in the streets of the Quaker City. Automobile horns _whonked_ belligerently. Radio loudspeakers blared from the doorways of tiny Market Street shops. A newsboy bellowed headlines on the European war situation. A bus chugged into the station, disgorged its cargo of human freight, lumbered ponderously on down the street. A vendor offered dried lavender; his whine was a thin, discordant note in the hum of a busy city.

But Larry Wilson, intent only on gaining the train platform above, did not notice these things. He brushed by a puffing matron at the foot of the stairs, steamed past a descending red-cap, and noticed with only casual interest as he took the steps three at a time a silken-clad calf before him. He might make it yet, he thought hopefully, if--

Then, suddenly, something was indefinably _wrong_!

Larry had ascended these stairs dozens of times in the past, both leisurely and, as now, at top speed. But at no time had they ever been like this! His stride faltered; then, even as the first, tiny fingers of wonderment plucked at his bewildered brain, he realized that the bright electric lights that limned the staircase had vanished. That in their place was a dull, unearthly, grayish glow that seemed to emanate equally from the walls, the staircase, and from the roof above him.

His foot, reaching for the next step, encountered no support. He staggered, thrown off balance, and stumbled forward to his hands and knees. Yet he was not bruised. As he fell he realized, with numb astonishment, that the steps were no longer there!

Wildly he scrambled to save himself. His shoulder collided with something fragrantly yielding. His outthrust hand clutched warm, firm flesh cased in sheer silk. Then he was falling helplessly, headlong, dizzily, down a dim tunnel of spinning grayness--and he was rolling over and over on a warm, grassy turf. The scent of flower-laden air was in his nostrils.

And a voice was saying indignantly, "Well, really! _If_ you don't mind--!"

* * * * *

In one hand Larry still clutched his bag. In the other--. He flushed, relaxed his grip in swift embarrassment. The girl was the one whom he had glimpsed before him on the steps of the Broad Street Station. It was her ankle that, in his moment of blind groping, his hand had clutched.

"I--I'm sorry!" gulped Larry. "I didn't mean to be--" Then he stopped, staring about him transfixed. "But what's this? Where the he--I mean, where in blazes are we?"

They were lying on a grassy plain horizoned by a forest of towering trees that reached aimlessly toward a wan and cloudless sky. The girl, her own blue eyes wide in astonishment, forgot her pique in amazement that matched his.

"I don't know. I was running for the train--"

"So was I. I saw you on the steps. Just then the staircase seemed to become strangely gray--"

"And it moved!" added the girl. "I remember now. Something like a _ripple_ passed over it--"

"I didn't see that," admitted Larry. "I was too busy running. But--but where are we, anyway?"

A touch of panic flickered in the girl's eyes.

"We--we couldn't be dead?"

Larry shook his head. "I thought of that. But it isn't likely. Not both of us. One of us might have fallen down the steps and broken a neck--but not two, together. And there was no explosion or anything like that. I don't see--"

Suddenly the girl gasped, clutching his arm.

"Look! Over there in the trees!"

Larry looked--and moved swiftly. With a jerk, he ripped open his bag, pawed through its contents, and came up with a snub-nosed automatic.

"Get behind me!" he shouted. "I don't know what's going on here, but--"

"Don't shoot!" The girl's hands tightened swiftly about his wrist, dragged it down as he drew a careful bead on the towering beast that, from the edge of the grassy glen, surveyed the two through tiny, myopic eyes.

An incredible mountain of flesh it was. More than eighty feet long with a rubbery, elephantine hide that draped its ugly carcass in sinewy ripples. Its long neck, surmounted by a ridiculously minute head, twitched nervously from one side to the other as its inadequate nostrils strove to identify this strange, tantalizingly foreign scent.

As Larry watched spellbound, the gigantic monster broke into lumbering motion. Its huge feet created thunder as it crashed blindly through the forest, leaving in its wake a swath of broken young trees and trampled underbrush.

"It won't attack us," explained the girl in answer to Larry's questioning stare. "It's herbivorous. That is, if it's what I think it is. It was probably more frightened than we were. But how it ever got here, in _this_ age--"

"For Pete's sake, what was it?"

The girl shook her head. "Unless," she answered slowly, "I've gone completely mad--and I may easily have done so--it was a brontosaurus! An ancient reptile of the Mesozoic Age. _The last one should have died over a hundred million years ago!_"

"Preposterous!" gasped Larry.

"I know it's preposterous. But we saw it. Which means--" The girl turned a puzzled face to him. "Do you know anything about Time?"

"Time?" Larry glanced at his watch. "Why, it's exactly 10:59. Say, that's funny! It was just 10:59 when I was running up those steps."

"I don't mean that kind of time. Though that may have something to do with it. I mean, do you know anything about the scientific theory of Time? For if our experience means anything ... if that really was a brontosaurus we saw ... and if your wrist-watch has stopped at 10:59...."

"Yes?" said Larry.

"Then," said the girl solemnly, "somehow or other you and I have experienced a temporal shift outside the ken of Earthly physics. We are lost in Time!"

* * * * *

"Neatly put, young lady!" said a quiet, approving voice. "Very neatly decided. I should not have expected such quick intelligence from one of your era."

Larry and the girl turned swiftly. Standing near them was a tiny man, no higher than Larry's shoulders. He wore a curious one-piece garment of woven metal fabric, on the belt or harness of which depended a host of studded instruments, pouches, and oddly shaped tools or ornaments.

Upon his overlarge, almost bulbous head was a sort of cap which completely covered his scalp and ears. Strange telescopic glasses, covering his bulging eyes, lent his face an elfin quality. There was a pleased smile on his lips--one which disclosed a pale, double ridge of cartilage in his upper and lower jaws where his teeth should have been. His face was smooth and hairless.

"Who," demanded Larry, "are you? And how did you get here?"

"You were so engrossed in the brontosaurus," said the diminutive stranger, "that you did not notice my approach. Permit me to introduce myself. I am Harg-Ofortu, Chief Archeologist of the Planetary Museum. And you?"

"Larry Wilson. Civil engineer. And this is Miss--Miss--"

"Sandra Day," supplied the girl. "I am--or was--assistant curator of the Philadelphia Museum."

"So?" The little man nodded delightedly. "Don't tell me, now. Let me guess!" He placed a wizened finger on his temple, studied the two carefully. "Those garments ... and that antique firearm ... your early Amerglish speech ... I should judge you to be from that period just preceding the Communal World State. About the year--let me see--the year 2000 A.D. Is that right?"

"You know damned well it's right!" snorted Larry. "This is the year 1940, of course. What's the gag?"

"Gag?" repeated Harg wonderingly. "Oh, yes--gag! A jest; a trick. Why, there is no--er--gag. I was merely attempting to place your position in the world line. You see, _this_ is the year M-62. You would call it--" He pondered briefly. "You would call it--25,983 A.D."

"What!" Larry's fingers crept tighter about the butt of his automatic. "Hey, Sandra, let's get out of here! This guy's nuts!"

Harg smiled upon the young engineer benignly, but his hand toyed with one of the metallic studs on his harness. "I shouldn't attempt anything--er--rash, if I were you," he suggested quietly. "I believe the young lady is beginning to comprehend. Am I not right, Miss Day?"

"I--I think so," nodded the girl faintly. "Larry, this really is the two-hundred-and-sixtieth century. Harg is not fooling us. Through some incredible accident ... or maybe by design...."

Harg rubbed his wee hands together triumphantly.

"But by design!" he cried. "Oh, most assuredly by design! _I_ brought you here! I, Harg-Ofortu! You are the results of my experiments."

"Experiments?" Larry didn't like the sound of the word. His eyes narrowed.

"Yes. The results of my experiments with the Time warp. Surely you know that Time can be warped? But, yes--of course you do. Even in your unenlightened era men had begun to recognize that fact. Still, it has taken all these intervening millenia for a human brain to unravel the problem of utilizing this knowledge. And I, Harg-Ofortu, have done it! I have brought you here, alive and unharmed, as a living proof of my genius."

"And now that we're here--?" began Sandra.

Harg beamed.

"Ah, the glory that is yours! You most fortunate children of a slumbrous past. From you we shall learn many things, things to fill gaps in our history of mankind. From your infantile brains we can extract racial memories stretching back to the early simian beginnings. From your bodies we can learn the history of man's early structure.

"You have hair! Teeth! Ears! It would not even surprise me to find that you have rudimentary gills. Maybe vermiform appendices! Oh, what marvelous subjects you will make for the dissecting table!"

Sandra's color fled; her breath hissed sharply.

"Dissecting table! But surely you can't mean to use us for--"

Harg silenced her with a tiny gesture. "Come, now. Let us waste no more time in idle chatter. We have delayed long enough, and I am afire with impatience. We will go to the laboratory."

* * * * *

Until this morning, Larry had maintained an incredulous silence. But now, with a sudden movement, he stepped before Sandra, his automatic leveled.

"Not us, fella!" he rapped. "I'm not such a keen student of this Time business, but I know when I'm behind the little black ball numbered eight. You got us here, you say? Okay--we've had a nice visit but we don't like the climate. So we'll be toddling off now. Send us back where we belong. And--" He jiggled the gun threateningly. "And get working on it before I make you look like a second-hand punch-board."

"My dear aborigine!" laughed Harg softly. His tiny fingers sought and pressed one of his metal studs. A golden glow diffused about him, forming a radiant mesh of shimmering light about his body. "Certainly you do not think to harm _me_ with your elementary weapon of destruction? Now, come, before I am compelled to use force."

"You," said Larry grimly, "asked for it!" And his finger tightened on the trigger. The automatic barked leaden death directly at Harg's breast. The little man of time yet-to-be smiled maddeningly. Before Larry's stupefied gaze, a flattened, shapeless blob of lead _splatted_ against the golden haze, fell dully to the ground!

Again Larry fired. This time Harg moved slightly. The bullet glanced off the lustrous force-armor, ricocheted from the ochre web to fly screaming into the woods beyond. Larry flung his impotent weapon away.

"Well, if that won't do it, maybe _this_--" And he stepped toward the smirking scientist, fists clenched. His arms touched the thin mist, then his heaving chest.

And, strangely, his head was aswim with an overwhelming giddiness. His limbs were numb with a creeping impotence that suffused his body, dulled his senses. The gray sky above seemed to recede far, far into the distance. There was mocking laughter in his ears, darkness gathering before his eyes. The last sound he heard as he sank, weak and helpless, into the swirling haze of unconsciousness, was the cry of Sandra Day--

"_Larry!_"

II

First all was blackness, then in that blackness was a spot of light that grew larger and larger and ever larger until the world was filled with roaring light. And now the dim, fluttering sounds began to make sense, and a voice was saying, "I see the young man is awakening. Good. Now we will take a little trip through my laboratories."

This was Larry Wilson's welcome to the incredible surroundings in which he found himself.

He was lying on a small pallet. Or, rather, two small pallets which had been placed end to end to accommodate his six-foot frame. Above him was a silken coverlet, beneath his head a soft pillow cased in the same material. He moved an arm experimentally and discovered that his rough, English tweed business suit was missing, as were his heavy leather brogues. While he had been unconscious, someone had replaced his Twentieth Century garments with those of Harg's era.

A soft and pliable leather harness fitted snugly about his waist--but as he stretched himself up from his cot he saw that his gear lacked the multitude of cryptic studs and instruments with which the scientist's had been decked.

Then, "Larry--you're all right?"

Sandra Day, who had leaped to her feet as Larry stirred, flew across the room. Her clothing, too, had been supplanted by that of the later era. Her harness differed from Larry's only in the addition of a cupped breast-girdle similar to that once worn by Egyptian women. Leather, soft and white and pliant, clung closely to her slim, lithe body. As Larry looked at her, she faltered. A slow flush mantled her cheeks. Harg moved forward, a delighted gleam in his protruding eyes.

"Modesty!" he said in a tone of enchantment. "Sex shame! Imagine! And we had believed that it died out long before the Machine Era. It would be interesting to mate you two young people and--" He stroked his temple thoughtfully. "But we will think of that later. Come, my dear young savages. Let me show you my _other_ experiments."

Larry's eyes, smoldering rebellion, sought those of Sandra. The girl's cheeks still flamed with a high pride, but she nodded almost imperceptibly, cautioning him to cause no immediate trouble. He grunted, "Okay, let's go. What is there to see?"

The chamber in which he had awakened was a square box of metal, lighted from above by concealed globes of cold light. No windows or doors marred the smooth luster of the walls. But as Harg stepped forward and touched his fingers to a spot on the wall briefly, a section slid back, exposing a brilliantly lighted corridor beyond.

Silently the three moved into the passage, Larry bringing up the rear. As he passed through the portal, he studied it cautiously. If he could only learn the secret of the operation of that door....

"It would do you," Harg interrupted his scrutiny, "no good, of course. This is but one of many inner chambers. There are many other doors and many guards to pass. Moreover, you cannot return to your Time ever--without my help."

Larry started guiltily. The man was uncanny! He seemed to be able to read thoughts!

"Now, here--" said Harg, "are the results of some of my earlier attempts to bring life-samples through the Time warp."

They had turned a corner and entered into a long chamber walled into sections. In each section there was an animal of some sort. So lifelike were the postures of these beasts that Larry half expected a cacaphony of protest to greet their entrance. But the creatures were stiff, silent. Harg smiled his white-gummed, toothless smile.

"Dead," he said regretfully. "All of them. Their bodies survived the passage through the Time warp. But when they arrived, the spark had gone. We have identified most of them. But some still puzzle us."

* * * * *

He pointed to the motionless figures in the cages as, one by one, they passed them. "A cow," he said, "which I brought through from the Fiftieth Century. Notice the exaggerated udders. The result of centuries of cross-breeding for milk. Somewhat different from the same beast of your day, I presume.

"This next is a pterodactyl from the Jurassic Age. I am glad to say it lived two whole weeks after coming down through the warp. The hardier animals were the only ones to survive at all--until I perfected my process. You have already seen my brontosaurus. A harmless thing. We allow it to roam freely, but we had to destroy the dinosaur that came after it....

"You recognize this sabre-toothed tiger? And the kangaroo? An interesting subject, by the way. I brought it through from the year 12,000. It had reached a high stage of development and could converse in simple phrases. A far cry from man's estate, however."

"You mean," said Sandra, "it could talk?"

"Oh, yes. But then many of the lower animals _do_ speak, you know. Of course I use the ancient meaning of the word. I mean they employ the vocal organs. They have not _this_!" He tapped the skull covering which both Larry and the girl had noticed before.

"That?" said Larry wonderingly. "What is it?"

But the little man was wringing his hands in exasperation. "Now, I declare!" he cried. "All this time, you have been opening and closing your mouths while we were communicating, and I thought it was caused by some physical disturbance! _You_ use vocal converse, too!"

"But of course," said the girl.

"It is quite unnecessary!" snapped the scientist. "With the _menaudo_, I can understand your thoughts clearly--and communicate my own to you, as well. In the future, both of you will be kind enough to think without speaking!"

"Why?" asked Larry bluntly. "Miss Day and I aren't mind-reading big-brains like you. If we wish to speak to each other--"

For the first time since they had met him, Harg's ever-present smile faded. A trace of his annoying superiority, self-confidence, seeped away. In his eyes there was a groping expression oddly akin to fear.

"There is nothing you need tell her!" he ordered. "I do not care to risk my--" He stopped suddenly, cannily. When he spoke again, it was in a milder tone. "You may, if you wish, converse with your mouths when I am not present. But in my presence I require you to think your conversation."

A sudden suspicion began to form in Larry's mind. He stifled it instantly; thrust it from him lest Harg grasp that faint, half-formed thought. Hastily he changed the subject.

"This other beast--" he began aloud. Then, remembering Harg's warning, he stopped and rephrased the query in his mind. "This other strange beast," he thought. "What is it?"

He knew, then, why Harg had taunted him for his interest in the mechanism of the door. For swift as an arrow the answer formed itself in his brain.

"A phoenix," replied Harg, "of the late Stone Age. A most curious creature; half animal, half bird. Originally it was a native of the planet Mars. It adapted itself to utter cold and airlessness when that planet's atmosphere waned. A few phoenix migrated to Earth, but failed to survive in our heavy atmosphere."

"That explains," cried Sandra, "the legend of the phoenix prevalent in our day. It was believed that the bird destroyed itself in fire to rise again, reborn."

"An amusing misapprehension," nodded Harg. "No doubt it was founded on someone's having seen a phoenix pass unscathed through flame. The creature was quite immune to temperature changes. But not to disease. It was this that, finally, caused its extinction.

"Now, in this next chamber--" He paused, obviously piqued. "I must confess, we have been unable to classify this beast. It is utterly unknown to our science. Apparently it does not breed true, nor can we determine its age--"

Larry and Sandra stared once at the quadruped in the booth, then broke into a duet of long and hearty laughter. Harg stared at them annoyedly. "Well?" he snapped. "Well?"

Larry said solemnly, "Harg, you've caught a rare beast there. There are none left in your day and age except the two-legged variety."

Harg said, "You know it, then? Its name, quickly!"

"We call it," Larry told him, grinning, "the jackass!"

* * * * *

The tour of inspection completed, Harg returned his two captives to the cell they shared. When the door closed behind him, Larry turned swiftly to Sandra.

"Now what? I'm not sure I understand just what's going on around here, but whatever it is, it means trouble. Spelled with a capital 'Harg.' That little monkey didn't knock me cold with his yellow fuzz just for the hell of it. He means business."

"I'm afraid," said Sandra seriously, "he intends to do just what he said--and in just as offhand a manner as that in which he mentioned it. To probe our brains for race memories, then dissect us for biological knowledge."

"But why?" demanded Larry. "For Lord's sake, why? We're human beings, the same as he. He couldn't kill us in cold blood, just to--"

"To him," said Sandra, "we are nothing but a pair of savages. He is not being deliberately cruel, no more so than a Twentieth Century scientist who practices vivisection to add to his knowledge. He is proud of us as an acquisition. May even like us in some cold, inhuman fashion, as we like cats and dogs. But we represent a scientific problem to be solved--and there is no thought in his mind of mercy."

"Then," said Larry forcefully, "we've got to pull our freight. Get out of here. But how? That's the rub."

"We're helpless against him," mused the girl, "on all save one point. That is the subject he wanted to avoid. Hearing. Larry--Harg can't hear! Not as we understand the word. His ears have atrophied. Or, perhaps--" A sudden light shone in her eyes. "I have it! His ears are--"

"Wait a minute!" broke in Larry excitedly. "For once I beat you to the draw. I guessed it in the museum. These jaspers of the 260th Century are not only _unable_ to hear, they're _afraid_ to hear! They wear those leather headgears because they have to. Because something had made them extremely sensitive to percussion."

"And I know," chimed in the girl positively, "what caused it. It was the change!"

"Change?"

"Yes. You've noticed the sky, haven't you? Didn't you see something strange about it?"

Larry thought for a moment. Then, "The sun! There isn't any sun."

"There is a sun," cried the girl, "but you can't see it. It's concealed behind a huge dome of _impervite_--a sort of leaded, polarized glass. Harg told me all about it while you were unconscious.

"In the year 17,000 A.D., or thereabouts, there was a terrible catastrophe on Earth. Man's constant drainage of electrical energy created a rupture in the Heaviside layer, and the layer collapsed. As you know, the Heaviside layer is Earth's only protection against potentials from space, from the undiluted strength of the Milliken rays.

* * * * *

"Without that protection, life on Earth was doomed. So large areas were domed over with this sixty-foot-thick layer of _impervite_. And--"