The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Gun Runners, by Ralph Williams

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Title: The Gun Runners

Author: Ralph Williams

Release Date: January 31, 2019 [EBook #58798]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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The gun runners were professionals, and except for one minor detail the operation had been very well planned.

The middle twentieth century was chosen as a source of supply after a careful survey of all factors pro and con. The gun runners did not want the mass weapons of their own day, they wanted selective weapons which could be used for private murder. In the mid-twentieth century, the level of technology was such that well-made and reliable weapons were available; and at the same time, social control was still sketchy enough to permit quiet procurement of such merchandise, if one knew how to go about it and was suitably financed.

The gun runners, two men and a woman, knew how to go about it, and they were suitably financed. The profits in their business were commensurate with the risks—which were not small.

In their world unauthorized time travel was highly illegal, because of certain possible undesirable effects on the total space-time continuum, and was severely punished. Moreover, it was personally uncomfortable and dangerous.

They came from an old ingrowing world which had never reached the stars, where there were only men and their works, no blade of grass or micro-organism or sparrow which did not directly serve men. In their time, hereditary traits which had meant untimely and certain death in earlier times had persisted and multiplied. Immunities and instincts which had fitted men to live with tigers and streptococci, and seek their food in the wilderness, had atrophied.

The twentieth century was a dangerous environment for these people, more so perhaps than the Eocene would have been for homo sapiens. In preparation for their venture, it had been necessary for them to undergo a drastic and painful series of tests, inoculations, conditionings and plastic surgery.

Unfortunately, it had not occurred to them that their time machine might need similar protection. The equipment was basically electronic, and the power leads were encased in a new insulation, a synthetic protein which in very thin films afforded a near perfect dielectric. It was also, as it happened, an almost perfect culture medium for certain bacilli, non-existent in the sterile future, but healthy and thriving and full of appetite in the twentieth century.

When the gun runners prepared to return to their own time with their cargo of contraband there were small flashes of fire, and smoke curled briefly from various parts of the equipment. Their temporal environment remained unchanged.

The gun runners were not technicians, they were specialists in other fields. They pulled and prodded uncertainly here and there, pushed the buttons again.

Nothing happened.

The senior gun runner, a man who wore in this century the appearance of a quiet, gray-haired professional man, and who wore in any century the habit of command, came to a decision. He spoke in their own language, a language time had pruned to telegraphic brevity:

"If tamper, make worse. Electronics technicians this era. Use."

The second man raised an eyebrow. "Knowledge adequate? Time travel not simple."

The older man shrugged. "Theory not simple, machine simple. Savages clever fingers. Adequate stimulus, can solve."

"And after? Disposition?"

"Displacement effect. Or—" the senior gun runner sketched a quick gesture of pulling a trigger.

The younger man nodded slowly, still dubious—which was proper, it was his function to be suspicious and questioning, as it was the other's to command. "Stimulus?"

"Profit. Curiosity. And ... Moirta."

Both men turned and looked appraisingly at the woman, who had not yet entered the discussion. She was a very narrow specialist, within the wider specialty of gun running and murder. Now she moved her shoulders uneasily. "Displacement effect," she suggested, "near limit. If caught—" she made an unpleasantly suggestive spastic gesture.

The chief gun runner shrugged again. "If caught," he repeated the gesture she had made, "in any case. No choice. Find technician now."

George Dolan studied his visitors thoughtfully.

"Well, actually," he said, "our work is design, not repair. I suppose I could send a man out to look over your job and recommend a firm to handle it. Is that what you want?"

"Mr. Dolan," the gray-haired man said earnestly, "I am afraid you still misunderstand me. The work we wish done is small in scale, but very intricate and delicate, and highly confidential. We have investigated your qualifications, and you are the man we want to handle it, you personally. We do not want you to mention this work to any other person—not even your wife."

"I don't have a wife," Dolan said. "That's no problem." He hesitated. "Do I need security clearance? That'll take time."

"No security clearance. This is private work."

Dolan frowned. Private work, money no object, very secret—there were implications to this offer which he did not like.

On the other hand—

His eye strayed to the young woman who sat quietly beside the man, silently exercising her specialty. The plastic surgeons of her era had done a beautiful and nearly perfect job on her body; but bone-deep, in ways an observant man could sense, she was still not a twentieth century woman. In a city full of women who made a profession of being young and handsome, she too was young and handsome, but different.

Dolan was an observant man, and a curious one.

He looked back at Brown. "If you could just give me some idea—" he said tentatively.

"The equipment, as I have said, is very intricate, and we are not technicians. We prefer that you make your own diagnosis."

Dolan pursed his lips uncertainly. He glanced again at the girl.

"OK," he said at last, "I'll look at it. I can't promise anything."

He punched a button on the desk intercom. "Betty, I'm going out to look at a job with Mr. Brown and Miss—uh—" he glanced at the girl.

"Jones," the gray-haired man said. "Miss Jones."

"Oh, yes, excuse me." Dolan smiled at the girl and drew a brief quirk of the lips in response. "—with Mr. Brown and Miss Jones," he continued. "Be back some time this afternoon."

"OK," he said to his clients. "Let's go see this intricate and delicate problem."

For reasons compatible with the profession of gun running and the nature of time travel, the time translator had been located outside of urban limits—the city was to be rather systematically bombed in the near future—on a secluded and stable granite dike, within the shell of a frame cottage. Dolan observed all this without comment.

They were met outside the cottage by a man about Dolan's age.

"This is my colleague, Mr. Smith," Brown introduced him.

Mr. Smith offered his hand. As he turned to lead them inside, Dolan noticed that the light summer jacket Smith wore did not drape well over the right hip pocket. He filed this fact also for future reference.

"And here," Brown said, "is the machine we wish repaired."

In the center of the room was an orderly jumble of shiny black geometric solids, laced together with wires and bars of silver, the whole mounted on a polished ebony platform. It was handsome, in a bizarre sort of way; but certainly it did not look like any electronic gear Dolan had ever seen, and he had seen almost all there was, at one time or another.

He studied it carefully, turning it this way and that in his mind, trying to find some familiar feature to grasp it by. There was none.

"Well," he asked skeptically, "what is it? What does it do?"

Brown shook his head. "The purpose of the machine must remain secret," he said firmly. "We think the trouble may be superficial, some minor thing an expert could quickly repair; and we wish you to work on it from that viewpoint, without inquiring into its purpose."

"I see," Dolan said noncommittally. The whole business was screwy. For two cents, he thought—

He glanced at the girl. She sat quietly on a chair, hands folded demurely in her lap, watching him, practising her specialty. Well, maybe, he thought, it wouldn't hurt to look, as long as he was here anyway.

He walked over to the equipment and bent to examine it. The silver conductors seemed to be uninsulated, although in places they were closely paired. He frowned and scratched tentatively at one with his fingernail. The metal showed bright. There was a slight tarnish, that was all, no insulation.

He noticed something else. Back of the equipment, at an angle unnoticeable from the side he had first approached, were several cut and dangling wires, some of which had been partially replaced by quite ordinary high tension cable. Spread about on the floor were lengths and coils of wire.

"You've been working on it yourselves?" he asked Brown.

"No, no. As I told you, we are not technicians. Before we contacted you, we had already tried another man. He proved unsatisfactory. We, uh, paid him off and sought a better qualified person."

"Unsatisfactory, eh? Umm, I see." Dolan's eyes moved thoughtfully to Smith, who lounged carelessly just inside the door. The coat now hung smoothly, it was only when Smith moved that the hint of a bulge showed.

Dolan was a curious man, but also a prudent and thoughtful one. He decided he did not want this job, it was time to get out. "I'll have to go back for some equipment," he said casually. "Can you drive me in?"

He knew immediately that it was not going over. Brown frowned and sucked thoughtfully at his lower lip.

"If you could make a list," Brown offered, "I could get it for you. You could then be making a preliminary survey while I am gone. There is a question of time involved, we wish these repairs made as quickly as possible."

"Well ... I'm not sure ..."

"Miss Jones," Brown said persuasively, "is as well-versed as any of us in the operation of the equipment. She could answer any questions you might have."

The girl smiled and nodded. Smith, lounging by the door, casually moved his hand to his belt, sweeping back his unbuttoned jacket slightly. Brown stood waiting.

Dolan studied them silently for a moment. They couldn't force him to take the job, he could simply turn them down and walk out. Or could he? For some reason he did not quite understand, he was just a little reluctant to test the idea.

"OK," he said shortly. He took his notebook and began to scribble a list of equipment on a blank page. A message, he wondered, like they do it in the movies? A request, maybe, for some outrageous piece of equipment that would tip off the boys in the shop? No good, they weren't that smart, and for that matter neither was he. Besides, what did he really know? Nothing, except that he just didn't want this job very much.

He tore the page out of the notebook and handed it to Brown. Brown slipped it in his pocket and went out.

Dolan turned to the girl. "OK, Miss Jones," he said. "Now let's see what we can figure out about this gear." He strolled completely around it, eyeing it from all sides.

"Well ..." he said dubiously. "First, I guess, control. How do you start it up, make it go?"

"We push these buttons, in this sequence," the girl told him. She moved her fingers lightly over a series of studs set in a small cube.

"OK, push 'em. Let's see what happens."

"Nothing happens," the girl said. "The machine just doesn't work."

"Well, then, what's supposed to happen?"

The girl looked unhappy. "I'm sorry," she said finally, "didn't Mr. Brown say you weren't to ask such questions?"

"OK," Dolan said resignedly, "we'll let that go then. How about this: What indications do you have when it is operating normally? Anything light up, move, buzz, hum, spin around?"

The girl frowned thoughtfully and shook her head. "Nothing lights up, moves, buzzes, hums, spins around. When the machine works, it ... well, it just works, and that's all." She studied him with troubled eyes. "You are an expert, it seems to me an expert should be able to look at a machine and see what parts are faulty, isn't that true? Why must you know what the machine does?"

Dolan leaned back against the machine and lit a cigarette. He squinted thoughtfully at her through the smoke. Well, what the hell, with looks like that, why should she need brains?

"Miss Jones," he said patiently, "I gather that you aren't a technical person?"

"Not with machines, no."

It was an odd sort of answer. Did it imply that she had a technical knowledge of something other than machines? Dolan considered it briefly and decided to pass it up for now.

"I am a technically trained person," he said, "an expert as you say; and I can tell you this: machinery, electronic gear, anything like that, is built to do a specific job. Before you can design, build, or repair such equipment, the very first thing you have to know is: what do you want it to do? For all I know, this machine here may just be an overgrown coffee percolator. Now, suppose I go ahead and fix it with that in mind, and when I get done it makes beautiful coffee, but it turn out you wanted all along for it to get television programs, you're going to be terribly disappointed. You see now why I have to know what it does?"

The girl nodded seriously. "Yes," she admitted, "I can see that; but I'm sorry, I still cannot tell you the purpose of the machine." She glanced uncertainly at Smith. He shook his head minutely. "Perhaps," she said, "when Mr. Brown returns—"

Brown, however, did not convince easy.

Dolan puffed angrily at a cigarette, while Brown and the girl watched him impassively.

"Damn it," he said, "it just won't work like this, that's all there is to it." He kicked savagely at the base of the machine. "All I'm doing is chasing my tail in circles. I know what part of the trouble is now, somehow you've lost the insulation on your conductors—burned up, evaporated, blew away, God knows what. Anyway, it's gone. But I can't just spray some gunk back on and have it work like new, we just haven't got that kind of insulation. Where'd you get that stuff, anyway. Can't you get some more?"

"It was specially made for us," Brown told him. "We cannot get more at ... present."

"I see." There had been a very slight accent on the "present". Did it mean anything? And if so, what? "Well, I can rewire it for you, use standard stuff, it won't look pretty but it might work, only what should I use? I don't know what it needs—high voltage cable, or bell wire; shielded or open. I've got to know what you've got in these black boxes here—" he pounded gently on one, "before I know what to feed them."

He snapped his cigarette into a corner, gloomily watched the smoke curl up from it for a moment, then walked over and stepped heavily on it. "So that's it," he said definitely. "I've been fooling with this thing all day, and that's just exactly as far as I can go. It's up to you people, you can give me the dope, I can't promise anything even then, except just to try; or you might as well pay me off. I can hang around here and put in more time, but you won't be getting anything out of it."

Brown studied his fingernails absently. "Perhaps you are right," he said slowly. "However, I cannot act without consulting with Mr. Smith, and he has gone into town to get some food for you, I am sure you must be hungry. When he returns, I will let you know our decision."

"OK." Dolan mopped at his face with his handkerchief. "God, it's hot as an oven in this shack," he said. Miss Jones smiled in sympathy, though she looked cool enough.

"Come on, Miss Jones, let's get outside and cool off a bit."

"I think that would be nice," she agreed.

It was just turning dusk outside, and there was an agreeable breeze coming up the valley. They walked over and sat down on a rocky ledge.

"Tell me, Miss Jones," he said suddenly, "do you like it here?"

"It's very pretty," she said. She looked out toward the ridge with the sunset colors fading behind it. "Much nicer than the city."

"No, no," he said brusquely, "that's not what I mean. I mean, do you like it here, in our world?"

"I don't think I understand you."

"I mean here, now, on this planet, in this time. Do you like it as well as your own ... place?"

She stared up at him with wide puzzled eyes. "My own place? What other planet or time do you think I might know?"

"I don't know, Miss Jones, I just...." He was not quite sure exactly what he had been driving at, himself. "Forget it. Just a stupid idea." He leaned back and let his eye follow the shadows up the valley. A faint whiff of perfume reached him.

"Miss Jones," he said. "That's rather an awkward thing to call you. Do you have a first name?"

"Jane Jones, naturally," she said, and smiled. "What else?"

"No good," he said firmly. "I might call you Mary, that's a nice anonymous tag, and sounds better too ... or you could tell me your real name, just the first name, that wouldn't give much away."

She considered silently. "Moirta," she said finally. "My name is Moirta." She accented the syllables evenly.

"Moirta," he repeated. "Moirta." He rolled the "r" slightly, as she had done. "That's much better, it fits you now, Moirta, and it fits the cool shades of evenin'."

He looked down at her.

"Moirta," he said soberly. "It's a lovely name, truly."

He leaned forward and kissed her. Her lips met his, not coldly, and not demandingly or fiercely, but gently and firmly, in the exact measure he desired. He put his arms about her, and she came into them, supple but not limp, as a beautifully trained dancer follows a lead. For a very long moment they remained thus, lip to lip and breast to breast, the yearning and response in each rising in swift even balance.

And then Brown opened the door, casting a shaft of light past them in the dusk.

"Oh, Moirta," he called. "Are you there? Could you come here a moment, please—"

The two male gun runners had stepped outside the cottage while Moirta served Dolan his dinner. They found the smells and sounds of summer night, the darkness itself—in their world there was no darkness except in closed rooms—disturbing, but preferable to watching and hearing Dolan eat.

"For primitive, natural," the senior gun runner said, "but—" he winced, "teeth!"

"Gnawing!" the other agreed. He clicked his own non-functional dentures experimentally, examined his fingers with fascinated revulsion. Tender flesh, white teeth—ugh!

"Moirta," he said thoughtfully, "seems not to mind."

The senior gun runner cringed as a bat fluttered by. "Her specialty," he said absently, "not to mind." He strained his eyes to see into the darkness. Was that a mouse rustling in the grass? Or worse yet, a snake?

"Progress?" the younger man asked.

"Motivation set. Next, focus on problem. Pressure." It was something, something small and alive, coming toward him. "Move nearer door," he said abruptly. "Light."

"Mr. Smith and I have discussed the matter," Brown said, "and we have decided to be completely frank with you." He paused, watching Dolan. "The machine is a time translator," he said.

Dolan looked back at him, poker-faced. "So?"

Brown frowned slightly. Perhaps he had expected more of a reaction. "We are from a time very far in your future," he continued. "The machine has the apparent effect of transferring our physical bodies to this age. I say 'apparent' effect, because the mechanism of this time translation is not fully understood. There are certain anomalies, the displacement effect for example—but that is immaterial, for all practical purposes we can move at will to and from any time in our past, though not into our future—when the machine is working.

"Naturally, such time travel must be kept secret, if it were not, several undesirable consequences might arise. It is very closely regulated, and may be used only for bona fide historical research by responsible persons."

He looked inquiringly at Dolan. "I am not really sure I can tell you much more about the machine, I am not a technician, as you know. Does what I have told you help any?"

"I don't know," Dolan said. "Let me think about it a minute." He was not really much surprised at the disclosure. In terms of the technology he knew, the machine was almost completely meaningless. From the beginning, there had only been two possibilities—either it was the product of an alien culture, or it was an elaborate hoax. He had already decided it was not a hoax. He had not, he realized, allowed himself to explore fully the implications of the other possibility. He did so now, and some of the implications were—intriguing.

Historical research, eh? Well, maybe. He would reserve judgment on that.

But a time machine? There was no such thing. And yet, if there were—

He looked at the jumble of equipment speculatively.

"I still don't know how a time machine might work," he said finally. "Do you have any sort of handbook, operating manual, anything like that? Or do they have such things in your time?"

"Operating manual? I don't think so. There are some pictures—" Brown stepped over to the machine and touched a large flattened sphere which grew out of the base. "This is the power unit. If you press these studs, various pictures—'schematics', I believe you would call them—are projected on the surface. Is that what you want?"

"That sounds like it," Dolan said. "But I did press those studs. Nothing happened."

"That is because the power unit is not operating. It does not come on, as it should, when we press this button." He indicated a stud on the cubicle control unit. "That, I suppose, is one of the major things wrong with the machine."

"Ummm, yeah, I see," Dolan said. He squatted and examined the power unit more closely. "One of these pairs now—" he traced them with his finger up to the control unit, "must be the control pair." He took a piece of chalk and began numbering the terminals rapidly.

"Now," he said, "if the control pair is shorted, the power should be on, but there must be overload protection of some kind, that's probably kicked out, so let's just cut all this junk loose and then short the possible control pairs one at a time, see what happens then."

He reached for a pair of side-cutters. The three gun runners looked at each other. Brown nodded slightly. They moved quickly back out of Dolan's way.

"OK," Dolan said half an hour later. "We've got the power unit perking, and we've got the pictures. Now what do they mean? This block interwiring diagram now, it seems to be what I'm looking for, but I can't read the tags they've got on it. You know which block in the diagram corresponds to which piece of equipment?"

Brown studied the luminous white lines against the black polished background. He put a well-manicured finger on one square. "According to the lettering," he said, "this is the control unity, the small cube at the top with the buttons. This other, I do not know, it says: 'temporal re-integrator.' I do not know what that might be."

Dolan frowned doubtfully. "'Temporal re-integrator'," he repeated. "Could be anything. What do the others say?" Among the litter the first electrician had left, there was a short length of lead-shielded two-conductor number 14 wire. He picked it up and began to run it absently through his fingers, straightening it. Someone had apparently amused themselves by clipping idly at it with a pair of side-cutters, it was irregularly nicked along its length.

"This," Brown continued, "is something called a 'selective resonator', and this, well, the term does not translate, it is a—" he pronounced carefully, as if unfamiliar with the word, "'bractor-quatic'—"

There was something peculiar about the indentations in the wire, Dolan realized, a pattern—He pulled it unobtrusively through his fingers again, letting his thumbnail run over the nicks. It was Morse: K-I-T-T-E ... kitten? ... no, it must be American Morse ... K-I-L-L-E-R ... killers hs end rvr rd

Killers in the house at the end of River Road.

This was the house at the end of River Road.

Brown had stopped speaking and was looking at him questioningly.

"Uh, yeah," Dolan said hastily. "Well, that still doesn't tell me too much." He carefully rolled the length of wire and hung it on a projecting piece of the time translator. His hands were damp, and he was sure he was moving awkwardly and unnaturally. Dolan was not an easily flustered person, but things were coming a little fast—mysterious aliens, time machines, and now—murder, or hint of it.

He needed time to think.

"It's getting pretty late," he said, hoping his voice sounded natural. "Let's just knock off for now, I'll study it over, maybe I'll have something figured by tomorrow."

Historical research, huh? Some professors all right, this bunch—

The thing to do was to stall, not let them know he suspected anything.

"I tell you," he said casually, "do you have some place I could bed down here? Save me a trip into town and back."

Was it his imagination, or did Brown relax slightly?

"Why, yes, we do have a spare cot in Mr. Smith's room," Brown said. "Would that be good enough?"

"Sounds fine," Dolan said. He snapped the lid of his tool-box shut. "Let's go see what it looks like."

The two male gun runners held a council of war while Dolan was eating his breakfast.

"Subject's attention diverted," the senior gun runner said. "Unknown factor. Annoying."

Smith clucked his tongue in sympathy. He thought for a moment. "Raise threshold to override?" he suggested.

"Must. Moirta."

Smith nodded and went out. He returned in a moment with the female gun runner. Brown explained the problem to her in the same few words he had used to Smith.

She shrugged. She did not bother to practise her specialty on her colleagues—they were, for one thing, almost immune, they had grown up in a civilization where her specialty was over-crowded. For another, in the nature of her specialty, she found it hard to concentrate on more than one subject at a time. "Doing best," she said indifferently.

Brown studied her shrewdly. "Supplies short," he said mildly. "One-half larger than one-third. Each must pay way."

His voice was mild, but Moirta understood the threat quite clearly. "Suggestions?" she asked coldly.

Brown nodded equably—he was used to temperament in this member of his team—and told her what he wanted her to do. She would obey, he knew. She would also double-cross him, if the occasion offered; but he did not intend that the occasion should offer.

There was a foot-path leading up the ridge back of the cabin. Dolan did not ordinarily feel the need of an after-breakfast stroll, but today he was looking for something. He was not quite sure what it would be, but he thought he would recognize it if he saw it. He walked slowly up the foot-path, letting his eyes roam. Perhaps fifty yards from the cottage, the grass was trampled and the brush bent where someone had left the path.

This might be it.

He followed the trampled trail off the path, searching carefully now. Three or four steps along it, he found what he had been looking for—two empty .45 caliber cartridges lying in the grass.

He picked them up and juggled them in his hand, looking speculatively about. Angling off to the left was an opening in the undergrowth.

He walked that way and found himself standing on the lip of a sharply eroded gully. Someone or something had kicked the bank down recently, there was a great pile of new earth in the bottom of the gully. He kicked around in the leaves and mold at his feet. There was a dark crusted substance on the leaves.

The door of the cottage slammed. He slipped the empty cartridges in his pocket and stepped hastily back to the path, listening.

Were those footsteps hurrying toward him?

He began to stroll slowly back toward the cottage. Around the first turn he met Moirta.

The girl now, he thought, where does she really fit? Possible ally? Enemy? Or neutral?

She came up to him a little breathless and took his hand. "Were you going back to the house?" she asked.

"Not specially. Just walking around."

"Let's not go back just yet, then," she said. They turned and walked slowly back up the path, hand-in-hand. After a while they came out on an open shoulder from which they could look down, catching glimpses of the path they had climbed here and there, and at its end the cottage. They sat down close together, leaning back against a large tree, not speaking at first.

After a while the girl sighed. "I shall feel very sorry when we leave this time," she said.

"Me, too." He kissed her.

After a moment she pulled away and looked at him searchingly. "There is something bothering you?" she asked. She flushed a little. "That was not very ... ardent."

Dolan looked away, feeling foolish. "I guess not," he said.

She took his hand and squeezed it. "Poor George. It must be very confusing for you. Can I help?"

Perhaps she could, he thought.

"Look here," he said cautiously, "what happens when I get this thing fixed, if I do? You folks go on back to your own time, I suppose, but what happens to me?"

She hesitated. "I don't think I understand," she said. "Mr. Brown pays you for your work, I suppose, and you stay here, that's all. Should there be more?"

Dolan smiled grimly. "Like the first technician, huh?"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, Brown pays me, and I stay here, like the first technician." He took his hand out of his pocket with the two empty cartridge cases in it and rolled them gently back and forth in his open palm.

Moirta stared at them fascinated. "Oh," she said faintly, "I didn't know. I thought ... I didn't know...."

"Well, you know now," he said. "And your job is to keep me cheered up and plugging away at the job until payday comes. Right?"

"No," she said. "Oh, no. Please, George. They wouldn't do that ... that is, I don't think ... it's so unnecessary."

"Unnecessary?"

"Yes. You see—I shouldn't tell you this, but I can't have you thinking ... you see, after we are gone, you will forget all this. Why should they kill you when there's no reason?"

She did not seem very strongly convinced herself, Dolan thought.

"How do you mean, I'll forget it? You mean they'll hypnotize me, something like that?"

She shook her head. "No, they won't have to do anything. It's the displacement effect. You see, we are not really here, in a way, it is a sort of illusion, but more real for us than for you. When we return to our own time, we will remember all that happened, but you will remember nothing, since the translator does not really exist in your time. You will just forget, it will be as if none of this had ever happened, as if you had never met me, never heard of a 'time-translator'."

It sounded plausible, in a way, but there was a flaw in the logic.

"If everybody in this time forgets, why so much to-do about secrecy? Won't anyone else I tell forget too?"

"There is a limit to the possible displacement. If the limit is exceeded, according to the Alwyn hypothesis the continuum itself may be altered, and one of the ways in which it might change would be to eliminate the irritant—in other words, all of us concerned directly."

"I see. So they figured two of us put too much of a strain on the displacement, that's why they killed this other joker—what was his name, anyway?"

"Nelson. Perhaps," she said uncertainly, "that might be it."

"And maybe they figure even one is too much strain, better to be safe than sorry, huh?"

"No, I don't think so. Killing requires even more displacement than ... loss of memory. Really, I don't understand it, you see, I am just a sort of employee, they don't confide in me. If they knew I had been talking to you about these things like this—" she shuddered and smiled wryly. "Perhaps I too know too much, perhaps I should be worrying about the pros and cons of various types of displacement for myself."

Dolan looked at her thoughtfully. "This displacement thing," he said gently, "I'll forget you too?"

She nodded. "You will forget me. But I will remember you—for a long time, I am afraid."

He frowned and kicked at a tuft of sod. "I don't want to forget you. Do you have to leave with the others? Couldn't you stay? For a little while anyway? You haven't really had a good chance to see our world yet."

"No. They would never trust me out of their control. If I refused to go ... well ..." she shrugged.

"And I don't suppose I could go back with you to your world, spend some time there, either?"

"No, that would be to travel into your own future, which cannot be done."

"I see." Dolan leaned back against the tree, thinking.

"Well, there's one thing sure," he said. "If the machine can't be fixed, it can't be fixed, there isn't much they can do about it. You may all stay in this time yet."

She shook her head gently. "Not all. At least, not all alive. There would be no displacement, and the only hope they would have to avoid the Alwyn action would be to preserve absolute secrecy. You have a saying, I believe: 'dead men—'" She hesitated. "Even if you and I could find a way to escape, even if they told me I might leave, I could not trust them. They are very dangerous men. As long as we and they are both in this time, there would be no safety for me, nor for you."

"I suppose you're right," Dolan said reluctantly. He looked down at her searchingly. "What do you want to do?" he asked. "Do you want to stay with me, or do you want me to forget you?"

"I want to be with you," she said softly. "Always."

"And I, with you," he said. He bent his head toward hers.

Below, the door of the cottage opened. Smith's figure appeared. He glanced around and then came plodding up the path.

Moirta pulled away and got to her feet. "We might as well start back, I suppose," she said unenthusiastically.

"Let's go back in the woods, he won't find us there."

She hesitated and then shook her head. "No. We have both been very indiscreet today, and they are suspicious men. It is important in their trade to be suspicious. It would not be wise to let them think we are avoiding them."

"OK, I suppose not," he acknowledged glumly. He rose and followed her down the path.

Like all true artists, Moirta tended to submerge herself completely in her role, a failing which the senior gun runner recognized and allowed for in his calculations.

In the following days, Dolan held her hand often, and kissed her sometimes, and talked with her frequently, and took her in his arms for short periods; but at the crucial moment Smith or Brown always casually appeared upon the scene. Dolan suspected, accurately, that they were deliberately permitting him just enough contact with her to keep him constantly on edge, keep his mind off other matters.

They made no overt threats, but he was constantly aware of the body in the gully, the bulge in Smith's pocket, Brown's cold eyes studying him. Dolan was not a submissive person, and under the pressure a cold malevolence toward the two gun runners began to develop in him. He concealed it, as well as he could, under a shell of impassivity.

His time would come. The sketch of a plan was beginning to form in his mind, it was not very solid yet, but if it worked out they would be laughing on the other side of their faces.

What was it Moirta had said? There would be danger "as long as we and they are both in this time." The answer to that was simple. Eliminate "they" and eliminate the danger.

In his work, Dolan kept running into reminders of the first technician, and the matter bothered him. The man seemed to have been making progress, and surely he would not have been such a fool as simply to refuse to work, the message he had left showed he understood quite clearly his danger. He asked Moirta about this, and got another shock.

"That was a mistake," she said. "We did not fully understand your world then. In our time, medical science is very exact. There are no incomplete men or incomplete women. We assumed that because this man ... person ... looked like a man, and seemed to be a man, he was one. However, we have since discovered that this is not always true, and it was not in this case. We could not allow him to work on the machine, since we could not predict his reactions adequately."

Not predict his reactions? There was an obvious corollary—

Dolan's lips tightened. "But you can predict mine, is that it?"

Moirta ran her fingers lightly along the back of his hand, studying his knuckles with the tips of them. "Of course," she said idly, "Why not? There is nothing wrong with your reactions, George dear."

He flung her hand away violently. "Why not? So you push the buttons, and I react as predicted, and you sit back and laugh at me while I fix your machine, and then you all go tootling off to find more suckers, while I hold the bag. That's it, isn't it? Boy, I bet you've been getting a big charge out of this. I thought it was mighty coincidental the way one of your boyfriends always pops up as soon as we're alone for five minutes. Not taking any chances on the reaction getting out of hand, are you?"

She stared up at him in shocked surprise. "No," she said, "no. Oh, poor George. How stupid of me. You see, I am not really very wise, I know only one thing, how to be a woman. I keep forgetting that you do not think as we do. Because we can predict a reaction, does that make it less real?"

"But you used me, you knew this would happen."

There were tears in her eyes. "I used you," she admitted, "and I used myself, and Brown used both you and me.

"And you used me, also. Do you wish me to think that when you hold a woman's hand, and say certain things to her, and look at her in a certain way; you are entirely innocent, you do not guess what may happen?"

"I didn't force you," he said stubbornly, "the choice was yours to make."

"Nor did I force you. But I knew what your choice would be, and further, I knew what my choice would be. Emotion is my trade, as electronics is yours. Electrons, I have been told, have a certain freedom of choice, or appear to have. Yet you know with quite high probability which choice they will make under the influence of certain physical fields. In the same way, I know what choice to expect of a man or a woman, under the influence of certain emotional fields."

"You didn't want me, though, you just wanted a technician. The first man would have done just as well for you, if he had 'reacted.'"

"That is true. And I am the first woman you have ever made love to?"

"No, of course not. But I've never felt the same about them as I do about you."

"I, the same. George, I think you still do not understand me. In your time there are women who get things from men by seeming to promise more than they intend to give, for simulating emotions they do not feel. You think I am one of those ... no, please don't interrupt ... I am not. In my time there are no such women, people understand each other too well, they are too hard to fool.

"Instead, there are women like me, women who are peculiarly attractive to men, and peculiarly susceptible to men—honestly so. Believe me, it is not an easy way to make a living. A woman has only so much honest emotion to give. Do you understand now?" She looked up at him appealingly.

He did not understand, but he believed.

He could not doubt that this was as important to her as to him, that regardless of the motives behind it, her feeling was deep and honest. And yet, it was impossible to understand, impossible for him to visualize a world in which people knew accurately the feeling others held for them; and yet still loved, disliked, or were indifferent. It was, he thought, a little like a caveman trying to understand the complexities and compulsions of polite urban society.

He slumped back down beside her. "I don't know," he said glumly. "You're right, I suppose, it all sounds logical; but I still don't understand."

She drew him to her. "Poor George," she said with her mouth against his ear. "Poor George, I know only one way to console you, and only one way to console myself." She sighed. "And it seems they will not permit that, I suppose the 'reaction,'" she smiled wryly, "would not fit with their plans."

Dolan straightened and looked at her sharply. Her remark had reminded him of something else he needed to know. "How do they know just when to break us up," he asked, "just when to drop in 'accidentally' on us? Can they read my mind?"

She shook her head. "No, they are not mind-readers. It is just that they know so much about what to expect of people—remember that for thousands of years there has been nothing so important to us as what other people do, in my time men of science no longer study physical things, all that is known, they study people. In any given situation, they can predict quite accurately what action a given individual will take."

"You think they know what we're talking about now?"

"Not in detail. But in general, yes—and I suppose it must serve their purpose in some way for us to worry about these things, what will become of you and me, or they would not permit it. In a matter such as this, they do nothing without a purpose."

"Well, that's fair enough," Dolan said grimly. "As long as they aren't actually mind-readers, they can guess all they want to."

Moirta shook her head. "It is not guessing, that is what I have been trying to tell you. Whatever you plan, they will have foreseen it, perhaps not the exact thing you wish to do; but all the possible things you can do, and the most likely thing you will do.

"Really, it will not be so bad, you will finish the translator, and we will go, and you will forget us, and ... well, in time I suppose I will forget you also."

"No." He squeezed her hard against him. "I don't intend to forget you, and I don't intend you to forget me." He grinned down at her. "In this time, the boy always gets the girl, and they live happily ever after. It's a natural law, like gravitation.

"Brown and Smith aren't infallible. They may know people, but I know machines. Don't forget, the time translator is the key, the big item in this mess. And that's in my bailiwick."

Dolan went back to work.

He left it to Brown to satisfy the people at the shop, and apparently Brown satisfied them, they sent along the equipment and supplies he requested without comment.

He still had no idea why the time translator worked, but he was beginning to know quite a bit about how it worked, in the sense of functional operation, the input/output relations of the black boxes. A time came when he could have activated the machine by making a few minor connections.

He did not do so.

With the knowledge that he had the technical problem whipped, some of his urgency faded. He could take time to amplify and clarify his knowledge. Quite probably the time translator could never be duplicated by twentieth century technology. At the same time, only a fool would pass up a chance to learn what he could, it was too big a thing, even with the limitations under which it seemed to operate. Also, familiarity with the translator was a weapon, knowledge Brown did not have—a weapon he was grimly intent on using.

He kept testing and checking, varying inputs and measuring outputs.

Remembering what Moirta had said about losing his memory—he did not think he would, if his plans worked out, but there was always the chance of something going wrong—he kept careful notes. Brown watched this activity blandly. Thinking it over, Dolan saw that this was only logical. There were always fires for notes.

So, as an extra precaution, he made copies of the most important data in secrecy and stored them in a glass jar under a rock back of the cottage. Then it occurred to him that he might forget about the jar—or he might not be around to remember it, there was still the gully to keep in mind. Well, what had worked once should work again. He nicked a code message in a piece of wire, showing the location of the notes, and left it in his tool-box.

Also, he made certain changes in the time-machine.

Finally, he told Brown the machine was ready.

"You want to test-hop it?" he asked. "I'm pretty sure it'll work now, but it's still a haywire job, I could be wrong."

Brown shook his head. "Not necessary. If the machine works, we will be ... home. If not, well, you will just have to tinker with it some more." It was not sound reasoning, from Dolan's viewpoint, but consistent with what he had come to expect from these people in technical matters. He had counted heavily on such a reaction.

"OK," he said. "Then she's ready to go."

Brown nodded and tossed a key to Smith, speaking curtly in a language strange to Dolan. Dolan had noticed long before that the back bedroom door was always locked, and the windows securely boarded up. Artifacts of historical interest, Brown had told him. It seemed like rather extreme precaution to take for security of such material.

Brown turned back to Dolan. "You had better move your equipment out of range of the machine now, if you wish to keep it," he said.

Dolan carried his equipment outside. When he returned the three aliens were carrying small heavy boxes out of the back room, stowing them in a tight circle about the machine. Moirta was straining at a heavy case with neatly dove-tailed corners, marked "Remington".

So that was what it was all about.

It suddenly occurred to him to wonder how, if the machine could not move a person into the future, if it had no real existence in this time, they expected to move guns and ammunition. Did the laws of time operate differently for living organisms and inanimate things? What was it someone had once said about life—'islands of reverse entropy'? But that was only a figure of speech, men were still made up of the same elements as steel and brass—

Well, it could wait, there were more important things right now. "You need a hand?" he asked Moirta.

She smiled and nodded breathlessly.

As he stooped to help lift the box, their heads almost touched. "Listen!" he whispered, "be on your toes, now. I'm going to try something. Stay on this side of the machine, no matter what happens, and do just as I say."

She looked startled, but nodded.

With four of them working, it did not take long to pile the cargo in place. Brown checked it over with his eye and then turned to study Dolan.

"Well," he said slowly, "I suppose we are ready to go. No doubt you wish your payment now, eh, Mr. Dolan?"

This was the critical point. Dolan tensed as Smith stepped clear and lifted an inquiring eyebrow at Brown, his hand in his hip-pocket; but the senior gun runner shook his head. "Don't be stupid," he said quietly. "I think we have a few negotiations to make now." He looked at Dolan inquiringly.

Dolan hoped his relief did not show too clearly. He had been reasonably sure Brown would be too acute to kill him off-hand, but it had been a tricky moment, just the same. Now, he thought, play it cagey, make them lay it out on the table, get it moving—

"I'm no good at guessing games," he said. "You'll have to come down to my level on this."

Brown nodded. "Of course. Excuse me. I will be more explicit. Mr. Smith wants to kill you and get you out of the way immediately; he does not trust you. I do not trust you completely myself, I do not trust anyone completely; and for that exact reason I feel it would be stupid and dangerous to kill you. I am quite sure you will have booby-trapped the machine against just such a contingency."

"Booby-trapped?" Dolan asked blankly.

"Yes," Brown said patiently. "I mean the machine will not work satisfactorily if you are killed. It will blow up, burn out, or some such thing. Is that not true?"

Dolan considered the question for a moment. He was acutely aware that the most devious plot would probably seem simple and childish to a man like Brown. "Suppose it were?" he said cautiously. "Then what?"

"Then we shall negotiate, like reasonable people. What do you need to convince you of our good faith. Your money?" Brown reached in his jacket pocket and brought out a slip of paper. "Here," he said, "I think you will find this satisfactory." He handed it to Dolan.

Dolan looked absently at the check. It was more than satisfactory—for a purely business transaction. But this was no longer just a business transaction.

"It's not enough," he said flatly.

Brown raised an eyebrow. "The girl? No." He shook his head firmly. "We must have Moirta for a hostage, a guarantee of your good faith. She goes with us. Afterward, perhaps, if she wishes to return—" he shrugged.

Dolan studied him, trying to decide just how much Brown's word was worth. Just as much as it suited him to make it worth, probably. He glanced at Moirta. She shook her head, a tiny almost imperceptible jerk, confirming his own thought. There was no particular reason to expect that Brown would really let her return—Moirta probably was not important to him, but the whereabouts of the time-translator was.

He turned back to Brown. "You'll promise not to stop her?"

Brown smiled indulgently. "I promise." Dolan felt an almost uncontrollable urge to smash the smug smile with his fist. He bottled it up. This was no time to get excited.

"OK," he said shortly. He stepped to the machine and carefully bent a wire just so, while Brown watched alertly.

"Also," Brown said, "the notes."

"Notes?"

"Exactly. The notes you kept on the operation of the machine. Give them to me, please."

Dolan shrugged. He had not really expected to keep the notes. "They're out in my briefcase," he said. Brown looked at Smith, who went out and returned in a moment with the briefcase. Dolan took out a folder and handed it to Brown. Brown riffled through the pages, nodded and tossed the folder on the pile of boxes.

He studied Dolan speculatively. "The other notes, too, please," he said. "The secret notes."

The man was guessing, of course. Dolan had not even mentioned the other notes to Moirta. "You've got all the notes I made," he said.

Brown stepped forward and grasped his arm. "Walk!" he commanded.

Dolan twisted to look at him, startled. "What—?"

"The notes," Brown said coldly. "Walk." He gave a little shove, and Dolan found himself walking, with Brown holding his arm in a firm even grasp, a look of preoccupation on his face.

"This way," Brown said. They went out the door.

"The notes," Brown repeated insistently. "Keep walking, keep walking." They zigzagged rapidly across the yard, Brown still guiding Dolan by the arm, Smith coming behind with his hand in his pocket. Brown paused. "Here, I think," he said to Smith. "Look under that rock."

Dolan watched in helpless rage as Smith dug the jar out and handed it to Brown. Was Brown a mind-reader, after all? How else—?

Well, of course, he thought, muscular tension, the old 'mind-reading' trick. He should have caught on sooner; but Brown was good at it, no doubt about that.

Brown smashed the jar against the rock and stuffed the notes in his pocket. They went back in to the time machine.

Brown bent over the control box and studied it carefully. He examined the wire Dolan had adjusted. For the first time, there was a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes.

"Well," he said absently. "I suppose—" he looked comprehensively around, checking the position of the cargo. "There is something—" He punched the power button, moved his hand to start the machine.

Dolan glanced at Moirta. She sat on one of the boxes on the far side of the machine, watching him.

This was the time, now—

He stepped forward and opened his mouth to shout.

He never did. Something went suddenly wrong. Brown flicked a thumb, Smith moved like lightning, and before Dolan realized what was happening, he found himself flat on his back, wondering numbly what had happened.

Brown snapped a syllable at Moirta. She answered with a shrug and a word. He frowned momentarily and then his face lightened.

"Ah," he said softly. "I think I see, now. You were going to shout to Moirta to run out of range of the machine, while you jumped in and activated it, isn't that so? Really, it would have done no good, we could still have returned, and besides Moirta—" he frowned suddenly. "Oh could we have returned?"

He bit delicately at his lower lip. "Moirta," he said. "Step a little closer to the machine, please."

"Now," he turned back to Dolan, "I am going to push the buttons, with Moirta quite close to the machine. Are there any last-minute changes you wish to make?"

Dolan hesitated, studying both Moirta's and the men's positions, and then nodded sullenly.

"I thought there might be," Brown said with satisfaction. "Mr. Smith, help Mr. Dolan up to the machine."

Dolan reached out unsteadily, leaning on Smith, and reversed two connections. "That's it," he mumbled.

"Thank you, Mr. Dolan. Now, Mr. Smith, if you will just carry Mr. Dolan over there into the corner, well away from the machine, and immobilize him—no, no, just temporarily. We may still need him again, Mr. Dolan is a very tricky sort of person."

Dolan felt Smith's fingers touch his neck lightly, there was a sudden blazing pain, and that was all. He blanked out.

The first thing he knew after that was that fingers were working gently at his neck, massaging it. His head was resting on something soft. He opened his eyes and saw that he was lying with his head pillowed on Moirta's lap.

"George?" she said sharply. "Are you all right, George?"

"I'm all right," he said. He raised his head and looked around. The machine was gone, and Smith and Brown were gone, and half the boxes were gone. The end ones in the little semicircle were broken, and from them a pile of brass cartridges had spilled through the hole in the floor where the others had been.

"Wise jerks," he mumbled with grim satisfaction. "See how they like it now."

Moirta stared at him. "What happened, George? I don't understand what happened."

"I gimmicked the machine. That's what happened. Surprise, huh? I'll bet they were plenty surprised too."

"But I thought—"

Dolan sat up and felt tenderly of his throat. He nodded. "I know," he said. "You thought they had me licked. So did they. That was just smoke-screen, a little diversion. I knew they could out-smart me if I tried to pull anything foxy, that's their trade. But they weren't really mind-readers, you told me that, and the business with the notes cinched it.

"And they didn't think like technicians. They could see I might disable the machine, or booby-trap it; but they couldn't see I could fix it so it would work, only just a little different.

"All I had to do was to keep their minds on their own specialty, let them wear out their suspicion on the little foxy tricks they expected, so they wouldn't notice what I was really doing. See?"

She shook her head. "No," she said. "I do not see. I suppose I'm stupid, too—"

"Not stupid. Just not technically minded. You understand, this machine works by setting up a field around itself, ordinarily that field's circular, it takes in everything in a certain radius. But it doesn't have to be, that's just because it's the easiest way, more convenient. So I just distorted the field a little, made it lopsided. Then I went through all that other business to keep their minds on me, keep them off your position, and make sure they both stayed over on my side." He smiled at her. "I told you, remember, in this time the villains always get it in the neck, the boy gets the girl, and they live happily ever after."

She shook her head. "No," she said gently. "I'm sorry, for you and me there will not be any ever after. You forget the displacement effect."

"Displacement effect?"

"Yes," she said. "I am afraid I did not explain that fully to you, I thought it would only hurt you to do so. You understand, the past is really immutable, we only seem to change it. For the time that the time-translator exists at any given time in the past, a sort of enclave, a self-supporting bubble, is established which permits apparent changes. When the time translator returns to its normal existence in my era, that bubble dissolves. I do not know, in terms of our present subjective time, just how long the displacement will hold, but when it vanishes we, you and I, will no longer exist."

"But that would be a change in the past, in itself."

"Not exactly. What I told you about forgetting was true, it was just not the whole truth. There will be, in my time, a Moirta who exists normally up to the time she is translated to the past. And there will be, in your time, a George Dolan who never met Mr. Brown or Miss Jones. But you and I, as we exist at this moment, will not have been."

"I see," Dolan said. "It's too bad I didn't know about this sooner. I think we still may have a chance, though. You see, I had to worry about the possibility that Smith and Brown might think it worth while to come back after you. So I changed the switches, too. The time translator isn't going into the future, it's gone into the past, and then it's fixed to burn out again, a long way in the past, where there aren't any electronics technicians, no people at all. How about that?"

"The past? I don't know," she said doubtfully. "I am not a temporal technician, I know only about the displacement effect as it operates in our usual translations. Perhaps, in that case, the bubble might continue to exist, as a sort of permanent side-track. I really don't know."

She laughed suddenly, as the full implications of what he had said struck her. "The past? Oh, poor Smith. And poor Brown. A long way in the past, where there are no people at all, just dinosaurs and snakes—and they hate such things so." She laughed helplessly, tears rolling down her cheeks. "And poor George, and poor Moirta. All with their clever little plans, their tricks to out-smart each other. Everyone has outsmarted everyone else, and we all lose now, don't we?"

Dolan stared at her narrowly. "We all lose?"

She nodded—

The senior gun runner had been quite confident of victory.

It took him a rather long moment to assimilate the fact of defeat; but in that moment he did assimilate it, as fully and completely as he took in the implications of any other situation.

He examined the wreckage of the time translator curiously, tried and failed to make sense of the erratic pattern in which their cargo had accompanied them, the absence of Moirta. He straightened and looked about. There were no dinosaurs, the range of the time machine did not extend that far; but over on a ledge of rock a large cat with hyper-trophied eyeteeth squatted, switching its stub of a tail, startled by their sudden appearance.

He sighed and turned toward the other gun runner. "Old, old, time," he said. He nodded toward the cat. "Bad for us. No chance rescue. Supplies short."

The other said nothing, watching him narrowly, hand in back pocket. Down in the valley below, something trumpeted, a hoarse grunting roar. The senior gun runner started nervously. It was getting dark.

He held out his hand. "Older first," he said simply. The younger man laid the gun in his hand; and the senior gun runner, without hesitation or farewell, raised it to his head and pulled the trigger.

"—yes, everyone," Moirta said. She wiped at her eyes. "I'm sorry, George. I will die very quickly in this time, whether the displacement operates or not."

"But you said—!"

"I know. I was so sure there was nothing you could do, and I said what I thought would make you happy. And I did want to stay with you, in a way, even though I knew it would kill me ... and in another way, I wanted to go back, to return to my own time, and you were my means to that ... oh, it's so mixed up, really, it is funny, everyone so sure of themselves, and now ... this...."

Dolan shook his head helplessly. "I never thought. You seemed so ... so...."

"So human?" her lips curled wryly. "I was made to seem human, twentieth-century human, it was part of my job. I'm not. And soon, I shall not even seem human, without the things I need—things that won't even be invented for ten thousand years—cancer inhibitors, blood clotting agents, insulin surrogate, vaccines, serums, antibiotics—why, I can't even eat your food!" She shook her head sadly. "You had better just leave me, it will not be nice, you will not like me at all."

And yet, even with the game played out, she could not forget her trade, her specialty, for it was bred into her as deeply as the tendency to leukemia, the hemophilia, the diabetes, the congenital digestive deformity he had inherited from a hundred ancestors kept alive by a superb medical science to breed her. She laid her cheek against his, the smooth velvet human-seeming cheek, with no hint as yet of the lumps of wild tissue waiting to proliferate within.

"Please don't worry, George," she said softly. "It's not your fault, really." She smiled up at him. "I've lived a rough life, most of us do, in my time. Remember, I've earned what I received, I came here knowing what I was doing. It's just caught up with me. It had to, some day."

He caught her in his arms and pulled her tightly to him. "Oh, God, honey," he said. "I didn't know, I didn't even think.... I'd give anything...." he turned his face up blindly. "Please, Lord, let the bubble break," he prayed. "Let us not be, both together, now...."

But the bubble did not break.

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