There was the crackle of static. I flicked the switch and spoke into the dime-sized mouthpiece. “Hello Tibet,” I whispered hoarsely. “Hello Tibet. Dudley, do you read me?”
“Is that you, Steve?” Dudley’s voice sounded very old and tired.
“No, it’s my Aunt Tillie,” I told him sarcastically. “Dudley, the last jump was only about a hundred years. Can’t you speed things up and get me home again?”
“Papa Baapuh says he has to be careful and jump you just a little at a time, or he‘s liable to take you too far into the future. The machine isn’t really perfected and he doesn’t have absolute control over it.”
“Well how about pushing him so I can move up again?”
“He won’t be pushed. He’s more interested in the blender he’s trying to develop. It was all I could do to get him to take time off long enough to arrange your last jump. And besides, I’ve been busy. You know, I do have a life of my own to live, Steve.”
“Dudley, you’re a dying man,” I reminded him.
“I’m going to live before I die,” he croaked.
“But you can’t live only for yourself. Don’t be selfish, Dudley! What about me?” I reminded him.
“It’s dog-eat-dog, Steve.” There was a low female murmur in the background and then Dudley squealed. “Coming, my sweet.” His voice was muffled and I could barely discern the words.
“Dudley!” I was struck by a sudden suspicion. “Have you succumbed to that harridan?”
“Don’t you call her a harridan,” he said hotly. “You’re talking about the woman I love.”
“Love! That beat up old bag? You’ve gone mad, Dudley. And you know how weak your constitution is. She’ll kill you!”
“But what a way to go!” he croaked happily.
“What about me, Dudley? What’s going to happen to me if you kick the bucket‘? I’ll be stuck in Russia in the eighteenth century for the rest of my life!”
“Just let me get my breath, sweetie.” His voice was muffled again. “I’ll brush this call off and be right with you.” The voice became clear again. “I’m sorry about that, Steve, and I’ll do what I can. But I have to take some time out for recreation. So long for now, Steve.”
“Recreation! Now you listen to me, Dudley— Dudley! -- Dudley?” It was no use. He’d broken the connection. Days went by, and nights, and I failed in my efforts to reestablish it. I hid in the bin and every so often one of the palace servants would bring food to me. Olga came to see me periodically. She brought me changes of clothing, and she spoke to me in French.
Our rapport grew with these conversations. Slowly, she opened up to me. Finally, she revealed to me the plot in which she was involved.
Olga belonged to a group which was plotting to assassinate Tsar Peter. She had smuggled into the palace a bomb by which this was to be accomplished. The servants I had met were her coconspirators. Like Olga, they were members of a peasants’ group dedicated to the overthrow of the government.
One of the members of this group—since deceased-— had developed the bomb to be used in the plot. This bomb intrigued me. The reason for my fascination was basic. As far as I knew, self-exploding weaponry would not be introduced to the World until 1863, one hundred years from now.
In that year Alfred Nobel would patent a mixture of nitroglycerine (a chemical compound to be discovered by Ascanio Sobrero in 1846) and gunpowder. Three years later, after many fatalities resulting from experimentation, Nobel would perfect this process and give it the name of “dynamite.” Nobel, a native of Sweden, would choose to conduct these researches in St. Petersburg.
Why St. Petersburg? History afforded no explanation, unless-— unless Nobel, who had been educated in St. Petersburg as a boy, had stumbled across the revolutionary legend of a peasant who had developed a method of detonating gunpowder by packing it tightly in a metal casement, attaching a fuse of hemp and igniting it.
So simple! It had been a thousand years or more since the Chinese developed gunpowder. Marco Polo had brought the discovery to Europe. But somehow a basic principal that the Chinese had stumbled upon had never been used to its full potential by the Europeans. This was the simple precept of the firecracker. Tamp gunpowder tightly enough into any container—even paper—ignite it, and it will explode. The explosion is the result of the pressure caused by lack of oxygen. Jenghiz Khan had utilized this principal in the Twelfth Century to blow up a portion of the Great Wall of China. Early cannons and musketry used in European warfare had operated on the idea of placing gunpowder at the bottom of a gun-barrel, tamping it down and then filling the rest of the weapon’s barrel with metal shot or cannonballs so that when the gunpower was ignited the shot would be expelled with the force of the explosion. But until after the time of Nobel nobody conceived of a “missile” which might be fired by one explosion and then detonate another explosion when it landed. Nobody conceived of a missile which might be hurled and detonate on contact. Nobody conceived of a bomb. Almost nobody—-
The anonymous peasant-inventor in Olga’s revolutionary group was evidently an exception. He had come up with a weapon to fit the circumstances. According to Olga, he had served as an artillery man in the Russian Army. This experience had provided the germ of an idea. A cannonball was simply a piece of solid iron which had been forged into a missile the size and shape of a round melon. Of itself it was useless as a weapon. It was only when propelled by the blast of gunpowder that it could wreak havoc on the enemy. A secondary damage it performed came from occasional shatterings from the force of impact. This flying metal was called shrapnel.
The unknown Russian revolutionary came up with the idea of hollowing out the cannonball and packing the inside with gunpowder. He refined this by putting layers of sharp metal fragments around the tightly packed gunpowder. The whole was held together by the shell of the cannonball. A short length of rope—soaked in oil like a lantern wick—extended outside the shell. Inside it led to the core of gunpowder. The metal was packed loosely around the rope so that there would be enough oxygen to allow it to burn. At the core it was packed more tightly so that only the spark necessary for detonation would act through and the explosion itself would be maximum strength.
This obscure ex-artillery man created two of these homemade weapons. They were really crude hand grenades, forerunners of anti-personnel fragmentation bombs. The first bomb was for testing purposes. The second was to be used to kill the Tsar.
The first one exploded prematurely and killed its inventor. The second was his legacy to his revolutionary comrades. It had to work, for there was no one who had the know-how to re-create it. This was the bomb Olga had smuggled into the palace.
There was one slight hitch to the plan. The genius of the bomb’s inventor had not extended to the development of a time fuse. It would be but an instant from the igniting of the bomb to the explosion. This meant that the perpetrator of the act of violence must be prepared to go up in smoke with the intended victim. If the plot was to succeed, there would be no time for any alternative.
Olga was to be the martyr. That was why her coconspirators had greeted her so effusively. She was about to die, and those who were to go on living saluted her.
The selection of the beautiful Slav siren to make the sacrifice had not been by chance. Her sensual appeal was an integral part of the plot. It was necessary to enable her to get close enough to the Tsar to detonate the bomb that was to seal their mutual doom.
Tsar Peter’s weaknesses were well known to the palace servants. Pretty serving wenches were only one of them. Drunkenness was another. Dressing up in women’s clothes was a third. There were others. Boredom was the Tsar’s enemy; all sorts of perversions and debaucheries were his weapons against it.