«If our discovery is given to the world, if all who are old or dying can make themselves young again, the population will almost double every generation. Nor would the world—not even our own relatively enlightened country—be willing to accept compulsory birth control as a solution.
«Give this to the world, as the world is today in 2004, and within a generation there will be famine, suffering, war. Perhaps a complete collapse of civilization.
«Yes, we have reached other planets, but they are not suitable for colonizing. The stars may be our answer, but we are a long way from reaching them. When we do, someday, the billions of habitable planets that must be out there will be our answer … our living room. But until then, what is the answer?
«Destroy the machine? But think of the countless lives it can save, the suffering it can prevent. Think of what it would mean to a man dying of cancer. Think …
Think. You finish the letter and put it down.
You think of Barbara dead for forty-five years. And of the fact that you were married to her for three years and that those years are lost to you.
Fifty years lost. You damn the old man of seventy-five whom you became and who has done this to you … who has given you this decision to make.
Bitterly, you know what the decision must be. You think that he knew, too, and realize that he could safely leave it in your hands. Damn him, he should have known.
Too valuable to destroy, too dangerous to give.
The other answer is painfully obvious.
You must be custodian of this discovery and keep it secret until it is safe to give, until mankind has expanded to the stars and has new worlds to populate, or until, even without that, he has reached a state of civilization where he can avoid overpopulation by rationing births to the number of accidental—or voluntary—deaths.
If neither of those things has happened in another fifty years (and are they likely so soon?), then you, at seventy-five, will be writing another letter like this one. You will be undergoing another experience similar to the one you’re going through now. And making the same decision, of course.
Why not? You’ll be the same person again.
Time and again, to preserve this secret until Man is ready for it.
How often will you again sit at a desk like this one, thinking the thoughts you are thinking now, feeling the grief you now feel?
There is a click at the door and you know that the time lock has opened, that you are now free to leave this room, free to start a new life for yourself in place of the one you have already lived and lost.
But you are in no hurry now to walk directly through that door.
You sit there, staring straight ahead of you blindly, seeing in your mind’s eye the vista of a set of facing mirrors, like those in an old-fashioned barber shop, reflecting the same thing over and over again, diminishing into far distance.
EXPERIMENT
«The first time machine, gentlemen,» Professor Johnson proudly informed his two colleagues. «True, it is a small-scale experimental model. It will operate only on objects weighing less than three pounds, five ounces and for distances into the past and future of twelve minutes or less. But it works.»
The small-scale model looked like a small scale—a postage scale—except for two dials in the part under the platform.
Professor Johnson held up a small metal cube. «Our experimental object,» he said, «is a brass cube weighing one pound, two point, three ounces. First, I shall send it five minutes into the future.»
He leaned forward and set one of the dials on the time machine. «Look at your watches,» he said.
They looked at their watches. Professor Johnson placed the cube gently on the machine’s platform. It vanished.
Five minutes later, to the second, it reappeared.
Professor Johnson picked it up. «Now five minutes into the past.» He set the other dial. Holding the cube in his hand he looked at his watch. «It is six minutes before three o’clock. I shall now activate the mechanism—by placing the cube on the platform—at exactly three o’clock. Therefore, the cube should, at five minutes before three, vanish from my hand and appear on the platform, five minutes before I place it there.»
«How can you place it there, then?» asked one of his colleagues.
«It will, as my hand approaches, vanish from the platform and appear in my hand to be placed there. Three o’clock. Notice, please.»
The cube vanished from his hand.
It appeared on the platform of the time machine.
«See? Five minutes before I shall place it there, it is there!»
His other colleague frowned at the cube. «But,» he said, «what if, now that it has already appeared five minutes before you place it there, you should change your mind about doing so and not place it there at three o’clock? Wouldn’t there be a paradox of some sort involved?»
«An interesting idea,» Professor Johnson said. «I had not thought of it, and it will be interesting to try. Very well, I shall not…»
There was no paradox at all. The cube remained.
But the entire rest of the Universe, professors and all, vanished.
THE LAST MARTIAN
It was an evening like any evening, but duller than most. I was back in the city room after covering a boring banquet, at which the food had been so poor that, even though it had cost me nothing, I’d felt cheated. For the hell of it, I was writing a long and glowing account of it, ten or twelve column inches. The copyreader, of course, would cut it to a passionless paragraph or two.
Slepper was sitting with his feet up on the desk, ostentatiously doing nothing, and Johnny Hale was putting a new ribbon on his typewriter. The rest of the boys were out on routine assignments.
Cargan, the city ed, came out of his private office and walked over to us.
«Any of you guys know Barney Welch?» he asked us.
A silly question. Barney runs Barney’s Bar right across the street from the Trib. There isn’t a Trib reporter who doesn’t know Barney well enough to borrow money from him. So we all nodded.
«He just phoned,» Cargan said. «He’s got a guy down there who claims to be from Mars.»
«Drunk or crazy, which?» Slepper wanted to know.
«Barney doesn’t know, but he said there might be a gag story in it if we want to come over and talk to the guy. Since it’s right across the street and since you three mugs are just sitting on your prats, anyway, one of you dash over. But no drinks on the expense account.»
Slepper said, «I’ll go,» but Cragan’s eyes had lighted on me. «You free, Bill?» he asked. «This has got to be a funny story, if any, and you got a light touch on the human interest stuff.»
«Sure,» I grumbled. «I’ll go.»
«Maybe it’s just some drunk being funny, but if the guy’s really insane, phone for a cop, unless you think you can get a gag story. If there’s an arrest, you got something to hang a straight story on.»
Slepper said, «Cargan, you’d get your grandmother arrested to get a story. Can I go along with Bill, just for the ride?»
«No, you and Johnny stay here. We’re not moving the city room across the street to Barney’s.» Cargan went back into his office.
I slapped a «thirty» on to end the banquet story and sent it down the tube. I got my hat and coat. Slepper said, «Have a drink for me, Bill. But don’t drink so much you lose that light touch.»
I said, «Sure,» and went on over to the stairway and down.
I walked into Barney’s and looked around. Nobody from the Trib was there except a couple of pressmen playing gin rummy at one of the tables. Aside from Barney himself, back of the bar, there was only one other man in the place.