Blake nodded. He listened again. Then be said, “You’ve three sides of an—an island of time marked there.”
“Just so,” agreed Minott. “Exactly! In the scrambling process, the oscillating process, there seem to be natural ‘faults’ in the surface of the earth. Relatively large areas seem to shift back and forth as units from one time path to another. In my own mind, I’ve likened them to elevators with many stories.
“We were on the Fredericksburg ‘elevator’, or that section of our time path, when it shifted to another time. We rode off it onto the Chinese continent. While there, the section we started from shifted again, to another time altogether. When we rode back to where it had been—well, the town of Fredericksburg was in another time path altogether.”
Blake said sharply, “Listen!”
A dull mutter sounded far to the north. It lasted for an instant and died away. There was a crashing of bushes near by and a monstrous animal stepped alertly into the firelight. It was, an elk, but such an elk! It was a giant, a colossal creature. One of the girls cried out affrightedly, and it turned and crashed away into the underbrush.
“There are no elk in Virginia,” said Minott dryly.
Blake said sharply again, “Listen!”
Again that dull muttering to the north. It grew louder, now. It was an airplane motor. It increased in volume from a dull mutter to a growl, from a growl to a roar. Then the plane shot overhead, the navigation lights on its wings glowing brightly. It banked steeper and returned. It circled overhead, with a queer effect of helplessness. And then suddenly it dived down.
“An aviator from our time,” said Blake, staring toward the sound. “He saw our fire. He’s going to try to make a crash landing in the dark.”
The motor cut off. An instant in which there was only the crackling, of the fire and the whistling of wind around gliding surfaces off there in the night. Then a terrific thrashing of branches. A crash ....
Then a flare of flame, a roaring noise, and the lurid yellow of gasoline flames spouting skyward.
“Stay here!” snapped Blake. He was on his feet in an instant. “Harris, Professor Minott! Somebody has to stay with the girls! I’ll get Hunter and go help!”
He plunged off into the darkness, calling to Hunter. The two of them forced their way through the underbrush. Minott scowled and got out his revolvers. Still scowling, he slipped out of the firelight and took up the guard duty Hunter had abandoned.
A gasoline tank exploded, off there in the darkness. The glare of the fire grew intolerably vivid. The sound of the two young men racing through undergrowth became fainter and died away.
A long time passed—a very long time. Then, very far away, the sound of thrashing bushes could be heard again. The gasoline flare dulled and dimmed. Figures came slowly back. They moved as if they were carrying something very heavy. They stopped beyond the glow of light from the camp fire. Then Blake and Hunter reappeared, alone.
“He’d dead,” said Blake curtly. “Luckily, he was flung clear of the crash before the gas tanks caught. He catch back to consciousness for a couple of minutes before he—died. Our fire was the only sign of human life he’d seen in hours. We brought him over here. We’ll bury him in the morning.”
There was silence. Minott’s scowl was deep and savage as he came back to the firelight.
“What—what did he say?” asked Maida Haynes. “He left Washington at five this afternoon,” said Blake shortly. “By our time, or something like it. All of Virginia across the Potomac vanished at four thirty, and virgin forest took its place He went out to explore. At the end of an hour he came back, and Washington was gone. In its place. was a fog bank, with snow underneath. He followed the Potomac down and saw palisaded homesteads with long, oared ships drawn up on shore.”
“Vikings, Norsemen!” said Minott in satisfaction.
“He didn’t land. He swept on down, following the edge of the bay. He looked for Baltimore. Gone! Once, he’s sure, he saw a city, but he was taken sick at about that time and when he recovered, it had vanished. He was heading north again and his gasoline was getting low when he saw our fire. He tried for a crash landing. He’d no flares with him. He crashed, and died.”
“Poor fellow!” said Maida shakenly.
“The point is,” said Blake, “that Washington was in our present time at about four thirty today. We’ve got a chance, though a slim one, of getting back! We’ve got to get to the edge of one of these blocks that go swinging through time, the edge of what Professor Minott calls a ‘time fault’, and watch it! When the shifts come, we explore as quickly as we can. We’ve no great likelihood, perhaps, of getting back exactly to our own period, but we can get nearer to it than we are now! Professor Minott said that somewhere the Confederacy exists. Even that, among people of our own race and speaking our own language, would be better than to be marooned forever among Indians, or among Chinese or Norsemen.”
Minott said harshly, “Blake, we’d better have this out right now! I give the orders in this party! You jumped quickly when that plane crashed, and you gave orders to Harris and to me. I let you get away with it, but we can have but one leader. I am that leader! See you remember it!”
Blake swung about. Minott had a revolver bearing on his body.
“And you are making plans for a return to our time!” he went on savagely. “I won’t have it! The odds are still that we’ll all be killed. But if I do live, I mean to take advantage of it. And my plans do not include a return to a professorship of mathematics at Robinson College.”
“Well?” said Blake coolly. “What of it, sir?”
“Just this! I’m going to take your revolvers. I’m going to make the plans and give the orders hereafter. We are going to look for the time path in which a viking civilization thrives in America. We’ll find it, too, because these disturbances will last for weeks yet. And once we find it, we will settle down among those Norsemen, and when space and time are stable again I shall begin the formation of my empire! And you will obey orders or you’ll be left afoot while the rest of us go on to my destiny!”
Blake said very quietly indeed, “Perhaps, sir, we’d all prefer to be left to our own destinies rather than be merely the tools by which you attain to yours.”
Minott stared at him an instant. His lips tensed. “It is a pity,” he said coldly. “I could have used your brains, Blake. But I can’t have mutiny. I shall have to shoot you.”
His revolver came up remorselessly.
VII
To determine the cause of various untoward events, the British Academy of Sciences was in extraordinary session. Its members were weary, bleary-eyed, but still conscious of their dignity and the importance of their task. A venerable, whiskered physicist spoke with fitting definiteness and solemnity.
“And so, gentleman, I see nothing more that remains to be said. The extraordinary events of the past hours seem to follow from certain facts about our own closed space. The gravitational fields of 1079 particles of matter will close space about such an aggregation. No cosmos can be larger. No cosmos can be smaller. And if we envision the creation of such a cosmos we will observe its galaxies vanish at the instant the 1079th particle adds its own mass to those which were present before it.
“However, the fact that space has closed about such a cosmos does not imply its annihilation. It means merely its separation from its original space, the isolation of itself in space and time because of the curvature of space due to its gravitational field. And if we assume the existence of more than one area of closed space, we assume in some sense the existence of a hyper space separating the closed spaces, hyper-spatial coordinates which mark their relative hyper-spatial positions, hyper-spatial ....”