“There are any number of destinations to eastward. There are any number to futureward. Start a hundred miles west and come eastward, choosing your paths on earth at random, as you do in time. You may arrive here. You may arrive to the north or south of this spot, and still be east of your starting point. Now start a hundred years back instead of a hundred miles west.”
Groping, Blake said fumbilingly: “I think you’re saying, sir, that—well, as there must be any number of futures, there must have been any number of pasts besides those written down in our histories. And—and it would follow that there are any number of what you might call ‘presents’. “
Minott gulped down the last of his sandwich and nodded. “Precisely. And today’s convulsion of nature has jumbled them and still upsets them from time to time. The Northmen once colonized America. In the sequence of events which mark the pathway of our own ancestors through time, that colony failed. But along another path through time that colony throve and flourished. The Chinese reached the shores of California. In the path our ancestors followed through time, nothing developed from the fact. But this morning we touched upon the pathway in which they colonized and conquered the continent, though from the fear that one peasant we saw displayed, they have not wiped out the Indians.
“Somewhere the Roman Empire still exists, and may not improbably rule America as it once ruled Britain. Somewhere, not impossibly, the conditions causing the glacial period still obtain and Virginia is buried under a mass of snow. Somewhere even the Carboniferous period may exist. Or to come more closely to the present we know, somewhere there is a path through time in which Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg went desperately home, and the Confederate States of America is now an independent nation with a heavily fortified border and a chip-on-the-shoulder attitude toward the United States.”
Blake alone had asked questions, but the entire party had been listening open-mouthed.
Now Maida Haynes said: “But—Professor Minott, where are we now?”
“We are probably,” said Minott, smiling, “in a path of time in which America has never been discovered by white men. That isn’t a very satisfactory state of things. We’re going to look for something better. We wouldn’t be comfortable in wigwams, with skins for clothing. So we shall hunt for a more congenial environment. We will have some weeks in which to do our searching, I think. Unless, of course, all space and time are wiped out by the cause of our predicament.”
Tom Hunter stirred uncomfortably. “We haven’t traveled backward or forward in time, then?”
“No,” repeated Minott. He got to his feet. “That odd nausea we felt seems to be caused by travel sidewise in time. It’s the symptom of a time oscillation. We’ll ride on and see what other worlds await us. We’re a rather well-qualified party for this sort of exploration. I chose you for your trainings. Hunter, zoology. Blake, engineering and geology. Harris, he nodded to the rather undersized young man, who flushed at being noticed, “Harris is quite a competent chemist, I understand. Miss Ketterling is a capable botanist. Miss Blair..”
Maida Haynes rose slowly. “You anticipated all this, Professor Minott, and yet you brought us into it. You, you said we’ll never get back home. Yet you deliberately arranged it. What, what was your motive? What did you do it for?”
Minott climbed into the saddle. He smiled, but there was bitterness in his smile. “In the world we know,” he told her, “I was a professor of mathematics in a small and unconsidered college. I had absolutely no chance of ever being more than a professor of mathematics in a small and unconsidered college. In this world I am, at least, the leader of a group of reasonably intelligent young people. In our saddlebags are arms and ammunition and more important, books of reference for our future activities. We shall hunt for and find a world in which our technical knowledge is at a premium. We shall live in that world—if all time and space is not destroyed—and use our knowledge.”
Maida Haynes said: “But again—what for?”
“To conquer it!” said Minott in sudden fierceness. “To conquer it! We eight shall rule a world as no world has been ruled since time began! I promise you that when we find the environment I seek, you will have wealth by millions, slaves by thousands, every luxury, and all the power human beings could desire!”
Blake said evenly: “And you, sir? What will you have?”
“Most power of all,” said Minott steadily. “I shall be the emperor of the world! And also—his tone changed indescribably as he glanced at Maida—“also I shall have a certain other possession that I wish.”
He turned his back to them and rode off to lead the way. Maida Haynes was deathly pale as she rode close to Blake. Her hand closed convulsively upon his arm.
“Jerry!” she whispered. “I’m—frightened!”
And Blake said steadily, “Don’t worry! I’ll kill him first!”
V
The ferryboat from Berkeley plowed valorously through the fog. Its whistle howled mournfully at the regulation intervals.
Up in the pilot house, the skipper said confidentially, “I tell you, I had the funniest feelin’ of my life, just now. I was dizzy and sick all over, like I was seasick and drunk all at the same time.”
The mate said abstractedly: “I had somethin’ like that a little while ago. Somethin’ we ate, prob’ly. Say, that’s funny!”
“Say what?”
“Was a lot o’ traffic in the harbor just now, whistlin’. I ain’t heard a whistle for minutes. Listen!”
Both men strained their ears. There was the rhythmic shudder of the vessel, itself a sound produced by the engines. There were fragmentary voice, noises from the passenger deck below. There was the wash of water by the ferryboat’s bow. There was nothing else. Nothing at all.
“Funny!” said the skipper.
“Damn funny!” agreed the mate.
The ferryboat went on. The fog cut down all visibility to a radius of perhaps two hundred feet.
“Funniest thing I ever saw!” said the skipper worriedly. He reached for the whistle cord and the mournful bellow of the horn resounded. “We’re near our slip, though. I wish ....”
With a little chugging, swishing sound a steam launch came out of the mist. It sheered off, the men in it staring blankly at the huge bulk of the ferry. It made a complete circuit of the big, clumsy craft. Then someone stood up and bellowed unintelligibly in the launch. He bellowed again. He was giving an order. He pointed to the flag at the stern of the launch—it was an unfamiliar flag—and roared furiously.
“What the hell’s the matter of that guy?” wondered the mate.
A little breeze blew suddenly. The fog began to thin. The faintly brighter spot which was the sun overhead grew bright indeed. Faint sunshine struggled through the fog bank. The wind drove the fog back before it, and the bellowing man in the steam launch grew purple with rage as his orders went unheeded.
Then, quite abruptly, the last wisps of vapor blew away. San Francisco stood revealed. But—San Francisco? This was not San Francisco! It was a wooden city, a small city, a dirty city with narrow streets and gas street lamps and four monstrous, barracklike edifice fronting the harbor. No hill stood, but it was barren of dwellings. And -
“Damn!” said the mate of the ferryboat.
He was staring at a colossal mass of masonry, foursquare and huge, which rose to a gigantic spiral fluted dome. A strange and alien flag fluttered in the breeze above certain buildings. Figures moved in the streets. There were motor cars, but they were clumsy and huge.