“Bryce, you cannot—”
He flung a switch, keeping clear of the steel table as he did so. Immediately an impalpable bubble of unknown forces — clearer than glass — enclosed the girl completely, swallowing up the steel table on which she lay. She was stopped in mid-motion of raising her head, her last sentence truncated.
Bryce waited for a moment or two, his brooding eyes on the many meters; then he turned and moved slowly towards the girl, contemplating her.
Her lips were slightly parted: her eyes stared at him quite unseeingly, eyes that were froze and yet somehow alive.
His gaze went up and down her slim form in the light overcoat, which had fallen apart to reveal the brown silk dress beneath. Then he looked at the steel table, the four leather binding straps, and lastly the beechwood cradle supporting her shoulders.
Bryce smiled. Time, he knew, was no more inside that globe. Entropy was halted by reason of the globe’s walls themselves having already achieved the ultimate of shuffling in their constitution.
“A year — fifty years — fifty centuries,” Bryce murmured half aloud. “Maybe for eternity.”
Then he turned back to the switchboard and examined the maze of instruments minutely. He waited perhaps half-an-hour and then cut the power out of the magnets at either end of the girl. A low, exultant sigh escaped him as he saw that the globe remained where it was, self-sustained, eternally balanced, a small foretaste of what the universe itself must one day become.
“If there is a key to open it — a random element to restore the shuffling — I do not know of it, nor do I want it! None shall unlock the prison!”
He nodded to himself, then pulling out a plunger he waited a moment and stepped back. In a sudden blaze of light and explosion the entire switchboard blew itself to atoms, tearing out part of the wall with it.
Bryce turned to the massive door of the cavern, took one last look at the motionless girl in the motionless globe. Then he closed the door upon her and locked it. With the face of a dead man he went silently through the adjoining cavern and into the tunnel that led to the surface.
“Reggie and the brat,” he murmured, “They must be taken care of too—”
The thought was dashed from his mind as there suddenly came a vast ominous rumbling. He looked up with a start, flashing the beam of his torch. He was in time to see the tunnel roof fissuring along its whole length. In a flash he realized what had occurred, remembering the crack in the cavern wall, which had followed the wrecking of the switchboard. The underground workings had been savagely shaken, and now— The truth had no sooner flashed across his mind than he saw a vast mass of rubble and stone hurtling down towards him.
CHAPTER TWO: TIME BARRIER
The Master was deliberating. He sat in his office at the top of a building towering to two thousand feet — a lonely being with the entire Western world beneath him. His was the guiding brain, his the responsibility for the continued progress of western civilization. The people had voted him into his position, and his father before him. He knew only the duty and the inflexible adherence to laws made by his predecessors.
In appearance he was only slight. Like all his fellows he was deeply tanned. His movements were deliberate and every gesture had finality about it. His thin, high-cheek-boned face was without expression because he had been schooled in keeping his emotions in rigid check. In becoming more refined he had also become less human.
Presently the Master pressed a button amongst the multitude on his desk. Then he sat back to wait, the papers relevant to his next interview neatly arranged on the desk before him. A door with the warm gleam of copper about it opened and shut and a lithe, well-built man, scrupulously dressed and aged about forty, came forward with active strides.
“Good morning, Mister Hurst,” the Master greeted. “Please be seated.”
“Master.…” Leslie Hurst gave a slight bow of acknowledgement and then settled in the chair at the opposite side of the Master’s desk.
“I have here your dossier on the Eastern crisis,” the Master continued, motioning languidly to the papers. “You apparently believe a good deal of trouble is brewing in that hemisphere?”
“I am convinced of it, Master — so much so I felt that, in my capacity as ambassador to the East, I should deliver that dossier to you personally and not risk the possibility of agents getting at it.”
“Very commendable, Mister Hurst. And what exactly is the Eastern position?”
“The same old trouble of concessions,” Hurst replied bitterly. “Lan Ilof, President of the Eastern Government, is still insisting that half of Mars should belong to them and the other half to us. It’s sheer bluff, of course, since we were the first to set up a base on Mars, and claim the entire planet for its value in mineral resources. Ilof claims that at a date before we arrived, their own expedition had already been there. He has supplied photographic proof to me, but I don’t believe any of it. The whole thing boils down to him wanting half of Mars so that he can replenish certain mineral stocks of which the East is short.”
“And if he does not get this concession from us he threatens war?”
“Yes.” Leslie Hurst was silent for a moment or two, his young but powerful face troubled. “And I think he could give us a run for our money too,” he added.
“How so?” There was an undisturbed calm upon the face of the Master that belied his quick-thinking brain.
“I happen to know that he has been building up formidable stocks of weapons and missiles with atomic warheads. Our agents have given me the facts. I don’t think I would be exaggerating if I said his intercontinental missiles outnumber ours by nearly three to one. There are also many secret armaments. The scientists have never been deficient of scientific ingenuity as you know.”
“President Ilof has never seemed to me the kind of man who would favor war as a means of gaining his end,” the Master mused. “I have met him several times, and I found him most cordial, and highly intelligent.”
“No doubt of it,” Hurst agreed, “but he is in the unfortunate position of having to bow to certain factions in his government. Generals Zoam and Niol are, as is well known, two of the biggest warmongers ever. Their greatest ambition is to dominate Earth and now Mars. I know, because an ambassador hears many things. The Generals have never said as much openly, preferring to use President Ilof as their mouthpiece. That is the situation, Master,” Hurst finished. “Nothing in the nature of an ultimatum has been presented yet, but I have the feeling it may happen before long. When it does I wish to be in a position to answer quickly, so what are your instructions?”
Calmly the Master answered: “Tell them that we shall not make any concessions whatever. Not an inch! And if they wish to fight over it we will use every available means to defeat them. I am aware that it means war between hemispheres, global war on a far-reaching, devastating scale. Even that is better than meekly kneeling down before the dictates of a Government that has no legal right to make such a claim. Against the possibility of war breaking out I will instruct the necessary experts in the west to prepare armaments and defensive measures to meet the storm, should it come.”
“That is your final decision, Master?”
“It is. You may return to your post as ambassador, Mister Hurst, and any serious change in the situation must be notified immediately by secret transmission.… A pity indeed that matters have to come to such a pass,” the Master added, musing. “Particularly so as we are all now essentially a single race, the product of nearly one thousand years of world peace and inter-marriage — before the creation of a new iron curtain between hemispheres in the last century, for reasons that are now obscure.”