I looked at him. "Just a nut, huh?" I said pityingly. "Just another sometimes capable fellow gone wrong. He thinks he knows what he's doing, and he even had me fooled for a time, but the idee fixe has come out at last, and we see the man for what he is – mad as a hatter. Nothing but a time-traveller at the bottom of that mass of flesh and bone." I felt sorry for him, in a way.
His face grew as purple as the drink in his hand. As though he too had formed the association, he drained it and set it down. "Listen," he said. "I only know one style of reasoning that parallels yours in its scope and utter disregard of logic. Were you ever so unfortunate as to be associated with that miserable charlatan, Dr. George B. Hopper?"
"My physics professor at Housatonic," I said, "and whaddya make of that?"
"I am glad of the chance of talking to you," he said in a voice suddenly hoarse. "It's no exaggeration to say that for the greater part of my life I've wanted to come across a pupil of Professor Hopper. I've sat under him and over him on various faculties; we even went to Cambridge together — it disgusted both of us. And now at last I have the chance, and now you are going to learn the truth about physics."
"Go on with your lecture," I muttered skeptically.
He looked at me glassily. "I am going on with my lecture," he said. "Listen closely. Take a circle. What is a circle?"
"You tell me," I said.
"A circle is a closed arc. A circle is composed of an infinite number of straight lines, each with a length of zero, each at an angle infinitesmally small to its adjacent straight lines."
"I should be the last to dispute the point," I said judiciously. He reached for the decanter and missed. He reached again grimly, his fist opening and closing, and finally snapping shut on its neck. Will you join me once more?" he asked graciously.
"Granted," I said absently, wondering what was going around in my head.
"Now — one point which we must get quite clear in the beginning is that all circles are composed of an in—"
"You said that already," I interrupted.
"Did I?" he asked with a delighted smile. "I'm brighter than I thought." He waggled his head fuzzily. "Then do you further admit that, by a crude Euclidean axiom which I forget at the moment, all circles are equal?"
"Could be — but so help me, if —" I broke off abruptly as I realized that I was lying full length on the floor. I shuddered at the very thought of what my aunt would say to that. "The point I was about to make," he continued without a quaver, "was that if all circles are equal, all circles can be traversed at the same expenditure of effort, money, or what have you." He stopped and gasped at me, collecting his thoughts. "All circles can be traversed, also, with the same amount of time! No matter whether the circle be the equator or the head of a pin! Now do you see?"
"With the clarity appalling. And the time travelling .. .?"
"Ah — er — yes. The time travelling. Let me think for a moment." He indicated thought by a Homeric configuration of his eyebrows, forehead, cheeks and chin. "Do you know," he finally said with a weak laugh, "I'm afraid I've forgotten the connection. But my premise is right, isn't it? If it takes the same time to traverse any two circles, and one of them is the universe, and the other is my time wheel —" His voice died under my baleful stare.
"I question your premise vaguely," I said. "There's nothing I can exactly put my finger on, but I believe it's not quite dry behind the ears."
"Look," he said. "You can question it as much as you like, but it works. I'll show you the gimmicks."
We clambered to our feet. "There," he pointed to the box I had nearly sat upon, "there lies the key to the ages." And he took up a crowbar and jimmied the top off the crate.
I lifted out carefully the most miscellaneous collection of junk ever seen outside a museum of modern art. "What, for example," I asked, gingerly dangling a canvas affair at arms' length, "does this thing do?"
"One wears it as a belt," he said. I put the thing on and found that it resolved itself into a normal Sam Browne belt with all sorts of oddments of things dangling from it. "Now," he said, "I have but to plug this into a wall socket, and then, providing you get on the time wheel, out you go like a light — pouf!"
"Don't be silly," I said. "I'm practically out now in the first place, in the second place I don't care whether I go out pouf or splash – though the latter is more customary – and in the third place I don't believe your silly old machine works anyway. I dare you to make me go pouf – I just dare you!"
"All right," he said mildly. "Over there is the time wheel. Get on it."
The time wheel reminded me of a small hand-turned merry-go-round. I got on it with a good will, and he made it turn. Then he plugged in the lead to a wall socket, and I went out like a light – pouf !
There are few things more sobering than time-travel. On going pouf I closed my eyes, as was natural. Possibly I screamed a little, too. All I know is when I opened my eyes they were bleary and aching, and certainly nowhere very near the old house past the dog-pound on Court Street. The locale appeared to be something like Rockefeller Center, only without fountains.
I was standing on polished stones – beautifully polished stones which seemed to set the keynote of the surroundings. Everything was beautiful and everything was polished. Before me was a tall, tall building. It was a dark night, and there seemed to be a great lack of illumination in this World of Tomorrow.
I followed my nose into the building. The revolving door revolved without much complaint, and did me the favor of turning on the lights of the lobby.
There were no people there; there were no people anywhere in sight. I tried to shout, and the ghastly echo from the still darkened sections made me tremble to my boots. I didn't try again, but very mousily looked about for an elevator or something. The something turned out to be a button in a vast column, labeled in plain English, "Slavies' ring."
I rang, assuring myself that doing so was no confession of inferiority, but merely the seizing of an offered opportunity.
All the lobby lights went out, then, but the column was glowing like mother-of-pearl before a candle. A sort of door opened, and I walked through. "Why not?" I asked myself grimly.
I seemed to be standing on a revolving staircase – but one that actually revolved! It carried me up like a gigantic corkscrew at a speed that was difficult to determine. It stopped after a few minutes, and another door opened. I stepped through and said "Thank you" nicely to the goblins of the staircase, and shuddered again as the door slammed murderously fast and hard.
Lights go again at my landing place – I was getting a bit more familiar with this ridiculous civilization. Was everybody away at Bermuda for the summer? I wondered. Then I chattered my teeth.
Corpses! Hundreds of them! I had had the bad taste, I decided, to land in the necropolis of the World of Tomorrow.
On slabs of stone they lay in double rows, great lines of them stretching into the distance of the huge chamber into which I had blundered. Morbid curiosity moved me closer to the nearest stiff. I had taken a course in embalming to get my C.E., and I pondered on the advances of that art.
Something hideously like a bed-lamp clicked on as I bent over the mummified creature. Go above! With a rustling like the pages of an ancient book it moved – flung its arm over its eyes!
I'm afraid I may have screamed. But almost immediately I realized that the terror had been of my own postulation. Corpses do not move. This thing had moved – therefore it was not a corpse, and I had better get hold of myself unless I was determined to go batty.