It was revolting but necessary that I examine the thing. From its fingers thin, fine silver wires led into holes in the slab. I rolled it over, not heeding its terrible groans, and saw that a larger strand penetrated the neck, apparently in contact with its medulla oblongata. Presumably it was sick – this was a hospital. I rambled about cheerfully, scanning cryptic dials on the walls, wondering what would happen next, if anything.
There was a chair facing the wall; I turned it around and sat down.
"Greetings, unknown friend," said an effeminate voice.
"Greetings right back at you," said I.
"You have seated yourself in a chair; please be advised that you have set into motion a sound track that may be of interest to you."
The voice came from a panel in the wall that had lit up with opalescent effects.
"My name," said the panel, "is unimportant. You will probably wish to know first, assuming that this record is ever played, that there are duplicates artfully scattered throughout this city, so that whoever visits us will hear our story."
"Clever, aren't you?" I said sourly. "Suppose you stop fussing around and tell me what's going on around here."
"I am speaking," said the panel, "from the Fifth Century of Bickerstaff."
"Whatever that means," I said.
"Or, by primitive reckoning, 2700 A.D."
"Thanks."
To explain, we must begin at the beginning. You may know that Bickerstaff was a poor Scottish engineer who went and discovered atomic power. I shall pass over his early struggles for recognition, merely stating that the process he invented was economical and efficient beyond anything similar in history.
"With the genius of Bickerstaff as a prod, humanity blossomed forth into its fullest greatness. Poetry and music, architecture and sculpture, letters and graphics became the principal occupations of mankind."
The panel coughed. "I myself," it said, modestly struggling with pride, "was a composer of no little renown in this city.
"However, there was one thing wrong with the Bickerstaff Power Process. That is, as Bickerstaff was to mankind, so the element yttrium was to his process. It was what is known as a catalyst, a substance introduced into a reaction for the purpose of increasing the speed of the reaction."
I, a Chemical Engineer, listening to that elementary rot! I didn't walk away. Perhaps he was going to say something of importance.
"In normal reactions the catalyst is not changed either in quantity or in quality, since it takes no real part in the process. However, the Bickerstaff process subjected all matter involved to extraordinary heat, pressure, and bombardment, and so the supply of yttrium has steadily vanished.
"Possibly we should have earlier heeded the warnings of nature. It may be the fault of no one but ourselves that we have allowed our race to become soft and degenerate in the long era of plenty. Power, light, heat – for the asking. And then we faced twin terrors: shortage of yttrium – and the Martians."
Abruptly I sat straight. Martians! I didn't see any of them around.
"Our planetary neighbors," said the panel, "are hardly agreeable. It came as a distinct shock to us when their ships landed this year – my year, that is – as the bearers of a message.
"Flatly we were ordered: Get out or be crushed. We could have resisted, we could have built war-machines, but what was to power them? Our brain-men did what they could, but it was little enough.
"They warned us, did the Martians. They said that we were worthless, absolutely useless, and they deserved the planet more than we. They had been watching our planet for many years, they said, and we were unfit to own it.
"That is almost a quotation of what they said. Not a translation, either, for they spoke English and indeed all the languages of Earth perfectly. They had observed us so minutely as to learn our tongues!
"Opinion was divided as to the course that lay before us. There were those who claimed that by hoarding the minute quantity of yttrium remaining to us we might be able to hold off the invaders when they should come. But while we were discussing the idea the supply was all consumed.
"Some declared themselves for absorption with the Martian race on its arrival. Simple laws of biogenetics demonstrated effectively that such a procedure was likewise impossible.
"A very large group decided to wage guerilla warfare, studying the technique from Clausewitz's "Theory and Practise". Unfortunately, the sole remaining copy of this work crumbled into dust when it was removed from its vault.
"And then ...
"A man named Selig Vissarion, a poet of Odessa, turned his faculties to the problem, and evolved a device to remove the agonies of waiting. Three months ago – my time, remember –he proclaimed it to all mankind.
"His device was – the Biosomniac. It so operates that the sleeper – the subject of the device, that is – is thrown into a deep slumber characterized by dreams of a pleasurable nature. And the slumber is one from which he will never, without outside interference, awake.
"The entire human race, as I speak, is now under the influence of the machine. All but me, and I am left only because there is no one to put me under. When I have done here – I shall shoot myself.
"For this is our tragedy: Now, when all our yttrium is gone, we have found a device to transmute metals. Now we could make all the yttrium we need, except that ...
"The device cannot be powered except by the destruction of the atom.
"And, having no yttrium at all left, we can produce no such power ...
"And so, unknown friend, farewell. You have heard our history. Remember it, and take warning. Be warned of sloth, beware of greed. Farewell, my unknown friend."
And, with that little sermon, the shifting glow of the panel died and I sat bespelled. It was all a puzzle to me. If the Martians were coming, why hadn't they arrived? Or had they? At least I saw none about me.
I looked at the mummified figures that stretched in great rows the length of the chamber. These, then, were neither dead nor ill, but sleeping. Sleeping against the coming of the Martians. I thought. My chronology was fearfully confused. Could it be that the invaders from the red planet had not yet come, and that I was only a year or two after the human race had plunged itself into sleep? That must be it.
And all for the want of a little bit of yttrium!
Absently I inspected the appendages of the time travelling belt. They were, for the most part, compact boxes labeled with the curt terminology of engineering. "Converter," said one. "Entropy gradient," said another. And a third bore the cryptic word, "Gadenolite." That baffled my chemical knowledge. Vaguely I remembered something I had done back in Housatonic with the stuff. It was a Scandinavian rare earth, as I remember, containing tratia, eunobia, and several oxides. And one of them, I slowly remembered…
Then I said it aloud, with dignity and precision "One of the compounds present in this earth in large proportions is yttrium dioxide."
Yttrium dioxide? Why, that was —
Yttrium!
It was one of those things that was just too good to be true. Yttrium! Assuming that the Martians hadn't come yet, and that there really was a decent amount of the metal in the little box on my belt ...
Quite the little heroine, I, I thought cheerfully, and strode to the nearest sleeper. "Excuse me," I said.
He groaned as the little reading-lamp flashed on. "Excuse me," I said again.
He didn't move. Stern measures seemed to be called for. I shouted in his ear, Wake up, you!" But he wouldn't. I wandered among the sleepers, trying to arouse some, and failing in every case. It must be those little wires, I thought gaily as I bent over one of them.