And he, alone in this tiny cigar-shaped rocket only thirty feet long by six in circumference, could do what the whole fleet couldn’t—he hoped. Well, Mekky thought it would work and Mekky would know if anybody or anything would know. No use worrying about it. It would work or it wouldn’t and, if it didn’t, he wouldn’t live to worry.
He tested the controls, sending the rocket in a tight little circle only a mile across, coming back and to a dead stop at the point at which he’d started. A difficult maneuver but easy for him now. «The Ole Rocketeer,» he thought. «If my fans of the Rocketalk Department could only see me now.» He grinned.
Inside his head, Mekky’s voice said, «It’s coming. I feel ether vibrations.»
He looked hard at the visiplate. There was a black dot just off the center of it. He touched the controls, got the dot on dead center and slammed on all the rockets, full power.
The black dot grew, slowly at first, then filled the screen. He was going to hit it in a second now. Quickly, desperately, he remembered to concentrate on Earth, his Earth, on the spot near Greeneville, New York. On Betty Hadley. On currency in sensible dollars and cents and night life on Broadway without the mist-out, on everything he’d known.
A series of pictures flashed through his mind, as is supposed to be the case with a drowning man. «But—Lord,» he thought, «Why didn’t I think of it sooner? It doesn’t have to be exactly like that. I can make a few improvements. I can pick a universe almost exactly like mine but with a few differences that would make it better, such as—
The rocket hit the monster ship, dead center. There was a blinding flash.
Again there was no sense of a time lapse. Keith Winton was again lying flat on the ground and it was early evening. There were stars in the sky and a moon. It was a half-moon, he noticed, not the crescent moon of last Saturday evening.
He looked down and around him. He was in the middle of a big charred and blackened area. Not far away were the foundations of what had been a house, and he recognized the size and shape of it. He recognized the blackened stump of a tree beside him. Things looked as though the explosion and fire had occurred almost a week ago. «Good,» he thought. «Back at the right time and place.»
He stood up and stretched, feeling a bit stiff from his confinement in the little rocketship.
He walked out to the road, still feeling a bit uneasy. Why had he let his mind wander a trifle just at the last minute. He could have made a mistake doing that. What if—?
A truck was coming along and he hailed it, getting a lift into Greeneville. The driver was taciturn. They didn’t talk at all on the way in.
Keith thanked him as he got off at the main square of town. He ran quickly to the newsstand to look at the headline of the current newspaper displayed there. «Giants Beat Bums,» it read. Keith sighed with relief.
He realized he’d been sweating until he’d seen that headline. He wiped perspiration off his forehead and went into the newsstand. «Got a copy of Surprising Stories?» he asked.
«Right here, sir.»
He glanced at the cover, at the familiar cover, saw that it said 20c, and not 2cr. Again he sighed with relief—until he reached for change in his pocket and remembered there wasn’t any there. And there’d be only credit bills—a few of them—in his wallet. No use pulling that out.
Embarrassed, he handed the magazine back. «Sorry,» he said. «Just realized I came away without any money.»
«Oh, that’s all right, Mr. Winton,» the proprietor said. «Pay me any time. And—uh—if you came away without your money could I lend you some? Would ten dollars help?»
«It surely would,» Keith said. «Thanks a lot. Uh—make it nine-eighty, so I’ll owe you an even ten with the magazine.»
«Sure. Gee, I’m glad to see you, Mr. Winton. We thought you were killed when the rocket hit. All the papers said so.»
«Of course,» Keith thought. «That’s how he knows me. My picture would have been in the papers as one of Borden’s visitors who was killed.»
«Glad to say the newspapers got it wrong,» he told the man. «Thanks a lot.»
He pocketed the nine dollars and eighty cents, and went out again. It was getting to be dusk, just as it had been before on last Saturday night. Well, now to—now to what? He couldn’t phone Borden.
Borden was dead—or maybe blown into another universe. Keith hoped it was the latter. Had the Bordens and the others who’d been on the estate, been near enough the center of the flash to have had that happen to them? He hoped so.
An unpleasant memory made him walk past the corner drugstore where—it seemed like years ago—he’d seen his first purple Bem. He went into the drugstore on the next corner and walked back to the phone booth. Often someone worked late in the Borden offices in New York. Maybe somebody would be working there now. If not, all the call would cost him would be a report charge.
He got a handful of change from the druggist and went back to the phone booth. How did one dial a long distance operator on a Greeneville phone? He picked up the Greeneville directory to find out and idly leafed it open to the B’s first. The last time he’d handled one of these things there hadn’t been any L. A. Borden listed.
This time, of course—just to reassure himself, he ran his finger down the column. There wasn’t any L. A. Borden.
For just a minute, he leaned against the back of the phone booth and closed his eyes. Then he looked again. Had some embryonic thoughts gone through his mind at the last minute and brought him back to a universe not quite the same as the one he left?
Quickly he yanked the copy of Surprising Stories out of his pocket and opened it to the title page. He ran his finger to the point in the fine print where—Ray Wheeler, Managing Editor, it read. Not Keith Winton but Ray Wheeler. Who the devil was Ray Wheeler?
Quickly his eyes swung to the name of the publisher—and it didn’t read Borden Publications, Inc., at all. It read Winton Publications, Inc. It took him a full five seconds to figure out where he’d heard the name of Winton before. Then he grabbed for the phone book again and looked under the Ws. There was a Keith Winton listed, Cedarburg Road, and a familiar phone number, Greeneville 111.
No wonder the newsdealer had known him, then. And he had changed things somewhat and somehow with those last minute thoughts in the rocket ship. This was almost the same universe but not quite. In it Keith Winton owned one of the biggest chains of publications in the country and had owned a Greeneville estate!
But what else—if anything?
He put a coin in the phone and said quickly, «Long distance, please,» before he remembered it was a dial phone.
His hands fumbled the directory before he could find out how to get a long distance operator.
Then he got one, and said, «New York, please. Have the New York operator see if there is a Betty Hadley listed and get her for me if there is. Quickly, please.»
A few minutes later—«Your party, sir.» And then Betty’s cool voice saying, «Hello.»
«Betty, this is Keith Winton. I—»
«Keith! We thought you—the papers said—what happened?»
«Guess I must have been in the explosion, Betty, but at the edge of it and just got knocked out. I must have had amnesia from the shock and been wandering around. I just came to myself. I’m in Greeneville.»
«Oh, Keith, that’s wonderful! It’s—I just can’t say it! You’re coming right to New York?»
«As soon as a plane will get me there. Want to meet me at La Guardia field?»