Page:Amazing Stories Volume 01 Number 02.djvu/50

Rh any more than we can grasp time as a direction, which extends from the small to the great. That is to say, when you grow you are really moving in a new dimension which is linked, how I do not comprehend, with the dimension of time. The difference between this universe and the universe of which it is a part, an atom, is a difference in space through another dimension—similar to the difference in miles or light-years between our sun and another sun of our universe."

"But really, that is too obscure for me."

"For me, too," she acknowledged. "But our scientists understand." We were silent for a long while, she dreaming some private dream of her own, I pondering these vast conceptions that were beyond my grasp. I broke the silence first:

"In all theories of time as a dimension, this point has always raised itself in my mind. If I were to return during some crisis in history and foretell the mistake that would be made, could that mistake be rectified, changing the whole course of history?"

"That," she answered, "would come under the head of the progress which civilization makes from cycle to cycle, I think. You must remember that all these things are inevitable. If it were your destiny to return at some earlier point in your world's history, it would be the result of natural laws, and any changes you might effect in history would also be inevitable." Again we were silent.

At last I roused myself from my reveries.

"All this," I said, "seems very dim and unreal to me yet. I suppose that is natural. But we must begin to act. Could your scientists help me in the problem of finding the point in history where my world will be again as I left it?" She looked at me very steadily for a moment.

"You are sure you wish to go?" she said. I smiled. "I cannot imagine wishing not to," I said.… Oh, fool that I was! If I had only known how much I should some day wish to return to her.…

"Then," she answered, averting her eyes, "I think I can help you. You kept records of the time you spent in your journey?"

"As well as I could," I replied.

"Can you draw a diagram of the stars as they looked from your earth when you left?"

"I am sure of it," I assured her.

"Then I think it can be done."

And, for the rest of that day I sat with her, drawing my maps of the sky from memory, setting down extracts from my tale of the journey. When she left, she had all the information which she thought would be required.

Again I shall pass over the next few weeks with a few words. During that time she came each day with news of the progress of her efforts. Once or twice she required new information of me. She had persuaded her uncle to make the calculations for me in his moments of relaxation (what an awful thought that conjured in my mind of the intellectual labour of these men!) Apparently the man, by figuring the length of time I had been away and the position of my sun in space, could identify it among the amazing records he possessed of all the stars in our universe, past, present, or future—things inconceivable to me. Having identified my world, he could then figure just the size I should have to become and the time I should have to spend in my various sizes, before I could return again to the world in its next cycle, unimaginable millions of eons in the future.

When the day came on which all these calculations were finished, Vinda brought me my suit, which had been preserved, and the machine. She brought also a chronometer which, she said, would record, upon its numerous dials, the passage of time in the universe I was leaving, regardless of the various sizes I might assume. It had been connected by those marvellous men in some fashion to the machine itself, so that the growth of the machine acted upon the chronometer in such fashion that it would record a corresponding swiftness in the passage of time. One dial recorded years. When the needle reached a certain swiftness of revolution on the dial, it ceased, and the next highest dial, in thousands of years, continued the record alone, having followed the dial of the years so long as it revolved. In turn this dial ceased to record, while the millions of years were registered, and so on—the whole process being reversed as my size decreased, each dial taking upon the record at the correct point.

The precise point when I must stop was recorded on the various dials, and the precise point when I must stop my growth and shrink again was indicated on the highest dial. It was impossible that I could fail, if I followed my directions explicitly.

When all was ready, an escort of two guards was given me, and Vinda came with me, very impassive, very silent. We went from my cell up through the building to the roof, and entered the plane which awaited us. This time I would not be chained to the rail, but I would stand beside it with Vinda.

We passed out through the City precisely as we had come in, reached the sea, and headed across it toward the isolated spot where I had first appeared. Vinda and I stood alone in the stern of the platform, looking out over the retreating water and the City.

"Do you not think," she said, "that you will be disappointed when you return? Will you not find it very ironic to take up a hum-drum life after all these exotic adventures?"

"No doubt I shall," I answered, for, now that I was on my way back, I could admit many things "but there will be the compensations of friendship and other things. And, anyhow, it is my destiny." She sighed.

"Yes.… it is your destiny. Is there, perhaps, someone whom you love and who calls you back to her?" I laughed lightly.

"By no means!" I said. "I am immune. I have never fallen in love." For one lies, many times, without knowing it.

"You are very unfortunate," she said, "or perhaps very fortunate; it is hard to say."

"Are you, then, in love?" I asked her. She looked out over the sea, her face turned away.

"Yes," she replied simply.

"Then I wish you the greatest success," I said formally. And—do you know?—I was suddenly a little piqued, without at all knowing why. It may be that men are more intellectual than women, but it is certain that they are sometimes more terrible fools.

So we went rushing on through the air, cool, fragrant, quiet. How can I ever have wished to