Page:Amazing Stories Volume 16 Number 06.djvu/99

Rh "This being true, it must be assumed that the creatures manning it were off their course. Surely they were not aiming to smash Earth deliberately! Obviously they would smash up other planets in our universe as well, it was so incalculably huge. Many hundred times the size of earth

O HERE I was, one year in the future, at the possible end of the world! It flashed to my mind that the reason I didn't reach my mark of one-hundred years ahead was because at that time there wouldn't be any world here. Whatever forces governed this time-dimension had let me off at the last stop "

"Well, what d'ya know!" was my aghast comment.

He frowned me into silence.

"I had but one day left!

"I rushed home. My mother's attitude toward me was one of mingled awe and commiseration. It seemed my comings and goings during the past months had kept her in a continual state of frenzy.

Morton!' she cried. 'I thought you were upstairs in bed! Where have you been?'

"I mumbled a vague answer. I knew it would be futile to attempt to explain where I'd come from. A sudden thought started my scalp prickling, as I swallowed a hasty breakfast.

"Was there another Morton Weinstock Jr. upstairs in bed?

"Both the radio and my mother gave me all the latest dope on the 'terror.' Father was in conference with all the world scientists at the Observatory. I hopped into my roadster, and didn't drag my feet on the way.

We must save Earth!' I told father. 'Surely there must be some way!'

"He looked as though he'd been dragged through a knot-hole. He laughed mirthlessly, glaring at me with contempt.

Where'd you come from?' he rasped.

I came from last year, Father!' I shouted. 'Remember that Future Elixir I was working on? Well, I took some of it last year—I mean, this morning—and here I am, a year in the future!'

"He only growled. After while he said impatiently. 'Don't bother me with your crack-pot notions now, son. I'm much too busy and tired to listen to your eccentricities.'

"He rubbed quivering hands over his drawn face, in a paroxysm of weariness.

You've got to believe me!' I protested. 'I traveled a year into the future by means of my Elixir. Why, you started me working on it!'

"He shook his head sadly. 'I've seen it coming. You've been acting potty for a year! Not that this cataclysm isn't enough to break anybody's mind. Lord knows thousands of persons have already been driven crazy by this impending—'

Listen to me!' I shrieked.

"But he refused to listen. He thought I was nuts, because of my peculiar behavior in the past year!

E STALKED out on me, shaking his head, and the convocation of scientists repaired to the telescope room. There they goggled, and pondered, and plotted, with no tangible result until nightfall. I sidled into the vast room along with the grey-beards of every nation, and when they trouped out I peeped in the mammoth telescope.

"There it was—that silvery menace out of the depths of Space. Seeing it filled me with an intense feeling of insignificance, as well as horror. Who could they be, these voyageurs out of Infinity?

"Surely, I told myself, if they knew