Page:Stirring Science Stories, March 1942.djvu/57

 for an instant, then turned, making a gesture with his hand. "Come on. We'll both try it. Get your watch out and keep your eye on it. What's the time now?"

"12:50 to the tick."

"Good. We'll see if this happens again, and if it does, exactly how long it takes."

They strode on in silence, Michael taking out his pipe and stuffing it as they did so. One must not try to think this out now; one must observe. Observe carefully, meticulously. Would it happen again?

The stillness about the place began to crawl under his skin, yet he didn't want to break it. There was nothing to be said at a time like this. He shuffled along the sandy road meditatively, started looking carefully at the base of the wall. Ah, there it was.

"Keep an extra careful eye out now," he whispered. "If it's going to happen again, it will happen now—or rather, soon. What's the time?"

"It was just 1:03 when we passed the empty cigarette package."

Michael's eyes were fixed up ahead. There was nothing but empty road, reaching up to the rim of vision, and the expanse of field to the right. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing—

There!

"Time!" he gasped. "What's the time?"

"1:08 exactly."

He grasped Crosby's arm as they both halted. "Look up there."

Almost at the horizon was a dark speck over to the right of the road. And—what else was it? Why, the horizon was near. An average person can see a good many miles on a clear day, particularly on an almost-flat terrain like this. Yet, he knew from past experience that their car, for that is what the speck was, was not more than a quarter-mile away.

HAD WING struck a match on his shoe and applied it to the oversized bowl of his corncob, surveying the two travelers as he did so. "What," he asked, "did ye do when ye found that ye couldn't walk around the wall, Mr.—Mr.—excuse me, I didn't rightly ketch yer last name."

"Michael," he grinned. "I'm Gerry Michael and this is Clyde Crosby."

"Oh yes, pleased ter meetcher, Mr. Michael. And you, Mr. Crosby, would ye be any relative of that feller who sings?"

Crosby chuckled. "None at all."

Wing nodded pleasantly. "Good thing," he commented. "Them crooners is all right so long as they remain a small tribe. But as I wuz sayin', what did you fellers do when ye found ye couldn't git around that wall?"

"Next thing we did was to see if we could find out what was on the other side. We walked back into the field over by the side of the wall until we could see over it."

"And what did ye see?"

Michael looked downcast. "Nothing. That is, nothing worth the effort. It was just an open field, running into wooded hills. Exactly like the side we were standing on.

"We both felt disappointed, and I think we would have gone on if it hadn't been for something that happened accidently." He turned to Crosby. "Suppose you tell him, Clyde."

"It wasn't much of anything," said Crosby. "I slipped on something and went down on my knees. When I got up, I looked to see what it was, and found a little colored rubber ball. The colors had pretty well faded, but there was a definite design to it. Well, I picked it up and threw it away, the way anyone would. I watched it and I distinctly saw it go over the wall. Just about cleared it so that it should have fallen just a little bit on the other side.

"But when we got back to the car, my eye caught something across the road. I went over to if and picked it up. It was a rubber ball.

"I might add," put in Michael, "that I was watching the wall all the time as we walked back toward our car. If anything had come back over that wall, I would have seen it."

"That," continued Crosby, "was just the start. I picked up the ball again, and just tossed it over the wall. You saw me do that, didn't you Gerry?"

Michael nodded.

"So I turned around, ready to get in the car, and

Crosby drank a glass of water hastily. "I was about to throw it with all my strength, this time, but Gerry stopped me. He suggested we take one of the paper plates we'd used for lunch and skim that over, then look for it on this side. Just to make sure, we marked it in blue pencil. I told Gerry to do it this time, so he hefted it over, and we both saw it sail neatly over the wall and out of sight. Then we turned around and started looking for it.

"We found it in less than 30 seconds.

"That made us both feel pretty sore. Either something pretty horrible was going on, or our senses were deceiving us, or someone was playing a joke on us. We decided to go over the wall ourselves. I'm smaller than Gerry, so I climbed up on his shoulders and pulled myself on to the top of the wall. I stood there for a moment, looking in all directions. It looked just the same over there, except that, of course, there was no car parked by the opposite side of the road—in fact, there was no road on the other side of the wall.

"I balanced myself right, then made a jump, landing very nicely. And the first thing I saw when I straightened up was our car. A second later, Gerry was telling me I'd jumped over on the