Page:Weird Tales volume 36 number 02.djvu/67

 he wasn't thinking about them now. They had been crowded from his mind by gloomy forebodings of an insecure future. This precious, yet terrible knowledge weighed heavily, on his shoulders. He clenched his jaw and straightened to an upright position.

The red eyes of a golden Buddha on his desk glowed warningly. Someone was coming down the corridor to the entrance of his private laboratory.

Soundlessly the door opened. Through the opening came his friend and laboratory assistant, Karl Danzig. "Vignot's here," he stated, "and crusty as usual."

ARRUTHERS nodded. He liked George Vignot in spite of the bearded chemist's sarcastic, blustering ways. "Show him into the west laboratory where our Time Projector—No. Wait a minute. Vignot's not yet ready for that experiment. Show him instead into the Thermo-cell laboratory. We'll work on our problem there."

The eyes of Karl Danzig held worried glints.

He hesitated a moment then said: "You—you aren't going to test out the new Time Projector Machine—?"

"It all depends," shrugged Carruthers, "on whether certain computations I have made are correct in assumption and ultimate result. Vignot's undoubtedly the foremost mathematician in the east. And I want him to re-check my calculations for possible error. If he arrives at the same answer as I have, we'll make the experiment—provided he is willing and not afraid."

Still, Danzig did not leave the room. "In some ways," he went on, "I wish you'd abandon the experiment, Aaron. It's not that I'm disloyal, but it seems to me that you're going to get entangled into something that—that the universal creator doesn't want mankind to know. Somehow, it doesn't seem right for man to probe into the mystery of what has not yet happened."

Carruthers placed a hand on his friend's shoulder. "I'm not questioning your loyalty, Karl, when you oppose the experiment I've got to go through with. But I know you'll stand by till the end. Perhaps I'm asking for death in trying to do somethink that transcends the physical impossibility of tampering with the element of time.

"Still, being the way I am, there seems no other course open—for me at least. So don't have any doubts. We've been mixed up in strange and fantastic experiences before, and have somehow survived. Let's keep the thought in mind that we'll survive this one."

Danzig nodded. "I understand all that, Aaron. But you've never gone through anything like the experiment you've planned with the Time Projector Machine. You still don't know what effect it will have on your physical body."

"I've tried it on mice and they came back alive."

"Mice aren't human beings. It scares me, Aaron. Things that have happened in the past are history, and they're static in most ways. Things that are happening in the present are understandable and real. They are things you and I can get a grip on. I can touch my skin, my hair and fingernails, and feel them. They are the result of growth that extends into the past, they are also the result of growth that is taking place this very second."

"That's quite true, Karl. The sum of our knowledge is based on what is happening now, and what has taken place in the past. That being true, would not our knowledge be astoundingly increased in the revealing awareness of what is going to happen in—say a year from now, or a decade of years for that matter? Could we not arrange to meet misfortune and