Page:Weird Tales volume 36 number 02.djvu/68

 better if we knew what was to take place in the future?"

"You're getting into the realm of pre-destination, Aaron. And that is dangerous ground for man to invade. Suppose fate has willed that I am to die at eleven o'clock at night a year from today from coming in contact with fifty-thousand volts of electricity in this laboratory. Could you, by your foreknowledge of events that are yet to happen, cheat fate by having the current turned off so that I couldn't possibly be electrocuted?"

"I don't know, Karl, any more than you do." The shadow of some inner disturbance crossed his serious young face. When he spoke again his voice was low and vibrant. "But the scientific urge to find the answer to your question and others of my own propounding is greater than my emotional will to resist that urge. I've got to find out, Karl. My mind won't rest, nor my body either, until the answer to the riddle comes to me out of the impalpable element of a time period that has not yet taken place. Go get Vignot now, and bring him to the Thermo-cell laboratory. And I'll want you with us, Karl, for reasons you'll discover for yourself."

Without another word he turned and walked down a tile corridor to a white, gleaming laboratory. A few minutes later Danzig, with George Vignot close behind him, entered the room.

EORGE VIGNOT spread his feet wide and puffed out both checks. "So!" His voice had the booming quality of a deep organ note. "It isn't enough that I should be plagued by inconsequential classroom experiments I have performed a thousand—yes, a million times. No. I must fritter away my precious moments with arithmetic, with figures which you seemed to have forgotten—"

"Wait a minute, Vignot—"

"Ha. Wait? Always I'm waiting. Where is this Time Proj'ector? Speak up, for I have no time to waste on trivialities. Certainly it isn't in this room. It wouldn't be. You'd keep it hidden. I don't want to see it. I don't want anything to do with it. The last experience I had with your Neutronium exploration apparatus nearly drove me insane. I damned near starved to death, too. No. Count me out of any future experiments dealing with the unknown. I'll stick to my moronic classroom lectures—"

"I suppose," Carruthers broke in, "that I could easily persuade the noted bio-chemist, Haley, to assist me, or Professor Grange the metallurgist whose experiments and findings have lately startled the world. Not being concerned with petty classroom sessions, they'd undoubtedly—"

"Bah! Haley's a doddering fool. And Grange is afraid of his own shadow. Petty classroom sessions, eh? You brought that up, Aaron, just to goad me on into doing something I don't want—"

Carruthers shook his head. "I wouldn't urge you to do anything you don't want to do, or have your heart set on doing. Go back to your classroom. I'll find someone else."

Vignot's big body shook with gusty laughter. "Oh ho! I should go now after I'm already here. You should get rid of me like I'm an incompetent scullion who keeps dropping beakers and test tubes. I'm not so good as Haley or Grange. So now. What is that problem in arithmetic?"

"The arithmetic will come in a few minutes." He pointed to a marble-topped table. "First, I want you to check the readings on the tape from the Thermo-cell unit recordings."

"Hummm!" grunted Vignot, crossing the room to the table and bending over the intricate machine which indicated and traced the pattern of any electrical or metallic disturbances in the outer reaches of the sky.