The Palace, where Hradzka, surrounded by his sycophants2 and guards, had lorded it over a solar system, was now an inferno3. Those who had been too closely identified with the dictator's rule to hope for forgiveness were fighting to the last, seeking only a quick death in combat; one by one, their isolated4 points of resistance were being wiped out. The corridors and chambers5 of the huge palace were thronged6 with rebels, loud with their shouts, and with the rasping hiss7 of heat-beams and the crash of blasters, reeking8 with the stench of scorched9 plastic and burned flesh, of hot metal and charred10 fabric11. The living quarters were overrun; the mob smashed down walls and tore up floors in search of secret hiding-places. They found strange things—the space-ship that had been built under one of the domes12, in readiness for flight to the still-loyal colonies on Mars or the Asteroid13 Belt, for instance—but Hradzka himself they could not find.
At last, the search reached the New Tower which reared its head five thousand feet above the palace, the highest thing in the city. They blasted down the huge steel doors, cut the power from the energy-screens. They landed from antigrav-cars on the upper levels. But except for barriers of metal and concrete and energy, they met with no opposition14. Finally, they came to the spiral stairway which led up to the great metal sphere which capped the whole structure.
General Zarvas, the Army Commander who had placed himself at the head of the revolt, stood with his foot on the lowest step, his followers15 behind him. There was Prince Burvanny, the leader of the old nobility, and Ghorzesko Orhm, the merchant, and between them stood Tobbh, the chieftain of the mutinous16 slaves. There were clerks; laborers17; poor but haughty18 nobles: and wealthy merchants who had long been forced to hide their riches from the dictator's tax-gatherers, and soldiers, and spacemen.
"You'd better let some of us go first sir," General Zarvas' orderly, a blood-stained bandage about his head, his uniform in rags, suggested. "You don't know what might be up there."
The General shook his head. "I'll go first." Zarvas Pol was not the man to send subordinates into danger ahead of himself. "To tell the truth, I'm afraid we won't find anything at all up there."
"You mean...?" Ghorzesko Orhm began.
"The 'time-machine'," Zarvas Pol replied. "If he's managed to get it finished, the Great Mind only knows where he may be, now. Or when."
He loosened the blaster in his holster and started up the long spiral. His followers spread out, below; sharp-shooters took position to cover his ascent19. Prince Burvanny and Tobbh the Slave started to follow him. They hesitated as each motioned the other to precede him; then the nobleman followed the general, his blaster drawn20, and the brawny21 slave behind him.
The door at the top was open, and Zarvas Pol stepped through but there was nothing in the great spherical22 room except a raised dais some fifty feet in diameter, its polished metal top strangely clean and empty. And a crumpled23 heap of burned cloth and charred flesh that had, not long ago, been a man. An old man with a white beard, and the seven-pointed star of the Learned Brothers on his breast, advanced to meet the armed intruders.
"So he is gone, Kradzy Zago?" Zarvas Pol said, holstering his weapon. "Gone in the 'time-machine', to hide in yesterday or tomorrow. And you let him go?"
The old one nodded. "He had a blaster, and I had none." He indicated the body on the floor. "Zoldy Jarv had no blaster, either, but he tried to stop Hradzka. See, he squandered24 his life as a fool squanders25 his money, getting nothing for it. And a man's life is not money, Zarvas Pol."
"I do not blame you, Kradzy Zago," General Zarvas said. "But now you must get to work, and build us another 'time-machine', so that we can hunt him down."
"Does revenge mean so much to you, then?"
The soldier made an impatient gesture. "Revenge is for fools, like that pack of screaming beasts below. I do not kill for revenge; I kill because dead men do no harm."
"Hradzka will do us no more harm," the old scientist replied. "He is a thing of yesterday; of a time long past and half-lost in the mists of legend."
"No matter. As long as he exists, at any point in space-time, Hradzka is still a threat. Revenge means much to Hradzka; he will return for it, when we least expect him."
The old man shook his head. "No, Zarvas Pol, Hradzka will not return."
Hradzka holstered his blaster, threw the switch that sealed the "time-machine", put on the antigrav-unit and started the time-shift unit. He reached out and set the destination-dial for the mid-Fifty-Second Century of the Atomic Era. That would land him in the Ninth Age of Chaos26, following the Two-Century War and the collapse27 of the World Theocracy28. A good time for his purpose: the world would be slipping back into barbarism, and yet possess the technologies of former civilizations. A hundred little national states would be trying to regain29 social stability, competing and warring with one another. Hradzka glanced back over his shoulder at the cases of books, record-spools, tri-dimensional pictures, and scale-models. These people of the past would welcome him and his science of the future, would make him their leader.
He would start in a small way, by taking over the local feudal30 or tribal31 government, would arm his followers with weapons of the future. Then he would impose his rule upon neighboring tribes, or princedoms, or communes, or whatever, and build a strong sovereignty; from that he envisioned a world empire, a Solar System empire.
Then, he would build "time-machines", many "time-machines". He would recruit an army such as the universe had never seen, a swarm32 of men from every age in the past. At that point, he would return to the Hundredth Century of the Atomic Era, to wreak33 vengeance34 upon those who had risen against him. A slow smile grew on Hradzka's thin lips as he thought of the tortures with which he would put Zarvas Pol to death.
He glanced up at the great disc of the indicator35 and frowned. Already he was back to the year 7500, A.E., and the temporal-displacement36 had not begun to slow. The disc was turning even more rapidly—7000, 6000, 5500; he gasped37 slightly. Then he had passed his destination; he was now in the Fortieth Century, but the indicator was slowing. The hairline crossed the Thirtieth Century, the Twentieth, the Fifteenth, the Tenth. He wondered what had gone wrong, but he had recovered from his fright by this time. When this insane machine stopped, as it must around the First Century of the Atomic Era, he would investigate, make repairs, then shift forward to his target-point. Hradzka was determined38 upon the Fifty-Second Century; he had made a special study of the history of that period, had learned the language spoken then, and he understood the methods necessary to gain power over the natives of that time.
The indicator-disc came to a stop, in the First Century. He switched on the magnifier and leaned forward to look; he had emerged into normal time in the year 10 of the Atomic Era, a decade after the first uranium-pile had gone into operation, and seven years after the first atomic bombs had been exploded in warfare39. The altimeter showed that he was hovering40 at eight thousand feet above ground-level.
Slowly, he cut out the antigrav, letting the "time machine" down easily. He knew that there had been no danger of materializing inside anything; the New Tower had been built to put it above anything that had occupied that space-point at any moment within history, or legend, or even the geological knowledge of man. What lay below, however, was uncertain. It was night—the visi-screen showed only a star-dusted, moonless-sky, and dark shadows below. He snapped another switch; for a few micro-seconds a beam of intense light was turned on, automatically photographing the landscape under him. A second later, the developed picture was projected upon another screen; it showed only wooded mountains and a barren, brush-grown valley.
The "time-machine" came to rest with a soft jar and a crashing of broken bushes that was audible through the sound pickup41. Hradzka pulled the main switch; there was a click as the shielding went out and the door opened. A breath of cool night air drew into the hollow sphere.
Then there was a loud bang inside the mechanism42, and a flash of blue-white light which turned to pinkish flame with a nasty crackling. Curls of smoke began to rise from the square black box that housed the "time-shift" mechanism, and from behind the instrument-board. In a moment, everything was glowing-hot: driblets of aluminum43 and silver were running down from the instruments. Then the whole interior of the "time-machine" was afire; there was barely time for Hradzka to leap through the open door.
The brush outside impeded44 him, and he used his blaster to clear a path for himself away from the big sphere, which was now glowing faintly on the outside. The heat grew in intensity45, and the brush outside was taking fire. It was not until he had gotten two hundred yards from the machine that he stopped, realizing what had happened.
The machine, of course, had been sabotaged47. That would have been young Zoldy, whom he had killed, or that old billy-goat, Kradzy Zago; the latter, most likely. He cursed both of them for having marooned48 him in this savage49 age, at the very beginning of atomic civilization, with all his printed and recorded knowledge destroyed. Oh, he could still gain mastery over these barbarians50; he knew enough to fashion a crude blaster, or a heat-beam gun, or an atomic-electric conversion51 unit. But without his books and records, he could never build an antigrav unit, and the secret of the "temporal shift" was lost.
For "Time" is not an object, or a medium which can be travelled along. The "Time-Machine" was not a vehicle; it was a mechanical process of displacement within the space-time continuum, and those who constructed it knew that it could not be used with the sort of accuracy that the dials indicated. Hradzka had ordered his scientists to produce a "Time Machine", and they had combined the possible—displacement within the space-time continuum—with the sort of fiction the dictator demanded, for their own well-being52. Even had there been no sabotage46, his return to his own "time" was nearly of zero probability.
The fire, spreading from the "time-machine", was blowing toward him; he observed the wind-direction and hurried around out of the path of the flames. The light enabled him to pick his way through the brush, and, after crossing a small stream, he found a rutted road and followed it up the mountainside until he came to a place where he could rest concealed53 until morning.
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1
tyrant
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| n.暴君，专制的君主，残暴的人 | |
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sycophants
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| n.谄媚者，拍马屁者( sycophant的名词复数 ) | |
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inferno
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| n.火海；地狱般的场所 | |
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isolated
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| adj.与世隔绝的 | |
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chambers
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| n.房间( chamber的名词复数 )；（议会的）议院；卧室；会议厅 | |
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thronged
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| v.成群，挤满( throng的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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7
hiss
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| v.发出嘶嘶声；发嘘声表示不满 | |
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reeking
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| v.发出浓烈的臭气( reek的现在分词 )；散发臭气；发出难闻的气味 (of sth)；明显带有（令人不快或生疑的跡象） | |
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scorched
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| 烧焦，烤焦( scorch的过去式和过去分词 )； 使（植物）枯萎，把…晒枯； 高速行驶； 枯焦 | |
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charred
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| v.把…烧成炭( char的过去式)；烧焦 | |
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fabric
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| n.织物，织品，布；构造，结构，组织 | |
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12
domes
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| n.圆屋顶( dome的名词复数 )；像圆屋顶一样的东西；圆顶体育场 | |
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13
asteroid
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| n.小行星；海盘车(动物) | |
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opposition
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| n.反对，敌对 | |
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followers
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| 追随者( follower的名词复数 )； 用户； 契据的附面； 从动件 | |
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mutinous
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| adj.叛变的，反抗的；adv.反抗地，叛变地；n.反抗，叛变 | |
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laborers
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| n.体力劳动者，工人( laborer的名词复数 )；（熟练工人的）辅助工 | |
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haughty
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| adj.傲慢的，高傲的 | |
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ascent
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| n.(声望或地位)提高；上升，升高；登高 | |
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drawn
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| v.拖，拉，拔出；adj.憔悴的，紧张的 | |
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brawny
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| adj.强壮的 | |
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spherical
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| adj.球形的；球面的 | |
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crumpled
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| adj. 弯扭的, 变皱的 动词crumple的过去式和过去分词形式 | |
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24
squandered
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| v.（指钱，财产等）浪费，乱花( squander的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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squanders
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| v.（指钱，财产等）浪费，乱花( squander的第三人称单数 ) | |
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chaos
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| n.混乱，无秩序 | |
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collapse
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| vi.累倒；昏倒；倒塌；塌陷 | |
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theocracy
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| n.神权政治；僧侣政治 | |
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regain
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| vt.重新获得，收复，恢复 | |
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feudal
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| adj.封建的，封地的，领地的 | |
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tribal
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| adj.部族的，种族的 | |
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32
swarm
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| n.(昆虫)等一大群；vi.成群飞舞；蜂拥而入 | |
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wreak
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| v.发泄；报复 | |
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vengeance
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| n.报复，报仇，复仇 | |
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indicator
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| n.指标；指示物，指示者；指示器 | |
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displacement
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| n.移置，取代，位移，排水量 | |
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gasped
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| v.喘气( gasp的过去式和过去分词 )；喘息；倒抽气；很想要 | |
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38
determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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39
warfare
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| n.战争(状态)；斗争；冲突 | |
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40
hovering
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| 鸟( hover的现在分词 )； 靠近（某事物）； （人）徘徊； 犹豫 | |
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41
pickup
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| n.拾起，获得 | |
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mechanism
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| n.机械装置；机构，结构 | |
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43
aluminum
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| n.(aluminium)铝 | |
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44
impeded
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| 阻碍，妨碍，阻止( impede的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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45
intensity
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| n.强烈，剧烈；强度；烈度 | |
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46
sabotage
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| n.怠工，破坏活动，破坏；v.从事破坏活动，妨害，破坏 | |
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47
sabotaged
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| 阴谋破坏（某事物）( sabotage的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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48
marooned
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| adj.被围困的；孤立无援的；无法脱身的 | |
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49
savage
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| adj.野蛮的；凶恶的，残暴的；n.未开化的人 | |
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50
barbarians
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| n.野蛮人( barbarian的名词复数 )；外国人；粗野的人；无教养的人 | |
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51
conversion
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| n.转化，转换，转变 | |
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52
well-being
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| n.安康，安乐，幸福 | |
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53
concealed
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| a.隐藏的，隐蔽的 | |
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