TROUBLE IN TIME "Trouble in Time" was the second story Cyril and I published in collaboration. (The first was "Before the Universe.") In most of these early stories I thought them up and "action-charted" them; Cyril wrote a complete first draft from my plot outline; and I revised them for publication. So the responsibility for structure and final form is mostly mine. What Cyril contributed was only the hardest port. To begin at the beginning everybody knows that scientists are crazy. I may be either mistaken or prejudiced, but this seems especially true of mathematico-physicists. In a small town like Colchester gossip spreads fast and furiously, and one evening the word was passed around that an outstanding example of the species Doctissimus Dementiae had finally lodged himself in the old frame house beyond the dog-pound on Court Street, mysterious crates and things having been unloaded there for weeks previously. Abigail O'Liffey, a typical specimen of the low type that a fine girl like me is forced to consort with in a small town, said she had seen the Scientist. "He had broad shoulders," she said dreamily, "and red hair, and a scraggly little moustache that wiggled up and down when he chewed gum." "What would you expect it to do?" She looked at me dumbly. "He was wearing a kind of garden coat," she said. "It was like a painter's, only it was all burned in places instead of having paint on it. I'll bet he discovers things like Paul Pasteur." "Louis Pasteur," I said. "Do you know his name, by any chance?" "Whose ? the Scientist's? Clarissa said one of the express-men told her husband it was Cramer or something." "Never heard of him," I said. "Good night." And I slammed the screen door. Cramer, I thought ? it was the echo of a name I knew, and a big name at that. I was angry with Clarissa for not getting the name more accurately, and with Abigail for bothering me about it, and most of all with the Scientist for stirring me out of my drowsy existence with remembrances of livelier and brighter things not long past. So I slung on a coat and sneaked out the back door to get a look at the mystery man, or at least his house. I slunk past the dog-pound, and the house sprang into sight like a Christmas tree ? every socket in the place must have been in use, to judge from the flood of light that poured from all windows. There was a dark figure on the unkempt lawn; when I was about ten yards from it and on the verge of turning back it shouted at me : "Hey, you! Can you give me a hand?" I approached warily; the figure was wrestling with a crate four feet high and square. "Sure," I said. The figure straightened. "Oh, so he's a she," it said. "Sorry, lady. I'll get a hand truck from inside." "Don't bother," I assured it. "I'm glad to help" And I took one of the canvas slings as it took the other, and we carried the crate in, swaying perilously. "Set it here, please," he said, dropping his side of the crate. It was a he, I saw in the numerous electric bulbs' light, and from all appearances the Scientist Cramer, or whatever his name was. I looked about the big front parlor, bare of furniture but jammed with boxes and piles of machinery. "That was the last piece," he said amiably, noting my gaze. "Thank you. Can I offer you a scientist's drink?" "Not ? ethyl?" I cried rapturously. "The same," he assured me, vigorously attacking a crate that tinkled internally. "How do you know?" "Past experience. My Alma Mater was the Housatonic University, School of Chemical Engineering." He had torn away the front of the crate, laying bare a neat array of bottles. "What's a C.E. doing in this stale little place?" he asked, selecting flasks and measures. "Sometimes she wonders," I said bitterly. "Mix me an Ethyl Martini, will you?" "Sure, if you like them. I don't go much for the fancy swigs myself. Correct me if I'm wrong." He took the bottle labeled CH2OH. "Three cubic centimeters?" "No ? you don't start with the ethyl!" I cried. "Put four minims of fusel oil in a beaker." He complied. "Right ? now a tenth of a grain of saccharine saturated in theine barbiturate ten per cent solution." His hands flew through the pharmaceutical ritual. "And now pour in the ethyl slowly, and stir, don't shake." He held the beaker to the light. "Want some color in that?" he asked, immersing it momentarily in liquid air from a double thermos. "No," I said. "What are you having?" "A simple fusel highball," he said, expertly pouring and chilling a beakerful, and brightening it with a drop of a purple dye that transformed the colorless drink into a sparkling beverage. We touched beakers and drank deep. "That," I said gratefully when I had finished coughing, "is the first real drink I've had since graduating three years ago. The stuff has a nostalgic appeal for me." He looked blank. "It occurs to me," he said, 'that I ought to introduce myself. I am Stephen Trainer, late of Mellon, late of Northwestern, late of Cambridge, sometime fellow of the Sidney School of Technology. Now you tell me who you are and we'll be almost even." I collected my senses and announced, "Miss Mabel Evans, late in practically every respect." "I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Miss Evans," he said. "Won't you sit down?" "Thank you," I murmured. I was about to settle on one of the big wooden boxes when he cried out at me. "For God's sake ? not there!" "And why not?" I asked, moving to another. "Is that your reserve stock of organic bases?" "No," he said. "That's part of my time machine." I looked at him. "Just a nut, huh?" I said pityingly. "Just another sometimes capable fellow gone wrong. He thinks he knows what he's doing, and he even had me fooled for a time, but the idee fixe has come out at last, and we see the man for what he is ? mad as a hatter. Nothing but a time-traveller at the bottom of that mass of flesh and bone." I felt sorry for him, in a way. His face grew as purple as the drink in his hand. As though he too had formed the association, he drained it and set it down. "Listen," he said. "I only know one style of reasoning that parallels yours in its scope and utter disregard of logic. Were you ever so unfortunate as to be associated with that miserable charlatan, Dr. George B. Hopper?" "My physics professor at Housatonic," I said, "and whaddya make of that?" "I am glad of the chance of talking to you," he said in a voice suddenly hoarse. "It's no exaggeration to say that for the greater part of my life I've wanted to come across a pupil of Professor Hopper. I've sat under him and over him on various faculties; we even went to Cambridge together ? it disgusted both of us. And now at last I have the chance, and now you are going to learn the truth about physics." "Go on with your lecture," I muttered skeptically. He looked at me glassily. "I am going on with my lecture," he said. "Listen closely. Take a circle. What is a circle?" "You tell me," I said. "A circle is a closed arc. A circle is composed of an infinite number of straight lines, each with a length of zero, each at an angle infinitesmally small to its adjacent straight lines." "I should be the last to dispute the point," I said judiciously. He reached for the decanter and missed. He reached again grimly, his fist opening and closing, and finally snapping shut on its neck. Will you join me once more?" he asked graciously. "Granted," I said absently, wondering what was going around in my head. "Now ? one point which we must get quite clear in the beginning is that all circles are composed of an in?" "You said that already," I interrupted. "Did I?" he asked with a delighted smile. "I'm brighter than I thought." He waggled his head fuzzily. "Then do you further admit that, by a crude Euclidean axiom which I forget at the moment, all circles are equal?" "Could be ? but so help me, if ?" I broke off abruptly as I realized that I was lying full length on the floor. I shuddered at the very thought of what my aunt would say to that. "The point I was about to make," he continued without a quaver, "was that if all circles are equal, all circles can be traversed at the same expenditure of effort, money, or what have you." He stopped and gasped at me, collecting his thoughts. "All circles can be traversed, also, with the same amount of time! No matter whether the circle be the equator or the head of a pin! Now do you see?" "With the clarity appalling. And the time travelling .. .?" "Ah ? er ? yes. The time travelling. Let me think for a moment." He indicated thought by a Homeric configuration of his eyebrows, forehead, cheeks and chin. "Do you know," he finally said with a weak laugh, "I'm afraid I've forgotten the connection. But my premise is right, isn't it? If it takes the same time to traverse any two circles, and one of them is the universe, and the other is my time wheel ?" His voice died under my baleful stare. "I question your premise vaguely," I said. "There's nothing I can exactly put my finger on, but I believe it's not quite dry behind the ears." "Look," he said. "You can question it as much as you like, but it works. I'll show you the gimmicks." We clambered to our feet. "There," he pointed to the box I had nearly sat upon, "there lies the key to the ages." And he took up a crowbar and jimmied the top off the crate. I lifted out carefully the most miscellaneous collection of junk ever seen outside a museum of modern art. "What, for example," I asked, gingerly dangling a canvas affair at arms' length, "does this thing do?" "One wears it as a belt," he said. I put the thing on and found that it resolved itself into a normal Sam Browne belt with all sorts of...
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