CHAPTER I
Floating Men
My first glimpse of a human being of the 25th Century was obtainedthrough a portion of woodland where the trees were thinly scattered,with a dense forest beyond.
I had been wandering along aimlessly, and hopelessly, musing over mystrange fate, when I noticed a figure that cautiously backed out of thedense growth across the glade. I was about to call out joyfully, butthere was something furtive about the figure that prevented me. Theboy's attention (for it seemed to be a lad of fifteen or sixteen) wascentered tensely on the heavy growth of trees from which he had justemerged.
He was clad in rather tight-fitting garments entirely of green, and worea helmet-like cap of the same color. High around his waist he wore abroad, thick belt, which bulked up in the back across the shoulders,into something of the proportions of a knapsack.
As I was taking in these details, there came a vivid flash and heavydetonation, like that of a hand grenade, not far to the left of him. Hethrew up an arm and staggered a bit in a queer, gliding way; then herecovered himself and slipped cautiously away from the place of theexplosion, crouching slightly, and still facing the denser part of theforest. Every few steps he would raise his arm, and point into theforest with something he held in his hand. Wherever he pointed there wasa terrific explosion, deeper in among the trees. It came to me then thathe was shooting with some form of pistol, though there was neither flashnor detonation from the muzzle of the weapon itself.
After firing several times, he seemed to come to a sudden resolution,and turning in my general direction, leaped--to my amazement sailingthrough the air between the sparsely scattered trees in such a jump as Ihad never in my life seen before. That leap must have carried him a fullfifty feet, although at the height of his arc, he was not more than tenor twelve feet from the ground.
When he alighted, his foot caught in a projecting root, and he sprawledgently forward. I say "gently" for he did not crash down as I expectedhim to do. The only thing I could compare it with was a slow-motioncinema, although I had never seen one in which horizontal motions wereregistered at normal speed and only the vertical movements were sloweddown.
Due to my surprise, I suppose my brain did not function with its normalquickness, for I gazed at the prone figure for several seconds before Isaw the blood that oozed out from under the tight green cap. Regainingmy power of action, I dragged him out of sight back of the big tree. Fora few moments I busied myself in an attempt to staunch the flow ofblood. The wound was not a deep one. My companion was more dazed thanhurt. But what of the pursuers?
I took the weapon from his grasp and examined it hurriedly. It was notunlike the automatic pistol to which I was accustomed, except that itapparently fired with a button instead of a trigger. I inserted severalfresh rounds of ammunition into its magazine from my companion's belt,as rapidly as I could, for I soon heard, near us, the suppressedconversation of his pursuers.
There followed a series of explosions round about us, but none veryclose. They evidently had not spotted our hiding place, and were firingat random.
I waited tensely, balancing the gun in my hand, to accustom myself toits weight and probable throw.
Then I saw a movement in the green foliage of a tree not far away, andthe head and face of a man appeared. Like my companion, he was cladentirely in green, which made his figure difficult to distinguish. Buthis face could be seen clearly. It was an evil face, and had murder init.
That decided me. I raised the gun and fired. My aim was bad, for therewas no kick in the gun, as I had expected, and I hit the trunk of thetree several feet below him. It blew him from his perch like a crumpledbit of paper, and he _floated_ down to the ground, like some limp, deadthing, gently lowered by an invisible hand. The tree, its trunk blownapart by the explosion, crashed down.
There followed another series of explosions around us. These guns wewere using made no sound in the firing, and my opponents were evidentlyas much at sea as to my position as I was to theirs. So I made noattempt to reply to their fire, contenting myself with keeping a sharplookout in their general direction. And patience had its reward.
Very soon I saw a cautious movement in the top of another tree. Exposingmyself as little as possible, I aimed carefully at the tree trunk andfired again. A shriek followed the explosion. I heard the tree crashdown; then a groan.
There was silence for a while. Then I heard a faint sound of boughsswishing. I shot three times in its direction, pressing the button asrapidly as I could. Branches crashed down where my shells had exploded,but there was no body.
Then I saw one of them. He was starting one of those amazing leaps fromthe bough of one tree to another, about forty feet away.
I threw up my gun impulsively and fired. By now I had gotten the feel ofthe weapon, and my aim was good. I hit him. The "bullet" must havepenetrated his body and exploded. For one moment I saw him flyingthrough the air. Then the explosion, and he had vanished. He neverfinished his leap. It was annihilation.
How many more of them there were I don't know. But this must have beentoo much for them. They used a final round of shells on us, all of whichexploded harmlessly, and shortly after I heard them swishing andcrashing away from us through the tree tops. Not one of them descendedto earth.
Now I had time to give some attention to my companion. She was, I found,a girl, and not a boy. Despite her bulky appearance, due to the peculiarbelt strapped around her body high up under the arms, she was veryslender, and very pretty.
There was a stream not far away, from which I brought water and bathedher face and wound.
Apparently the mystery of these long leaps, the monkey-like ability tojump from bough to bough, and of the bodies that floated gently downinstead of falling, lay in the belt. The thing was some sort ofanti-gravity belt that almost balanced the weight of the wearer, therebytremendously multiplying the propulsive power of the leg muscles, andthe lifting power of the arms.
When the girl came to, she regarded me as curiously as I did her, andpromptly began to quiz me. Her accent and intonation puzzled me a lot,but nevertheless we were able to understand each other fairly well,except for certain words and phrases. I explained what had happenedwhile she lay unconscious, and she thanked me simply for saving herlife.
"You are a strange exchange," she said, eying my clothing quizzically.Evidently she found it mirth provoking by contrast with her own neatlyefficient garb. "Don't you understand what I mean by 'exchange?' I meanah--let me see--a stranger, somebody from some other gang. What gang doyou belong to?" (She pronounced it "gan," with only a suspicion of anasal sound.)
I laughed. "I'm not a gangster," I said. But she evidently did notunderstand this word. "I don't belong to any gang," I explained, "andnever did. Does everybody belong to a gang nowadays?"
"Naturally," she said, frowning. "If you don't belong to a gang, whereand how do you live? Why have you not found and joined a gang? How doyou eat? Where do you get your clothing?"
"I've been eating wild game for the past two weeks," I explained, "andthis clothing I--er--ah--." I paused, wondering how I could explain thatit must be many hundred years old.
In the end I saw I would have to tell my story as well as I could,piecing it together with my assumptions as to what had happened. Shelistened patiently; incredulously at first, but with more confidence asI went on. When I had finished, she sat thinking for a long time.
"That's hard to believe," she said, "but I believe it." She looked meover with frank interest.
"Were you married when you slipped into unconsciousness down in thatmine?" she asked me suddenly. I assured her I had never married. "Well,that simplifies matters," she continued. "You see, if you weretechnically classed as a family man, I could take you back only as aninvited exchange and I, being unmarried, and no relation of yours,couldn't do the inviting."