For fifteen years now, as head of Project Mastodon, he had lived with it night and day and he could see all the possibilities as clearly as if they had been actual fact. Not military possibilities alone, although as a military man, he naturally would think of those first.
The hidden bases, for example, located within the very strongholds of potential enemies--within, yet centuries removed in time. Many centuries removed and only seconds distant.
He could see it all: The materialization of the fleets; the swift, devastating blow, then the instantaneous retreat into the fastnesses of the past. Terrific destruction, but not a ship lost nor a man.
Except that if you had the bases, you need never strike the blow. If you had the bases and let the enemy know you had them, there would never be the provocation.
And on the home front, you'd have air-raid shelters that would be effective. You'd evacuate your population not in space, but time. You'd have the sure and absolute defense against any kind of bombing--fission, fusion, bacteriological or whatever else the labs had in stock.
And if the worst should come--which it never would with a setup like that--you'd have a place to which the entire nation could retreat, leaving to the enemy the empty, blasted cities and the lethally dusted countryside.
Sanctuary--that had been what Hudson had offered the then-secretary of state fifteen years ago--and the idiot had frozen up with the insult of it and had Hudson thrown out.
And if war did not come, think of the living space and the vast new opportunities--not the least of which would be the opportunity to achieve peaceful living in a virgin world, where the old hatreds would slough off and new concepts have a chance to grow.
He wondered where they were, those three who had gone back into time. Dead, perhaps. Run down by a mastodon. Or stalked by tigers. Or maybe done in by warlike tribesmen. No, he kept forgetting there weren't any in that era. Or trapped in time, unable to get back, condemned to exile in an alien time. Or maybe, he thought, just plain disgusted. And he couldn't blame them if they were.
Or maybe--let's be fantastic about this--sneaking in colonists from some place other than the watched Wisconsin farm, building up in actuality the nation they had claimed to be.
They had to get back to the present soon or Project Mastodon would be killed entirely. Already the research program had been halted and if something didn't happen quickly, the watch that was kept on the Wisconsin farm would be called off.
"And if they do that," said the general, "I know just what I'll do."
He got up and strode around the room.
"By God," he said, "I'll show 'em!"
VIII
It had taken ten full days of back-breaking work to build the pyramid. They'd hauled the rocks from the creek bed half a mile away and had piled them, stone by rolling stone, to the height of a full twelve feet. It took a lot of rocks and a lot of patience, for as the pyramid went up, the base naturally kept broadening out.
But now all was finally ready.
Hudson sat before the burned-out campfire and held his blistered hands before him.
It should work, he thought, better than the logs--and less dangerous.
Grab a handful of sand. Some trickled back between your fingers, but most stayed in your grasp. That was the principle of the pyramid of stones. When--and if--the time machine should work, most of the rocks would go along.
Those that didn't go would simply trickle out and do no harm. There'd be no stress or strain to upset the working of the force-field.
And if the time unit didn't work?
Or if it did?
This was the end of the dream, thought Hudson, no matter how you looked at it.
For even if they did get back to the twentieth century, there would be no money and with the film lost and no other taken to replace it, they'd have no proof they had traveled back beyond the dawn of history--back almost to the dawn of Man.
Although how far you traveled would have no significance. An hour or a million years would be all the same; if you could span the hour, you could span the million years. And if you could go back the million years, it was within your power to go back to the first tick of eternity, the first stir of time across the face of emptiness and nothingness--back to that initial instant when nothing as yet had happened or been planned or thought, when all the vastness of the Universe was a new slate waiting the first chalk stroke of destiny.
Another helicopter would cost thirty thousand dollars--and they didn't even have the money to buy the tractor that they needed to build the stockade.
There was no way to borrow. You couldn't walk into a bank and say you wanted thirty thousand to take a trip back to the Old Stone Age.
You still could go to some industry or some university or the government and if you could persuade them you had something on the ball--why, then, they might put up the cash after cutting themselves in on just about all of the profits. And, naturally, they'd run the show because it was their money and all you had done was the sweating and the bleeding.
"There's one thing that still bothers me," said Cooper, breaking the silence. "We spent a lot of time picking our spot so we'd miss the barn and house and all the other buildings...."
"Don't tell me the windmill!" Hudson cried.
"No. I'm pretty sure we're clear of that. But the way I figure, we're right astraddle that barbed-wire fence at the south end of the orchard."
"If you want, we could move the pyramid over twenty feet or so."
Cooper groaned. "I'll take my chances with the fence." Adams got to his feet, the time unit tucked underneath his arm. "Come on, you guys. It's time to go."
They climbed the pyramid gingerly and stood unsteadily at its top.
Adams shifted the unit around, clasped it to his chest.
"Stand around close," he said, "and bend your knees a little. It may be quite a drop."
"Go ahead," said Cooper. "Press the button."
Adams pressed the button.
Nothing happened.
The unit didn't work.
IX
The chief of Central Intelligence was white-lipped when he finished talking.
"You're sure of your information?" asked the President.
"Mr. President," said the CIA chief, "I've never been more sure of anything in my entire life."
The President looked at the other two who were in the room, a question in his eyes.
The JCS chairman said, "It checks, sir, with everything we know."
"But it's incredible!" the President said.
"They're afraid," said the CIA chief. "They lie awake nights. They've become convinced that we're on the verge of traveling in time. They've tried and failed, but they think we're near success. To their way of thinking, they've got to hit us now or never, because once we actually get time travel, they know their number's up."
"But we dropped Project Mastodon entirely almost three years ago. It's been all of ten years since we stopped the research. It was twenty-five years ago that Hudson--"
"That makes no difference, sir. They're convinced we dropped the project publicly, but went underground with it. That would be the kind of strategy they could understand."
The President picked up a pencil and doodled on a pad.
"Who was that old general," he asked, "the one who raised so much fuss when we dropped the project? I remember I was in the Senate then. He came around to see me."
"Bowers, sir," said the JCS chairman.
"That's right. What became of him?"
"Retired."
"Well, I guess it doesn't make any difference now." He doodled some more and finally said, "Gentlemen, it looks like this is it. How much time did you say we had?"
"Not more than ninety days, sir. Maybe as little as thirty."
The President looked up at the JCS chairman.
"We're as ready," said the chairman, "as we will ever be. We can handle them--I think. There will, of course, be some--"
"I know," said the President.
/> "Could we bluff?" asked the secretary of state, speaking quietly. "I know it wouldn't stick, but at least we might buy some time."
"You mean hint that we have time travel?"
The secretary nodded.
"It wouldn't work," said the CIA chief tiredly. "If we really had it, there'd be no question then. They'd become exceedingly well-mannered, even neighborly, if they were sure we had it."
"But we haven't got it," said the President gloomily.
X
The two hunters trudged homeward late in the afternoon, with a deer slung from a pole they carried on their shoulders. Their breath hung visibly in the air as they walked along, for the frost had come and any day now, they knew, there would be snow.
"I'm worried about Wes," said Cooper, breathing heavily. "He's taking this too hard. We got to keep an eye on him."
"Let's take a rest," panted Hudson.
They halted and lowered the deer to the ground.
"He blames himself too much," said Cooper. He wiped his sweaty forehead. "There isn't any need to. All of us walked into this with our eyes wide open."
"He's kidding himself and he knows it, but it gives him something to go on. As long as he can keep busy with all his puttering around, he'll be all right."
"He isn't going to repair the time unit, Chuck."
"I know he isn't. And he knows it, too. He hasn't got the tools or the materials. Back in the workshop, he might have a chance, but here he hasn't."
"It's rough on him."
"It's rough on all of us."
"Yes, but we didn't get a brainstorm that marooned two old friends in this tail end of nowhere. And we can't make him swallow it when we say that it's okay, we don't mind at all."
"That's a lot to swallow, Johnny."
"What's going to happen to us, Chuck?"
"We've got ourselves a place to live and there's lots to eat. Save our ammo for the big game--a lot of eating for each bullet--and trap the smaller animals."
"I'm wondering what will happen when the flour and all the other stuff is gone. We don't have too much of it because we always figured we could bring in more."
"We'll live on meat," said Hudson. "We got bison by the million. The plains Indians lived on them alone. And in the spring, we'll find roots and in the summer berries. And in the fall, we'll harvest a half-dozen kinds of nuts."
"Some day our ammo will be gone, no matter how careful we are with it."
"Bows and arrows. Slingshots. Spears."
"There's a lot of beasts here I wouldn't want to stand up to with nothing but a spear."
"We won't stand up to them. We'll duck when we can and run when we can't duck. Without our guns, we're no lords of creation--not in this place. If we're going to live, we'll have to recognize that fact."
"And if one of us gets sick or breaks a leg or--"
"We'll do the best we can. Nobody lives forever."
But they were talking around the thing that really bothered them, Hudson told himself--each of them afraid to speak the thought aloud.
They'd live, all right, so far as food, shelter and clothing were concerned. And they'd live most of the time in plenty, for this was a fat and open-handed land and a man could make an easy living.
But the big problem--the one they were afraid to talk about--was their emptiness of purpose. To live, they had to find some meaning in a world without society.
A man cast away on a desert isle could always live for hope, but here there was no hope. A Robinson Crusoe was separated from his fellow-humans by, at the most, a few thousand miles. Here they were separated by a hundred and fifty thousand years.
Wes Adams was the lucky one so far. Even playing his thousand-to-one shot, he still held tightly to a purpose, feeble as it might be--the hope that he could repair the time machine.
We don't need to watch him now, thought Hudson. The time we'll have to watch is when he is forced to admit he can't fix the machine.
And both Hudson and Cooper had been kept sane enough, for there had been the cabin to be built and the winter's supply of wood to cut and the hunting to be done.
But then there would come a time when all the chores were finished and there was nothing left to do.
"You ready to go?" asked Cooper.
"Sure. All rested now," said Hudson.
They hoisted the pole to their shoulders and started off again.
Hudson had lain awake nights thinking of it and all the thoughts had been dead ends.
One could write a natural history of the Pleistocene, complete with photographs and sketches, and it would be a pointless thing to do, because no future scientist would ever have a chance to read it.
Or they might labor to build a memorial, a vast pyramid, perhaps, which would carry a message forward across fifteen hundred centuries, snatching with bare hands at a semblance of immortality. But if they did, they would be working against the sure and certain knowledge that it all would come to naught, for they knew in advance that no such pyramid existed in historic time.
Or they might set out to seek contemporary Man, hiking across four thousand miles of wilderness to Bering Strait and over into Asia. And having found contemporary Man cowering in his caves, they might be able to help him immeasurably along the road to his great inheritance. Except that they'd never make it and even if they did, contemporary Man undoubtedly would find some way to do them in and might eat them in the bargain.
They came out of the woods and there was the cabin, just a hundred yards away. It crouched against the hillside above the spring, with the sweep of grassland billowing beyond it to the slate-gray skyline. A trickle of smoke came up from the chimney and they saw the door was open.
"Wes oughtn't to leave it open that way," said Cooper. "No telling when a bear might decide to come visiting."
"Hey, Wes!" yelled Hudson.
But there was no sign of him.
Inside the cabin, a white sheet of paper lay on the table top. Hudson snatched it up and read it, with Cooper at his shoulder.
Dear guys--I don't want to get your hopes up again and have you disappointed. But I think I may have found the trouble. I'm going to try it out. If it doesn't work, I'll come back and burn this note and never say a word. But if you find the note, you'll know it worked and I'll be back to get you. Wes.
Hudson crumpled the note in his hand. "The crazy fool!"
"He's gone off his rocker," Cooper said. "He just thought...."
The same thought struck them both and they bolted for the door. At the corner of the cabin, they skidded to a halt and stood there, staring at the ridge above them.
The pyramid of rocks they'd built two months ago was gone!
XI
The crash brought Gen. Leslie Bowers (ret.) up out of bed--about two feet out of bed--old muscles tense, white mustache bristling.
Even at his age, the general was a man of action. He flipped the covers back, swung his feet out to the floor and grabbed the shotgun leaning against the wall.
Muttering, he blundered out of the bedroom, marched across the dining room and charged into the kitchen. There, beside the door, he snapped on the switch that turned on the floodlights. He practically took the door off its hinges getting to the stoop and he stood there, bare feet gripping the planks, nightshirt billowing in the wind, the shotgun poised and ready.
"What's going on out there?" he bellowed.
There was a tremendous pile of rocks resting where he'd parked his car. One crumpled fender and a drunken headlight peeped out of the rubble.
A man was clambering carefully down the jumbled stones, making a detour to dodge the battered fender.
The general pulled back the hammer of the gun and fought to control himself.
The man reached the bottom of the pile and turned around to face him. The general saw that he was hugging something tightly to his chest.
"Mister," the general told him, "your explanation better be a good one. That was a brand-new car. And this was the first time I was set for a
night of sleep since my tooth quit aching."
The man just stood and looked at him.
"Who in thunder are you?" roared the general.
The man walked slowly forward. He stopped at the bottom of the stoop.
"My name is Wesley Adams," he said. "I'm--"
"Wesley Adams!" howled the general. "My God, man, where have you been all these years?"
"Well, I don't imagine you'll believe me, but the fact is...."
"We've been waiting for you. For twenty-five long years! Or, rather, I've been waiting for you. Those other idiots gave up. I've waited right here for you, Adams, for the last three years, ever since they called off the guard."
Adams gulped. "I'm sorry about the car. You see, it was this way...."
The general, he saw, was beaming at him fondly.
"I had faith in you," the general said.
He waved the shotgun by way of invitation. "Come on in. I have a call to make."
Adams stumbled up the stairs.
"Move!" the general ordered, shivering. "On the double! You want me to catch my death of cold out here?"
Inside, he fumbled for the lights and turned them on. He laid the shotgun across the kitchen table and picked up the telephone.
"Give me the White House at Washington," he said. "Yes, I said the White House.... The President? Naturally he's the one I want to talk to.... Yes, it's all right. He won't mind my calling him."
"Sir," said Adams tentatively.
The general looked up. "What is it, Adams? Go ahead and say it."
"Did you say twenty-five years?"
"That's what I said. What were you doing all that time?"
Adams grasped the table and hung on. "But it wasn't...."
"Yes," said the general to the operator. "Yes, I'll wait."
He held his hand over the receiver and looked inquiringly at Adams. "I imagine you'll want the same terms as before."
"Terms?"
"Sure. Recognition. Point Four Aid. Defense pact."
"I suppose so," Adams said.
"You got these saps across the barrel," the general told him happily. "You can get anything you want. You rate it, too, after what you've done and the bonehead treatment you got--but especially for not selling out."