CHAPTER II
_Time Stands Still_
For Dave Miller, the world was now a planet of death on which he alonelived and moved and spoke. Staggered, utterly beaten, he made no attemptto break into his home. But he did stumble around to the kitchen windowand try to peer in, anxious to see if there was a body on the floor. Theroom was in semi-darkness, however, and his straining eyes made outnothing.
He returned to the front of the house, shambling like a somnambulist.Seated on the porch steps, head in hands, he slipped into a hell ofregrets. He knew now that his suicide had been no hallucination. He wasdead, all right; and this must be hell or purgatory.
Bitterly he cursed his drinking, that had led him to such a mad thing assuicide. Suicide! He--Dave Miller--a coward who had taken his own life!Miller's whole being crawled with revulsion. If he just had the lastyear to live over again, he thought fervently.
And yet, through it all, some inner strain kept trying to tell him hewas not dead. This was his own world, all right, and essentiallyunchanged. What had happened to it was beyond the pale of mereguesswork. But this one thing began to be clear: This was a world inwhich change or motion of any kind was a foreigner.
* * * * *
Fire would not burn and smoke did not rise. Doors would not open,liquids were solid. Miller's stubbing toe could not move a pebble, and ablade of grass easily supported his weight without bending. In otherwords, Miller began to understand, change had been stopped as surely asif a master hand had put a finger on the world's balance wheel.
Miller's ramblings were terminated by the consciousness that he had anacute headache. His mouth tasted, as Herman used to say after a bignight, as if an army had camped in it. Coffee and a bromo were what heneeded.
But it was a great awakening to him when he found a restaurant andlearned that he could neither drink the coffee nor get the lid off thebromo bottle. Fragrant coffee-steam hung over the glass percolator, buteven this steam was as a brick wall to his probing touch. Miller startedgloomily to thread his way through the waiters in back of the counteragain.
Moments later he stood in the street and there were tears swimming inhis eyes.
"Helen!" His voice was a pleading whisper. "Helen, honey, where areyou?"
There was no answer but the pitiful palpitation of utter silence. Andthen, there was movement at Dave Miller's right!
Something shot from between the parked cars and crashed against him;something brown and hairy and soft. It knocked him down. Before he couldget his breath, a red, wet tongue was licking his face and hands, and hewas looking up into the face of a police dog!
Frantic with joy at seeing another in this city of death, the dog wouldscarcely let Miller rise. It stood up to plant big paws on his shouldersand try to lick his face. Miller laughed out loud, a laugh with athroaty catch in it.
"Where'd you come from, boy?" he asked. "Won't they talk to you, either?What's your name, boy?"
There was a heavy, brass-studded collar about the animal's neck, andDave Miller read on its little nameplate: "Major."
"Well, Major, at least we've got company now," was Miller's sigh ofrelief.
For a long time he was too busy with the dog to bother about the sobbingnoises. Apparently the dog failed to hear them, for he gave no sign.Miller scratched him behind the ear.
"What shall we do now, Major? Walk? Maybe your nose can smell outanother friend for us."
They had gone hardly two blocks when it came to him that there was amore useful way of spending their time. The library! Half convinced thatthe whole trouble stemmed from his suicide shot in the head--which wasconspicuously absent now--he decided that a perusal of the surgery booksin the public library might yield something he could use.
* * * * *
That way they bent their steps, and were soon mounting the broad cementstairs of the building. As they went beneath the brass turnstile, thelibrarian caught Miller's attention with a smiling glance. He smiledback.
"I'm trying to find something on brain surgery," he explained. "I--"
With a shock, then, he realized he had been talking to himself.
In the next instant, Dave Miller whirled. A voice from the bookcaseschuckled:
"If you find anything, I wish you'd let me know. I'm stumped myself!"
* * * * *
From a corner of the room came an elderly, half-bald man with tangledgray brows and a rueful smile. A pencil was balanced over his ear, and anote-book was clutched in his hand.
"You, too!" he said. "I had hoped I was the only one--"
Miller went forward hurriedly to grip his hand.
"I'm afraid I'm not so unselfish," he admitted. "I've been hoping fortwo hours that I'd run into some other poor soul."
"Quite understandable," the stranger murmured sympathetically. "But inmy case it is different. You see--I am responsible for this whole tragicbusiness!"
"You!" Dave Miller gulped the word. "I--I thought--"
The man wagged his head, staring at his note pad, which was litteredwith jumbled calculations. Miller had a chance to study him. He wastall, heavily built, with wide, sturdy shoulders despite his sixtyyears. Oddly, he wore a gray-green smock. His eyes, narrowed and intent,looked gimlet-sharp beneath those toothbrush brows of his, as he staredat the pad.
"There's the trouble, right there," he muttered. "I provided only threestages of amplification, whereas four would have been barely enough. Nowonder the phase didn't carry through!"
"I guess I don't follow you," Miller faltered. "You mean--something youdid--"
"I should think it was something I did!" The baldish stranger scratchedhis head with the tip of his pencil. "I'm John Erickson--you know, theWanamaker Institute."
Miller said: "Oh!" in an understanding voice. Erickson was head ofWanamaker Institute, first laboratory of them all when it came toexploding atoms and blazing trails into the wildernesses of science.
* * * * *
Erickson's piercing eyes were suddenly boring into the younger man.
"You've been sick, haven't you?" he demanded.
"Well--no--not really sick." The druggist colored. "I'll have to admitto being drunk a few hours ago, though."
"Drunk--" Erickson stuck his tongue in his cheek, shook his head,scowled. "No, that would hardly do it. There must have been somethingelse. The impulsor isn't _that_ powerful. I can understand about thedog, poor fellow. He must have been run over, and I caught him just atthe instant of passing from life to death."
"Oh!" Dave Miller lifted his head, knowing now what Erickson was drivingat. "Well, I may as well be frank. I'm--I committed suicide. That's howdrunk I was. There hasn't been a suicide in the Miller family incenturies. It took a skinful of liquor to set the precedent."
Erickson nodded wisely. "Perhaps we will find the precedent hasn'treally been set! But no matter--" His lifted hand stopped Miller'seager, wondering exclamation. "The point is, young man, we three are ina tough spot, and it's up to us to get out of it. And not only we, butheaven knows how many others the world over!"
"Would you--maybe you can explain to my lay mind what's happened,"Miller suggested.
"Of course. Forgive me. You see, Mr.--"
"Miller. Dave Miller."
"Dave it is. I have a feeling we're going to be pretty well acquaintedbefore this is over. You see, Dave, I'm a nut on so-called 'timetheories.' I've seen time compared to everything from an entity to along, pink worm. But I disagree with them all, because they postulatethe idea that time is constantly being manufactured. Such reasoning isfantastic!
"Time exists. Not as an ever-growing chain of links, because such achain would have to have a tail end, if it has a front end; and who canimagine the period when time did not exist? So I think time is like acircular train-track. Unending. We who live and die merely travel aroundon it. The future exists simultaneously with the past, for one instantwhen they meet."
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* * * * *
Miller's brain was humming. Erickson shot the words at himstaccato-fashion, as if they were things known from Great Primer days.The young druggist scratched his head.
"You've got me licked," he admitted. "I'm a stranger here, myself."
"Naturally you can't be expected to understand things I've been all mylife puzzling about. Simplest way I can explain it is that we are on atrain following this immense circular railway.
"When the train reaches the point where it started, it is about toplunge into the past; but this is impossible, because the point where itstarted is simply the caboose of the train! And that point is alwaysahead--and behind--the time-train.
"Now, my idea was that with the proper stimulus a man could be thrustacross the diameter of this circular railway to a point in his past.Because of the nature of time, he could neither go ahead of the train tomeet the future nor could he stand still and let the caboose catch upwith him. But--he could detour across the circle and land farther backon the train! And that, my dear Dave, is what you and I and Major havedone--almost."
"Almost?" Miller said hoarsely.
Erickson pursed his lips. "We are somewhere partway across the spacebetween present and past. We are living in an instant that can moveneither forward nor back. You and I, Dave, and Major--and the Lord knowshow many others the world over--have been thrust by my time impulsoronto a timeless beach of eternity. We have been caught in time'sbackwash. Castaways, you might say."
An objection clamored for attention in Miller's mind.
"But if this is so, where are the rest of them? Where is my wife?"
"They are right here," Erickson explained. "No doubt you could see yourwife if you could find her. But we see them as statues, because, for us,time no longer exists. But there was something I did not count on. I didnot know that it would be possible to live in one small instant of time,as we are doing. And I did not know that only those who are hoveringbetween life and death can deviate from the normal process of time!"
"You mean--we're dead!" Miller's voice was a bitter monotone.
"Obviously not. We're talking and moving, aren't we? But--we are on thefence. When I gave my impulsor the jolt of high power, it went wrong andI think something must have happened to me. At the same instant, you hadshot yourself.
"Perhaps, Dave, you are dying. The only way for us to find out is to tryto get the machine working and topple ourselves one way or the other. Ifwe fall back, we will all live. If we fall into the present--we maydie."
"Either way, it's better than this!" Miller said fervently.
"I came to the library here, hoping to find out the things I must know.My own books are locked in my study. And these--they might be cementedin their places, for all their use to me. I suppose we might as well goback to the lab."
Miller nodded, murmuring: "Maybe you'll get an idea when you look at themachine again."
"Let's hope so," said Erickson grimly. "God knows I've failed so far!"