their normal glow, but at the same time the maroon book grew blurry. In a second it was transparent; I thought I could see the white pages and the merging lines of print through the cover, but the transition was very fast. In the next second the book dissolved and disappeared, and I saw only the empty black chamber of the machine.
“It has moved through time,” he said without looking at me. He rose heavily from the floor. His forehead glistened with sweat, in beads tiny as pinpoints. “Or, if you prefer, it has become younger.”
“By how much?” I asked. At my matter-of-fact tone, his face relaxed somewhat. Its smaller, seemingly atrophied left side (which was also darker, I now noticed) twitched.
“About a day. I am not yet able to calculate exactly. But this — “ he broke off and looked at me.
“Were you here yesterday?” he asked, obviously hanging on my reply.
“I was,” I said slowly, feeling that the floor was slipping out from under me. I understood him. In a dreamlike daze I connected the two facts: the inexplicable appearance of the book, yesterday, on that very spot against the wall, and his present experiment.
I told him. He did not beam, as one might have expected, but silently wiped his forehead with a handkerchief. I saw that he was sweating profusely and had turned pale. I pulled up a chair for him and sat down myself.
“Could you tell me now what you want from me?” I asked when he had collected himself.
“Help,” he mumbled. “Support — not charity. Let it be… an advance on a share in future profits. A time vehicle — surely you realize — “ He stopped short.
I nodded. “You need a lot of money.”
“A lot. Great amounts of energy are involved. Besides, the chronoscope — to make the transposed body reach the exact time desired — still requires work.”
“How much?” I prompted.
“A year, at least.”
“Fine, I understand. But I’ll have to seek… the help of third parties. Financiers. If you have no objection.”
“No, of course not.”
“Good. I’ll lay my cards on the table. Most people in my shoes would assume — after what you’ve told me — that they were dealing with a trick, an ingenious swindle. But I believe you. I believe you and will do what I can. That will take time, of course. At the moment I am very busy. Also, I will need to consult —”
“Physicists?” he shot out. He was listening with the greatest attention.
“No, why? You’re touchy on that point — no, please. I am not prying. But I’ll need advice in choosing the most suitable people, those willing…”
I broke off. The thought must have occurred to him the instant it occurred to me. His eyes flashed.
“Mr. Tichy,” he said, “you don’t have to consult anyone. I myself will tell you who to go to.”
“Using your machine, you mean?”
He smiled triumphantly.
“I should have thought of it before. What an ass I am!”
“You’ve already traveled in time, then?” I asked.
“No. The machine has been working for only a short while — since last Friday, to be exact. I sent a cat…”
“A cat? And it returned?”
“No. It went five years, give or take a year, into the future; the calibration is not yet precise. Precision in determining the point of cessation of time displacement necessitates the inclusion of a differentiator able to coordinate the field warps. As it is, the desynchronization caused by the quantum tunnel effect…”
“Unfortunately, I don’t understand a thing you’re saying. But you haven’t tried it yourself?”
It seemed odd to me, not to use another word. Molteris was flustered.
“I planned to, but, you see, I — my landlord turned off the electricity on Sunday.”
His face — the normal, right side of his face — went scarlet.
“I’m behind in the rent…” he stammered. “But yes, you’re right. I’ll do it at once. I’ll climb in, like this. Now I’ll turn on the machine. When I reach the future, I’ll find out who financed the undertaking. I’ll get their names, and that will make it possible for you to…”
“Wait,” I said. “I don’t like this. How will you return if the machine stays here with me?”
He smiled.
“Ah, no. I’ll be traveling along with the machine. This is possible — it has two adjustments. Here, this variometer, see? If I send something through time and want the machine to stay, I focus the field into this little space under the hatch. But if I want to move through time myself, I expand the field so that it includes the whole machine. Except that the power consumption will be greater. How many amps are your fuses?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But I don’t think they’ll take the load. Even before, when you … sent that book, the lights dimmed.”
“No problem. I can replace the fuses with larger ones, if you don’t mind; that is…”
“Be my guest.”
He set to work. His pockets were a compact electronics workshop. In ten minutes he was done.
“I’m off,” he said, coming back into the room. “I’ll need to go at least thirty years forward.”
“Why so far?” I asked. We stood before the black machine.
“In a few years, specialists will know about the project, but in a quarter of a century every child will. It will be taught in school, and I will be able to get from any passer-by the names of the people who sponsored it.”
He smiled wanly, shook his head, and got into the machine with both his feet.
“The lights are flickering,” he said, “but that’s nothing. The fuses will hold. But… there may be a problem with the return trip.”
“How do you mean?”
He threw a quick glance at me.
“You never saw me here before?”
“What are you saying?” I did not follow.
“Well, yesterday, or a week or month ago — even a year ago — you never saw me? Here, in this corner, did a man ever suddenly appear, with both his feet in such a machine?”
“Ah!” I cried, “I understand. You’re afraid that when you return, you might overshoot the mark and come to rest some time in the past. But no, I never saw you before. True, I returned from a voyage nine months ago; before then my apartment was unoccupied.”
“One minute …” He frowned. “I’m not sure myself. If I was here before — for instance, when your apartment was unoccupied, as you say — then I should remember that, shouldn’t I?”
“Not at all,” I was quick to reply. “That’s the paradox of the time loop. You were somewhere else then and doing other things — the you of then, I mean. Of course, you could accidentally enter that then from this now, in which case —”
“Well,” he said, “it doesn’t really matter. If I go back too far, I’ll make a correction. At the worst, the project will be delayed a little. Anyway, it is my first experiment and I must ask for your patience.”
He leaned over and pushed a button. The lights dimmed at once; the machine gave a faint, high-pitched tone like a glass rod that had been struck. Molteris raised one hand in a farewell gesture and with the other flipped the black lever, straightening himself at the same time. The tubes glowed with their full light again, and I saw his figure change. The clothing on him darkened and blurred, but I paid no attention to that, astounded by what was happening to his head. The black hair became transparent and simultaneously turned white. The body dissolved and shrank, and when he disappeared, along with his machine, and when I found myself facing an empty corner of the room, an empty floor — a white, bare wall in which there was no plug — when, I say, I stood there open-mouthed, with a cry of horror frozen in my throat, I could still see the gruesome metamorphosis that had come over him. Because, gentlemen, as he disappeared, swept away by time, he also aged at an incredible rate. He must have gone through decades in a fraction of a second! I tottered to a chair, moved it to have a clear view of that empty, brightly lit corner, sat, and began to wait. I waited the whole night, until morning. Seven years, gentlemen, have passed since then. I do not believe that he will ever return, for, caught up in his idea, he forgot about a simple, an extremely simple, a truly elementary thing, yet one that all the authors of science fiction neglect to mention, whether out of ignorance or dishonesty I do not know. You see, if a time traveler goes twenty years ahead, he must
