The Time Axis

engulfing all sound except for De Kalb's heavy breathing and the quick rasping breath that came and went as Murray sat motionless, staring at the flicker of lights that had been lit at the world's end and sent back to us along the circumference of time.

I found that I was holding myself tense in that silence. I was waiting – waiting for the nova to burst again inside me, perhaps. Waiting for another killing, perhaps somewhere in my sight this time, perhaps someone in this room. And I was waiting for one thing more – the first spreading coldness that might hint to me that my own flesh, like the stone of the studio hearth, had given root to the nekron.

The box closed. The lights vanished from the ceiling.

Murray very slowly sat upright in his chair ...

De Kalb leaned back heavily, his curiously dull eyes full on Murray's face.

'And that's the whole story,' he said.

It had taken over an hour of quick, incisive questions and painstaking answers to present Murray with a complete picture of the situation in which he himself played so curious a part. We all watched his face, searching, I think, for some sign of the tremendous intellectual and emotional experience through which everyone must go who opened that box.

Nothing showed. It was the stranger because I knew Murray was almost a hysteric, psychologically. Perhaps he'd learned to control himself when he had to. Certainly he showed nothing of emotion as he shot his cold, watchful questions at De Kalb.

'And you recognized me,' he said now, narrowing his eyes at De Kalb. 'I was in that – that underground room?'

'You were.'

Murray regarded him quietly, his mouth pulled downward in a curve of determination and anger.

'De Kalb,' he said, 'you tell a good story. But you're a grasshopper. You always have been. You lose interest in every project as soon as you think you've solved it. Now listen to me a minute. The indoctrination project you were working on with me is not yet fully solved. I know you think so. But it isn't. I see exactly what's happened. Hypnosis as an indoctrination method has led you off onto this wild scheme. You intend to use hypnosis on whatever guinea-pigs you can enlist and – '

'It isn't true, Murray, It isn't true.' De Kalb was not even indignant, only weary. 'You saw the Record. You know.'

'All right,' Murray admitted after a moment. 'I saw the Record. Very well. Suppose you can go forward in time. Suppose you step out, back in the here and now, ten seconds after you step in. You say no time is lost. But what energy you'll lose, De Kalb! You'll be a different man, older, tired, full of experiences. Disinterested, maybe, in my project. I can't let you do it. I'll have to insist you finish that first and then do what you like on this Record deal of yours.'

'It can't be done, Murray,' De Kalb said. 'You can't get around it that way. I saw you in the time-chamber, remember. You did go.'

Murray put up an impatient hand. 'Is this telephone connected with the exchange? Thanks. I can't argue with you, De Kalb. I have a job to do.'

We all sat quiet, watching him as he put a number through. He got his departmental headquarters. He got the man he wanted.

'Murray speaking,' he said .briskly. 'I'm at De Kalb's in Connecticut. You know the place? I'm leaving immediately in my plane. I want you to check me in as soon as I get there, probably around three. I'm bringing a man named Cortland with me, newspaper fellow – you know his work? Good? Now listen, this is important.' Murray took a deep breath and regarded me coldly over the telephone. Very distinctly he said into it.

'Cortland is responsible for that series of murders he reported from Brazil. I'm bringing him in for questioning.'

7. OUT OF CONTROL

I didn't like the way he flew his plane. His hands kept jiggling with the controls, his feet kept adjusting and readjusting the tail-flaps so that the ship was in constant, unnecessary side motion in the air, Murray was nervous.

I looked down at the trees, the tilted mountain slopes, the roads shining in the sun, with little glittering black dots sliding along it that were cars.

'You know you can't get away with this, Murray,' I said. It was, I think, almost the first thing I had said to him since we took off half an hour ago. After all, there had been little to say. The situation was out of all our hands, as Murray had meant it to be, from the moment he spoke into the telephone.

'I have got away with it, Cortland,' he said, not looking at me.

'De Kalb has connections as powerful as yours,' I told him. 'Besides, I think I can prove I'm not responsible for those deaths.'

'I think you are, Cortland. If there's any truth in what De Kalb was saying, I believe you're a carrier.'

'But you're not doing this because you think I'm guilty. You're doing it to stop De Kalb.'

'Certainly.' He snapped his lips shut. I shrugged. That, of course, was obvious.

We flew on in silence. Murray was uneasy, perhaps from the experience of the Record. I think now that he had entirely shut his mind to that. I think he was denying it had ever happened. But his hands and feet still jittered on the controls until I itched to take the plane away from him and fly it myself.

It was a nice little ship, a six-passenger job that could have flown alone, almost, as any good plane can do in smooth air if the pilot will only let it. I would probably have said just then, if you'd asked me, that I was in plenty of trouble. My troubles hadn't started. They were about to.

The first intimation was the sound Murray made – a sort of deep, startled, incredulous grunt. I stopped to turn toward him. And then – time stopped.

I had a confused awareness that something was moving through the ship, something dark and frighteningly swift. But this time there was a difference. The thing I had first encountered in a Rio alley had returned. The first pulse of that nova of blinding brilliance burst outward from the core and center of my body. But it did not rise to its climactic explosion of pure violence. The energy suddenly was shut off at the source. The plane was empty of that monstrous intruder.

Beside me Murray hunched over the controls, slowly bending forward. I could not see his face. That instant of relief passed in a flashing time-beat.

Again the pulse throbbed through me. And again it was shut off. There was something terribly wrong with gravity. The earth stood upright in a blurred line that bisected the sky and was slowly, slowly toppling over from left to right. The weight of Murray's body, slumped heavily forward, was throwing the ship out of control.

I couldn't move – not while those erratic jumping shocks kept pounding at me.

But I had to move. I had to get hold of the controls. And then, as I put forth all my strength, the explosion channeled into my brain – different, somehow incomplete. I could feel a swiftly-fading ebb-tide draining into the empty void.

Then it was gone altogether.

Another part of my mind must have taken over then. And it must have been efficient. Myself, I seemed to be floating somewhere in a troubled void with the image of Murray's lolling head and limp arms. Murray – dead. Dead? He must be dead. I knew that nekronic shock too well.

In the mindless void where my awareness floated I knew that I was a bad spot temporally. Jerry Cortland was in a bad spot. Murray's headquarters must be expecting him in already with a murder suspect in tow. I was the murder suspect and murder had been done again. And Murray and I had been alone in mid-air when it happened.