the voice.
Says the doc, 'That means us.' So he pushes open the door and walks in.
An old man with savage white whiskers stares us in the face. 'Who the devil are you?' he bellows. 'And where are my nitwit offspring gone?'
Without hedging the doc introduces himself: 'I am Doctor Ellenbogan and this is Mr. Reilly. We have come from Earth, year 1941. You must be Lord Peter DeManning?'
The old man stares at him, breathing heavily. 'I am,' he says at last.
'And what the devil may you be doing in my world?'
'Fleeing from an assassin,' says the doc. 'And this is the assassin. We are here by accident, but I had expected a greater degree of courtesy than you seem to see fit to bestow on us. Will you explain, please?'
'And that goes double for me,' I snap, feeling plenty tough.
'Pah!' grunts the old man. 'Muscling in, that's what you're doing! Who invited you? This is my experiment and I'm not going to see it ruined by any blundering outsider. You a physicist?'
'Specializing in electronics,' says the doc coldly.
'Thought so! Poppycock! I used a physicist to get me here—used him, mark you—for my own purposes. I'm a scientist myself. The only real scientist—the only real science there is!'
'And what might that be?' I ask.
'Humanity, you—assassin. The science of human relationships.
Conditioned reflexes from head to toe. Give me the child and I'll give you the man! I proved it—proved it here with my own brains and hands.
Make what you like of that. I won't tell you another word. Scientist—
physicist—pah!'
'He's nuts!' I whisper to the doc.
'Possibly. Possibly,' he whispers back. 'But I doubt it. And there are too many mysteries here.' So he turns to the old man again. 'Lord DeManning,' he says smoothly, 'there are things I want to find out.'
'Well,' snarls the old thing, 'you won't from me. Now get out!' And he raises his hand—and in that hand is a huge Colt .45 automatic—the meanest hand weapon this side of perdition. I dive for the roscoe, but the doc turns on me quickly. 'Cut it out, Matt,' he hisses. 'None of that.
Let's go outside and look around.'
Once we are outside I complain, 'Why didn't you let me plug him? He can't be that fast on the trigger. You practically need a crowbar to fire one of those things he had.'
'Not that cunning old monster,' broods the doc. 'Not him. He knows a lot—probably has a hair-trigger on the gun. He's that kind of mind—I know the type. Academic run wild. Let's split up here and scout around.' So he wanders off vaguely, polishing his glasses.
A passing figure attracts my eye. 'Lady Cynthia!' I yell.
The incredibly beautiful blonde turns and looks at me coldly. 'Mr.
Reilly,' she says, 'you were informed of my sentiments towards you. I hope you make no further attempts at —'
'Hold it!' I says. 'Stop right then and there. What I want to know is what did I do that I shouldn't have done? Lady Cynthia, I—I like you an awful lot, and I don't think we should—' I'm studying her eyes like an eagle. The second I see them soften I know that I'm in.
'Mr. Reilly,' she says with great agitation, 'follow me. They'd kill me if they found out, but—' She walks off slowly, and I follow her into a hut.
'Now,' she says, facing me fair and square, 'I don't know why I should foul my mouth with things that I would rather die than utter, but there's something about you—' She brings herself to rights with a determined toss of her head. 'What do you want to know?'
'First,' I says, 'tell me where you were coming back from this afternoon, or whatever it was.'
She winces, actually winces, and turns red down to her neck, not with the pretty kind of pink blush that a dame can turn on and off, but with the real hot, red blush of shame that hurts like sunburn. Before answering she turns so she doesn't have to look at me. 'It was a counter-raid,' she says. 'Against—' and here I feel actual nausea in her voice— 'against the Whites.' Defiantly she faces me again.
Bewildered I says, 'Whites?' and she loses her temper. Almost hoarsely she cries, 'Don't say that filthy name! Isn't it enough that you made me speak it?' And she hurries from the hut almost in a dead run.
But this time little Matt doesn't follow her. He's beginning to suspect that everybody's crazy except him or maybe vice versa.
Then there were sudden yells outside the hut, and Little Matt runs out to see what's up. And bedad if there aren't centipedes by the score pouring down on the little village! Centipedes mounted by men with weapons—axes, knives and bows. A passing woman yells at me, 'Get to the walls—fight the bloody rotters! Kill them all!' She is small and pretty; the kind of gal that should never get angry. But her face was puffed with rage, and she was gnashing her small, even teeth.
As I see it the centipedes form a ring around the village, at full gallop like Indians attacking a wagon-train. And, like Indians, firing arrows into the thick of the crowd. So I take out the roscoe on account of the people on the centipedes are getting off and rushing the village.
I find myself engaged with a big, savage guy dreamin' homicidal visions in which I took a big part. He has a stone axe with a fine, sharp blade, and I have to fend it off as well as I can by dodging, inasmuch as if I tried to roll it off my shoulder or arm, like a prize-fighter would, I would find that I did not have any longer a shoulder or arm.
Little Matt gets in a clean one to the jaw, nearly breaking his hand, and works the guy around to one of the huts, through other knots of fighting men. Then the big guy lands one with the handle of the axe on my left forearm, nearly paralyzing it. And to my great surprise he says, 'Take that, you rotten Black!'
Not wishing to argue I keeps on playing with him until he is ready to split my skull with one blow. At which point I dodge, and the axe is stuck firm in the side of the hut. Taking my time to aim it, I crack his skull open with the roscoe's butt and procede to my next encounter.
This gent I trip up with the old soji as taught in the New York Police Department and elsewhere, and while he is lying there I kick him in the right place on the side of his head, which causes him to lose interest.
'Matt! For God's sake!' yells someone. It is Doc Ellenbogan, seriously involved with two persons, both using clubs with more enthusiasm than skill. I pick up a rock from the ground and demonstrate in rapid succession just what you can do with a blunt instrument once you learn how. There's a certain spot behind the ear
I drag the doc into the nearest hut. 'Why do they call us Blacks?' I demand. 'And who are they anyway?'
'Matt,' he says quietly, 'let me have your gun.'
Without questions I fork over the roscoe. 'What plans you got, chief?' I say, feeling very good after the free- for-all.
'Things begin to fall into place,' he says. 'Sir Peter, the chap we met, broke down and told me his viewpoint. It wasn't much, but I can tell there's something horrible going on.' He actually shudders. 'I'm going to see the Old Man. You please stay outside the hut and see that none of the Whites interrupt us.'
'I don't think they will,' I inform him, peeking out. 'The battle's over and—awk!— they ain't taking prisoners.' I had just seen that pretty little woman bashing in the head of an unconscious White on the ground. 'So the Whites are those people that just came and—left?' I asks. 'And we're the Blacks?'
'That's right, Matt.'
'Sorry, chief,' I says mournfully. 'I don't get it.'
So we leave for the hut of the Old Man.
While I stand guard outside there is a long conversation in muffled tones; then, so quick they almost sounded like one shot, the roar of the Old Man's .45 and the crack of the roscoe. I bust through the door, and see the doc bleeding from his shoulder and the Old Man lying very dead on his floor.
I tape up the doc as well as I can, but a .45 leaves a terrible cavity in a man. As soon as he is able to talk I warn him: 'You better get a doctor to see after that thing. It'll infect as sure as fate.'
'It probably will,' says the doc weakly. Then he mutters, 'That old monster! That horrible old—' and the rest is words that seem all the worse coming as they do from the doc, who is a mild-mannered person in appearance.
