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 C.I.A. 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 J.C.S. chairman said, “It checks, sir, with everything we know.”
“But it’s incredible!” the President said.
“They’re afraid,” said the C.I.A. 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 J.C.S. 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 J.C.S. 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 C.I.A. 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
