He threw the main switch. As vision wavered he saw the pursuers almost on him. One of them was aiming something like a bazooka.
They faded into grayness. He lay back, shuddering. Slowly, he grew aware that his clothes were torn and that a metal fragment had scratched his hand.
And Sam was dead. Sam was dead.
He watched the dial creep upward. Let it be 3000 A.D. Five hundred years was not too much to put between himself and the men in black.
He chose nighttime. A cautious look outside revealed that he was among tall buildings with little if any light. Good!
He spent a few moments bandaging his injury and changing into the extra clothes Eve had insisted on providing—a heavy wool shirt and breeches, boots and a raincoat that should help make him relatively inconspicuous. The holstered pistol went along, of course, with plenty of extra cartridges. He’d have to leave the machine while he reconnoitered and chance its discovery. At least he could lock the door.
Outside he found himself standing in a small cobbled courtyard between high houses with shuttered and darkened windows. Overhead was utter night, the stars must be clouded, but he saw a vague red glow to the north, pulsing and flickering. After a moment, he squared his shoulders and started down an alley that was like a cavern of blackness.
Briefly, the incredible situation rose in his mind. In less than an hour he had leaped a thousand years past his own age, had seen his friend murdered and now stood in an alien city more alone than man had ever been. And Eve, will I see you again?
A noiseless shadow, blacker than the night, slipped past him. The dim light shone greenly from its eyes—an alley cat. At least man still had pets. But he could have wished for a more reassuring one.
Noise came from ahead, a bobbing light flashing around at the doors of houses. He dropped a hand through the slit in his coat to grasp the pistol butt.
Black against the narrowed skyline four men came abreast, filling the street. The rhythm of their footfalls was military. A guard of some kind. He looked around for shelter; he didn’t want to be taken prisoner by unknowns.
No alleys to the side—he sidled backward.
The flashlight beam darted ahead, crossed his body, and came back. A voice shouted something, harsh and peremptory.
Saunders turned and ran. The voice cried again behind him. He heard the slam of boots after him. Someone blew a horn, raising echoes that hooted between the high dark walls.
A black form grew out of the night. Fingers like steel wires closed on his arm, yanking him to one side. He opened his mouth, and a hand slipped across it. Before he could recover balance, he was pulled down a flight of stairs in the street.
«In heah.» The hissing whisper was taut in his ear. «Quickly.»
A door slid open just a crack. They burst through, and the other man closed it behind them. An automatic lock clicked shut.
«Ih don’ tink dey vised us,» said the man grimly. «Dey better not ha’!»
Saunders stared at him. The other man was of medium height, with a lithe, slender build shown by the skin-tight gray clothes under his black cape. There was a gun at one hip, a pouch at the other. His face was sallow, with a yellowish tinge, and the hair was shaven. It was a lean, strong face, with high cheekbones and narrow jaw, straight nose with flaring nostrils, dark, slant eyes under Mephistophelean brows. The mouth, wide and self-indulgent, was drawn into a reckless grin that showed sharp white teeth. Some sort of white-Mongoloid half-breed, Saunders guessed.
«Who are you?» he asked roughly.
The stranger surveyed him shrewdly. «Belgotai of Syrtis,» he said at last. «But yuh don’ belong heah.»
«I’ll say I don’t.» Wry humor rose in Saunders. «Why did you snatch me that way?»
«Yuh didn’ wanna fall into de Watch’s hands, did yuh?» asked Belgotai. «Don’ ask mih why Ih ressued a stranger. Ih happened to come out, see yuh running, figgered anybody running fro de Watch desuhved help, an’ pulled yuh back in.» He shrugged. «Of course, if yuh don’ wanna be helped, go back upstaiahs.»
«I’ll stay here, of course,» he said. «And—thanks for rescuing me.»
«De nada,» said Belgotai. «Come, le’s ha’ a drink.»
It was a smoky, low-ceilinged room, with a few scarred wooden tables crowded about a small charcoal fire and big barrels in the rear—a tavern of some sort, an underworld hangout. Saunders reflected that he might have done worse. Crooks wouldn’t be as finicky about his antecedents as officialdom might be. He could ask his way around, learn.
«I’m afraid I haven’t any money,» he said. «Unless—» He pulled a handful of coins from his pocket.
Belgotai looked sharply at them and drew a whistling breath between his teeth. Then his face smoothed into blankness. «Ih’ll buy,» he said genially. «Come, Hennaly, gi’ us whissey.»
Belgotai drew Saunders into a dark corner seat, away from the others in the room. The landlord brought tumblers of rotgut remotely akin to whiskey, and Saunders gulped his with a feeling of need.
«Wha’ name do yuh go by?» asked Belgotai.
«Saunders. Martin Saunders.»
«Glad to see yuh. Now—» Belgotai leaned closer, and his voice dropped to a whisper— «Now, Saunders, when’re yuh from?»
Saunders started. Belgotai smiled thinly. «Be frank,» he said. «Dese’re mih frien’s heah. Dey’d think nawting of slitting yuh troat and dumping yuh in de alley. But Ih mean well.»
With a sudden great weariness, Saunders relaxed. What the hell, it had to come out sometime. «Nineteen hundred seventy-three,» he said.
«Eh? De future?»
«No—the past.»
«Oh. Diff’ent chronning, den. How far back?»
«One thousand and twenty-seven years.»
Belgotai whistled. «Long ways! But Ih were sure yuh mus’ be from de past. Nobody eve’ come fro’ de future.»
Sickly: «You mean—it’s impossible?»
«Ih do’ know.» Belgotai’s grin was wolfish. «Who’d visit dis era fro’ de future, if dey could? But wha’s yuh story?»
Saunders bristled. The whiskey was coursing hot in his veins now. «I’ll trade information,» he said coldly. «I won’t give it.»
«Faiah enawff. Blast away, Mahtin Saundahs.»
Saunders told his story in a few words. At the end, Belgotai nodded gravely. «Yuh ran into de Fanatics, five hundred yeahs ago,» he said. «Dey was deat’ on time travelers. Or on most people, for dat matter.»
«But what’s happened? What sort of world is this, anyway?»
Belgotai’s slurring accents were getting easier to follow. Pronunciation had changed a little, vowels sounded different, the «r» had shifted to something like that in twentieth-century French or Danish, other consonants were modified. Foreign words, especially Spanish, had crept in. But it was still intelligible. Saunders listened. Belgotai was not too well versed in history, but his shrewd brain had a grasp of the more important facts.
The time of troubles had begun in the twenty-third century with the revolt of the Martian colonists against the increasingly corrupt and tyrannical Terrestrial Directorate. A century later the folk of Earth were on the move, driven by famine, pestilence and civil war, a chaos out of which rose the religious enthusiasm of the Armageddonists—the Fanatics, as they were called later. Fifty years after the massacres on Luna, Huntry was the military dictator of Earth, and the rule of the Armageddonists endured for nearly three hundred years. It was a nominal sort of rule, vast territories were always in revolt and the planetary colonists were building up a power which kept the Fanatics out of space, but wherever they did have control they ruled with utter ruthlessness.