«Of course, they didn’t have a chance,» growled Hart. «Folsworth explained all that in his story. They were licked before they started. Psychology. What’s this yap about the pick of Earth teams for the past 1800 years?»
«Give me five minutes,» pleaded Jimmy, «and if you aren’t yelling yourself hoarse at the end of that time, I’ll admit you’re a good editor.»
«All right,» snapped the editor, «sit down and loosen up. And you better be good or I’ll fire you right out on your ear.»
«Now, Hiawatha,» said Jimmy, addressing his companion, «you sit right down in this chair. It won’t hurt you. It’s a thing you rest yourself in.»
The Indian merely stared at him.
«He don’t understand me very good yet,» explained Jimmy, «but he thinks I’m a god of some sort and he does the best he can.»
Hart snorted in disgust.
«Don’t snort,» cautioned the reporter. «The poor misguided savage probably thinks you’re a god, too.»
«Get going,» snarled Hart.
Jimmy seated himself on the edge of the desk. The Indian drew himself up to his full height and folded his arms across his chest. The newsmen in the room had left their desks and were crowding about.
«You see before you,» said Jimmy, «a wild Indian, one of the aborigines of this continent. He lived here before the white men ever set foot on this land. I brought him along to show you I got the right dope.»
«What’s all this got to do with the game?» persisted the editor.
«Plenty. Now you listen. You don’t believe in Time travel. Neither did I until just a few days ago. There are thousands like you. Ships bridging the millions of miles of space between planets are commonplace now. Transmutation of metal is a matter of fact. Yet less than 1500 years ago people believed these things were impossible. Still, you—in this advanced age which has proven the impossible to be possible time and time again—scout the theory of Time travel along a fourth dimension. You even doubt that Time is a fourth dimension, or that there is such a thing possible as a fourth dimension.
«Now, just keep your shirt on!
«Nobody believes in Time travel. Let’s state that as a fact. Nobody but a few fool scientists who should be turning their time and effort toward something else. Something that will spell profit, or speed up production, or make the people happier, or send space liners shooting along faster so that the Earth-Mars run can be made in just a few less minutes.
«And let me tell you that one of those fool scientists succeeded and he built a Time tunnel. I don’t know what he calls it, but that describes it pretty well. I stumbled onto this thing and from what the coach told me, and what the players told, and from what the Indians tried to tell me, and from my own observations, I’ve got the thing all doped out. Don’t ask me how the scientist made the tunnel. I don’t have the least idea. I probably wouldn’t understand if I met the man who made it face to face and he told me how he did it.
«Here’s how the Earth team beat the Martians. The coach knew he didn’t have a chance. He knew that he was in for another licking. The Earth is degenerating. Its men are getting soft. They don’t measure up to the Martians. The coach looked back at the Earth players of former years and he wished he could get a few of them.»
«So,» said the editor, «I suppose he got this Time-tunnel of yours and went back and handpicked them.»
«That’s exactly what he did,» declared Jimmy. «He went over the records and he picked out the men he wanted. Then he sent his scouts back in Time and contracted them to play. He collected the whole bunch as near as I can make it out, and then he established a Time tunnel leading from his office into the past about 3,000 years and took the whole gang back there. He constructed a playing field there, and he drilled men who had been dead for hundreds of years in a wilderness which existed hundreds of years before they were born. The men who played out in the Great Bowl at Guja Tant today were men who had played football before the first spaceship took to the void. Some of them have been dead for over a thousand years.
«That’s what the squabble on the Control Board was about. That’s what held up the game—while the Board tried to dig up something that would bar these men out of Time. But they couldn’t, for the only rules of eligibility are that a man must be of unmixed Earth blood for the past ten generations and must be a football player on some college or university. And every one of those men were just that.»
Hart’s eyes were stony and the reporter, looking at them, knew what to expect.
«So you would like to sit down at your old desk and write that story,» he said.
«Why not?» snarled Jimmy, ready for a battle.
«And you would like me to put it on the front page, with big green headlines, and put out an extra edition and make a big name for the Rocket,» Hart went on.
Jimmy said nothing. He knew nothing he could say would help.
«And you would like to make a damn fool out of me and a joke out of the Rocket and set in motion an athletic investigation that would have Earth and Mars on their ears for the next couple of years.»
The reporter turned to the Indian.
«Hiawatha,» he said, «the big square-head doesn’t believe us. He ought to be back burning witches at the stake. He thinks we just thought this one up.»
The Indian remained unmoved.
«Will you get the hell out of here,» snapped Hart, «and take your friend along.»
The soft, but insistent whirring of the night phone beside his bed brought the editor of the Rocket out of a sound sleep. He did not take kindly to night calls and when he saw the face of one of his reporters in the visaglass he growled savagely.
«What are you waking me up for?» he asked. «You say there are fires out in the Great Bowl—Say, do you have to call me out of bed every time a fire breaks out? Do you want me to run down there and get the story—? You want to know should we shoot out an extra in the morning? Say, do we put out extras every time somebody builds a bonfire, even if it is in the Great Bowl? Probably just some drunks celebrating the victory while they’re waiting for the football special to come in.»
He listened as words tumbled out of the phone.
«What’s that,» he shouted. «Indians?… Holding a war dance! How many of them?… You say they are coming out of the administration building?… More coming all the time, eh!»
Hart was out of bed now.
«Listen, Bob, are you certain they are Indians?… Bill says they are, huh? Would Bill know an Indian if he saw one?… He wasn’t around this afternoon when Jim was in, was he? He didn’t see that freak Jim hauled in, did he?… if he’s playing a joke, I’ll crack his neck.
«Listen, Bob, you get hold of Jim … Yes, I know he’s fired, but he’ll be glad to come back again. Maybe there’s something to that yarn of his. Call all the speakies and gambling joints in town. Get him if you have to arrest him. I’m coming down right away.»
Hart hauled on his clothes, grabbed a cloak and hurried to his garage, where his small service plane was stored.
A few minutes later he stamped into the Rocket editorial rooms.
Bob was there.
«Find Jim?» asked Hart.
«Sure, I found him.»
«What dump is he holed up in?»
«He isn’t in any dump. He’s out at the Bowl with the Indians. He’s got hold of a half barrel of bocca someplace and those savages are getting ripe to tear up the place. How the Martians drink that bocca is beyond me. Imagine an Indian, who has never tasted alcohol, pouring it down his throat!»