«But what did Jim say—»
«Bill got hold of him, but he won’t do a thing for us. Said you insulted him.»
«I can imagine what he said,» grated Hart. «You get Bill in here as fast as you can. Have him write a story about the Indians out at the Bowl. Call some of the other boys. Send one of them to wait for the football special and nail the coach as soon as it lands. Better have a bunch of the boys there and get interviews from the Earth players. The life story of each one of them. Shoot the works. Photographers, too. Pictures—I want hundreds of them. Find out who’s been monkeying around with Time traveling and put them on the spot. Call somebody on the Control Board. See what they have to say. Get hold of the Martian coach. I’m going out to the Bowl and drag Jim back here.»
The door banged behind him and Bob grabbed for the phone.
A huge crowd had gathered at the Bowl. In the center of the amphitheater, on the carefully kept and tended gridiron sod, a huge bonfire blazed. Hart saw that one of the goal posts had been torn down to feed it and that piles of broken boxes were on the ground beside the fire. About the blaze leaped barbaric figures, chanting—figures snatched out of the legendry of the country’s beginnings, etched against the leaping flames of the bonfire.
A murmur rose from the crowd. Hart glanced behind him.
Streaming into the Bowl came a squad of police, mounted on motor-bikes. As the squad entered the Bowl they turned on the shrill blasting of the police sirens and charged full down upon the dancing figures around the fire.
Pandemonium reigned. The crowd that had gathered to watch the Indian dance scented new excitement and attempted to out-scream the sirens.
The dance halted and Hart saw the Indians draw together for a single instant, then break and run, not away from the police, but straight toward them. One savage lifted his arm. There was a glint of polished stone in the firelight as he threw the war-axe. The weapon described an arc, descended upon the head of a mounted policeman. Policeman and bike went over in a flurry of arms, legs and spinning wheels.
Above the din rose the terrible cry of the war whoop.
Hart saw a white man leaping ahead of the Indians, shouting at them. It was Jimmy Russell. Mad with bocca, probably.
«Jimmy,» shrieked Hart. «Come back here, Jimmy. You fool, come back.»
But Jimmy didn’t hear. He was shouting at the Indians, urging them to follow him, straight through the charging police line, toward the administration building.
They followed him.
It was all over in a moment.
The Indians and the police met, the police swerving their machines to avoid running down the men they had been sent out to awe into submission.
Then the Indians were in the clear and running swiftly after the white man who was their friend. Before the police squad could turn their charging bikes, the red-men had reached the administration building, disappeared within it.
Behind them ran Hart, his cloak whipping in the wind.
«Jimmy,» he shrieked. «Jimmy, damn you, come back here. Everything’s all right. I’ll raise your salary.»
He stumbled and fell, and as he fell the police roared past him, headed for the door through which the Indians and Jimmy had disappeared.
Hart picked himself up and stumbled on. He was met at the door of the building by a police lieutenant who knew him.
«Can’t understand it,» he shouted. «There isn’t a sign of them. They disappeared.»
«They’re in the tunnel,» shouted Hart. «They’ve gone back 3,000 years.»
The editor pushed the lieutenant to one side. But as he set foot in the building there was a dull thud, like a far-away explosion.
When he reached the coach’s office he found it in ruins. The door had burst outward. The steel plates were buckled as if by a tremendous force.
The furniture was upset and twisted.
Something had happened.
Hart was right. Something had happened to the Time-tunnel. It had been wiped out of existence.
Alexis Androvitch spoke with a queer quirk in his voice, a half-stuttering guttural.
«But how was I to know that a foolish newspaper reporter would go down the Time-tunnel?» he demanded. «How was I to know something would happen? What do I care for newspapers? What do I care for football games? I’ll tell you. I care nothing for them. I care only for science. I do not even want to use this Time traveling personally. It would be nice to see the future, oh, yes, that would be nice—but I haven’t the time. I have more work to do. I have solved Time travel. Now I care no more about it. Pouf! It is something done and finished. Now I move on. I lose interest in the possible. It is always the impossible that challenges me. I do not rest until I eliminate the impossible.»
Arthur Hart thumped the desk.
«But if you did not care about football, why did you help out Coach Snelling? Why turn over the facilities of a great discovery to an athletic coach?»
Androvitch leaned over the desk and leered at the editor.
«So you would like to know that? You would ask me that question. Well, I will tell you. Gentlemen came to me, not the coach, but other gentlemen. A gentleman by the name of Danny Carsten and others. Yes, the gangsters. Danny Carsten was killed later, but I do not care about that. I care for nothing but science.»
«Did you know who these men were when they came to you?» asked Hart.
«Certainly I knew. They told me who they were. They were very businesslike about it. They said they had heard about me working on Time travel and they asked when I thought I would have it finished. I told them I already had solved the problem and then they spread money on the table—much money, more than I had ever seen before. So I said to them: ‘Gentlemen, what can I do for you?’ and they told me. They were frank about it. They said they wanted to win much money by betting on the game. They said they wanted me to help them get a team which would win the game. So I agreed.»
Hart leaped to his feet.
«Great galloping Jupiter,» he yelled. «Snelling mixed up with gangsters!»
Androvitch shook his head.
«Snelling did not know he was dealing with gangsters. Others went to him and talked to him about using the Time travel method. Others he thought were his friends.»
«But, man,» said Hart, «you aren’t going to tell all this when you are called before the athletic Board of Control? There’ll be an investigation that will go through the whole thing with a fine tooth comb and you’ll knock Coach Snelling out of the football picture if you open your mouth about gangsters being mixed up in this.»
The scientist shook his head. «Why should I care one way or the other. Human fortunes mean little. Progress of the race is the only thing worth while. I have nothing to hide. I sold the use of my discovery for money I needed to embark upon other researches. Why should I lie? If I tell the truth, maybe they will let me leave as soon as my story is told. I can’t waste time at investigations. I have work to do, important work.»
«Have it your way,» said Hart, «but the thing I came here for was to see you about Jimmy Russell. Is there any way I can reach him? Do you know what happened?»
«Something happened to the Time-control machine which was in Coach Snelling’s office. It operated at all times to keep the tunnel open. It required a lot of power and we had it hooked on a high-voltage circuit. I would guess that one of the Indians, becoming frightened in the office, probably even in a drunken stupor, blundered into the machine. He more than likely tipped it over and short-circuited it. I understand fragments of human body were found in the office. Just why the tunnel or the machine should have exploded, I don’t know. Electricity—just plain old electricity—was the key to the whole discovery. But probably I had set up some other type of force—let’s call it a Time-force if you want to be melodramatic about it—and this force might have been responsible. There’s still a lot to learn. And a lot of times a man accomplishes results which he does not suspect.»