“No,” said Shorty. Strangely, he felt completely unafraid now. He knew that he must be asleep dreaming this, but he didn’t think he was. But he was as sure as he was sure of anything that he wasn’t crazy. The voice he was talking to said he wasn’t; and that voice certainly seemed to be an authority on the subject. A hundred Napoleons!
He said, “This is fun. I want to find out as much as I can before I wake up. Who are you; what’s your name? Mine’s Shorty.”
“Moderately glad to know you, Shorty. You normals bore me usually, but you seem a bit better than most. I’d rather not give you the name they call me at Donnybrook, though; I wouldn’t want you to come there visiting or anything. Just call me Dopey.”
“You mean… uh… the Seven Dwarfs? You think you’re one of—”
“Oh, no, not at all. I’m not a paranoiac; none of my delusions, as you would call them, concern identity. It’s just the nickname they know me by here. Just like they call you Shorty, see? Never mind my other name.”
Shorty said, “What are your… uh… delusions?”
“I’m an inventor, what they call a nut inventor. I think I invent time machines, for one thing. This is one of them.”
“This is— You mean that I’m in a time machine? Well, yes, that would account for… uh… a thing or two. But, listen, if this is a time machine and it works, why do you say you think you invent them? If this is one—I mean—” The voice laughed. “But a time machine is impossible. It is a paradox. Your professors will explain that a time machine cannot be, because it would mean that two things could occupy the same space at the same time. And a man could go back and kill himself when he was younger, and—oh, all sorts of stuff like that. It’s completely impossible. Only a crazy man could—”
“But you say this is one. Uh… where is it? I mean, where in time.”
“Now? It’s 1958, of course.”
“In— Hey, it’s only 1953. Unless you moved it since I got on; did you?”
“No. I was in 1958 all along; that’s where I was listening to that lecture on the dinosaurs. But you got on back there, five years back. That’s because of the warp. The one I’m going to take up with Napo—”
“But where am I… are we… now?”
“You’re in the same classroom you got on from, Shorty. But five years ahead. If you reach out, you’ll see— Try, just to your left, back where you yourself were sitting.”
“Uh—would I get my hand back again, or would it be like when I reached into here?”
“It’s all right; you’ll get it back.”
“Well—” said Shorty.
Tentatively, he reached out his hand. It touched something soft that felt like hair. He took hold experimentally and tugged a little.
It jerked suddenly out of his grasp, and involuntarily Shorty jerked his hand back.
“Wow!” said the voice beside him. “That was funny!”
“What… what happened?” asked Shorty.
“It was a girl, a knockout with red hair. She’s sitting in the same seat you were sitting in back there five years ago. You pulled her hair, and you ought to’ve seen her jump! Listen—”
“Listen to what?”
“Shut up, then, so I can listen—” There was a pause, and the voice chuckled. “The prof is dating her up!”
“Huh?” said Shorty. “Right in class? How—”
“Oh, he just looked back at her when she let out a yip, and told her to stay after class. But from the way he’s looking at her, I can guess he’s got an ulterior motive. I can’t blame him; she’s sure a knockout. Reach out and pull her hair again.”
“Uh… well, it wouldn’t be quite… uh—”
“That’s right,” said the voice disgustedly. “I keep forgetting you aren’t crazy like me. Must be awful to be normal. Well, let’s get out of here. I’m bored. How’d you like to go hunting?”
“Hunting? Well, I’m not much of a shot. Particularly when I can’t see anything.”
“Oh, it won’t be dark if you step out of the apparatus. It’s your own world, you know, but it’s crazy. I mean, it’s an— how would your professors put it?—an illogical aspect of logicality. Anyway, we always hunt with sling shots. It’s more sporting.”
“Hunt what?”
“Dinosaurs. They’re the most fun.”
“Dinosaurs! With a sling shot? You’re era— I mean, do you?”
The voice laughed. “Sure, we do. Look, that’s what was so funny about what that professor was saying about the saurians. You see, we killed them off. Since I made this time machine, the Jurassic has been our favorite hunting ground. But there may be one or two left for us to hunt. I know a good place for them. This is it.”
“This? I thought we were in a classroom in 1958.”
“We were, then. Here, I’ll inverse the polarity, and you can step right out. Go ahead.”
“But—” Shorty said, and then “Well—” and then took a step to his right.
Sunlight blinded him.
It was a brighter, more glaring sunlight than he had ever seen or known before, a terrific contrast after the darkness he’d been in. He put his hands over his eyes to protect them, and only slowly was he able to take them away and open his eyes.
Then he saw he was standing on a patch of sandy soil near the shore of a smooth-surfaced lake.
“They come here to drink,” said a familiar voice, and Shorty whirled around. The man standing there was a funny-looking little cuss, a good four inches shorter than Shorty, who stood five feet five. He wore shell-rimmed glasses and a small goatee; and his face seemed tiny and weazened under a tall black top hat that was turning greenish with age.
He reached into his pocket and pulled out a small sling shot, but with quite heavy rubber between the prongs. He said, “You can shoot the first one if you want,” and held it out. Shorty shook his head vigorously. “You,” he said.
The little man bent down and carefully selected a few stones out of the sand. He pocketed all but one, and fitted that into the leather insert of the sling shot. Then he sat down on a boulder and said, “We needn’t hide. They’re dumb, those dinosaurs. They’ll come right by here.”
Shorty looked around him again. There were trees about a hundred yards back from the lake, strange and monstrous trees with gigantic leaves that were a much paler green than any trees he’d ever seen before. Between the trees and the lake were only small, brownish, stunted bushes and a kind of coarse yellow grass.
Something was missing. Shorty suddenly remembered what it was. “Where’s the time machine?” he asked.
“Huh? Oh, right here.” The little man reached out a hand to his left and it disappeared up to the elbow.
“Oh,” said Shorty. “I wondered what it looked like.”
“Looked like?” said the little man. “How could it look like anything? I told you that there isn’t any such thing as a time machine. There couldn’t be; it would be a complete paradox. Time is a fixed dimension. And when I proved that to myself, that’s what drove me crazy.”
“When was that?”
“About four million years from now, around 1951. I had my heart set on making one, and went batty when I couldn’t.”
“Oh,” said Shorty. “Listen, how come I couldn’t see you, up there in the future, and I can here? And which world of four million years ago is this, yours or mine?”
“The same thing answers both of those questions. This is neutral ground; it’s before there was a bifurcation of sanity and insanity. The dinosaurs are awfully dumb; they haven’t got brains enough to be insane, let alone normal. They don’t know from anything. They don’t know there couldn’t be a time machine. That’s why we can come here.”