At one point, though, the Weather Bureau announced the danger to be passed, the hurricane was blowing out to sea. We all sighed with relief as we waited for zero minute.
However, if any of you were in New England that day you will remember that the Weather Bureau announced later that it had “lost” the hurricane; that the backlash struck surprisingly; that five inches of rain or more fell in many places within an hour; that rivers rose and extensive flooding began.
I watched that rain; it was a deluge. I watched the small river running across our campus become a torrent and begin to spread up and out across the lawns while the lines of shrubbery seemed to grow out of roiled sheets of water.
I shouted for an axe. One of my students brought one, remarking afterward that I sounded so wild he was almost afraid I had turned homicidal maniac.
I smashed that steel container. I removed the telechronic battery and in the flickering gray light of that storm-lashed day, I filled a beaker of water and waited for zero minute, ready to douse the battery at the proper moment.
As I did so, the rain slackened, the hurricane moved off.
I do not say we caused the hurricane to return and yet —water had to be added to that battery somehow. If the stainless steel container had to be floated away on a rising flood and smashed by wind and water to have that done, it would be done. The original solution of the final unit predicted that; or else it predicted my deliberate subversion of the experiment. I chose the latter.
As a result of all this, I can envisage what I can only call a “peace bomb.” Enemy agents working within a particular nation, can assemble telechronic batteries, operate them until a case occurs in which the final unit dissolves. That battery can then be encased in a steel capsule and placed near a stream well above high-water mark. Twenty-four hours later, a disastrous flood is bound to occur, since only so can water reach the container. This will be accompanied by high winds since only so can the container be smashed.
Damage will undoubtedly be as great in its way as would result from an H-Bomb blast and yet the telechronic battery would be a “peace bomb” for its use will not bring on retaliation and war. There would be no reason to suspect anything but an act of God.
Such a bomb requires little in the way of technology or expense. The smallest nation, the smallest of revolutionary or dissident groups could manage it.
Sometimes in my more morbid moment, I wonder if perhaps Noah’s flood—the prototype of which actually has been recorded in Mesopotamian sediments—was not brought about by thiotimoline experiments among the ancient Sumerians.
I tell you, gentlemen, if we have one urgent task ahead of us now it is to convince our government-to press for international control of all sources of thiotimoline. It is boundlessly useful when used properly; boundlessly harmful when used-improperly.
Not a milligram of it must be allowed to reach irresponsible hands.
Gentlemen, I call you to a crusade for the safety of the world!
BEACH SCENE
by Marshall King
On all the frontiers, new and old, physical and speculative, the perils, and hardships of exploration (be it danger of death, deprivation, excommunication, or no more than academic hilarity) attract two very different kinds of men: those driven by curiosity and those drawn to conquest— the seekers of light and the searchers for might. Often the conflict between them is even sharper than the endless quarrel between the frontiersmen (of all kinds) and those less restless souls who hold up the established foundations from which the explorers go forth.
This story is Mr. King’s first published fiction.
Purnie ran laughing and shouting through the forest until he could run no more. He fell headlong into a patch of blue moss and whooped with delight in having this day free for exploring. He was free to see the ocean at last.
When he had caught his breath, he looked back through the forest. No sign of the village; he had left it far behind. Safe from the scrutiny of brothers and parents, there was nothing now to stop him from going to the ocean. This was the moment to stop time.
“On your mark!” he shouted to the rippling stream and its orange whirlpools. He glanced furtively from side to side, pretending that some object might try to get a head start. “Get set!” he challenged the thin-winged bees that hovered over the abundant foliage. “Stop!” He shrieked this command upward toward the dense, low-hanging purple clouds that perennially raced across the treetops, making one wonder how tall the trees really were.
His eyes took quick inventory. It was exactly as he knew it would be: the milky-orange stream had become motionless and its minute whirlpools had stopped whirling; a nearby bee hung suspended over a paka plant, its transparent wings frozen in position for a downward stroke; and the heavy purple fluid overhead held fast in its manufacture of whorls and nimbi.
With everything around him in a state of perfect tableau, Purnie hurried toward the ocean.
If only the days weren’t so short he thought. There was so much to see and so little time. It seemed that everyone except him had seen the wonders of the beach country. The stories he had heard from his brothers and their friends had taunted him for as long as he could remember. So many times had he heard these thrilling tales that now, as he ran along, he could clearly picture the wonderland as though he were already there. There would be a rockslide of petrified logs to play on, the ocean itself with waves higher than a house, the comical three-legged tripons who never stopped munching on seaweed, and many kinds of other wonderful creatures found only at the ocean.
He bounced through the forest as though the world was reserved this day just for him. And who could say it wasn’t? he thought. Wasn’t this his fifth birthday? He ran along feeling sorry for four-year-olds, and even for those who were only four and a half, for they were babies and wouldn’t dare try slipping away to the ocean alone. But five!
“I’ll set you free, Mr. Bee—just wait and see!” As he passed one of the many motionless pollen-gathering insects he met on the way, he took care not to brush against it or disturb its interrupted task. When Purnie had stopped time, the bees—like all the other creatures he met—had been arrested in their native activities, and he knew that as soon as he resumed time, everything would pick up where it had left off.
When he smelled an acid sweetness that told him the ocean was not far off, his pulse quickened in anticipation. Rather than spoil what was clearly going to be a perfect day, he chose to ignore the fact that he had been forbidden to use time-stopping as a convenience for journeying far from home. He chose to ignore the oft-repeated statement that an hour of time-stopping consumed more energy than a week of foot-racing. He chose to ignore the negative maxim that “small children who stop time without an adult being present, may not live to regret it.”
He chose, instead, to picture the beaming praise of family and friends when they learned of his brave journey.
The journey was long, the clock stood still. He stopped long enough to gather some fruit that grew along the path. It would serve as his lunch during this day of promise. With it under his arm he bounded along a dozen more steps, then stopped abruptly in his tracks.
He found himself atop a rocky knoll, overlooking the mighty sea!
He was so overpowered by the vista before him that his “Hurrah!” came out as a weak squeak. The ocean lay at the ready, its stilled waves awaiting his command to resume their tidal sweep. The breakers along the shoreline hung in varying stages of disarray, some having already exploded into towering white spray while others were poised in smooth orange curls waiting to start that action.