The Man Who Saw the Future - Edmond Hamilton 2

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Man Who Saw the Future by Edmund Hamilton. Jean
de Marceillais, Inquisitor Extraordinary of the King of France, raised
his head from the parchments that littered the crude desk
at which he sat. His glance shifted along the long,
stone walled, torch lit room to the file of mail
clad soldiers who stood like steel statues by its door.

(00:20):
A word from him, and two of them sprang forward.
You may bring in the prisoner, he said. The two
disappeared through the door, and in moments there came a
clang of opening bolts and grating of heavy hinges from
somewhere in the building, then the clang of the returning soldiers,
and they entered the room, with another man between them,
whose hands were fettered. He was a straight figure and

(00:40):
was dressed in drab tunic and hose. His dark hair
was long and straight, and his face held a dreaming strength,
altogether different from the battered visages of the soldiers or
the changel's mask of the inquisitor. The latter regarded the
prisoner for a moment, and then lifted one of the
parchments from before him and read from it in a smooth,
clear voice. Henri Lothier, Apothecary's assistant to Paris. He read,

(01:04):
is charged in this year of our Lord one thousand,
four hundred and forty four, with offending against God and
the King by committing the crime of sorcery. The prisoner
spoke for the first time, his voice low but steady.
I am no sorcerer, Sire Jean de marseillais read calmly
on from the parchment. It is stated by many witnesses
that for long that part of Paris, called Nanley by

(01:26):
some has been troubled by works of the devil. Ever
and anon, great claps of thunder had been heard issuing
from an open field there without visible cause. They were
evidently caused by a sorcerer of power, since even exorcists
could not halt them. It is attested by many that
the accused Henri Lothier, did, in spite of the known
diabolical nature of the thing, spend much time at the

(01:46):
field in question. It is also attested that the said
Henre Lothier did state that, in his opinion, the thunderclaps
were not of a diabolical origin, and that if they
were studied, their cause might be discovered. It being suspected
from this that Henre Lothier was himself the sorcerer causing
the thunderclaps. He was watched, and on the third day

(02:07):
of June was seen to go in the early morning
to the unholy spot with certain instruments. There he was
observed going through strange and diabolical conjurations, when there came
suddenly another thunderclap, and the said Henre Lothier did vanish
entirely from view in that moment. This fact is attested
beyond all doubt. The news spreading many hundreds watched around

(02:29):
the field during that day. Upon that night, before midnight,
another thunderclap was heard, and the said Henri Lothier was
seen by these hundreds to appear at the field center
as swiftly and as strangely as he had vanished. The
fear stricken hundreds around the field heard him tell them
how by diabolical power he had gone for hundreds of
years into the future, a thing surely possible only to

(02:52):
the devil in his minions, and heard him tell other
blasphemies before they seized him and brought him to the
inquisitor of the King, praying that he be burned in
his work of sorcery, thus halted. Therefore, Henrilothier, since you
were seen to vanish and reappear, as only the servants
of an evil one might do, and were heard by
many to utter the blasphemies mentioned, I must adjudge you

(03:15):
a sorcerer, with the penalty of death by fire. If
anything there be that you can advance in pallation of
your black offense, however, you may now do so before
the final sentence is passed upon you. Jean de Marceillais
laid down the parchment and raised his eyes to the prisoner.
The latter looked round him quickly. For a moment a
half glimpsed panic for an instant in his eyes. Then

(03:37):
seemed to steady. Sire, I cannot change the sentence you
will pass upon me, he said quietly. Yet do I
wish well to relate once? What happened to me and
what I saw? Is it permitted me to tell that
from first to last? The inquisitor's head bent, and Henrilothier spoke,
his voice gaining in strength and fevor as he continued, Sire, I,

(04:00):
Henri Lothier, am no sorcerer, but a simple Apothecary's assistant.
It was always my nature, from earliest youth, to desire
to delve into matters unknown to men, the secrets of
the earth and sea and sky, the knowledge hidden from us.
I knew well that this was wicked, that the Church
teaches all we need to know, and that Heaven frowns

(04:20):
when we pry into its mysteries. But so strong was
my desire to know that many times I concerned myself
with matters forbidden. I had sought to know the nature
of the lightning, and the manner of the flight of birds,
and the way in which fishes are able to live
beneath the waters, and the mystery of the stars. So
when these thunderclaps began to be heard in that part

(04:41):
of Paris in which I lived, I did not fear
them so much as my neighbors. I was eager to
learn only what was causing them, for it seemed to
me that their cause might be learned. So I began
to go down to that field from which they issued
to study them. I waited in it, and twice I
heard the great thunderclaps myself. I thought they came from
near the field center, and I studied that place, but

(05:04):
I could see nothing there that was causing them. I
dug in the ground, I looked for hours into the sky,
but there was nothing, and still at intervals the thunderclap sounded.
I still kept going to the field, though I knew
that many of my neighbors whispered that I was engaged
in sorcery upon that morning of the third day of June,

(05:24):
yet it occurred to me to take certain instruments, such
as loadstones, to the field to see whether anything might
be learned from them. I went, a few superstitious ones
following me at a distance. I reached the field center
and started the examinations I had planned. Then came suddenly
another thunderclap, and with it I passed from the sight
of those who had followed and were watching, vanished from view. Sire.

(05:47):
I cannot well describe what happened in that moment. I
heard the thunderclap come as though from all the air
around me, stunning my ears with its terrible burst of sound.
And at the same moment that I heard it, I
was buffeted as though by awful winds, and seemed falling
downward through terrific depths, then through the hellish uproar. I
felt myself bumping upon a hard surface, and the sounds

(06:10):
quickly ceased from about me. I had involuntarily closed my
eyes at the great thunderclap, but now slowly I opened them.
I looked around me, first in stupefication, and then in
growing amazement, for I was not in that familiar field
at all, Sire, that I had been in a moment before.
I was in a room, lying upon its floor. And

(06:32):
it was such a room as I had never seen before.
Its walls were smooth and white and gleaming. There were
windows in the walls, and they were closed with sheets
of glass, so smooth and clear that one seemed looking
through a clear opening rather than through glass. The floor
was of stone, smooth and seamless, as though carved from

(06:53):
one great rock, yet seeming not in some way to
be stone at all. There was a great circle of
smooth metal inset in it, and it was on it
that I was lying. All around the room were many
great things, the like of which I had never seen.
Some seemed of black metal, seemed contrivances or machines of

(07:13):
some sort. Black cords of wire connected them to each other,
and from part of them, came a humming sound that
did not stop. Others had glass tubes fixed on the
front of them, and there were square black plates on
which were many shining little handles and buttons. There was
a sound of voices, and I turned to find that
two men were bending over me. They were men like myself,

(07:36):
yet they were at the same time like no men
I had ever met. One was white bearded, and the
other plump and bare of face. Neither of them wore
cloak or tunic or hose. Instead, they wore loose and
straight hanging garments of cloth. They were both greatly excited,
it seemed, and were talking to each other as they
bent over me. I caught a word or two of

(07:56):
their speech in a moment, and found it was French
they were talking, but it was not the French I knew,
Being so strange and with so many new words as
to be almost a different language. I could understand the drift, though,
of what they were saying. We have succeeded. The plump
one was shouting excitedly, We've brought someone through at last.

(08:16):
They will never believe it, the other replied, they'll say
it was faked. Nonsense, cried the first we can do
it again, Reston, We can show them before their own eyes.
They bent toward me, seeing me staring at them. Where
are you from, shouted the plump faced one. What time?
What year? What century? He didn't understand s Threycourt muttered the

(08:37):
white bearded one, What year is this now? My friend?
He asked me. I found voice to answer, surely, sirs,
whoever you be, you know that this is the year
fourteen hundred and forty four. I said. That set them
off again into a babble of excited talk, of which
I could make out only a word here and there.
They lifted me up, seeing how sick and weak I felt,

(09:00):
and seated me in a strange but very comfortable chair.
I felt dazed. The two were still talking excitedly, but
finally the white bearded one, Raston, turned to me. He
spoke to me very slowly so that I understood him clearly,
and he asked me my name. I told him, Henri Lothier.
He repeated, well, Henri, you must try to understand you

(09:23):
are not now in the year fourteen forty four. You
are five hundred years in the future, or what would
seem to you the future. This is the year nineteen
forty four, and Raston and I have jerked you out
of your own time across five solid centuries, said the other, grinning.
I looked from one to the other. Messieurs, I pleaded,

(09:45):
and Raston shook his head. He does not believe, he
said to the other. Then to me, Where were you
just before you found yourself here, Henri, he asked, In
a field at the outskirts of Paris. I said, well,
look from that window and see if you still believe
yourself in fifteenth century Paris. I went to the window.

(10:05):
I looked out, Mother of God, what a sight I
saw before my eyes. The familiar gray little houses, the
open fields behind them, the saunterers in the dirt streets.
All these were gone, and it was a new and
terrible city that lay about me. Its broad streets were
of stone, and great buildings of many levels rose on

(10:27):
either side of them. Great numbers of people, dressed like
the two beside me, moved in streets, and also strange
vehicles or carriages, undrawn by horse or ox, that rushed
to and fro at, undreamed of speed. I staggered back
into the chair. You believe me, now, Henri, asked the
white Beard rest unkindly enough, and I nodded weakly. My

(10:51):
brain was whirling. He pointed to the circle of metal
on the floor and the machines around the room. Those
are what we used to jerk you from your own
time to this one. He said, But how, sirs, I asked,
for the love of God, how is it that you
can take me from one time to another? Have you
become gods or devils? Neither the one nor the other, Henri,

(11:14):
he answered, We are simply scientists, physicists, men who want
to know as much as men can know, and who
spend our lives seeking knowledge. I felt my confidence returning.
These were men such as I had dreamed might some
day be. But what can you do with time? I asked?
Is not time a thing unalterable? Unchanging? Both shook their heads. No, awry,

(11:38):
it is not. But lately our men of science have
found that out. They went on to tell me of
things that I could not understand. It seemed they were
telling that their men of knowledge had found time to
be a mere measurement or dimension, such as length, or
breadth or thickness. They mentioned names with reverence that I

(12:00):
had never heard of, Einstein and Desiter and Lornce. I
was in amaze at their words. They said that just
as men us forced to move or rotate matter from
one point along the three known measurements to another, so
might matter be rotated from one point in time the
fourth measurement to another if the right force were used.

(12:23):
They said that their machines produced that force and applied
it to the metal circle from five hundred years before
to this time of theirs. They had tried it many times,
they said, but nothing had been on the spot at
that time, and they had rotated nothing but the air
above it from one time to the other, and the reverse.
I told them of the thunderclaps that had been heard
at the spot in the field, and that had made

(12:44):
me curious. They said that they had been caused by
the changing of the air above the spot from one
time to another in their trials. I could not understand
these things. They said then that I had happened to
be on the spot when they had again turned on
their force, and so had been rotated out of my
own time into theirs. They said that they had always

(13:07):
hoped to get some one living from a distant time
in that way, since such a man would be a
proof to all the other men of knowledge of what
they had been able to do. I could not comprehend,
and they saw and told me not to fear. I
was not fearful, but excited at the things that I
saw around me. I asked of those things, and Raston

(13:27):
and thycourt laughed and explained some of them to me
as best they could. Much they said that I did
not understand, but my eyes saw marvels in that room
of which I had never dreamed. They showed me a
thing like a small glass bottle with wires inside, and
then told me to touch a button beneath it. I
did so, and the bottle shone with a brilliant light,

(13:50):
exceeding that of scores of candles. I shrank back, but
they laughed, and when Raston touched the button again, the
light in the glass thing vanished. I saw that there
were many of these things in the ceiling. They showed
me also a rounded black object of metal with a
wheel at the end. A belt ran around the wheel

(14:10):
and around smaller wheels connected to many machines. They touched
a lever on this object, and a sound of humming
came from it, and the wheel turned very fast. Turning
all the machines with the belt. It turned faster than
any man could ever have turned it. Yet when they
touched the lever again, its turning ceased. They said that

(14:32):
it was the power of the lightning in the skies
that they used to make the light and to turn
that wheel. My brain reeled at the wonders that they showed.
One took an instrument from the table that he had
held to his face, saying that he would summon the
other scientists or men of knowledge to see their experiment
that night. He spoke into the instrument, as though to

(14:55):
different men, and let me hear voices from it, answering him.
They said that the men who answered were leagues separated
from him. I could not believe, and yet somehow I
did believe. I was half dazed with wonder, and yet
excited too. The white bearded man Raston saw that and

(15:16):
encouraged me. Then they brought a small box with an opening,
and placed a black disc on the box, and said
it turning in some way. A woman's voice came from
the opening of the box, singing. I shuddered when they
told me that the woman was one who had died
years before. Could the dead speak. Thus, how can I

(15:39):
describe what I saw? There? Another box or cabinet there
was with an opening. Also, I thought it was like
that from which I had heard the dead woman singing.
But they said that it was different. They touched buttons
on it, and a voice came from it, speaking in
a tongue I knew not. They said that the man
was speaking thousand of leagues from us, in a strange

(16:02):
land across the uncrossed western Ocean. Yet he seemed speaking
by my side. They saw how dazed I was by
these things, and gave me wine. At that I took
heart for wine. At least was as it had always been.
You will want to see Paris, the Paris of our time,

(16:23):
Henri asked, Raston. But it is different, terrible, I said.
We'll take you, Thrycourt said, but first your clothes. He
got a long light coat that they had me put
on that covered my tunic and hose, and a hat
of grotesque round shape that they put on my head.
They led me then out of the building and into

(16:45):
the street. I gazed astoundedly along that street. It had
a raised walk at either side, on which many hundreds
of people moved to and fro, all dressed in as
strange a fashion. Many, like Reston in Thriycourt, seemed of
gentle blood. Yet in spite of this, they did not
wear a sword or even a dagger. There were no

(17:08):
knights or squires, or priests or peasants. All seemed dressed
much the same. Small lads ran to and fro, selling
what seemed sheets of very thin white parchment, many times
folded and covered with lettering. Raston said that these had
written in them all things that had happened through all
the world. But even hours before. I said that to

(17:31):
write even one of these sheets would take a clerk
many days. But they said that the writing was done
in some way very quickly by machines. In the broad
Stone street between the two raised walks were rushing back
and forth the strange vehicles I had seen from the window.
There was no animal pulling or pushing any one of them,
yet they never halted their swift rush, and carried many

(17:53):
people at unthinkable speed. Sometimes those who walked stepped before
the rushing vehicles, and and then from them came terrible
warning snarls or moans that made the walkers draw back.
One of the vehicles stood at the walk's edge before us,
and we entered it and sat side by side on
a soft leather seat. The Thrykors sat behind a wheel

(18:14):
on a post with levers beside him. He touched these,
and a humming sound came from somewhere in the vehicle,
and then it too began to rush forward, faster and
faster along the street it went. Yet neither of them
seemed afraid. Many thousands of these vehicles were moving swiftly
through the streets about us. We passed on between great
buildings and along wider streets, my eyes and ears numbed

(18:38):
by what I saw about me. Then the buildings grew smaller,
after we had gone for miles through them, and we
were passing through the city's outskirts. I could not believe
hardly that it was Paris in which I was. We
came to a great flat and open field outside the city,
and there Thriykors stopped and we got out of the vehicle.

(18:59):
There were big buildings at the field's end, and I
saw other vehicles rolling out of them across the field,
ones different from any I had yet seen, with flat
winglike projections on either side. They rolled out over the
field very fast, and then I cried out as I
saw them rising from the ground into the air. Mother

(19:20):
of God, they were flying. The men in them were flying.
Rasten and Threykor took me forward to the great buildings.
They spoke to men there, and one brought forward one
of the winged cars. Rasten told me to get in,
and though I was terribly afraid, there was too terrible
a fascination that drew me in. Thrychor and Rasten entered

(19:42):
after me, and we sat in seats with the other man.
He had before him levers and buttons. While at the
car's front there was a great thing like a double
oar or paddle. A loud roaring came, and that double
paddle began to whirl so swiftly that I could not
see it. Then the car rolled swiftly forward, bumping on

(20:04):
the ground, and then ceased to bump. I looked down,
then shuddered. The ground was already far beneath I too,
was flying in the air. We swept upward at terrible
speed that increased steadily. The thunder of the car was terrific,
and as the man at the levers changed their position,

(20:24):
we curved around and over downward and upward, as though birds.
Reston tried to explain to me how the car flew,
but it was all too wonderful, and I could not understand.
I only knew that a wild, thrilling excitement help me,
and that it were worth life and death to fly thus.
If but for once, as I had always dreamed that

(20:46):
men might some day do higher and higher, we went.
The earth lay far beneath, and I saw now that
Paris was indeed a mighty city, its vast mass of
buildings stretching away almost to the horizons below us, a
mighty city of the future, that it had been given
my eyes to look on. There were other winged cars

(21:10):
darting to and fro in the air about us, and
they said that many of these were starting or finishing
journeys of hundreds of leagues in the air. Then I
cried out as I saw a great shape coming nearer us.
In the air. It was many rods in length, tapering
to a point at both ends, a vast ship sailing
through the air. They were great cabins on its lower part,

(21:33):
and in them we glimpsed people gazing out, coming and
going inside, dancing. Even they told me that vast ships
of the air like this sailed to and fro for
thousands of leagues, with hundreds inside them. The huge vessel
of the air passed us, and then our winged car
began to descend. It circled smoothly down to the field

(21:54):
like a swooping bird, And when we landed there, Rasten
in Thrycourt led me back to the ground vehicle. It
was late afternoon by then, the sun sinking westward, and
darkness had descended by the time we rolled back into
the great city. But in that city was not darkness.
Lights were everywhere in it, flashing brilliant lights that shone

(22:16):
from its mighty buildings that blinked and burned and ran
like water in great symbols upon the buildings above the streets.
Their glare was like that of day. We stopped before
a great building into which Raston and Thrychoor led me.
It was vast inside, and in it were many people
in rows on rows of seats. I thought it a

(22:37):
cathedral at first, but saw soon that it was not.
The wall at one end of it, toward which all
in it were gazing, had on it pictures of people
great in size, and those pictures were moving as though
themselves alive, and they were talking one to another, too,
as though with living voices. I trembled, what magic. With

(23:00):
Braston and thycourt and seats beside me, I watched the
pictures enthralled. It was like looking through a great window
into strange worlds. I saw the sea seemingly tossing and
roaring there before me, and then saw on it a ship,
a vast ship of incredible size, without sails or oars,
holding thousands of people. I seemed on that ship as

(23:23):
I watched, seemed moving forward with it. They told me
it was sailing over the Western Ocean that never men
had crossed. I feared. Then another scene land appearing from
the ship, a great statue upholding a torch, and we
on the ship seemed passing beneath it. They said that

(23:44):
the ship was approaching a city, the city of New York,
but mists hid all before us. Then suddenly the mists
before the ship cleared, and there before me seemed the city,
Mother of God. What a city, climing range on range
of great mountain like buildings that aspired up as though

(24:05):
to scale Heaven itself, far beneath narrow streets pierced through them,
and in the picture we seemed to land from the
ship to go through those streets of the city. It
was an incredible city of madness. The streets and ways
were mere chasms between sky toppling buildings. People, people, people,

(24:26):
millions on millions of them, rushed through the endless streets.
Countless ground vehicles rushed to and fro also, and other
different ones that roared above the streets, and still others
below them. Winged, flying cars and great airships were sailing
to and fro over the Titanic city, and in the
waters around it. Great ships of the sea, and smaller

(24:49):
ships were coming as man never dreamed of, surely, that
reached out from the mighty city on all sides. And
when the coming of darkness, the city blazed with living light.
The pictures changed showed other mighty cities, though none so
terrible as that one. It showed great mechanisms that appalled me,

(25:12):
great metal things that scooped in an instant from the
earth as much as a man might dig in daze,
Vast things that poured molten metal from them like water.
Others that lifted loads that hundreds of men and oxen
could not have stirred. They showed men of knowledge, like
Rastin and Thycorp. Beside me. Some were healers working miraculous

(25:33):
cures in ways that I could not understand. Others were
gazing through giant tubes at the stars, and the pictures
showed what they saw, showed that all the stars were
great suns, like our sun, and that our sun was
greater than the earth, and that Earth moved around it
instead of the reverse. How could such things be, I wondered.

(25:55):
Yet they said it was so, that Earth was round
like an apple, and that with other earths like it,
the planets moved around the Sun. I heard, but could
scarce understand. At last, Rasdon and Thycourt led me out
of that place of living pictures and to their ground vehicle.
We went again through the streets to their building where

(26:16):
first I had found myself. As we went, I saw
that none challenged my right to go, nor asked who
was my lord? And Rasden said that none now had lords,
but that all were lord, king and priest and noble,
having no more power than any in the land. Each
man was his own master. It was what I had

(26:40):
hardly dared to hope for in my own time, and
this I thought was greatest of all the marvels that
they had shown me. We entered again their building, but
Rasdon and Thrycourt took me first to another room than
the one in which I had found myself. They said
that their men of knowledge were gathered there to hear
of their feet and to have it proved to them.

(27:03):
You would not be afraid to return to your own
time Onnri, asked Raston, and I shook my head. I
want to return to it, I told them. I want
to tell my people there what I have seen, what
the future is that they must strive for. But if
they should not believe you, Threykour asked, still, I must go,

(27:24):
must tell them, I said. Rasten grasped my hand. You
are a man, Henri, he said, then, throwing aside the
cloak and hat I had worn outside, they went with
me down to the big white walled room where first
I had found myself. It was lit brightly now by
many of the shining glass things on the ceiling and walls,

(27:45):
and in it were many men. They all stared strangely
at me and at my clothes, and talked excitedly, so
fast that I could not understand. Raston began to address them,
he seemed explaining how he had brought me from my
own own time to his. He used many terms and
words that I could not understand, incomprehensible references and phrases,

(28:07):
and I could understand. But little I heard again the
names of Einstein and Desitter that I had heard before,
repeated frequently by these men. As they disputed with Rasten
and Thraycourt. They seemed disputing about me. One big man
was saying, impossible, I tell you, Raston, you have faked
this fellow. Raston smiled, you don't believe that Thrychoor and

(28:31):
I brought him here from his own time across five centuries.
A chorus of excited negatives answered him. He had me
stand up and speak to them. They asked me many questions,
part of which I could not understand. I told them
of my life, and of the city, of my own time,
and of king and priest and noble, and of many

(28:52):
simple things that they seemed quite ignorant of. Some appeared
to believe me, but others did not, And again their
dispute broke out. There is a way to settle the argument, gentlemen,
said Raston, Finally, how all cried Thrykor, and I brought
Henri across five centuries by rotating the time dimensions at
this spot. He said, suppose we reverse that rotation and

(29:16):
send him back before your eyes. Would that be proof?
They all said it would. Raston turned to me stand
on the metal circle Henri, He said, I did so.
All were watching very closely. Thrykor did something quickly with
the levers and buttons of the mechanisms in the room.
They began to hum, and blue light came from the

(29:38):
glass tubes on some All were quiet watching me. As
I stood there on the circle of metal, I met
Raston's eyes, and something in me made me call goodbye
to him. He waved his hand and smiled. Threykor pressed
more buttons, and the hum of the mechanisms grew louder.
Then he reached toward another lever. All in the room

(29:59):
were tense, and I was tense. Then I saw Thrychoor's
arm move as he turned one of the many levers.
A terrific clap of thunder seemed to break around me,
and as I closed my eyes before its shock, I
felt myself whirling around and falling at the same time
as though into a maelstrom, just as I had done before.

(30:19):
The awful falling sensation ceased in a moment, and the
sound subsided. I opened my eyes. I was on the
ground at the center of the familiar field from which
I had vanished hours before. Upon the morning of that day.
It was night now, though for that day I had
spent five hundred years in the future. There were many

(30:40):
people gathered around the field, fearful, and they screamed and
some fled. When I appeared in the thunder clap, I
went toward those who remained. My mind was full of
things I had seen, and I wanted to tell them
of these things. I wanted to tell them how they
must work ever toward that future time of wonder. But
they did not listen. Before I had spoken minutes to them,

(31:02):
they cried out on me as a sorcerer and a blasphemer,
and seized me and brought me here to the Inquisitor.
To you, sire, and to you, sire, I have told
the truth in all things. I know that in doing
so I have set the seal of my own fate,
and that only a sorcerer would ever tell such a tale.

(31:23):
Yet despite that I am glad, Glad that I have
told one, at least of this time, of what I
saw five centuries in the future. Glad that I saw,
Glad that I saw the things that some day, some
time must come to be. It was a week later
that they burned Henrilothier Jean de Marseillais, lifting his gaze

(31:48):
from his endless parchment accusation and examines on that afternoon,
looked out through the window at a thick curl of
black smoke going up from the distant square. Strange that one,
he mused. A sorcerer, of course, but such a one
as I have never heard before. I wonder, He half whispered,

(32:09):
was there any truth in that wild tale of his?
The future? Who can say what men might do? There
was silence in the room as he brooded for a moment,
and then he shook himself as one ridding himself of
an absurd speculation. But tush enough of these crazy fancies.
They will have me for a sorcerer if I yield

(32:31):
to these wild fancies and visions of the future. And
bending again with his pen to the parchment before him,
he went gravely on with his work. The end end
of the Man Who Saw the Future by Edmund Hamilton