Flight From Tomorrow - H Beam Piper

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Flight from tomorrow by h beam piper, hunted and hated
in two worlds. Harotzky dreamed of a monomaniac's glory strained
in the past with his knowledge of the future. But
he didn't know the past quite well enough. One But
yesterday a whole planet had shouted, Hail Horotzka, Hail the Leader.

(00:24):
Today they were screaming death to Harotzka, Kill the tyrant.
The palace where Horotzka, surrounded by his sukophants and guards,
had lorded it over a solar system, was now an inferno.
Those who had been too closely identified with the dictator's
rule to hope for forgiveness were fighting to the last,
seeking only a quick death in combat. One by one,

(00:46):
their isolated points of resistance were being wiped out. The
corridors and chambers of the huge palace were thronged with rebels,
loud with their shouts and with the rasping hiss of
heat beams and the crash of blasters, reeking with the
stench of squirre plastic and burned flesh, of hot metal
and charred fabric, the living quarters were overrun. The mob

(01:07):
smashed down walls and tore up floors in search of
secret hiding places. They found strange things, the space ship
that had been built under one of the domes in
readiness for flight to the still loyal colonies of Mars
or the asteroid belt, for instance, but Frotzka himself they
could not find. At last, the search reached the new tower,
which reared its head five thousand feet above the palace,

(01:29):
the highest thing in the city. They blasted down the
huge steel doors, cut the power from the energy screens.
They landed from antigraph cars on the upper levels, but
except for barriers, the metal and concrete and energy they
met with no opposition. Finally they came to a spiral
stairway which led up to the great metal sphere, which
capped the whole structure. General Jarvis, the army commander, who

(01:51):
had placed himself at the head of the revolt, stood
with his foot on the lowest step, his followers behind him.
There was Prince Burvanni, the leader of the old nobility,
and Gorzesko orm the merchant, and between them stood tob
the chieftain of the mutinous slaves. There were clerks, laborers,
poor but haughty nobles, and wealthy merchants who had long

(02:13):
been forced to hide their riches from the dictator's tax
gatherers and soldiers and spacemen. You better let one of
us go first, Sir. General Zarvas orderly, a blood stained
bandage about his head. He's uniform in rags, suggested, you
don't know what might be up there. The General shook
his head. I'll go first. Service Pole was not the

(02:34):
man to sense subordinates into danger ahead of himself. To
tell the truth, I'm afraid we won't find anything at
all up there. You mean, Gorzesko orm began the time machine,
service Pole replied, if he's managed to get it finished,
The great mind only knows where he may be now
or when he loosened the blaster in his holster and

(02:57):
started up the long spiral. Followers spread out below. Sharpshooters
took position to cover his ascent. Prince Bravanni and toabed
the slave started to follow him. They hesitated as each
motioned the other to precede him. Then the nobleman followed
the general, his blaster drawn, and the brawny slave behind him.
The door of the top was open, and zarvas Pole

(03:19):
stepped through, but there was nothing in the great spherical room,
except a raised dais some fifty feet in diameter, its
polished metal top, strangely clean and empty, and a crumpled
heap of burned cloth and charred flesh that had been
not long ago. A man, an old man with a
white beard and the seven pointed star of the Learned
Brothers on his breast, advanced to meet the armed intruders.

(03:42):
So he is gone, Crozyzago, Sarvas Pole said, holstring his weapon,
got in the time machine to hide in yesterday tomorrow,
and you let him go. The old one nodded. He
had a blaster, and I had none. He indicated the
body of the floor solely. Jarv had no blaster either,

(04:03):
but he tried to stop Ratzka. See he squandered his
life as a fool, squanders his money getting nothing for it.
And a man's life is not money, Jarvis, paul, I
do not blame you, protzy Zago. General Zarvis said, but
now you must get to work and build us another
time machine so that we can hunt him down. Does

(04:26):
revenge mean so much to you? Then the soldier made
an impatient gesture. Revenge is for fools, like a screaming
pack of beasts below. I do not kill for revenge.
I killed because dead men do no harm. Rajito will
do us no more harm. The old scientist replied, he
is a thing of yesterday, have a time long passed

(04:48):
and half lost in the mists of legend. No matter,
as long as he exists at any point in space time,
Rotzka is still a threat. Revenge means much to ratz
He will return for it when we least expect him.
The old man shook his head. No zarvespol Hrodsky will

(05:08):
not return. Rodsky holdered his plaster through this witch that
sealed the time machine, put on the antigrav unit, and
started the time shift unit. He reached out and set
the destination dial for the mid fifty second century of
the atomic era that would land him in the ninth
Age of chaos, following the two Century War and the

(05:30):
collapse of the world theocracy, a good time for his purpose.
The world would be slipping back into barbarism and yet
possessed the technology of former civilizations. A hundred little national
states would be trying to gain social stability, competing and
warring with each other. Harodzka glanced back over his shoulder
at the cases of books, record spools, try dimensional pictures,

(05:54):
and scale models. These people of the past will welcome
him in his science of the future, would make him
their leader. He would start in a small way by
taking over the local feudal or tribal government, would arm
his followers with weapons of the future. Then he would
impose his rule upon neighboring tribes or princedoms or communes

(06:14):
or whatever, and build a strong sovereignty. From that, he
envisioned a world empire, a solar system empire. Then he
would build time machines, many time machines. He would recruit
an army such as the universe had never seen, a
swarm of men from every age in the past. At
that point he would return to the hundredth century of

(06:36):
the atomic era to wreak vengeance upon those who had
risen against him. A thin smile grew on Rotzky's thin
lips as he thought of the tortures with which he
would put Tsarva's poll to death. He glanced up at
the great disc of the Indicator and frowned. Already he
was back to the year seventy five hundred a E
and the temporal displacement had begun to slow. The disc

(06:58):
was turning even more rapidly. Seven thousand, six thousand, fifty
five hundred. He gasped slightly. Then he had passed his destination.
He was now in the fortieth century, but the indicator
was slowing. The hairline crossed the thirtieth century, the twentieth,
the fifteenth, the tenth. He wondered what had gone wrong,

(07:21):
but he had recovered from his fright by this time.
When the insane machine stopped, as it must around the
first century of the atomic era, he would investigate, make repairs,
then shift forward to his target point. Peranska was determined
upon the fifty second century. He had made a special
study of the history of that period, had learned the

(07:41):
language spoken then, and he understood the methods necessary to
gain power over the natives of that time. The indicator
disc came to a stop in the first century, he
switched on the magnifier and leaned forward to look. He
had emerged into normal time in the year ten of
the atomic era, a decade after the first guranium pile
had gone into operation, and seven years after the first

(08:04):
atomic bombs had been exploded in warfare. The ultimeter showed
that he was hovering at eight thousand feet above ground level.
Slowly he cut out the antigraph, letting the time machine
down easily. He knew that there had been no danger
of materializing inside anything. The new tower had been built
to put it above anything that it occupied that space
point at any moment within history or legend, or even

(08:27):
the geological knowledge of man. What lay below, however, was uncertain.
It was night. The VISI screen showed only a stardusted,
moonless sky and dark shadows below. He snapped another switch.
For a few microseconds, a beam of intense light was
turned on, automatically photographing the landscape under him. A second later,

(08:50):
the developed picture was projected upon another screen. It showed
only wooded mountains and a barren, brush grown valley. The
time machine came to rest with a soft jar and
a crashing of broken bushes that was audible through the
sound pick up. Harotzka pulled the main switch. There was
a click as the shielding went out and the door opened.

(09:10):
A breath of cool night air drew into the hollow sphere.
Then there was a loud bang inside the mechanism and
a flash of blue white light which turned pinkish flame
with a nasty crackling. Curls of smoke began to rise
from the square block box that housed the time shift
mechanism and from behind the instrument board. In a moment,
everything was glowing hot driblets of aluminum and silver were

(09:32):
running down the instruments. Then the whole interior of the
time machine was a fire. There was barely time for Rotskad.
It leaped through the open door. The brush outside impeded him,
and he used his blaster to clear a path for
himself away from the big sphere, which was now glowing
faintly on the outside. The heat drew in intensity, and
the brush outside was taking fire. It was not until

(09:55):
he had gotten two hundred yards from the machine that
he stopped, realizing what had happened. The machine, of course,
had been sabotaged. That would have been young Zoldi, whom
he had killed, or that old billygoat croadzy Zago, the
latter most likely. He cursed both of them for having
marooned him in this savage age at the very beginning
of atomic civilization. With all his printed and recorded knowledge destroyed, Oh,

(10:20):
we could still gain mastery over these barbarians. He knew
enough to fashion a crude blaster, or a heat beam gun,
or an atomic electric conversion unit, but without his books
and records, he could never build an anti grav unit,
and the secret of the temporal shift was lost. For
time is not an object or a medium which can
be traveled along. The time machine was not a vehicle.

(10:43):
It was a mechanical process for displacement within the space
time continuum, and those who constructed it knew that it
could not be used with the sort of accuracy that
the dials indicated. Rotzka had ordered his scientists to produce
a time machine, and they had combined the possible displacement
within this space time continuum with the sort of fiction
the dictator demanded for their own well being. Even had

(11:06):
there been no sabotage, his return to his own time
was nearly of zero probability. The fire spreading from the
time machine was blowing toward him. He observed the wind
direction and hurried around out of the path of the flames.
The light enabled him to pick his way through the brush,
and after crossing a small stream, he found a rutted
road and followed it up the mountain side until he

(11:29):
came to a place where he could rest concealed until
morning two. It was broad daylight when he woke, and
there was a strange throbbing sound. Horodskay lay motionless under
the brush where he had slept, his blaster ready. In
a few minutes, a vehicle came into sight, following the
road down the mountain side. It was a large thing,

(11:51):
four wheeled, with a projection in front, which probably housed
the engine and a cab for the operator. The body
of the vehicle was simply an open, red tangular box.
There were two men in the cab and about twenty
or thirty more crowded into the box body. These were
dressed in faded and nondescript garments of blue and gray
and brown. All were armed with crude weapons axes, bill hooks,

(12:16):
long handed instruments with serrated edges, and what looked like
broad bladed spears. The vehicle itself, which seemed to have
been propelled by some sort of chemical explosion engine, was
dingy and mudsplattered. The men in it were ragged and unshaven.
Hartzka snorted in contempt. They were probably warriors of the
local tribe going to the fire in the belief that

(12:37):
it had been started by raiding enemies. When they found
the wreckage of the time machine, they would no doubt
believe that it was the chariot of some god and
drag it home to be venerated. A plan of action
was taking shape in his mind. First he must get
clothing of the sort worn by these people and find
a safe hiding place for his own things. Then, pretending

(12:58):
to be a deaf mute, he would go among them
to learn something of their customs and pick up the language.
When he had done that, he would move to another
tribe or village able to tell a credible story for himself.
For a while it would be necessary for him to
do menial work, but in the end he would establish
himself among these people. Then he could gather around him

(13:18):
a faction of those who were dissatisfied with whatever conditions existed,
organize a conspiracy, make arms for his followers, and start
his program at power seizure. The matter of clothing was
attended to shortly after he had crossed the mountain and
descended into the valley on the other side. Hearing a
clinking sound some distance from the road, as of metal

(13:39):
striking stone, Harozka stole cautiously through the woods until he
came within sight of a man who was digging with
a mattock, uprooting small bushes of a particular sort with
rough gray bark and three pointed leaves. When he had
dug one up, he would cut off the roots and
then slice away the root bark with a knife, putting
it into a sack. Harozka's lipped rolled contemptuously. The fellow

(14:02):
was gathering the stuff for medical use. He had heard
of the use of roots and herbs for such purposes
by the ancient savages. The blaster would be no use here.
It was too powerful and would destroy the clothing that
the man was wearing. He unfastened his strap from his
belt and attached it to his stone to form a
hand loop. Then inched forward behind the lone herb gatherer.

(14:23):
When he was close enough, he straightened and rushed forward,
swinging his improvised weapon. The man heard him and turned
too late. After addressing his victim, Frotzka used the mattock
to finish him and then to dig a grave. The
fugitive buried his own clothes with the murdered man and
donned the faded blue shirt, rough shoes, worn trousers, and jacket.

(14:46):
The blaster he concealed under the jacket, and he kept
a few other hundredth century gadgets. These he would hide
somewhere closer to his center of operations. He had kept,
among other things, a small box of food cons and
trade capsules, and in one pocket of the newly acquired
jacket he found a package containing food. It was rough

(15:06):
and unappetizing, fare slices of cold cooked meat between slices
of some cereal substance. He ate these before filling in
the grave, and put the paper wrappings in with the
dead man. Then, his work finished, he threw the mattock
into the brush and set out again, grimacing disgustedly, and
scratching himself. The clothing he had appropriated was verminous. Crossing

(15:29):
another mountain, he descended into a second valley and for
a time lost his way among a tangle of narrow ravines.
It was dark by the time he mounted a hill
and found himself looking down in another valley in which
a few scattered lights gave evidence of human habitations. Not
wishing to arouse suspicion by approaching these, in the night time,
he found a place among some young evergreens where he

(15:50):
could sleep. The next morning, having breakfasted on a concentrat capsule,
he found the hiding place for his blaster in a
hollow tree. It was in a sufficiently prominent position so
that he could easily find it again, and at the
same time unlikely to be discovered by some native. Then
he went down into the inhabited valley. He was surprised

(16:10):
at the ease with which he established contact with the natives.
The first dwelling which he approached, a cluster of farm
buildings at the upper end of the valley, gave him shelter.
There was a man clad in the same sort of
rough garments Sarrotzka had taken from the body of the
herb gatherer, and a woman in a faded and shapeless dress.
The man was thin and work bent, the woman short

(16:31):
and heavy. Both were past middle age. He made inarticulate
sounds to attract their attention, then gestured to his mouth
and ears to indicate his assumed affliction. He rubbed his
stomach to portray hunger. Looking about, he saw an axe
sticking in a chopping block and a pile of wood
near it, probably the fuel used by these people. He

(16:54):
took the axe, split up some of the wood, then
repeated the hunger signs the man and the woman, and
both nodded, laughing. He was shown a pile of tree limbs,
and the man picked up a short billet of wood
and used it like a measuring rule to indicate that
all the wood was to be cut at that length.
Harotzka fell to work, and by mid morning he had

(17:15):
all the wood cut. He had seen a circular stone
mounted on a trustle with a metal axle through it,
and judged it to be some sort of grinding wheel,
since it was fitted with a foot pedal and a
rusty metal can was set above it to spill water
onto the grinding edge. After dropping the wood, he carefully
sharpened the axe, handing it to the man for inspection.

(17:35):
This seemed to please the man. He clapped Harotzka on
the back, making commendatory sounds. It required considerable time and
ingenuity to make himself more or less a permanent member
of the household. Harotzka had made a survey of the farmyard,
noting the sorts of work that would normally be performed
on the farm, and he pantomimed this work in its
simpler operations. He pointed to the east where the sun

(17:58):
would rise and the zenith, and to the west he
made signs indicative of eating, and of sleeping, and of
rising and of working. At length, he succeeded in conveying
his meaning. There was considerable argument between the man and
the woman, but his proposal was accepted as he expected
that it would be. It was easy to see that

(18:20):
the work of the farm was hard for this aging couple.
Now for a place to sleep in a little food,
they were able to acquire a strong and intelligent slave.
It was not long before he picked up a few
words which he had heard his employers using and related
them to the things or acts spoken of. And he
began to notice that these people, in spite of the
crudities of their own life, enjoyed some of the advantages

(18:43):
of a fairly complex civilization. Their implements were not hand
craft products, but showed machine workmanship. There were two objects
hanging on hooks on the kitchen wall, which he was
sure were weapons. Both had wooden shoulder stocks and wooden
four pieces. They had long toobes extending to the front
and triggers like blasters. One had double tubes mounted side

(19:05):
by side and double triggers. The other had an octagonal
tube mounted over a round tube and a loop extension
on the trigger guard. Then there was a box on
the kitchen wall with a mouthpiece and a cylindrical tube
on a cord. Sometimes a bell would ring out of
the box, and the woman would go to this instrument,
take down the tube and hold it to her ear

(19:25):
and talk into the mouthpiece. There was another box from
which voices would issue of people conversing, or of orators,
or of singing, and sometimes instrumental music. None of these
objects were made by savages. These people probably traded with
some fairly high civilization. They were not illiterate, For he
found printed matter indicating the use of some phonetic alphabet,

(19:48):
and paper pamphlets containing reproductions of photographs as well as
verbal text. There was also a vehicle on the farm,
powered like the one he had seen on the road,
by an engine in which a hydrocarbon liquid fuel was
ext floated. He made it his business to examine this minutely,
and to study its construction and operation, until he was
thoroughly familiar with it. It was not until the third

(20:09):
day after his arrival that the chickens began to die.
In the morning, Rotzka found three of them dead when
he went to feed them, the rest drooping unhealthily. He
summoned the man and showed him what he had found.
The next morning, they were all dead, and the cow
was sick. She gave bloody milk that evening, and the
next morning she lay in her stall and would not

(20:30):
get up. The man and the woman were also beginning
to sicken, although both of them tried to continue their work.
It was the woman who first noticed that the plants
around the farmhouse were withering and turning yellow. The farmer
went to the stable with Rotzka and looked at the cow.
Shaking his head. He limped back to the house and
returned carrying one of the weapons from the kitchen, the

(20:52):
one with the single trigger and the octagonal tube. As
he entered the stable, he jerked down and up on
the loop extension of the trigger guard, then put the
weapon to his shoulder and pointed it at the cow.
It made a flash and roared louder even than a
hand blaster, and the cow jerked convulsively and was dead.
The man then indicated by signs that Harotzsky was to

(21:13):
drag the dead cow out of the stable, dig a hole,
and bury it. This Rotzka did, carefully, examining the wound
in the cow's head. The weapon, he decided was not
an energy weapon, but a simple solid missile projector. By evening,
neither the man nor the woman were able to eat,
and both seemed to be suffering intensely. The man used

(21:35):
the communicating instrument on the wall, probably calling on his
friends for help. Harotzka did what he could to make
them comfortable, cooked his own meal, washed the dishes as
he had seen the woman doing, and tidied up the kitchen.
It was not long before people, men and women whom
he had seen on the road or who had stopped
at the farmhouse while he had been there, began arriving,

(21:55):
some carrying baskets of food, and shortly after Rotska had
eaten of vehicle liked the farmers, but in better condition
and a better quality, arrived and a young man got
out of it and entered the house carrying a leather bag.
He was apparently some sort of scientist. He examined the
man and his wife, asked many questions and administered drugs.

(22:15):
He also took samples for blood tests and your analysis. This,
Rotzka considered, was another of the many contradictions he had
encountered among these people. This man behaved like an educated
scientist and seemingly had nothing in common with the peasant
herb gatherer on the mountain side. The fact was that
Rotzka was worried. The strange death of the animals, the

(22:37):
blight which had smitten the trees and vegetables around the farm,
and the sickness of the farmer and his woman all
mystified him. He did not know of any disease which
would affect plants and animals and humans. He wondered if
some poisonous gas might not be escaping from the earth
near the farmhouse. However, he had not himself been affected.
He also disliked the way in which the doctor and

(22:58):
the neighbors seemed to be talking about him. While he
had come to a considerable revision of his original opinion
about the culture level of these people, it was possible
that they might suspect him of having caused the whole
thing by witchcraft. At any moment, they might fall upon
him and put him to death. In any case, there
was no longer any use in his staying here, and
it might be wise if he left at once. Accordingly,

(23:21):
he filled his pockets with food from the pantry and
slipped out of the farmhouse. Before his absence was discovered.
He was well on his way down the road. Three
that night, Kronzka slept under a bridge across a fairly
wide stream. The next morning, he followed the road until
he came to a town. It was not a large place.

(23:42):
There were perhaps four or five hundred houses and other
buildings in it. Most of these were dwellings, like the
farmhouse where he had been staying, but some were much
larger and seemed to be places of business. One of
these latter was a concrete structure with wide doors at
the front. Inside he could see men working on the
internal combustion vehicles, which seemed to be in almost universal use.

(24:04):
Harotzka decided to obtain employment there. It would be best.
He decided to continue his pretense of being a deaf mute.
He did not know whether a world language were in
use at this time or not, and even if not,
the pretense of being a foreigner unable to speak the
local dialect might be dangerous. So he entered the vehicle
repair shop and accosted a man in a clean shirt

(24:26):
who seemed to be issuing instructions to the workers, going
into his pantomime of the homeless mute seeking employment. The
master of the repair shop merely laughed at him. However,
Harotzka became more insistent in his manner, making signs to
indicate his hunger and willingness to work. The other men
in the shop left their tasks and gathered around. There

(24:47):
was much laughter and unmistakably ribal than derogatory remarks. Harotzka
was beginning to give up hope of getting employment here
when one of the workmen approached the master and whispered
something to him. The two of them walked away, conversing
in voices. Harotzka thought he understood the situation no doubt.
The workman, thinking to light in his own labor, was

(25:07):
urging that the vagarant be employed for no other pay
than food and lodging. At length, the master assented to
his employee's urgings. He returned showing Rotzka a hose and
a bucket and sponges and clothes, and set him to
work cleaning the mud from one of the vehicles. Then,
after seeing that the work was being done properly, he
went away, entering a room at one side of the shop.

(25:30):
About twenty minutes later, another man entered the shop. He
was not dressed like any of the other people whom
Rotzka had seen. He wore a great tunic and breeches,
black polished boots, and a cap with a visor and
a metal insignia on it. On a belt, he carried
a whole stored weapon like a blaster. After speaking to
one of the workers, who pointed Rotzka out to him,

(25:51):
he approached the fugitive and said something. Harotzka made gestures
at his mouth and ears and made gargling sounds. The
newcomer shrugged and motioned him to come with him, at
the same time producing a pair of handcuffs from his
belt and jingling them suggestively. In a few seconds, Harotzka
tried to analyze the situation and estimate its possibilities. The

(26:11):
newcomer was a soldier, or more likely a policeman, since
manacles were a part of his equipment. Evidently, since the
evening before, a warning had been made public by means
of communication devices such as he had seen at the farm,
advising people that a man of his description, pretending to
be a deaf mute, should be detained and the police notified.

(26:32):
It had been for that reason that the workman had
persuaded his master to employ Rotzka. No doubt he would
be accused of causing the conditions at the farm by sorcery.
Harotzky shrugged and nodded, then went to the water tap
to turn off the hose he had been using. He
disconnected it, coiled it and hung it up, and then
picked up the water bucket. Then, without warning, he hurled

(26:54):
the water into the policeman's face, sprang forward, swinging the
bucket by the bail, and hit the man on the head.
Releasing his grip on the bucket, he tore the blaster
or whatever it was, from the holster. One of the
workers swung a hammer as though to throw it. Harotzka
aimed the weapon at him and pulled the trigger. The
thing belched fire and kicked back painfully in his hand,

(27:16):
and the man fell. He used it again to drop
the policeman, then thrust it into the waistband of his trousers.
And ran outside. The thing was not a blaster at all,
he realized, only a missile projector, like the big weapons
at the farm, using the force of some chemical explosive.
The policeman's vehicle standing outside it was a small, single

(27:36):
seat to wheel affair. Having become familiar with the principles
of these hydrocarbon engines from examination of the vehicle of
the farm, and accustomed as he was, to far more
complex mechanisms than this trude affair, Harotzka could see at
a glance how to operate it. Springing onto the saddle,
he kicked away the folding support and started the engine.
Just as he did, the master of the repair shop

(27:58):
ran outside, one of the small all hand weapons in
his hand and fired several shots. They all missed, but
Rotzka heard the whiting sound of the missiles passing uncomfortably
close to him. It was imperative that he recovered the
bluster he had hidden in the hollow tree at the
head of the valley. By this time there would be
a concerted search under way for him, and he needed

(28:19):
a better weapon than the solid missile projectory he had
taken from the policeman. He did not know how many
shots the things contained, but if it propelled solid missiles
by chemical explosion, there could not have been more than
five or six such cartridges in the cylindrical part of
the weapon, which he had soon to be the chargeholder.
On the other hand, his blaster, a weapon of much
greater power, contained enough energy for five hundred blasts, and

(28:42):
with it were eight extra energy capsules, giving him a
total of four thousand, five hundred blasts. Handling the two
wheeled vehicle was no particular problem, although he had never
ridden on anything of the sort before. It was child's
play compared to controlling a hundred century strato rocket, and
Rotzka was a skilled rocket pilot. Several times he passed

(29:03):
vehicles on the road, the passenger vehicles with enclosed cabins
and cargo vehicles piled high with farm produce. Once he
encountered a large number of children gathered in front of
a big red building with a flag staff in front,
from which a queer flag with horizontal red and white
stripes and a white, spotted blue device in the corner flew.

(29:23):
They scattered off the road in terror at his approach.
Fortunately he hit none of them, for at the speed
at which he was traveling. Such a collision would have
wrecked his light vehicle. As he approached the farm where
he had spent the past few days, he saw two
passenger vehicles standing by the road. One was a black one,
similar to the one in which the physician had come
to the farm, and the other was white with black

(29:45):
trimmings and bore the same device he had seen on
the cap of the policeman. A policeman was sitting in
the driver's seat of his vehicle, and another policeman was
standing beside it, breathing smoke with one of the white
pepper cylinders these people used in the farm yard. The
two men were going about with a square block box.
To this box, a tube was connected by a wire,

(30:05):
and they were passing the tube about over the ground.
The policeman, who was standing beside the vehicle, saw him
approach and blew his whistle, then drew the weapon from
his belt. Rotzka, who had been expecting some attempt to
halt him, had let go the right hand steering handle
and drawn his own weapon. As the policeman fired, He
fired at him without observing the effect of the shot.

(30:27):
He sped on before he had rounded the bend above
the farm. Several shots were fired after him. A mile beyond,
he came to the place where he had hidden the blaster.
He stopped the vehicle and jumped off, plunging into the
brush and racing toward the hollow tree. Just as he
reached it, he heard a vehicle approach and stop, and

(30:47):
the door of the police vehicle slam Frozka's fingers found
the belt of his blaster. He dragged it out and
buckled it on, tossing away the missile weapon he had
been carrying. Then crouching behind the tree, he waited a
few moments later, he caught a movement in the brush
toward the road. He brought up the blaster, aimed, and

(31:08):
squeezed the trigger. There was a faint bluish glow with
the muzzle, and a blast of energy tore through the brush,
smashing the molecular structure of everything that stood in the way.
There was an involuntary shout of alarm from the direction
of the road. At least one of the policemen had
escaped the blast. Radzko holstered his weapon and crept away
for some distance, keeping under cover, then turned and waited

(31:31):
for some sign of the presence of his enemies. For
some time nothing happened. He decided to turn hunter against
the men who were hunting him. He started back in
the direction of the road, making a wide circle, flitting
silently from rock to bush and from bush to tree,
stopping often to look and listen. This finally brought him

(31:51):
upon one of the policemen, and almost terminated his flight.
At the same time, he must have grown over confident
and careless. Suddenly a weapon and a missile smashed through
the brush enters from his face. The shot had come
from his left and a little to the rear. Whirling,
he blasted four times in rapid succession, then turned and

(32:11):
fled for a few yards, dropping and crawling behind a rock.
When he looked back, he could see wisps of smoke
rising from the shattered trees and bushes which had absorbed
the energy output of his weapon, and he caught a
faint odor of burned flesh. One of his pursuers, at
least would pursue him no longer. He slipped away down

(32:32):
into the tangle of ravines and hollows in which he
had wandered the day before his arrival on the farm.
For the time being, he felt safe, and finally confident
that he was not being pursued, he stopped to rest.
The place where he had stopped seemed familiar, and he
looked about. In a moment. He recognized the little stream,
the pool where he had bathed his feet, the clump

(32:54):
of sealing vines under which he had slept. He even
found the silver foil wrapping from the food country capsule.
But there had been a change since the night when
he had slept there. Then the young pines had been
green and alive. Now they were blighted, and their needles
had turned brown. Ronzka stood for a long time looking
at them. It was the same light that had touched

(33:16):
the plants around the farmhouse, And here among the pine
needles on the ground lay a dead bird. It took
some time for him to admit to himself the implications.
The vegetation. The chickens, the cow, the farmer and his
wife had all sickened and died. He had been in
this place, and now when he had returned, he found

(33:38):
that death had followed him here too. During the early
centuries of the atomic era, he knew there had been
great wars, the stories of which had survived even to
the hundredth century. Among the weapons that had been used,
there had been artificial plagues and epidemics caused by new
types of bacteria developed in laboratories against which the victims
had possessed no protection. Those germs and viruses had persisted

(34:01):
for centuries and gradually had lost their power to harm mankind.
Suppose now that he had brought some of them back
with him to a century before they had been developed.
Supposed that he were now a human plague carrier. He
thought of the vermin that had infested the clothing he
had taken from the man he had killed on the
other side of the mountain. They had not troubled him.
After the first day, there was a throbbing, mechanical sound

(34:25):
somewhere in the air. He looked about and finally identified
its source. A small aircraft had come over the valley
from the other side of the mountain and was circling
lazily overhead. He froze, shrinking back under a pine tree.
As long as he remained motionless, he would not be seen,
and soon the thing would go away. He was beginning

(34:46):
to understand why the search for him was being pressed
so relentlessly. As long as he remained alive, he was
a menace to everybody in this first century world. He
got out his supply of food concentrates, saw that he
only had three capsules left, and put them away again.
For a long time, he sat under the dying tree,
chewing on a twig and thinking there must be some

(35:07):
way in which he could overcome, or even utilize his
inherent deadliness to these people. He might find some isolated community,
conceal himself near it, invaded at night and infect it,
and then when everybody was dead, move in and take
it for himself. But was there any such isolated community.
The farmhouse where he had worked had been fairly remote,

(35:29):
yet its inhabitants had been in communication with the outside world,
and the physician had come immediately in response to their
call for help. The little aircraft had been circling overhead
directly above the place where he lay hidden for a while.
Rotzka was afraid it had spotted him, and was debating
the advisability of using his blaster on it. Then it banked,

(35:50):
turned and went away. He watched it circle over the
valley on the other side of the mountain and got
to his feet four almost at once. There was a
new sound, a multiple throbbing at a quick, snarling tempo
that hinted an enormous power, growing louder each second. Rotzka
stiffened and drew his blaster. As he did, five more

(36:13):
aircrafts swooped over the crest of the mountain and came
rushing down toward him, not aimlessly, but as though they
knew exactly where he was. As they approached, the leading
edges of the wings sparkled with light. Branches began flying
from the trees about him, and there was a loud,
hammering noise. He aimed a little in front of them
and began blasting. A wing flew from one of the

(36:34):
aircraft and it plunged downward. Another came apart in the air.
A third burst into flames. The other two zoomed upward quickly.
Vrotzka swung his blaster after them, blasting again and again.
He hit a fourth with a blast of energy, knocking
it to pieces, and then the fifth was out of range.
He blasted at it twice, but without effect. A hand

(36:57):
blaster was only good for a thousand yards at the most.
Holstering his weapon, he hurried away, following the stream and
keeping under cover of trees. The last of the attacking
aircraft had gone away, but the little scoup plane was
still circling about well out of blaster range. Once or twice,
Herodsky was compelled to stay hidden for some time, not

(37:18):
knowing the nature of the pilot's ability to detect him.
It was during one of those weights that the next
days of the attack developed. It began, like the last one,
with a distant roar that swelled in volume until it
seemed to fill the whole world. Then fifteen or twenty
thousand feet out of blaster range, the new attackers swept
into sight. There must have been fifty of them, huge

(37:41):
tapering things with wide spread wings, flying in close formation
wave after V shaped wave. He stood and stared at them, amazed.
He had never imagined that such aircraft existed in the
first century. Then a high pitched screaming sound cut through
the roar of the propellers, and for an instant he
saw count with small specks in the sky falling downward.

(38:04):
The first bomb salvo landed in the young Pines where
he had fought against the first air attack. Great gouts
of flame shot upward, and smoke and flying earth and debris.
Ratzka turned and started to run. Another salvo fell in
front of him. He veered to the left and plunged
on through the undergrowth. Now the bombs were falling all
about him, deafening him with their thunder, shaking him with concussion.

(38:28):
He dodged, frightened as the trunk of a tree came
crashing down beside him. Then something hit him across the back,
knocking him flat. For a moment, he lay stunned, then
tried to rise. As he did, a searing light filled
his eyes, and a wave of intolerable heats wept over him.
Then darkness. No javaspol Crowdzizagu repeated, Radzko will not return.

(38:56):
The time machine was sabotaged, So by you, the soldier asked.
The scientist nodded. I knew the purpose for which he
intended it. Radzka was not content with having enslaved a
whole solar system. He hungered to bring tyranny and serfdom
to all the past and all the future as well.

(39:17):
He wanted to be master not only of the present,
but of the sentries that were and were to be
as well. I never took part in politics, servas pol
I had no hand in this revolt, but I could
not be a party to such a crime, as Rotzka contemplated,
when it lay within my power to prevent it. The
machine will take him out of our space time continuum,

(39:38):
or back to a time when this planet was a
swirling cloud of flaming gas, Servaspole asked. Kratzy Zago shook
his head. No, the unit is not powerful enough for that.
It will only take him about ten thousand years into
the past. But then when it stops, the machine will
destroy itself. It may destroy hurtz Go with it, or

(40:00):
he may escape, but if he does, he will be
left stranded ten thousand years ago, where he can do
us no harm. Actually, it did not operate as he imagined,
and there is an infinitely small chance that he could
have returned to our time in any event, but I
wanted to insure against even so small a chance. We
can't be sure of that, zarvas Pole objected. He may

(40:23):
know more about the machine than you think, enough more
to build another like it. So you must build me
a machine, and I'll take back a party of volunteers
and hunt him down. That will not be necessary, and
you would only share his fate. Then, apparently changing the subject,
krazy Zago asked, tell me, Jarves Pol, have you never

(40:45):
heard the legends of the deadly radiations? General Zarvas smiled,
who was not. Every cadet at the Officer's College dreams
of rediscovering them to use as a weapon. But nobody
ever has we heard these tales of how in the
early days, atomic engines and piles and fission bombs emitted
particles which were utterly deadly, which would make anything in

(41:06):
which they came in contact deadly, which would bring a
horrible death to any human being. But these are only myths.
All the ancient experiments have been duplicated time and time again,
and the deadly radiation effect has never been observed. Some
say that it's a mere old wife's terror tale. Some
say that the deaths were caused by fear of atomic
energy when it was still unfamiliar. Others contend that the

(41:30):
fundamental nature of atomic energy is altered, but the degeneration
of the fissionable matter. For my own part, I'm not
enough of a scientist to have an opinion. The old
ones smiled Wanly. None of these theories are correct in
the beginning of the atomic error, the deadly radiations existed.
They still exist, but they are no longer deadly because

(41:53):
all life on this planet has adapted itself to such radiations,
and all living things are now immune to them. And
Rodskow's returned to a time when such immunity did not exist.
But would that not be to his advantage? Remember general,
that man has been using atomic energy for ten thousand years.

(42:13):
Our whole world has become drenched with radioactivity. The planet,
the seas, the atmosphere, and every living thing are all radioactive.
Now radioactivity is as natural to us as the air
we breathe. Now, you remember hearing of the great wars
of the first centuries of the atomic era, and which
whole nations were wiped out, leaving only hundreds of survivors

(42:35):
out of millions. You no doubt think that such tales
are products of ignorant and barbaric imaginations, But I assure
you they are literally true. There was not the blast
effect of a few bombs which created such holocausts, but
the radiations released by the bombs, And those who survived
to carry on the race were men and women whose

(42:56):
systems resisted the radiations and they transmitted to their project
that power of resistance. In many cases the children were mutants,
not monsters, although there were many of them too which
did not survive, but humans who were immune to radioactivity.
An interesting theory, Krotzizago, the soldier commented, and one which

(43:18):
conforms both to what we know of atomic energy and
the ancient legends. Then would you say that those radiations
are still deadly? Did the non immune exactly? And Radzka,
his body emitting those radiations, has returned to the first
century of the atomic era, to a world without immunity.
General Zarvas smile vanished man, he cried in horror, you

(43:42):
have lustic career of death among those innocent people of
the past. Krotzizago nodded, that is true. I estimate that
Ratzka will probably cause the death of a hundred people
or so before he has dealt with. But dealt with
he will be. Tell me, General, if the men should
appear now out of nowhere, spreading a strange and horrible

(44:03):
plague wherever he went, what would you do? Why? I'd
hunt him down and kill him. General Zarfice replied, not
for anything he did, but for the menace he was
and then I'd cover his body with a mass of
concrete bigger than this palace precise, say Crazizago smiled. And
the military commanders and political leaders in the first century

(44:26):
were no less ruthless or efficient than you. You know
how atomic energy was first used. There was an ancient
nation upon the ruins of whose cities we have built
our own, which was famed for its idealistic humanitarianism. Yet
that nation treacherously attacked, created the first atomic bombs and
self defense, and used them. There is among the people

(44:48):
of that nation that Ratzka has emerged, But would they
recognize him as the cause of the calamity he brings
among them? Of course he will emerge at the time
when atomic energy is first be being used. They will
have detectors for the deadly radiations, detectors we know nothing
of to day. For a detection instrument must be free
from the thing it is intended to detect, and today

(45:11):
everything is radioactive. It will be a day or so
before they discover what is happening to them, and not
a few will die in that time, I fear. But
once they have found out what is killing their people,
Rodska's days, no his hours will be numbered. A massive
concrete bigger than this place, told the slave. Repeated General

(45:32):
Zarvas's words. The ancient spaceport Prince Brevni clapped him on
the shoulder, told man, you've hit it. You mean Crowdzizago began. Yes,
you all know of it. It stood for nobody knows
how many millennia, and nobody's ever decided what it was
to begin with, except that somebody once fill the valley

(45:54):
with concrete level from mountain top to mountain top. The
accepted theory is that it was done for a firing
stand for the first Moon rocket. But gentlemen, our friend
Tobs explained it. It is the tomb of Rotzka, and
it has been the tomb of Rotzka for ten thousand
years before Krotzka was born. End of flight from Tomorrow

(46:16):
by h Beam Piper