Murray Leinster Read Online Free Page A

chair, in which after a little his body - already dead - would struggle convulsively against its doom …
    He was paralyzed. He could not move. The door of his cell opened. They came in. He could not stir. He barely breathed. He was almost in a coma of pure, incredulous horror.
    One of the guards handed him a note.
    ‘Professor Fellenden,’ he said curtly, ‘you know, the fella who fought so hard for you, got permission to send you this.’ Rodney breathed hoarsely. It was almost impossible to move. For an instant he seemed unconscious of the offered message. Then one of the guards stirred, and he snatched it. They would wait while he read it— They would wait that long. No longer— His eyes were hard to focus. Almost he did not try to read but only to delay, to gain precious seconds of life. But then he saw an equation, and he reacted with a stunned swiftness. And Fellenden had written down for him, in concise equations and precise, scientific phrasing, the theory of time travel with such absolute clarity that a trained brain could grasp it in a single reading. On the very brink of execution, a scientific mind could comprehend and use this, and escape death by the simple process of going back in time and - not committing murder. But nothing else would suffice. He must not commit murder!
    Rodney shifted his eyes and stared unseeingly at the opposite wall. So that was it! He’d been wrong, not in a trivial detail of a murder, but in a basic fact. Execution was a consequence of murder, not of a fumbled clue. And Fellenden, who’d been a murderer himself, had to tell him so with pious urgency! Rodney raged coldly. Very well, he’d go back again! Not to a moment just after he’d murdered Hale, but to a time long before! Before Hale had found out anything for which he would need to be murdered.
    The guards lifted him to his feet and bound his hands behind him. He was very calm, now. Ragingly calm. With the clarity of conception that Fellenden had made possible, he knew that it would be infinitely easy to escape. Even in the chair itself. With his brains—
    He said scornfully:
    ‘Just for curiosity, I’d like to know what set the police on my
    trail after the murder. Something trivial - but I’ve forgotten.’ A guard said awkwardly:
    ‘You laid down a chair to look like it’d been knocked over. You pulled it where you wanted it by one leg. The cops knew it wasn’t knocked over because a loose cushion didn’t fall out. An’
    - your fingerprints were on the leg you pulled it by.’
    Rodney shrugged. Proof enough. He’d have to go back beyond the murder and not commit it. Too bad! Professor Adner Hale had been a righteous old fool whom it had been a positive pleasure to bludgeon to death. Now he’d have to live in a third time track—
    The guards led him out of his cell. He said harshly:
    ‘I’d like to tell Limpy something.’ When they stared at him, he said impatiendy: ‘Limpy Gossett! In the deathhouse, here! I was given a reprieve so it’d be a double execution.’
    One of the guards said:
    ‘You didn’t get a reprieve, fella. An’ there ain’t any Limpy Gossett here. Never was. I never heard of ’im.’
    The green door opened. Rodney was badly shaken, now. Still, he had only to go back in time. But he gave a precious half-second to a raging hatred of Fellenden, who had written piety in with science in his instructions for Rodney’s escape. ‘The important thing,’ said Fellenden fatuously, ‘was to be rid of all ties to the time track you wanted to leave. Everything in it had not to matter to you—’ Rodney despised him.
    There was the squat and horrible chair. Rodney began to listen to his own breathing. To his own heartbeat. Step by step, they marched him to the chair. Slow down time! Slow it! Watch everything! Cut the things that anchor you to this time track! With that and Fellenden’s equations it’s easy - but Fellenden’s a pious fool!
    Time did not slow. He realized it in a surge of