Time Waits for Winthrop Read Online Free Page B

have to go on the basis of the only human being in the government we’ve met personally, this Mr. Storku. Two, we have to select a representative from among us. Three, this representative has to see Mr. Storku and lay the
facts
before him. How his government managed somehow to communicate with our government the fact that time travel was possible, but only if certain physical laws were taken into consideration, most particularly the law of—the law of—What
is
that law, Pollock?”
    “Conservation of energy and mass. If you want to transfer five people from 2458 to 1958, you have to replace them simultaneously in their own time with five people of exactly the same structure and mass from the time they’re going to. Otherwise, you’d have a gap in the mass of one space-time continuum and a corresponding surplus in the other. It’s like a chemical equation—”
    “I’m not a student in one of your classes. You don’t have to impress
me
, Pollock,” Mr. Mead said. “Thank you for the explanation.”
    “Who was trying to impress you?” Pollock demanded belligerently. “I just tried to clear up something you seemed to have a lot of trouble understanding. That’s at the bottom of our problem: the law of the conservation of energy and mass. And the way the machine’s been set for all five of us and all five of them, nobody can do anything about transferring unless all of us and all of them are present at both ends of the connection at the very same moment.”
    “All right,” Mr. Mead said. “All right! Thank you very much for your lesson, but now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to go on. Some of us aren’t civil service workers. Our time is valuable.”
    “Listen to the tycoon, will you?
His
time is valuable. Look, Ollie, my friend, as long as Winthrop goes on being stubborn, we’re all stuck here together. And as long as we’re stuck here, we’re all greenhorns together in 2458. For your information, right now, your time is my time, and vice versa.”
    “Sh-h-h!” Mrs. Brucks commanded. “Be nice. Go on talking, Mr. Mead. It’s very interesting. Isn’t it interesting, Miss Carthington?”
    The blonde girl nodded. “It sure is. They don’t make people executives for nothing. You put things so—so
right
, Mr. Mead.”
    O liver T. Mead, somewhat mollified, smiled a slender thanks at her. “Three, then. We lay the facts before this Mr. Storku. We tell him how we came in good faith, after we were selected by a nationwide contest to find the exact opposite numbers of the five people from his time. How we did it partly out of a natural and understandable curiosity to see what the future looks like, and partly out of patriotism. Yes, patriotism! For is not this America of 2458
our
America, however strange and inexplicable the changes in it? As patriots, we could follow no other course. As patriots, we—”
    “Oh, for God’s sake!” the high school teacher exploded. “You’re no subversive, all right? What’s your
idea?”
    There was a long silence in the room while the stout middle-aged man went through a pantomime of fighting for control. “Pollock, if you don’t want to hear what I have to say, you can always take a breather in the hall!
As I was saying
, having explained the background facts to Mr. Storku, we come to point four, the fact that Winthrop refuses to return with us. And we demand—do you hear me?—we
demand
that the American government of this time take the appropriate steps to insure our safe return to our own era even if it involves—well,
martial law
relative to Winthrop.”
    “Is that your idea?” Dave Pollock asked derisively. “What if Storku says no?”
    “He can’t say no if it’s put to him with authority. We are American citizens. We demand our rights. If he won’t recognize our citizenship, we demand to be sent back where we came from. He can’t refuse. We explain the risks his government runs: loss of good will, irreparable damage to future contacts between