Chapter I: Front Matter

DICTATOR OF TIME

_An Exciting Novel_

By NELSON S. BOND

Humanity against the Arch-Brain of the
Future! Twentieth-Century Larry Wilson
and Sandra Day lead the Armageddon of
the Ages against Harg, crafty, vain
monster-intellect bent on warping
Man to his Inhuman Will!

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Planet Stories Spring 1940.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Larry Wilson was going to miss his train. He swung from his cab at Philadelphia's Broad Street Station, glanced swiftly at his wrist-watch, tossed a bill in the general direction of the cabby, then dashed for the staircase that led to the train platform. His watch showed exactly 10:59. The New York express was scheduled to leave at eleven sharp.

Behind him, morning traffic made its customary din in the streets of the Quaker City. Automobile horns _whonked_ belligerently. Radio loudspeakers blared from the doorways of tiny Market Street shops. A newsboy bellowed headlines on the European war situation. A bus chugged into the station, disgorged its cargo of human freight, lumbered ponderously on down the street. A vendor offered dried lavender; his whine was a thin, discordant note in the hum of a busy city.

But Larry Wilson, intent only on gaining the train platform above, did not notice these things. He brushed by a puffing matron at the foot of the stairs, steamed past a descending red-cap, and noticed with only casual interest as he took the steps three at a time a silken-clad calf before him. He might make it yet, he thought hopefully, if--

Then, suddenly, something was indefinably _wrong_!

Larry had ascended these stairs dozens of times in the past, both leisurely and, as now, at top speed. But at no time had they ever been like this! His stride faltered; then, even as the first, tiny fingers of wonderment plucked at his bewildered brain, he realized that the bright electric lights that limned the staircase had vanished. That in their place was a dull, unearthly, grayish glow that seemed to emanate equally from the walls, the staircase, and from the roof above him.

His foot, reaching for the next step, encountered no support. He staggered, thrown off balance, and stumbled forward to his hands and knees. Yet he was not bruised. As he fell he realized, with numb astonishment, that the steps were no longer there!

Wildly he scrambled to save himself. His shoulder collided with something fragrantly yielding. His outthrust hand clutched warm, firm flesh cased in sheer silk. Then he was falling helplessly, headlong, dizzily, down a dim tunnel of spinning grayness--and he was rolling over and over on a warm, grassy turf. The scent of flower-laden air was in his nostrils.

And a voice was saying indignantly, "Well, really! _If_ you don't mind--!"

* * * * *

In one hand Larry still clutched his bag. In the other--. He flushed, relaxed his grip in swift embarrassment. The girl was the one whom he had glimpsed before him on the steps of the Broad Street Station. It was her ankle that, in his moment of blind groping, his hand had clutched.

"I--I'm sorry!" gulped Larry. "I didn't mean to be--" Then he stopped, staring about him transfixed. "But what's this? Where the he--I mean, where in blazes are we?"

They were lying on a grassy plain horizoned by a forest of towering trees that reached aimlessly toward a wan and cloudless sky. The girl, her own blue eyes wide in astonishment, forgot her pique in amazement that matched his.

"I don't know. I was running for the train--"

"So was I. I saw you on the steps. Just then the staircase seemed to become strangely gray--"

"And it moved!" added the girl. "I remember now. Something like a _ripple_ passed over it--"

"I didn't see that," admitted Larry. "I was too busy running. But--but where are we, anyway?"

A touch of panic flickered in the girl's eyes.

"We--we couldn't be dead?"

Larry shook his head. "I thought of that. But it isn't likely. Not both of us. One of us might have fallen down the steps and broken a neck--but not two, together. And there was no explosion or anything like that. I don't see--"

Suddenly the girl gasped, clutching his arm.

"Look! Over there in the trees!"

Larry looked--and moved swiftly. With a jerk, he ripped open his bag, pawed through its contents, and came up with a snub-nosed automatic.

"Get behind me!" he shouted. "I don't know what's going on here, but--"

"Don't shoot!" The girl's hands tightened swiftly about his wrist, dragged it down as he drew a careful bead on the towering beast that, from the edge of the grassy glen, surveyed the two through tiny, myopic eyes.

An incredible mountain of flesh it was. More than eighty feet long with a rubbery, elephantine hide that draped its ugly carcass in sinewy ripples. Its long neck, surmounted by a ridiculously minute head, twitched nervously from one side to the other as its inadequate nostrils strove to identify this strange, tantalizingly foreign scent.

As Larry watched spellbound, the gigantic monster broke into lumbering motion. Its huge feet created thunder as it crashed blindly through the forest, leaving in its wake a swath of broken young trees and trampled underbrush.

"It won't attack us," explained the girl in answer to Larry's questioning stare. "It's herbivorous. That is, if it's what I think it is. It was probably more frightened than we were. But how it ever got here, in _this_ age--"

"For Pete's sake, what was it?"

The girl shook her head. "Unless," she answered slowly, "I've gone completely mad--and I may easily have done so--it was a brontosaurus! An ancient reptile of the Mesozoic Age. _The last one should have died over a hundred million years ago!_"

"Preposterous!" gasped Larry.

"I know it's preposterous. But we saw it. Which means--" The girl turned a puzzled face to him. "Do you know anything about Time?"

"Time?" Larry glanced at his watch. "Why, it's exactly 10:59. Say, that's funny! It was just 10:59 when I was running up those steps."

"I don't mean that kind of time. Though that may have something to do with it. I mean, do you know anything about the scientific theory of Time? For if our experience means anything ... if that really was a brontosaurus we saw ... and if your wrist-watch has stopped at 10:59...."

"Yes?" said Larry.

"Then," said the girl solemnly, "somehow or other you and I have experienced a temporal shift outside the ken of Earthly physics. We are lost in Time!"

* * * * *

"Neatly put, young lady!" said a quiet, approving voice. "Very neatly decided. I should not have expected such quick intelligence from one of your era."

Larry and the girl turned swiftly. Standing near them was a tiny man, no higher than Larry's shoulders. He wore a curious one-piece garment of woven metal fabric, on the belt or harness of which depended a host of studded instruments, pouches, and oddly shaped tools or ornaments.

Upon his overlarge, almost bulbous head was a sort of cap which completely covered his scalp and ears. Strange telescopic glasses, covering his bulging eyes, lent his face an elfin quality. There was a pleased smile on his lips--one which disclosed a pale, double ridge of cartilage in his upper and lower jaws where his teeth should have been. His face was smooth and hairless.

"Who," demanded Larry, "are you? And how did you get here?"

"You were so engrossed in the brontosaurus," said the diminutive stranger, "that you did not notice my approach. Permit me to introduce myself. I am Harg-Ofortu, Chief Archeologist of the Planetary Museum. And you?"

"Larry Wilson. Civil engineer. And this is Miss--Miss--"

"Sandra Day," supplied the girl. "I am--or was--assistant curator of the Philadelphia Museum."

"So?" The little man nodded delightedly. "Don't tell me, now. Let me guess!" He placed a wizened finger on his temple, studied the two carefully. "Those garments ... and that antique firearm ... your early Amerglish speech ... I should judge you to be from that period just preceding the Communal World State. About the year--let me see--the year 2000 A.D. Is that right?"

"You know damned well it's right!" snorted Larry. "This is the year 1940, of course. What's the gag?"

"Gag?" repeated Harg wonderingly. "Oh, yes--gag! A jest; a trick. Why, there is no--er--gag. I was merely attempting to place your position in the world line. You see, _this_ is the year M-62. You would call it--" He pondered briefly. "You would call it--25,983 A.D."

"What!" Larry's fingers crept tighter about the butt of his automatic. "Hey, Sandra, let's get out of here! This guy's nuts!"

Harg smiled upon the young engineer benignly, but his hand toyed with one of the metallic studs on his harness. "I shouldn't attempt anything--er--rash, if I were you," he suggested quietly. "I believe the young lady is beginning to comprehend. Am I not right, Miss Day?"

"I--I think so," nodded the girl faintly. "Larry, this really is the two-hundred-and-sixtieth century. Harg is not fooling us. Through some incredible accident ... or maybe by design...."

Harg rubbed his wee hands together triumphantly.

"But by design!" he cried. "Oh, most assuredly by design! _I_ brought you here! I, Harg-Ofortu! You are the results of my experiments."

"Experiments?" Larry didn't like the sound of the word. His eyes narrowed.

"Yes. The results of my experiments with the Time warp. Surely you know that Time can be warped? But, yes--of course you do. Even in your unenlightened era men had begun to recognize that fact. Still, it has taken all these intervening millenia for a human brain to unravel the problem of utilizing this knowledge. And I, Harg-Ofortu, have done it! I have brought you here, alive and unharmed, as a living proof of my genius."

"And now that we're here--?" began Sandra.

Harg beamed.

"Ah, the glory that is yours! You most fortunate children of a slumbrous past. From you we shall learn many things, things to fill gaps in our history of mankind. From your infantile brains we can extract racial memories stretching back to the early simian beginnings. From your bodies we can learn the history of man's early structure.

"You have hair! Teeth! Ears! It would not even surprise me to find that you have rudimentary gills. Maybe vermiform appendices! Oh, what marvelous subjects you will make for the dissecting table!"

Sandra's color fled; her breath hissed sharply.

"Dissecting table! But surely you can't mean to use us for--"

Harg silenced her with a tiny gesture. "Come, now. Let us waste no more time in idle chatter. We have delayed long enough, and I am afire with impatience. We will go to the laboratory."

* * * * *

Until this morning, Larry had maintained an incredulous silence. But now, with a sudden movement, he stepped before Sandra, his automatic leveled.

"Not us, fella!" he rapped. "I'm not such a keen student of this Time business, but I know when I'm behind the little black ball numbered eight. You got us here, you say? Okay--we've had a nice visit but we don't like the climate. So we'll be toddling off now. Send us back where we belong. And--" He jiggled the gun threateningly. "And get working on it before I make you look like a second-hand punch-board."

"My dear aborigine!" laughed Harg softly. His tiny fingers sought and pressed one of his metal studs. A golden glow diffused about him, forming a radiant mesh of shimmering light about his body. "Certainly you do not think to harm _me_ with your elementary weapon of destruction? Now, come, before I am compelled to use force."

"You," said Larry grimly, "asked for it!" And his finger tightened on the trigger. The automatic barked leaden death directly at Harg's breast. The little man of time yet-to-be smiled maddeningly. Before Larry's stupefied gaze, a flattened, shapeless blob of lead _splatted_ against the golden haze, fell dully to the ground!

Again Larry fired. This time Harg moved slightly. The bullet glanced off the lustrous force-armor, ricocheted from the ochre web to fly screaming into the woods beyond. Larry flung his impotent weapon away.

"Well, if that won't do it, maybe _this_--" And he stepped toward the smirking scientist, fists clenched. His arms touched the thin mist, then his heaving chest.

And, strangely, his head was aswim with an overwhelming giddiness. His limbs were numb with a creeping impotence that suffused his body, dulled his senses. The gray sky above seemed to recede far, far into the distance. There was mocking laughter in his ears, darkness gathering before his eyes. The last sound he heard as he sank, weak and helpless, into the swirling haze of unconsciousness, was the cry of Sandra Day--

"_Larry!_"