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Read Ebook: Children of the Chronotron by Byrne S J Stuart James
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Ebook has 656 lines and 31857 words, and 14 pages
Facing destruction, Earth's last immortals sent an emissary through time to alter history. Thus, he appeared in 1952, searching for the--
CHILDREN of the CHRONOTRON
Henry closed his science fiction magazine with as much of an indignant "bang" as was possible with a well-worn pulp and turned his back on the intruder. He tried not to listen to him as he went on arguing with Uncle Andy. He tried to concentrate on the wisps of clouds straggling low over the gray Atlantic Ocean ten thousand feet below. He watched the giant nacelles of the right wing engines as the double-decked strato-cruiser droned monotonously onward toward New York. But he could not shut off his ears....
"Just now I could quote Henry in a lot of appropriate ways," Uncle Andy replied. "He's very serious about this business of extrapolation. He thinks it is a new perspective, a seventh sense, as it were, that Man ought to develop. Furthermore, as long as you're interested...."
Dr. Edwards, also a balding man in his middle forties, but rueful of the fact, managed a thin smile, and Henry perceived that a tender spot had been probed. "I'll overlook a rather unbecoming lack of respect for your elders," retorted the scientist, "but go ahead! As an 'original thinker,' Henry, you should be sufficiently philanthropic to at least drop us groveling orthodox scientists a crumb of pure thought from the overwhelming Cornucopia of your banquet table." His eyes narrowed suddenly with disciplinary sternness. "To put it plainly--"
"Now Henry," chided Uncle Andy, tamping more tobacco into his pipe, "come down off your Pegasus, boy!"
"No, let him go ahead," insisted Edwards. "This will be a good measurement for both of us!"
Three men in the triple seat behind Henry were poking each other. He could hear what they were saying.
"Get this kid!" one of them grunted. He was the slick, heavy-bearded fellow in the powder blue suit, the one with the mean looking scowl caused by a bright scar on one side of his mouth. But he was not being critical. He was genuinely interested.
"Yeah. Smart alec!" a second man muttered.
"There's about eighty people on board," said the third. "Gotta be at least one genius amongst 'em!" That was the big construction stiff from the base where Uncle Andy had worked--in French Morocco.
Henry squared his mental shoulders, stuck out his sixteen-year-old chin and thought--This is it!
"All right!" he said aloud, "how about a good hypothesis on novae, arrived at by extrapolation?"
Dr. Edwards slapped his knee in mock enthusiasm. "Just the information the world has been waiting for!" he exclaimed. "Go ahead!"
"I shall attempt to demonstrate that lightwaves produced by any given nova were produced long before their appearance, regardless of astronomical proximity to the observer, and that those waves actually were propagated through Time, along the Fourth Coordinate," Henry began, emphatically.
But there was an interruption.
Henry's rather lean face lengthened as he contemplated the back of her persnickety-looking hat, which he thought was a ridiculous assembly of straw, lace and painted berries. He was blushing slightly as he looked back at Uncle Andy and Dr. Edwards, who wondered if he was going to ignore the lady's protest. When Henry looked at the three men behind him and noticed the all too knowing smirks on their faces, he gave up.
"Aw, skip it!" he said, and he got up, making his way to the aisle.
"Wait, Henry--!" Dr. Edwards started to say.
"Let him go," interrupted Uncle Andy. Those were the last words Henry caught as he hurried away down the aisle toward the stairway leading to the lower deck and the observation lounge and commissary.
It was all on account of Martia, he thought sullenly. She was the daughter of that stuck up English woman. He didn't like people like that, with her airs and the big pretense she put up trying to appear to be still the great lady, with her hatboxes and her governess. Lady Dewitt his foot! Everybody knew that such anachronisms were on their last legs now, with war economies eating away the foundations of landed wealth in England. If Martia weren't merely fifteen years old or so, Henry would have accused Lady Dewitt, in his mind, of coming to New York to catch her daughter a wealthy American husband. Actually, she was just another English evacuee. They were coming to Canada and the States by the tens of thousands, on the eve of war, inasmuch as World War Three's version of the V-2 was expected to be atomic--and England was becoming a glorified foxhole.
Henry looked at the friendly, round face of the soldier. He looked at the other soldiers next to him, and at those in the seat ahead of them. They were all looking at him strangely, but not belligerently. He thought: They're coming home from U.N. duty. Troop rotation. Maybe soon they'll have to go back and really use their guns. Uncle Andy said that if by next spring, in 1960--
A strange ringing sound was in Henry's ears and he felt vaguely airsick.
"I thought I bumped into somebody," he answered, lamely. And he still looked at the soldiers.
"You feel all right, kid?" asked the same soldier again.
The ringing in his ears was more insistent. He swayed, dizzily, catching the stair rail for support.
One of the soldiers was a negro, one of those dark ones that almost looked blue-black. But he was the friendliest of all. He even got up to see what he could do.
"Man, you look like you're all mixed up," he said, smiling. "Are you airsick, or constipated?"
The others laughed. Henry blushed again and ran down the narrow, circular staircase, this time actually crashing into a large man in a dark suit who looked like the ads in Esquire concerning "Men of Distinction." He had gray at the temples and a ruddy, confident face with penetrating gray eyes.
"Sorry!" exclaimed Henry, and went on. He had recognized the man. He had been pointed out earlier as Congressman Burley, attached to some world-touring congressional committee on something or other. Sure were a lot of big shots on board, he reflected, as he came down onto B deck.
There were many of them here in the observation lounge--heavily braided officers, some of them high-ranking women in the Service; scientists, international businessmen, newspaper correspondents, entertainers--and foreigners. Henry was especially impressed with the Prince from India who wore thousand dollar turbans and beautiful jewelry. And the Swedish movie star, a beautiful blonde who was anything but dumb. Uncle Andy had been especially interested in her, as well as that young air hostess over there talking to the bald-headed man by the magazine rack.
Suddenly, he saw Martia Dewitt at the commissary counter. There were also two young women with year old youngsters in their arms, buying suckers to keep them from yowling. But he was interested only in Martia. This time he had caught her alone.
The girl was dressed neatly in a blue, pleated skirt, red jacket and lacy blouse with a velvet tie and a yellow straw hat, red bobby socks and black shoes; but there was a home-spun look about her clothes that hinted at a struggle to maintain appearances.
When Martia spotted him, she lowered her eyes and attempted to hurry past, but he caught her, gently, surprised at his own boldness. "We might as well talk about it now," he said to her quickly. "There won't be another chance."
She held her eyes averted, strained slightly to be released, then relaxed. Her large, clear blue eyes found his and his head swam.
"All right," she answered, simply.
They could not find a seat by the observation panels, which was to be expected, so they stood near the drinking fountain and looked at each other's feet.
"Then it's true," said Henry. "We have something to talk about, don't we?"
"Yes," she replied, glancing quickly at him and then looking down again.
"Well--what is it?" he asked.
"I--I don't know. I thought you--"
Henry swayed, his ears ringing insistently. To his surprise, she grasped his arm seeking support. Her face paled.
This time their eyes really met. It was unnecessary for her to tell him her ears were ringing too. He knew it.
"I'm scared!" she exclaimed. "What is it?"
"It--it isn't quite like ringing," he told her. "It's more like--"
"Like very high flutes going up and down a scale."
"Yeah--in a weird kind of way."
The small tots in the young mothers' arms were shrieking unaccountably now, in spite of the suckers they had been allowed to taste.
Henry looked at them curiously. "Their ears are ringing, too," he said.
Martia did not question how he knew this, because she was also sure the babies were hearing the eerie ringing of the flutes. And that no one else heard--none of the adults on board....
"Your name is Henry," she said, irrelevantly.
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