Galactic Dreams

Don looked on with increasing interest as the green basketball of metal drifted into sight from under the trees. A circular disk slipped away on one side and a gleaming nozzle, not unlike the hose nozzle on a toy firetruck, appeared through the opening. It pointed toward a hedge a good thirty feet away. A shrill whining began from the depths of the sphere, rising in pitch until it was almost inaudible. Then, suddenly, a thin line of light spat out towards the shrub, which crackled and instantly burst into flame. Within a second it was a blackened skeleton.

“The device is called a roxidizer, and is deadly,” 17 said. “Release the chameleon at once or we will turn it on you.”

Don scowled. “All right. Who wants the old lizard anyway.”

He put the cage on the ground and started to open the cover. Then he stopped and sniffed. Picking up the cage again he started across the grass toward the blackened bush.

“Come back!” 17 screeched. “We will fire if you go another step.”

Don ignored the lizardoid, which was now dancing up and down in an agony of frustration, and ran to the bush. He put his hand out and apparently right through the charred stems.

“I thought something was fishy,” he said. “All that burning and everything just upwind of me and I couldn’t smell a thing.”

He turned to look at the time traveler, who was slumped in gloomy silence. “It’s just a projected image of some kind, isn’t it? Some kind of three-dimensional movie.”

He stopped in sudden thought, then walked over to the still hovering temporal transporter. When he poked at it with his finger he apparently pushed his hand right into it.

“And this thing isn’t here either. Are you?”

“There is no need to experiment. I, and our ship, are present only as what might be called temporal echoes. Matter cannot be moved through time, that is an impossibility, but the concept of matter can be temporally projected. I am sure that this is too technical for you ….”

“You’re doing great so far. Carry on.”

“Our projections are here in a real sense to us, though we can only be an image or a sound wave to any observers in the time we visit. Immense amounts of energy are required and almost the total resources of our civilization are involved in this time transfer.”

“Why? And the truth for a change. No more fairy godmother and that kind of malarkey.”

“I regret the necessity to use subterfuge, but the secret is too important to reveal casually without attempting other means of persuasion.”

“Now we get to the real story.”

Don sat down and crossed his legs comfortably. “Give.”

“We need your aid, or our very society is threatened. Very recently, on our time scale, strange disturbances were detected by our instruments. Ours is a simple saurian existence, some million or so years in the future, and our race is dominant. Your race has long since vanished — in a manner too horrible to mention to your young ears. Now something is threatening our entire race. Research quickly uncovered the fact that we are about to be overwhelmed by a probability wave that will completely destroy us. A great wave of negation is sweeping toward us from our remote past.”

“You wouldn’t mind tipping me off to what a probability wave is, would you?”

“I will take an example from your own literature. If your grandfather had died without marrying, you would not have been born and would not now exist.”

“But I do.”

“The matter is debatable in the greater xan-probability universe, but we shall not discuss that now. Our power is limited. To put the affair simply, we traced our ancestral lines back through all the various mutations and changes until we found the individual protolizard from which our line sprung.”

“Let me guess.” Don pointed at the cage. “This is the one?”

“She is.”

17 spoke in solemn tones, as befitted the moment. “Just as somewhen, somewhere there is a prototarsier from which your race sprung, so is there before us this temporal mother of ours. She will bear young soon, and they will breed and grow in this pleasant valley. The rocks near the lake have an appreciable amount of radioactivity, which will cause mutations. The centuries will roll by and, one day, our race will reach its heights of glory.”

“Sounds great.”

“It is — or it will be. But none of this will happen if you do not open that cage.”

Don rested his chin on his fist and thought. “You’re not putting me on anymore? This is the truth?”

17 drew herself up and waved both arms-or rather her front legs-over her head. “By the Saur of All, I promise,” she intoned. “By the stars eternal, the seasons vernal, the clouds, the sky, the matriarchal I ….”

“Just cross your heart and hope to die, that will be good enough for me.”

The lizardoid moved its eyes in concentric circles and performed this ritual.

“Okay then, I’m as softhearted as the next guy when it comes to wiping out whole races.”