The Technicolor Time Machine

Tex shouted some Marine Corps insults, but they did not penetrate the linguistic barrier. He then resorted to the Latin language of gesture that he had learned as a youth and with rapid movement of fingers and hands called the Viking a cuckold, a gelding, ascribed some filthy personal habits to him and ended up with the Ultimate Insult, left hand slapped to right bicep causing the right fist to be jerked up into the air. One—or more—of these obviously had antecedents that predated the eleventh century, because the Viking roared with rage and staggered to his feet. Tex calmly stood his ground, though he looked like a pygmy before the charging giant. The ax swung up and Dallas’s spinning lasso shot out and caught it, while at the same moment Tex put out his foot and tripped him. As the Viking hit the ground with a crash both men were on him, Tex paralyzing him with an armlock while Dallas hogtied him with rapid bights of rope. In a few instants he was helpless, with his arms tied to his legs behind his back and roaring with frustration as they dragged him through the pebbles back to the truck. Tex had the ax and Dallas the shield.

“I have to talk to him,” Jens Lyn insisted. “It is a rare opportunity.”

“We must leave instantly,” the professor urged, making a delicate adjustment on the verniers.

“We’re being attacked!” Amory Blestead squealed, pointing with palsied ringer at the house. A ragged horde of shock-haired men armed with a variety of swords, spears and axes were rushing down the hill toward them.

“We’re getting out of here,” Barney ordered. “Throw that prehistoric lumberjack in the back and let’s get going. You can have plenty of time to talk to him after we get back, Doc.”

Tex jumped into the cab and grabbed up his revolver from the seat. He fired it out to sea until all the chambers were empty, raced the engine, flashed the remaining headlight and blew the horn. The shouts of the attackers turned to wails of fear as they dropped their weapons and fled back into the house. The truck made a U-turn and started back down the beach. When they came to the sharp curve around the headland a horn blasted from the other side of the rocks and Tex just had time to jerk the wheel to the right—until the tires were in the rush of breaking waves—as another olive-drab truck tore around the headland and roared by them.

“Sunday driver!” Tex shouted out the window and kicked the truck forward again.

Barney Hendrickson glanced up as the other truck went by, swinging into their wheel tracks, and was almost petrified as he looked into the open rear. He saw himself standing there, swaying as the truck lurched over the rocks and grinning wickedly. At the last moment, before the second truck vanished from sight, the other Barney Hendrickson raised his thumb to his nose and wiggled his fingers at his duplicate. Barney dropped back onto a box as the rock wall intervened.

“Did you see that?” he gasped. “What happened?”

“Most interesting,” Professor Hewett said, pressing the starter on the motor-generator. “Time is more plastic than I bad ever imagined. It allows for the doubling of world lines, perhaps even for trebling, or even an infinite number of coils. The possibilities are incredible…”

“Will you stop babbling and tell me what I saw,” Barney snapped, lowering the almost empty whiskey bottle.

“You saw yourself, or we saw us who will be—I’m afraid English grammar is not capable of accurately describing a situation like this. Perhaps it would be better to say you saw this same truck with yourself in it as it will be at a later date. That is simple enough to understand.”

Barney groaned and emptied the bottle, then shouted with pain as the Viking managed to wriggle around on the floor and bite him in the leg.

“Better keep your feet up on the boxes,” Dallas warned. “He’s still frothing.”

The truck slowed and Tex called back to them. “We’re coming to the spot where we landed, I can see where the tire tracks begin just ahead. What’s next?”

“Stop as close to the original position of arrival as you can. It makes the adjustments simpler. Prepare yourselves, gentlemen—we begin our return journey through time.”

“Tröll taki yor öll!”[2] the Viking roared.

3

“What went wrong?” L.M. asked suspiciously as they trooped tiredly into his office, dropping into the same chairs they had left eighteen centuries before. “What happened—you walk out of the office ten minutes ago and now ten minutes later you walk in?”

“Ten minutes to you, L.M.,” Barney said, “but it’s been hours for us. The machine is okay, so we’re over the first and biggest hurdle. We know now that Professor Hewett’s vremeatron works even better than we had hoped. The way is open to take a company back in time and film an accurate, full-length, wide-screen, realistic, low-budget high-quality historical. Our next problem is a simple one.”

“A story.”