The time-raider

by Edmond Hamilton

INTO THE FUTURE

"Zero hour, Wheeler," said Lantin, who stood in the car itself, his head projecting through the round manhole in its upper side. Our strange vehicle lay ready for its flight into the future, on the apartment building's roof, for this was the night we had chosen for our departure.

I paused at the roof's edge to glance for a last time at the ever-new panorama of the metropolis around us. Though moonless, the sky above was brilliant, flecked with blazing stars, but even these were dimmed by the great up-gush of white light from the city's streets. A soft little breeze fanned my face as I looked out. Down in the bay, there was a great hooting of tugs as a big liner went out to sea. And in the river, a battleship's great search-lights stabbed and circled.

I turned away, reluctantly enough, and followed Lantin into the car. Crouched on the padded floor, in a half-sitting, half-lying position, he was already giving the car's machinery a last inspection, and at his command I clanged shut the round metal door that sealed the entrance. I then took up a position on the floor beside him.

His hands were moving over the gleaming controlling switches, searching, pulling, twisting. Abruptly something clicked under his fingers and the car rose smoothly in the air some fifty feet above the roof and hung motionless. There was a curious little humming now, that seemed to come from the floor beneath us, caused, as I knew, by the invisible streams of electronic force that lifted and held us.

Under the pressure of a little wind, the car drifted a short distance sidewise, and now hung directly over the streets. I glanced down through the dead-light in the floor of the car, and saw that from the height we had already attained, autos and pedestrians were but tiny specks moving in the blurred glare of the street-lights.

Without turning, Lantin spoke. "We'd better try the power of the time-wave," he said, "before going any distance in space."

I nodded, and again his hands moved over the car's intricate controls. He turned a large knob, and a rising, purring whine filled the car, while outside there was a growing roar of sudden wind. At the same time there came to me a staggering sensation of falling, and for a moment I seemed to be plunging helplessly down into unfathomable abysses. It lasted but an instant, and when my mind cleared, I heard the winds outside the car shouting with higher and higher intensity, caused, as I knew, by our swift passage through time.

I looked down into the streets below, and for a second could see no obvious changes, then noted that the autos and people seemed to have suddenly vanished. In place of them were misty blurs of undefined motion, and even these vanished as our progress on through time grew greater. The winking electric signs of the city had ceased to flash on and off, and appeared to be steadily illuminated.

I looked up, through one of the glasses in the car's top surface, and then gasped, prepared as I was for what I saw. The whole firmament was moving, its starry hosts moving slowly but visibly toward the west. Steadily it turned, and in hardly more than a minute a gray light began to grow over the eastern horizon, flushing swiftly to rose. Then, from the center of the growing light, sprang up the sun, crimson and mighty, leaping up above the horizon in a single bound, it seemed, and moving swiftly, ever more swiftly, up toward the zenith.