The time-raider

by Edmond Hamilton

The winds had steadily risen to a cyclonic gale, and now I heard Lantin's voice, striving to make itself heard above them.

"We're going through time all right," he shouted, his voice thin and piping in sound, above the roar of the gale. "We may as well head west now, too."

I did not answer, but saw the buildings and streets below slide away to the east, as the car moved off in the opposite direction. By now the sun had traversed its whole circuit in the sky and was tumbling down behind the western heights. Before we had crossed above the Hudson, darkness had plunged down upon us, and as we rocketed over the Jersey meadows, I saw the stars again wheeling across the sky, but much faster than before. Our time-speed was steadily accelerating, now, as Lantin turned on more and more of the time-wave's power, and I knew that shortly we would be racing through the years with lightning speed.

Again the cycle of darkness and dawn was repeated, with the sun hurtling across the sky faster and faster, while the winds of our double progress through time and space were deafening. Day and night followed each other so rapidly that I could obtain but vague glimpses of the ground below us. We were progressing through space at the rate of a hundred and fifty miles an hour, holding an even altitude of a mile above the earth's surface.

Soon day and night had merged, had given way to a perpetual greenish dusk through which we raced with nightmare speed. I glanced at the dials that recorded our progress and position in time, and noted that already we had gone ahead almost four months into the future, while our progress was now doubling every few minutes. Passing over northern Pennsylvania, I saw the ground below turning to a blotched, patchy gray, the composite impression of weeks of snow and ice, below. The gray soon faded, changed to green, with the coming of spring. The cycle of green and white was repeated, again and again, until we were speeding through the years too swiftly to see it, and white and green had merged into a drab color that hung over all the landscape below.

By the time we passed over western Ohio, our car was racing into the future with a speed of nearly ten years a minute. At this speed, we saw little of human activities below. There were blurred, vague outlines of cities now and then, but these were only hazy, indefinite masses that passed from view as we fled on westward in the car.

Soon, though, Lantin slowed the car's progress through space and began to give close attention to the physical features of the country below us. He consulted maps constantly, now, and finally, after a number of stops and starts, brought the car to rest, in space, above the juncture of two small rivers. Hanging there, we still sped on through time, and above the winds Lantin shouted, "Stop there," pointing to the maps he held and then down toward the ground below. I understood his meaning, and knew that he had reached the spot in Illinois which he had calculated to be the Raider's home.

Intently we scanned the ground beneath the car. Gray and splotchy as it appeared, from alternate summer and winter, yet there were nowhere any buildings or signs of life, nothing but the two little rivers and the rolling fields that extended away to the horizon.

A glance at the dials told me that we had progressed through time some twelve thousand years, since our start. I heard Lantin utter a low exclamation, and looked up to see him gazing intently toward the north, through one of the side windows. Moving over beside him, I looked also, and saw, away on the distant northern horizon, a speck of gleaming white. We were still racing on through time, and as we watched, that white spot spread, expanded, grew to a thick line of dazzling white that lay across all the north horizon.

The white expanse grew still, coming nearer and nearer toward us, rolling slowly south and covering all the country it passed over with a blanket of whiteness. It came nearer toward us, moving with very slow speed, considering the rapidity of our progress in time. Now, above the shrill winds around us, there came the dull, grinding roar of the white blanket's passage. South rolled the gleaming sheet, until it had almost reached the ground directly beneath the car. I recognized, now, the material of that gleaming expanse.