YESTERDAY'S REVENGE

                           by H. L. NICHOLS

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                           Comet January 41.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


War! Years and decades of slaughter and hate and retrogression, of men
against men, machines against machines, machines against men, in an
ever quickening tempo of destruction. The World War, the War of the
Wings, the War of the Rockets, the Pacifist War, the World Revolution
drowning in the sea of its own blood, and at last peace, the Peace of
Fear.

And in this Peace cities rose again on the surface of the earth, roads
found new ways across the blasted continents, great ships again safely
plied the seas, the skies were burdened with commerce and everywhere
the mighty deserts slowly shrank before the verdancy of nature and the
genius of man.

But the ground was soaked with blood of the lost generations marching
in endless columns to their sacrifice to hate. The vibrations of the
hate were in the very ground beneath the cities. There was bitter hate
in the hearts of the men who toiled to build the forms of civilization
without its spirit, urged on by the lash, the torture chamber and the
purge. And the focus of all this hatred was the Master, Protector of
the Peace, betrayer and dictator of a world.

Once he had been the idol of the war-weary millions as he sent the
robots of the Pacifist Democrats to victory after brilliant victory;
as the regimented subjects of the brigand nations had broken their
chains to fight under the banners of the great League of Scientists
who promised peace and freedom and security; and as the League itself
gave him complete control over the mighty armaments contrived for man's
salvation.

By the time the last stubborn flame-fort had surrendered, he stood
upon a dazzling pinnacle of glory such as men had only dreamed before,
and he would not descend to be again a man among men. He refused
to return his dread powers to the League. When they insisted, he
imprisoned them, and they escaped to raise his armies and all peoples
against him, shouting the war cries of freedom, so that the whole
world seemed to batter against his citadel like a sea of thunder
and flame. Yet he alone controlled the robots, and the robots went
forth bringing darkness to the sky and fire to the earth. The armies
of the people were defeated and scattered, only to fight again from
buried strongholds and mountain fastnesses. Then again and again the
robots went forth, until the continents were shattered deserts and the
underground cities great smoking craters open to the sky.

While the Master's vengeance still flickered through the wastelands,
his rebuilding had begun, and now he sat high and secure in his great
Room of Power, that seemed to float as a miraculous campanulet of
silver above the half mile peak of the Serene Tower. There was no
sound in this room save the Master's breathing, but against its outer
walls of glass lapped the purr and whisper and whine of millions of
horsepower performing their appointed tasks. From the Southern Port
came the drone of a great liner beating its way into the stratosphere,
from where the thunder of its released rockets would come to him only
as a faint orange streak is a dazzling sky. Through the air also came
the hum of hovering taxicopters far below, the muted rumbling of the
great moving streets and freightways and the mutter and crash and clang
of building machines, all dying against this shell of glass. Through
the mighty frame of the building itself quivered the vibrations of the
giant factories, endlessly fabricating materials for more factories,
more cities, more ships of the sky and sea, mere power and glory for
the Master. But these vibrations, too, died in the protections of that
tower top.

Here, the Master assured himself, he was safe, safe alike in his
life and in his power. For here were the telepathic controls of the
ingenious and terrible robots, that kept the world securely his. Here
also were some of the robots themselves, resembling neither machines
nor men as they waited in everlasting patience and vigilance for his
activating thought. And lest some danger creep upon him unaware, there
were the Guard, faithful in their unleashed cruelty and mindless
worship; there were the ray screens and thought detectors; and
primitive but reassuring, there was the electric lock upon the elevator
that was the sole entrance to this room. Only the vibrations of hate
beat in, beat past locks and screens and rays, beat through glass and
steel and plastic, beat gently, tirelessly, like ripples on a rock.

Safe indeed was the Master, and powerful beyond all telling, but the
Master was afraid.

On the Master's desk the visiscreen glowed softly into life, and from
it his secretary spoke. "Technician Heidkamp, special director Capitol
Mecho-lab 43, desires an audience in the Room of Power to demonstrate
the Time Visor to your Excellency."

"Has it been inspected by the Director of Precautions?" The Master's
fingers drummed nervously on his desk and he cast a sidelong glance
behind him, although he knew that no human being could penetrate the
Room of Power without his orders.

"No, your Excellency, it bears a waiver with your signature."

"No matter, have it inspected and report back at once."

The visiscreen faded into lifelessness, and the Master returned to
his musing. "No one in all the history of the world has ever been so
powerful as I," he muttered, and yet he knew that in his heart there
was fear, a fear which he had not the courage to face.

Again the visiscreen glowed, this time with the image of the Director
of Precautions, who reported, "I, Melsit, have inspected the Time
Visor, Experimental Permit No. 445,826, and find it to contain no
dangerous elements."

"It is well," said the Master, releasing the elevator lock, "Technician
Heidkamp may bring it to my Presence, accompanied by two of the Guard.
Remain in communication."

A bell rang softly as the elevator rose into view. Technician Heidkamp,
a man whose gray, lined face and desolate eyes belied his middle-age,
gave the salute, then entered wheeling before him a cabinet whose
glass panels revealed an intricacy of tubes and wiring in interlacing
spirals. Behind him came the giant Guards, watchful and impassive.

The Master watched, smiling secretly as he exulted in his power over
Heidkamp. It was small pleasure to have the right of life and death
over the workers who toiled in the depths of the city, but here was
one of the great minds of all time, whom the Master could crush out of
existence like an insect. The Master's eyes sparkled as he acknowledged
the salute of the Technician.

From the top of the cabinet Heidkamp lifted the separate eyepiece, its
control buttons showing white against the ruby case, and laid it on the
Master's desk. Again he saluted.

"Your Excellency, a year ago you commanded me to construct a machine
through which, for your amusement, you could view the past. Night and
day I have labored, and now I offer to you the Time Visor through which
you may view one small segment of the past--that time when the world,
long tottering on the brink of disaster, spread too late the wings
of war, and hurled itself to its long ruin. From this high place you
may see the towers of Manhattan once more piled against the southern
sky, in the midst of that vast ancient web of bridges, highways and
villages, with its great harbor filled with the shipping that the War
of the Wings has since destroyed. Look downward, and you may follow
hour by hour the simple life of the old village of Nyack where our city
now stands. Or you may carry it to the ends of the earth, and view the
whole crowded world of those other days.

"The instrument is adjusted to your Excellency's eyes. The lower
button regulates the magnification, now set at three diameters. Your
Excellency, you have long possessed the present and the future. It is
my honor now to offer you the past." Heidkamp paused, his face glowing
with the impersonal exultation of the born scientist.

The Master lifted the instrument toward his eyes, and as he did so,
saw on the southern horizon a small cloud, intensely black, and from
some forgotten saying there flashed uneasily through his mind the
phrase "no larger than a man's hand." But through the eye piece there
was no cloud, but a dawn-cleared sky into which the haphazard towers
of the now almost legendary Manhattan lifted their pinnacles, softened
by plumes of drifting smoke and flattered by slanting bars of golden
sunlight. Long the Master looked, and at length turned the visor
directly downward, to look through half a mile of empty space at a
village sprawled toylike on a green hill sloping upward from the river.

Interested in the town which had once occupied the land where the
Serene Tower now soared aloft, the Master increased the magnification.
He had a nightmare sensation of falling with rocket speed, snatched his
eyes away, and saw that in the south the cloud towered over a third of
the horizon, black and ominous. He barked to the watchful image in the
visiscreen, "Tell those fools in the weather department to stop that
storm!" and again looked down thru the visor. He seemed now to be a few
feet above a green lawn fronting a trim white house, roofed with wooden
shingles. On the gravel path stood a girl whose pure young beauty
made him catch his breath. She threw back her golden hair and looked
directly toward him, her blue eyes wide and fearless.

But suddenly the Master was jerked back to the present as the floor
swayed beneath him, and a fearful crash of thunder entered his eyrie,
where no outside sound had ever come unbidden. He looked up and saw
the great cloud, now overhead, pouring forth torrents of rain which
made the campanulet seem like a diving bell in a cataract. On the outer
surface of the glass was an incessant race of lightning, flashing
over the surface in zigzags and spirals, seeking angrily to penetrate
the Room of Power. The visiscreen was blank and rimmed with fire,
blue flames and crackling sparks flickered from the machines and the
robots, and it seemed to the Master that at last his defenses had
failed.

Now the secret fear which lay hidden at the Master's heart grew in
power, and he shrank back into his chair, while the great Negro
guards stood like statues of fear, their hair erect and snapping. The
elements, then, were not wholly under control of the Master's mighty
science! Nature had broken the chains with which he had thought to bind
her. And if the weather control could fail, could not something go
wrong, too, with all the Master's power and authority?

Heidkamp, immobile, watched the Master and seemed to guess at his
thoughts. Only his eyes betrayed his exultation at the fury of the
storm. Only a flicker of the lids, when he looked at the Master,
shadowed forth a hatred of the man in whose war his only brother had
fallen, the man who had negligently said to Heidkamp, "Well, give her
to him, man! What's a brown-haired girl?" when the Master's current
favorite had coveted Heidkamp's only daughter. The favorite was dead
now, executed at one of the Master's whims, and the daughter too was
dead, refusing to survive her shame and perishing by her own hand.

But soon the torrent of rain ceased, the dancing fires vanished, and
the lightning thinned and waned. The cloud was breaking under the
impact of great rays that lashed out from below, boiling away in
harmless beaten puffs, dissolving into the upper air or blowing north
like fragments of a vanquished fleet. Belatedly the weather control
operators had reasserted their mastery.

Now the Master's fear changed to fury. As the visiscreen came on again,
he shouted, "Intelligence Department, at once! Zadol, how did that
storm get past our guard screens? Broke them with electric overload?
Who calculated the safety factor? Have them executed at once! One of
them a woman?--no matter. Put the execution on visiscreen where I can
enjoy it. Ho, you Heidkamp, stand by and see the mildest penalty you
technicians can expect when you fail me."

On the visiscreen appeared the figures of the shrinking victims,
instantly electrocuted by the Master's new device, which galvanized
every separate cell of the human body into a tiny inferno. As the
despot's petulant order was executed, he smiled, while the Guards stood
impassive and the murmur of the drenched city drifted thru the broken
sound screens.

"Now, Technician Heidkamp, opener of windows and resurrector of the
shattered and the dead, it is your task to prove to me that I saw the
real past, not clever trickery. Burdened with the cares of the world, I
have forgotten your theories. Explain."

"With pleasure, your Excellency. Upon graduation from Midland
Technical, I was assigned to vibro-chemical work with the London
Archaeological Expedition. In block 44 south, Section 33, we excavated
a partially demolished laboratory and library, in which we found
records of extensive calculations and experiments by which one Dr.
Louis Foster had demonstrated that time is spiral in nature, and that
the loops of present and past are pressed so closely together that
vision and travel from one to the other are theoretically possible.
Foster published his findings in 1941, by which time his country was
so deep in the agony of the War of the Wings that it was interested in
nothing except military science. Dr. Foster had hoped to make a time
travelling device to escape the rising tide of slaughter, but before he
completed it, cellulate bombs put an end to him and his work."

"Your Excellency generously condescended to supply me with facilities
to investigate these theories. After finding Foster's mechanism to
be ineffectual I experimented with Ronferth rays, until I found that
the A and F output, interlaced at dissonant frequencies and reflected
from thionite crystals in Madderhern tubes, would actually pierce the
veil between us and the past. The case upon your desk throws a hollow
beam of these dissonances, which it absorbs from the cabinet relays,
and within this beam, light rays from the adjacent part of the next
loop of the time spiral penetrate to the visor, subject to the same
laws of optics that hold in our present time. The core of the visor
is an ordinary electrically magnifying binocular, with stabilizers.
The period of the time coil is sixty-six years, one hundred five days,
and nine hours. Therefore, your Excellency, some minutes ago you were
seeing the world as it was at seven o'clock, May 18th, 1940. For proof
that this is indeed so, and not a deception, I can but trust to your
Excellency's own acumen."

"You speak only of the past, Heidkamp. Can you not show me the loop
beyond--the future?"

"The future is not visible, your Excellency, and I do not believe
it yet exists. Through eternity time stretches backward, and as our
instruments grow stronger, it shall yield its secrets. But you are
the point at which the spiral builds, and the future waits for your
shaping."

"It is well." Responding to Heidkamp's subtle flattery, the Master's
thin lips curled with pleasure as he thought of a future shaped to his
will. His hands twisted and twitched as he contemplated his own endless
power. "Heidkamp, it is well. The Guards will accompany you to the
reception chamber. You may go."

As the elevator silently started downward, the Master returned to the
visor, impatiently turning the controls until he again found the white
house with the gravel path, in the long-forgotten village of Nyack.
Long he waited until he could see again the girl to whom he felt so
strangely drawn. Darkness fell, and the city became a glory of colored
lights around him, but he did not heed, as he steadily watched a path
that lay sleeping in the afternoon of a beautiful spring day.

At last his vigilance was rewarded. A shining four-wheeled roadster
stopped before the gravel path, and from it alighted the girl and a
man, a man who was as tall and blonde and sleepy as the Master was
small and dark and intense, a man with whom she laughed and talked as
they went up the path and into the house. This time she did not look
toward the Master at all.

The sun of that forgotten day sank behind banks of purple cloud, and as
lights glowed throughout the village and from the windows of the house,
the watcher from the future remembered from old stories the comfort
and intimacy that would be within its walls. He thought of the radiant
golden girl whose eyes caressed her companion, the girl whose bearing
had the freedom and intelligence which now had almost passed from the
women of the world, because like the men they knew themselves absolute
slaves of the despot in the tower. The Master felt an irrational surge
of rage toward the girl, long since dead, whose living body he could
behold in the time screen. What right had she to look like that, with
open, fearless eyes, oblivious of his power?

He slammed the visor down on his desk with a vicious curse. "Technician
Heidkamp, at once," he snarled. In a moment Heidkamp, gravely saluting,
appeared on the visiscreen.

"Heidkamp, you spoke of a time travelling machine. Can you build me
one?"

"That is a far more complex and difficult matter than the building of
the visor, your Excellency. The formulae are not yet complete...."

"In thirty days you must build me a conveyance to bring a woman to me
from 1940, alive and unharmed."

"But your Excellency! The formulae, the experiments, the safety
factors!" Heidkamp's imperturbability for once was shaken at the
Master's preposterous demand.

The Master's breath came fast with rage. "Have you forgotten your
lesson of this afternoon? If you cannot carry out my instructions, the
execution of the weather experts will prove child's play compared to
the tortures I shall devise for you. Report at thirteen tomorrow."
He touched the screen into darkness, and slept at his desk until the
morning sun was high over the city.

The rest of the morning he devoted to conferences with his captains in
various parts of the world, in regard to their keeping of the Peace.
His secret police were everywhere, and were themselves watched by
spies, who underwent periodic hypnotic examinations in the Master's
presence, lest they should be disloyal. So perfect was the organization
that nowhere could a man say a word against the Master or his Peace and
be safe from his vengeance.

But of late that vengeance had been withheld as its wielder watched the
growth of a revolutionary society, the New Day, whose hope spread among
his subjects swift as fungus thru rotting wood. They were building
power for his overthrow and for establishment of the democratic world
state which he had so falsely promised, and the Master was aware that
they were the most brilliant and determined antagonists he had known
since the establishment of his Peace. They had found ways to screen
their thoughts against his detectors, but no way to keep his agents out
of their organization, so that his spies sat in their high councils and
betrayed them.

So the Master deemed himself safe from them, since he would know
before they struck, and he leisurely prepared cruel traps for their
undoing. And he promised himself that he would make their punishment so
fearful that he could count himself safe against another revolt for a
generation. But for the while he held his hand.

When noon was an hour past, Heidkamp was ushered into the Room of Power
by the Guards. He dared make no further protests, but the muscles of
his jaws twitched when the Master reiterated his harsh order that the
time traveller must be ready within a month, and added, "This visor has
revealed to me a woman whose beauty is worthy of my recognition, and
I propose to bring her here for my enjoyment. Mount the instrument on
this range finder, so that I may indicate to you the location of her
dwelling."

So the observations were made and subsequently checked against plans of
the Serene Tower, and it was found that the house and path lay within
the impenetrable wall of a vault. In the vault itself Heidkamp set up
his laboratory, trusting that chance or stratagem would lure the victim
to the trap he planned.

Here Heidkamp labored by day and night, seldom stopping even for food.
His lean, worn body brought new reserves of strength to the monumental
task. It was not fear that drove him on; Heidkamp was not afraid of
death or torture, and after the fate which had befallen his brother and
child he had nothing more to live for. Heidkamp was driven by hate;
hate of the Master. For deep in his brain there was a hidden hope that
the Master, secure and omnipotent beyond the reach of mortal hands or
minds in his Serene Tower, might somehow be vulnerable to contact with
the free and dynamic ancient world revealed in the Time Visor. Had not
the storm which had arisen when the Master first looked into the visor
been, perhaps, an omen of some ill to befall him through this tampering
with time?

So the days crept past, while Heidkamp in his dungeon laboratory worked
among the giant tubes and shimmering radiances that should open the
backward facing door, and while the Master in his eyrie brooded darkly
over the romance that developed beyond that door while he waited
impotently for the key. For it was Spring in Nyack, and the girl he
sought was clearly and increasingly in love with her virile escort.
Hand in hand they walked the streets of the village, or sped beyond the
visor's range in the sleek roadster, while in the high and dreamlike
tower, surrounded by miracles of science and of beauty, the Master
yearned wickedly for the girl who had long been dust, and furiously
hated her companion. When but half of the allotted thirty days were
past, he summoned Heidkamp to the Room of Power for an accounting.

"Your Excellency, I am pleased to report that I have developed some
new plastics in the beryl-nickeloid series, which can be charged with
the Ronferth-Madderhern dissonances so heavily that the rays form a
tangible structure in themselves, which takes the shape of the plastic,
and can be forced into the next loop of time and drawn back again. A
cage or cell so composed and charged can be used to entrap your desire,
and transport her to us, but the apparatus is still primitive, and
has proved fatal to life and destructive to material, that has been
tested. I am working without rest with my assistants to correct the
difficulties, but the field is new, and progress necessarily slow. We
are in hourly hope of finding the right path to success, and hope that
your Excellency will not lose patience with our efforts."

"Will you be able to move this cage of rays in space as well as time,
so as to pick her up wherever she may be?"

"No, your Excellency. We must set up the plastic mold in our space so
as to project the vibration screen to some point upon her lawn. This
screen should have no palpable existence in her time, but if she steps
within it, we can draw her to us."

And now, suddenly, a cunning idea uncoiled itself like a snake in the
depths of Heidkamp's mind. His tone was colorless and submissive as he
asked, "Perhaps your Excellency himself would care to enter the cage
and go backward through time, in order to invite this woman to enter
your world of wonders as your favorite?"

The Master started and the cords on his forehead bulged with rage.
"Heidkamp! Are you a traitor or are you a fool? You would pay dearly
for this treacherous proposal if I did not need your brain to carry
forward this work!"

Heidkamp's bow was humble. "But, your Excellency, forgive me--I do not
understand."

"Stupid!" shrilled the Master. "Can you not see that in that old time,
where all my power is undreamed of, I would be cut off from my robots,
my Guard, my police and my armies? In that village all my power would
be naught, and even the mention of it would close me in a madhouse!"
At the mere thought the Master's voice grew high and thin with terror.
Almost he abandoned the whole project; yet the thought of the girl
with golden hair and fearless eyes returned to him, filling him with
eagerness and desire which, jaded by absolute power, he had thought
never to feel again. "Lure her to the trap!" he cried. "But if she
comes to any harm, you shall repent it in the longest, keenest agony my
torturers can devise."

Yet the nameless, growing fear grew stronger within the Master as the
days crept on and Heidkamp's experiments progressed. The future could
not be foreseen ... who could know that the past might not somehow
reach darkly toward the Master, and destroy him? Yet the mad passion
inspired by the girl in the Time Visor gave him no rest; it grew too,
waxing stronger as Heidkamp's science gradually placed her nearer to
his grasp, and finally this passion outstripped even the Master's fear.
Daily he summoned Heidkamp to the visiscreen, threatened him anew
with endless torture if he should fail, and heard with satisfaction
Heidkamp's story of progress. For the genius of the Technician, rising
to the monstrous demands made upon it by the Master, was actually
bringing to pass the miracle which he had commanded.

When on the 28th day of the allotted thirty Heidkamp reported that all
was in readiness, the Master prepared to leave his lofty haven for
the first time in many months. For this expedition he chose to be
accompanied by the robots, rather than by the brutal Guard; and lest a
half mile of steel and glass and air should too much intervene between
his thoughts and the telepathic amplifier-converter, he had two of
the robots carry it between them. These two went into the elevator,
but before following them, the Master walked slowly around his eyrie,
appraising what he saw, and beyond that, the distances unseen.

He had taken over from the Pacifist Democrats their plans for the
rebirth of a world destroyed by war, and he congratulated himself that
he had achieved beyond their dreams. Fair indeed was this great city,
rising in miles of mighty windowed ramparts along the western bank
of the purple Hudson, and fair indeed were a thousand lesser cities,
set like jewels around the healing earth. And the vast fruitful farms
and terraced orchards, dotted with placid lakes and webbed by shining
canals, stretching to the north to break at last against the desolate
shell torn slopes of the Highlands, and to the west into the cauldron
of the sunset, these were things of wonder and beauty too. But for
all his building and possession of this vast achievement, the Master
knew that nowhere beneath that darkening sky could he count a single
friend, or any person loyal except thru fear or greed. And as he turned
away, he saw the crimson of the west spread over the whole dome of the
heavens like a great flame, and the city and the landscape seemed to
flow with blood. With a deep foreboding he shuddered into the elevator,
bidding two more robots after him, and rocket-like they plummeted into
the depths of the great building, in the safe and familiar light of the
phosphene ceiling.

Soft as a breath the swift car came to rest at the level of the
upper vaults, and into the blue lighted corridor issued the strange
procession--four strange creatures beyond any man's imaginings, whose
very presence made the air electric with menace; two of them bearing
the glittering thing that gave them life, the irreplaceable telepath
whose structure was known to the Master and to no other living man, and
within the shelter of their square walked the puissant owner of the
world, quick with desire for the woman he hoped to resurrect from the
forgotten dead, but still fearful in the memory of the bright flame of
the sky and the city drenched in blood. He remembered now that as he
had first seen the girl, the heavens had unleashed upon him that great
storm, quivering with a concentration of the hate that always subtly
beat upon him, and he wondered whether the old gods still lived, and
had shown him then a sign and now another sign.

"Perhaps," he thought, "I should turn back, lest I and my great destiny
should be trapped and lost in the dimness of these vaults and the
enticements of the past, so that I might never again look forth upon
the planet that lies crushed beneath my will, or behold the great cold
space of twinkling suns that yet may feel my power. But no, this is
weakness, for the past is mine as well as the future, and this woman
shall be but the first tribute I shall exact."

Thus fixed in his determination, he came to the laboratory, where
Heidkamp stood alone and tense among the fantastic trappings of his
science. In the center of the room was a great cylinder of softly
glowing orange, on the warm surface of which danced flecks of silver
light. This was the mold into which the whining generators, banked tier
on tier in the further shadows, were pouring dissonances to be flung
across the incredible emptiness of timelessness to snatch back a living
prize. Upon its side an insulated handle stood out sharp and black, and
around it a faint suggestion of a door showed thru the radiance.

No spark of hatred showed in Heidkamp's eyes as he saluted. "Your
Excellency has arrived within three minutes of the time when the
Ronferth potential will be at maximum. You will observe on the right
a visiscreen connected thru a time visor so as to show the house and
its surroundings. Upon the steps sits the girl whom you desire. She is
waiting for her escort. I have drawn this black circle upon the screen
itself, to show where the trap will be sprung."

"And how will you lure her to the trap?"

"I have taken advantage of your Excellency's authority to obtain from
the museums diamonds and other gems that were highly esteemed in her
time. Upon the floor of this cylinder I have placed a heap of these,
which will be carried backward with the force screen and appear upon
her lawn as the trap is set. Unless women were far different then than
now, she will come to this glittering bait, penetrating the force
screen that will be invisible and harmless while at rest, and then we
shall pull the screen and the woman back together, so that she shall
await the Master's pleasure within this glowing cell."

The Master licked his lips as he watched through the screen the lovely,
oblivious face of the girl from bygone ages. Yet there remained a
doubt. "Heidkamp", he said abruptly, "you have planned well and built
skillfully, but I fear that all is not well, and that we perhaps
tamper with forces that may rise up and destroy me. If you have any
faint doubt of the safety of all this strange machinery, that Director
Melsit himself cannot entirely vouch for, speak now, and you may have
more time to make sure. But if you are sure, and carry me forward to
success, you shall share my power and be heir to all of it. Think well,
for this is a price that malice or disloyalty cannot offer."

[Illustration: _The master licked his lips as he watched through the
screen the lovely face of the girl from ages past. Yet there remained a
doubt._]

"Your Excellency, I am your loyal and careful servant, the potential
is at its peak, the bait is within the trap, and I await your word to
close the switch that begins your conquest of time itself. Shall I
proceed?"

"Close the switch."

The whine of the generators died to a whisper, the orange and the
silver light sank slowly into the plastics of the cage, as if receding
into a measureless depth of water to vanish at last, leaving the
surface blank and sombre.

On the screen appeared clearly the image of the beautiful girl from
the America of 1940. She was dressed in blue; she rested her chin on
her hand as she waited for her lover to appear, and she seemed to be
lost in some vague dream. For a minute she did not look up as, through
the magic of Heidkamp's science, there materialized on the lawn the
glittering jewels which were to bait the trap. Then she saw them. Her
eyes widened. With a smile which bespoke childlike pleasure rather than
greed she jumped up and ran toward the treasure. She came to the edge
of the fateful circle, hesitated as if some mystic warning made her
pause, and finally stepped within.

In the laboratory Heidkamp and the Master watched intently, and as soon
as she was well within the trap, Heidkamp swiftly opened the master
switch and closed two others. The coruscations of light appeared deep
within the cage and expanded until the room was again alive with their
radiance. Through the time visor there appeared upon the screen the
house and path and lawn, but the jewels and the girl had vanished,
swept forward into Time.

Heidkamp, hands shaking as he realized that the miraculous experiment
had succeeded, turned the great black handle of the Time Trap and flung
wide the door. Within the cell the girl huddled against the far wall,
hardly knowing what had befallen her, conscious only of the dizzying
sickening shock she had sustained from her transportation into the
future.

An inarticulate cry of joy burst from the lips of the Master. Now his
passion for the girl became an avalanche of madness, sweeping away all
his fears and cautions. He hurled himself forward into the cage of
the Time Trap, reached blindly for the girl, twisted one hand in her
golden hair and pulled her toward him. Blanched and shaking, she held
up her hands with a pathetic gesture of pleading horror. "Beauty from
past ages!" cried the Master hoarsely, and bore down her resistance.

He had forgotten Heidkamp.

Quietly, almost reverently, Heidkamp stepped forward, laid his hand
upon the door, and closed it. He fingered the master switch, and as
he did so, remembered the forces of the New Day, ready to take over
power and build at last a true democracy, including all the mechanical
glories of the civilization which the Master had erected, with the
added crown of peace and freedom and happiness for every man on earth.
This he remembered, and he closed the switch.

The light died back within the cage, and in the circle on the time
screen appeared the Master, so forgetful of all else in his struggles
to win the lips of the girl that he was not even aware that he was
trapped by Time. In his arms the girl struggled desperately, her
feet scattering the wondrous gems upon the grass. A roadster stopped
before the house with an abrupt jerk, and the girl's giant lover
hurled himself from the driver's seat and laid a violent hand upon the
shoulder of the Master.

For one long, ecstatic instant Heidkamp could see in the time visor the
eyes of the Master, stark with his abrupt, dreadful realization.

Slowly Heidkamp picked up a long bar of heavy iron, and methodically
destroyed the time traveler--first the long spirals of glowing tubes,
then the frail and lifeless structure of the empty cage and last the
idling generators, their whispers crashing into silence.

He ignored the robots, waiting in vigilance for the commands of the
Master, commands that now would never come, their frantic urgency lost
in Time.