The Stolen Future Box Set Page 2

  Helpless or not, they outnumbered me one hundred to one and I was in the open. Blind luck had run out and left me only one option. I gathered my feet and dived into the cave inches ahead of the next hail of gunfire.

  I landed on blessedly hard ground. It sloped up from the entrance, keeping the water out past the first few yards. I rolled to my feet and stumbled away from the entrance, hoping there were no Germans inside because I knew there were far too many outside. I didn’t have time to adjust my eyes to the dimness before I trained my pistol on the light from the opening.

  It took several moments before the first of them blocked it, and I rewarded his efforts with a single shot. Before they had dragged his body back I was shifting my position. Still no one came at me from behind—could I have been wrong about the soldier I was following? But then where had he come from?

  A rifle muzzle showed itself at the opening, firing randomly, but it couldn’t reach me any more than I could reach the man holding it. For the moment we were at a stalemate: they couldn’t get to me, or past me, and I couldn’t get out. It was critical that I hold this spot if my men were to have any chance of returning to our lines alive, but sooner or later my time would run out. And if the Huns had another way to reach no-man’s-land, my sacrifice wouldn’t even make a difference.

  If sacrifice I was to be…

  Another rifle showed its muzzle at the entrance, and I fired at it just to keep the Germans honest. As it drew back, I did the same, retreating further into the cave, dividing my attention between the outside and my new home.

  The ceiling rose as the cave deepened, and I grew more sure that I had found something. No one would have allowed this natural shelter to lie unused… I learned later that they had never known it was there. It had been hidden from mortal eyes by a device undreamt of in our time, and the only reason I ever saw it was a simple malfunction brought on by relentless rain and cloying mud.

  At the time, however, I was convinced I had stumbled onto some secret Hun headquarters, and felt my way every step while I kept a wary eye on the outside. For this reason alone did I find the passage to the deeper cavern.

  Keeping an eye out for the enemy, I reached behind me for the wall and felt nothing. I turned that way just as the cave entrance exploded with gunfire. The Germans had decided on a full frontal assault—a decision fueled no doubt by their surprise at finding this cave in the middle of their own lines. At that moment I stepped backward and I, too, disappeared from sight.

  I found myself in a passage screened from the front chamber by a curtain of rock, a camouflage only penetrated by my forced feeling of my way. A man with a lantern would not have spotted it, I am sure. But the twisting path I took explained to me a more important mystery: why no one had been drawn by the sounds of war. The stone acted as a baffle for sound as well as sight. I lost track of my pursuers the moment I entered the stony corridor—and the sight I beheld at its end drove all thought of them from my mind.

  The man I had been following sat at a desk near the back of this chamber, which was roughly the same size as its predecessor. He was facing away from me, and toward a doorway in the wall of the cave. I call it a doorway because that was how it seemed to me, even at first glance, but a doorway such as I had never seen before.

  It shimmered, like mercury pinned in a vertical suspension. It stood higher than a man, and wider, but there was no evident frame, nor could I see any handle or knob. Yet it struck me undeniably as a doorway, a portal to something deeper inside the rock. Whatever it was, it was beyond my understanding of any German or Allied science, and it frightened me.

  Tearing my eyes from it, I fell to examining the desk where the man was seated, oblivious to my intrusion. From all that I could see, he sat before a plain wooden table, head bent over several objects that I could not discern. While he was so engrossed, I was hesitant to move, believing myself safe for the moment, but I roused myself with an almost physical shake: If this was an enemy base, then the men behind me knew its secrets and my safety was but a sham. My only hope was to keep moving, my first task to subdue the man at the desk.

  My wet clothes and soggy boots betrayed me only a few scant feet from my goal. He heard me approach and spun about, rising from his chair with a look of utter shock. Clawing at his side, his hand came up with a small box he pointed at me even as I lunged for him, but my muddy feet slipped on the stone floor and I fell. What the box would have done to me—for I had to believe it to be a weapon—I did not see nor did I wait to give him a chance to show me. I scrabbled forward and knocked him off his feet.

  We did not struggle long. Rough hands pulled us apart. The Germans, knowing I had not left the cave as I had entered, had found for themselves the passage to the inner chamber. I was stunned to see there were only four or five where I had expected hordes. Two held my arms. I could see my sidearm on the floor nearby, but it might as well have been on the Moon.

  The rest ganged up on the other man, whose garments now resembled less a German uniform than they did the strange door itself, seeming to slide and gleam like liquid metal. To their dismay the Huns found that this appearance was not deceiving, for the man slipped from their grasp and unleashed his box-weapon once more.

  This time I saw the beam that struck down two of the Germans, and so did the men holding me. At once they both released me to use their guns; I saw the stranger stagger as the first shot rang out, then I slugged one of the Germans and broke free, and seized my revolver.

  I had but two choices. Outside the cave was the enemy army; through the silver door might lie anything.

  I made the wrong choice.

  I chose the door.

  Chapter 2

  I Arrive

  If any time passed while I journeyed through that portal, I was not aware of it, and if there were any sensations, I did not feel them. It was no different than the door into my parents’ parlor, but one moment I was in rainy, war-torn France, and the next I was standing in the hot sun of a quiet countryside.

  Had I known then the true extent of my travel, I might have given leave of my sanity right on the spot.

  Fortunately I did not know, for what I could see was already taxing my reason—and my faith in my own eyes—to the limit. My surroundings were serene, warm, and had I but the wit to notice, beautiful. The air smelled clean and slightly sweet, with none of the bitter scents of blood or gunpowder, or the heart-rending cries of dying men. I stood in a small depression among several low hillocks; in fact I stood at the base of one such hill, into whose side the door must have inserted itself, in parallel fashion to the doorway through which I had run. Suddenly I recollected my flight, and spun about to see if anyone pursued me—only to stagger back in shock at finding the hill behind me blank but for tall green grass spotted with small, unfamiliar red flowers.

  Slowly, over the course of several minutes, I slowed my heart and breathing. I am a rational product of the twentieth century, I told myself, and can find a rational explanation for my situation. Presently I did so: I had fallen afoul of a German experiment in gas warfare, such as was always rumored on the front. I was victim of some fantastic hallucination, my mind being forced to twist familiar objects into disorienting fantasies. The more I thought along these lines, the more convinced I was that it was true—surely I was wandering the corridors of a secret mountain laboratory, and not the soft green hills of a summer forest.

  But the effect on a man—! All around me arose the vision of a peaceful glade, while further back in the rolling landscape massive trees rose to a cloudless blue sky. Like sentries, the trees and hills surrounded and protected my little meadow, except to my left, where a mound of rocks rose like a giant’s throne twice the height of a man. How could any soldier think of war in a place such as this?

  The imagery was so overwhelming that I fancied I could feel the hot sun already beginning to dry my clothes and the mud starting to itch against my skin. I reasoned that while I remained under the effect of the narcotic, I could hardly navi
gate properly, and so, hoping that what my eyes perceived corresponded in some fashion to reality, I resolved to treat my wonderland as though it were real until I could recover and make my escape. This might allow me to alleviate my growing discomfort, and if I strode blindly into the enemy’s hands—well, it was no worse than if I stood still and the enemy came to me.

  As they formed the highest nearby point, I climbed the rocks to gain a vantage upon my personal world. The mud caking my uniform made climbing difficult, and once my wet boots nearly slipped; I had to grab suddenly for a handhold. The rock was rough and skinned my palm painfully. It was astounding how the human mind could be compelled to construct such detail!

  My efforts proved their worth, however, when I gained the top of the rocky promontory and gazed down the other side. There, not ten strides from the bottom of the hill, ran a shrub-lined stream as wide and deep as a hotel bathtub. Without another thought I began to step and slide my way toward it. I no longer cared about fantasy or reality I hadn’t had a bath in weeks.

  My haste to be clean very likely saved my life.

  Peeling off my filthy, sodden clothes, my sidearm, and my heavy helmet as quickly as I could manage, I plunged into the stream to wash. The icy water was nothing after the rainy hell I had lived through these past months, and it stood as no barrier to my zest to be clean. After a few moments I simply submerged my entire body while I rubbed vigorously all over.

  When I burst again into the open air I felt a new man. I picked up my shirt from the bank and soaked it until the water downstream turned brown, then wrung it out and turned to lay it out to dry on a bush. Then, shirt in hand, I stopped. On the crest of the hill above me stood a man dressed in the same silver garments as the man in the cave in France.

  I was at first unsure whether to hail him or hide from him. My mind was still of two opinions as to the reality of this land in which I seemed to have been dumped—was this a savior to return me to my own world, or a Hun soldier determined to dispatch me to the next?

  His own actions dictated my course. In each hand he held what appeared to be a small device about the size of a cigarette package. The device in his left hand looked to me, at that distance, disquietingly like the weapon that had subdued the Germans in the inner cave. With his right hand he cast about in the air before him as though trying to catch a scent. I was certain of one thing: If he was looking for something, it could only be me.

  Very quietly I knelt down and picked up a small stone from the water’s edge, and when his attention seemed elsewhere, I tossed it downstream, where it landed in the water with a plop.

  Immediately he whirled, his left hand extended. A beam of light, pale against the sky, shot out and incinerated a bush near where the rock had struck.

  I no longer had any doubt as to his intentions.

  He did not move from his spot on the ridgeline as his right hand swept the air in the direction of the smoking shrubbery; if he was a German, he was extraordinarily careless. I quietly retrieved my Webley, sighted carefully on his breastbone, and shot him. Without a cry he fell back behind the hilltop.

  I was on the bank in an instant, forgetting in the urgency of the moment both my nakedness and my concomitant lack of shoes. Numbed by the cold water, my feet hardly noted the rocks, and it was only later I saw the bloody trail I was leaving. I reached the crest of the hill knowing he must be dead, but the instinct born of months of trench warfare bade me pop my head into view only just long enough to see the field below without exposing myself to enemy fire.

  His ray-weapon charred the ground black not six inches from my nose.

  He was standing near the center of the natural amphitheater whence I had come, watching the top of the hill where he anticipated I must appear. He had not sought cover; either he was confident that he could shoot me before I could react, or (as I realized belatedly) his silver tunic had the characteristics of a suit of armor, and my bullets would not penetrate it.

  This cat-and-mouse worked vastly more in his favor than mine, as it began to dawn on me that far from wearing a suit of armor, I was wearing nothing at all. The numbness in my feet had worn off with the return of heat and circulation, replaced by the pain of cut and bruised soles and toes. A soft wind ran shiveringly across my back and legs, a product of the waning afternoon and prelude to the coming of night. And most urgently of all, I was pinned down with no way of knowing when my enemy might burst over the hill and sear the flesh from my bones.

  Gritting my teeth against the pain, I retraced my steps to the stream. With only a moment’s delay to rinse them, I stuck my bare and bleeding feet into my boots, broke a branch from the bush, grabbed my helmet, and made my way once more up the hill, dreading every moment being caught in my extremely exposed position.

  Deep in my mind the idea had already taken hold that this was no ordinary soldier I was fighting; had the Huns developed such weapons and armor they would have overrun Europe long ago. I still could not come to conscious grips with the consequences of such logic, but my hindbrain had grasped onto the practical reality that it presented. Gingerly placing myself flat against the hillside again, I poked the branch up under my helmet, pushed it into view of the man below—

  —and pulled back half a stick. There was no sound, no smoke—and no helmet.

  I waited.

  True to my assessment of him, the silver-garbed stranger walked straight up the hill without hesitation, pausing at the top to survey what he expected to be my headless corpse. This time I shot him above the line of his suit. I don’t think he had time to realize his mistake.

  I was upon him in a moment, steadfastly ignoring the horrible mess my bullet had made of his skull while I examined his body for any clue as to his identity or origin. The silver material felt thin and smooth, like tinsel, but unlike tinsel it would not crease, instead flowing along the lines of the body. Suddenly it began to glow softly. I pulled away my hands with a grunt of surprise, and thankfully so, because the body vanished with a soft pop as air rushed in to fill the empty space. I cast about for his possessions, but they were likewise gone.

  Slowly and inexorably the truth forced itself onto my unwilling mind: I had fallen into something even beyond the imaginations of Mr. Verne or Mr. Wells. I was a very long way from home.

  Over the next two days I was to learn several invaluable lessons about this new world. In the morning, having found a small cave in which to pass the night, I sought after food. Months in the trenches had bred out of me any particularity for the shape of my nourishment, but I was an active man and as such I craved meat. Craving, however, is not the same as having.

  Game was not especially difficult to find. The stream drew animals from all around, as I had surmised it would from my limited skills in forest craft, but these were not the beasts I had expected to see. My first shock was how similar they were to the hares and foxes and badgers to be found in the woodlands of my own country; my second shock was how different they were.

  The first who chanced by was, I believe, a rabbit—but a rabbit such as no hunter of my acquaintance had ever bagged. The size of a small dog, its ears towered above it like wireless antennae, and with much the same effect, for it clearly spied my presence from two score yards away, though I made no sound louder than an indrawn breath. Its feet were of such length that it bounded six feet at a leap. When it stopped and fixed its gaze on my position, there was an intelligence in those eyes that clearly indicated to me that it knew I was there, waiting. But unlike the skittish animal I was used to, this rabbit calmly continued down to the bank of the stream and drank its fill, ears gently waving in the breeze. I was so bewildered at its appearance that, ignoring my growling insides, I let it be and simply watched.

  The growling only increased as the morning wore on and the parade passed by. A fox trotted by not long after the rabbit had left, intent on its trail, but a fox such as I would have hesitated to confront, even with my pistol in hand. Other creatures followed. In every instance, recognizable species had
undergone incredible changes, all obviously designed to fend off predators or to enhance predatory ability, and all of which worked wonders on me. Although some of the beasts passed quite near my ambush, and knew of me, none paid unwonted attention, as though Man was but another animal, and lacking any evident hostile intent, was ignored. I could have killed any one of them, but I was loath to waste limited ammunition on dinner.

  At last caution overtook me, along with the belated realization that I had no way of cleaning that which I would kill, and I fetched myself berries that I had seen others eat. They were surprisingly sweet, and fortunately quite edible. The only distress they caused was due to my own overindulgence. I spent the rest of that day exploring my new demesne, but no sign of civilization could I find.

  On the second day I drank as did the animals, ate their berries, and forgot about them. The herbivores ignored me, and the carnivores had apparently decided that I was too large to challenge. I had ranged north the day before, so now I set off to the south. Beyond the first small hill I stumbled onto a vague path. Whether it had been trodden by animals or men I did not know, but the very idea that it might lead somewhere brightened my spirits immeasurably, and I set off upon it.

  In common with the nature trails in the Santa Monica Mountains of my boyhood, this one dipped and weaved like a prizefighter. Thorny plants overhung at almost every step, and I, reminded of the poison ivy of my earlier hikes, avoided them with care—such care that when half the trail fell away under my feet in a miniature crevasse, I nearly fell in and broke an ankle.

  I had hardly avoided this fatal mishap when I saw the men in silver.

  There were three of them this time, standing in single file in the middle of the path. Their heads seemed to be bowed over some apparatus, likely similar to that used by the man I had killed the day before. For this reason they had not seen me, and I quickly stepped into the underbrush.