Time Travel Omnibus Volume 2 Read online

  Within a month, riding the crest of public acclaim, Hank Ford laid the foundations for his Ford Motor Company—already planning for the day when his ‘tin lizzies’ would swarm the highways of America.

  The victory of 999 also benefited Willy McGuire. ‘I want you and Spider to work for me from now on, Willy,’ Hank Ford had told him. ‘Cooper just doesn’t appreciate you. And, for a start, I’ll double your salary!’

  During the days following the race at Grosse Pointe, Kathy fell deeply in love with the happy, red-haired Irishman. He was totally unlike any man she’d ever known: honest, kind, strong, gentle and attentive. And he loved her as a complete woman—mind and body. For the first time in her life, she had found real emotional fulfilment.

  His question was inevitable: ‘Will you marry me, Kate?’

  And her reply came instantly: ‘Yes, yes, yes! Oh, yes, Willy, I’ll marry you!’

  As they embraced, holding one another tightly, Kathy knew that she was no longer afraid of anything. The old life was gone.

  ‘Nothing frightens me now that I’m with you,’ she told him.

  ‘Not even the lake?’ he suddenly asked, his blue eyes intense.

  She was startled by the question. ‘I never said that I was afraid of the lake.’

  ‘It’s been obvious. We do everything together. Ride . . . skate . . . picnic . . . attend band concerts. But you never want to go boating with me on the lake.’

  ‘I don’t like boating. I told you that.’

  His eyes were steady on hers. ‘Then why were you on the lake alone the day I found you? What made you go out there?’

  She sighed, lowering her eyes. ‘It’s a long, long story and someday, when I’m sure you’ll understand, I’ll tell you all about it. I swear I will.’

  ‘It’s a fine day, Kate. Sky’s clear. No wind. No clouds. I think we ought to go out on the lake. Together.’

  ‘But why?’

  ‘To put that final fear of yours to rest. It’s like climbing back on a horse once he’s bucked you off. If you don’t, you never ride again. The fear is always there.’

  A strained moment of silence.

  ‘I’m not afraid of the lake, Willy,’ she said in a measured tone.

  ‘Then prove you’re not! Today. Now. Show me, Kate!’

  And she agreed. There was nothing to fear out there on the quiet water. She kept telling herself that over and over . . .

  Nothing to fear.

  Nothing.

  Nothing.

  Nothing.

  The weather was ideal for boating—and Willy handled the oars with practised ease, giving Kathy a sense of confidence and serenity.

  She did feel serene out here on the placid lake. She enjoyed the pleasant warmth of the afternoon sun on her shoulders as she twirled the bright red parasol Willy had bought her just for this occasion.

  The water was spangled with moving patterns of sunlight, glittering diamond shapes, shifting and breaking and re-forming in complex designs around the boat as Willy rowed steadily away from the shore.

  In this calming aura of peace and natural beauty she wondered why she had been so afraid of the lake. It was lovely here, and there was certainly nothing to fear. The bizarre circumstances of that fateful afternoon in 1982 were unique; a freak storm had created some kind of time gate through which she had passed. And no harm had been done to her. In fact, she was grateful for the experience; it had brought her across a bridge of years to the one man she could truly love and respect.

  She reached out to touch his shoulder gently. ‘Mr McGuire, I love you.’

  He grinned at her. ‘And I love you, Miss Benedict!’

  Willy laid aside the oars to take her into his arms. They stretched out next to one another in the bottom of the easy-drifting boat. The sky above them was a delicate shade of pastel blue (like Willy’s eyes, she thought) and a faint breeze carried the perfume of deep woods out on to the water.

  ‘It’s an absolutely perfect moment,’ she said. ‘I wish we could put it in a bottle and open it whenever we get sad!’

  ‘Don’t need to,’ said Willy softly. ‘We’ve got a lifetime of perfect moments ahead of us, Kate.’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Life is never perfect.’

  ‘Ours will be,’ he said, running a finger along the side of her sun-warm cheek, tracing the curve of her chin. ‘I’ll make it perfect—and that’s a promise.’

  She kissed him, pressing her lips deeply into his.

  He sat up.

  ‘Hey,’ she protested, opening her eyes. ‘Where’d you go? We were just getting started.’ And she giggled.

  ‘Sky’s darkening,’ he said, looking upwards, shading his eyes. ‘I’d better row us in. A lake storm can—’

  ‘Storm?’ She sat up abruptly, staring at him, at the sky and water. ‘No! Oh, God, no!’

  ‘Whoa there, you’re shaking!’ he said, holding her. ‘There’s nothing to get worried over. We’ll be back on shore in a few minutes.’

  ‘But you weren’t there . . . you don’t understand!’ she said, a desperate tone in her voice. ‘That’s just how the other storm came along—out of nowhere. And the wind . . .’

  It was there, suddenly whipping at the lake surface.

  He was rowing strongly now, with the boat cutting towards the shoreline. ‘Be on the beach in a jiffy. You’ll see. Trust me, Kate.’

  But the wind was building rapidly, blowing against them, neutralising Willy’s efforts.

  Kathy looked fearfully at the sky. Yes, there they were, the same ugly mass of grey-black clouds.

  It began to rain.

  ‘Hurry, Willy! Row faster!’

  ‘I’m trying . . . but this wind’s really strong!’

  She sat in a huddled position in the stern of the boat, head down now, hands locked around her legs as the rain struck at her in blown gusts.

  ‘Never seen a storm build up this fast,’ Willy grunted, rowing harder. ‘Freak weather, that’s for sure.’

  How could he understand that she’d seen it all before, in a world eighty years beyond him? Clouds, wind, rain and—

  And . . .

  She knew when she looked up, slowly raising her head, that it would be there, at the horizon, coming for them.

  The wave.

  Willy stopped rowing at her scream. He looked towards the horizon.

  ‘God A’amighty!’

  Then, in the blink of a cat’s eye, it was upon them—blasting their senses, an angry, falling mountain of rushing water that split their boat asunder and pitched them into the seething depths of the lake.

  Into blackness.

  And silence.

  Kathy opened her eyes.

  She was alone on the beach. Somehow, without any visible proof, she knew she had returned to 1982.

  And Willy was gone.

  The thought tore through her, knife-sharp, filling her with desperate anguish.

  Willy has gone!

  She had lost him to the lake. It had given him to her and now it had taken him away.

  Forever.

  A husky lifeguard in orange swim trunks was running towards her across the sand.

  I don’t want to be saved, she told herself; I want to go back into the lake and die there, as Willy had died. There’s no reason to go on living. No reason at all.

  ‘You all right, miss?’

  Same words! Same voice!

  She looked up—into the face of her beloved. The blue eyes. The red hair. The gentle, intense features.

  ‘Willy!’ she cried, suddenly hugging him. ‘Oh, God, Willy, I thought I’d lost you! I thought you were—’

  She hesitated as the young man pulled back.

  ‘Afraid you’ve made a mistake,’ he said. ‘My name’s Tom.’

  She stared at him, and then she knew who he was. No doubt of it. Kathy knew.

  ‘What about your middle name?’

  ‘It’s William,’ he told her. And then grinned. ‘Oh, I see what you mean—but nobody ever
calls me Willy. Not since I was a kid.’

  ‘I know your last name,’ she said softly.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘It’s McGuire.’

  He blinked at her. ‘Yeah. Yeah, it is.’

  ‘Thomas William McGuire,’ she said, smiling at him. ‘Please . . . sit down here, next to me.’

  With a small sigh, he did so. She intrigued him.

  ‘When were you born?’

  ‘In I960.’

  ‘And who was your father? What was his name?’

  ‘Timothy McGuire.’

  ‘Born? . . . The year?’

  ‘My Dad was born in 1929.’

  ‘And your grandfather . . . What was his name and when was he born?’

  ‘Patrick McGuire. Born in 1904.’

  Kathy’s eyes were shining. She blinked back the wetness. ‘And his father, your great-grandfather—’

  He started to speak, but she touched his lips with a finger to stop the words.

  ‘He was William Patrick McGuire,’ she said, ‘and he was born in 1880, right?’

  The young man was amazed. He nodded slowly. ‘Yeah. Right.’

  ‘And he survived a boating accident late in 1902, on this lake, didn’t he?’

  ‘He sure did, miss.’

  ‘Who was your great-grandmother?’ Kathy asked.

  ‘Her name was Patricia Hennessey. They met after the accident, that Christmas. They say he kind of—’

  ‘Kind of what?’

  ‘Kind of married her on the rebound. Seems he lost the girl he was going to marry in the boating accident. My great-grandma was what I guess you’d call a second choice.’

  Then he grinned (Willy’s grin!), shaking his head. ‘I just can’t figure how you knew about him . . . Are you a friend of the family?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head.

  ‘And we’ve never met before, have we?’

  She looked into the deep lake-blue of his eyes. ‘No, Willy, we’ve never met.’ She smiled. ‘But we’re going to be friends . . . very, very good friends.’

  And she kissed him gently, softly, under the serene sky of a sun-bright Michigan afternoon on the shore of a placid lake in the autumn of a very special year.

  OF TIME AND TEXAS

  William F. Nolan

  “In one fell swoop,” declared Professor C. Cydwick Ohms, releasing a thin blue ribbon of pipe-smoke and rocking back on his heels, “—I intend to solve the greatest problem facing mankind today. Colonizing the Polar Wastes was a messy and fruitless business. And the Enforced Birth Control Program couldn’t be enforced. Overpopulation still remains the thorn in our side. Gentlemen—” He paused to look each of the assembled reporters in the eye. “—there is but one answer.”

  “Mass annihilation?” quavered a cub reporter.

  “Posh, boy! Certainly not!” The professor bristled. “The answer is—TIME!”

  “Time?”

  “Exactly,” nodded Ohms. With a dramatic flourish he swept aside a red velvet drape—to reveal a tall structure of gleaming metal. “As witness!”

  “Golly, what’s that thing?” queried the cub.

  “This thing,” replied the professor acidly, “—is the C. Cydwick Ohms Time Door.”

  “Whillikers, a Time Machine!”

  “Not so, not so. Please, boy! A Time Machine, in the popular sense, is impossible. Wild fancy! However—” The professor tapped the dottle from his pipe. “—by a mathematically precise series of infinite calculations, I have developed the remarkable C. Cydwick Ohms Time Door. Open it, take but a single step—and, presto! The Past!”

  “But, where in the past, Prof.?”

  Ohms smiled easily down at the tense ring of faces. “Gentlemen, beyond this door lies the sprawling giant of the Southwest—enough land to absorb Earth’s overflow like that!” He snapped his fingers. “I speak, gentlemen, of Texas, 1957!”

  “What if the Texans object?”

  “They have no choice. The Time Door is strictly a one-way passage. I saw to that. It will be utterly impossible for anyone in 1957 to re-enter our world of 2057. And now—the Past awaits!”

  He tossed aside his professorial robes. Under them Cydwick Ohms wore an ancient and bizarre costume: black riding boots, highly polished and trimmed in silver; wool chaps; a wide, jewel-studded belt with an immense buckle; a brightly checked shirt topped by a blazing red bandana. Briskly, he snapped a tall ten-gallon hat on his head, and stepped to the Time Door.

  Gripping an ebony handle, he tugged upward. The huge metal door oiled slowly back. “Time,” said Cydwick Ohms simply, gesturing toward the gray nothingness beyond the door.

  The reporters and photographers surged forward, notebooks and cameras at the ready. “What if the door swings shut after you’re gone?” one of them asked.

  “A groundless fear, boy,” assured Ohms. “I have seen to it that the Time Door can never be closed. And now—good-bye, gentlemen. Or, to use the proper colloquialism—so long, hombres!”

  Ohms bowed from the waist, gave his ten-gallon hat a final tug, and took a single step forward.

  And did not disappear.

  He stood, blinking. Then he swore, beat upon the unyielding wall of grayness with clenched fists, and fell back, panting, to his desk.

  “I’ve failed!” he moaned in a lost voice. “The C. Cydwick Ohms Time Door is a botch!” He buried his head in trembling hands.

  The reporters and photographers began to file out.

  Suddenly the professor raised his head. “Listen!” he warned.

  A slow rumbling, muted with distance, emanated from the dense grayness of the Time Door. Faint yips and whoopings were distinct above the rumble. The sounds grew steadily—to a thousand beating drums—to a rolling sea of thunder!

  Shrieking, the reporters and photographers scattered for the stairs.

  Ah, another knotty problem to be solved, mused Professor Cydwick Ohms, swinging, with some difficulty, onto one of three thousand Texas steers stampeding into the laboratory.

  n one fell swoop,” declared Professor C. Cydwick Ohms, releasing a thin blue ribbon of pipe-smoke and rocking back on his heels, “—I intend to solve the greatest problem facing mankind today. Colonizing the Polar Wastes was a messy and fruitless business. And the Enforced Birth Control Program couldn’t be enforced. Overpopulation still remains the thorn in our side. Gentlemen—” He paused to look each of the assembled reporters in the eye. “—there is but one answer.”

  “Mass annihilation?” quavered a cub reporter.

  “Posh, boy! Certainly not!” The professor bristled. “The answer is—TIME!”

  “Time?”

  “Exactly,” nodded Ohms. With a dramatic flourish he swept aside a red velvet drape—to reveal a tall structure of gleaming metal. “As witness!”

  “Golly, what’s that thing?” queried the cub.

  “This thing,” replied the professor acidly, “—is the C. Cydwick Ohms Time Door.”

  “Whillikers, a Time Machine!”

  “Not so, not so. Please, boy! A Time Machine, in the popular sense, is impossible. Wild fancy! However—” The professor tapped the dottle from his pipe. “—by a mathematically precise series of infinite calculations, I have developed the remarkable C. Cydwick Ohms Time Door. Open it, take but a single step—and, presto! The Past!”

  “But, where in the past, Prof.?”

  Ohms smiled easily down at the tense ring of faces. “Gentlemen, beyond this door lies the sprawling giant of the Southwest—enough land to absorb Earth’s overflow like that!” He snapped his fingers. “I speak, gentlemen, of Texas, 1957!”

  “What if the Texans object?”

  “They have no choice. The Time Door is strictly a one-way passage. I saw to that. It will be utterly impossible for anyone in 1957 to re-enter our world of 2057. And now—the Past awaits!”

  He tossed aside his professorial robes. Under them Cydwick Ohms wore an ancient and bizarre costume: black riding boots, highly polished and trimmed in silver;
wool chaps; a wide, jewel-studded belt with an immense buckle; a brightly checked shirt topped by a blazing red bandana. Briskly, he snapped a tall ten-gallon hat on his head, and stepped to the Time Door.

  Gripping an ebony handle, he tugged upward. The huge metal door oiled slowly back. “Time,” said Cydwick Ohms simply, gesturing toward the gray nothingness beyond the door.

  The reporters and photographers surged forward, notebooks and cameras at the ready. “What if the door swings shut after you’re gone?” one of them asked.

  “A groundless fear, boy,” assured Ohms. “I have seen to it that the Time Door can never be closed. And now—good-bye, gentlemen. Or, to use the proper colloquialism—so long, hombres!”

  Ohms bowed from the waist, gave his ten-gallon hat a final tug, and took a single step forward.

  And did not disappear.

  He stood, blinking. Then he swore, beat upon the unyielding wall of grayness with clenched fists, and fell back, panting, to his desk.

  “I’ve failed!” he moaned in a lost voice. “The C. Cydwick Ohms Time Door is a botch!” He buried his head in trembling hands.

  The reporters and photographers began to file out.

  Suddenly the professor raised his head. “Listen!” he warned.

  A slow rumbling, muted with distance, emanated from the dense grayness of the Time Door. Faint yips and whoopings were distinct above the rumble. The sounds grew steadily—to a thousand beating drums—to a rolling sea of thunder!

  Shrieking, the reporters and photographers scattered for the stairs.

  Ah, another knotty problem to be solved, mused Professor Cydwick Ohms, swinging, with some difficulty, onto one of three thousand Texas steers stampeding into the laboratory.

  ON THE STAIRCASE

  Katharine Fullerton Gerould

  Probably the least wise way to begin a ghost-story is to say that one does not believe in ghosts. It suggests that one has never seen the real article. Perhaps, in one sense, I never have; yet I am tempted to set down a few facts that I have never turned over to the Society for Psychical Research or discussed at my club. The fact is that I had ingeniously forgotten them until I saw Harry Medway, the specialist—my old classmate—a few years ago. I say “forgotten”; of course, I had not forgotten them, but, in order to carry on the business of life, I had managed to record them, as it were, in sympathetic ink. After I heard what Harry Medway had to say, I took out the loose sheets and turned them to the fire. Then the writing came out strong and clear again—letter by letter, line by line, as fatefully as Belshazzar’s “immortal postscript.” Did I say that I do not believe in ghosts? Well—I am getting toward the end, and a few inconsistencies may be forgiven to one who is not far from discoveries that will certainly be inconsistent with much that we have learned by heart in this interesting world. Perhaps it will be pardoned me as a last flicker of moribund pride if I say that in my younger days I was a crack shot, and to the best of my belief never refused a bet or a drink or an adventure. I do not remember ever having been afraid of a human being; and yet I have known fear. There are weeks, still, when I live in a bath of it. I think I will amend my first statement, and say instead that I do not believe in any ghosts except my own—oh, and in Wender’s and Lithway’s, of course.