Argosy All-Story Weekly — page 75: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE MAN WHO MASTERED TIME. — The white, snowy hills of New Jersey soon turned to green. The cabin air warmed a little. Then autumn and winter came again—and passed in a moment or two. Rogers sighed with relief. “ We’re fairly started. One year out of twenty-eight thousand!” ‘“ And we’ve got eight hundred or a thou- sand miles of space to travel also,” said Georgie. ‘‘ We’re going to make that sim- ultaneously, aren’t we?” “Yes,” agreed Rogers, Georgie took a last look through the floor window at the blurring gray land- scape beneath, and stood up to join him. “Let’s talk things over,” he suggested. “T’ve got a lot of questions—plans and things.” Rogers had taken a sheaf of script from his pocket. “ Loto’s notes to guide us,” he explained. “T’ve followed them closely so far. We have a flight through time of something more than twenty-five thousand years at the fifteenth intensity, and then slacken. Simultaneously we must fly southward, some thousand miles or more through space, directing our course for the southern tip of Florida. Loto specifies that we should under all circumstances, reach the latitude of north Florida coincident with twenty- five thousand years of our time-progress. We will then—or perhaps a thousand years further along—see the island. We cannot miss it, of course. It is so large, and it must certainly endure over a great period of time.” “How long did Loto take to reach twenty-five thousand years?” ‘“ About twelve hours,” Rogers consulted the memoranda. ‘“ He computes his average speed as equivalent to the twelfth intensity. We are using the fifteenth continuously. Our clocks should register no more than the passage of ten hours for the time- flight. “Ten hours,” he added thoughtfully. “And flying directly south at a hundred miles an hour, we would reach the island in those ten hours.” “But we haven’t started flying yet,” Georgie protested. ‘ We’re moving through 709 time all right, but we’re still right over Newark—and look at it!” The New Jersey metropolis was spreading west to the Orange Mountains, and east- ward, already it seemed linked solid with Jersey City. Factories dotted the interven- ing meadows, which now were drained of their stagnant water. “You're right,” exclaimed Rogers. ‘ We have barely nine hours left—we must start our horizontal flight.” In a few moments more they were speed- ing south, and slightly west, at an altitude of some five thousand feet, with their pro- gress through time steadily accelerating. An hour, by their clocks went by. They were over Delaware Bay. Its shores seemed in the more congested areas almost solid with buildings. There was a great city on each side at the mouth of the river, with a gigantic bridge connecting them. The bridge rose into being under the eyes of the watchers in the flying plane, but they swept on past and in a moment left it far in the distance behind them. Georgie was seated on the floor watching the changing landscape—a huge, concave, gray surface, shadowless, stretching out and up to the circular horizon. Steadily, like a panorama unrolled, it slid sidewise beneath them. The motion was greatest directly below. To the west the mountains seemed, by an optical illusion, to be following, speed- ing forward with them. The sea or its arms, constantly occupied a portion of the scene, for they were still flying south and somewhat west, following the Atlantic coast. And of everything in sight, the sea only seemed unchanging. In time-progressing, that height of civili- zation Loto had described lay under them. They were flying lower now. Rogers in his seat at the controls, said: — “T think we’re making it as we should. That’s the four thousand year mark just passed. And we are flying at a hundred and ten miles an hour.” : “* Are you sure we'll hit it right?” Georgie asked anxiously. “T think so. It is about as Loto figured so far. Those buildings—what a civilization that must be down there! It will fade pres- ently. In three or four thousand years—” (S@) COMIGDOOKS