Astounding Science Fiction (UK Edition) — page 60: what you’re looking at

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

58 well cast as the Mad Scientist, either. His hair was neatly combed and his eyes were mildly blinking. His dinner jacket hung on his thin stooped shoulders about as grace- fully as it might have decorated a scarecrow. There was nothing colorful or eccentric about him but his conversation. That was enough. “You may define a dimension as you will, my dear colonel,” he observed over the fish. “You may quite correctly term it the degree of manifoldness of a magnitude or any other proper terminological gibberish your methodical mind choses to employ. But a dimension is basically a measure of extent; and if extent is measurable, then extension is possible.” The colonel beamed. “I am not sure if you are playing with ideas, or simply with words. What is your opinion, Mr. Holding?” I had to fight to keep from jumping each time he addressed me. I had to remind my- self that my exploits in the Little Massacre had been strictly anonymous and that the Gestapo, so far as I knew, had no more information on me than that I was a practi- tioner of degenerate art but otherwise harm- less. I was, I kept saying to myself, far safer here, as a sort of purloined letter in person, than anywhere else. But I have since won- dered how the purloined letter itself felt about the Minister D—’s brilliant ruse. “What are ideas themselves but playing with words?” I said casually. “Can a wordless idea exist?” Colonel von Schwarzenau frowned. “That is loose thinking,” he said severely, in that overperfect English of his. “Ideas can exist for instance as mathematical formulas, or even as an unformulated series of sensory images. Please, Mr. Holding, more discip- line in your thought.” Having put me in my decadent place, he turned back to his host as Antoine brought on the braised meat. “But granting, sir, your possibility of exten- sion in the time dimension, to what prac- tical purpose do you age to apply this theory?” I had my marked RUSpicion that the meat was horseflesh, but Antoine had accom- plished such wonders with a sauce borde- laise that I didn’t give a damn. That sauce would have been enough to distract my attention from most conversations, but Dr. Palgrave’s next remark jerked me back. “Propose to? But, my dear colonel, I have applied it. My time machine is already in operation.” All of the colonel’s plump body shook ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION with delight. “Ah, so? And what treasures do you bring us from the future, dear doctor? Ray guns perhaps, to aid us in perpetuating the New Order?” “I must confess that I have so far suc- ceeded only with the past, but—” “The past? But there are treasures there, too. Perhaps you could fetch back and re- store the honor and glory of France?” He chuckled long at this one. “I... have not as yet ventured into the machine myself. But I consider my efforts with the transportation of inanimate objects and of small animals to have proved my case completely. Iron sent into the past, left there for a year, and brought back has returned covered with rust, while it remained in the machine for only a minute of our time here. My first guinea pig died of old age through a mistake in my calculations. He was not yet adult when I put him in the machine; when I took him out thirty seconds later, he was dead of senile decay.” Colonel von Schwarzenau’s chuckle be- came almost a giggle. “You are so symbolic, my dear doctor. It is you and not our friend here who should be the poet. Iron that rusts and guinea pigs that die of seriile decay, always while seeking the past and ignoring the future. What better picture could you paint of the Third Republic?” I held my temper. “And you offer—” “Steel that never rusts and men who never age while their eyes remain fixed on the future, on the glory of the New Order. Steel and the bodies of men and always the future, the German future that must be the future of the world.” For a moment he was in deadly earnest, but* then the pudgy chuckle crept back into his voice. “Ah, it is good to be among representatives of your great democracy who still understand us. And such representatives. A scientist and a poet: A _ scientist who plays with time machines and a poet who plays with sur- realism. There is your science and your art in a democracy. And yet you understand us, do you not, my friends? You are the admiring crowd who look up at the spiked wheels of the Juggernaut and cry, ‘How beautiful is the goddess Kali today!’ And because you see her beauty, she will spare you. Yes, you will be spared, and long may you be happy here in your haunted villa. Pursue your time machines and your surreal reality. And do not interfere.” There was a . fleeting expression of grimness, then a broad beam. oO comiclooks (©