Astounding Science Fiction (UK Edition) — page 62: what you’re looking at

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

60 ventures into the past with senile guinea pigs and rusting iron? “It would be fun,” I said, “to see your ghost meet your colonel.” Dr. Palgrave half smiled. “But we talk of these trivial matters when I have so much to show you, Holding. I want so very much to interest you in my experiments. I even dare hope that if I can convince you—” There was an honest-to-God gleam in his eye. “Hold on,” I said hurriedly. “You aren’t aiming to graduate from guinea pigs to me, are you?” “I should not have put it quite that way, but my thought | was something of that nature.” “I'm afraid,” I said politely, “I haven't any scientific aptitude.’ I'd never learn to | handle the controls on a time machine. I can’t even drive a car.” “Oh, that would be nothing. I have .a remote-control panel so that I can operate the machine from such a distance that its field does not affect me. Contact with the field, you see, sets up a certain sympathetic parallel in the electronic vibrations of the blood stream; it is that that enables me to recall a living object from the past even if it has left the physical bounds of the machine.” “Then you have brought them back alive?” “Guinea pigs, yes. But I have not had the opportunity to experiment with higher forms of life. How the field would affect the nervous system, whether there might be certain synaptic short circuits— Antoine refuses to make the attempt. And moreover he .is so valuable a cook— But if I could interest you in the tremendous possibili-. ties—” I cursed Henri-Marie de Champsfleuris thoroughly up one side and down the other. It wasn’t enough that he should play pur- loined letter with me under the nose of a Gestapo colonel. No; he has to expose me as guinea pig to a time-machine crackpot. I began to think it would have been a simpler and safer life to hide in hedges, sleep in haymows, and live off ditch water till that fishing boat sailed. I couldn’t an- tagonize my host; but I was damned if I was going to have curious currents shot through me, whether they transported me in time or not. I was trying to frame a courteous excuse when I heard a thud that wasn’t from the Barras works. It was the steady rhythmic clump of trained marchers. They went to the back of ASTOUNDING SCIENCE-FICTION the house first, and I heard sullen curses and a sharp scream that must have come from Antoine. Then they came back, thud- ding across the terrace. The Barras works thumped out death for all men. The feet on the terrace thumped an unknown but far more immediate peril. And Dr. Palgrave talked about the effect of a temporomagnetic field on the ganglia of guinea pigs. The French windows opened and a squad of four men came in, in gray uniforms with swastika brassards. A corporal saluted us and said nothing. His hand was an ‘inch from his automatic as the men searched the room. 3 Dr. Palgrave paid no attention to them. I started to speak, but I thought better of it when I caught the corporal’s hard eye ‘ and saw his fingers twitch. I sat there listen- ing to the details of the Palgrave remote- control time mechanism while the four men completed their wordless search. The corporal saluted again in silence, and the searchers filed out. I stared at Dr. Pal- grave. | “It is nothing,” he said calmly. “You see we are near the Barras works. Not infre- quently saboteurs are spotted near here. Perhaps even a Commando. These searches are necessary. To protest would imperil my position. Antoine sometimes objects to the treatment he receives, but I give him a bonus.” I was speechless. But no speech from me was necessary. Dr. Palgrave’s remark was answered in a new voice, a fresh crude voice with a vivid Americanism I hadn’t: heard in years of self-exile. “Shut up, you guys,” it said, “and stay shut. Fermy le butch or cuppy le gorge, get me?” I turned to gape at the ghost of the villa —dirty, dungarees, tattered tennis shoes, blackened face and all. . “Why, you're the ghost,” Dr. Palgrave observed, as one who notes an interesting but insignificant fact. “Brother, it’s you that’s slated to be the ghost if there’s any trouble.” There was a sheen of steel in the figure’s hand—an efficient-looking blade about six inches long that seemed to be all cutting edge. I got it. “You’re a Commando,” I said. He snorted. “You civilians don’t know from nothing. “I’m a Commandoman.” I was put in my place again. “But, look, boys. You talk English, You talk it kind of funny Ccomiclooks.c©