Authentic Science Fiction, No. 23 — page 36: what you’re looking at

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

68 THE SINGING SPHERES met with catastrophe 800,000 years ago. know for another 100,000 years—” “Oh, dear,” said Tubby. “What now?” “That beam of light idea—it makes that confounded : The Wise Ones found how to goa = machine more plausible. little way along the beam, as it were—” Personally, I felt like going a long way round the bend, as | they used to say, but at least the discussion took our minds © from that forbidding line of spheres watchfully perched against | the rocks and from the nagging anxiety which began to close @ upon us as nerves stretched to meet the tension. Beams? Light-beams or force-beams? surface. force or why they failed to puncture themselves on sharp corners. Easing myself round a little, I noticed for the first — time that the guards did not. after all, rest firmly against the & cliff-face, but remained some two or three feet away. In fact, 7 by shifting my line of sight more to the left, I obtained a clear view behind them right down to the brown, desolate % plain beyond. I told Hartnell about this. tion. “Eh? Well, what of it?” This rather took the wind out of my sails, and I muttered 3 something about it being interesting. He looked at me curiously and resumed his lecture. “Now © Oh, yes, well this ingenious Dunne imagined | time as a sort of escalator, with a man travelling on it back- | wards, looking down to where he had been—that’s the Past, 7 of course—yet all the time being carried upwards he knows © where was I? Now if—” not where—that’s the Future. He broke off and gripped my arm like a swamp-octopus { from Zonnash. Deep in my own quagmire of despondent re- | flections, it nearly made me jump right out of my atmosphere | suit. Even so, we won't That brought me 7 to the question of the guards again and made the whole sub- | ject pointless. They propped themselves there, about ten feet © from ground level, winking with an evil, greenish sheen. | Through their tenuous substance I could see the uneven rock- 4 Strange how such frail bubbles could hold so great a | He was in the middle of a | rather tedious discourse about the theories of some ancient | scientist named Dunne, who had performed elementary ex- 7 periments in time, and he didn’t take kindly to the interrup- 7 THE SINGING SPHERES 69 - What was that you said, Pop?” “Eh?. Me? _ Why, nothing—TI was just thinking—” He gestured impatiently. “Not just now—a few moments ago. About the guards—”’ ‘Then I remembered. “Why, only that they don’t actually cling to the rocks. They’re hovering a couple of feet or so He guffawed delightedly. “Yes, they are, aren’t they?” "What's all this about?” demanded Tubby, suspiciously. Look here,” I said, equally doubtful. “What hare- brained scheme have you hatched up this time?” We knew sufficient of Hartnell’s little ways—through bitter experience—to get alarmed when he showed enthusiasm of that kind. “Just a little idea to get out of here,” he said, modestly. I drew a deep exasperated breath. “Is that all? And precisely how—?” Sarcasm is always wasted on Hartnell. “Look, Pop, have a word with Fuzzy-bubble and ask him whether it’s alent that a good, brisk prod would puncture the guards’ envelopes.” What good will that do? They'd never let you get within a dozen yards of em! Besides, all we’ve got to do it with are tn Pees ae they don’t work on inorganic matter—” egally, he brushed objectio “Don’ an fay; j ns aside. “Don’t argue, Pop. Fuzzy-bubble, although rather surprised by such a grue- some query, agreed that this was true. “Failure of the enve- lope is invariably fatal, of course. That is why executions are performed by tearing it apart.” yee ae if Uae a lot of strength,” said Hartnell. pparently it did—the maximum oS : ote gESOny a healthy young sphere “I still don’t see what you’re planning,” I said. “Tf you chucked a pointed rock at ’em they’d only catch it in mid-air.” He laughed delightedly. ‘“‘Nothing so crude, Pop. Finesse —that’s what we’re going to use. Warn Fuzzy-bubble and the aoe one. Tell ’em to be ready to follow us—” S1 He raised his eyebrows. me?” There is a very ancient saying about “jumping out of the frying pan into the fire.” I thought those old philosophers “Don’t you want to come with Gomichbooks.co