Avon Fantasy Reader No. 8 — page 34: what you’re looking at

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

30 FRANCIS FLAGG “A pre-historic man!” I exclaimed. “What do you mean?” “I mean that you are one of that race of early men whose skeletons we have dug up here and there and reconstructed for our schools of biology. Marvelous how our scientists have copied you from some fragments of bone! The small head covered with hair; the beast-like jaw; the abnormally large body and legs; the artificial coverings made of cloth . . . even your language!” For the first time I began to suspect that I was the victim of a hoax. I got up and walked carefully around the cylinder but could detect no outside agency controlling the contraption. Besides, it was absurd to think that anyone would go to all the trouble of constructing such a complicated apparatus as this appeared to be, merely for the sake of a practical joke. Nevertheless, I looked | out on the landing. I came back and resumed my seat in front of the cylinder. . “Pardon me,” I said, “but you referred to me as belonging to a period much More remote than yours.” : . “That is correct. If I am not mistaken in my calculations, you are thirty thousand years in the past. What date is this?” “June 5th, 1926,” I replied feebly. The .creature went through some contortions, sorted a few metal tubes with its hands, and then announced in its metallic voice: | “Computed in terms of your method of reckoning, I have travelled back through time exactly twenty-eight thousand years, nine months, three weeks, two days, seven hours, and a certain number of minutes and seconds which it is useless for me to enumerate exactly.” It was at this point that I endeavored to make sure I was wide awake and in full possession of my faculties. I got up, selected a fresh cigar from the humidor, struck a light and began puffing away. After a few puffs I laid it beside the one I had been smoking earlier in the evening. I found it there later. Incontestable proof .. . I said that I am a man of steady nerves. Iam. I sat down in front of the - cylinder again determined this time, to find out what I could about the in- credible creature within. 3 A: “You say you have traveled back through time thousands of years. How is that possible?” “By verifying time as a fourth dimension and perfecting devices for travel- sd ing in it.” : “In what manner?” “I do not know whether I can explain it exactly, in your language, and you are too primitive and unevolved to understand mine. However [ shall try: Know then that space is as much a relative thing as time. In itself, aside from _its relation to matter, it has no existence. You can neither see nor touch it, yet ar you move freely in spacé. Is that clear?” Se “It sounds like Einstein’s theory.” oe = | Gomicbooks |