Part 16 (1/2)

Twissell said, almost as though chiming in with Harlan's thoughts, ”The time-gauge is set for a thrust back to the 23.17th. That requires no adjustment. Your only task is to pour energy through at the proper moment in physiotime. There is a chronometer to the right of the gauge. Nod if you see it.”

Harlan nodded.

”It will reach zero-point backward. At the minus-fifteen-second point, align the contact points. It's simple. You see how?”

Harlan nodded again.

Twissell went on, ”Synchronization is not vital. You can do it at minus fourteen or thirteen or even minus five seconds, but please make every effort to stay this side of minus ten for safety's sake. Once you've closed contact, a synchronized force-gear will do the rest and make certain that the final energy thrust will occur precisely at time zero. Understood?”

Harlan nodded still again. He understood more than Twissell said. If he himself did not align the points by minus ten, it would be taken care of from without.

Harlan thought grimly: There'll be no need for outsiders.

Twissell said, ”We have thirty physiominutes left. Cooper and I will leave to check on the supplies.”

They left. The door closed behind them, and Harlan was left alone with the thrust control, the time (already moving slowly backward toward zero)--and a resolute knowledge of what must be done.

Harlan turned away from the window. He put his hand inside his pocket and half withdrew the neuronic whip it still contained. Through all this he had kept the whip. His hand shook a little.

An earlier thought recurred: a Samson-smash of the temple!

A corner of his mind wondered sickly: How many Eternals have ever heard of Samson? How many know how he died?

There were only twenty-five minutes left. He was not certain how long the operation would take. He was not really certain it would work at all.

But what choice had he? His damp fingers almost dropped the weapon before he succeeded in unhinging the b.u.t.t.

He worked rapidly and in complete absorption. Of all the aspects of what he planned, the possibility of his own pa.s.sage into nonexistence occupied his mind the least and bothered him not at all.

At minus one minute Harlan was standing at the controls.

Detachedly he thought: The last minute of life?

Nothing in the room was visible to him but the backward sweep of the red hairline that marked the pa.s.sing seconds.

Minus thirty seconds.

He thought: It will not hurt. It is not death.

He tried to think only of Noys.

Minus fifteen seconds.

Noys!

Harlan's left hand moved a switch down toward contact. Not hastily!

Minus twelve seconds.

Contact!

The force-gear would take over now. Thrust would come at zero time. And that left Harlan one last manipulation. The Samson-smas.h.!.+

His right hand moved. He did not look at his right hand.

Minus five seconds.

Noys!

His right hand mo--ZERO--ved again, spasmodically. He did not look at it.

Was this nonexistence?

Not yet. Nonexistence not yet.

Harlan stared out the window. He did not move. Time pa.s.sed and he was unaware of its pa.s.sage.

The room was empty. Where the giant, enclosed kettle had been was nothing. Metal blocks that had served as its base sat emptily, lifting their huge strength against air.

Twissell, strangely small and dwarfed in the room that had become a waiting cavern, was the only thing that moved as he tramped edgily this way and that.

Harlan's eyes followed him for a moment and then left him.

Then, without any sound or stir, the kettle was back in the spot it had left. Its pa.s.sage across the hairline from time past to time present did not as much as disturb a molecule of air.

Twissell was hidden from Harlan's eyes by the bulk of the kettle, but then he rounded it, came into view. He was running.

A flick of his hand was enough to activate the mechanism that opened the door of the control room. He hurtled inside, shouting with an almost lyrical excitement. ”It's done. It's done. We've closed the circle.” He had breath to say no more.

Harlan made no answer.

Twissell stared out the window, his hands flat against the gla.s.s. Harlan noted the blotches of age upon them and the way in which they trembled. It was as though his mind no longer had the ability or the strength to filter the important from the inconsequential, but were selecting observational material in a purely random manner.

Wearily he thought: What does it matter? What does anything matter now?

Twissell said (Harlan heard him dimly), ”I'll tell you now that I've been more anxious than I cared to admit. Sennor used to say once that this whole thing was impossible. He insisted something must happen to stop it---- What's the matter?”

He had turned at Harlan's odd grunt.

Harlan shook his head, managed a choked ”Nothing.”

Twissell left it at that and turned away. It was doubtful whether he spoke to Harlan or to the air. It was as though he were allowing years of pent-up anxieties to escape in words.

”Sennor,” he said, ”was the doubter. We reasoned with him and argued. We used mathematics and presented the results of generations of research that had preceded us in the physiotime of Eternity. He put it all to one side and presented his case by quoting the man-meets.h.i.+mself paradox. You heard him talk about it. It's his favorite.

”We knew our own future, Sennor said. I, Twissell, knew, for instance, that I would survive, despite the fact that I would be quite old, until Cooper made his trip past the downwhen terminus. I knew other details of my future, the things I would do.