Part 4 (2/2)

The two occupants couldn't be anyone other than Hitler and Goering. And I was suddenly aware that the map Goering pointed to so frequently was a map of Austria.

”But what,” I started again.

Stoddard looked me in the eye. ”I can understand a little German,” he said. ”They're talking about an invasion of Austria, and if you will look hard at the corner of that map, you'll see a date marked--1938!”

I did look hard, and of course I saw that date. I turned back to Stoddard.

”We're both crazy,” I said a little wildly, ”we're both stark, raving nuts. Let's get out of here.”

”We are looking back almost five years into the past,” Stoddard hissed.

”We are looking back five years into Germany, into a room in which Hitler and Goering are talking over an approaching invasion of a country called Austria. I might have believed I was crazy when I first found this alone, but not now!”

Maybe we were both crazy. Maybe he was wrong. But then and there I believed him, and I knew that somehow, in some wild, impossible fas.h.i.+on, that belfry on Stoddard's asinine house had become a door leading through s.p.a.ce and time, back five years into Germany, into the same room where Adolf Hitler and Hermann Goering planned the conquest of Austria!

Stoddard was taking something out of his pocket.

”Now that you're here I can try it,” he said. ”I didn't dare do so before, since I felt I couldn't trust my own mind alone in the thing.”

I looked at what he held in his hands. A stone, tied to a long piece of string.

”What's that for?” I demanded.

”I want to see if that veil, that gray fog door, can be penetrated,” he hissed.

Stoddard was swinging the stone on a string in a sharp arc now. And suddenly he released it, sending it sailing through the grayish aperture in the ceiling, straight into the belfry, or rather, the big room.

I saw and heard the stone on the string hit the marble floor of that room. Then, just as sharply, Stoddard jerked it back, yanking it into the attic again.

The result in the room beyond the fog sheet was instantaneous. Goering wheeled from the map on the wall, glaring wildly around the room. A pistol was in his hand.

Hitler had half risen behind that ornate desk, and was searching the vast, otherwise unoccupied room wildly with his eyes.

Of course neither saw anything. Stoddard, breathing excitedly at my side, had pulled the stone back into our section of time and s.p.a.ce. But his eyes were gleaming.

”It can be done,” he whispered fiercely. ”It can be crossed!”

”But what on--” I started. He cut me off with a wave of his hand, pointing back to the gray screen covering the hole in the ceiling.

Goering had put the pistol back in the holster at his side, and was grinning sheepishly at der Fuehrer, who was resuming his seat behind the desk in confused and angry embarra.s.sment.

The voices picked up again.

”They're saying how silly, to be startled by a sound,” Stoddard hissed in my ear.

Then he grabbed my arm. ”But come, we can't wait any longer. Something has to be done immediately.”

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