Wonder Stories, December, 1934
The Time Tragedy
by Raymond A. Palmer
Wonder Stories, December, 1934
up, the judge is taking it pretty
his attempt at interruption was vain. There
hard. Y’see, the boy’s his only
was no stopping the voice. It rang on.
“Y son, and him being missin’ this “Don’t try to stop me. I’ve got to tell way for more’n a month without
the story from the beginning. You’ve got to
no word; well, if you knew as well as I do the believe it. This afternoon the photographer
way them two has been pals, you’d kinda get
delivered the prints of a snapshot I took just the way the judge is taking it.” Police before William disappeared. Then the Lieutenant McKennedy shifted his plug of newspapers called asking for some tobacco to the other jaw and observed the big information about the missing boy, and I got feet of the sergeant on the desk before him.
out an old scrapbook of family clippings. A
“Funny where he went,” came a voice
similarity between the photo I had just
from behind the feet, “just seemed to drop
received and an old newsprint picture drew
clean out of sight.”
my attention .... but I must begin at the
“You said it. I ain’t never seen beginning or you won’t understand.” And this anything .... dang it, there goes the phone
is the judge’s story:
again.” McKennedy reached over and yanked
the instrument to his chest. “Police
* * *
headquarters,” he barked. “Oh, hello, judge,
no word yet .... what!”
In the spring of 1901, two years after I took The sergeant’s feet thumped to the the bench, my father, Andrew Gregory, was floor at the incredulous enunciation of the last murdered. I remember the night horribly well.
word. McKennedy clapped his hand over the
Father had gone into the library to secure a mouthpiece. “My God, sarge, the judge is
book on law to substantiate a point in
going nuts .... says he’s going to commit argument, while I remained seated before the suicide. Get out the squad and hurry down to comfortable fire in the living room—you
his place while I try to stall him.”
know the situation; the house is the same now McKennedy removed his hand from
as it was then. Suddenly I heard a peculiar
the mouthpiece as the sergeant turned on his whining noise, the noise that a swiftly running heel. “Wait a minute, judge; say that again.”
dynamo might make, then a crash. Father
The voice from the receiver sounded
cried out and I dashed toward the library to clearly in the silence of the office. “I said I’m investigate, but I was too late. On the floor, going to kill myself. I’m going to go insane blood oozing from a deep wound in his head,
otherwise.”
was Father, and standing over him in an
“Good Lord, judge, don’t do that. attitude of stupefaction was a young man, We’ll find the boy soon now ....”
perhaps twenty-five years old. A heavy
“No you won’t. He’s dead.”
andiron from the library fireplace was in his
“Who told you that? We’ve no report
hand.
indicating anything ....”
For a moment we faced each other, the
“I tell you he’s dead! And I killed him!
young fellow staring at me with what seemed, Now listen, McKennedy; my mind is going
at the time, an unnaturally horrified air. I tell and I’ve got to tell you before I die. I killed you, that young man was more terrified at the him, I tell you, over thirty years ago!”
sight of me than he was of the deed he had
just committed.
shrilling into his ear through the receiver, but
“You!” he gasped. Then pale as a
The Time Tragedy
3
ghost, but with an astounding alacrity, he addressed no one in particular. “William leaped from a window and was gone.
Gregory—1901—sentenced to... no!” His
Our police department was as efficient
shout was sudden and determined. “No, I’m
as it is now, and before the night was over, he not insane. My mind is as clear as yours—a
was in a cell.
whole lot clearer. As to what I was doing in I went down to see him the next day.
your house last night, I cannot tell you. You When I appeared at the entrance to his
would not believe, nor would it change the
cell, he leaped to his feet, presenting an course of events were I to tell you. What has extremely disheveled countenance to my been, must be.”
view—a face that had gone through hell.
From that moment on, McKennedy, I
“God, no!” he cried, thrusting an arm
marveled with everyone else at the silence the before his eyes protectingly. “It can’t be true!”
youth steadfastly maintained. All through the
“But it is, you scoundrel!” I retorted.
trial we could get nothing from him but an
“Young man, do you realize that you are a
admission of his guilt and the meaningless
murderer?”
statement that what had been, must be. The
He did not answer, continuing to jury found him guilty in what was claimed cower back in that strange terror of me. “What record time. They were influenced by what the is your name?” I tried another question.
papers decried as “incredible stubbornness
He turned downright ashen then, and an apparent indifference to his crime.”
dropping his arm from his eyes to stare into On May 29. 1901. I sentenced him to
mine. “William Gregory,” he choked out, as if hang by the neck until he should be dead—on
the words were the hardest he had ever July 8 the sentence was carried out. I have the spoken. I was taken aback. It was something
clippings before me bearing those fatal dates.
of a shock to learn that his last name was the Until this day I have had no reason to examine same as mine, and thus, of course, also that of them closely in an effort to refresh my
his victim. I remember how the newspapers
memory, but now they burn in my brain in
played that up.
letters of fire. But to continue my story in I pursued my questioning. “What was
proper sequence, William Gregory, the
your errand in my house last night? You don’t murderer, became but a dim, hardly
look like a thief.”
remembered memory that finally faded out
He ignored my question, continuing to
entirely. In 1908 I married, and in 1909 my
stare at me. I grew uncomfortable under the
son was born. A momentary recollection of
horror possessing the depths of those black
the case flashed into my mind at the news that eyes. Then suddenly he burst out, “Tell me,”
my wife had selected William as the name for he begged, “tell me, what year is this? They my son, but I dismissed it as unworthy of
told me it was....” he halted, as if dreading to mention, since she seemed so thoroughly to
mention it.
like the name.
“What year?” I asked in an astoun
During the years that passed, would to
tone. “Why it’s 1901, of course. Are you
God that I had scanned my scrapbooks, but
trying to feign insanity? If you are, you aren’t being modestly inclined, I disliked such
going to get away with it.”
egotistical indulgence. If I had, I might have noted the growing resemblance and when the
At once he dropped to his cot, a blank look of time came, done the one thing that might have despair settling upon his face, and he changed the future. But I did not, and the
Wonder Stories
4
scrapbooks gathered dust in the garret.
objective!
William progressed finely in school,
As I gazed at the complicated array of
evidencing a promising engineering ability machinery that confronted me in his along with a keen scientific mind. He laboratory above the library, I was suddenly discussed with friends things far beyond my
possessed with the certainty that he had done own mental interests, and finally I abandoned something unknowable. The machinery had a
the fond hope that he would become a veritable aura of untried possibilities practical engineer when I perceived that his emanating from its shining parts. I felt it, too, mind strayed more into theoretical channels. I in his enthusiasm as he explained it all to me.
was quite satisfied that he should be an An uncanny feeling of foreboding crept over inventor, and since my own fortune had me. but I shook it off. Complicated as this accumulated to a satisfying degree. I allowed machine looked, I was sure that it could not him to develop his life work in his own way, offer anything of harm. There were no moving acting merely as the source of supply for
parts; electrical connections were all properly materials upon which to vent his genius.
grounded and safety measures provided for
You know his success as well as I do.
any overload of current, which was unlikely, He did fine work in the development of radio.
as the apparatus functioned on ordinary house Television reached a degree of perfection current.
through one of his theories, although he
“Have you tried it out?” I asked him
himself did not achieve the final result due to when he had finished his description of it.
what I sometimes considered his foolishness
“No,” he replied. “I am going to make several in immediately publishing his theories, tests that will take me a few more days and allowing other inventors to keep stride and
then I am going to make a personal sally into even to forge ahead of him in actual time.” Before I left, he made one of the tests, development. But then, it was his keen insight which consisted of a very bewildering
into the future that told him of the deadlock manipulation of the house cat—causing her to that would result because of the extreme disappear mysteriously and reappear again costliness of practical use.
under his deft guidance at the controls. Into Thus, early in 1933 he turned to a new
the future she had gone. William said, and I theory. He studied Einstein’s concepts until he had no reason to doubt him. The cat took the understood them as perfectly, I believe, as
matter in a calm way and seemed in no wise
even the great mathematician himself. Finally injured by its uncanny transit. So I left him his interest devolved down to one important
there, fully satisfied that he was in no danger.
item. Time, its meaning, and the answer to its Would to God I had smashed the machine to
riddle, became his one interest.
bits!
For long months he worked on his new
During the days that followed. I
apparatus, telling no one exactly what he was witnessed several more concluding
searching for, nor his purpose, until about five experiments. Then I was called away on
weeks ago. He came to me then with a light of business. When I returned, the household was exultance shining in his eyes and his lips
in an uproar, William had been abducted! He
brimming with scientific explanations. Time-
must have been, for he was gone.
traveling, he explained, had been his object, But I immediately thought of the time-and impossible as it seemed to me, he insisted machine, and commanding the servants to
that it was a fact—he had accomplished his
cease their silly rantings, I hurried to the
The Time Tragedy
5
laboratory. I must confess that there was a
space during those years, was precipitated into peculiar sensation of relief in my vitals the library just as my father entered it in (imagine feeling relief at the conviction that it search of his law book. What happened then is was really abduction) as I saw that the obvious. Father, discerning an intruder, machine was still there, in cold in-operation.
attacked immediately, actuated by his
William had said that the machine would naturally impetuous nature. William, dazed by disappear when actually used by someone his trip and finding himself assaulted by a within it, quite necessary for a return, of stranger, grasped the andiron and struck in course. I had no reason to doubt his accuracy self-defence.
in that supposition.
I have already described what
Thus, for more than a month now we
happened after that. It is all too true, and the have been vainly trying to solve the mystery contemplation of it is driving me mad. To
of his “abduction” with no success until this think that I sentenced my own son to death for morning, when it became necessary to retrieve what was obviously not a criminal action, and those unfortunate scrapbooks from the garret to think that he knew me, and knew his fate, in search of an item desired by the newspaper.
having read my scrapbooks through and
Having them laid before me, I took an
through! God! I cannot stand it. What a
interest in paging through them to kill the
paradoxical hell this life has become!
inaction of eternally waiting for news that did I clutched upon a desperate hope about
not come. And then the photographer an hour ago. Matter cannot exist in two places delivered the proofs of the snapshots I had
at the same time. Thus, I argued, his body
ordered developed. I stared long at the picture could not have been consigned to the grave, to of my missing son, and then laid the photo
remain there while he was born and grew to
down upon the open book beside an old manhood with that same body. If this were so, newsprint photo. As my eyes compared them,
then the whole horrible thing was untrue; but the terrible realization froze my very brain in my own family doctor, who is a scientist of no my head—for the prints, though in different
mean repute, assures me that a human being,
poses, were identical! I knew then that in the space of seven years, retains no single William Gregory, the murderer, was William
atom of matter which formerly constituted his Gregory, my son.
makeup, each cell having been individually
Impossible, you say? No, my dear replaced many times over in the natural McKennedy, I have considered it from every
processes of the body. Thus the clay that lies possible angle. There can be no mistake, in a murderer’s grave is not the flesh born of though I have tried desperately to confute my my wife.
reasoning. As if I had witnessed every action I clutched another hope. What then of
of my son on the day he disappeared, I know
his body in manhood? Those terrible
that he stepped into the time-machine clippings; they refute with terrorizingly determined on a trip into the past, perhaps
complete logic my every hope! For William’s
himself
choosing 1901 as his goal, Great God!
body was not buried. It does not lie beneath Why did he not realize that the machine would the soil. It was consigned to the lime-pit to be no more travel with him than a cannon travels absolutely dissolved!
with its projectile? But he did not, and turning Continually ringing in my ears is that
the switch was hurled backward in time to
terrible phrase “What has been, must be.” To 1901, and through some misplacement of me this life has become a hell of confusion.
Wonder Stories
6
Which is past, and which is future? If I had that anyone will arrive in time to save me, for known of the similarity of the two young men, I anticipated your action, and they will not could I have saved him by smashing the find me at home! I will not live in madness.
machine ? God, I do not know. The doubt is
Hell cannot be worse than that. Good-bye,
bringing madness.
McKennedy, and God have mercy on my soul.
At first I asked myself, “Why did he
not save himself?” but then I realized that it
* * *
was impossible. How could he make me, or
anyone else, believe that I, who was not yet McKennedy staggered back from the phone in
married, was his father? Yes, he knew that he horror as the sharp explosion of an automatic could not save himself. What agonies he must rang in his ears. With trembling fingers he
have suffered. It is too terrible to think of.
replaced the receiver and slumped down at his Horror is creeping ever closer. I have the gun desk. His awed whisper broke the silence of
in my hand. And, McKennedy, do not hope
the room. “An’ I thought he was nuts!”