The Time Mirror Part 10

The next instant Mark's voice rose in a scream.

"_Look out!_"

Instinctively, without so much as a backward glance, the old man lunged forward. Even as he did so, he felt something jerk at his ankle. His leg came out from under him. He pitched to the floor.

_Cras.h.!.+_

The crucible was falling, jerked from its place atop the lab bench! The electric cable which supplied its current was twisted about the professor's ankle, somehow unconsciously caught by his foot as he worked.

Molten gla.s.s burst out of the pot in a white-hot wave. Slopped over the composition floor in a steaming river. Engulfed table legs and radiator pipes alike.

And then, like a writhing snake, the high tension line from which the crucible cable stemmed was whipping down, torn loose by the jar of the professor's leap!

Down it came! Struck the floor once. Lashed against the gla.s.s-engulfed radiator pipes, bare wires flas.h.i.+ng.

A ball of purple fire exploded at the contact point, while the cable jerked and twisted like a living thing. The laboratory was suddenly permeated with ozone's peculiar odor.

"Look out!" cried Mark again.

But already Professor Duchard had jerked his foot free of the crucible line. He shrank back under the long bench, away from the writhing cable.

An instant later the current went dead. The crackling ball of purple fire evaporated into thin air.

Mark sprang across the room to where the scientist lay. He pulled him to his feet.

"Are you all right, professor? Are you hurt?"

"Yes, yes, my boy. It was a narrow escape, but your warning saved me. I am all right."

The savant leaned against the bench, trying to still the reflexive trembling of his body. His face was pale. He ran his tongue over lips suddenly gone dry as he stared down at the broken high tension line, and thought of what would have happened had it touched him in its spasm.

And then, suddenly, his blue eyes went wide with stark amazement.

"Mark!" he gasped.

"What's wrong, professor? What is it?"

"That gla.s.s on the floor! Look at it!"

The other stared uncomprehendingly.

"The waves, Mark! See the waves!"

A startled exclamation burst from the younger man's lips. He dropped to his knees. Scrutinized the puddle of gla.s.s.

But the scientist pulled him erect again.

"My instruments!" he ordered in a voice that trembled. "Quick! I must make tests--"

For half an hour he worked. And when at last he straightened, complete confidence gleamed deep in his eyes.

"Is it--"

Professor Duchard nodded.

"It is. That was the secret, my boy. The secret we sought but could not find. The time mirror is merely a special gla.s.s which has been subjected to a terrific electrical discharge, then silvered. That piece on the floor is worthless, of course; too many elements were uncontrolled.

"But knowing the formula as we do; knowing exactly what we are searching for and how to prepare it, I would stake my reputation that we can duplicate the mirror Adrian Vance sent to Elaine."

Mark's eyes were gleaming. His jaw hard.

"Then do it!" he commanded.

"But what good would it do? We cannot bring Elaine back--"

"Maybe not." The other's tanned face was grim. "But we can send me back to where she is."

"Send you back!"

"Yes." A pause. "You see, I've been thinking about the things you've told me, Professor Duchard. About time travel, and how it works.

"You say we can't save Elaine. Well, that's probably true. Maybe she's got to die in France, back in the days before the revolution."

A tremor of emotion pa.s.sed over him as he said it. He swallowed hard.

Then:

"But if she must die, she can at least die easily. Cleanly. Quickly, with a knife through her heart. She doesn't have to go the way Adrian Vance wants her to--tortured by a bunch of drunken sc.u.m, then cut to pieces without a chance to fight back."

There was pain in the professor's face, too, when he answered.

"I wish it were as easy as that, Mark."

Mark's voice was fierce.

"What's wrong with it? What's to stop me?"

The other sighed. Brushed back white hair with a sweep of one frail hand.

"You cannot change history, my boy," he said sadly. "A study of cosmology would show you that such things are immutable. You can go backward or forward through time and partic.i.p.ate in them, but you cannot change them."

"How do you know? Who's traveled through time and then come back to say we can't change events?"

"You do not understand--"

"And I don't care!" the younger man flared. "I may fail--but I'm going to try! I'm not going to sit here, waiting for Elaine to die--"