A Trip to Anywhen
Amazing Stories – May 1956
(1956)*
Randall Garrett
(as by Ivar Jorgensen)

Want to see the hanging gardens of Babylon? Care to spend an afternoon at the Roman games in the Colosseum? Or perhaps a jaunt hack into the pre-Cro-Magnon days where you could watch Man discover fire? Okay? Fine, but one thing—you'll have to wait until Time of Your Life Tours is organized. It won't be long now.

-

	The sign on the door, in gold-bordered black letters on pebbled glass, said:

TIME OF YOUR LIFE 
TOURS, INC.

	The office was on the twenty-second floor of a first-rate office building in midtown Manhattan, and in my business I don't get to see too many first-rate office buildings. I'm a private dick—not exactly giving old man Pinkerton gray hair, but it's a living.

	I opened the door and waded across a carpet deep enough to hide mice in. There were murals on the wall and right away I began to figure it was some kind of history club. I'm not a bug on history or archaeology, but when I see pictures of Egyptian pyramids and Doric Grecian temples and Sancta Sophia and the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, I recognize them.

	Sitting surrounded by all this history and holding down a circular desk was the kind of girl that belongs in a first-rate office building. She had hair which once would have been called strawberry blonde but now the name if not the color is out of fashion. These days they call it copper. She had the deepest blue eyes I have ever seen. She was beautiful and while the high round desk hid her figure from the ribs down, what you could see of her body in a shimmering blue dress as tight as a corn husk fits an ear of corn was every bit as breath-taking as the face.

	I handed her my calling card and studied her while she studied it. "Mr. Elgin," I said. "I have an appointment with him."

	Her eyes met mine and she said, "You're supposed to look at the pictures, not the receptionist."

	"I've seen pyramids and things before."

	"But not actual photographs of what they looked like in their heyday."

	"Are you trying to tell me—"

	She gave me back the card and said, "I'm not trying to tell you anything. If your eyes are retractable please pull them in while I tell Mr. Elgin you are here, Mr. Cabot."

	She had taken the round on points, so I retreated to my corner and waited for the bell. After a while she said, "Down the hall and through the first door on your left, Mr. Cabot."

	I was halfway down the hall before I realized something was funny. The office. It was a large suite of rooms and it must have cost them plenty, but there wasn't a customer or a client in the large waiting room and the place looked so neat it didn't seem there had ever been one. Except for the gorgeous receptionist there didn't seem to be another employee of TIME OF YOUR LIFE TOURS, INC., either, except for Mr. Elgin, who I was going to see. There had to be a catch somewhere.

	Otherwise, this whole layout was for my benefit.

-

	I knocked on Mr. Elgin's door and a deep voice told me to come in. The office was completely devoid of furniture. It was big and bare and my footsteps echoed as I walked across it. Mr. Elgin sat, yogi-fashion, in the middle of the floor. He was smoking a cigar and incredibly the cigar smelled exactly like roast chicken.

	"Mind if I finish my lunch?" he asked politely between puffs.

	I looked at the cigar. It was a little yellowish for a cigar, but it looked more like a cigar than it did like roast chicken. The smell was still there, though. Every time Elgin exhaled, I got a whiff of it. Roast chicken. And no tobacco smell at all.

	"Hearty appetite," I said, going along with the gag.

	Elgin appraised me and said, "You're cool, Cabot. I guess in your line of work you have to be."

	"In my line of work you have to be whatever the client wants. You might say my line of work is trouble. Other people's trouble."

	"Well, I have plenty of it, Cabot."

	"Shoot," I said, and gave the prospective client a good looking over. He was a big fellow who could have filled a man of distinction and to perfection. He had close-cropped salt and pepper hair and a hard handsome face. I put him somewhere between forty-five and fifty. He had enormous shoulders and a thick chest, but he wasn't dressed right. On the receptionist I had called the garment a dress. But it wasn't a dress. He was wearing one too and on him it was simply a close-fitting sheath which bisected itself to slacks on either leg.

	"Masquerade?" I said before he could begin his story.

	"It would be a masquerade," Elgin assured me, "if I were wearing what you're wearing."

	"Is that supposed to mean something to me?"

	"I hope it does before we're finished here."

	"Go ahead, Mr. Elgin."

	"TIME OF YOUR LIFE, INC. has lost one of its cruise ships." Elgin began. "We want you, to find it."

	"Where do you cruise to?"

	"Oh, just about all over. Thebes in Egypt, Periclean Athens, Chichen Itza under the Mayans, Sumer and Akkad, Ur of the Chaldees, the Battle of Waterloo, the Signing of the Magna Carta, the Battle of Hastings, the Assassination of Caesar, the Battle of Iwo Jima, the Building of the Tower of Babel, the Dropping of the First A Bomb on Hiroshima, the Battle of Heartbreak Fridge, the Death of Hitler. Just about anywhen."

	"Any what?" I said.

	"Any when," he repeated, making two words out of it this time. "TIME OF YOUR LIFE means exactly that, Mr. Cabot. We take guided tours through time."

	"Look, Jack," I said, getting sore because I thought he was pulling my leg, "if you have a case for me, I'm interested. But if this is someone's idea of a practical joke—"

	"Relax, Mr. Cabot. I assure you I would have no reason under the sun to play a joke on you, although, in a way, a sham has been attempted."

	"So now it comes out."

	"But only in one respect. This is a vacant suite of rooms, Mr. Cabot. You have been hypnotized to accept the furniture in the waiting room as real but you'll notice there's no furniture here in this room. We didn't want to fool you: we merely wanted you to accept us. You see?"

	"What about this receptionist?" I asked.

	Elgin smiled for the first time. "Real enough, I assure you. Shall we go on?"

-

	I said we should go on.

	"Dru is the pilot of the missing time-ship," Mr. Elgin said. "She's the girl outside. She had taken a six-man tour of V.I.P.s in our own age—"

	"Which is when?" I asked, although I believed none of it so far.

	"Fourteen hundred years in the future, but that isn't important. Anyway, she took the V.I.P.s back here, to the mid-twentieth century. Prometheus Tours, our chief rival, thought this would be a splendid opportunity to discredit us. Accordingly, the time-ship was hijacked with its six V.I.P.s aboard. Dru was left here in your century. She contacted me and I came running in a two man scout-ship."

	"What do you need a private detective for?" I said. "I don't know a damn thing about time travel. I don't even know if I really believe you or not."

	"Because one of us, either Dru or myself, has got to stay here when the time ship is shuttled back. The other one might need some help."

	"So why not recruit it from your own century?"

	"Because we're trying to keep this thing quiet. Because I don't even want my own staff to know. Because time travel is under attack by certain anti-progress organizations in our own day and I don't want to give them fuel for their fire, as you would say. Will you help us?"

	"My rates are fifty dollars a day plus expenses," I said, although I would have settled for half of that.

	"Splendid. I'll have Dru make you some money right away."

	"Make it, did you say?"

	"Why yes, of course. TIME OF YOUR LIFE can't be expected to have on hand currency for each of a thousand civilizations that might be visited. We make our own money as it is needed."

	"No," I said, "thanks."

	"We don't counterfeit it. We make it."

	"There's a difference?"

	"In this case there is. The money we make is perfect money. Your Treasury Department experts couldn't tell it apart from the real thing. Here, I have a few bills in my pocket." He took out two twenties and a ten and gave them to me. I'm no expert but they looked like the real thing.

	I returned them to Mr. Elgin and shook my head, saying, "If this is some kind of elaborate stunt to pass out counterfeit money, it sure is a new one on me."

	"I already told you the money is as good as real. Do you want the job or don't you, Mr. Cabot? Prometheus Tours is desperate because we've been taking away a good deal of their business. If they can successfully discredit us—"

	"Sure. I'll take the job." What the hell, I thought, I wasn't working at the moment. I had nothing to lose. And & private eye is liable to meet almost anything ...

	"Splendid. You'll be going after the missing tour ship with Dru. I'll wait here to shuttle you in, if and when."

	"Where did the tour ship go? Where was it taken?

	"Our tracking devices show it was taken to Southern Europe."

	"Southern Europe? Which country?"

	"Not in this age, Mr. Cabot. Southern Europe some time ago."

	"Well, which country?"

	"I'm afraid they had no countries then. Southern Europe twenty thousand years ago."

	"Twenty!" I said.

	"Miss Dru is waiting for you."

-

	She was waiting but she didn't seem happy about it. "You're joining me?" she said.

	"Right."

	"But do you believe?"

	"Does it matter if I believe or not?"

	"Not right away it doesn't."

	"If you prove it to me, I'll believe. Hell/' I said, "if I told you I was flying off to the nearest star or something, would you believe me?"

	"Yes, of course. That's old stuff. We've had interstellar travel for three hundred years. Nothing to see, though, so we turned our attention to time."

	"I guess I should have kept my mouth shut."

	"Well, are you all set?"

	I patted the Magnum .357 in the shoulder harness I wore. It has a smaller bore than a .45 but it makes a bigger hole. "As all set as I'll ever be," I said.

	I expected Dru to get up and lead the way to their time machine. Instead, she beckoned me to the desk. It was a large round desk and she sat in the middle of it in a space big enough for one person easily and big enough for two in a tight squeeze.

	"Come on in," Dru said.

	I vaulted the desk like a high hurdles man at the 1956 Olympics. My arm got in the way so I had to put it around Dru's shoulder. It was more crowded in there for the two of us than rush hour on the IRT subway. I smiled at Dru but she didn't smile at me.

	"Time travel," she said pedantically, "is based upon the principle of a space-time continuum. You're familiar with the term?"

	"Yeah," I said, staring at Dru's face which was about two inches from my own. She was a tall girl and although it was hard to focus at this distance, she seemed prettier than ever.

	"There operates in the universe," Dru went on, "a law of conservation of matter and energy. Nothing is ever lost. Matter may be converted to energy: if that happens violently, we call it an atomic explosion. Energy may be converted to matter and if that happens under sufficiently mysterious circumstances, we call it creation. The point is, nothing is lost. The matter-energy continuum is conserved. Now, since matter-energy on the one hand and space-time on the other are continuous and identical throughout the universe, it follows that neither space nor time can be lost, in the same way that neither matter nor energy can become lost. You followed what I said so far?"

	I nodded my head. That brought my chin in contact with the crown of Dru's head because she had leaned down to do something to the bank of controls.

	"How does an ordinary space traveling device get from place to place in space—say an automobile or an airplane or a spaceship?"

	"Why, by moving of course."

	"Not of course, Mr. Cabot. By moving, yes. But through what medium? To travel in space, you move through time! There is no such thing as instantaneous travel, is there? Even light, the fastest known thing in the universe, travels at the finite speed of 186,000 miles per second. If you want to go by car from here to, say, Washington, D. C. you say it will take you about six hours. That is, in traveling across a certain distance of space, you travel through time. Right?"

	"If you put it that way, yes."

-

	She did something to the controls. The room began to blur. It spun and turned a uniform gray color, murals and all. I felt no sensation of motion but figured we were traveling if what Dru told me, or even a little bit of it, was true.

	"In the same way," she said, "to travel through time you must move through the medium of space. Where is yesterday, Mr. Cabot?"

	"I guess I flunk your course, teacher. You got me."

	"Well, consider this. The Earth spins on its axis and the Earth goes around the sun and the sun is moving freely through space, taking the Earth and all the planets with it in the general direction of the constellation Hercules. But this whole sector of galactic space, the sun and Hercules included, is spinning around the galactic center at a fixed rate of speed. In addition, the galaxy is itself drifting through space.

	It also belongs to a small local cluster of galaxies called a first level supergalaxy, which is moving through space. This first level super-galaxy belongs to a cluster of first level supergalaxies called a second level supergalaxy, and that has its own motion through space too. Then there is—"

	"I get the idea," I said.

	"Now, a time ship must somehow backtrack—simultaneously, of course, since to travel in time you travel through the medium of space, not the medium of time—on all those separate paths at once. That's precisely what we're doing at the moment."

	"I thought you said it was simultaneous."

	"It is, once we get underway. We must accelerate and slow down, though."

	Overhead, a light suddenly blinked on and off. I said nothing. I was-—for the moment—not even interested in Dru the way I had been interested in her at first. My head was whirling. The way she told it, I was beginning to believe.

-

	Later, Dru said: "Well, here we are."

	It still looked like a large circular desk to me. I climbed out and helped Dru over the side. She came lithely and for the first time I had a good look at her figure. All of it. The curves of the space-time continuum had nothing on her. I'd have followed her to the crack of doom if the space-time ship or whatever the hell it was would have taken us that far.

	"Look around you," Dru said.

	She had a point. I unfastened my eyes from her and gazed around. We were in a broad valley and the valley was surrounded by low green hills and the low hills by higher hills, azure hills, and off in the distance the azure hills were topped and ringed by purple mountains. A stream came tumbling and bubbling down from the mountains and the hills and frothed by almost at our feet. The big circular desk looked about as out of place as a Woolly Mammoth in Macy's window.

	"What Prometheus Tours is probably going to do," Dru said, reminding me I was on a case, "is this. They'll hold the V.I.P.s back here and never let on they're from Prometheus, not from TIME OF YOUR LIFE. The V.I.P.s will naturally be angry at the inconvenience. Probably the Prometheus people will pre-tend their time traveling mechanism is broken down."

	"Do you know where they are?"

	"About two miles from here, on the first level of hills to your left."

	"So we go over there, confront them and—"

	"There's one thing you don't understand, Cabot. When time travel was invented, a whole new set of laws was promulgated to cover it. One such law is this: time crime cannot be punished by my own century. Time crime must always be tried and punished by the laws of the century visited."

	"But back here there's no civilization," I said. "So obviously there are no laws."

	"Now you're catching on. That means the Prometheus people can do anything they want to further their ends. Even if they murdered us in the process, they couldn't be touched for it."

	"You didn't say anything about this back in the 20th century."

	"We wanted you to come."

	"I'd have come," I said.

-
	We began to walk toward the hills. I wondered about the Prometheus people up there, but didn't say anything. They would be able to see us coming from a long way off. If they were desperate and if they could get away with anything as Dru said, it could be a dangerous situation.

	I pointed this out to Dru and she shrugged and said, "That's why we hired you. To help us. What do you think we ought to do?"

	"I don't think we should have landed right out there in the middle of the valley like that, but it's too late to cry over that now. I don't think we ought to walk straight across the open valley. I think we ought to seek cover of some kind. I—"

	Just then something whistled by my ear and thunked into the trunk of a tree. It was a spear nearly ten feet long and whoever had been able to throw it like that would have made me look like a midget although I'm six feet tall and push a good two hundred pounds.

	I got down in the tall grass and dragged Dru down beside me. She didn't say anything but she was breathing hard. For the first time I thought she was afraid. I put my hand on her shoulder. She was trembling.

	After a little while the sound of many footsteps came across the valley. I got up on hands and knees and, crouching like that, chanced a look over the tall grass.

	There were about a hundred of them. They were naked. They carried spears and half of them were men and half women. They all looked like heroic statues done by Praxitiles or Michelangelo, men and women included. If I could judge it at this distance, the men were all close to seven feet tall. The women were strapping six footers but looked puny next to their mates. The men must have weighed a cool two hundred fifty pounds each.

-

	They came forward in a wide line, single file, ten feet or more between each figure. They were beating the tall grass with their spears. It took a few seconds for the idea to penetrate and when it did the hackles rose on the back of my neck. They were beating the grass—for us.

	"The way they're beating the grass," I said, "they couldn't miss us."

	"Who are they? I can't see a thing."

	"Savages. Cavemen, probably. If they come on us all of a sudden, by thrusting a spear in and making us yell, they're liable to be violent."

	"How far away are they now?"

	"Not more than a hundred yards."

	"You think we ought to reveal ourselves, Cabot?"

	"I think we better."

	I took her arm. She was still trembling when we stood up. The savages whooped something I didn't understand. They began to trot. They took enormous ground-covering strides. It would take them only a few seconds to reach us. They waved their spears and made thrusting motions with them and I didn't know who looked worse, the men with their shaggy beards and huge muscles or the women with their matted hair, yellow-toothed grins and hard flat muscles.

	I showed my hands at them, palms outward. Universal gesture, I told myself. Relax. You have nothing to worry about. Everybody knows the universal gesture for peace.

	Everybody?

	These jokers didn't. They kept coming and I thought we were done for. I didn't reach for my Magnum .357 revolver. It would have been futile. Defiant, sure, but while there was a chance—even a microscopic chance—they would change their minds, I didn't want to die defiantly.

	At the last moment, they reversed their spears. Apparently only the points were sharp, for they held the edges. The hafts were as thick as the meat-ends of baseball bats. They swung them easily as they came, like baseball players leveling at the pitcher. But the spears were ten feet long and there wasn't any pitcher. There was us.

	Dru screamed something. It was the last thing I heard for a long time. One of the men swung his spear around, haft foremost, and he hit both of us with it. He swung it easily but it blurred at us with incredible speed. Had he swung it harder, he would have taken our heads off. As it was, the space-time continuum opened up a yawning chasm beneath our feet and I tumbled in with Dru. I shouted to her to catch on to something but the shout echoed and echoed from infinite distances. The infinite distances were all inside my skull. I lost consciousness.

-

	"Are you all right?" Dru said, much later.

	"No. My head feels like they were using it for a gong."

	"Mine too. I—I'm afraid to open my eyes, Cabot."

	I opened mine. The place was a cave. It was very warm in there and flickering crimson light bathed us. We sat near a fire. I could see the shadows of the cave people at the outer edge of the circle of light cast by the fire, but they didn't come any closer. Since there was a considerable chill in the air, I decided it was because they were afraid of the fire. It might be important and I wanted to find out.

	I stood up and for a moment my head whirled dizzily.

	"What are you going to do?" Dru wanted to know.

	Instead of answering her, I grabbed a brand from the fire and advanced with it. You could hear the slap-slap-slap of the cave peoples' feet as they beat a hasty retreat. When I -put the brand down, the shadows came back after a while.

	"It's something to know," I said. "They're afraid of the fire."

	"Of their own fire?" Dru said, surprised.

	"It looks that way. Well, what do we do now? We could probably get out of here if I use a brand to scare them off."

	"I don't know, Cabot. The Prometheus people probably had them bring us here. Maybe we'd better see them."

	"O.K.." I shrugged. "But just in case what you said about them being able to get away with, murder back here is correct, I'll keep this brand ready. If they get tough, we can always stampede the cavemen."

	A voice said: "That would be foolish. They might trample you, too." It wasn't Dru's voice. It was a man's voice.

	The cavemen moved aside in awe to let him pass. You could tell it was awe the way they shouldered one another out of the way. They regarded the newcomer exactly as they regarded the fire: it was something which would do them a lot of good but they were afraid of it.

	"I know him," Dru whispered. "That's the president of Prometheus Tours. If he's back here, this must be important."

	"I thought you said they were merely trying to discredit TIME OF YOUR LIFE."

	"Yes, but—"

	"You have recruited help from some other age?" the president of Prometheus Tours asked. "You know the statutes forbid it."

	"They also forbid time kidnapping," Dru said coolly, "but that didn't stop you."

	"When is this man from?"

	"Twentieth century."

	The president didn't comment on that. He was a tall fellow and cadaverously thin with parched skin as dry as cured leather. "Quick is my name," he said, looking at me directly for the first time.

	I offered him my hand and at first he didn't understand the gesture. Then he mumbled something about the twentieth century and shook hands with me. Dru said, "You can't get away with it, Mr. Quick. Where are you hiding the people you've kidnapped? And where's our cruise ship?"

	Quick laughed. It was a surprisingly rich, booming laughter for such a thin man. He said, "Do you think I'd have given this matter my personal attention if we were simply trying to discredit the rival tour service? Do you think I have nothing better to do with my time?"

-

	Dru didn't say anything. The cavemen were coming back toward the fire in groups of two or three, carefully, anxiously. Every time the fire leaped and danced they would beat a hasty retreat again. For a long time it was strictly two steps forward and one step back for them.

	"I'm listening," Dru said finally.

	"Are you wondering why they fear the fire?" Quick asked us. "I'll tell you why. Because it's new to them. I feel something like a god right now. I've given them fire. I've started them up the long path toward civilization."

	"That's ridiculous," Dru said. "They've always had fire. Lightning fells a tree in the forest and the rain doesn't fall. The tree burns. They know fire."

	"Sure," Quick said. "Of course they do. But they don't use it. Don't you see the difference? They've seen animals. They hunt animals. But they don't domesticate them. That's still several thousand years off. They also eat fruits and berries and even wild grains, but they don't cultivate them. That's also several thousand years off. Thus they have just begun to domesticate fire, with my help. They have changed from an utterly barbaric, nature - dependent people to a people embarking on the first stage of civilization, thanks to me. You see?"

	Dru was about to reply, but I was reasonably certain she'd go off on some theoretical tangent. To get to the point, I asked Quick, "What's in it for you?"

	"You have a very practical friend," Quick told Dru.

	I repeated my question.

	"If they have now domesticated fire with my help, and if that will lead to the domestication of animals and the cultivation of crops, and so to civilization. Look at it another way. I have domesticated them."

	"What did you say?" Dru demanded.

	"I have domesticated these simple cavemen in the same way as their progeny will learn to domesticate animals."

	"But what in the world for?"

	Quick's laughter came in another loud peal. "Time travel," he said, and sneered. "We're soft. We've always been a soft people, I suppose. Too much civilization too long. No wars. No unemployment. No disease. Is it any wonder we're soft? We develop time travel all right, but what do we do with it?"

	"I'll tell you what we do with it," Dru said coldly. "We use it the way human beings should use a great discovery like time travel. Our historians get the facts accurately for the first time, all the facts anywhere, anywhen. Our anthropologists and archaeologists do the same. If there's any time travel machinery left over—as there's bound to be because we're a productive people—we make a touring and vacation industry out of it. But we've been careful not to exploit any of the past ages. So far, Mr. Quick, time travel hasn't hurt anyone."

	"Hasn't benefitted anyone, you mean."

	"I won't argue that point with you. But don't you understand that exploitation of the past ages won't only hurt them. It will hurt us as well."

	Quick shook his head. "I've heard that argument before."

	"Well, it's the truth. How do you intend to exploit the past ages, assuming you domesticate them?"

	"For minerals and other raw materials, mostly."

-

	"That's what I thought. But look, Mr. Quick. Every ton of coal you take out of a neolithic mine means one ton less in civilized times, when it will be really needed. For every ton of iron, of copper, of aluminum, the same. For every barrel of crude oil, every—"

	"You've made your point," Quick said.

	"Well, I won't let you get away with it."

	"You think we hijacked your time cruiser? You think we kidnapped your six V.I.P.s? Don't be a little fool. They came willingly. They wanted to see what domestication of a past age could mean for our own civilization. Sure, their original idea was a vacation. TIME OF YOUR LIFE was taking them on a meaningless junket into the past. I've given their junket meaning. They realize that. If they back me financially, we'll start a new era, tapping the past to benefit our own age. They haven't been kidnapped. They've seen an opportunity to get in on the ground floor, and they want to take it."

	"Why don't we ask Mr. Cabot what he thinks?" Dru said. "The twentieth century was the century of greatest exploitation, wasn't it?"

	"Don't look at me," I said. "The free world wasn't doing the exploitation in the twentieth century. The free world realized that people had the right of self-determination in the nineteenth century. The Commies now, they're different. But I wouldn't know how a Commie mind operates."

	"But they've proven themselves harmful to the subject areas?" Dru said.

	"Hell, yes. It looks like we may have to fight a war because of it." Suddenly, I was very eager. I added: "Hey, you're from the future. You know. You know. You could tell me all about that war, if it has to be fought, if we win it—"

	Dru shook her, head. "We can't tell a past people their own future. It's against our statutes." 

	"But—"

	"I can put it in vague terms, though. If a war has to be fought—and I'm not saying it has to—you won't lose. How's that?"

	"Ambiguous," I said. "But better than nothing. Say, Dru," I went on, "it looks like I'm no longer working for you."

	"What do you mean?" "I mean Mr. Quick didn't kidnap anybody." "Still—"

	"Listen," Quick said. "I don't want to be your enemy. There is room for TIME OF YOUR LIFE in the new scheme of things, too. Prometheus Tours—Prometheus Enterprises now, by the way isn't big enough to handle the entire operation."

	"Not interested," Dru said. "And I'm not even sure I can believe you. Can you take me to TIME's six passengers?"

	Quick nodded. "Why not?" he said. "They're taking a tour of the silver mines we've opened back here—"

	"Silver?" Dru gasped. "Before they've mastered fire? Before they've even dreamed of domesticating animals?"

	"Silver is the basis of our currency, isn't it? We need silver. Whoever corners a rich supply of new silver will be a powerful figure in our own civilization. You understand that, don't you?"

	"I only understand you're exploiting these people."

	Quick shrugged. "Let's take a look at the silver mines."

	Dru raised her eyebrows at me. I nodded and she offered me her hand. We followed Quick through the crowds of cavemen who were gawking at the fire and outside.

-

	The silver mine was located higher in the hills. It was almost dusk when we reached the place with Quick leading the way. Purple shadows cloaked the steep, rocky hillsides but somewhere up ahead an unnatural glow glared in the sky.

	"The mining methods are primitive," Quick admitted. "But these are primitive people. And if you give them such things as fire and trinkets, and a modicum of medical care, and a little whiskey, there are no wages."

	We scrambled like mountain goats up the remaining few yards of steep slope between us and the entrance to a large cave. The orange glow came from there, pulsing out into the dusk. You could feel the choking, oven-like heat from a considerable distance. Outside the cave entrance, a few dozen cavemen were squatting on their haunches and sweating—and drinking. The bottles were unmarked but the effect of the contents upon some of the savages, who were dancing and yelling-and fighting one another despite the intense heat, was unmistakable.

	So was the look on Dru's face. Quick saw it and said, "Now tell me you don't drink alcoholic beverages!"

	"I drink them," Dru said. "I like them. But this is different. These people are savages. You gave them fire but they don't understand fire. You give them whiskey, and they don't understand whiskey either."

	"They'll manage," Quick snorted, and led us inside.

-

	It was hot in there. It was fantastically, enervatingly, devastatingly hot. The very walls of the cavern seemed on the point of melting. The savages were plodding back and forth barefoot, from the depth of the cave to the outside and back again, sweat pouring from their bodies. They were carrying great fiat pans of blasted rock and behind them there was a hissing and billowing of hot steam and an occasional loud explosive sound.

	Quick led the way without talking. Talk would have sapped our energy unnecessarily. We plodded through the steam and dimly I was able to see the natives staggering by. The natives. Our ancestors and Dru's and Quick's. The ancestors of a large segment of the human population of future generations. Enslaved before they had tasted the fruits of their own civilization.

	They lighted huge fires against the naked rock walls of the cavern's interior. You could see they feared the flame, but Quick had showed them how it would warm them in the bleak cold interiors of their sleeping caves and Quick had also given them a sample of his whiskey and although they feared the fire, they worked with it.

	After the rock was superheated, other cavemen rushed up with skins and bladders of large animals, probably mastodons. The skins and bladders were distended with water and the water was flung upon the red-glowing rock. In the red of the rock, veins of silver gleamed metallically. When the water struck the hot rock it hissed into steam instantly and the rock cracked explosively, shards flying, massive chunks groaning and falling to the cavern floor.

	The cavemen came up with their pans. They were sweating and they were trembling with fear and uncertainty but they moved forward to get their ore and then retreated toward the entrance with it.

	"You're making animals out of them," Dru accused.

	Quick shook his head. "I've given them fire."

	"You've given them whatever you thought they would need to help you."

	"Why don't you ask your friends? They're here somewhere."

	"I'm going to ask them," Dru said. "But even if they agreed with you they wouldn't change my mind. Don't you see what you're doing? These people attacked us when we came. Why?"

	"Because I told them to. Because I wanted to show you my control over them."

	"You're insane. If they obey you, they'll obey any other strong leader, anywhere, anytime. You're not giving them civilization. You're just teaching them how to be slaves."

	Quick sneered. He was very good at sneering. The sneer fit his face. He was a cynical man who had seen too much of civilization and too much of man's successful conquest of his environment. He was cynical and I thought he was going to be dangerous, very dangerous, because he was cynical.

	In a few moments, six other time travelers joined us. They were sweating with the heat of the fire and when they saw Dru they seemed embarrassed.

	"Did you go with him of your own free wills?" she asked them.

	One after another, they nodded. They- seemed too sheepish about it to speak. "That wasn't very ethical," Dru said.

	"He painted such a glowing picture," a portly man with a bald head told her, "that we had to find out for ourselves."

	"And did you find out?"

	"Well—" the portly man began.

	"Go ahead and tell me," Dru said.

	"In everything that's new as this venture of Mr. Quick's is new, there is some good and there is some bad. Do I like exploitation? Does any man living in a civilized democracy like it? But factors must be weighed. When they are weighed and you decide what must be held in the balance—"

	"Why don't you tell him to can it," I suggested to Dru. "It sounds to me like your friend is a stuffed shirt."

	"What!" the fat man gasped, but Dru was grinning. She said:

	"I'm beginning to like you, Cabot. You have a way of get^ ting to the bottom of things in a hurry."

	I shrugged. "You people have fourteen hundred years of thinking and civilization on me, but what the hell, thinking and civilization aren't anything."

	"You mean you can understand human nature better than we can?"

	"Better than you? I don't know. But a man in my business has got to make snap judgments about people."

	"Mr. Quick," the fat man said, "I want it known that after what has been said here, I'm on your side."

	Quick grinned. Evidently the fat man was his first convert. "What about the rest of you?" he asked. "Still thinking?"

	They conversed together in whispers. The general consensus was that they were still undecided. One of them, the youngest, said, "If you paid them with something more concrete. But whiskey—"

	Quick laughed. "Who said anything about paying them with whiskey? I pay them whatever they want. There are some elements in every population which would prefer drink or other sensual pleasure to the tools of civilization. I pay in the currency of their own desire."

	"From what I've seen," I said, "you pay them whatever's cheapest for you."

	Quick smiled condescendingly. "You're a barbarian. You come from the century of Total War. How can we hold your opinion as worthwhile?"

	"Since he has nothing to do with your try for power," Dru said, "he can be more objective than any of us."

	"Look," I said, "my opinion doesn't matter. The lady wants her cruise ship back. I've been paid to get it for her. If the passengers want to stay here with you—"

	"But how would we get back," Quick protested, "if you take the ship? That would be murder."

	"Murder?" I said with an innocent look on my face. "Why would it be murder?"

	"Because if I stopped supplying these stupid savages with whiskey for any length of time, they'd mob me."

	"Is that so?" Dru cried triumphantly. "I thought you were paying them with civilization."

	It took a few seconds for the meaning of what had been said to dawn on Quick. When it did he said, pointing at me, "That barbarian tricked me. I've been tricked."

	"The stranger made his point," one of the time travelers said. "I'd like to register disapproval of Mr. Quick's uncivilized schemes. I ought to be ashamed it took me so long to realize this." One by one the others joined him, ranging themselves behind Dru. Only the bald fat man remained with Quick.

	"O.K.," I said. "We'll take the time ship now."

	"You'll have to kill me first," Quick said.

	"Don't be a fool," one of the men advised him. "You've played your hand and lost."

	"I'm not starting all over again," Quick insisted. "I've built something good here."

	I looked at Dru. "How does your century go for the use of force?"

	"When necessary, we use it."

	I took out my Magnum .357 and showed Quick the business end. "The ship," I said. "Tell us where it is. You can come back with us or not, it's all the same to my client. But she wants her time ship."

	The cavemen filed by with their heavy trays of ore, sweating feverishly. Quick watched them for a moment and watched the billowing, hissing steam. Something leaped in his eyes, a new light which hadn't been there. It was radiant. It was a look of sheer joy, of bliss—but of madness too.

	"I've taught them civilization!" Quick screamed. "I've given them that, haven't I?"

	Even the fat man stared at him doubtfully now. He shook his round hairless head and joined Dru and the others. Quick said, "Desert me, all of you. I don't care. I taught these savages civilization, but they've taught me something. They've taught me violence. You think I fear you? Not with what they taught me!" he cried.

	"Take it easy," Dru said. "You need medical care."

	"The next great advance," Quick screamed. "Intertemporal exploitation. The next step in human achievement exists in me, don't you see it—a wedding of civilization and violence."

-

	I advanced on him slowly with the Magnum through the steam. He look at me and laughed and suddenly lunged at the nearest caveman, grasping the heavy tray of ore and hurling it at me with amazing strength, with the strength of a madman.

	I did the only thing I could do under the circumstances. I ducked.

	The tray spun through air and steam and struck the superheated wall just as cold water was applied. "Hit the ground!" I yelled, and then a violent explosion deafened all of us and burst rock flew in all directions, red hot and as dangerous as shrapnel.

	When the steam cleared, half a dozen cavemen were dead or dying of burns and shrapnel wounds. Hysterical now, Quick wrestled a spear away from one of the cavemen and held all of them at bay with it. They milled about angrily, jabbering among themselves. They pointed accusingly at Quick and even more accusingly at the fire which he had brought them, the controlled fire which they did not understand, which they were not ready for yet.

	I still held the Magnum. I moved toward Quick. "You better drop the spear," I said. "You've done enough damage already." I walked among the dead bodies. Heads were crushed and limbs cracked by the shrapnel. The floor of the cave was slippery with blood.

	Quick didn't answer me. I expected the cavemen to charge him with their own spears, flint-tipped and deadly, but they were watching me.

	Dru said, "We can't punish. They've got to do it themselves."

	I shrugged. Dru didn't understand and there wasn't time to explain it to her now.

	Abruptly Quick lunged at me with the spear. I leaped aside and it caught on my trousers.

	I didn't want to hit Quick. I wanted to leave him for the cavemen. It was an incredible shot, a lucky shot. You can't aim a Magnum that well.

	The Magnum roared and the spear haft shattered. The cavemen screamed and retreated as I waded in on Quick and drove my fists into his body, then raised them and pile-drived for his head while he swatted ineffectually with weaker blows.

	"That's enough," Dru finally said. I could barely see her through the fresh steam which came from deeper within the cavern. "You'll kill him."

	The natives came and studied their unconscious God. They looked at the dead men too and I knew they wanted retribution.

	"We'll leave him here,"

	Dru said. "Let their own laws punish him."

	"I thought they had ho laws."

	"They didn't have any, but Quick brought them that at least."

	We found the time cruiser and went inside, but a delegation of cavemen came and beckoned us outside. I thought they were beckoning us, but they only wanted me. I was Quick's conqueror. I went with them across the hills a little way and there on a bare crag overlooking their lush, green valley was Quick. They had lashed him to nearby trees with tough plaited rope. He was dying.

	The cavemen looked at me. They smiled. When I said nothing, they led me back to the time cruiser.

	Dru dropped me off, picked up Elgin, who had been able to shuttle them this far from his base in the twentieth century.

	Quick was deified, but not under his own name. They forgot his name but somehow they remembered the name of his company. He had brought them fire and they were not ready for fire so they had punished him with the first human laws.

	Under the name of Prometheus.

The End