Short Story contributed by bc1am1
---------------------------------

I'm not going to make a habit of this but here's a short sci-fi story I
found in an old magazine from 1982 called Space Voyager. I definitely think
it is worth reading, so I have decided to contribute it. I've given full
credit to the author, but I'll state here and now this work is NOT written
by me. I'm sure the author will welcome any further publicity, (unless he's
gone onto better things by now, which I'm sure he has after eleven years!)


                              MAN OUT OF TIME

                               by JOHN WADE


  He felt a drizzle of fine rain across his eyelids. For a moment he lay
perfectly still as the sensation was passed through to his numbed brain.
Slowly at first, but with a growing sense of awareness, the brain received
its message from the nerve ends in his eyelids, analysed it, translated it
and began to send out commands. He opened his eyes.
  The changing colours of a nearby neon sign fell across his face. Red,
then blue, now red again. He winced and sat up. His head banged; his eyes
blurred, tried to focus, blurred again and finally cleared. He climbed
carefully to his feet and looked around him.
  How did he get here? Where was he? For that matter, *who* was he?
  The alley he had been lying in was dark, lit only by the changing colours
of the sign. He shook his head between the palms of outstretched hands,
searched his memory for some clue to what might have happened. He found a
name. His own name. Kendrew Latigue. Even as his lips soundlessly formed
the words, his mind associated the name with other words. They came back to
him now, as strong as they were meaningless:
  "Kendrew Latigue, the best time-driver in 500 centuries."
  His head was beginning to clear now. The ceaseless pounding died to a
dull roar as he made his way out of the alley and into a street. Silence
wrapped itself around him like a blanket. Silence, he realised, was
something he wasn't used to. Streets, towns, cities; they were all
continuosly noisy where he came from.
  A sound now. The soft tinkling of a piano. It came from a building at the
end of the street. Latigue made his way towards the sound and looked
through the misted windows of a drab little bar. Inside, the barman was
polishing glasses. The place was empty apart from the pianist in the
corner.
  This was a drinking house. He was sure of it. He had seen pictures in ...
in ... where? He couldn't remember. What he could remember was that the
drink sold in places such as this fortified, revived. Latigue pushed open
the door and went in.
  The barman stopped his polishing and surveyed his customer with idle
curiosity. "Yes sir?" Latigue pointed to a bottle and the barman filled a
glass from it. Latigue took the glass, emptied its contents in a single
gulp and indicated that he'd like another. With the second one he took more
care, sipping it slowly, letting the liquid burn its way down his throat
and into his stomach. Gradually, fragments of memory seeped into his brain
and he realised there was something he had to know. For the first time, he
felt strong enough to speak.
  "When am I?" he asked.
  The barman took him for a foreigner. "No sir. You mean: 'Where am I?'"
  Latigue controlled a sudden feeling of irrational fear. "No. I mean:
'*when* am I?' What is the date?"
  "Oh I see," the barman said, smiling now. "That's easy. It's the 26th."
  "Of what?"
  "August."
  Latigue's growing desperation got the better of him. He curled his fist
into a ball and slammed it down on the bar counter. "What century?" he
demanded.
  "Sir?"
  "The century, damn you! What century is this?"
  "Well, the 20th, of course. What else ... Hey!" This last word came as
Latigue turned and prepared to leave. "You owe me for those drinks."
  Latigue turned. "Owe?"
  "Yes. Owe. Money. You understand?"
  "Money?" Latigue whispered. "I have no ... money."
  The barman's eyes widened with a mixture of disbelief and anger. "Then I
might have to call the police!"
  Something in his tone annoyed and frightened Latigue. "No, please. Surely
there's some service I can do for you in return for your hospitality?"
  "There's only one service you can do for me," the barman said.
  "Name it."
  "Get the hell out of my bar!" And, lifting the flap in the counter, the
man came at Latigue, clipped his arms neatly behind his back and threw him
bodily into the street. He landed on the pavement with a thud that shook
every nerve in his body. It also brought a sudden new flash of memory into
his confused mind...
  "Good morning ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to Time-Line. This morning's
tour will take us briefly Down-Time to the 25th century, then back through
our own 34th and Up-Time to the 100th with stops at the 50th, the 61st and
the 78th. I must remind you that Time-Line is for pleasure purposes only
and that as tourists you may only observe. Make no attempt to leave the
timeliner or you may interfere with the delicate balance of Time."
  Latigue watched the stewardess. He admired her grace and poise, the way
she managed to go through the same speech over and over without ever making
it sound as though she might be bored by the repetition.
  As she spoke, she walked down the gangway between the seats. She reached
the end, turned and walked back towards Latigue, sitting in the driving
seat. Her eyes fixed themselves on him as she told the passengers:
  "Your time-driver for this morning is Kendrew Latigue." She smiled at him
and he knew that she loved him. "Now, if there are any questions before we
start?"
  "Please, miss?"
  She turned to the questioner with a professional smile. "Yes?"
  "How long will the journey take?"
  "The length of the journey is relative to three different factors," she
explained. "We shall be travelling, in all, from the 25th to the 100th. In
that respect, our journey will take 7500 years." She paused for the several
gasps of awe that always followed such a statement. "However, within the
concept of the timeliner, the tour will take only the space of a morning -
four hours to be precise, which is the amount we shall all age during the
course of the journey." Again, she paused before producing her trump card.
"Nonetheless, time-driver Latigue will return us to the 34th at a point no
more than half a minute after we left. So, to the world outside, we shall
have been away no more than 30 seconds."
  She smiled as she completed her walk along the gangway and took her place
in the seat next to Latigue. "And now, ladies and gentlemen, I leave you in
the safe hands of Kendrew Latigue, the best time-driver in 500 centuries."
  She turned to him with a smile as he pushed the time-lever into
Down-Time, heading for the 25th century...
  Latigue picked himself up from the pavement and began walking away from
the bar. He thought again of the timeliner stewardess and remembered her
name. Kristy Latigue. She was his wife: the girl he had met on a time trip
and with whom he had taken no time at all to fall in love.
  He shook his head as his mind reeled over this new anomaly. No, it was
wrong to think of Kristy as having been his wife. She wouldn't be his wife
yet for another 1400 years - give or take a few. Which brought him straight
back to his original problem. How had he managed to get himself into the
20th century?
  The Down-Time terminus was situated in the 23rd. It was impossible for
anyone to travel further than that. Yet there he was. Slap, bang in the
middle of the 20th, and, with time travel itself not being invented for
another 300 years, he had, as far as he could see, no way of getting back
to his home and wife in the 34th.
  The 34th century. He thought of it now as he walked the dark streets of
the 20th. Noise and bustle, everyone eager to be somewhere else. The whole
country covered by a sprawl of ugly buildings. No greenery, no open spaces.
It was not a good century to live in. Many times he and Kristy had thought
(would think) about applying for permission to emigrate Down-Time, but the
computations involved in establishing an up-timer in a different century
made permanent Movement a possibility only for the very privileged or the
very rich.
  Latigue smiled as he remembered explaining the problem to a passenger
named Finn on one of his trips a few weeks before, (several hundered years
in the future). Finn had wanted to know why he couldn't leave the timeliner
in the 27th and have a look round...
  "Look," said Latigue. "Let's say you went out into the 27th and met, for
instance, a young man who was destined to grow up to be the grandfather of
a prime minister a century hence." Finn nodded. "Now supposing, by sheer
accident, you killed that man. Or perhaps only injured him or said
something that turned him against marrying the girl he was engaged to. Just
by that act, you could stop the future prime minister being born. And since
that future prime minister is, in effect, a part of your past, you can
begin to see the complications that might arise.
  "Which is why we can't have passengers wandering about Time. They could
change history with nothing more than a snap of the fingers."
  "I see," said Finn. "And that's why Time-Line is for observers only."
  "Yes," Latigue told him. "Very, very few people have ever been allowed to
leave a timeliner and fewer still have been allowed to settle in a century
other than their own."
  "So how did all this start?" Finn asked. "How did time travel come into
being?"
  "Time travel was invented in the 23rd century by a scientist named
Professor Heinlopf."
  "He must have been a very clever man."
  "On the contrary," Latigue went on. "He was no more than a very good
scientist. But one night, history tells us, a stranger arrived at his front
door, a man with a sheaf of handwritten papers. He handed them to the
professor, told him to study them, and then left without even introducing
himself. Later, when the professor saw what the papers contained, he tried
to trace the mysterious stranger, but never found him."
  "What did the papers contain?" Finn asked.
  "The elementary maths of time travel," said Latigue. "With their help,
the professor eventually built the first timeliner."
  "But I still don't understand how a timeliner runs through Time," Finn
said.
  "Frankly," said Latigue, "neither do I. The theory is for the boffins.
I'm a mere driver. But this much I do know. The timeliner runs on tracks in
much the same way the old railway locomotives did. The tracks wind their
way through Time on carefully computed co-ordinates that don't interfere
with the actual moments they are passing through.
  "There is an Up-Time terminus somewhere in the ten thousand millions when
man has long since left the earth and the Sun is no more than a burnt
cinder, and a Down-Time terminus in the 23rd when time travel was
invented."
  "And there are no timelines either side of those termini?"
  "That's right."
  "Which is why we can't travel past the 23rd when we go Down-Time."
  "You've got it."
  Finn thought for a moment and then he said: "I'd sure like to see that
time when the Sun is no more than a burnt cinder."
  "Time-Line run a special excursion once a month," Latigue told him. "But
book early. Everyone likes to be in at the death."
  He walked back to his driving seat, leaving one very awed passenger
sitting behind him ...
  Dawn was creeping across the sky as Latigue left the city. He kept
walking and, as the sun rose, he soon found himself surrounded by fields.
He had never seen such emptiness in all his life. It scared him almost as
much as it thrilled him. What a century to live in. If only Kristy could
have been here to share it with him. He walked on, suddenly saddened by the
thought of never seeing her again.
  Mid-morning found him sitting on a farm gate, looking out over a view
that took in fields and trees, rolling hills and the far off smudge of
distant mountains.
  The 20th century, he thought, was very much to his liking. But how, he
asked himself over and over again, had he got here? He put his head in his
hands, massaging his temples with his fingers. Think, man, think. How? Why?
When?
  And suddenly it came back to him. In a blinding flash, he saw it all. The
how, the why and the when. His mind rocked as he was suddenly forced to
relive that last terrifying journey through Time ...
  It had started as a purely routine run. One of the timeliners had
developed a fault and become stuck in the 45th century. Engineers were sent
Up-Time to sort out the bother, but not before the timeliner concerned had
been forced to spend two days in limbo.
  When they returned, the passengers were haggard, to say the least; the
men, bearded and exhausted, the women sweaty and in filthy tempers,
children crying, the whole party starving, having been without food for two
days.
  When they staggard out at the 34th century station, they had only been
away 30 seconds.
  The faulty timeliner was taken in for a thorough service. The fault was
sorted out and a few days later, Latigue was asked to take it on a test
run. He climbed into the driving seat and pressed the time-lever into
Up-Time. The machine slid along the time-lines smoothly and without a
hitch.
  He took it up as far as the 435th century, then stopped and began the
journey back to the 34th.
  It was as he passed the 50th that things started going wrong. He began
applying the brakes for a gradual slowdown into the 34th but, to his
surprise, nothing happened. He put extra pressure on the brake lever. For a
moment, it remained stiff, then suddenly gave way. The brakes had failed.
He had no way of stopping the thing. A rising sense of panic gripping at
his throat, he checked the time-gauge. He was in the 39th already - no, the
38th.
  He gripped the time-lever, forcing it round into Up-Time. He checked the
gauge again. 37th, 36th, 35th. He hurtled through the 34th and on towards
the finality of the 23rd.
  He gripped his seat as he suddenly saw the inevitability of crashing into
the Down-Time terminus. What would happen? Would it bring the timeliner to
a stop? Would it kill him? He had no way of knowing. No-one had ever done
it before.
  Now he was in the 28th. Now the 27th.
  Latigue rolled himself into a tight ball and hugged the seat. Any minute
now. 25th, 24th, 23rd ...
  The expected crash never came. Instead, there was nothing more than a
slight jarring of his mind. He sat up and looked again at the gauge. He was
in the 22nd! But how was that possible? His mind raced almost as fast as
the speeding timeliner and, yes, he saw now just how possible it all was.
  Consider the timeliner to be like an old locomotive running on rails.
Now, what happens if that locomotive crashes into the buffers at the far
end of a line? Does it stop? Of course not. It keeps travelling. It doesn't
need rails to make it go, only to keep it on the right course. And without
those rails ...
  Latigue suddenly saw the whole thing in its frightening reality. The
timeliner was still travelling Down-Time. It would keep travelling like
this straight through history, down the past prehistoric times to a time
when man was no more than an animal, and further still to when there was no
man at all, then no world, no universe.
  He had to get off. What would happen if he just opened the door and
jumped out? What did it matter? He was a doomed man anyway. Better to die
leaping from the timeliner than to end up so far Down-Time that there was
no world to jump to.
  The last thing he saw was the gauge, telling him that he had just entered
the 20th century. He opened the door and leapt for his life. It was black
outside. The blackness opened up and swallowed him whole as the timeliner
continued its journey down the interminable centuries.
  So he was trapped in the 20th century with no way out. No way back. No
way he would ever see Kristy again. For a while, he sat on the farm gate
and wept.
  During the following year, Kendrew Latigue slowly came to terms with his
new life. He started by considering the very real possibility of suicide.
It seemed a waste. To survive the leap from the timeliner only to kill
oneself? Having come through that, he set about settling down to his lonely
life in the 20th century. He was still a young man, only 26. He wasn't too
old to learn a trade and make the best of his life here. Even if that life
could never be truly fulfilled without Kristy.
  He first took a job on a farm, digging ditches and the like. He learnt a
lot from the farmer and he earned enough, after five years, to buy himself
a small plot of land. There, he built a wooden cabin to live in. He visited
libraries, he read a lot and the more he read, the more he learned. In a
short while, he became completely self-sufficient.
  At the beginning of his sixth year in the 20th century, he received two
visitors.
  It was an evening towards the end of Winter. The day had had the taste of
Spring about it and Latigue had spent a few hours after his evening meal,
sitting in front of his cabin and taking the air. As dusk had fallen, it
had turned colder and now he was inside, building up a log fire that
crackled and spat in the cabin's small fireplace.
  Latigue smiled a comfortable smile and sat back in his favourite rocking
chair with a book. Through the Winter he had been thinking about expanding
his smallholding, getting some cattle, cows maybe, to make his own milk,
butter and cheese. The book he held in his hands was going to tell him how.
He had completed only three pages when there came a soft knock at his cabin
door.
  Latigue cursed. He had few visitors and liked it that way. He put the
book down and went to the door. He opened it. And there stood Kristy.
  He had no words to say and she had to speak for him. "Hello Kendrew." Two
words. Simple and to the point, but enough to bring a rush of emotion to
his bewildered senses. He took her in his arms and drew her close.
  "Kristy," he murmered. "Is it really you?"
  "Yes."
  "But how? How did you get here?"
  "I brought her."
  This was another voice, a man's this time. Latigue looked up and a figure
stepped out of the shadows behind his wife. The man was old, his hair was
white and his face lined, yet he held himself with the sureness of a man
half his age. Latigue looked at the man and felt that perhaps he knew him.
There was a familiarity about his features that he couldn't place. Was he
someone from the 34th whom Latigue had met (will meet) years before (years
hence)? He couldn't remember and frankly he didn't care. All he cared about
was the woman before him. Kristy. His wife. Back with him again.
  "Well, come in, come in," he beamed.
  The old man followed Kristy into the cabin and Latigue set about
preparing them some food. Only when they had both eaten did he find the
courage to ask the questions that had been exploding in his mind from the
moment he had opened the door.
  "Who are you?" he asked the old man. "And why are you here?"
  "Who I am doesn't matter," came the reply. "As to why I am here ..." He
took a small folder of papers from his inside pocket and tossed them on to
the table. Latigue picked them up and glanced briefly at the pages of
figures and equations. In answer to his unasked question, the old man said:
"It is the elementary maths of time travel. Study them and, with a little
ingenuity, you should be able to build a mechanism that will take you back
to your own time."
  "But who are you?" Latigue asked the old man.
  "That I cannot tell you," he answered.
  Latigue looked at him and suddenly remembered the story of Professor
Heinlopf and the mysterious stranger who had arrived at his front door one
night and given him the secret of time travel. Was it possible that this
was the same man? A man destined to travel Time, bringing its secrets to
those who needed it?
  The old man saw the realization in Latigue's eyes and nodded his head
wisely. Then he rose to his feet. "And now, I am very tired," he said. "I
am an old man. I'm sure you understand. If you have a bed ..."
  "Of course."
  Latigue had only one bed, his own; but he led the old man willingly to
it. To give him his bed for the night was the least he could do in the
circumstances. So he left the old man in the bedroom and returned to the
cabin's only other room and to Kristy, still sitting at the table.
  He took her two hands in his and looked intently at her. "You look older,
Kendrew," she said.
  "I am older. It's been six years since I've seen you."
  "And yet, I saw you only yesterday morning," she replied.
  "Tell me about it," he said and then, holding tight to her hands, he
listened quietly and without interruption while she told him the whole
story:
  "Yesterday morning - that is, yesterday in the 34th - you were asked to
take a newly repaired timeliner on a test run. You disappeared into Time
and, apart from a brief flash through the 34th a moment later, we never saw
you again.
  "Later, we heard that there had been some terrible damage done at the
Down-Time terminus in the 23rd. Everything pointed to the fact that
something had crashed straight through it. We put two and two together and
came up with the fact that that 'something' must have been the timeliner
you were on.
  "They told me there was nothing they could do. You were lost in Time.
  "That afternoon, in the midst of my despair, I had a visitor. The old
man. When he first came to me, he seemed to think I ought to know him, but
I didn't think I'd ever seen him before. He seemed strained somehow, lost,
and so I invited him in.
  "It was while I was giving him something to drink that a sudden sort of
realization seemed to come over him. His eyes began to glow in a way I
hadn't seen before and then he told me he could take me to you.
  "I told him that was impossible because you were lost in Time and he said
no you weren't. He knew exactly where you were and that I was to trust him
and go with him.
  "He seemed so sincere that I knew instinctively that I could trust him.
He said that we should need to get aboard a timeliner alone and in secret.
That was easy enough. I worked for Time-Line and no one questioned my
presence when I stole him aboard just before a party of tourists was due.
  "Immediately we were on board, he sat in the driving seat and pushed the
time-lever into Down-Time. We raced for the 23rd, but, instead of stopping,
we crashed straight through the terminus and just kept going. Then
suddenly, with one eye on the time-gauge, he opened the door! I was
petrified. But he just yelled out: 'Trust me' and then he grabbed me and
bundled me out into nothingness.
  "I think I must have passed out. When I came to, I was in a city miles
from here. We walked and walked and, at last, we found your cabin. I
thought it was chance but, now that I think about it, I'm sure he knew
exactly where he was bringing me.
  "He sent me up to knock on the cabin door while he hung back a bit. I
knocked, you opened the door and you know the rest."
  They talked on through the rest of the night and, as the early light of
dawn crept across the sky, they finally fell asleep in each other's arms.
  It was broad daylight when they woke and the cabin was completely silent.
"I'll go wake the old man," Kristy said and went into the bedroom. A moment
later, she appeared at the bedroom door, her face white. "Kendrew," she
whispered. He looked up. "He's dead."
  They buried the old man that afternoon on a hill overlooking the valley
where the early blossoms of Spring were beginning to touch the trees with
colour. As they walked, arm in arm, back to the cabin, Kristy looked at her
husband and said: "It's a beautiful century isn't it?"
  He nodded thoughtfully. "It's better than all the noise and bustle of the
34th, any day," he answered her.
  They walked on in silence for a while. Then: "Do you remember, Kendrew,"
she asked, "the way we used to talk about how wonderful it would be to
emigrate Down-Time?"
  "I remember."
  "Do you really want to return to the 34th?"
  "No," he said. "Do you?"
  She answered him with a kis. Back in the cabin, they took the old man's
folder of papers on time-travel and threw them into the bottom of a
cupboard.
  The time went past. Winter blossomed into a Spring that bloomed into
Summer and mellowed into Autumn. Winter came again. Years went past, and
Kristy and Latigue grew old together with a dual sense of contentment they
each knew they could never have had in their own century. They farmed, they
worked the land, they lived only for one another. For 20 years they lived
and loved a life of complete happiness and then Kristy died.
  She had been out one night with Latigue in the pouring rain when some of
their animals had escaped. She had caught a cold, the cold had turned into
pneumonia and, at last, she had died.
  Latigue had never known such sorrow in all his life. It had been bad
enough the first time he had lost her. But to lose her, find her, and then
to lose her again was almost more than he could bear.
  He buried her in a second grave, beside the old man's on the hill behind
the cabin and, on Summer evenings, he took to climbing the hill and sitting
with her as he looked out over the valley below. It was on one of these
evenings that he suddenly realised how he could be with his wife again.
  Item: Kristy was dead here in the 20th century.
  Item: Kristy was alive in the 34th up until the moment the old man
arrived to take her away.
  Therefore: If he, Latigue, could get to the 34th, and reach his wife just
before the old man, they could be together again.
  It made sense, didn't it? He thought it through once more, could see no
problem and hurried back to the cabin to search his cupboards for that
folder of maths on the elements of time travel.
  It took him five long years to get to grips with the maths. He did so by
copying every single page by hand and, as he copied, so he learned. After
that, it took him another four years to assemble the parts he needed and
then it took him three years to actually build the time traveller. When he
had finished, he had a corner of the cabin covered in the mechanism which
he had built around his old rocking chair.
  At last it was finished. That night, he retired early, had a good night's
sleep and, on waking, had an extra large breakfast. Then he went up the
hill one last time to see Kristy's grave and to bid farewell to the century
they had both loved so dearly. He returned to the cabin with very mixed
feelings and, pausing only to pick up the folder of maths in case of
emergencies, he sat down in the old rocking chair and strapped himself in
before he had time to have second thoughts about the journey ahead of him.
  He set the time-gauge for an automatic stop in the 34th, checked the
power-gauge, sat back and pushed the machine into Up-Time.
  The chair rattled and banged its way through Time, not at all like the
slick and silent movement of a timeliner. Latigue could see the power-gauge
visibly falling the farther he went.
  He prayed he had enough to reach the 34th, but he needn't have worried.
When he eventually came to a clattering standstill, the gauge still
registered nearly half full.
  He unstrapped himself from the chair and looked about him. Luckily, he
was alone. The chair had landed in the cellar of what was obviously a
deserted building. He left it where it was and made his way into the
street.
  He was in a part of the city he didn't recognise. The place looked
familiar and yet in an alien sort of way. He walked to the end of the road,
hoping to pick up some landmark he might know. Everything looked wrong
somehow.
  He walked on and soon came into a more crowded part of the city. This was
more like the old 34th that he knew and hated. Crowds, noise, bustle. He
had no idea where his home might be but perhaps, he thought, he could get a
bearing from the Time-Line station. He stopped a man who was about to
stride right past him and asked directions.
  The man looked blank. "Where?" he asked.
  "The Time-Line station."
  "Never heard of it."
  The man began to walk away. Latigue ran after him, grabbed him by the
arm. "What do you mean 'never heard of it'?" he demanded. "I want the
Time-Line station."
  "What are you talking about?" the man asked.
  "Time-Line. You know. Time travel for tourists."
  The man actually began to laugh. "Time travel?" he exploded. "What are
you, some sort of nut? There's no such thing as time travel."
  Again he turned away. Again Latigue pulled him back. "Wait a minute," he
said, "What century is this?"
  "Now I *know* you're a nut," the man laughed.
  "Answer me," Latigue cried desperately. "What century is this?"
  "The 34th of course," said the man and, shaking himself free from
Latigue's grip, he strode away to be swallowed up by the crowds.
  Latigue leaned heavily against a wall. What was happening? He was in the
34th and yet there was no time travel. Had he strayed perhaps, into some
other dimension of the 34th, into an alternate universe where time travel
had not been invented? No, that was impossible. Then what was the
explanation?
  Without time travel, there could be no Time-Line. Without Time-Line,
there would be no jobs for Kristy and himself. And without those jobs, he
and Kristy could never have met. Could never have married.
  There had to be time travel!
  A slow glimmer of realisation began to splutter and burn in his mind. If
there was no time travel, it was because Professor Heinlopf and never
received his visitor back in the 23rd. Latigue gripped the folder of maths
in his inside pocket and knew suddenly what he had to do.
  He made his way back to the cellar where he had left his time traveller.
He checked the power-gauge. Half full. Just enough to get him to the 23rd
and back. He strapped himself in and shifted the machine into Down-Time.
  He arrived back in the 23rd in the middle of a deserted park. He took out
the folder of maths and, seperating his own hand-written copies from the
originals, he set out to find the professor's house. It was night before he
finally traced it. He knocked on the door and, when the professor opened
it, Latigue thrust the sheaf of papers into his hands. "Study these," he
said and, turning, he strode away again without even introducing himself.
  Back in the darkness of the park, he strapped himself into his time
traveller once more and headed Up-Time to the 34th. He arrived back in the
cellar. He checked the time-gauge: afternoon on the day he had disappeared
into Time. Now the power gauge: Drained. If things weren't right this time,
he'd be trapped again.
  He went out into the street and found, to his joy, that it was
recognisable now and, yes, there across the street was the Time-Line
station.
  With a renewed bounce in his step, he made his way to the house where he
and Kristy lived. His heart was beating like a crazy schoolboy's as he
walked up to the door and knocked. There was a silence for a few moments
and then the door opened. Kristy stood there, red-eyed from crying, but
still more beautiful than he had ever dared to remember her.
  "Kristy," he breathed.
  She wiped her eyes. "Yes?" He took a step forward, but she barred his
way. "Do I know you?" she asked.
  "Do you ... But you're ... I mean, I'm ..."
  She gazed at him with sad, unknowing eyes.
  "Are you not well?" she asked. He stood silently staring at her. "Perhaps
you'd better come in."
  He followed her into the familiar surroundings of their home. "You must
excuse me," she said softly. "I've had some rather bad news today. My
husband ..."
  "Has been lost in time," he murmured.
  "You know?"
  "Yes I know." He looked across at her but, instead of seeing her, he
caught sight of his own reflection in the mirror behind her head. White
hair now and a lined face. Suddenly he knew what was wrong, the reason why
she hadn't recognised him. Six years he had been in the 20th century before
she had come to him, 20 years they had lived together, 12 more years he had
been building the time traveller. He was 64 years old, while she was still
no more than 20. To her, he was an old, old man. There was a gulf between
them that could never be bridged.
  He sat heavily down in a chair. "Look, perhaps you'd like something to
drink," she suggested. "You look as though you have suffered some terrible
shock."
  He nodded and she went to the kitchen.
  It was while they were each sipping at the drinks that Kendrew Latigue
realised for the second time that day what he had to do. He felt a renewed
burst of energy at the thought.
  "Listen," he said. "Supposing I told you that I know where your husband
is. Supposing I said I could take you to him."
  "That's impossible," she said. "Kendrew is lost in Time."
  "No he isn't. I know exactly where he is and I can take you there. You
must come."
  Ordinarily, Kristy wouldn't have dreamt of going along with this strange
old man. But there was something about him that was so sincere that she
knew instinctively that she could trust him.
  He told her that she had to get them both secretly aboard an empty
timeliner and she said that was easy enough because she worked for
Time-Line. Half-an-hour later, they were on board, Latigue was in the
driving seat and the timeliner was slipping into Down-Time.
  Steadfastly, he kept his hand on the time-lever as the centuries whisked
past: 30th, 29th, 28th, 27th. "We're going too fast," Kristy told him.
"There's a terminus in the 23rd."
  "We're going past that," Latigue said grimly. "Hold on tight."
  Kristy looked at him as though she might have realised suddenly that he
was insane. But there was little she could do except hold on.
  With no more than a slight jarring of the mind, they crashed through the
Down-Time terminus and now Latigue had his eyes fixed on the time-gauge as
he began to open the door of the timeliner.
  "What are you doing?" Kristy cried. "You're mad."
  "Trust me!" he yelled and, grabbing her by both arms, pushed her out into
the blackness of speeding time.
  They came to in a city. It was night. They walked the streets until dawn
came and they found themselves in the countryside. They walked right
through the rest of that day until dusk began to fall again. Kristy was in
a daze but her companion seemed to know where he was going and so she
tagged along.
  Shortly before nightfall, they came to the cabin. He sent her to knock at
the door. She did so and when it was opened from the inside, there stood
her husband.
  They went in and Latigue, the old man, watched Latigue, the young man, as
he embraced his wife. Only when they had eaten, did Latigue hand over the
folder of elementary time travel maths.
  After that, they talked for a while and then Latigue the Elder said: "And
now, I am very tired. I am an old man. I'm sure you understand. If you have
a bed ..."
  Latigue the Younger led him to the only bedroom and, as he quietly closed
the door and left the old man alone, Latigue the Elder sat on the corner of
the bed, listening to the sound of Kristy's voice in the next room as she
went through the explanation of how and why she was there.
  The old man smiled to himself. It was the smile of a man who knew exactly
the way things were. He knew now that the circle was complete and that
Kristy had 20 happy years ahead of her with the other Latigue, just as he
knew, with a sudden finality, that he would close his eyes that night and
never see the morning.