The Fredric Brown Megapack by Fredric Brown Read Free Book Online

couldn’t get away, for it rolled back towards him, clawed tentacles reaching out.
    Stone knife in hand, he met it. He stabbed, again and again, while those horrid claws ripped skin and flesh and muscle from his body.
    He stabbed and slashed, and at last it was still.
    * * * *
    A bell was ringing, and it took him a while after he’d opened his eyes to tell where he was and what it was. He was strapped into the seat of his scouter, and the visiplate before him showed only empty space. No Outsider ship and no impossible planet.
    The bell was the communications plate signal; someone wanted him to switch power into the receiver. Purely reflex action enabled him to reach forward and throw the lever.
    The face of Brander, captain of the Magellan , mother-ship of his group of scouters, flashed into the screen. His face was pale and his black eyes glowing with excitement.
    “ Magellan to Carson,” he snapped. “Come on in. The fight’s over. We’ve won!”
    The screen went blank; Brander would be signaling the other scouters of his command.
    Slowly, Carson set the controls for the return. Slowly, unbelievingly, he unstrapped himself from the seat and went back to get a drink at the cold-water tank. For some reason, he was unbelievably thirsty. He drank six glasses.
    He leaned there against the wall, trying to think.
    Had it happened? He was in good health, sound, uninjured. His thirst had been mental rather than physical; his throat hadn’t been dry.
    He pulled up his trouser leg and looked at the calf. There was a long white scar there, but a perfectly healed scar; it hadn’t been there before. He zipped open the front of his shirt and saw that his chest and abdomen were crisscrossed with tiny, almost unnoticeable, perfectly healed scars.
    It had happened!
    The scouter, under automatic control, was already entering the hatch of the mothership. The grapples pulled it into its individual lock, and a moment later a buzzer indicated that the lock was air-filled. Carson opened the hatch and stepped outside, went through the double door of the lock.
    He went right to Brander’s office, went in, and saluted.
    Brander still looked dazed. “Hi, Carson,” he said. “What you missed; what a show!”
    “What happened, sir?”
    “Don’t know, exactly. We fired one salvo, and their whole fleet went up in dust! Whatever it was jumped from ship to ship in a flash, even the ones we hadn’t aimed at and that were out of range! The whole fleet disintegrated before our eyes, and we didn’t get the paint of a single ship scratched!
    “We can’t even claim credit for it. Must have been some unstable component in the metal they used, and our sighting shot just set it off. Man, too bad you missed all the excitement!”
    Carson managed a sickly ghost of a grin, for it would be days before he’d be over the impact of his experience, but the captain wasn’t watching.
    “Yes, sir,” he said. Common sense, more than modesty, told him he’d be branded as the worst liar in space if he ever said any more than that. “Yes, sir, too bad I missed all the excitement.…”
    EXPERIMENT
    “The first time machine, gentlemen,” Professor Johnson proudly informed his two colleagues. “True, it is a small-scale experimental model. It will operate only on objects weighing less than three pounds, five ounces and for distances into the past and future of twelve minutes or less. But it works.”
    The small-scale model looked like a small scale—a postage scale—except for two dials in the part under the platform.
    Professor Johnson held up a small metal cube. “Our experimental object,” he said, “is a brass cube weighing one pound, two point three ounces. First, I shall send it five minutes into the future.”
    He leaned forward and set one of the dials on the time machine. “Look at your watches,” he said.
    They looked at their watches. Professor Johnson placed the cube gently on the machine’s platform. It vanished.
    Five minutes later,