The Mammoth Book of Golden Age SF by Isaac Asimov Read Free Book Online

down by the throat. He felt through his pockets, unearthed the key to the cuffs. Then he hauled Masters to his feet and shook him. Masters’ teeth clicked.
    “Murderer!” Tony snapped, white with rage.
    Masters broke loose. “I’d do it again,” he said wildly, and swung. He missed. Tony lashed out with the full power of his open palm, caught Masters on the side of the head. Masters went reeling back, slammed against the side of the ship. Tony glared at him, and then turned on his heel.
    He met Laurette Overland coming down the stairs to the upper corridor.
    “Lieutenant!” Her eyes danced with excitement. “I’ve been looking for you. Where in the world have you been?”
    “Ask Masters.” He urged himself down the corridor, jaw set. She fell into step beside him, running to keep up with his long strides.
    “You’re all wet!” she exclaimed. “Can’t you tell me what happened? Did you go swimming?”
    “Involuntarily.” He kept on walking.
    She grabbed his arm, and slowed him to a stop. An ominous glint replaced her excitement.
    “What,” she said, “did you mean when you said I should ask Erle about it? Did he push you in? If he did, I’ll—” She was unable to speak.
    Tony laughed humorlessly. “He admitted it. He stole my key to the handcuffs with the idea that it would be easier to free Braker and Yates that way after I was . . . uh . . . properly prepared to be a skeleton.”
    Her head moved back and forth. “That’s horrible,” she said lowly. “Horrible.”
    He held her eyes. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have told you about it,” he said, voice faintly acid. “He’s your fiancé, isn’t he?”
    She nodded, imperceptibly, studying him through the half gloom. “Yes. But maybe I’ll change my mind, lieutenant. Maybe I will. But in the meantime, come along with me. Daddy’s discovered something wonderful.”
     
    Professor Overland’s head was propped up. He had a pencil and paper on his pyramided legs.
    “Oh. Lieutenant! Come in.” His face lighted. “Look here! Gravitons
can
thrust their way through to the future, giving the ship a thrust into the past. But only if it happened to enter the spherical type of etheric vacuum. This vacuum would be minus everything – electrons, photons, cosmic rays and so forth, except under unusual circumstances. At some one time, in either the past or future, there might be a stream of photons bridging the vacuum. Now, when gravitons are ejected into the past, they grab hold of light photons, and become ordinary negative electrons. Now say the photons are farther away in the past than they are in the future. The gravitons therefore follow the line of least resistance and hook up with photons of the future. The photons in this case were perhaps hundreds of millions of years away in the vacuum. In traveling that time-distance, the gravitons kicked the ship back for a proportionate number of years, burned up our machinery, and wrecked us on this suddenly appearing before-the-asteroid world.”
    Laurette said brightly, “But that isn’t the important part, daddy.”
    “I can find another of those etheric vacuums,” Overland went on, preoccupiedly, pointing out a series of equations. “Same type, same structure. But we have to go to the planet Earth in order to rebuild the reversed constraction machinery. We’ll find the materials we need there.” He glanced up. “But we have to get off this world before it cracks up, lieutenant.”
    Tony started. “Before this world cracks up?”
    “Certainly. Naturally. You can—” His heavy brows came down abruptly. “You didn’t know about that, did you? Hm-m-m.” He stroked his jaw, frowning. “You recall the crescent planet you and Masters saw? Well, he took some readings on that. It’s wonderful, son!” His eyes lighted. “It’s an ill wind that blows nobody good. Not only do we know now that the asteroid evolved from a broken-up planet, but we also know the manner in which that planet broke up.