The man who mastered time

I straightened out, and flew south. The howling of the dogs died away. Without realizing where I was going, I headed down the wind. Soon I was over the water. I had risen, and in the morning light could see the landlocked bay into which the main channel of the Hudson emptied. The bay itself had an entrance to the sea almost at the river's mouth. It was midwinter, I learned afterward. The river and the bay both seemed frozen over, with a mantle of snow on their ice. I passed above an island--Staten Island, no doubt--and mechanically swung to the west. What was I to do? I had several rifles in the plane, as you know, and one of the latest Collinger hand guns. My instinct was to land at the house boldly, overawe its inmates with my weapons, and carry off the girl. That was a fatuous thought. I very soon realized that for all I knew they might have the power to strike me dead with some weapon totally unknown. I was still flying west. I found myself far out over Jersey, and still I had decided nothing. There were houses beneath me and even a little village or two. But I did not heed them, though fortunately I had sense enough to ascend to a higher altitude where I could escape observation. The sun was rising above the sea behind me, and at last I swung about to face it. As it mounted higher--it was moving at about normal speed--some of the red, glowing look was lost; it assumed more of its familiar aspects of our own time world. But still an hour above the horizon as it was now, I could stare at it quite steadily without being blinded. I was heading east. In another ten minutes I would have been back in Manhattan. I decided that I would leave the plane secluded somewhere and approach the house on foot, quietly. If I could only elude the dogs and not arouse them, I hoped to be able to get into the house and get the girl out. I realize now it was a foolhardy plan. I flew very low up the Hudson from its mouth. I was afraid I might be seen. Then it suddenly occurred to me how easily I could avoid that with certainty. I threw the switch of the proton current into the first and then the second intensity, and began a slow time flight forward through the day simultaneously with my flight up the river. I found a good hiding place for the plane on the east bank of the river--a broad, flat sort of gully some two hundred feet wide. I figured this was about abreast of the house, and I lowered the plane into it. It was difficult to do because of my southward drift, but I managed it. As I neared the ground I shut off the proton current and came to rest in time and space almost at the same moment. The sun was just setting behind a line of hills across the river. As I had not eaten for several hours, I sat in the cabin now and ate, planning exactly what I should do to rescue the girl. You will not understand it, but as I sat there, alone, with no one to consult, it did not seem to me so desperate an enterprise. My Collinger, no bigger than your hand, would silently fire a dozen bullets in as many seconds, each capable of killing a human, or one of those dogs. It was the dogs I was most afraid of. And yet, as I had observed from the laboratory, they did not run loose about the grounds at night, but were trained to stay in the kennel, which was some distance from the dwelling...three or four hundred feet, perhaps. I decided to start about midnight. My clock gave a totally different hour, of course, from the correct one of that particular time world. But I was planning to leave the plane about six hours after sunset. It was a long evening, but the time finally arrived. I put on my fur coat and went bareheaded, because I wanted to look as rational to the girl as possible. At best she would be afraid of me, a stranger--probably more afraid of me than of her captors. I realized fully what a difficulty that would be. An outcry from her, or any resistance on her part, might lose me everything. But my intentions were the best, though she could not know it. I left the plane. Besides the Collinger, I had a hand compass and a small flashlight. It was very cold. I scrambled out through the snow, up the side of the gulley to the level land above--a climb of sixty or seventy feet. The snow was deep, with an underlying surface of ice that would support my weight. Up here on the higher land it was colder than ever. The north wind hit me full, and I had been walking no more than five minutes when it began to snow--tremendous flakes, that soon came in a thick, soft cloud, and blotted out everything around me. In my pocket I had my fur cap with ear tabs, and I soon found I would have to wear it. I was heading across the wind, plowing through the loose snow. I could see only a few feet ahead of me. It was a pathless waste. And suddenly the whimsical thought came over me that I was crossing Fifty-ninth Street, and soon I would be near Columbus Circle. It was the same space, the same location. Nothing was different but the time--the changes time had brought. I took out my compass and, by the light of the flashlight, I consulted it. I was heading as nearly as I could toward the house. So far as I had been able to tell before, there was no other habitation on the island. I suppose I struggled along for nearly an hour. I figured I must be in the vicinity of the house now, though I could see nothing but the snow covered ground a few feet ahead of me, the whirling flakes close at hand, and the blackness overhead. Without warning, through a rift in the clouds to the east, came moonlight; a gigantic, egg-shaped moon with a reddish tinge to it that gave the scene a lurid, extremely weird look. The house was in sight, ahead and to the left, on a slight rise of ground no more than a quarter of a mile away. I was faced now with the necessity for a definite course of action. From the laboratory, with my telescope, I had occasionally seen the girl late at night, sitting in the central living room of the house. I had seen her through the windows, and she had always left the living room in a southeast direction. The house faced south; I felt that her room was in the southeast end. The enclosure lay mostly behind the house, toward the north, with the dog kennel in its extreme northern wall. This was all advantageous to me. I knew I had to keep away from those dogs. With a wind of from twenty to thirty miles an hour blowing from them to me, I felt sure that they would not get my scent. My plan was to get into the house through either a sort of gateway in the southeast wall of the enclosure, or directly in through a window. I expected to locate the girl and carry here away--by force, I suppose. I was confident--absurdly so, I realize now. I think it was the enthusiasm--the excitement--of being actually engaged in what I had contemplated for two long years and had worked so hard to attain. My heart was beating fast as I crept forward, the Collinger in my gloved hand. It was still snowing hard, and presently the clouds swept back over the newly risen moon; but I was now so close up that I could see the dark outlines of the house, and the wall of the enclosure. The building was only one story, but quite high, with a queer looking overhanging roof. The wall of the enclosure was some ten feet high. I circled to the south, and was soon close up to the main doorway of the house. The whole place was piled with snow. There was not a sound, only the howling of the wind as it swept in gusts under the low eaves. The glass door--I suppose it was glass--was a single rectangular pane in a dark, narrow frame. It was no more than three feet broad, and at least twelve feet high. Behind it I could see the dimly lighted interior--a soft, blue-white light. I could not see where it came from. For quite a while I must have stood there motionless, peering in. A portion of a large room was in the line of my sight; It seemed unoccupied. I could see a back wall hung with something dark; a sort of low couch to one side; queerly shaped, low chairs and a table or two. And there was a floor covering of some thick, soft textile, and several furs lying about. A large fur rug covered the couch. To the right I could see a low archway, hung with a curtain. That was in the direction of the girl's room. There were two other archways with curtains, but evidently no interior doors to the house. I had been pressing against the glass pane; it seemed to give a little. I pushed. The motion was inward, and greater at the bottom. I knelt down and shoved it. The lower half swung silently and smoothly inward and upward, while the upper half came out and down. The whole twelve foot pane was pivoted at its center. When it paralleled the floor it stopped, and there was a six foot opening leading into the house. I took a cautious step, listening intently, peering around me--behind me--with the sudden feeling that something supernatural might leap forth and spring at me any instant. But the Collinger, my finger on the trigger, gave me courage. In my left hand I held the flashlight, and very slowly I crept toward the curtained archway behind which I hoped the girl might be. Suddenly I remembered my cap. I smiled at the absurdity of the detail, but, nevertheless, I pulled it off and stuffed it in my pocket. Then I went forward, pushed aside the curtain, and entered the space behind it. I was in darkness as the curtain dropped. It must have been a sort of anteroom, or a short hallway, for some twenty feet ahead of me I saw another curtain with a blue radiance beyond it. A moment more and I had pushed aside the second curtain and stood peering into the room beyond. It was more dimly lighted than the living room. Across it, in a angle of wall, the first thing my gaze caught was a low couch or divan, bathed in the blue radiance from a brazier beside it, which left the rest of the room in gloom. The girl lay there asleep. A soft, pure-white fur was covering her, but her bare arms and shoulders were above it. One arm was crooked under her head for a pillow; the other, almost as white as the rug, lay stretched out over the fur. On her breast, her golden hair lay in waves. I stood transfixed by the ethereal loveliness of the face, calm in deep slumber. It was a small oval face of seemingly perfect features, with soft, curving red lips, smooth, rosy cheeks and long, silken lashes that lay motionless as she slept. My emotion at the picture was short lived; other thoughts crowded up me. What was I to do? I could not awaken the girl and ask her to come with me. She would not understand the words, and if she did, she would probably have screamed before I could get them out. Seize her, stifle her cries and carry her off forcibly? Perhaps that is what I should have done; taken her to the plane and left explanations until afterward. But I could not bring myself to do that. Somehow, my whole instinct was to retreat from the room. I felt myself a gross intruder in a sanctified place, my very gaze an insult. What I would finally have done, I don't know. Events took the decision out of my hands. The wind outside roared with a sudden gust that must have pulled loose something under the eaves. There came a rattle, a thump, loud in the silence of the house. Then the wind died again. I glanced up to the ceiling, startled, with my heart pounding and the Collinger pointed toward the sound. I could see nothing but the dark rectangle of a window up there. My gaze fell again to the couch--and met the opened eyes of the girl. She was sitting up, her hair tumbling over her shoulders, one hand instinctively gripping the white fur to raise it more closely about her, the other pressed against her mouth. I think I could never imagine an expression of more utter terror than that on her