CHAPTER II

Double Feature

Well, you know me! Old brain-like-a-fish Blakeson. I stared at him foolishly for a moment, then, when he said no more about it, decided Hank had finally developed, along with his many other virtues, a sense of humor. So I chuckled, and he chuckled with me, and we went to bed a little while later, and I proceeded to forget all about it.

It didn't even dawn on me, when the next morning he went out and came home with a couple armloads of wires, tubes and miscellaneous doogadgets, that he meant business. He was always prancing home with some kind of lab equipment or other--you know how amateur scientists are.

So I went ahead with my duties, which were plugging the sale of U. S. Government Bonds and Stamps--and, by the way, you better buy 'em, kiddies!--and three days whisked by as days have a habit of doing.

Then Travis Tomkins, chief technician of the observatory, halted me one day on the street.

"Say, Blakeson, where's Cleaver hiding himself? He promised to help me plot the orbit on that new comet he and I discovered."

"He and you!" I snorted. "Where do you get the community spirit? All you did was point the telescope where Hank told you! Oh--he's places, doing things. I'll tell him you want him."

And less than an hour later I bumped into H. Logan MacDowell, himself, in person, and not the captive balloon he looked like, to meet the same query.

"James, my dear lad," puffed the erstwhile Prexy of our former Alma Mammy. "I have been endeavoring to ascertain the whereabouts of our erudite rural companion. If you could enlighten me--"

"If you mean," I interpreted, "where's Hank, I guess he's home."

H. Logan pawed his plump jowls speculatively. "You might inform him that my daughter is most disturbed about his apparent disinclination to seek her company."

"H-how's that again?" I asked. MacDowell frowned at me disapprovingly.

"The custom," he hrrumphed, "is commonly known as--er--dating."

"You mean she wants to fling woo," I said, "and old Hank ain't been parking on the divan lately? Now I _know_ he's off his button. A gal like Helen, and with the marriage date already set--all right, Prexy. I'll tell him."

* * * * *

So I guess those two chance meetings served as eye-openers, because when I went home that evening, I came to the realization that Hank Cleaver had turned our tiny flat into a super-scientific workshop. There were odds and ends of things all over the living room; when I entered I heard a humming in Hank's bedroom, a curious, whining wail that stopped just as I entered, gave way to the tapping of a hammer on metal.

"_Hank!_" I yelled.

No answer. The lamps dimmed for a moment then rose again as the humming sound drowned out my call.

"_Hank!_" I cried again.

Still no answer. So I walked over to his door, and banged. "Hey! Come out, come out, wherever you are!"

And Hank came to the door, hair rumpled, a smear of grease running diagonally from his right temple to the tip of his nose, collar open, sleeves rolled high--

"Was you callin' me, Jim?" he asked.

"Who, me?" I retorted elaborately. "Oh, no! I was just addressing an envelope--hey, what the hell makes around here? Anyhow? Everybody and his brother has been asking me where I hid the _corpus delicti_. What are you making--"

Then I looked over his shoulder and saw it.

It was the wildest, weirdest looking thing you ever set eyes on in your life. I can't describe it exactly. They say English is the most elastic of all languages, but even _it_ lacks the words to describe some things. Like this one.

But I'll take a running start and see what happens. It was a machine. It was made of metal and glass and gadgets and doolollies and sugar and spice and everything nice; that's what little _girls_ are made of! It was shaped something like the tonneau of a 1931 model Packard, and somewhat more like a big, old-fashioned bathtub with a hood. It was roughly oval, but only roughly so, because you couldn't exactly decide what shape it was. It _wriggled_!

* * * * *

So help me, that's just what it did! Coils of wire wound around and around the tonneau part, in which there were two wide upholstered seats and an incomprehensible dashboard, bedecked with twelve or twenty dials; these coils twisted out to fore and aft of the egg-shaped structure--and vanished!

It had other features. But that's all I saw during that first, startled glance. And that was enough. I loosed a squawk of despair and held on to Hank for dear life.

"W--what is it?" I yelped. "Great whispering winds, what do you call that--that monstrosity?"

Hank said, "Now, ca'm down, Jim. It ain't like you to act thisaway. They ain't no cause for alarm."

"That's what they told Mrs. O'Leary when she bought a cow," I moaned, "only look what happened!" Then suddenly I remembered our conversation of a few nights ago, and I choked on my own incredulous words. "Hank--that's not _it_? Tell me it's not a--a time-machine?"

Horsesense Hank grinned and tugged at a straggling wisp of hair.

"Wa-a-all, I reckon I could tell you that, Jim, but it wouldn't be whut you mought call the truth. 'Cause that's jest whut it is. The machine that's gonna carry us back into the past to prove my theories!"

I said, "It's a time-machine," weakly. "A--a time-machine," I said--and then the double-take struck me. "_Us!_" I howled. "Us! Into the past? Oh, no! Gangway, pal--"

* * * * *

Hank grabbed me and held on tight. He's about four inches taller than I am, and dawn-to-dusk workouts behind the plow built him muscles like tension springs. My legs churned air, and I got nowhere. Hank said aggrievedly, "Now, Jim--I never thought you'd let me down like this--"

"Talking about letting down," I bleated, "how about me? Who's holding who? Leggo, Hank! I just remembered, I'm supposed to meet a guy about four thousand miles from here!"

"Now, durn it, you got to come with me!" said Hank. "It wouldn't do me no good to go gallivantin' off to the past by myself. I got to have witnesses. I'll have this machine all finished by tomorrow--"

Then it wasn't completed yet! That was a horse of a different collar. I stopped struggling. I said, "Will you be kind enough to take your greasy paws off me, you dope! My goodness, you act as if I were afraid of something!" I moved over to the machine, studied it with pacified interest. "How does it work?" I asked.

Hank grinned sheepishly and worked one bulldog tipped toe into the rug.

"Aw, it wasn't nothin' much, really. Not when you understand whut Time is."

"Oh, naturally!" I said. "But isn't it funny? For the moment it seems to have slipped my mind. What is Time?"

"Why, it's another dimension o' matter. Some calls it the 'fourth dimension,' but that's plumb silly, o' course. Dimensions is dimensions, an' it don't matter how you number 'em so long as you know how to use 'em.

"Anyhow, whut this here machine does is run down a pathway through the Time dimension jest like an auto runs on a road or an elevator runs up an' down or an airyplane flies 'round in circles. See?"

"No!" I said.

"Well, it's as simple as A-B-C, Jim. I just made a helical vortex with these here wires as the motivating cores, and slung the machine in it like a basket. Right now while I test it, I got it operatin' on A.C. house current, but when I push this little doogummy--" He pressed a small switch. "I shift it to self-generatin' D.C. These other levers control the distance in Time it travels, and there's space-location finders, too.

"Only thing I ain't figgered out yet is--"

"Yet!" I gasped. "Yet! You've done all this within four days. Solved a problem that has eluded men of genius for centuries, and you're worried about one minor detail!"

"Well, it ain't whut you might call minor, Jim--"

"Hank, you never had a day's mechanical training in your life. I know that. So tell me--how on earth could you know how to make this machine?"

Cleaver blushed.

"Why, it just come sort o' natcheral, Jim. 'Peared to me as if they was oney one way to make it, so--O golly!"

A stricken look swept suddenly over his face, and I spun to discover the reason. The Reason was five-foot-two of loveliness standing in the doorway of our apartment. Breath-taking but outraged loveliness, answering to the name of Miss Helen MacDowell.

Her dark eyes were like thunder-clouds, and her foot tapped the carpet angrily.

"Well!" she said. "Well, at last I find you!"

* * * * *

It was I who had to hold Hank Cleaver now. He was trying desperately to wriggle out of my grasp. I believe he had some idea of trying to crawl under the carpet. Finally he surrendered, turned to face his fiancée.

"H-hullo, honey!" he said.

"Don't 'honey' me!" snapped Helen. "What were you two talking about just now?"

Hank had temporarily suffered a paralysis of the vocal cords. I went to bat for him.

"Dimensions," I said. "Hank was explaining to me how the Time dimension operates."

Helen sniffed. "Time, indeed! Perhaps he needs an explanation of Time himself. I suppose you completely forgot you had a date with me an hour and a half ago, Hank Cleaver?"

Hank strangled. I said apologetically, "Now, Helen--don't be angry. I guess he forgot dimension it."

"That," scorned the girl, "is just the sort of poor joke I should expect from you, Jim. Well, I'm going to marry him and get him away from your bad influence soon--" Before I could think up a good comeback to that one, she shouldered past me into Hank's bedroom-laboratory, eyed with disdain the wavering, nebulous whatchamaycallit standing there. "What do you call _this_?" she demanded.

"It--it's a time-machine, honey," said Hank meekly.

"Hmmm! Funniest looking clock _I_ ever saw!"

"Not that kind of Time, sugar-plum." Hank visioned forgiveness in her aroused interest. He sprang to her side, pointed at the various dials and gadgets. "This takes you to the past, so you can watch history being made. Or into the future--"

Helen, being a woman, had no time for nonsense like that. She got right down to fundamentals. "It's not streamlined," she said. "I don't like the color, and the dashboard isn't pretty. Where's the cigarette-lighter? And those seats don't look very comfortable--"

And she climbed into the front seat.

Hank said, "Now, Helen, don't git in there yet! It ain't quite finished, an'--"

She ignored him with magnificent aplomb. "I'm glad _one_ of us has good common-sense," she said. "If you're going to be an inventor, someone has to keep an eye on you to make sure your inventions are practical.

"Just as I thought! These cushions aren't at all comfortable. They're not wide enough, either. Get in here, Jim. Beside me--that's right! And you, too, Hank. Now do you see what I mean? These seats should be lots wider--"

Hank said nervously. "All right, sweety-pie. Now let's go see a nice movie or--"

"And what," continued Helen blandly, "is this tiny key for? A glove compartment? Let me see inside--"

Hank stiffened like a strychnine victim. His eyes bulged, and his voice exploded in a sudden roar.

"_Don't touch that! Helen, don't--!_"

He spoke a split second too late. Already the key was turning. Freezing in my chair, I heard a thin, whining hum from the time-machine's motors. The framework shook, and I was suddenly aware that where about us, a moment before, we had seen a brightly illumined bedroom, now there was nothing but flickering mists of gray ... wavering ... bottomless ... formless....

"Dagnab it!" cried Hank. "Oh, dagnab it to blazes! Now you've went an' did it!"

* * * * *

He reached across the terrified girl, snapped over the key. Instantly the flickering ceased ... the gray, bottomless mists dissipated ... the illumination returned. We were once again back in the bedroom, sitting in the time-machine.

But--there was a startling difference.

Standing beside us, staring at us with eyes huge as moons and mouths incredulously agape, were three people. And those three people were--

Helen MacDowell ... Horsesense Hank ... and myself!