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Title: Ancestral Voices
Date of first publication: 1933
Author: Nat(haniel) Schachner (1895-1955)
Date first posted: Aug. 9, 2013
Date last updated: Aug. 9, 2013
Faded Page eBook #20130818

This eBook was produced by: Delphine Lettau, Mary Meehan, poolie
& the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net




                        Ancestral Voices

                       _by Nat Schachner_


                       ASTOUNDING STORIES

                  A STREET & SMITH PUBLICATION

                      VOLUME XII, NUMBER 4

                         DECEMBER, 1933




    _NAT SCHACHNER Challenges Debate in the most provoking story up till
    now_


The Year of grace 1935! A dull year, a comfortable year! Nothing much
happened. The depression was over; people worked steadily at their jobs
and forgot that they had ever starved; Roosevelt was still President of
the United States; Hitler was firmly ensconced in Germany; France talked
of security; Japan continued to defend itself against China by
swallowing a few more provinces; Russia was about to commence on the
third Five Year Plan, to be completed in two years; and, oh, yes--Cuba
was still in revolution.

In short, a normal, workaday world in which the social sciences were
once more relegated to the obscure utterances of long-haired professors,
and the average man passed hurriedly over columns of politics and the
international situation to pore intently on the chances of the Yankees
over the Athletics, and the inch-by-inch measurements of the Hebraic
challenger, Max Bernstein, juxtaposed against those of the Nordic
heavyweight champion of the world, the mighty Hans Schilling himself.

What could possibly happen in a world of such even-going pace, except
casual normalities, like:

       *       *       *       *       *

James Mann looked up feebly at the terrifying shadow of his boss. The
boss was Spanish, darkly predatory.

"Look here, Mann," he was saying. "Your accounts are out two cents
again."

"I--I can't understand it, sir."

"I'm not asking you to understand it," the boss said sharply. "I want
accuracy, loyalty. The next time you make a mistake, out you go--fired.
How much am I paying you now?"

"Fifteen a week, sir."

"The minimum, hey? You're not worth that much. Five would be more like
it."

Now James Mann, bookkeeper and near-sighted bachelor, prided himself on
one thing in his meek, rabbitlike existence. That was the fact that he
was superior to all foreigners by virtue of his ancestor having signed
the Domesday Book in illiterate, highly illegible Anglo-Saxon.

Something burst within him now, some long-underlaid streak of reckless
insanity. He rose from his desk to a full five feet four; thrust a
violently wagging forefinger under his boss's nose.

"You--you filthy foreigner!" he half screamed. "Keep your filthy job! My
ancestors----"

       *       *       *       *       *

Now consider:

       *       *       *       *       *

Herr Hellwig, Dictator of Mideuropa, struck a characteristic pose. At
once a hundred thousand Blue Shirts extended their hands and shouted in
unison: "_Heil Hellwig!_" The roar of it shook the earth with the
thunder of far-marching armies.

The bristly little mustache of his sallow face fairly quivered. His
mouth opened; he spoke:

"The future of the world belongs to the Mideuropans! The other nations
know it; they are panic-stricken! It was treachery, base treachery, that
won for them before! Down with the Jews and Communists!"

"Down with the Jews and Communists!" thundered the antiphonal response.

Herr Hellwig was gratified.

"We have eliminated the scoundrels!" he orated. "We are a pure race of
Nordics! Vercingetorix was our ancestor! We shall, we must prevail!
Blah--blah--blah!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Or if you prefer the purlieus of Boston Brahmism:

       *       *       *       *       *

Georgiana Cabot looked with marked distaste at her tall, iron-gray
husband. He was distinguished-looking, was Henry Cabot: especially now,
as he put the last finishing touch to his dress tie and hummed before
the mirror a slow, seductive waltz. She herself was faded, prim, and
highly rouged.

"I don't mind so much your low-bred taste in having an affair with a
chorus girl," she observed coldly; "but at least you could have the
decency not to let all Boston in on the sordid details. Remember, you
are a Cabot, and I----"

"Yes, yes. I know," the man said wearily. The light had gone out of his
face. "You are an Adams, and a Daughter of the American Revolution.
That's just the trouble. If you could forget those damning facts for a
moment, perhaps there would have been no chorus girl."

"Why, Henry, it is outrageous of you----"

And so the quarrel started.

Of course, there are pleasanter scenes. Take this one for example:

       *       *       *       *       *

The park in late springtime. A girl sat on the bench; overhead a dogwood
spread its waxen blooms. The girl was beautiful, with a certain warm,
olive-tinted Latinity to her. She palpably expected some one. Her eager
eyes raked the winding path both ways; she glanced at her wrist watch,
and the worried lines on her forehead deepened. She bit her lip.

There was the sound of crunching, hurried footsteps. She looked up, saw
a very blond young man half running. Her face lit up with happiness. The
worried lines disappeared.

"Paul!"

"Emily!"

The discreet squirrels looked the other way for the next minute or so.
When they did glance around again, the girl was patting her hair back
into place, and the young man was explaining:

"I just had it out with the mater."

The girl turned swiftly.

"Paul! You told her?"

He nodded gloomily.

"Yes."

"And----"

"Damn it all!" he exclaimed irrelevantly. "Suppose my forbear was
knighted by Queen Elizabeth. He might just as well have been hung, the
old pirate!"

"And my father came over in the steerage. I understand."

The young man said fiercely:

"I won't give you up."

In spite of the red-faced cop standing stolidly not a hundred feet away;
in spite of bright-eyed, chattering sparrows unversed in the delicacies
of squirrels, his arms went out for her. She moved blindly toward
him----

Now this is really very unusual; not only for 1935, year of normalities;
it would have been passing strange even in 1933, when the world was
stirring and quickening with the yeast of its motion. In the first
place, it involves science, and science is always unusual. But listen
for yourself:

       *       *       *       *       *

The laboratory was filled with precision instruments, such as a hundred
other physical laboratories could have duplicated. There was something
else, however, and this was truly unique. Emmet Pennypacker had made it
after three years of unremitting toil, and now it was finished. Any
number of internationally known scientists, if they had known, as of
course they didn't, could have told you that if an invention took
Pennypacker that long to complete, it must be a world beater.

Pennypacker admitted it himself; there was no false modesty about the
man! Even Sam Corey, his assistant, had to admit it, though he resented
many other things in his chief. For it must be confessed that the
scientist's personality was not particularly pleasing. He was ruthless,
unscrupulous, avid for personal aggrandisement and glory. He swallowed
the unsung, unknown labors of talented assistants like Sam Corey without
so much as an acknowledgement; he tore the professional reputations of
his colleagues to pieces if only it meant another column of praise in
the press.

Now, as he stood, arms akimbo, in the laboratory, staring at his last
and most marvelous invention, Pennypacker's lips were wreathed in a thin
smile of triumph. Sam Corey watched the yellowish, high-cheeked
features, the strong, beak-like nose, the single line of the thick,
black eyebrow, with a bit of distaste. Pennypacker's fingers twitched.
Lord! Was he going to repeat that idiotic, habitual gesture? There it
came. The right hand moved unconsciously up, twisted around the back of
the neck, and scratched the tip of the longish nose. A contortionist's
trick; one that Sam Corey couldn't have duplicated if he tried.

Pennypacker stepped back.

"It's the supreme product of human powers," he said. "My name will
resound through the ages as the greatest man of all time. Look at it,
Sam! Look at it!"

Sam smiled wryly. Not a word about his share in the planning and making
of the machine. As a matter of fact, the whole idea and construction had
really been his. But he only said: "Absolutely, Mr. Pennypacker," and
turned to stare at the machine as though it were the first time, and not
the thousandth.

It was well worth staring at. Resting on a movable platform was a large
square box, tall enough and wide enough to accommodate several men, as
well as a cluster of shiny machinery, tubes, numerous gadgets and
controls. What was peculiar about the box was the material of which it
was made. A transparent, metallic-like substance, harder and less clear
than glass, and shimmering in a sort of ecstatic dance as though its
component atoms were afflicted with a stuttering St. Vitus.

"A beautiful thing," acknowledged Sam. "I hope it works."

"Works?" Pennypacker echoed, as though he had not heard aright. "Of
course it works. This time machine is absolutely foolproof. Works! Ha!"
He snorted and glared. "Even you could work it!"

"Of course," said Sam with subtle meaning. "But it's dangerous
business, meddling with the past. What's done is done. 'The moving
finger writes, and, having writ, moves on'----You know the rest. We try
to introduce an anachronistic element into the past, and the
consequences may be incalculable. Now, if you were traveling into the
future, I'd be glad to----"

"Bunk! Stuff and nonsense!" interrupted the older man rudely. "Don't
quote poetry at me, Corey, to bolster up your cowardice. I'm going into
the past for that very reason; it's more difficult. The glory will be
greater, and--the world will believe more readily. I can bring back
proof; the future is a myth; they'll accuse me of inventing it."

That was it, thought Sam bitterly. Thinking only of the effect upon an
admiring world instead of the true scientific spirit. The past was dead;
nothing to be learned there; but the future----

Aloud he said: "Curious element, _vibratium_. Without its strange
property of reversing itself or speeding up in time, the machine could
never have been made."

"Y-e-es," Pennypacker assented grudgingly, as though Corey were setting
undue limits to his powers. Then: "But come; get everything ready. I am
anxious to start."

Sam walked through a slide door into the machine. He adjusted the
shining, shimmering controls, made certain tests, carefully ascertained
that the automatic reverse was set for three hours, to insure the return
of the machine within that time limit.

"All set, sir," he reported.

Pennypacker gulped down a colloidal solution of the new element to
impregnate his body with its peculiar qualities. Then he walked
steadily into the machine. The man was brave in his fashion.

"I'd like to go with you, sir," said Corey.

Pennypacker stopped, swung on his heel, glared through the open door at
his assistant.

"No!" he literally barked. "This first trip is mine, mine alone! You
wait here and watch."

The slide slid noiselessly into position. Corey saw a strangely
distorted figure press a button inside.

"Good-by," he shouted viciously, sure that he could not be heard. "I
hope you meet your great ape of a great-great-grandfather. He'll commit
suicide when he sees what he created!"

The time machine cleared magically a moment, then clouded into milky
opaqueness. The sharp outlines blurred and faded until there was only a
gray mist; then nothingness. The machine had started on its tremendous
journey back into time!

Sam Corey cursed to relieve his feelings; then, because he was above all
a scientist, sat down to await the ending of the three-hour interval,
every nerve taut for the slightest interruption to the great experiment.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mrs. Murphy sat dry-eyed, listening to her lord and master. When he
paused for a particularly strangling hiccup, she said:

"You're drunk!"

Her three children, ranging from Bridget, seven, to Tim, three, the
cause of all the commotion, hung on to her ample skirts, whimpering,
frightened.

Mr. Murphy sank into a rickety wooden chair and wiped his slobbering
mouth with the back of an uncertain hand.

"Drunk, 'm I?" he muttered, glowering. "Well, maybe I am! An' why
shouldn't I be, Mrs. Murphy?" he roared suddenly. Tim began to cry
loudly.

Mr. Murphy rose unsteadily to his feet, glared at his youngest offspring
with bloodshot eyes.

"Look at 'm!" he shouted. "Black's ace o' spades! A bloody Eytalian,
thass wha' he is. Ain't no Murphy 'bout 'm; like Bridget an' Michael,
the darlints. You, Mrs. Murphy"--he pointed a wavering, hairy
finger--"been--been unfaithful!"

He sank back into the chair, bowed his head on the table, and keened
beerily.

Mrs. Murphy shrugged her shoulders with a Mona Lisa smile. She was used
to these scenes; they occurred every time Mr. Murphy came home more than
ordinarily drunk.

Tim, the youngest, looked so un-Irish.

       *       *       *       *       *

In Cuba there was the usual revolution. Gonzales, the president pro tem,
was about to be shot by order of Merrido, the president-to-be. The
firing squad were sighting down their rifles, waiting for the signal.

In England a newly made member of Parliament was haranguing a bored
House of Commons; in Sicily a peasant was lustily treading out the
dark-red juice of the grapes with bare, muscular feet, singing the
"Drinking Song" from _Otello_ to the accompaniment of his downward
jumps. An orthodox Jewish rabbi was conning his prayer book. An Ogpu
officer stalked into a Russian factory to arrest a sabotaging
counter-revolutionist. A Turkish soldier waited at the barred gate to
the harem.

All quiet on the western, southern, eastern, and northern fronts!

No! I almost forgot. There was one event stirring in this year of 1935
that had the world by the ears. America certainly was all agog; every
one discussed it, argued with all the factual discrepancies and rancor
of experts. Broadcasting networks were hooked up as never before;
announcers were on their toes; reporters pounded furiously on
typewriters; cable and wireless companies reaped a harvest; and Europe,
Australia, Africa, Asia, waited for the tremendous dénouement. Mideuropa
was wild with Hellwigish enthusiasm, of course.

The mammoth, gigantic, overadvertised conflict of all time was in
progress. Max Bernstein, Semitic challenger, against Hans Schilling,
champion, for the heavyweight championship of the world!

The Garden was black with humanity; tier on tier of them, crammed into
every available inch of space, clinging to the rafters, solidly packed
into the aisles, hysterical, limp, raucous, imploring, yelling for
blood.

It had been a great fight so far. The great bulk of the champion, with
his ponderous reach and bone-crushing, sledge-hammer blows; the lighter,
shorter challenger, with his superior speed and agility. Both were
battered out of all semblance to humanity; both were groggy and game.

The beginning of the tenth round of a fifteen-round so-called boxing
contest. The bell clanged harshly, and its last notes were lost in the
roar of the crowd. Everybody was on his feet, struggling for a better
view, cursing his neighbor, collars sweaty and torn, chanting:

"Knock 'im out! Kill 'im! Get the big bum! In the breadbasket! Put the
big palooka out!"

In short, all the cultured give-and-take of a fully developed
civilization.

The two gladiators were in the center of the ring; the beating lights
glistened from sweaty, muscular bodies.

Schilling led off with a smashing right. Bernstein ducked slightly, and
the blow passed over his shoulder. He countered with a short jab to the
chin. The champion's head rocked back. The crowd yelled. Schilling shook
his head, swung his left. It caught Bernstein in the side; staggered
him. To save himself, he clinched. There was a rapid hammering of blows
on reddened ribs; then the referee sprang in.

"Break!" he shouted.

The fighters parted. Schilling's lips went back from split mouth in a
snarl.

"Yah!" he taunted. "Kike! Back to the ghetto!"

Bernstein went dead-white, then the dark blood swarmed over head and
shoulders. He swung suddenly from the floor. Every ounce of power was in
that blow. It smashed square into Schilling's nose.

The giant rocked on his heels, went down. The referee sprang over him;
Bernstein backed into a corner. The Garden was wild with sound.

"One--two--three--four----"

The referee could hardly be heard in the tumult.

"Five--six--seven--eight----" he called.

Somewhere in the dim, bewildered brain of the fallen champion sounds
penetrated. He heaved, staggered slowly to his feet on the last count,
grinned foolishly, and fumbled for his opponent.

Bernstein drew his right calmly back; measured the befuddled giant for
the final killing blow. The glove flicked forward; the roar of the mob
was indescribable----

       *       *       *       *       *

Emmet Pennypacker seemed suspended in the void; a void of sullen
blankness in which there was neither day nor night, form nor shape,
machine nor man. How long this state of not being lasted, he never was
able to tell. Time itself had no sense or meaning.

Then awareness came; awareness of a lightening in a materialized
universe; a sense of solidity to body and a pressure against unyielding
floor. The time machine was slowing down.

Pennypacker's thoughts went round and round in whirligig fashion. "Don't
know where stop--stop where can--calculations impossible--impossible
know--maybe no world--out in space--_afraid_----"

His senses cleared; he gaped foolishly around. The machine was solid
about him; the walls were milky-white. That meant he was almost at the
end of his journey. He felt uneasily for the gun in his pocket. It was
still there, fully loaded, but it gave him no comfort. He regretted now
that he had wanted all the glory for himself; Sam Corey would have been
a tower of strength.

The milkiness was clearing. He strained his eyes anxiously. What was
outside; what strange monsters and steamy swamps? Perhaps the earth was
a molten mass; perhaps it had whirled backward from under him, and he
was suspended horribly in space.

The _vibratium_ walls shimmered into translucency; the atoms were
approaching normal speeds. A tiny jar, and vision was established. The
machine had come to a halt.

Emmet Pennypacker stared, groaned, and cowered back.

The machine was resting against the solid stone of a wall. It was the
edge of a great square in the heart of an ancient city; Roman, by the
massiveness and simplicity of its architecture. But that was not what
had elicited the groan from Pennypacker.

The city was in flames; the sparks flew upward on surges of dense black
smoke; walls tottered and fell in ruining destruction. Even that did not
represent the full horror of it. For the great square was a shambles;
the bodies of dead and dying lay in great, sprawling heaps. Through the
_vibratium_ walls came shouts and screams and shrieks and the crash of
collapsing houses.

Figures rushed wildly across the square, like puppets jerked by
invisible strings. Men in the characteristic Roman armor ran headlong,
unarmed, the doom of approaching death on set lips and darkened eyes.
Women, old, young, granddames, maidens, fled helterskelter, stumbling
over the dead, hair streaming wildly, shrieking with insane intensity.

There were other men; strange, savage-looking barbarians; swart,
yellowish, misshapen, and squatly powerful. Some ran with flaming
torches, thrust them into open doorways, and ran on, leaving flame and
smoke to burst out behind in gushing blasts. Others staggered under
heaped piles of loot, bedecked in grisly fashion with pendant ornaments
and mincing bracelets; others shouted and sang in wild, vinous accents,
and others ran methodically and with deadly precision. Their short
swords rose and fell--and came up dripping, bloody. A fleeing Roman
soldier went crashing, cloven to the nape; an ancient bel-dame shrieked
and stopped in bloody gurgle.

Pennypacker thus found himself in the Roman city of Aquileia, in the
year 452 A. D., at the very moment that Attila's Huns had broken through
the city walls!

Pennypacker screamed once and dashed for the controls. He did not want
to remain in this terrible place! He did not want to travel in time any
more! If only he could get back to safe-and-sane 1935, he would destroy
the time machine; he would----

He groaned and cowered away. He had forgotten. The controls were locked
on automatic reverse; he must wait, wait three hours. Three hours!
Eternity in this scene of carnage and horror! He would go mad! He would
be discovered and killed!

A piercing screech filtered through the glassy wall. He raised his head
from his hands. A girl was running straight across the square, running
swiftly over débris and the dead, her long white garment whipping
backward with the wind of her flight. Her tawny hair was disordered; her
eyes were wide with fear. Behind her clattered a Hun--squat, powerful,
hairy, his thick brow a single straight gash, his nose curved like a
vulture's, his skin tough and yellow.

There was brutal, avid desire in his slanted eyes, and he was gaining on
the fleeing girl. Pennypacker jerked forward with an oath. The girl was
running straight for the time machine; her eyes flared into hope.

Pennypacker yelled insanely, beat upon the locked, immobile controls. He
was discovered! He would be killed! He did not want to die in this
long-dead past.

The girl has reached the deceptive glass of the machine, was hammering
with small, tender fists against the solid wall. The Hun leaped the
intervening distance, caught at her shoulder. The hope in her eyes gave
way to horror. She screamed in last despair as the hairy arms encircled
her, swung her like a sack of meal over a squat, powerful shoulder.

The gaze of the Hun and that of the man of A. D. 1935 met. The Hun
grinned brutally and turned to carry off his prey. The girl's hand
fluttered feebly to Pennypacker in a final imploring gesture.

Something cracked within the man. Not knowing what he did, swearing
horribly, his hand fought the slide control. The door sprang open. Still
unknowing, the gun somehow in his hand, he raised it, shot. The bullet
tore at the barbarian's leg. It sagged; he sat grotesquely down.

Pennypacker ran out of the machine to help the girl, but she forestalled
him. She had flung clear; was up on her feet, and, without looking
backward, without so much as a "Thank you," fled like a startled animal
straight for the nearest building and disappeared into the portico.

Pennypacker stared after her in disgust, and even as he stared, a party
of Huns dashed into the very structure the girl had thought to hide in.
Pennypacker shrugged his shoulders.

"Serves her damn right," he muttered, and turned to go back into the
machine.

Pennypacker did not know it, but he had interfered with the course of
history and unwittingly sealed his own fate. The girl would have been
his many-times-removed great-grandmother! Thus time revenges itself on
those who pry into its secrets.

There was another surprise waiting for him. The barbarian Hun had
managed to drag himself with his shattered leg into the machine, and as
Pennypacker, still dazed, entered, he felt himself caught in a grip of
iron.

He cried out with the pain of it, and struggled to free himself, but it
was like the futile buzzing of a fly enmeshed in a spider's web. The
hold on his leg gripped all the tighter. Pennypacker ceased struggling,
and caught hold of a jutting control. The barbarian, because of his
wounded leg, could not rise or draw him nearer for the finishing blow;
and Pennypacker, holding grimly onto the control, could not free his
captured leg.

A straining, heaving tug of war, and then, as if by mutual consent, both
ceased pulling, to remain in a sort of status quo. Their eyes turned and
met.

Pennypacker was so shocked that he almost let go his hold. The features
of the Hun--the straight black brow, the yellowish tinge, the nose--they
all seemed strangely familiar, as though they were a caricature of some
one he knew. The Hun, too, seemed greatly puzzled. He stared up with
dark, savage eyes; the straight brow furrowed with unaccustomed thought.

Then, almost simultaneously, their free hands stole around the nape of
their necks and scratched gently at the longish noses.

The characteristic, unconscious gesture of Pennypacker that used to
infuriate Sam Corey most unreasonably. Duplicated, back in time, at the
sack of Aquileia, by a Hun, an unspeakable savage, a deformed creature
stemming from the Asiatic steppes, following the scourge of God, scum of
humanity!

Pennypacker let go his hold in the surprise of it, dropped to the floor
within easy reach of the fierce barbarian. But the Hun, though still
gripping his leg, made no other move. He sat there, his wounded leg
stiff in front of him, staring at the modern man.

He opened his mouth; thick, barbarous speech spewed forth. Pennypacker,
beyond fear, shook his head and said nothing. The Hun tried again. This
time more haltingly, with frequent stops as he fumbled for the words and
with mutilated intonations. But Pennypacker, who was somewhat of a
scholar, caught the drift. The Hun was addressing him in ancient Latin.

"You--do that," the savage warrior mouthed. "That old trick--my family.
Father do it; great father; way back. Who you? Were you from? How----"

Pennypacker stared down at the distorted, bestial features in front of
him. He shuddered. That strange familiarity--it resolved itself into a
weird caricature of his own face. That trick gesture--his own father and
great-grandfather, according to tradition, had been addicted to it.

It was impossible; a nightmare come to plague him!

He winked his eyes violently; hoping to awake, to find himself in bed
back in 1935. But no; the scenes of slaughter and lust continued around
him; the ancestral Hun gave him back feature for feature; the grip on
his leg had not relaxed.

Then he went mad; stark, raving mad.

"Go away," he shrieked, "vision out of hell! I disown you. I defy you.
You never fathered me! I come of Norman stock! You devil, you!"

He struck futilely at the grinning visage, a stinging, glancing blow.
The Hun's puzzled grin gave way to a scowl of utter ferocity. The beast,
the Oriental savage, came to the fore with a rush. He had been struck,
insulted. It called for blood, the warm, satisfying gush of blood from
gaping wounds. The terrifying battle cry of the Huns ripped out of his
throat, filled the machine with its ululations.

"_Ula-ula-ula-loo-loo!_"

His right arm whipped around, caught Pennypacker by the throat. The
scientist felt himself strangling; his hands plucked unavailingly at the
steely grip; red, hate-filled eyes stared into his; hot breath was on
his cheek.

He tried to cry out, and could not. The hands were constricting.
Everything was a red haze. His arms dropped limply. The right hand
contacted with something hard. A last gush of consciousness. That must
be the gun. His fingers clutched, raised it.

Something told him he must not fire; the consequences would be
infinitely incalculable; but he was dying, anyway. There was no mercy in
the Hun. The red haze deepened. His hand moved in reflex action. The
muzzle tilted; the finger compressed. There was a shattering roar; the
barbarian shook violently, stared in hurt surprise, and slowly
collapsed.

Pennypacker felt the death-dealing grip loosen, felt rather than saw the
sprawl of the Hun. Then--suddenly--darkness, vague, illimitable----

Men were running to the machine with great shouts. Huns with weapons in
their hands. The _vibratium_ walls cleared, turned milky-white, and
faded. The automatic reverse had gone into action. The three-hour limit
was up!

       *       *       *       *       *

James Mann, bookkeeper, shouted under the nose of his astounded boss:
"My ancestors----"

He staggered, held himself painfully. Then----

The boss said: "My God!" and fell back into a chair.

He rubbed his eyes, tried to control the trembling of his limbs.

He stared around the office with bloodshot, haggard eyes.

It was empty!

James Mann had vanished, as though he had never been!

That was it--as though he had never been.

The boss raised himself, fighting back insanity. He ran around, peering
under desks and chairs. No use!

"Mann!" he cried, his voice a semishriek. "Come back! I know it's a
joke! You're hiding some place. I'll raise your salary! I'll do
anything!"

No answer, for the very good reason that James Mann never existed on
this earth.

"Oh, my God!" mouthed the boss, and fell on the floor in a fit. There
they found him, his other employees. Shrieking and gibbering--mad!

       *       *       *       *       *

Herr Hellwig was in splendid fettle. He played upon the hundred thousand
Blue Shirts as though they were a many-stopped organ.

"Blah! Blah! War!" he shouted. "War against the enemy! I call on
Vercingetorix, our ancestor; Odin, Thor, all the gods of Valhalla----"

The Blue Shirts flamed, upended sun-bright swords, crashed out:

"War! _Heil Hellwig!_"

And stopped as though paralyzed.

A hundred thousand stared, a hundred thousand moaned, a hundred
thousand--no--_ninety thousand_, broke into epic, panic flight.

Their leader, calling on his ancestors, on his ancient gods, had
vanished, gone as though he had never been.

The gods had revenged themselves!

       *       *       *       *       *

With Henry Cabot it was much simpler.

His wife choked on a fish-wife epithet, most unbecoming in an Adams and
a Daughter of the American Revolution, and evaporated.

Henry Cabot rubbed his eyes unbelievingly, said something under his
breath. He was in truth a Cabot, a Brahmin of Brahmins, schooled to
self-repression, so he did not faint nor call wildly for help.

He took a step forward, stopped. No question about it; his wife had
evaporated. He made a move toward the telephone to call the police,
paused again, shrugged his shoulders. They would not believe him, of
course.

A slow smile broke over his aristocratic countenance. He commenced
humming the interrupted waltz, adjusted his necktie, went out to meet
his chorus girl.

       *       *       *       *       *

Emily closed her eyes, nestled forward for Paul's strong arms, and fell
half across the bench. She picked herself up, opened her eyes, and
screamed.

She was alone!

The red-faced policeman came on a lumbering run, swinging his stick. One
look at the hysterical, shrieking girl and he blew a shrill blast on his
whistle. A brother officer came racing; a crowd gathered with the
facility that all New York crowds possess.

"Call the ambulance, Pete," No. 1 said. "Bellevue, psychopathic ward.
It's a pity; she's got good looks."

He turned savagely on the crowd.

"G'wan, scram! What d'ye think this is--a circus?"

Max Bernstein let loose the killing blow, straight for the unprotected,
sagging jaw of Hans Schilling, the champion. Within seconds there would
be a new champion.

The Garden was bedlam. Expensive straws showered unnoticed on straining,
blood-lustful humanity. The climax to the battle of the century. The
announcers danced insanely before the microphones; their voices cracked
and hoarse.

"Folks, it's coming, on its way! It's connecting! Max Bernstein's
fist----Hold on! Wh-what's that? Where am I? Where are we? Oh, my God!"

The microphones went dead, forgotten. In a million homes, ears,
thirstily waiting for the description of the final blow, strained in
vain. Even the roar of the crowd went mute. Then--confused sounds,
terrified, wailing, like animals in mortal agony.

Home-sitting fight fans shuddered, turned off their radios; rushed to
phone broadcasting stations, clamoring for information, clogging all
wires.

Hans Schilling, Nordic champion, and Max Bernstein, Jewish challenger,
had both puffed out like wisps of smoke in mid-blow, in the very center
of the ring, under the fierce, beating glare of the floodlights!

       *       *       *       *       *

Sam Corey waited alertly in the laboratory, his eyes glued to the
split-second clock; the platform where the time machine should reappear.

Three hours! Eternity!

Never did seconds drag more interminably. The machine had vanished
according to schedule; the first half of the experiment was a success.
Somewhere in time, in the dim past ages, the machine rested; somewhere
in time, Emmet Pennypacker existed, no longer an entity in the year
1935.

What was happening to him? Sam Corey tried to visualize; could not
concentrate; gave it up, and waited, every sense taut on the dragging
clock.

A quarter to three! Pennypacker had started at twelve. Ten minutes, five
minutes, one minute, fifteen seconds. Sam Corey sprang up. One second!

A vague opalescence, a shadowy mist gathering: a milky, coherent cloud,
and the familiar shimmer of the _vibratium_-built time machine. It had
returned on the dot, obedient to the automatic reverse.

Sam allowed his scientific feelings to overcome him. He gave an exultant
whoop, dashed forward to the machine. He stopped, cried out in horror,
jumped in through the open slide door, knelt at the motionless body
within.

It was minutes before he arose. When he did, he was a strangely aged,
stooped man. Gone was the zest of youth, never to return. His lips were
grim, taut; his eyes hard. Very deliberately he dragged the body out
into the laboratory; very deliberately he searched around until he found
what he wanted. It was a sledge hammer. Methodically he smashed into
smithereens the time machine, the greatest invention that man had ever
conceived.

At last, satisfied that no one part was intact or recognizable, he went
to the phone and called the police--and the reporters.

       *       *       *       *       *

It was a tragedy of colossal dimensions that struck an astounded world.
A holocaust that left its impact on future generations, making it
impossible for any scientist to dare meddle again with time.

Fifty thousand men, women and children vanished that fatal day; fifty
thousand human beings of every race and clime; in savage Africa, in
far-off Australia, in teeming China, in blue-eyed northern Europe, in
dark-haired southern Europe, in the vast stretches of America, the
melting pot of all races.

Gone, vanished, disappeared without a trace, as though they had never
been!

That was it: they had never been, explained Sam Corey to the horde of
clamoring reporters, while a bewildered world, mourning lost dear ones,
surfeited with supernatural tragedy, groped for a coherent answer.

"You see," said Sam, after the awe-stricken men had thrown vain glances
at the smashed machine, stared with sharp intakes of breath at the thing
on the floor, "you can't play around with time. I warned Pennypacker,
but he wouldn't listen. I helped him build the machine--it was his idea
completely," he added hastily. He did not want the credit that rightly
was his. The execrations of mankind would immortally follow the creator.

"To go into the future," resumed Sam, "yes, that might be possible:
though even then there might be trouble. It's a delicate business. But
into the past! The past is done, completely. The tale is told. 'The
moving finger writes, and, having writ, moves on----' You know the
rest."

The reporters looked at each other, nodded wisely, and scribbled. A good
line: make note to look it up, where it came from, back at the copy
desk.

Sam crossed his legs. He was beginning to enjoy himself.

"You go back into the past," he said, "and what happens? You intrude
into a state of affairs that's already worked out: cause and effect.
Your mere presence is sufficient to set up disturbances that should
never have existed."

A reporter raised his head, looked with avid, fascinated eyes at the
thing on the floor.

"But that," he muttered. "What is it?"

"I'm coming to that," Sam said deliberately. "Pennypacker did more than
intrude. He killed a man; a man who had lived and bred children, and who
in turn bred children, and so on ad infinitum. Reason mathematically:
figure the number of generations; the spread of offspring. Fifty
thousand is conservative; I'm surprised half the world didn't go!

"The man died by an act that should never have happened. The
consequences are simple. The children he must have had after his
untimely decease, and I use the word _untimely_ advisedly, were
therefore never born. Accordingly, all his descendants whom we supposed
alive to-day never were. They were illusions, figments of our
imagination, and necessarily vanished into nothingness the moment their
putative ancestor shuffled off his mortal coil."

"But this thing," persisted the stubborn reporter. "And where is
Pennypacker?"

For the first time Sam Corey smiled. Years of bitterness under the
selfish egotism of Pennypacker were now bearing pleasant fruit.

He got up, went to the body.

"This," he repeated. "Look at it; it's a Hun of Attila's time. Read
Gibbon's description. Note something further. It's a caricature, I grant
you, but a painfully accurate caricature of Emmet Pennypacker, the
eminent scientist. This Hun was Pennypacker's direct progenitor.
Pennypacker killed his own father, so to speak, and therefore never
existed. Pennypacker, gentlemen, was a myth!"

       *       *       *       *       *

Here this veracious chronicle should end, but there is just one further
incident to be told, if only to season unmitigated horror with a little
spice of grim humor--if only to point a moral.

       *       *       *       *       *

Mrs. Murphy was waiting for the return of her lord and master;
frightened, hard, and faintly triumphant, in bewildering succession.
Little Tim clung to her ample Sunday-going black dress, whimpering.

It was evening. The papers were out already, screaming headlines about
the world-wide tragedy and the incredible explanation. She hushed poor
Tim with absent, stroking fingers, and waited.

Mr. Murphy walked elaborately through the door, more drunk than usual.
The holocaust had caught him at work--riveting; a pal had vanished from
his side. That meant drinks to drown the memory; more drinks to vanquish
thought.

He stared blearily at Mrs. Murphy, at poor, dark-haired Tim. Ancient
suspicions awaked in him, as they were wont to do on such occasions.

"Look at 'm!" he shouted. "Black's ace o' spades! A bloody Eytalian,
thass wha' he is! Ain't no Murphy 'bout 'm, like Bridget an' Michael.
Say--whe-where's my children?"

Mrs. Murphy rose to magnificent heights. Her voice was filled with
grief, with strange triumph.

"You--drunken--fool!" she said. "A lot you know! Bridget and Michael
were not your children! They've been took. Tim is your only child.
You--fool!"

She sat down, panting from the effort, a little frightened now, hugging
Tim close against the inevitable outburst.

Mr. Murphy looked at her with cold-sober eyes. The drink was completely
out of him.

He pushed a hairy hand across his brow.

"They've been took," he muttered. "Took!"

He looked across at Tim, and the child flinched away.

"Tim--only one left!"

Mr. Murphy's brow cleared.

"O' course!" he roared, and banged his fist on the table. "I knew it all
along! Tim's a real Murphy; there's black Irish in 'm."

He gestured splendidly.

"Shure, Mrs. Murphy, ye needn't be thinkin' ye've pulled the wool over
my eyes all these years, you ould darlint!"


[The end of _Ancestral Voices_ by Nat(haniel) Schachner]