Made in Tanganyika Page 2
stare hungrily at the alien shells until suddenly thescene before him grew dim, then faded completely away.
Travail laughed shortly. "Somebody sold you a fluke. This set must be anoff brand. Incidentally, isn't Tanganyika a colony governed by theFederal Union Congress?"
"Yes, it is," replied Sutter. "I don't understand this at all. There'sno _Empire_ of Tanganyika."
* * * * *
Next morning after breakfast Sutter announced that he was driving intothe country to visit a friend. There was no reason why he should nothave told his roommate the truth--that he was going to look up the manwho had sold him the TV set. No reason except for the odd fact thatTravail had made no mention of the alien shells, and Sutter keptthinking that a shell collector would have been immediately aware of therareness of them.
Once again Sutter drove out across state and down the highway where hehad seen the roadside stand. But when he reached the spot there was nosign of the stand. The big oak tree which had shaded it and the railfence on the adjoining property were there. But no stand. As Sutterstared with perplexed eyes at the spot he saw something he had notnoticed before.
At the edge of the highway was a large granite boulder with a bronzeplate fastened to its slanting surface. Sutter got out of the car,approached it and read:
_This property has been preserved as a State Park to commemorate the first successful trial explosion of the Hydrogen Bomb which took place on this site and marked the beginning of an era._
It seemed to Sutter as he stood there that the surrounding silence grewmore intense. Then he passed through a wide gateway and began to strideacross an evenly clipped lawn toward a grove of trees beyond. Halfway hepaused and glanced absently at his watch. It was exactly twelve o'clocknoon.
And abruptly the scene before him slipped out of plumb. The sky and thelawn seemed to alter positions, to rotate madly as in a vortex. Thewhirling ceased and the next instant Sutter stood on the shore of alonely sea with a tawny width of sand stretching out before him and thewaves washing up almost at his feet. Then he saw the shells....
It was the beach of the alien shells! There they lay, scattered aboutthe sand, hundreds, thousands of them, alien and delicate and lovely,exoskeletons the like of which he had never seen before. Their pastelcolors blended with one another to form a horizontal rainbow extendinginto the measureless distance.
And somehow, as Sutter walked among them, picking his way with care, theyears of his life seemed to slip away and he was a small boy at theseashore again, entranced with his first shell discovery. He could evenhear his mother's voice calling "Be careful, Martin! Don't go too far!"
He walked on and on, slowly, uncertainly, until the beach and the seabegan to waver like a heat mirage. And suddenly the shells and the watervanished and he was on the green grass again with the grove of treesjust ahead. He turned, saw a white highway with his car parked on theshoulder.
Dazedly, Sutter walked back to the car....
All next morning he ruminated over his strange experience. Toward noonthe pieces of the puzzle began to fit slowly together in his mind. Butthe partial answer at which he arrived seemed too fantastic for belief.Could it be possible that when he had stopped at the roadside stand hehad blundered, in some inexplicable way, into another dimension?
Sutter had a layman's knowledge of Einsteinian physics, and he knew thatexperiments in Time were being made every day. Only last week he hadread in the paper of an army officer who had reportedly Time-traveledsome twenty-two minutes. And a year ago the Belgian scientist, Delgar,claimed to have entered a secondary world which he declared impinged onour own.
Assuming all this to be true, then it could be that the Tanganyikatelevision set was a product manufactured in Future Time by a companythat, by Sutter's Time standards, didn't yet exist.
The following day saw Sutter begin an experiment of which he was ratherproud. Travail had said that he had tried to tune in the noon newsbroadcast yesterday on the TV and had turned the set on from twelveo'clock until five minutes after. At a nearby appliance store Sutterpurchased a clock control which would turn his television set on and offat any chosen time. He set the control for two o'clock, then managed tolure Travail out of the house for the afternoon by giving him aninvitation he'd received for a lecture on marine life at a local club.Next, he drove again to the H-bomb site and stood waiting in thegrass-like park, watch in hand.
At precisely two o'clock there came that queer staggering of earth andsky. The trees gave way to the stretch of sand; the waves,leaden-colored and cheerless, dotted with white caps rolled up on thelonely shore. As before Sutter felt that same exhilaration, that samereversal to the spirit of his youth. But despite his mental excitementhe maintained an awareness of the situation and a remembrance of why hehad come here.
When he walked among the shells this time he carried a large basket withhim and he picked up shells and dropped them into the basket, selectingthose that were the most alien.
In due time the basket was filled to overflowing and Sutter stood still,waiting. Once more the surrounding landscape underwent its change. Afterthe whirling had ceased and the initial feeling of vertigo had passedSutter carried the full basket back to the car and began the long drivehome.
As he drove he mused over what Travail would say when he saw theseshells. Then on second thought, he decided not to show them to him.Travail was getting on his nerves. He had obviously lied about hisinterest in shells. On discussing the subject with him Sutter found hedid not know the first thing about them. In fact, he regretted takinghim in as a roommate.
He was convinced that Travail's friendly good-fellowship attitude wasjust a pose, cloaking a so far mysterious motive. But it could be thatTravail knew of the value of Sutter's shell collection. Yesterday aletter had come from the Federal Arts Museum offering five thousandcredits for the lot, and while he had made no mention of the amount,Sutter had been foolish enough to tell Travail there had been an offer.
"Are you going to sell?" Travail had asked.
"Certainly not. They're worth five times the price they offered."
"Are they really?" said Travail. "That makes my own collection seemworthless by comparison."
Oh, Travail could be clever all right! Why else had he made no commentabout the alien shells they both had seen on the television set, if hedid know something of the value of shells?
Arriving home, Sutter entered by the rear door and carried the basket ofshells to his bedroom. There he took them out and one by one spread themon the table. He drew a goose-necked lamp down close and from the tabledrawer took out a powerful ato-magnifying glass. Then he selected one ofthe larger shells and began to examine it.
* * * * *
After a while he took a small keyhole saw which he kept for suchpurposes, and very carefully began to cut the shell into two equalportions. Once again he moved the ato-glass and began to study one ofthe sections. But the lamp was not very powerful, and insufficient forthe tiny details. Sutter abruptly remembered the four-position lamp inthe sitting room. He took the shell and the ato-glass and went to thefront room, hoping that Travail was not there.
To his relief he found the sitting room deserted. The television setstood silent in a corner and as he passed it Sutter switched it on, thencrossed to the four-position lamp and turned it up full. For a secondtime he peered through the ato-glass long and intently.
The bisected shell appeared to be a spinal univalve, resembling thefamiliar cephalopoda, _nautilus_, with thin septa dividing the manychambers.
Behind him the Tanganyika TV swelled on, the screen presenting that samescene of the beach of shells. As it did so Sutter uttered a startledexclamation.
Under the magnifying glass the chambers in the bisected shell suddenlybecame more than outgrowths of marine organism. _They were rooms!_Tessellated ceilings, microscopically mosaic inlaid floors, longsweeping staircases with graceful slender balustrades and tall almostIonic columns....
/> Heart pounding, Sutter looked again.
He saw that it was actually the light from the television set that wasilluminating the interior of the shell, lighting it with a strangeradiance that seemed to extend outward from the shell in a steadilywidening cone. His hand touched this cone, and it possessed a curioussolidity.
He hadn't been mistaken. _There were rooms in that shell!_ Narrowcorridors with arched doorways opened off alcoves and galleries. Onevaulted chamber had a kind of dais in the center of it. The entire innerstructure was fashioned of pastel-tinted walls which caught the light ofthe TV and radiated it to every corner in a soft glow of effulgence.
A magnetic lure swept over Sutter. He felt an overwhelming desire tostep into that cone of light....
Whether the exoskeleton expanded to admit his entrance or whether hisown figure magically dwindled he could not tell, but the next instant hefound himself in a fairy palace with all about him a world of