Robert Heinlein - Assignment in Eternity

"Let a gal eat, please," she begged. "I won't hold out on you. What is Howard looking so sour about?"

The professor whispered an explanation. She gave Jenkins a compassionate glance. "Oh, she hasn't? I thought I'd be the last man in; I was away so long. What day is this?"

Frost glanced at his wrist watch. "You're right on time; it's just eleven o'clock."

"The hell you say! Oh, excuse me. Doctor. *Curiouser and curiouser, said Alice.' All in a couple of hours. Just for the record, I was gone several weeks at least.'*

When her third cup of coffee had washed down the last of the toast, she began:

"When I woke up I was falling upstairs through a nightmare, several nightmares. Don't ask me to describe that nobody could. That went on for a week, maybe, then things started to come into focus. I don't know in just what order things happened, but when I first started to notice clearly I was standing in a little barren valley. It was cold, and the air was thin and acrid. It burned my throat. There were two suns in the sky, one big and reddish, the other smaller and too bright to look at."

'Two suns!" exclaimed Howard. "That's not possible binary stars don't have planets."

She looked at him. "Have it your own way I was there. Just as I was taking this all in, something whizzed overhead and I ducked. That was the last I saw of that place.

"I slowed down next back on earth at least it looked like it and in a city. It was a big and complicated city. I was in trafficway with a lot of fastmoving traffic. I stepped out and tried to flag one of the vehicles a long crawling caterpillar thing with about fifty wheels when I caught sight of what was driving it and dodged back in a hurry. It wasn't a man and it wasn't an animal either not one I've ever seen or heard of. It wasn't a bird, or a fish, nor an insect. The god that thought up the inhabitants of that city doesn't deserve worship. I don't know what they were, but they crawled and they crept and they stank. Ugh!"

"I slunk around holes in ithat place," she continued, "for a couple of weeks before I recovered the trick of jumping the time track. I was desperate, for I thought that the suggestion to return to now hadn't worked. I couldn't find much to eat and I was lightheaded part of the time. I drank out of what I suspect was their drainage system, but there was nobody to ask and I didn't want to know. I was thirsty."

"Did you see any human beings?"

"I'm not sure. I saw some shapes that might have been men squatting in a circle down in the tunnels under the city, but something frightened them, and they scurried away before I could get close enough to look."

"What else happened there?"

"Nothing. I found the trick again that same night and got away from there as fast as I could-1 am afraid I lost the scientific spirit. Professor I didn't care how the other half lived.

'This time I had better luck. I was on earth again, but in pleasant rolling hills, like the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was summer, and very lovely. I found a little stream and took off my clothes and bathed. It was wonderful. After I had found some ripe berries, I lay down in the sun and went to sleep.

"I woke wide awake with a start. Someone was bending over me. It was a man, but no beauty. He was a Neanderthal. I should have run, but I tried to grab my clothes first, so he grabbed me. I was led back into camp, a Sabine woman, with my new spring sports outfit tucked fetchingly under one arm.

"I wasn't so bad off. It was the Old Man who had found me, and he seemed to regard me as a strange pet, about on a par with the dogs that snarled around the bone heap, rather than as a member of his harem. I fed well enough, if you aren't fussy I wasn't nissy after living in the bowels of that awful city.

"The Neanderthal isn't a bad fellow at heart, rather good-natured, although inclined to play rough. That's how I got this." She fingered the scar on her cheek, "I had about decided to stay a while and study them, when one day I made a mistake. It was a chilly morning, and I put on my clothes for the first time since I had arrived. One of the young bucks saw me, and I guess it aroused his romantic nature. The Old Man was away at the time and there was no one to stop him.

' He grabbed me before I knew what was happening and tried to show his affection. Have you ever been nuzzled by a cave man, Howard? They have halitosis, not to mention B.O. I was too startled to concentrate on the time trick, or else I would have slipped right out into space-time and left him clutching air."

Doctor Frost was aghast. "Dear God, child! What did you do?"

"I finally showed him a jiu jitsu trick I learned in Phys. Ed. II, then I ran like hell and skinned up a tree. I counted up to a hundred and tried to be calm. Pretty soon I was shooting upstairs in a nightmare again and very happy to be doing it."

"Then you came back here?"

"Not by a whole lot worse luck! I landed in this present all right, and apparently along this time dimension, but there was plenty that was wrong about itI was standing on the south side of Forty-second street in New York. I knew where I was for the first thing I noticed was the big lighted letters that chase around the TIMES building and spell out news flashes. It was running backwards. I was trying to figure out ТDETROIT BEAT TO HITS NINE GET YANKEESУ when I saw two cops close to me running as hard as they could backwards, away from me." Doctor Frost smothered an ejaculation. "What did you say?"

"Reversed entropy you entered the track backwards your time arrow was pointing backwards."

"I figured that out, when I had time to think about it. Just then I was too busy. I was in a clearing in the crowd, but the ring of people-was closing in on me, all running backwards. The cops'disappeared in the crowd, and the crowd ran right up to me, stopped, and started to scream. Just as that happened, the traffic lights changed, cars charged out from both directions, driving backwards. It was too much for little Helen. I fainted.

"Following that I seemed to slant through a lot of places "

"Just a second," Howard interrupted, "just what happened before that? I thought I savvied entropy, but that got me licked."

"Well," explained Frost, "the easiest way to explain it is to say that she was travelling backwards in time. Her future was their past, and vice versa. I'm glad she got out in a hurry. I'm not sure that human metabolism can be maintained in such conditions."

"Hmm Go ahead, Helen."

"This slanting through the axes would have been startling, if I hadn't been emotionally exhausted. I sat back and watched it, like a movie. I think Salvador Dali wrote the script. I saw landscapes heave and shift like a stormy sea. People melted into plants I think my own body changed at times, but I can't be sure. Once I found myself in a place that was all insides, instead of outsides. Some of the things we'll skip I don't believe them myself.

"Then I slowed down in a place that must have had an extra spatial dimension. Everything looked three dimensional to me, but they changed their shapes when I thought about them. I found I could look inside solid objects simply by wanting to. When I tired of prying into the intimate secrets of rocks and plants, I took a look at myself, and it worked Just as well. I know more about anatomy and physiology now than an M.D. It's fun to watch your heart beat kind o'cute.

"But my appendix was swollen and inflamed. I found I could reach in and touch it it was tender. I've had trouble with it so I decided to perform an emergency operation, I nipped it off with my nails. It didn't hurt at all, bled a couple of drops and closed right up."

"Good Heavens, child! You might have gotten peritonitis and died."

"I don't think so. I believe that ultra-violet was pouring all through me and killing the bugs. I had a fever for a while, but I think what caused it was a bad case of internal sunburn.