Мартин Гринберг - The Best Time Travel Stories of the 20th Century

Vanning was thinking about tesseracts. “You mean it’s bigger inside than it is outside?”

“A paradox, a paradox, a most delightful paradox. You tell me. I suppose the inside of the locker isn’t in this space-time continuum at all. Here, shove that bench in it. You’ll see.” Gallegher made no move to rise; he waved toward the article of furniture in question.

“You’re crazy. That bench is bigger than the locker.”

“So it is. Shove it in a bit at a time. That corner first. Go ahead.”

Vanning wrestled with the bench. Despite his shortness, he was stockily muscular.

“Lay the locker on its back. It’ll be easier.”

“I... uh!... O.K. Now what?”

“Edge the bench down into it.”

Vanning squinted at his companion, shrugged, and tried to obey. Of course the bench wouldn’t go into the locker. One corner did, that was all. Then, naturally, the bench stopped, balancing precariously at an angle.

“Well?”

“Wait.”

The bench moved. It settled slowly downward. As Vanning’s jaw dropped, the bench seemed to crawl into the locker, with the gentle motion of a not-too-heavy object sinking through water. It wasn’t sucked down. It melted down. The portion still outside the locker was unchanged. But that, too, settled, and was gone.

Vanning craned forward. A blur of movement hurt his eyes. Inside the locker was—something. It shifted its contours, shrank, and became a spiky sort of scalene pyramid, deep purple in hue.

It seemed to be less than four inches across at its widest point.

“I don’t believe it,” Vanning said.

Gallegher grinned. “As the Duke of Wellington remarked to the subaltern, it was a demned small bottle, sir.”

“Now wait a minute. How the devil could I put an eight-foot bench inside of a five-foot locker?”

“Because of Newton,” Gallegher said. “Gravity. Go fill a test tube with water and I’ll show you.”

“Wait a minute... O.K. Now what?”

“Got it brim-full? Good. You’ll find some sugar cubes in that drawer labeled fuses. Lay a cube on top of the test tube, one corner down so it touches the water.”

Vanning racked the tube and obeyed. “Well?”

“What do you see?”

“Nothing. The sugar’s getting wet. And melting.”

“So there you are,” Gallegher said expansively. Vanning gave him a brooding look and turned back to the tube. The cube of sugar was slowly dissolving and melting down.

Presently it was gone.

“Air and water are different physical conditions. In air a sugar cube can exist as a sugar cube. In water it exists in solution. The corner of it extending into water is subject to aqueous conditions. So it alters physically, though not chemically. Gravity does the rest.”

“Make it clearer.”

“The analogy’s clear enough, no? The water represents the particular condition existing inside that locker. The sugar cube represents the workbench. Now! The sugar soaked up the water and gradually dissolved in it, so gravity could pull the cube down into the tube as it melted. See?”

“I think so. The bench soaked up the... the x condition inside the locker, eh? A condition that shrank the bench—”

“ In partis, not in toto. A little at a time. You can shove a human body into a small container of sulphuric acid, bit by bit.”

“Oh,” Vanning said, regarding the cabinet askance. “Can you get the bench out again?”

“Do it yourself. Just reach in and pull it out.”

“ Reach in? I don’t want my hand to melt!”

“It won’t. The action isn’t instantaneous. You saw that yourself. It takes a few minutes for the change to take place. You can reach into the locker without any ill effects, if you don’t leave your hand exposed to the conditions for more than a minute or so. I’ll show you.” Gallegher languidly arose, looked around, and picked up an empty demijohn. He dropped this into the locker.

The change wasn’t immediate. It occurred slowly, the demijohn altering its shape and size till it was a distorted cube the apparent size of a cube of sugar. Gallegher reached down and brought it up again, placing the cube on the floor.

It grew. It was a demijohn again.

“Now the bench. Look out.”

Gallegher rescued the little pyramid. Presently it became the original workbench.

“You see? I’ll bet a storage company would like this. You could probably pack all the furniture in Brooklyn in here, but there’d be trouble in getting what you wanted out again. The physical change, you know—”

“Keep a chart,” Vanning suggested absently. “Draw a picture of how the thing looks inside the locker, and note down what it was.”

“The legal brain,” Gallegher said. “I want a drink.” He returned to his couch and clutched the siphon in a grip of death.

“I’ll give you six credits for the thing,” Vanning offered.

“Sold. It takes up too much room anyway. Wish I could put it inside itself.” The scientist chuckled immoderately. “That’s very funny.”

“Is it?” Vanning said. “Well, here you are.” He took credit coupons from his wallet. “Where’ll I put the dough?”

“Stuff it into Monstro. He’s my bank.... Thanks.”

“Yeah. Say, elucidate this sugar business a bit, will you? It isn’t just gravity that affects the cube so it slips into a test tube. Doesn’t the water soak up into the sugar—”

“You’re right at that. Osmosis. No, I’m wrong. Osmosis has something to do with eggs. Or is that ovulation? Conduction, convection—absorption! Wish I’d studied physics; then I’d know the right words. Just a mad genius, that’s me. I shall take the daughter of the Vine to spouse,” Gallegher finished incoherently and sucked at the siphon.

“Absorption,” Vanning scowled. “Only not water, being soaked up by the sugar. The... the conditions existing inside the locker, being soaked up by your workbench—in that particular case.”

“Like a sponge or a blotter.”

“The bench?”

“Me,” Gallegher said succinctly, and relapsed into a happy silence, broken by occasional gurgles as he poured liquor down his scarified gullet. Vanning sighed and turned to the locker. He carefully closed and latched the door before lifting the metal cabinet in his muscular arms.

“Going? G’night. Fare thee well, fare thee well—”

“Night.”

“ Fare —thee—well!” Gallegher ended, in a melancholy outburst of tunefulness, as he turned over preparatory to going to sleep.

Vanning sighed again and let himself out into the coolness of the night. Stars blazed in the sky, except toward the south, where the aurora of Lower Manhattan dimmed them. The glowing white towers of skyscrapers rose in a jagged pattern. A sky-ad announced the virtues of Vambulin It Peps You Up.

His speeder was at the curb. Vanning edged the locker into the trunk compartment and drove toward the Hudson Floatway, the quickest route downtown. He was thinking about Poe.

The Purloined Letter, which had been hidden in plain sight, but refolded and readdressed, so that its superficial appearance was changed. Holy Hecate! What a perfect safe the locker would make! No thief could crack it, for the obvious reason that it wouldn’t be locked. No thief would want to clean it out. Vanning could fill the locker with credit coupons and instantly they’d become unrecognizable. It was the ideal cache.

How the devil did it work?

There was little use in asking Gallegher. He played by ear. A primrose by the river’s rim a simple primrose was to him—not Primula vulgaris. Syllogisms were unknown to him. He reached the conclusion without the aid of either major or minor premises.