The hors d’oeuvres, soup, and salad were delicious. Then, proud and fond, Amily’s father stood up to do the honors as the main course was brought in: roast suckling coolie.

Flight to Forever

Chapter 1

No Return

That morning it rained, a fine summer mist blowing over the hills and hiding the gleam of the river and the village beyond. Martin Saunders stood in the doorway letting the cool, wet air blow in his face and wondered what the weather would be like a hundred years from now.

Eve Lang came up behind him and laid a hand on his arm. He smiled down at her, thinking how lovely she was with the raindrops caught in her dark hair like small pearls. She didn’t say anything; there was no need for it, and he felt grateful for silence.

He was the first to speak. “Not long now, Eve. And then, realizing the banality of it,” he smiled. “Only why do we have this airport feeling? It’s not as if I’ll be gone long.”

“A hundred years,” she said.

“Take it easy, darling. The theory is foolproof. I’ve been on time jaunts before, remember? Twenty years ahead and twenty back. The projector works, it’s been proven in practice. This is just a little longer trip, that’s all.”

“But the automatic machines, that went a hundred years ahead, never came back—”

“Exactly. Some damn fool thing or other went wrong with them. Tubes blew their silly heads off, or some such thing. That’s why Sam and I have to go, to see what went wrong. We can repair our machine. We can compensate for the well-known perversity of vacuum tubes.”

“But why the two of you? One would be enough. Sam—”

“Sam is no physicist. He might not be able to find the trouble. On the other hand, as a skilled mechanic he can do things I never could. We supplement each other.” Saunders took a deep breath. Look, darling—”

Sam Hull’s bass shout rang out to them. “All set, folks! Any time you want to go, we can ride!”

“Coming.” Saunders took his time, bidding Eve a proper farewell, a little in advance. She followed him into the house and down to the capacious underground workshop.

The projector stood in a clutter of apparatus under the white radiance of fluorotubes. It was unimpressive from the outside, a metal cylinder some ten feet high and thirty feet long with the unfinished look of all experimental setups. The outer shell was simply protection for the battery banks and the massive dimensional projector within. A tiny space in the forward end was left for the two men.

Sam Hull gave them a gay wave. His massive form almost blotted out the gray smocked little body of MacPherson. “All set for a hundred years ahead,” he exclaimed. “Two thousand seventy-three, here we come!”

MacPherson blinked owlishly at them from behind thick lenses. “It all tests out,” he said. “Or so Sam here tells me. Personally, I wouldn’t know an oscillograph from a klystron. You have an ample supply of spare parts and tools. There should be no difficulty.”