Time and Again

XV

The face in the visiplate was masked and Adams spoke in chilly anger:, "I do not receive masked calls."

"You will this one," said the voice form behind the mask. "I am the man you talked to on the patio. Remember?"

"Calling from the future, I presume," said Adams.

"No, I still am in your time. I have been watching you."

"Watching Sutton, too?"

The masked head nodded. "You have seen him now. What do you think?"

"He's hiding something," Adams said. "And not all of him is human."

"You're going to have him killed?"

"No," said Adams. "No, I don't think I will. He knows something that we need to know. And we won't get it out of him by killing."

"What he knows," said the masked voice, "is better dead with the man who knows it."

"Perhaps," said Adams, "we could come to an understanding if you would tell me what this is all about."

"I can't tell you, Adams. I wish I could. I can't tell you the future."

"And until you do," snapped Adams, "I won't let you change the past."

And he was thinking: The man is scared. Scared and almost desperate. He could kill Sutton any time he wished, but he is afraid to do it. Sutton has to be killed by a man of his own time…literally has to be, for time may not tolerate the extension of violence from one bracket to the next.

"By the way," said the future man.

"Yes," said Adams.

"I was going to ask you how things are on Aldebaran XII."

Adams sat rigid in his chair, anger flaming in him.

"If it hadn't been for Sutton," said the masked man, "there would have been no incident on Aldebaran XII."

"But Sutton wasn't back yet," snapped Adams. "He wasn't even here…"

His voice ran down, for he remembered something. The name on the flyleaf…"by Asher Sutton."

"Look," said Adams, "tell me, for the love of heaven, if you have anything to tell."

"You mean to say you haven't guessed what it might be?"

Adams shook his head.

"It's war," the voice said.

"But there is no war."

"Not in your time, but in another time."

"But how…"

"Remember Michaelson?"

"The man who went a second into time."

The masked head nodded and the screen went blank and Adams sat and felt the chill of horror trickle through his body.

The visor buzzer purred at him and mechanically he snapped the toggle over.

It was Nelson in the glass.

"Sutton just left the university," Nelson said. "He spent an hour with Dr. Horace Raven. Dr. Raven, if you don't recall, is a professor of comparative religion."

"Oh," said Adams. "Oh, so that is it."

He tapped his fingers on the desk, half irritated, half frightened.

It would be a shame, he thought, to kill a man like Sutton.

But it might be best.

Yes, he told himself, it might be for the best,