Science fiction -- Periodicals; Science fiction, American -- Periodicals
He added, "I am glad to have you back. Things are not well at home,
Princess. This insubordinate adventure of Migul's has been bad for the
other mechanisms. News of it has spread, and the revolt is very near.
What we are to do I cannot say, but I do know we did not like your
absence."
The trip which Larry and Tina now took to 2930 A.D. consumed, to their
consciousness of the passing of Time, some three hours. They
discovered that they were hungry, and Tugh produced food and drink.
Larry spent much of the time with Tina at the window, gazing at the
changing landscape while she told him of the events which to her were
history--the recorded things on the Time-scroll which separated her
world and his.
* * * * *
Tugh busied himself about the vehicle and left them much to
themselves. They had ample opportunity to discuss him and his story of
Harl. It must be remembered that Larry had no knowledge of Tugh, save
the story which Alten had told of a cripple named Tugh in New York in
1933-34; and Mary Atwood's mention of the coincidence of the Tugh she
knew in 1777.
But Tina had known this Tugh for years. Though she, like Harl, had
never liked him, nevertheless he was a trusted and influential man in
her world. Proof of his activities in other Time-worlds, there was
none so far, from Tina's viewpoint. Nor did Larry and Tina know as yet
of the devastation of New York in 1935; nor of the murder of Major
Atwood. The capture of Mary and me, the fight with the Robot in the
back yard of the house on Patton Place--in all these incidents of the
bandit cage, only Migul had figured. Migul--an insubordinate, crazy
mechanism running amuck.
Yet upon Larry and Tina was a premonition that Tugh, here with them
now and so suavely friendly, was their real enemy.
"I wouldn't trust him," Larry whispered, "any further than I can see
him. He's planning something, but I don't know what."
"But perhaps--and this I have often thought, Larry--perhaps it is his
aspect. He looks so repulsive--"
Larry shook his head. "He does, for a fact; but I don't mean that.
What Mary Atwood told me of the Tugh she knew, described the fellow.
And so did Alten describe him. And in 1934 he murdered a girl: don't
forget that, Tina--he, or someone who looked remarkably like him, and
had the same name."
But they knew that the best thing they could do now was to get to
2930. Larry wanted to join me again, and Tugh maintained I was there.
Well, they would soon find out....
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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