The Many-Coloured Land - 1 Read Free

ordinary wooden stool and carried it to the apparatus. Guderian's device rather resembled an old-fashioned latticework pergola or gazebo draped in vines. However, the frame was made of transparent vitreous material except for peculiar nodular components of dead black, and the "vines" were actually cables of colorful alloys that seemed to grow up from the cellar floor, creep in and out of the lattice in a disconcerting fashion, and abruptly disappear at a point just short of the ceiling.
    When the stool and its carrot were in position, Guderian rejoined his guests and activated the device. There was no sound. The gazebo shimmered momentarily; then it seemed as if mirror panels sprang into existence, hiding the interior of the apparatus completely from view.
    "You will understand that a certain waiting period is now in order," the old man said. 'The carrot is almost always effective, but from time to time there are disappointments."
    The seven visitors waited. The wide-shouldered human clutched his book-plaque in both hands but never let his eyes leave the gazebo. The other colonial, a placid type from some institute on Londinium, made a tactful examination of the control panel. The Gi and the Poltroyan read their booklets with equanimity. One of the younger Simbiari inadvertently let an emerald drop fall and made haste to scuff it into the cellar floor.
    Numerals on the wall chronometer flickered past. Five minutes. Ten.
    "We will see whether our game is afoot," the Professor said, with a wink at the man from Londinium.
    The mirrored energy field snapped off. For the merest nanosecond, the startled scientists were aware of a pony-shaped creature standing inside the gazebo. It turned instantly to an articulated skeleton. As the bones fell, they disintegrated into grayish powder.
    "Shit!" exclaimed the seven eminent scientists.
    "Be calm, colleagues," said Guderian. "Such a denouement is unfortunately inevitable. But we shall project a slow-motion holo so that our catch may be identified."
    He switched on a concealed Tri-D projector and froze the action to reveal a small horse-like animal with amiable black eyes, three-toed feet, and a russet coat marked with faint white stripes. Carrot greens stuck out of its mouth. The wooden stool was beside it.
    "Hipparion gracfle. A cosmopolitan species during Earth's Pliocene Epoch."
    Guderian let the projector run. The stool quietly dissolved. The hide and flesh of the little horse shriveled with dreadful slowness, peeling away from the skeleton and exploding into a cloud of dust, while the internal organs simultaneously swelled, shrank, and puffed into nothingness. The bones continued to stand upright, then tumbled in graceful slow arcs. Their first contact with the cellar floor reduced them to their component minerals.
    The sensitive Gi let out a sigh and closed its great yellow eyes. The Londoner had turned pale, while the other human, from the rugged and morose world of Shqipni, chewed on his large brown mustache. The incontinent young Simb made haste to uI'llize a wastebasket.
    "I have tried both plant and animal bait in my little trap," Guderian said. "Carrot or rabbit or mouse may make the trip to the Pliocene unharmed, but on the return journey, any living thing that is within the tau-field inevitably assumes the burden of more than six million years of earthly existence."
    "And inorganic matter?" inquired the Skipetar.
    "Of a certain density, of a certain crystalline structure, many specimens make the round trip in fairly good condition. I have even been successful in circumtranslating two forms of organic matter: amber and coal travel unscathed."
    "But this is most intriguing!" said the Prime Contemplate of the Twenty-Sixth College of Simb. The theory of temporal application has been in our repository for some seventy thousand of your years, my worthy Guderian, but its demonstration eluded the best minds of the Galactic Milieu . . . unI'll now. The fact that you, a human