The TIME-RAIDER
By EDMOND HAMILTON
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Weird Tales October, November December 1927 and January 1928.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"He dangled helplessly in the thing's embrace."
CHAPTER 1
THE CANNELL MYSTERY
In
beginning this account of our great adventure, it must be understood
that I attempt no complete history of the matter. There will be gaps,
many gaps, in the continuity of my story, for that story remains, after
all, simply a record of my own contacts with the Raider, and with those
people whose lives he entered and darkened. So that my tale here is
necessarily one of personal experience, except for a few places where I
have summarized general knowledge.
Besides
this history of what I may term the more human side of our experience,
Dr. Lantin has dealt with its scientific aspects in his epochal work on
time-displacement and in our joint monograph on electronic acceleration.
Although several salient features of the affair have been omitted, for reasons
that will figure later, yet the two works mentioned and the present
record give a broad outline of the whole matter, from the beginning.
From
the beginning! But where was that beginning? Ages back in the past, or
ages ahead in the future? To place the true beginning of it all would be
to know much about it that we do not know. So I start at the point
where the matter definitely entered my own life and world. And that
point, that event, is the Cannell Mystery, as it was then termed.
You
will find it in the newspapers of the day, the bare facts wrapped in
clouds of speculation. Professor Ferdinand Cannell, of New York,
disappearing inexplicably in the jungles of Indo-China, vanishing from
the world of men as though blotted out.
At
that time, Cannell was undoubtedly one of the very greatest of living
archeologists. Nominally attached to a great New York museum, he was
really a free-lance student and excavator, roaming about the world in
search of proof for his numerous and startling theories. His first fame
had been established by his researches into the Dravidian remnants in
lower India, and he had followed that brilliant achievement by another
as great, the monumental Warren Society investigation into the walled
ruins of Zimbabwe, in South Africa.
With
two such successes behind him, Cannell then boldly proposed to make the
subject of his next researches the mighty ruined city of Angkor, in the
heart of the Cambodian jungle. Angkor has long been a colossal
challenge to modern wisdom, a gigantic, towered metropolis of gray
stone, once noisy with the life of swarming millions, but silent and
dead now, unutterably dead. A thousand years the huge ruin has lain in
the jungle, wrapped in silence, inhabited only by snakes and bats and
tigers. Its past, the history of its builders, has been a vast enigma
always, which Cannell had determined to solve.
So
he sailed for Hongkong, and Dr. Lantin and I were on the dock when his
ship cleared. My own acquaintance with Cannell was recent, but Lantin
and he had been close friends for years. Their friendship dated back to
their university days, and had continued after they diverged into
different lines of work, Cannell's taking him to the remnants of past
peoples, while Lantin's interest in radio-chemistry had brought him to
the great New York laboratories of the Downe Foundation, with myself as
his laboratory assistant.
For
all their warm friendship, there was a strong contrast between the two
men. Cannell was the younger by a few years, a blond giant of
thirty-five or thirty-five or thirty-six, with snapping blue eyes and a
habit of talking with machine-gun rapidity. Altogether the antithesis of
Dr. Lantin, who was dark, medium of stature and quiet of manner, with
friendly gray eyes that could take on the glint of steel, at times.
Together
we had waved farewell to Cannell and a few weeks later had received a
cable from Saigon, in Indo-China, briefly announcing his arrival. He had
then proceeded up the Mekong River into the wilderness of the interior,
and finally over a network of winding creeks to Angkor itself. The
latter stage of the journey was made in canoes, some seven or eight
natives poling along Cannell and his outfit, but no other white man was
in the party.
No
more was heard of the venture until a week later, when the natives of
Cannell's party straggled into a little up-river village, without him.
They explained, volubly, that on the third night after reaching Angkor,
the white man had been seized and carried away by the devils of the
ruins. None of them had actually seen this but they had heard his
scream, from a distance, and when they conquered their fears enough to
search the ruins, had found no trace of him. It was clear that the
powerful spirits of the dead city were angered, and had snatched away
the white man who dared to disturb them, so the terror-stricken natives
had at once fled from the place with all speed.
On
hearing this tale, several French planters made their way to Angkor,
forcing the unwilling natives to accompany them, but they found no trace
of Cannell, who seemed to have vanished completely. His tent and outfit
were found, quite undisturbed, which tended to corroborate the natives'
story regarding their sudden flight.
So
when the little search-party returned, it was advanced as its opinion
that Cannell had been seized and carried away by a roving tiger, his
scream and disappearance being interpreted by the natives as a
visitation of demons, since they were known to be extremely
superstitious in regard to the dead city. While this explanation was
faulty enough, it seemed the only rational one available, and was
accepted by the authorities at Saigon.
And
so the matter rested. Cannell's only relatives had been distant
connections, and except for Lantin he had had scarcely one intimate
friend, so after the first shock of surprize his passing caused little
stir. The newspapers speculated briefly, and the archeological journals
expressed regrets, referring to his splendid achievements. But that was
all. New stars soon rose to fill his place in the scientific firmament.
And Cannell was forgotten.
Time drove on. Days ... months ... years....
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