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  RENE BARJAVEL, THE AUTHOR OF FUTURE TIMES THREE…

  “is well known as a journalist and pioneer in science-fiction. (He has received) the French booksellers’ prize…which has become an important literary event…

  —The New York Times

  When a pair of scientists choose to plunge

  into the unknown and travel back and forth

  through the barriers of time, they become

  victims of a horrible, mind-twisting trap!

  Don’t miss this incredible adventure beyond

  the realm of reason. It is science-fiction suspense

  of the highest caliber!

  FUTURE

  TIMES

  THREE!

  Rene Barjavel

  Translated by

  Margaret Sansone Scouten

  Copyright © MCMLVIII by Editions Denoel

  All rights reserved

  AWARD BOOKS are published by

  Universal-Award House, Inc., a subsidiary of

  Universal Publishing and Distributing Corporation.

  235 East Forty-fifth Street. New York. N.Y. 10017

  TANDEM BOOKS are published by

  Universal-Tandem Publishing Company Limited

  14 Gloucester Road. London SW7, England

  Manufactured in the United States of America

  Contents:-

  Part I APPRENTICESHIP

  Part II THE ENTOMOLOGICAL VOYAGE

  Part III IMPRUDENCE

  Postscript TO BE AND NOT TO BE

  Part I

  APPRENTICESHIP

  1

  1942. It was bitter cold. At dawn Sergeant Mosler discovered the body of a soldier sprawled across the camp latrine, covered with snow. He had frozen to death. His thighs clattered like hollow boards when you rapped them. Four men carried him off. The one who held the head accidentally snapped off his ears.

  The Pyrenean hunters of the 27th Battalion, encamped on the border of a beet field, had occupied the village of Vanesse for two months. Today they were to leave for an unknown destination. Peter St. Menoux, the corporal of the squadron, slept uneasily, buried in the straw of the stable. He was tormented by the worries of his seventh tour and the responsibility for seventeen artillerymen, their horses and their gun-wagons. As a civilian he had been a mathematics teacher at Philip-August High School.

  His greatest worry was the kitchens. The cooks were always late. Finally, shaking off the straw, he set out toward the field kitchen. He shivered, trying to shorten his large lanky body so as to offer less surface to the cold. Hands thrust into the pockets of his overcoat, back hunched, beret pulled down over his eyes, he ran stiff-legged like a heron across the farm.

  “Are you thinking about getting ready? I would prefer not getting bawled out for you again!” he yelled.

  Greasy, dirty Corporal Credent slapped him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, old man. It’ll come. Peace will come someday. The rear battalion has already arrived.” He grinned, showing green teeth. “Do you want something to eat?” Spearing a steak cooking in the flames, he gnawed at the charred meat. From his smoking tin cup, balanced on the log where he sat, rose the mingled odors of coffee and wine.

  St Menoux felt his stomach revolt. “How can you drink that garbage? It smells like a wino’s vomit.”

  Some crows swooped down from the low-hanging clouds and perched in black clusters on an elm standing solitary and forlorn in the middle of the field. It was the only tree left standing after the earlier war. A flurry of snow began to obscure the horizon around the farm, muffling the scattered sounds which rose from the village—the cry of impatient men abusing their animals, the shouts of noncommissioned officers bawling out the men.

  Under the sheds the cooks began to load their only cart, a grating, swaying, two-wheeled covered wagon.

  “That thing was around for the War of 1914—maybe even the one in 1870,” complained Credent He walked over to help his men pile on sacks of coffee, sugar, rice, potatoes, split peas, beans, lentils, lard, the barrel of frozen wine, the cask of rum, two sides of beef, cases of canned food and crackers, the 120 loaves of bread, the two bundles of hay, the faggots of wood, a half-tub of mustard, the salt, onions, one hundred pounds of carrots, condensed milk, chocolate, the radio with its batteries, and all of the equipment collected from one encampment to the next by himself and his cooks.

  St Menoux paced around and around the cart. He opened his mouth to speak at least twenty times, finally remaining silent, realizing it would be useless.

  By the end of the afternoon the little cart had absorbed a load which would have overburdened even a truck. As they were stretching the tarp over it, the sergeant arrived, shivering, coughing, a cigarette on his ear. The regiment truck refused to move. The radiator had frozen solid and burst They would have to transfer its contents to the kitchen cart—twelve boxes of records, state forms, matriculation reports,

  Inkwells and pens, trunks belonging to the captain and the lieutenants, canteens, the folding bed and the suitcases of the accountant-sergeant.

  St. Menoux raised his arms in despair and bit the ends of his thin fingers through his fur gloves. The snowflakes fell larger. The roofs of the farm were swallowed up in the gray sky. The cooks swore. Credent cursed the sergeant, who trudged through the snow and disappeared.

  Soldiers brought up the extra baggage. Miraculously it all fit on top of the provisions. A tarp covered the enormous hump.

  “I only have to hitch up the lead horse,’* said Polinet

  The snow softened the twilight, lending a solidity to the still air. Two men at each wheel and two more behind helped the horse start moving. The animal was old, toothless and half-blind, with a dirty, mangy coat. When the weather was this cold, Polinet never took him out without protecting his bad eye with a patch cut from his blue wool coat. A great friendship had grown up between the peasant and the old horse. The war had tom them both from their normal labors, plunging them into the same ungodly misery. They clung together like unfortunate brothers. The man forged ahead with great strides. The horse panted, heaved and pulled. To follow his master he would pull a mountain.

  The equipment was to join the rest of the battalion at the edge of the village. Together they would reach the station of Tremplin-le-Haut, about twenty miles away, and embark from there. Other vehicles had been waiting for an hour, and the snow was rapidly covering them.

  “The canteen! Good God, the canteen!99 shouted St. Menoux. “What is Pilastre waiting for? He’ll be the last one again.”

  “There he comes,” said Credent quietly. Pilastre pulled up with his two horses, leading them by a long rope. He mistrusted them. He was a metal-turner by vocation; his boss had promised to take him back at the factory after the war. He knew nothing about horses. He did not like animals. He was in the wrong place. He was fuming.

  The animals didn’t care for him either. One flame-colored, the other black, they hated each other as much as they feared him. Harnessing them was not a simple matter. Pilastre struck them on the muzzles with his fist. The horses reared back, snorting and looking to bite each other.

  The canteen was a kind of battleship, a monument of iron and steel, assembled with three thousand rivets, carried on four iron wheels with large spokes as thick as thighs. In the middle of the courtyard Pilastre and his two horses danced their angry ballet Behind them the four cooks, helmets on their heads and guns slung across their backs, their coats black with grease, were stirring up the fire. They threw log after log into the crackling hearth, above which steamed two enormous kettles of soup and the coffee for the trip.

  Pilastre hoisted himself onto the seat. Wrapping himself in three blankets and raising his whip, he began to strike. The snow flew, the chains clattered and t
he tongue of the cart creaked. The canteen did not move. Each animal strained toward his own side, nullifying the other’s effort with its own.

  Credent removed his pipe from his mouth and spit. “What a bastard 1 Those damn animals—”

  The driver stood erect and doubled the blows, hatred hollowing his cheeks and eyes. By accident the eight hoofs planted themselves simultaneously in the snow. The canteen took off like a shot, throwing Pilastre back into his seat. The two powerful horses charged across the courtyard at full gallop. With the roar of an express train, the canteen jumped over a heap of frozen manure, tore through the entrance gate and tipped over in the ditch, breaking the zero-mile record.

  The fire of the hearth was scattered, hissing, across the snow. The cyclone had upset the soup and coffee, spilling them together. Ladles in their hands and brandishing their pokers, the cooks ran shouting toward the devastation. Credent ran behind them, cursing. St. Menoux, running behind Credent, plunged into the night along a road of smoking charcoal. The curtain of snow closed behind him.

  Thus he began the voyage that was to lead him so far.

  At the Tremplin-le-Haut station, the Pyrenean hunters set out without soup or coffee. They had waited for the convoy of trucks and food until around ten o’clock. The convoy had still not arrived when, at midnight, the first train left.

  One by one the iron wheels of the vehicles had broken through the snow, reaching the underlayer of ice and softly slipping into the ditch. For one wagon in distress, the entire caravan had to grind to a halt. The sergeant, leader of the convoy, would run, waving his blazing signal light. Twenty men would pull at the wheels. The procession would move ahead another hundred meters before another wagon went down.

  After nine hours of walking, stopping and hauling, the convoy pulled into Tremplin-le-Haut. The town was sleeping, its shutters guarding the warmth of the houses. The equipment trundled noiselessly over the snow-covered pavement. The station was at the far end of the town, at the top of a steep hill. The first car approached the incline, climbed about five yards and slid down again.

  The leader of the convoy ordered four couples of horses unharnessed. The eight animals pulled the lead wagon up to the station, descended again and retrieved the next one. At this rate, dawn arrived before the final vehicle.

  The weary men sat on the runningboards, leaned on the cart-shafts and crouching or standing, fell asleep. The tired horses hung their heads. The relentless snow began to bury the caravan.

  St. Menoux, overcome with fatigue and loneliness, plodded on into the gray night, along the column, past the statuary horses, the phantom wagons to which clung the hazy silhouettes of men. His breath had frozen his Balaklava helmet to his beret, which was pulled down over his head like a nightcap. Behind the helmet, the cold cracked his lips. Hie studs of his ankle boots chilled his feet. The cold climbed along his calves, slipping sharply under his shoulder blades, gnawing at his sides and crushing his gloved fingers into his pockets.

  His back hunched under the weight of the night, St. Menoux trudged past the lead truck and attacked the steep ascent, burying his feet in the deep snow. He heard the soft infinite fall of the snowflakes stretching out to an imagined horizon, out to the edge of the world.

  Suddenly his foot struck something and he stumbled, almost falling. Peering ahead into the gloom he saw a stairway whose three steps climbed toward a door. He sighed. The black hole of the opening looked like a welcome shelter, a refuge from the storms around him. He climbed the steps and sat down on the top one, huddled in a ball, no longer able to move.

  A car suddenly appeared at the bottom of the hill. Its headlights bleached the night, thousands of snowflakes dancing in the cone of light. The ground was like a vast outspread sheet. The auto slowed as it approached the summit, finally stopping completely. It could go no further. The motor sputtered, a door slammed. An officer covered with braids and stripes stepped into the light The snow turned to gold. The officer opened his mouth to shout orders to his chauffeur, but the snow ate his words. St. Menoux heard nothing. He had no desire to hear. He was content. He no longer felt his feet nor his back.

  The automobile softly began to back up, sliding back down the incline. The officer waved his gold-braided arms, dancing and running after the light which was slipping away more and more quickly. He grew smaller and smaller, finally disappearing completely into the cold.

  St. Menoux slipped into sleep. His flesh ceased its suffering. He became light, insensitive, like a feather in the middle of a universe stuffed with soft cotton. Suddenly he fell backward. The door behind him had opened. Heat rushed out from the open passage, enveloped him and was lost in the chill of the street A rectangle of sun was drawn on the snow. St. Menoux rose with great effort and turned around. A dark girl, young and beautiful, was standing before him like an apparition. In her hand she held a lamp. The light flowed along her hair, down onto her shoulders and shone from her large black eyes. She motioned to him to enter. He followed and the door closed on the night

  For weeks and weeks he had lived outside during the day and in the stable during the night He had forgotten how men live in houses. His feet left puddles on the tiles of the entrance. The studs of his shoes squeaked. He felt heavy as a bear. The girl was looking at him, her face drawn with simple lines and bathed in peace. He flushed with embarrassment, but she only smiled kindly, without speaking.

  He followed her into a room whose walls, floor and furniture shone softly in the glow of a lamp veiled with pink lace. An old round table of blond cherrywood barely touched the floor with its slender feet. Seated in a wheelchair, between the table and the earthenware stove, a man clothed in gray looked at St. Menoux.

  “Hello, sir,” said St Menoux through his helmet.

  The man was looking at him and shaking his head. He was enormous. His belly spread the arms of the chair, and his thighs pushed out to the left and right A golden fanshaped beard rose to the edge of his bald head, hiding his cheeks, his mouth, and his entire lower face, spreading out over his chest in billowing waves which shone in the light of the lamp like the tanned wood of the table. His pink and shiny baldness glowed like the enamel finish of the stove. A short white piece of string drew a crescent around his chin, buried in the golden sea of hair.

  From the legs of his gray pants, deformed by the fat thighs and knees, emerged ankles as round as trees. At the extremities of these ankles there were no feet. Two stumps, covered with green knit socks, were resting on a leather cushion. The man buried his hand in his beard, drew out a pair of glasses, placed them on the end of his nose, which barely protruded from the mass of hair, and fell back into his chair.

  St Menoux sneezed. His cloak was dripping in a steamy ring around him.

  A wave split the blond beard in two, revealing a snowy white smile. His eyes magnified by the glasses revealed a lively intelligence and a somewhat ironic benevolence.

  “I’ve been waiting for you, Mr. St. Menoux. I have known for three months that you would come tonight to sit on the doorstep of my house, and I am delighted. I know still more—that your convoy will not begin to leave until 5:38 A.M. You have time to take off your coat, to refresh yourself and to listen to me. After you have heard me out, there will be time for everything.”

  The corporal, Master of Arts in Mathematics, heard only these astonishing words, that he had time to undress and to sit down. He did not need to be asked twice.

  He began to unharness himself, undoing his suspenders and safety clasps, laying aside his rifle, water bottle, knapsack, gun-shield, shovel, bayonet, belt, cloak, gloves, helmet and beret. He immediately lost two thirds of his volume. He was so thin that his tall frame looked even more gaunt. His jacket could have enveloped four torsos like his, but the sleeves did not reach his wrists.

  He stood somewhat hunched, perhaps from the habitual fear of striking the head of a door or a ceiling. His blue eyes were very pale, his nose and lips thin. He passed a long hand with thin fingers through his light blond hair, w
hich the beret had plastered down.

  The girl laid his equipment on the back of an armchair near the stove. Wearing pink satin slippers, she moved around the room silently. She placed the objects with efficient gestures, neither sluggishly nor with nervous haste. St. Menoux, deprived since childhood of a woman’s care, followed her with his eyes, admiring her silent grace. He felt his embarrassment melt away. She brought him a chair and placed a bowl of coffee before him. He sat down and drank* She sat down in turn, just far enough away from him to watch him without disturbing him. She wore a white dress and looked to be about fifteen years old.

  “She probably hasn’t finished growing yet,” St. Menoux thought to himself.

  She looked tranquilly into his eyes. She was a child who did not know shame.

  The invalid took a tortoiseshell-handled brush from the table and absentmindedly brushed his golden beard*

  “Hmmm, he murmured. Perhaps we have looked at each other long enough! Now that you have seen us, allow me to introduce ourselves. Annette is my daughter. My name is Noel Essaillon.”

  “Noel Essaillon!” exclaimed St. Menoux, stupefied. “Let me see…It is you—it’s you who answered me in February 1939 in Mathematics Review”

  The man nodded and smiled, visibly pleased with the corporal’s surprise.

  “What a fascinating reply!” said St. Menoux, his astonishment turning to joy. “You are the man whom I have always wanted to meet”

  He rose, forgetting his sufferings, his timidity, the war, the strangeness of his arrival at this place. He was again the abstract man, the passionate mathematician whose theories a year earlier had scandalized the scientific world. No one had understood him except this man, Noel Essaillon, whose remarks had opened new vistas to his mind.