MIRACLE
By Ray Cummings
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Astonishing Stories, October 1942.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
"But how can you possibly know that time traveling has never beendone?" the chemist protested. "Someone from our future may have goneinto the past many times."
"I should think they'd have created quite a commotion," the lawyerobserved. "Wouldn't we have heard of it from our historical records?"
"Of course." The chemist was smiling now. "We probably have. Historytells of many important occasions on which a 'vision' appeared. Amiraculous presence, such as Joan of Arc, for instance, or the Angel ofMons."
"Or the appearance of the Sun God to the Aztecs. I get your point," oneof the other men interjected. "You think that there might have been atime traveler who materialized just long enough to take a look—and thesuperstitious natives took him for a god. Why not? That's probably justwhat would happen."
Young Alan Dane sat in a corner of his grandfather's laboratory,listening to the argument of the group of men. He was well over sixfeet in height, a sun-bronzed, crisply blond young Viking. Beside himsat Ruth Vincent, his fiancée, a slim girl of twenty. Alan's heartwas pounding. Somehow it seemed as though this bantering talk of timetraveling were something momentous to him, something requiring a greatand irrevocable decision.
Then abruptly old Professor Dane held up his hand and, quite casually,said, "What you do not know, gentlemen, is that for half my life I havebeen working to discover the secret of time travel."
His audience was suddenly tense. Professor Dane was loved and respectedby each of them, and his word in his chosen field of physics was final.If he said a thing could be done there was no mistake.
The chemist broke the silence. "You've succeeded?" he asked. "You'vemade experiments that show—"
The old man shook his head. "No, not yet. But I'm close to it. I know Iam." He was staring at some infinitely distant thing beyond the room inwhich they were sitting. Staring as though he were trying to penetratethe grim curtain of the future, or the past.
Almost as though to himself, he went on, "I've often wondered whatmade me work on this thing all these years. It's been like an innerurge driving me, a preordained destiny that is making me accomplishsomething."
"Metaphysics!" the lawyer interrupted. "Do you believe inpredestination?"
"I believe there is a plan," Professor Dane said simply. "But whatit is, and what my part in it may be ... I don't know. That's thequeer part. I know instinctively that I must do something, somethingconnected with traveling through time. Some task I must accomplish. Butwhat it is, and how I am to do it ... I don't know. Yet I feel thatif the moment came, I would know what to do." He was gently smilingnow at Alan and his fiancée. "But perhaps I am too old—I have thoughtthat is true," he continued. "So I sent for my grandson. And, as yousee, he brought his fiancée here with him."
The old professor was staring at the startled Ruth now. "And,gentlemen," he added earnestly, "meeting her has somehow seemed tointensify that feeling. There is something to be accomplished, in thepast or the future, and it concerns Ruth Vincent!"
Alan's hands were gripping the arms of his chair. These things whichhis grandfather had been feeling—he was feeling them now. This urge,this apprehension that something was