Conrad's Time Machine Read Online Free PDF

I know? I would imagine that it went into some alternate spatial or temporal continuum."
    "Alternate. . . . ?"
    "Don't you read any science fiction? Come, there's work to do. And get Ian," Hasenpfeffer said.
    Well, Ian was still there, and the bottle was still there, but the contents of the latter had been transferred to the former.
    "Ian's going to be out of it for a while."
    "Oh. I see. Well, we will simply have to do it ourselves."
    "Do what?"
    "Rig some sort of net to recover as much as of the debris as possible."
    "What on earth for?"
    Hasenpfeffer looked at me sadly. Then he started speaking slowly and with small words. "Something made a big ball of earth and air go away. Now it is coming back. Big balls of earth don't usually go away, so something unusual must have made it go away. Maybe that something is in the middle of the big ball that went away. If we can get it, maybe we can find out how to make other big balls of dirt go away."
    "Go drag your knuckles in your shit."
    Obnoxious son of a bitch. I went and cut down two thin saplings for poles. The twit needed me because he was too clumsy to cut down a tree without chopping off both of his thumbs in the process. I heard another "pop while I rigged up a butterfly net of sorts out of the poles, my sleeping bag, and some bungee cords. Dumb bastard, anyway.
    "You'll notice that there was some sort of structure here," Hasenpfeffer said. "The last few pops have contained bits of wood and shingles, located precisely where you would expect them to be if a thin spherical shell were to materialize in our space. While none of the debris so far has been very heavy, some of it looks quite sharp, so do be careful. Oh yes. The explosions are becoming less violent. I think that the additional material at the bottom has a muffling action."
    My "butterfly net" weighed about fifty pounds.
    "Hey, I should be careful? Damn it, Jim, give me a hand with this thing!"
    "Well, if you really feel that you require physical assistance . . ." But he didn't come any closer to me.
    Pop.
    "What is that?" he said.
    "That" was a bunch of hundred dollar bills that materialized right in front of me. I had them scooped out of the air before they fell into the hole.
    I said, "Hey, good idea about the net!"
    "Thank you. They're coming in at six minute intervals now, so be ready. I'll watch for anything else that might be useful."
    So I was left holding the stick, but it didn't trouble me any more. In the next eight pops, with Hasenpfeffer warning me of each impending pop, I raked in an even two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, which was a lot of money back then. Some of the bills were cut up, but I got all the pieces. We could Scotch tape them back together later on.
    Then there was nothing much except wood and plumbing fixtures for a few hours, so I took a lunch break. I was halfway through my fourth salami sandwich when Hasenpfeffer started yelling.
    "His papers! There are papers coming in!"
    "What? Whose papers?"
    No answer. The pops were coming two minutes apart now, so I inhaled the sandwich and went back to work. Actually, my net was a little big for Hasenpfeffer to handle alone.
    Paper came in, but it was more like confetti than anything else. You see, the money had been laid parallel to the surface of the sphere, whereas this stuff was perpendicular to it. It came as thin, curved walls of confetti that gently exploded on arrival. The first bits were followed by a deluge of paper.
    "Jim, this is ridiculous. A whole library has been run through the grandmother of all paper schredders here. No way in hell will we ever get it together," I said.
    "But we must try! It's critical!"
    "Maybe, but it's also impossible. I'm going back to lunch. Call me if anything useful turns up."
    Ian hadn't moved, but he still had a pulse.
    Towards four o'clock the gore started. I had been scooping up bits of electronic parts, circuit boards and workbench when I got a bit of meat on my sleeping bag. At first I