The Fury Out of Time Read Online Free PDF

been sitting there in Whistler’s garden for maybe three hours when things started to happen, but obviously I didn’t spend that time staring fixedly in any particular direction.” He was speaking slowly, with frequent pauses. “I may have been looking toward that tree for a minute or two before it fell, but I couldn’t swear to it, and I didn’t see anything.”
    “He couldn’t have seen anything anyway,” Colonel Rogers said dryly. “I told you the U.O. wasn’t visible from Whistler’s, not even with binoculars. It was resting in a depression.”
    “He might have seen it arriving,” Colonel Stubbins said. “It had to come from somewhere, and it didn’t pop out of the ground. If it floated down by parachute, for example—”
    “In that case, where’s the parachute?” Colonel Rogers demanded.
    “I only used that as an example. The U.O. wasn’t hauled in by truck, or there’d be tracks. It didn’t fall out of a plane, or get dropped from one, or it would have been smashed or at least embedded in the ground. Also, the base radar would have picked up the plane. It didn’t arrive under its own power—”
    “We can’t be certain about that. Shall we get on with it?”
    “Ten minutes, gentlemen,” Colonel Vukin said crisply.
    “The condition of the grass it was resting on should give you some idea of how long it had been there,” Karvel said.
    “We have something better than that, Major,” Colonel Rogers said. “A farmer drove a jeep across that pasture shortly after one o’clock yesterday. He passed within twenty feet of the spot—we measured from the tracks—and he thinks he would have noticed the U.O. if it’d been there. We think so, too. As for the condition of the grass—”
    “Never mind,” Colonel Stubbins said. “Major Karvel says he didn’t notice anything before that tree fell. Let’s leave it at that. What happened next, Major?”
    “I doubt if anyone ever saw a tree fall the way that one fell,” Karvel said thoughtfully. “The trunk was knocked right out from under it. As I found out later, it fell with its upper branches on the stump, and the lower part of the trunk was shredded, as if someone had wielded a gigantic sledge hammer.”
    “What did you think at the time it happened?”
    “It just vaguely registered as an odd way for a tree to fall.”
    “And then?”
    “The spiral pattern was obvious almost at once. It—your Force X—kept getting broader, as did the space between the spirals. It left the valley first in the vicinity of the Mueller farm, but it kept cutting back. I didn’t see it again after it hit me. By the time Whistler picked me up it was no longer in sight.”
    “You didn’t see it again,” Colonel Stubbins mused. “Did you actually see Force X at any time?”
    “Bad semantics,” Karvel said with a grin. “No, sir. All I saw was what it did.”
    “There was no optical distortion, or anything like that?”
    Karvel shook his head.
    “Or—when it came close to you—any sound?”
    Karvel shook his head again. “The destruction was highly audible, but I neither saw nor heard Force X. I felt it, if that’s any help to you.”
    “What did it feel like?”
    “Like a silent, invisible, speeding truck.”
    “No, sir, not that I can recall.”
    “Very well,” Colonel Stubbins said. “Force X was invisible and silent and odorless, and it spiraled. The other survivors didn’t see or hear or smell anything, and the crew of surveyors confirms the spiral. What else can you tell us?”
    “In the way of facts, very little. I can offer a few conclusions. Or guesses.”
    “We’d like to hear them.”
    “For one thing, Force X gradually got weaker. In the beginning it was knocking the trunks out from under the trees. Later the trees fell normally. I’d say this was fortunate for me. If Force X had struck me with the impact that it had down in the valley, you would have found me looking like those dead cattle. For another thing, although Force