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will lead. Maybe to a higher state of the soul? I do believe the end will be good, and this is the purpose
we time travelers are born for.
Leonce brought us partway back to our bodies. Mainly, she laughed, we spec to have a hooraw o
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fun. Climb down off your prophetic broomstick, Jack, honeybee, an pay atten-tion to your drink.
You two intend, then, to be among the early explorers? I asked redundantly.
We ve earned the right, she said.
Uh-pardon me, none of my business, but if your children cannot inherit your gift--
Wistfulness touched her. Maybe we ll find a New Earth to raise them on. We re not too old. She
regarded her man s sharp-edged profile. Or maybe we ll wander the universe till we die. That d be
enough.
Silence fell. The clock on my mantel ticked aloud and the wind outside flowed past like a river.
The doorbell pealed. I left my chair to open up for a glimpse of Aquila. Three small figures were on the
stoop, a clown, a bear, an astronaut. They held out paper bags. Trick or treat! they chanted. Trick or
treat!
A year has fled since Jack Havig and Leonce of Wahorn bade me farewell. I often think about them.
Mostly, of course, daili-ness fills my days. But I often find an hour to think about them.
At any moment they may be somewhere on our planet, des-perate or triumphant in that saga I already
know. But we will not meet. The end of their lives reaches untellably far beyond mine.
Well, so does the life of man. Of Earth and the cosmos.
I wish ... I wish many things. That they d felt free to spend part of their stay in this summer which is past.
We could have gone sailing. However, they naturally wanted to see Elea-nor, his mother, in one of the
few intervals they had been able to make sure were safe, and tell her--what? She has not told me.
I wish they or I had thought to raise a question which has lately haunted me.
How did the race of time travelers come to be?
We supposed, the three of us, that we knew the why. But we did not ask who, or what, felt the need
and responded.
Meaningless accidental mutation? Then curious that none like Havig seem to have been born futureward
of the Eyrie--of, anyhow, Polaris House. In truth it would probably not be good to have them and their
foreknowledge about, once the purpose has been served of freeing man to roam and discover forever.
But who decided this? Who shaped the reality?
I have been reading about recent work in experimental ge-netics. Apparently a virus can be made to
carry genes from one host to the next; and the hosts need not be of the same species. Nature may have
done this already, may always be doing it. Quite likely we bear in our cells and bequeath to our children
bits of heritage from animals which were never among our forebears. That is well, if true. I am glad to
think we may be so close to the whole living world.
But could a virus have been made which carried a very strange thing; and could it have been sown
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through a chosen part of the past by travelers created anew in some unimaginably remote tomorrow?
I walk beyond town, many of these nights, to stand under the high autumnal stars, look upward and
wonder.
Two in Time
Two classic novels of time travel in one edition.
The Year Of The Quiet Sun
by Wilson Tucker
&
There Will Be Time
by Poul Anderson
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THE YEAR OF THE QUIET SUN
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byWilson Tucker
Copyright 1970 by Wilson Tucker. All rights reserved.
ACE BOOKS, INC. 1120 Avenue of the Americas New York, N.Y. 10036
Indian Rocks Beach, Florida
7 June 1978
The kind of prophet these people want
is a windbag and a liar,
Prophesying a future of wine and spirits.
-- The Book of Micah
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ONE
The leggy girl was both alpha and omega: the two embodied in the same compact bundle. The
operation began when she confronted him on a Florida beach, breaking his euphoria; it ended when he
found her sign on a grave marker, hard by a Nabataean cistern. The leap between those two points was
enormous.
Brian Chaney was aware of only a third symbol when he discovered her: she was wearing a
hip-length summer blouse over delta pants. No more than that--and a faint expression of
disapproval--was evident.
Chaney intended to make short work of her.
When he realized the girl was coming at him, coming for him, he felt dismay and wished he'd had
time to run for it. When he saw the object she carried--and its bright red dustjacket couldn't be
missed--he was tempted to jump from the beach chair and run anyway. She was another tormentor. The
furies had been hounding him since he left Tel Aviv--since the book was published-- hounding him and
crying heresy in voices hoarse with indignation. String up the traitor! they cried. Burn the infidel!
He watched the approach, already resenting her.
He had been idling in the sun, half dozing and half watching a mail Jeep make box deliveries along
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