Title: When Time Rolled Back
Author: Repp, Ed Earl
Language: English
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*** Start of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "When Time Rolled Back" ***


                         WHEN TIME ROLLED BACK

                            by ED EARL REPP

           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
                             Comet May 41.
         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]


Long before Rog found the mysterious, shining ball back in the
mountains, he knew he was far different from the rest of his tribe that
lived along the river. He knew it because he didn't think the same way
they did, and because there was a difference even in their appearance.

Sarak, who was the Old Man of the tribe as well as his sire, and Monah,
Rog's mother, were short and heavy and thickly covered with hair. Rog
was taller and straighter, and endowed with much less hair. Too, his
face was much broader through the cheekbones and less heavy-looking
around the mouth. There was only one other in the tribe who seemed to
be of the same physical cast as Rog, and that was Lo, a young woman who
dwelt with her family in Sarak's cave.

Though the stalwart, blond young man took an active part in all the
work of the tribe--hunting, skinning, tool-making--there were times
when he would detach himself from the rest as though he were a creature
of a higher world viewing a savage orgy.

Such a time was the delirious madness of eating after the lucky kill
of a giant mammoth. All the able-bodied men of the tribe would aid in
dragging the great, quiet animal into the clearing beside the river,
and then, to the cries of men, women, and children, huge hunks of flesh
would be torn off and devoured by all. The orgy did not cease until no
one was able to stand without falling.

But Rog and Lo would stand back in the shadows and watch gravely,
gnawing passively on smaller pieces of meat.

The others of the tribe realized that Rog and Lo were somehow different
from them. And because of the young man's tremendous strength and
because he was the son of the Old Man, he was not molested. But
secretly the slow-thinking men and women classed him with Ta, the
half-witted boy who sat all day playing with a stick.

None of them, not even the thoughtful Lo, ever stopped to wonder how
far back their ancestors had lived in this spot. Nor did they care. But
Rog found himself wondering if life had always been like this, or if it
had once been superior or inferior to their mode of life. Sometimes he
would grow curious enough to wander far down the river, or off into the
hills, alone.

It was on one of those excursions, prompted by an increasing
dissatisfaction with the life of the tribe, that Rog wandered back four
or five ranges from the cave dwellings. He had just sat down to eat
some of the dried meat he had brought along when his eye was caught by
a glint of flashing metal off through the dense woods.

Startled, he leaped up and made his way nearer. Within ten minutes he
was standing aghast, staring at a great, gleaming globe of silver, half
buried in the soft, moldy ground. He was terrified, for an instant, and
broke into panic-stricken flight before this thing that none of the
aborigines had ever seen. Then Rog's overpowering curiosity brought him
creeping back.

It was fifty times as tall as he was, just the half of it he could
see. It sparkled in the sunlight like white fire. Then, down near the
ground, Rog saw a round cut in the smooth surface. Something told him
this was the way inside the ball, though there was no reason why he
should not have believed it was anything but solid. But there was an
inner urge that made him approach gingerly and take hold of the long
cross-bar that was set into the door.

Eagerly he pulled at it. Nothing happened. He pushed, twisted, shoved,
and still the thing would not budge. Then a gleam of comprehension
flickered in his eyes. He grasped both ends of the bar and turned it
the way a plumber turns a pipe-cutter. It moved!

The round entrance swivelled about on threads that were glass-smooth,
until suddenly it swung aside on a hinge. Rog gasped and poked his head
inside. He was so amazed that for a couple of minutes he could only
stand in the portal, gaping.

       *       *       *       *       *

The ball was divided into floors, apparently, for there was a spiral
staircase in the middle that went up through the high ceiling, and a
continuation of the stairway going down into the lower half of it. From
some small globes hanging from the ceiling a soft radiation was thrown
into the room. There were gleaming tables and cabinets and shelves of
mystifying apparatus that Rog's eyes had never seen.

At last he ventured inside. He went from one glass-covered table to the
next, frowning at the things he saw. He could make nothing of them.

There were twenty tables, and each bore a maze of strange symbols
on its top. He was at a loss to divine what they meant, until he
discovered that at the bottom of each chart there was a picture of a
globe, with a tiny red arrow pointing to a section of it. Then he knew.
The tables were supposed to tell him what was to be found on each floor.

All this Rog knew, although he had never seen metal before, or glass,
or heard of a floor. But somehow he felt more at home in here than he
did in the cave with Sarak and Monah. With perfect confidence he went
to the staircase and climbed to the first floor.

A low, shining fence leading from the stairway made it plain that he
was to follow inside it and view each exhibit as he went. Rog went to
the first table, and within five minutes he was plunged into a maze of
conjectures and mysteries that made his aboriginal brain ache.

The first table bore a number of short groups of symbols, completely
lost on him. There were flowing, cursive characters; then a line
of wedge-shaped pictures; line after line of characters differing
only slightly; and finally, at the very bottom, something he could
understand.

There was pictured a figure that brought a quick smile of apprehension
to Rog's face--an old man, bowed with age. Beside him was a young
child, enclosed in a red circle that set him off from the old man. A
word leaped to his lips.... Not, perhaps, the word that the artist had
intended, but close enough.

"Beginning!" was the thought that came from his lips.

       *       *       *       *       *

After that the messages in the words and pictures made more sense
to him. Stupefied, trembling with excitement at this thing that was
happening to him, he went on and on.

He ignored the symbols as mere decorations, and read the pictures,
hurrying from one group to the next. He stared long and amazed at
amazingly life-like representations of the life of a tribe such as his
own. The men and women even looked like his did--short, squat, hairy.
The scenes showed them killing great animals somewhat similar to the
ones on whose meat they lived, portrayed them chipping flint holes, and
doing the other dozens of things life demanded of them.

But as he went on the life changed.

From cave-houses the migration was to peculiar dwellings of poles and
boughs, making box-like affairs in which men and women lived. The
tribe-folk, even, changed. They grew more upright and less hairy, and
their faces looked something like the reflection that stared back at
Rog from quiet forest pools.

The message of the pictures did not by any means unfold fully to
Rog, but from the chain of scenes he began to grasp something. Life
steadily became more and more complex, as though it were working toward
something--with a purpose. Men grew taller, their dwellings bigger,
their weapons stranger and apparently more efficient. He saw small
tribal conflicts broaden into great wars between numbers of tribes.

He gaped at inventions which he could not begin to comprehend. Before
his startled gaze caves gave way to great dwelling-places so large
that men looked like ants beside them. He had to smile at the fanciful
picturization of a man flying through the air in a fantastic machine.
But as Rog neared the end of the exhibit, he realized that the story,
if story it was, did not satisfy him.

In his crude, barbaric way, he had great visions of improving life so
that death was not such a stern, everpresent reality, and men would
have time for things other than eating and sleeping and mating. He was
a philosopher, if such a thing were conceivable of a man who lived on
raw meat. And this story did not appeal to him, for as far as he could
tell men grew more and more dissatisfied, instead of contented....

Terrible wars were shown to him. Violent death stalked the streets
of the beautiful cities. War after war piled on top of struggling
civilization until at last a conflict that seemed to embrace every
shred of man's life took place. After that there were scenes of cities
utterly deserted, crumbling into ruins. The final picture made Rog gasp
with shock.

They showed ten men laboring on a great steel ball, filling it with
tiny miniatures and statues and boxes. The last picture was of one man
lying under a transparent glass dome at the bottom of the ball.

Rog was suddenly frightened. He turned and fled back down the stairs
and out the door, and plunged into the forest--

       *       *       *       *       *

He said nothing to the rest of the tribe that day. Somehow he knew he
must guard his secret with his life. If the others found what he had
discovered, they would crowd into it and tear to shreds these things
that he treasured, simply through love of destruction. When he thought
of that, his fists clenched and hatred blazed in his eyes. The ball
must be kept safe, so that he could learn what it meant. It meant more
than life itself, more than Lo, even, that he should solve the message
in the shining globe.

But the next day he found time to sit by the river with Lo. "You were
gone yesterday," she said. "Where?"

Rog's heart leaped into his mouth. He looked down in sudden confusion.
"Only down the river," he lied. "I went to hunt roots."

Her questioning eyes told him she knew he was lying. But she was wise,
and held her tongue.

After a long time he could hold himself in no longer. "Do you ever
wonder," he asked intensely, "why we live this way? I mean--have men
always lived like this, in caves, killing their meat and gorging
themselves on it, and then starving until they killed again?"

Lo's dark eyes met his boring glance, but she said nothing. She was
feminine enough, and civilized enough, to realize it wasn't an answer
he wanted, but an audience.

In a moment he went on. "You and I aren't like the others, Lo. The Old
Man and all the rest of the people aren't happy unless they are eating.
But we can be happy talking, and ... wondering."

She smiled at him in happy understanding. "Luk-no says you are lazy,"
she said naïvely. "But I know you work hard even when you are quiet.
Else how would you find things to make like the Thing that Floats?"

He warmed at her mention of his raft. It was only a short while ago
that he had conceived the idea of tying a bundle of logs together to
ferry things across the river, but now it was in daily use. But when
his mind rested on Luk-no, he scowled.

"Some day I will kill him," he promised savagely. "Always he
interferes."

Luk-no was a great, stubby trunk of a man who resented Lo's interest in
Rog and took every chance to get in his way. His greatest delight was
to carry tales of his laziness to Sarak, who would promptly beat his
son with a club. Such treatment rankled under Rog's skin.

Then he forgot his hatred of the black-browed one in contemplation of
other things. "I do not like the way we live," he said simply. "Our
caves are cold and sometimes wet. Our weapons are scarcely able to kill
the animals we need before they kill us. I do not like the way the Old
Man rules us, telling us what we can do and what we cannot do. Why
shouldn't I make better things for myself if I want, instead of being
beaten for not working? Some day...."

Lo caught up the thread of thought quickly. "I know," she nodded. "Some
day you will challenge Sarak and kill him. Then you will be the Old
Man! You will be the one who rules!"

"So that is what you two talk of! I knew it was not how to get food for
the tribe!" The voice was triumphant and harsh, close behind them.

They were on their feet in an instant, whirling to face the
brutally-built man who had come up behind them. It was Luk-no. His
little red-rimmed eyes were alight with anticipation.

"You came at the wrong moment," Rog growled sullenly. "We were not
talking of that, but Lo grew over-enthusiastic."

"Well, and won't the Old Man be glad to hear this?" Luk-no taunted.
"When I tell him, he will cave your head in like an acorn."

Rog's face was black with fury. "If you tell Sarak what you heard," he
said tensely, "I will take your dirty throat in my hands and break it.
Then I'll gouge your prying eyes out. I'll tear your tongue out so you
can never tell anything else you hear again. Or perhaps I will just do
it now!" He took a menacing step towards the smaller, burlier man, his
club resting on his shoulder.

Luk-no cringed, essaying a grin. "You are too quick to anger!" he
protested. "It was a joke."

"A joke," Rog mocked. "Like the time you toppled a rock on the head of
one of the others who wished to mate with Lo! I don't like your jokes,
dirty one. Go back to your caterpillar-grubbing before I change my
mind."

But as Luk-no slunk away, he felt icy chills run down his back. He must
be more careful! Here he had been on the point of telling everything to
Lo. What would have resulted if Luk-no had heard! The globe, perhaps,
would have been discovered and ruined!

And Rog, stalking away by himself, knew that he must be triply careful,
for somehow he sensed that in that shining ball was contained the whole
future of the tribe....

       *       *       *       *       *

In the weeks to come he made many trips back to the sphere. With every
visit his wonder grew.

By intuition and study he became convinced that the place was a
repository in which some race long dead--a "tribe" was his only word
for them--had sought to preserve the knowledge of their civilization
for those to come later. His agile mind told him why it had been
necessary.

Mankind had worked itself up to the point where it had too much
leisure, and turned its energy to the destruction of others. The
inevitable result was self-destruction. But the ten he had seen in the
pictures stole away and created this museum of history and science, to
aid mankind when it must again struggle upward.

Under Luk-no's subtle whispering the tribe grew incensed against Rog
and watched him constantly, seeking to learn where he went on the
days he was absent. They resented the things he "invented" with such
regularity. Little did they realize he was but copying things he saw in
the sphere.

The thing that astounded them most, even Rog himself, was the wheel.

He hacked a section of a log into a rough cylinder about three feet
thick and bored a hole through it for an axle. Two of these "wheels" he
joined together by a peeled pole and made a crude sort of cart, more,
perhaps, like a wheelbarrow. But the simple contraption did the work of
many men in hauling rocks and meat. Had it not been for the tremendous
jealousy it aroused among other young men in the settlement, he would
have been acclaimed a hero.

Another day he fashioned a device consisting of a bent stick held in
a permanent arc by a piece of rawhide. When a notched branch, skinned
clean of bark and twigs, was launched by the bowstring, it flew with
sufficient force to kill a squirrel. Rog was as delighted as a child
with his bow and arrow, and spent many hours practicing with it.

There were other things in the museum that brought deep lines to his
forehead. He was already beginning to comprehend the principle of the
water-wheel and the pulley, but when he saw a man hanging from a great
bag high in the air, or a hunter killing a bear by pointing a smoking
stick at it, he was stupefied.

       *       *       *       *       *

Just six weeks after his discovery of the ball, he found something that
froze him with sheer terror, that sent him running away, vowing never
to return.

On this day he had gone down the stairs through a number of floors,
until he came to a room in the very bottom of the sphere. The door to
the chamber was closed. It was an unusual door, of a gleaming material
that made him blink, and had a single character in the center of it:
a red circle from which a small sector had been removed. The sector
hovered over the gap, as if asking to be replaced.

Rog pushed the door open and went in, suddenly stopped. His face froze,
then brightened with eagerness. Hastily he went to the bubble-like dome
of glass in the middle of the room.

Then he was standing rigid with shock. On a low couch under the glass
bell lay an old man clad in flowing, white garments. But he was
different from the tribe's old men. He was taller and frailer. His brow
was lofty, instead of being crowded down over his eyebrows, and his
expression was serene in death.

Rog shoved his nose against the glass, studying the dignified figure.
He wished, suddenly, that the old man were not dead, for he could
undoubtedly explain all these things to him that had him puzzling so
hopelessly. At last his gaze wandered to the maze of machines at the
head of the couch.

There was nothing there that he could begin to understand. Just a
battery of glass and metal and tubes. Two red wires led from the
machinery to a board on which were a number of dials and things that
Rog scarcely gave a second glance.

Then, all at once, he stiffened. His eyes fastened on a shining red
circle of metal, exactly the same as the symbol on the door. And there
was a section out of it, lying there asking him to put it back in!

       *       *       *       *       *

Now he went to it and lifted the heavy little bit of red stuff. It had
prongs that fitted into corresponding holes in the rest of the circle
which was firmly fixed to the board. Rog knew he was supposed to shove
the sector into place. His fingers were trembling as he hesitated.
Suddenly he bent forward and pushed the prongs home!

[Illustration: _Suddenly Rog bent forward and shoved the prongs home._]

There was an instant of utter silence. His primitive mind told him that
this was a moment of moments, though he knew not why. Gradually a low
humming told him his action had taken results. The machinery glowed and
wheels began to turn slowly, then faster and faster, until they were
spinning discs of silver.

Rog's eyes fastened on the ancient's face. Why, he did not know.
Perhaps he was asking him to answer.... He scowled. Were his eyes
deceiving him, or had the placid white face become flushed?

"Agh!" A hoarse bark of terror burst from Rog's throat. The old man's
eyes were open and he was looking straight at him!

The young aborigine had seen enough. He turned and fled, caring for
nothing but his own life now.

       *       *       *       *       *

For a week he was afraid even to think of what he had seen. His mind
was outraged by the thought of the dead returning to life.

He worked so hard with the tribe now that they were amazed at the
change in him. It was growing on towards winter, and stores of roots,
edible weeds, and dried meat were crowded into the smoky, dark caves in
which they lived. The winters had been growing so heavy that the Old
Man had even mentioned moving farther south, where they had observed
birds and certain animals went in cold weather. This winter they were
taking no chance of starving. Great supplies of food were being put in
long ahead of time.

But in spite of Rog's industry, Luk-no found time to run him down,
secretly, to Sarak. The two of them would mumble between themselves,
Luk-no furtive and prattling, the Old Man smoldering with righteous
indignation. And presently the Old Man, who was actually only about
fifteen years older than Rog, would take it upon himself to chastise
him. His great, bulging muscles would strain as he cudgelled him.

Rog sweltered under the mistreatment ... but this trouble was as
nothing compared to the burning curiosity to know what he had done the
last time he went to the globe. Even Lo could not be let in on such a
secret. She, too, would class him with Ta, then.

The day came when he could stand it no longer.

Almost without his own volition he found himself far back in the hills,
making swiftly towards the museum. He did not rush in as heretofore
when he reached it. He crept up and poked his head inside the portal,
wide-eyed and breathing hard. There was the sound of a twig's breaking
behind him, and he whirled, flattening out against the wall.

"Do not be afraid." It was the smiling patriarch who spoke. "I am
Johann Adam, the man you restored to life. I am here to help you."

But Rog could not understand the strange, musical sounds he made. He
continued to crouch there, waiting.

The old man spread his hands. "I have slept long, if you represent man
of today. But follow me." And he gestured to the boy, passing on into
the sphere.

Then there followed an hour of the most thrilling, most baffling,
conversation he had ever known. Johann Adam took a big pad and a
writing-stick and made picture after picture, while Rog crouched near
him, fearing to stay, and yet hating the thought of missing anything by
leaving. The first time Adam extended the pad to him to see what he had
written, he shrank back and almost ran away.

Somehow he knew that it was ridiculous, his being afraid of a man so
much feebler than he, and he stiffened his feeble courage. But there
was a tiny voice inside him that whispered that the ancient had a power
that transcended that of mere muscles. Rog remembered the smoking
sticks that killed bears....

Finally he glanced at the pad, and then took it. The diagram was a
repetition of the old man and child in the chart in the room above. A
smile claimed his features. He pointed upward and gave the pad back.

Adam was pleased. He seemed to inventory Rog's quick eyes and his
smooth, broad brow. Then he was writing again. The younger man's fear
broke down completely under the force of his desire for learning.
Within a few minutes he was sitting on the floor beside Johann Adam,
nodding and grinning and sometimes frowning in puzzlement. But a story
was unfolding to him. He was learning how the sphere happened to be.

Laboriously he pieced together the fact that Adam and nine
other men had foreseen what was to happen to the earth and its
super-civilization. Knowing that destruction of modern culture was
on the way, they had sought to preserve some part of it for humanity
when--and if--men emerged from the darkness at some future time.

They had constructed the globe and filled it with every scrap of
knowledge known to man. Then they constructed the last room of all, the
chamber in which Adam was to lie awaiting the renewal of his suspended
life, or the death that would be complete.

On the eve of the last of the terrible, cataclysmic wars that burned
mankind from earth like a searing flame from outer space, Johann Adam
entered the globe and the others went back, to die.

Their supposition had been correct. The last great invention of the war
gods, a corrosive gas, had got out of control. Within a space of years
men were wiped from the face of earth.

What happened then Adam could not say. Perhaps man had struggled
up from the bottom of evolution's ladder again; perhaps a tribe of
high-type apes had been left after the catastrophe, and were now Rog's
people, developed by a few thousand years. At any rate, the world was
again stumbling through the dark shadows of the Stone Age. And from
that murky period civilization was slowly crawling back to its former
golden age.

And Rog knew who would take the lead in the advance. He himself, under
the guidance of Johann Adam, would be the Old Man of all Old Men! He
would be instrumental in leading his people away from the paths that
would deter their progress. All this he would do, with Lo at his side!

He took the drawing-stick himself, then, and made what crude signs he
could to tell of the strained conditions at the caves. Adam frowned
and nodded slowly. Clearly he was worried. The death of this man, whom
he knew was hundreds of years ahead of his time, might nullify all his
chances of aiding the world.

Then a gleam of hope lighted his eyes. By pictures he showed Rog
what to do. He was to bring Lo with him and stay here in the globe
until he had learned enough to be able to convince the tribe of his
superiority. Until the day when he must be recognized as the leader of
them all!

He was reluctant to leave Adam, and yet eager to carry out his
instructions. Trembling with anticipation, he took his clumsy club over
his shoulder and ran back through the trees towards the river....

He came back to the caves to find an angry group awaiting him. Sarak
stood at the entrance to the cave, leaning on his club. He was an
imposing figure in his anger. His sloping shoulders bulged massively
under a mat of black hair, and his short body was tight with muscles
drawn hard by hatred.

"Sluggard!" he spat at Rog. "You run off and hide, do you, while others
work? Already black clouds gather, but you let old men and women, as
well as the younger ones, find food to keep the fat on your bones
during the long winter."

Rog stiffened with anxiety. He saw Lo watching him wide-eyed and white
of face, and realized Luk-no was grinning at his predicament. He
decided on a bold lie. "I was stalking a deer," he said. "I followed it
far into the hills, but could not get close enough to kill it. Had I
succeeded, it would have fed more mouths than what roots I could have
gathered."

The Old Man snorted. "You do not even lie well," he snarled. "You carry
only a club. Did you think to get close enough to kill it with that?"
His close-set, red-rimmed eyes blazed. "Where is your spear?"

"I--I lost it," Rog faltered.

"Lost it, did you?" shouted Sarak. "Well, I have not lost my club,
smooth-faced one! Feel its anger, now, and remember, when you feel like
sleeping in the forest instead of working."

His wide mouth was distorted, baring ugly black snags of teeth as he
advanced. The thick cudgel, weighted with a stone, came up over his
head.

For a moment Rog considered springing in to battle. His mind weighed
his chances. Against Sarak, perhaps, he might have had a chance of
coming out alive, but the tribe was incensed against him now. Luk-no
would lead them against him should he vanquish the bloodthirsty Old Man.

Then blows were raining down upon his head and back. As best he could,
he warded them off with his club, but the blood sprang from half a
dozen wounds in the first few seconds. He went to his knees, dazed and
bleeding. Sarak shouted and screamed and danced, in savage enjoyment of
his tribal right to punish, justifiably or not. His thick lips gleamed
with saliva.

And Rog bit his lip against the pain and bore it. He ground down the
hate welling up within his breast, because he must come out of this
alive. Whatever it cost him, he must endure it, or the secret of the
museum might die with Johann Adam. A bitter laugh was torn from his
lips at the thought that his only motive in living was to help the
tribe!

The wall of leering faces swam before his vision. The ruler's
countenance loomed before them all, twisted with savagery. His
breathing was stertorous, rasping through clenched teeth. At last Rog
could stand no more. The club fell from his hands and he sprawled on
his face in the cavern.

       *       *       *       *       *

Sometime during the night he awoke. His body was a mass of bruises and
cuts. It gave him excruciating agony to force his head from the floor,
but he did so, and cast a slow glance about him. Then he saw what he
wanted.

Painfully he inched himself to Lo's side and aroused her, placing
his hand quickly over her mouth to stifle the outcry. "It's me," he
whispered. "Rog. Listen to me, Lo. I want you to go away with me!"

Instantly the girl was wide awake. "Go away!" she echoed.

He nodded. "Not for good. Just for a few moons. Then we will come
back, and I will become the Old Man!"

Now Lo was trembling with excitement. Before she could question him, he
bent nearer and whispered, "Pay attention to what I say, but don't ask
questions. We are going back into the forest, to a great, shining stone
I found. And we must go tomorrow, as soon as the tribe is not noticing
us."

Then, hurriedly, he told her of the sphere. She was puzzled, almost
inclined to doubt him, but the energy and sincerity of his manner
told her he was not lying. A groan from one of the sleepers sent him
scuttling back to his place, to lie there sleepless until the sun came
up and shot long, golden lances into the cave.

He was so tense in the morning that he could scarcely force himself to
pretend to work. Lo stayed near him. Fear and hope battled within him.
Failure now would mean that Johann Adam would wait in vain, out in the
forest, for him to come back. He would know Rog could not help him, at
last, and then ... what?

He would become older rapidly, for he had many years on his shoulders
already. Time would almost surely cut him down before he could find
anyone in any of the tribes intelligent enough to know he was not a
devil. A cold sweat broke out on his forehead at the thought of so much
knowledge being wasted. Though he could not know it, his concern for
the secrets of the museum marked him as the first scientist in many
thousands of years.

When the sun had climbed high over the tops of the leafy trees Rog saw
his chance. The others had scattered, paying him little attention. In a
flash he had darted to Lo's side and hissed, "Now! We must run fast!"

       *       *       *       *       *

They crept to the edge of the clearing and then sprang into the thick,
cool darkness of the underbrush. Under the swift feet the miles slipped
past. Rog was tense and anxious, Lo eager as a child and a little
frightened. She did not know what he did: That upon their reaching the
sphere safely depended thousands of years of evolution.

And then, almost without warning, they were springing into the small
circle of bare ground surrounding the shining ball of metal. They
stopped just a few feet away from the closed door and stood hand in
hand while Rog shouted.

After a moment the bar across the portal began to turn. Then it had
swung open ... and in that same instant something took place that
drained every drop of blood from Rog's face and left him shivering in
dumb despair.

Not fifty feet behind them a confused shouting arose, and to their
shocked gazes were revealed the running forms of a dozen of the
tribesmen, led by Sarak, himself!

A groan of despair came from the lips of Johann Adam. Lo sank to the
ground and waited for the clubs to end her life with that of Rog.
But Rog was too stupefied to do or say anything. His club hung from
nerveless fingers. The sight of twelve men rushing upon him seemed not
to register in his mind.

Then he moved. The club swung up over one shoulder, and he stepped
forward one pace. His words carried strongly across the intervening
distance.

"Wait!" he shouted. "I would do battle with Sarak alone. One so weak
and stupid as he has no right to rule!"

They stopped. It was a young man's right, if he were so foolish, to
challenge the Old Man to battle. It meant that his wisdom and strength
were questioned, and only by a battle to the death could it be settled.
Sarak roared his acceptance, and the others were bound to wait.

He strode from the knot of savage tribesmen, cudgel lofted over his
head. Taunts and threats crowded his flabby lips.

It was a daring move that Rog was making. Unless he challenged Sarak
and demanded a fight alone with him, they would be massacred. Perhaps
if he won, the tribe would still exact payment, for Luk-no was at the
head of the men, waiting for his chance to avenge himself.

They crashed together with a sickening sound of stone on flesh. Blood
spurted from Rog's head, where Sarak's club had grazed him. The sight
of the blood brought a scream of triumph from the Old Man, he raised
the weapon again in his stubby hands.

Rog released the club with his right hand and shot a hard fist into
the other's face. Thrown off guard, Sarak had to fall back as his son
swept in upon him. His years of experience saved him as he warded off
every blow expertly. He drove in a hard sweep of the cudgel that rocked
against the younger man's shoulder.

Again Sarak bludgeoned his way in, driving Rog back before him,
bleeding and dazed. A sob of despair choked Rog. It was more than his
life that was at stake today.

Johann Adam's fingers were locked in the folds of his garments as he
watched the struggle. He knew as well as Rog what the stakes were. And
it was a heartbreaking fact for him to realize that he was powerless to
help. Interference by him, even if it resulted in victory for the boy,
would mean the tribe would never accept him. Only as a tribal member
could he aid.

Around the fighters a great crowd was collecting. The rest of the tribe
had run up just after Sarak and Luk-no, and now they crowded in to
watch the deadly combat. Their screams of hate filled the quiet forest.

Rog fought with desperation. In strength he was a match for his
bloodthirsty sire, but he lacked the years of experience behind the Old
Man's clubbing. He was forced to give ground time after time, wading
in with swinging bludgeon only to be brought to his knees by a clever
blow over the back of the neck.

Sweat streamed down his forehead and blinded him, mingling with blood.
His ribs ached terribly from a blow that had cracked several on one
side, and one leg was wrenched so it would hardly support him. But
still his shoulders writhed to his efforts to give Sarak a death blow.

Suddenly, as he backed to the very edge of the crowd, he saw a shadow
rise swiftly over his head, in the black images cast on the ground.
For a moment the battle with Sarak was forgotten in the more immediate
danger of being clubbed from behind. He ducked.

Something smacked into the ground at his feet, and a man, his balance
lost by the blow's missing, lunged past. Luk-no stumbled over the
boulder that had almost cost Rog his life. In a flash the intended
victim's club was raised and brought down on his back. With a scream of
pain the black-browed one went down.

The Old Man had not been napping. As Rog's attention wavered he
leaped in close and pulled his cudgel around behind him for a vicious
roundhouse swipe that would crush his adversary's head. Rog's only
warning was his hissing breath. He squatted down quickly, just as the
stone swept over him, so close it raised the hackles on his neck.

In the next moment Rog's chance came. Sarak lunged off balance and
twisted desperately around to recover it. Rog took one deep breath ...
and then he leaped.

His club hissed through the air as he put all his force into a final
effort. There was a solid crunching sound as the sharp rock connected
with Sarak's skull. The Old Man went down without a sound, and he was
Old Man no longer....

In the moment's hush that fell over the group, Rog went swiftly back
to Lo and Johann Adam. He stood between them and raised both arms for
attention.

"Is there any other who wishes to be ruler?" he shouted.

There was not a sound. Luk-no crouched where he had fallen.

A glad tide rushed up in Rog's breast. He had won! He was the Old Man
now, himself, free to do as he wished, and with the power to make the
tribe do what he knew was best for them. He spoke once more.

"Then, know this--I am your ruler and you are my people. But this old
man beside me is far wiser than any of us. You will follow my wishes--I
will follow his. You do not know what this means now, but you will
later."

A few feet away the hapless Luk-no still crouched and awaited the
death blow that was his due. Then Rog performed the first act of mercy
mankind had known in many hundreds of years.

Sharply he said to him, "Get up. I will not kill you because I do not
deign to dirty my club with your blood. But if ever you interfere with
me or my mate or the old one, it will go hard with you."

Luk-no crept away, while amazement gripped the tribe. And in the eyes
of the men and women Rog read complete victory.

Johann Adam shook his wise old head, realizing what had happened. "I
have known men far more cultured than you to seize the opportunity you
spurned," he murmured. "Perhaps with such a start, civilization will
come to a better end, this time!"



*** End of this LibraryBlog Digital Book "When Time Rolled Back" ***

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