The Gun Runners
BY RALPH WILLIAMS
George Dolan had four immediate problems:
the time-translator, a beautiful, out-of-this-world
girl named Moirta, the gun runners and his life.
A situation in which he finally triumphed.... But
what can you do with a victory that lies at the
other end of a bridge 10,000 years long?
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, December 1954.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The gun runners were professionals, and except for one minor detail theoperation had been very well planned.
The middle twentieth century was chosen as a source of supply aftera careful survey of all factors pro and con. The gun runners did notwant the mass weapons of their own day, they wanted selective weaponswhich could be used for private murder. In the mid-twentieth century,the level of technology was such that well-made and reliable weaponswere available; and at the same time, social control was still sketchyenough to permit quiet procurement of such merchandise, if one knewhow to go about it and was suitably financed.
The gun runners, two men and a woman, knew how to go about it, and theywere suitably financed. The profits in their business were commensuratewith the risks—which were not small.
In their world unauthorized time travel was highly illegal, because ofcertain possible undesirable effects on the total space-time continuum,and was severely punished. Moreover, it was personally uncomfortableand dangerous.
They came from an old ingrowing world which had never reached thestars, where there were only men and their works, no blade of grass ormicro-organism or sparrow which did not directly serve men. In theirtime, hereditary traits which had meant untimely and certain death inearlier times had persisted and multiplied. Immunities and instinctswhich had fitted men to live with tigers and streptococci, and seektheir food in the wilderness, had atrophied.
The twentieth century was a dangerous environment for these people,more so perhaps than the Eocene would have been for homo sapiens.In preparation for their venture, it had been necessary for themto undergo a drastic and painful series of tests, inoculations,conditionings and plastic surgery.
Unfortunately, it had not occurred to them that their time machinemight need similar protection. The equipment was basically electronic,and the power leads were encased in a new insulation, a syntheticprotein which in very thin films afforded a near perfect dielectric. Itwas also, as it happened, an almost perfect culture medium for certainbacilli, non-existent in the sterile future, but healthy and thrivingand full of appetite in the twentieth century.
When the gun runners prepared to return to their own time with theircargo of contraband there were small flashes of fire, and smoke curledbriefly from various parts of the equipment. Their temporal environmentremained unchanged.
The gun runners were not technicians, they were specialists in otherfields. They pulled and prodded uncertainly here and there, pushed thebuttons again.
Nothing happened.
The senior gun runner, a man who wore in this century the appearance ofa quiet, gray-haired professional man, and who wore in any century thehabit of command, came to a decision. He spoke in their own language, alanguage time had pruned to telegraphic brevity:
"If tamper, make worse. Electronics technician