Time for Sale by Ralph Milne Farley Read online

  Amazing Stories, August, 1938

  Time for Sale

  by Ralph Milne Farley

  CHAPTER I

  hair. His face showed an annoyed red through

  Two Weeks in a Day

  his close-clipped Vandyke beard. On the door

  was the name “Mr. Porter.”

  HE beefy man sitting behind the ornate

  “You

  would come to bother me about

  mahogany and chromium desk, ran his

  money at a time like this, Tom,” he bitterly

  T fingers through his rumpled graying remarked to the broad-shouldered

  Amazing Stories

  2

  black-haired young man who stood facing him

  flattened itself and slunk off down the street,

  across the desk.

  keeping close to the buildings. The match

  “But, Dad,” his son remonstrated, flickered—and went out.

  “wouldn’t it be worth two thousand dollars to

  “Looks like the correct number—five

  you for me to graduate from college? All that

  one five,” the athletically built man with the

  stands in the way of my Engineering degree is

  match remarked in doubtful tones. “But this is

  tomorrow’s exam in Physics, and I have a deal

  a warehouse, not an office-building.”

  which should get me through it. Only $500

  His companion, a small and precise

  down, and $1,500 more if I pass.”

  person, rummaged in his pockets, produced a

  “Why didn’t you pay attention to your

  small card, tilted it at several different angles

  lessons during the year?” growled his father,

  in an endeavor to catch the rays of a distant

  “instead of frittering away your time on street-lamp, and finally lit a match himself.

  football and fraternities and dances! You’re

  The card read:

  licked, and you know it. At least it’s

  something to know when one’s licked.”

  ENTROPY, INC.

  “Is it?” countered his husky son, 515 East 17th St., New York City raising his bushy eyebrows. “Well, there’s one

  “Time for Sale”

  thing which is even more worthwhile than

  P. Lanford Hatch, Ph.D.

  knowing when one’s licked.”

  President.

  “Yes? What is it?”

  “Not knowing when one’s licked.

  He threw away the match, lit another,

  Perhaps I’m a stubborn optimistic fool, but

  and ran it up and down the door-casing, until

  I’m never willing to admit that I’m licked.

  he found an obscure button, beneath the label

  That’s why I still plan to pass tomorrow’s

  “ENTROPY, INC.” This button he pushed.

  exam, although I know that it’ll take at least a

  After a long wait, a gate clanged

  week and a half of cramming to do it.”

  hollowly somewhere in the vast interior of the

  The elder Porter heaved a sigh of lower floor of the warehouse, a dim light resignation. “So you’d make fun of your poor

  flicked on, and then the door opened,

  old man at a time like this. All right, have

  disclosing a slim wiry white-coated man, with

  your two thousand dollars! Perhaps, when sad eyes and a quizzical smile.

  you’ve graduated, you may turn over a new

  “Well?”

  he

  demanded.

  leaf.”

  The smaller of the two callers,

  “Thank you, sir,” Tom Porter soberly

  scholarly looking with domed forehead and

  replied, but there was a twinkle in his dark

  thick horn-rimmed glasses, replied, “I’m

  eyes and a strange smile on his broad face, as

  McGuire of the University tutoring service.

  though he knew some joke which he was

  Your brother sent us. This is Tom Porter, the

  concealing from his father.

  football captain, a Phi Gam.”[1]

  “And I am Dr. Hatch,” announced the

  Two men stopped questioningly in front of the

  white-coated man in the doorway.

  huge bulking building in the dimly lit

  “I know you well by reputation,

  waterfront street. One of them, who loomed

  doctor,” said Porter. “You’re Lan Hatch, the

  large and powerful, laid a fat briefcase on the

  great quarterback of the twenties! If you are

  sidewalk, lit a match, and held its feeble flare

  half the physicist that you were football

  close to the number beside the door. A startled

  player, you can fix me up swell. And I’m

  alley cat, with a fish-head in its mouth, darted

  out from behind a group of garbage tins; then

  1 Dr. Hatch was also a member of Phi Gamma Delta.

  Time for Sale

  3

  certainly in need of help! My exam in Physics

  “What can I do for you?” a bit icily.

  is tomorrow morning, and Mac here says it

  “Well, you can take dinner with me

  will take at least a week and a half of tutoring

  tomorrow evening.”

  to get me by.”

  “Sorry, but I’m engaged—”

  The white-coated man sniffed, as

  “Good! I was afraid you might be

  though to indicate his supreme contempt for

  married. I’ll phone you—”

  anyone who found the least difficulty in

  Her cool green eyes narrowed.

  mastering Physics.

  “Will you please be sensible!” she

  “Step this way, gentlemen,” he invited

  snapped. “I assume that you are here to try

  crisply.

  one of Dr. Hatch’s time-machines.” She took a

  Porter picked up the brief-case, and he

  five-by-eight card-form from a drawer, and

  and McGuire entered the warehouse. Dr. opened her fountain pen. “Name please.”

  Hatch led the way onto a freight elevator, and

  “Thomas

  Porter.”

  pulled the cord. The elevator slowly ascended

  A flicker of expression showed that

  until it stopped at a brightly lighted upper

  she had heard the name. Porter chuckled

  floor.

  inwardly. The girl, with a bit more respect,

  Near the elevator-shaft stood a desk

  asked for and wrote down the remaining data,

  and some file-cabinets; and at the desk sat a

  collected a preliminary fee of five hundred

  girl with copper gold hair, a pink and white

  dollars, and sent Porter to join his tutor and

  complexion, and a provocative smile on her

  Dr. Hatch.

  very full, red lips. She wore some sort of

  He found them in front of a glassed-in

  green clothes, but all that Porter noticed was

  cubicle about twenty feet square,

  the exquisite figure to which they clung. He

  encompassed by coils of shining copper wire,

  raised his bushy black eyebrows in a gesture

  and surrounded by searchlights,
r />   of appreciation, and whistled softly under his

  mercury-vapor tubes, dynamos, and other

  breath. Then noticed that Dr. Hatch was electric contraptions. Within the cubicle were speaking to him.

  two cots, a desk, chairs, an ice-box, and toilet

  “You make the arrangements at the

  facilities. Dr. Hatch opened a glass door in the

  desk,” said Hatch, “while I show Mr. McGuire

  side of the cubicle.

  the apparatus.”

  “Step in, gentlemen,” he invited. “I

  Hatch and McGuire strolled through an

  shall have to lock you in, for it would be

  open doorway to the electrical paraphernalia

  disastrous for you to emerge while the coils

  with which the room beyond was filled; while

  are energized. Stay in there two weeks and

  Porter walked up to the desk and set down his

  tutor Mr. Porter for his exam. You will note

  bulging briefcase. He grinned broadly at the

  that the glass will become black and

  beautiful copper-haired girl.

  impervious to sight and light, as soon as the

  “Well?” she asked, cocking her current is turned on. When the glass clears, flaming head on one side, and looking up at

  you can come out. It will then be only seven

  him out of a pair of jade-green eyes. Then

  o’clock tomorrow morning.”

  very ostentatiously she smoothed a stray lock

  “Two weeks?” gasped the scholarly

  of her copper-gold hair with a slim white hand

  McGuire. “And it’ll be only seven o’clock

  which displayed a solitaire diamond and a

  tomorrow?”

  platinum wedding band on its ring-finger.

  “That’s

  correct.”

  “Old stuff,” Porter laughed, “but very

  The scholarly McGuire faltered, and

  effective. Keeps the predatory males from looked anxiously around; but his young tutee becoming annoying.”

  seized his arm and pushed him—almost lifted

  Amazing Stories

  4

  him—through the glass doorway.

  other. Grinning wryly, Porter addressed his

  “You a physicist, afraid of a little spectacled tutor, “All right, Mac, hop to it.

  entropy!”[2

  Eddington’s idea that our time-sense

  And you might just as well begin with

  is merely a sensory perception of entropy was further thermodynamics; it’s my weakest point. What,

  outlined in “New Pathways in Science.” “Setting aside if anything, has entropy to do with time?”

  the guidance of consciousness, we discover a signpost McGuire nervously cleared his throat,

  for time in the physical world itself. The signpost is a rather peculiar one, and I would not venture to say that and passed one hand across his high forehead

  the discovery of an objective ‘going on of time’ in the in a tired gesture.

  universe. But at any rate, it provides a unique criterion

  “Of course it’s all hooey,” he

  for discriminating between past and future, whereas diffidently began. “And yet—And yet, if there

  there is no corresponding absolute distinction between is a way of speeding up the general entropy of

  right and left. The signpost depends on a certain

  some shut-off portion of space—”

  measurable physical quantity called entropy.”—Ed.]

  Porter taunted.

  “Such as this glass room?”

  He flung his brief-case on the table;

  “Exactly—Well, Eddington has shown

  and the two men sat down uneasily on the two

  that entropy, in its more general sense, is the

  chairs, and stared out through the glass walls

  running-down of the universe. Entropy is what

  of the cage.

  makes time irreversible—is what gives us the

  Dr. Hatch strode with a bit of a feeling of the flow of time. And so if, as Dr.

  swagger to a switch-panel, where he closed a

  Hatch claims, he has found a way to speed up

  large leaf-switch and gradually advanced the

  the entropy in this glass cage, it should be

  handle of a controller. Motor-generator sets

  possible for two weeks to flow past us inside

  began to hum and spark-gaps to snap. The

  here while only a few hours are passing for the

  glass walls of the cubicle gradually blurred,

  world outside.”[3]

  then clouded a pearly hue which deepened

  His voice did not carry conviction; but

  through gray to an impenetrable black, taking advantage of the evident interest of his completely cutting off all view of the outside

  pupil, he proceeded to plunge into a detailed

  world.

  mathematical explanation of entropy, the

  Gradually the two inmates relaxed subject most difficult to understand of all of their tenseness, and turned and looked at each

  Physics.

  So expertly did McGuire budget the

  time which the time-cabinet created for them,

  2* Dr. Hatch adopted the term “entropy” from his

  that he completed a review of the six branches

  research in Eddington, considered the greatest relativist of General Physics just short of the expiration

  next to Einstein, now at Princeton.

  of two weeks by his watch.

  Eddington in his “The Nature of the Physical

  World,” discussing the relation between time and

  “Of course,” he said, his brow

  entropy, says: “Objection has sometimes been felt to contorting with a frown, “this business of

  the relativity theory because its four-dimensional picture of the world seems to overlook the directed character of time.... Without any mystic appeal to 3McGuire was not quite correct in his explanation to his consciousness it is possible to find a direction of time student. Eddington postulates that our time-sense is on the four-dimensional map, by a study of

  based on a sensory perception of entropy; which term, organization.... Let us consider in detail how a random although usually associated with thermodynamics, is element brings the irrevocable into the world.... The more generically the measure of the “running-down” of practical measure of the random element which can

  the universe. By isolating a portion of space and

  increase in the universe but can never decrease is called changing the rate of entropy within that portion, we entropy.... The law that entropy always increases—the thereby change the rate of elapse of time within that second law of thermodynamics—holds, I think, the

  portion. Undoubtedly this is what Dr. Hatch does within supreme position among the laws of nature.”

  the entropy cabinets.—Ed.

  Time for Sale

  5

  locking us up in a dark-walled glass room for

  The

  elder

  Porter

  sat at his desk,

  two weeks is all hooey. I am very much afraid

  looking even more tired than on the day

  that we shall find that your exam was held

  before.

  thirteen days ago.”

  “Well!” he snapped, as his son jauntily

  Tom Porter shrugged his broad entered. “More trouble, and need more money, shoulders.

  I suppose? Of course you flunked the exam.”

  “I’d have flunked it anyway,” he said

  “Good old dad,” chaffed the younger

  philosophically. “Come on, let’s get out of

  Porter. “In spite of all his worries, he
/>
  here and see what day it is.” He got up from

  remembers that his little boy had an exam this

  his chair and approached the door.

  morning. Well, dad, I bring you glad tidings. I

  “Stop!” shouted McGuire. “The positively killed the exam! Knocked it for at sudden equalization of entropy might burn us

  least a B!”

  to a crisp!”

  The tired old face brightened, and

  “So

  you

  do place some stock in all this

  relaxed somewhat.

  ‘hooey,’ as you call it!” A pause. Then,

  “No? How did you manage?”

  “Look! The glass is clearing!”

  “There, that’s better.” Seating himself

  The walls of the cubicle paled from

  on one corner of the desk, Tom Porter

  black to gray, became a swirl of pearly mist,

  continued, “Last night, between midnight and

  then translucent, and finally transparent. Dr.

  seven a.m., I spent two weeks in an ‘entropy’

  Hatch, tired and drawn advanced from the

  cabinet in P. Lanford Hatch’s laboratories,

  switch-panel, and unlocked and opened the

  tutoring with McGuire.”

  glass door.

  The fleshy eyes of Mr. Porter

  “Well,” he announced, “it’s seven a.m.

  narrowed, and he jerked bolt upright in his

  Just time enough for you to eat breakfast and

  chair. Then settled back again and shook his

  to get comfortably up to Morningside Heights

  head judiciously.

  for your examination. Fifteen hundred dollars

  “No, you’re not drunk.” He chewed his

  more please.”

  moustache for a moment in silence. Then, “So

  But Porter shook his black-maned that’s what that loony Dr. Hatch was after, head.