The Incredible Slingshot Bombs

Tommy Sonofagun drew back the sling and let fly with a pellet.

"You go over to the other ridge," the sheriff said to the two deputies. "If he tries to get out that way, stop him. But remember, we want him alive, if we can get him that way."

I only half heard what the sheriff said. My attention was fully occupied by the dogs down in Ten Mile Valley below us. I couldn't see them but I could hear them bugling down there in the cedar thickets. Baying slowly and mournfully, they were searching for the lost trail. A creek ran down the middle of the valley. Probably Tommy Sonofagun had crossed the creek and thrown the bloodhounds off his trail. Tommy might be a moron but he had enough animal cunning to lose a pack of hounds that were after him.

His name wasn't really Tommy Sonofagun. It was Tommy Britten, but the loafers around Brock's Tavern had taught him to say that his name was Tommy Sonofagun. They thought this was funny.

The sheriff and I watched the two deputies tramp down into Ten Mile Valley, but we lost sight of them before they reached the farther ridge. The steel towers of an electric high-line ran along this ridge for a couple of miles, then dipped down and crossed the valley. The transmission line carried current from the big dam about twenty miles to the north. When the war first started, there was some fear that enemy agents might sabotage this high-line and the sheriff had spent most of his time out in the hills guarding it.

The sheriff was a big, raw-boned mountaineer by the name of Tim Hoskins. He wore store clothes like they were overalls, he was long and lank, and if you took one look at him, you had the instant impression he had just enough sense to come in out of the rain, and no more. If you took a second look and noticed the slow cautious way he talked and the slow but damned sure way he moved, and especially if you looked at his eyes, which never faltered from the gaze of any man, you would be likely to decide you were damned glad you lived in a country where they had sheriffs like this.

"What do you make of it, sheriff?" I asked.

He was carrying his left arm in a bloody sling. Before he answered he adjusted the sling so his arm hung a little easier. Then he shook his head. "I don't know, Ben. I just don't know."

I'm Ben Hopper, and for the past four years I've been owner and publisher of the Summit Press. I'm also editor of this paper, advertising manager, circulation manager, business manager, proof reader, and copy boy. The Press is strictly a one man country paper, but it prints the news, which was why I was out here in the hills. There was news out here. Maybe it was mighty big news, too.

I was going to ask some more questions but the clatter of an over-worked motor interrupted me and I turned in time to see a car banging up the gravel road toward us. It was a gray Ford coupe and I needed only one glance to recognize it and to know who was driving it. Ellen Briscoe. Uncle Sam sent her out here to try to teach the people on the hill farms how to keep from starving to death. The Relief Lady, the mountaineers called her. She was coming up the hill road like she didn't know there was any such thing as tire rationing. Steam popped out of the radiator as the car reached us. She was out of it almost before it stopped rolling.

"Hello, Ben," she said to me.

"Ellen, you got no business being here," I protested.

She ignored me. She had business wherever she wanted to be, which was anywhere anybody was in trouble. "Sheriff, what's this all about?" she demanded.

Hoskins scraped a toe against the rocky ground. "I—I don't know for sure, Miss Ellen," he said.

"I heard about it in Summit," she said. "And I came right up here. They told me in Summit that you had organized a posse and gone after Tommy. Sheriff, what has Tommy done?"

Those were the words she used. The tone of her voice said more than the words.

The sheriff wore out a lot of shoe leather before he answered. "Sim Brock swore out a warrant," he said at last. "I don't have any choice about serving it."

"Sim Brock swore out a warrant, did he?" Fire flashed from her eyes. "Don't you know those loafers down at the roadhouse Brock runs are always teasing Tommy?"

"I know, Miss Ellen," the sheriff said uncomfortably.

"Were they teasing him and did he strike at one of them? Is that why you've got this posse after Tommy?"

"No," the sheriff said. "They might have been teasing him before it happened but I don't know that they were. The warrant charged Tommy with blowing up Brock's barn."

"Blowing up his barn!"

"That was the way Brock swore out the warrant."

"And you believed Sim Brock?" Ellen demanded. "Don't you know he's a liar and a no-good scoundrel. Don't you know that nobody can believe anything Brock says?"

"Yes," the sheriff slowly said. "But the barn was blown up. I went to look. I didn't put any faith in what Brock said, but the warrant had been sworn out and I had to act. So I went looking for Tommy—"

"With a gun in your hand, I suppose?" she said sharply.

He looked at her then, just glanced up, but his gaze didn't falter. "You know better than that, Miss Ellen," he said.

She flushed. Her temper had been running away with her and she knew it. "I'm sorry," she said. "What happened?"

"I didn't have much trouble finding Tommy," the sheriff explained. "He was crossing a field when I spotted him. I stopped my car and walked toward him—and he took a shot at me."

Down in this country you may do a little private feuding with your neighbors but there is one thing you don't do. You don't shoot at the sheriff.

"He shot at you!" Ellen gasped. "Where did he get a gun?"

"He didn't have a gun."

Ellen's face showed confusion. "Then how did he shoot at you?" she demanded.

"With that slingshot he always carries," the sheriff said.

Tommy's favorite weapon, in fact his only weapon, was a rubber slingshot. A pocket full of pebbles and a sling was all he needed to be happy.

"Sheriff," Ellen's voice was hot again. "Just because he shot at you with a sling is no reason why you should call out a posse and run him down like a mad dog?"

"No," the sheriff admitted. "Especially since he didn't hit me."

"He didn't hit you! And you—"

"He hit my car," the sheriff said.

Ellen's face blazed with anger. "So what? A few more nicks in that rattle-trap of yours won't make any difference."

"No, Miss Ellen," the sheriff said, his voice dry and tense. "Not any more."

"Not any more! What are you talking about?"

"Not any car any more," the sheriff said. "It blew up."

"Blew up!" the girl gasped.

"Sky high," the sheriff said. "Chunks of the motor landed a quarter of a mile away. Piece of hot metal hit me—" He looked down at the bloody sling holding his arm. "That's where I got this."

I had already seen what was left of his car, which was mostly a hole in the ground. A case of dynamite wouldn't have blown it into smaller pieces.

"I got two reasons for wanting to catch Tommy," the sheriff continued. "First, I got a warrant that says I must arrest him. Second, I want to look at those pebbles he's shooting out of that slingshot."

You can damned well bet he wanted to look at those pebbles! So did I. If a pebble small enough to be shot out of a sling could blow up a car, it was a mighty powerful and mighty important chunk of rock. Think how big an explosion a pebble as big as a baseball would make! Think how many baseballs could be carried in a bomber!

What was Tommy Sonofagun shooting in his sling?

"I just can't believe it," Ellen said, when she had recovered from her surprise. "Tommy didn't cause those explosions. Your car just happened to blow up at that moment. Tommy didn't do it. He couldn't have done it. It's—it's impossible."

The sheriff didn't argue with her and neither did I. We were both watching what was happening down in Ten Mile Valley. Those bloodhounds, after being baffled for a long time, had suddenly hit a hot trail.

Then Tommy appeared. He dashed across a glade in the cedar thickets, running half bent over like some ungainly animal. He was so far away he was just a little black dot but I saw him look back over his shoulder at the dogs.

They were right behind him. I heard them break into an excited bugling as they saw their prey and started running by sight instead of by scent.

Tommy frantically ran into the cedars.

The dogs raced across the glade after him. There were four of them, running in a bunch, and giving tongue as they ran.

They vanished in a puff of white light.

It happened almost too fast for the mind to grasp it. One second four bloodhounds were running across the glade, the next second there was an intense puff of light, the third second the whole glade seemed to take wings and fly up into the air, the fourth second—

Boom!

The sound of the explosion reached us. A ball of smoke leaped upward and the cedar trees bent over in a blast of air. In the silence that followed came the faint clatter of stones falling back to the ground. There wasn't another bark from those dogs. There weren't any dogs left to do any barking.

The sheriff's face turned a pasty gray. I believe from the bottom of my heart that he is scared of nothing, that he doesn't know the meaning of fear, but when that explosion came his face turned gray. He glanced once at Ellen as if he was asking her if this confirmed the wisdom of his decision to send a posse after Tommy Sonofagun. So far as I was concerned, it did. Then he started walking away.

"Where are we going?" I called after him.

"Down there," he said, nodding toward the glade where the explosion had taken place. "I reckon maybe I better get Tommy, if I can."

Ellen and I stayed on top of the ridge and watched. Ellen hadn't spoken a word since the explosion but from the way she was holding on to my arm, I knew how scared she was. I could feel her tremble.

The sheriff vanished among the cedars down below but I knew he was down there somewhere stalking Tommy Sonofagun. I also knew that other deputies were moving up from below while still another group had probably cut across the valley up above. A grim trap was closing.

"What can it possibly mean?" Ellen whispered.

"It means you had better go home," I answered.

She wouldn't go. She was the Relief Lady and Tommy was somebody who might need help.

It was already late in the afternoon. We stayed there on top of the ridge while darkness fell and waited for—anything. I shivered every time I thought of the explosion that had killed those four dogs. A hand grenade would not have caused so much destruction. There wasn't any chance of coincidence either. Those dogs had been after Tommy and he had destroyed them.

"Ben," said Ellen suddenly. "We've got to find Tommy."

"Huh?" Even the idea startled me.

"We've got to find him before the posse does. Those men are scared and they won't take any chances with him. Even the sheriff is scared. If they find Tommy and he tries to run—and that's what he will try to do—they'll shoot him. Ben, we've got to find him first, to save his life."

It took some time for this to sink in. And when it did sink in, I didn't like it. I tried to laugh it off. "A fine chance we have of finding him when this posse can't."

"I can find him. I know where he is."

"What?"

"He has a cave about a mile from here. Every time he gets in trouble he runs there and hides. That's where he was going when those dogs almost caught him, to his cave. If we go there, we're almost certain to find him."

"And get ourselves blown into mince-meat like those dogs!" I protested.

"He won't—do anything to me. He knows me. I'm his friend."

"Nuts, baby. We're not going."

"All right," she said defiantly. "I'll go alone." She started walking away.

"All right," I groaned. "I'll go with you. But you're taking an unfair advantage of me, and I know it."

The cave was in a ravine that led off from Ten Mile Valley. By the time we reached the place the moon was up but there wasn't much light down in the bottom of the ravine. Clumps of cedars grew everywhere, making dark blotches behind which anything might be lurking. A darker blotch was the mouth of the cave.

"T—Tommy," Ellen called.

There was no answer. I stood there in the darkness and wished to hell I was back in my office setting this story in type. Ellen was clinging to me so hard she was about to pull my arm off.

A shadow seemed to move in the mouth of the cave.

"Tommy," Ellen said quickly. "Don't be afraid. We've brought you some candy, Tommy. Don't you want some candy?"

Silence. A wind went whispering through the cedars, setting my teeth to chattering.

"We have some candy, Tommy?"

There was a tiny creak, as of somebody shifting his weight. It came from the cave. I did not in the least doubt but that Tommy Sonofagun was standing there looking out at us, slingshot in hand, trying to make up his poor mind if we were after him. At this moment my memory chose to remind me of what had happened to those bloodhounds. They had been after him too. Anything that was after him he would shoot at.

Cold sweat was dripping from under my arms and running down my body.

"Why don't you come down and get the candy we brought you?" Ellen asked.

"Scared," a dull, choked voice said from the mouth of the cave.

Tommy was there all right. He was watching us. He wanted candy. But he was scared.

He wasn't a tenth as scared as I was! Dillinger with a pistol would not have been near as dangerous as this half man who lurked in the cave mouth. You could talk to Dillinger. He wouldn't shoot without a reason. You could talk to Tommy but he wouldn't understand.

"You needn't be scared," Ellen said. "We won't hurt you. Don't you remember all the candy I've brought you? Don't you remember that new pair of overalls I brought you last month? Weren't they fine overalls, Tommy?"

"Uh-huh. Nice. Wearin' 'em now." He didn't sound quite so hostile.

"Come and get the candy," Ellen said, opening her purse.

It took her five minutes to get him down out of that cave. Those were five minutes of hell for me. Ellen's voice showed no trace of concern, no fear, no worry. Listening to her, you would have thought she hadn't a care in the world. Only the way she was holding on to my arm showed me how scared she was.

"Here," she said, handing him a candy bar.

He ate it, paper cover, tin foil, and all. He didn't look at me. He saw me all right but he didn't trust me so he didn't glance in my direction.

"How did you make the big noises?" Ellen quietly asked.

"Huh? Big noises?"

He sounded scared again. I took a firm grip on a lungful of air and prepared to hold on to it.

"The big booms," Ellen said. "You know, like firecrackers, only lots louder. They sure were fine noises."

"You like 'em, huh? Want hear more big noises, huh? Fourth of July noises, huh?"

My eyes had become accustomed to the darkness and I saw him lift his arms and stretch his slingshot rubbers. "Want more noises, huh?" he asked proudly.

"Not now, Tommy," Ellen said quickly, a sudden catch in her voice. "Let me see one of the firecrackers that make the big noises."

"Huh?" He lowered his arms but he held the sling ready. His grunt was full of suspicion.

"I'll give you another candy bar for one of your firecrackers," Ellen said quickly. She opened her purse and I heard the rattle of waxed paper. "I'll trade you a candy bar for a firecracker. You want another candy bar, don't you, Tommy? Remember how good that last candy bar was?"

He remembered all right. His eyes never left the bar of chocolate she was holding toward him.

I went right on holding my breath.

"Okay," he said suddenly. "Trade." He took something out of the pocket of his sling, dropped it in Ellen's hand, grabbed the candy bar, and started eating.

"Flashlight," Ellen whispered to me. To Tommy she said, "We're going to turn on a flashlight so we can look at the firecracker. It's a good candy bar, isn't it, Tommy?"

My hands were shaking so badly I could barely hold the light. Ellen was holding the firecracker in the palm of her hand. I took one look at it, and I didn't believe my eyes.

It was about the size of a big pea. It wasn't as big as a grape. It looked like a small round pebble.

This was the bomb that had caused those terrific explosions!

"Is this what made the big noises?" Ellen asked.

"Sure," Tommy said, stopping eating long enough to talk. "Make big boom. Want more? Got plenty." He reached into a pocket of his overalls and brought out a handful. "Good shootin' rocks," he said.

I just didn't believe it. There are mental limits beyond which the mind refuses to function. It was impossible to think that such a tiny pellet could cause so much destruction.

I took Tommy's sling, put the pellet in the pocket, stretched the rubbers as far as they would go, and released them. I had to see with my own eyes, I had to know, I had to be sure.

I damned well found out! Although the explosion took place at least seventy-five yards away, it blew me off my feet. A great bulge of flame leaped into the sky and the heavens roared with the thunder of the sound.

Tommy jumped up and down in excitement. "Big noise! Goody, goody! Want more booms?"

"N—nnn—no," I stuttered, picking myself up from the ground.

"Ben, you idiot!" Ellen snapped. "The sheriff will hear that. No, Tommy, no more booms right now. Where did you get those firecrackers, Tommy? Where did you get them?"

Firecrackers, hell! Those things were the mightiest explosive bombs for their weight ever used on earth! In violence they backed TNT right off the map. Nitroglycerin was not a tenth as powerful. If a pellet that weighed a fraction of an ounce could cause such an explosion, how big an explosion would a hundred-pound bomb make?

One bomber could sneak in out of the clouds and smash a city!

One bomb would do the job!

Where had Tommy Sonofagun gotten those round pebbles that exploded with such violence?

"Candy?" he said questioningly. "More candy?"

"I'll give you a barrel of candy if you will show us where you got these things!" I said. I was scared sick. I was remembering Pearl Harbor, the Prince of Wales, and the Repulse. Had bombs such as these sent those two gallant ships to the bottom?

If this had happened, how had similar bombs gotten here to the heart of America? Where were these round pebbles coming from? Obviously Tommy had found them somewhere, but where? Who had made them?

"A barrel of candy!" Tommy gasped. "G—gosh!"

Grabbing his slingshot from the ground where I had dropped it, he started off, motioning us to follow him. Stumbling, following him as best we could, he led us straight to one of the transmission line towers!

"It was attempted sabotage!" I gasped. "Somebody tried to blow up the high-line but their bombs didn't explode. Tommy found their explosives!"

This was a reasonable guess. If one of these big steel towers went down, a lot of defense industries that were dependent upon the juice flowing through the cables overhead, would have to shut down.

"Got 'em right here," Tommy said.

He shambled toward the legs of the tower, which formed an arch overhead. He was holding one of Ellen's hands and I was holding the other. We were strung out in a line. I could hear current singing in the transmission line as he went under the arch formed by the legs of the tower. It was a high, thin, wailing sound, and it meant that juice was leaking somewhere.

He stepped through the arch, and vanished.

Ellen, following a step behind him, vanished.

I took another step, which brought me under the arch, and the tower vanished!

One second it was there over my head, a steel lattice climbing skyward. The next second, no tower.

No sky, no stars, no moon. No hillside, no high-line, no night.

My tongue took a running jump and dived down into my throat to hide.

"Wh—wh—wh—what the hell—" I heard my own voice say.

I was in what looked like a big building. On one side was a lot of hooded machinery that was clicking softly to itself. I had the fleeting impression that this machinery was largely automatic in operation, that raw materials were being fed in from some source overhead and finished articles were rolling out into a large hopper. A soft blue light came from the walls of the building, which seemed to be windowless.

Ellen was standing right in front of me. The only movement about her was a flutter of her eye-lids. She seemed to be frozen stiff.

I was pretty well frozen myself. What the devil had happened to us? where were we?

Mad thoughts were bouncing up and down inside my brain. I had the impression I had gone insane.

Tommy wasn't scared. He didn't seem to mind what had happened. Something that would scare a man with sense to the verge of hysterics had no effect on him. He understood almost nothing about the world in which he lived and consequently anything was possible to him. There are times when being a moron has its advantages. This was one of those times. This building did not astonish Tommy, nor was he perturbed about the miraculous way in which we had entered it.

He ran over to the hopper in front of the big machine, thrust both hands into it, and came running back to us, his hands held out in front of him.

"Firecrackers!" he said exultantly.

He had a double handful of the round explosive pellets. The machine was manufacturing them. They were being made right here in this windowless building, in Ten Mile Valley.

This was where Tommy had got those incredible bombs. Somehow he had stumbled into this hidden place.

He looked expectantly up at me.

"Gimme bar'l of candy?" he said hopefully.

My tongue was still hiding down in my throat as if it was determined to have no part in the lies it knew I was going to tell. "S—sure," I stuttered. "I'll get the candy for you as soon as we get back to town. But Tommy, where are we?"

That was the question! Where were we?

"Huh?" said Tommy. Then he added, in explanation, "We're here!"

Hell, I knew that! What I wanted to know was where here was. I tried another tack. "Where did this building, all these machines, where did they come from?"

He shrugged. The question was over his head. "Find 'em here," he said. He looked hopefully at me. "Candy for Tommy Sonofagun?"

His little mind ran on one track. The building was here, the machines were here, facts to be accepted without question, just like the hills and the rain. He had found them here. That was all he knew about them.

"Let's get out of this place," I said to Ellen. There was a dazed, glazed expression in her eyes. Her mind had refused to accept the evidence of her eyes and she had stopped thinking.

In my mind was pure panic. Never in my life had I wanted to run so badly. The only thing that interested me was to get out of this place, fast! I was starting to do just that when a voice stopped me.

"Here's that thief again," the voice said. At least that was what I thought it said. The words were English but they weren't like the English I know. The accent was all wrong and they were run together in a sing-songy effect. I turned to see who had spoken.

Two men were standing in a door at the far end of the building. Apparently they had just entered. Dressed in glittering clothes, stern faced, they didn't look like any people I wanted to meet. I grabbed Ellen and started to run.

"Alt!" the command came.

I wasn't doing any halting. I was out of my mind from sheer fright. My sole interest lay in getting out of that place. I was so confused I didn't realize I didn't know how to get out and I did the only thing possible, which was to turn and run.

As it worked out, this was exactly the right thing to do. A split second after I started to run, the building vanished.

I was back at the high-line tower, not under it but beside it, with the night and the stars and the moon around me, and the high-pitched whine of leaking current in my ears. I was back where I had started from and no building full of automatic machinery was in sight.

"W—what's the matter?" Tommy gibbered beside me. He sensed how scared I was and this scared him.

Ellen had quietly fainted. I threw her over my shoulder.

"Run!" I shouted at Tommy.

With him at my heels, I started making tracks away from there.

"Alt!" came a high-pitched command from behind me.

A streak of light drove through the night, passed within a foot of my head. It seemed to set the darkness on fire. The two men had taken a shot at us.

This was all Tommy needed to convince him that something was really after him. He was already scared and when that streak of light went past us, he went crazy. Crouching and turning, he stretched the rubbers of that slingshot.

"Don't shoot!" I screamed at him.

It was too late. The rubbers blurred as he released the sling.

Looking back I caught a glimpse of the two men. It was the same two all right. They were standing beside the tower. Looking completely bewildered, they were making no effort to stop us.

Then the pellet hit them.

Blooie!

The blast hurled me forward but I managed to keep my feet and keep running. Fire spouted skyward, there was a crack of breaking steel.

The tower was falling. The explosion had knocked the legs out from under it and it was falling.

Somewhere over my head was a thrumming snap. I knew what it meant. The copper high-line cables, strained by the falling tower, were about to break. There were sixty-six thousand volts of electricity in those twanging cables.

With Ellen in my arms I dived into a ravine. As I hit and rolled the night was cataclysmic with bursting flame. Arcs like bright flashes of lightning leaped against the sky as the cables parted. The live ends hit the ground and writhed like giant snakes spewing fifteen-feet-long streams of molten fire. There was juice in those cables, plenty of juice, and it was running wild.

Somewhere, somebody screamed. Tommy! He was screaming. As if his scream was a signal, the whole earth seemed to gather itself together and hunch upward in one violent explosive blast. It knocked me cold. As I blacked out, I saw a great spout of flame leaping toward the stars and I remember thinking that the whole vault of heaven was on fire. Then something seemed to hit me on the head and I quit thinking.

When I regained consciousness I was in a hospital and a nurse was bending over me. As soon as I opened my eyes, she went dashing out of the room, to return with a doctor. He poked and pried at me and finally said that he thought I would live. From the way I felt, this was more than I expected.

The doctor had no more than left until there was a violent argument at the door. The nurse was telling someone that I couldn't have company and somebody else was saying I was going to have company, or else. Then Ellen was bending over me. "Ben, are you badly hurt?"

I told her what the doctor had said and the relief that flooded her face almost made me feel romantic. She had a big patch of adhesive tape on her face and a lot of scratches and bruises but she was able to walk.

"Ben, what happened?" she asked. "Those two men, that building, those machines—"

"And those atomic bombs!" I said.

"What? Atomic bombs? I don't understand. What were those men doing, Ben?"

"Sabotage," I said firmly.

"But it couldn't have been sabotage," she protested. "If they had wanted to blow up the high-line, they could have done it without any trouble. And that building and the high-line tower existed in the same place. Ben, it couldn't have been attempted sabotage. There must be some other explanation. I've thought and I've thought and I don't see the answer."

"Just the same, it was sabotage," I said. "That's the way I am going to write the story."

"You will be lying, Ben," said a voice from the doorway. I looked up. It was the sheriff. He came walking into the room. His arm was still in a sling and his face looked grayer than ever.

"How did you get here?" I stuttered.

"I found you and brought you in," he said. "The two of you." He pulled up a chair and sat down in a manner that indicated he planned to stay a while. "Now tell me the truth, you two," he said. "Tell me just exactly what happened, the way it happened."

"You will call us liars," I protested.

"That may be," he admitted. "But I want to hear it just the same."

So we told him. He sat there and listened without a sign of expression on his face. For all the emotion he showed, he might have been made out of wood.

"What do you make of it, Ben," he said at last, when we had finished.

"Sabotage," I said.

"What do you really think, Ben?" he came back.

"Well," I said slowly. "There was a slight leakage of current down that particular tower. I think this leakage and the particular way in which it took place accidentally combined to make us the first time travelers in human history!"

Ellen gasped at that but the sheriff didn't blink an eye.

"Go on," he said.

"I think that building exists in the future," I said. "I think it will exist some day and that it exists now and if we could cross time we could see it. Those men spoke a strange kind of English. That points to the future. They were making atomic bombs. We don't know how to make atomic bombs now but we will know how to do it, in the future. I think that building we entered was an arsenal of the future that will be built in Ten Mile Valley in some coming century. You asked me what I think and I've told you," I defiantly finished. "If you don't like it, you can think up your own explanation."

He didn't budge. "Tommy?" he said, his voice a question.

"Tommy accidentally blundered through the arch made by the legs of the tower. He found a machine making tiny atomic bombs. He didn't know they were bombs. He thought they were fine pebbles to shoot in his slingshot. And that's what he used them for. They exploded on contact. Maybe they were designed to be dropped from an airplane, hundreds at a time. Maybe they were to be used in interplanetary war. I don't know why they were being made. All I know is that an idiot found them, and thought they would be fine things to shoot in a sling. Incidentally, what happened to Tommy?"

I had forgotten all about Tommy Sonofagun.

"We found pieces of him," the sheriff sighed. "He had a pocketful of those pebbles when the falling cables hit him. They all exploded at once."

Poor Tommy Sonofagun. He would never get his barrel of candy.

Decisively the sheriff got to his feet. He stopped at the door and looked back. "You are right, Ben," he said. "It was attempted sabotage."

And that's the way it went down in the official records, that's the way I wrote the story for my paper. The public would be willing to believe in sabotage. But would they be willing to believe in time travel?

Not this century!