A TRAVELER IN TIME

by August Derleth

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Orbit volume 1number 2, 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that theU.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

"Tell me what time is," said Harrigan one late summer afternoon in aMadison Street bar. "I'd like to know."

"A dimension," I answered. "Everybody knows that."

"All right, granted. I know space is a dimension and you can moveforward or back in space. And, of course, you keep on aging all thetime."

"Elementary," I said.

"But what happens if you can move backward or forward in time? Do youage or get younger, or do you keep the status quo?"

"I'm not an authority on time, Tex. Do you know anyone who traveled intime?"

Harrigan shrugged aside my question. "That was the thing I couldn't getout of Vanderkamp, either. He presumed to know everything else."

"Vanderkamp?"

"He was another of those strange people a reporter always runs into.Lived in New York—downtown, near the Bowery. Man of about forty, I'dsay, but a little on the old-fashioned side. Dutch background, andhipped on the subject of New Amsterdam, which, in case you don't know,was the original name of New York City."

"Don't mind my interrupting," I cut in. "But I'm not quite straight onwhat Vanderkamp has to do with time as dimension."

"Oh, he was touched on the subject. He claimed to travel in it. The factis, he invented a time-traveling machine."

"You certainly meet the whacks, Tex!"

"Don't I!" He grinned appreciatively and leaned reminiscently over thebar. "But Vanderkamp had the wildest dreams of the lot. And in the endhe managed the neatest conjuring trick of them all. I was on theBrooklyn Enterprise at that time; I spent about a year there. Specialfeatures, though I was on a reporter's salary. Vanderkamp was somethingof a local celebrity in a minor way; he wrote articles on the earlyDutch in New York, the nomenclature of the Dutch, the history of Dutchplace-names, and the like. He was handy with a pen, and even handierwith tools. He was an amateur electrician, carpenter, house-painter, andclaimed to be an expert in genealogy."

"And he built a time-traveling machine?"

"So he said. He gave me a rather hard time of it. He was a glib talkerand half the time I didn't know whether I was coming or going. He keptme on my toes by taking for granted that I accepted his basic premises.I got next to him on a tip. He could be close-mouthed as a clam, but hissister let things slip from time to time, and on this occasion shepassed the word to one of her friends in a grocery store that herbrother had invented a machine that took him off on trips into the past.It seemed like routine whack stuff, but Blake, who decided what wentinto the Enterprise and what didn't, sent me over to Manhattan to getsomething for the paper, on the theory that since Vanderkamp waswell-known in Brooklyn, it was good neighborhood copy.

"Vanderkamp was a sharp-eyed little fellow, about five feet or so inheight, and I hit him at a good time. His sister said he had just comeback from a trip—she left me to draw my own conclusions about what kindof trip—and I found him in a mild fit of temper. He was too upset, infact, to be truculent, which was more like his nature.

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