The Flight
by Jim Foreman


CHAPTER EIGHT

                 There was a knock on the door and Melvin got up and opened it. The waitress who I had seen earlier at the cafe brought in a tray with two plates of food and two cups of coffee on it. "I figured that since you had salmon cakes for lunch, you might like something different tonight, so I brought you some nice pork chops," she said as she went to the table and set the tray down beside my belongings.

                 "Thanks, it looks good," I replied.

                 She turned to look at me. "I thought that there was something odd about you when you came in with that ditty-bag on your back. At first, I figured that you were just a bum off the train who wanted a free meal, but when you paid for it and gave me a big tip, I knew that something about you was suspicious. Nobody ever leaves a half dollar tip for a plate lunch, at least not around here. After you left, I took a good look at the quarters and saw that they were slugs, so I showed them to the boss. He is the one who called the sheriff and had you arrested. Sorry if I caused you a peck of trouble, but you not only stiffed me on the tip, the boss made me pay for your meal too."

                 "I'm sorry miss, but I never intended to do you any harm. The truth is that those quarters are as good as gold, but there has been a mistake all around about them."

                 Melvin broke in, "You'll have to go now Maggie, 'cause the sheriff said that this guy came in on a flying saucer and no one can talk to him until the FBI gets here tomorrow."

                 Melvin closed and locked the door as she left. He turned to me and said, "If I let you out to eat, will you promise not to try to escape or anything?"

                 "I promise and can assure you that I won't do anything which might cause me even more trouble than I already have. I'm innocent and this whole thing will be straightened out once the FBI gets here. I know enough about the law to know that if I try to escape while I'm in your custody, it would become a crime."

                 Melvin unlocked the cell door and we sat down to eat our dinners. "Would you let me look at your watch?" he asked.

                 I took it off and handed it to him. He held it to his ear for a moment and said, "It isn't running."

                 "Yes it is, it just doesn't make any sound, at least no sound that a human can hear. Look at the dial, see it changing back and forth between the time and date."

                 "Show me how it works," he said.

                 "This watch will do lots of things. First of all, it will tell you the time and date anywhere in the world. Take for instance, if you want to know what time it is in New York, you press the time zone button, then key in NY. Watch it change." It changed instantly from 8:23 PM to 9:23 PM. Now watch what happens when I change it to Tokyo, not only the time changes, but also the date since Tokyo is a day ahead of us.

                 "That's amazing, how does it know what time it is in all those places?"

                 "Telling time is simple," I replied. "Let me show you a few other things that it will do. Suppose that you want to multiply a number like 257864 times 71. Just put them in and press the equals button and you have the answer, 18308344."

                 "How much does a watch like that cost?" he asked.

                 "The government furnishes them to us, so they probably cost a lot more than most people could afford. However, considering that it will run for three or four thousand years, I suppose that the cost doesn't really matter."

                 "What is it like living in 1986?" he asked.

                 "Pretty much the same as it is now. We live in the same kinds of houses as you do, eat basically the same foods and work for a living. After all, it is only forty years later. Think how little things have changed between 1906 and now. We earn a lot more money but it also costs a lot more to live."

                 "But you have atomic watches like that and are able to travel through time."

                 "True, we have made a number of advances in technology, but there has been very little change in the human body or mind. It hasn't changed much in the past millions years, so it couldn't have changed very much in another forty," I told him. "We still fall in love, get married and have kids. We get old, get sick and die just like you do now."

                 "I joined the Navy after my brothers were killed but since I was the only son left in the family, they kept me in the states until the war was over. I had served just a little over a year before the war ended and they discharged me. Has there been another war or anything like that?" he asked.

                 "I'm afraid that is one field in which we haven't made much progress. There will be in another war in 1950 in a place called Korea but you probably won't have to go back in since you served more than a year during World War Two. The Korean war will last for about three years and will end with neither side winning."

                 "You know all sorts of things that will happen in the future. You must know who will win things like the World Series and the Kentucky Derby. If you told me, I could bet on them and make a lot of money."

                 "I don't remember who won those things, but I can give you a few tips that will make you a rich man. Do you have any money to invest?"

                 "I have twenty thousand dollars drawing three percent interest at the bank. It's the money I got from GI Insurance when my brothers were killed in the war, but I've been saving that to buy me a good farm with," Melvin replied.

                 "I hate to tell you this, but buying a farm in this area wouldn't be the way to make money. You would probably be able to make a comfortable living off it for a number of years, but you stand a good chance of losing it just about the time when you are old enough to think about retiring."

                 "If I owned a farm outright, how would I be likely to lose it?" asked Melvin.

                 "As time goes along, the agricultural market will become so unstable that you will have to borrow money just to keep going. Each year you will have to borrow more than you will be able to pay back until you reach a point where you will owe more than the farm is worth and then the bankers will take it over. It's a sad fact that bankers are the most insistent about getting their money just when you are the least able to repay it. Over half of the farmers in this area will go broke and lose their farms during the next forty years."

                 "Then what should I do?" he asked.

                 "If you really want to make some money, take that twenty thousand dollars and buy every share of stock that you can in three companies. They are called Polaroid, IBM and XEROX. Don't cash in any of the stock no matter how much you think that you need the money. When you get dividend checks, use that money to buy more shares of stock. By the time that you are forty years old, you will be a millionaire. In the meantime, use your GI Bill to get yourself a college education."

                 "If I went to college, I'd have to quit this job," he replied.

                 "Jobs like you have now will be a dime a dozen. The job that you will be doing ten years from now probably doesn't even exist today."

                 "I've never heard of any companies by those names, what are they?"

                 "I don't think that any of them exist yet. Polaroid will make cameras which will produce a finished print in only one minute after you take the picture."

 

                 "You say they will give you a picture in a minute, without having to take the film to the drug store."

                 "That's right. You snap the picture, wait a minute and pull out a finished photograph. After they have been in business a few years, they will start making a camera which will produce a color photograph in just one minute."

                 "That sounds amazing. No wonder that their stock will go up and up," he replied. "But what about those other two companies that you told me about. What will they make?"

                 "IBM will build a number of different kinds of business machines, but computers will be the thing which will make the most money for them and XEROX will make copying machines."

                 "Do you mean photostat machines, like the one which they have in the County Clerk's office?" he asked.               

                 "XEROX Copiers will do basically the same thing that photostat machines do now, except that it will produce an exact copy in a few seconds. The cost of a XEROX copy will be about two cents as compared to a couple dollars for a photostat."

                 "If these companies don't exist now, then how am I going to buy stock in them?"

                 "Keep in touch with some stock broker and the day that stock in these companies comes on the market, buy all that you have money for. I'd suggest that you put about a third of your money in each company, then set back and watch the value grow."

                 "That is awfully hard to believe," Melvin said with a shake of his head. "I'd hate to sink all of my money into stocks like that and then lose it all like my dad did in 1929. At one time, he had a lot of money but when he died in 1937 he was so broke that the county had to bury him."

                 "Melvin, stocks will go up and down over the next few years, but I can assure you that there will not be another market crash like the one in 1929. Stock in those three companies will do nothing but go up in value."                       

                 Melvin wrote down the names of the companies and thought about what I had said for a long time before he asked, "Those people that will come after you. Will they have guns or do they use death rays and things like that?"

                 I couldn't tell if I had gotten to the sheriff or not, but evidently Melvin had taken it all in and was concerned about what was going to happen when they came to rescue me. "They don't use death rays any more, they use stun rays. When they zap you with a stun ray, you remain conscious but you can't move. It's extremely painful and lasts for about eight hours, but it doesn't kill a person."

                 "Can they knock down doors and things like that with those rays?"

                 "No, stun rays will go right through doors or walls and are used only against people. When the team comes, they will scan the room to find out who is in it and where they are, then there will be a flash of light and everyone except me will be instantly stunned. After that, they will use a disintegrator ray to take out locks, doors or anything else which is in their way. Normally, they never use a disintegrator ray against a person because the only thing left would be a cloud of very bad smelling smoke."

                 "Sounds like we won't have much of a chance," he said.

                 I could see that I had him going and that he was scared. Now if I could only push him into letting me go. "I guarantee that you will have absolutely no chance at all. The team is very professional and will do whatever is necessary to accomplish their mission. They don't really want to hurt or kill anyone, but they are ready if it comes to that. I'd hate to see you go through the pain of being stunned but it will happen before you even know that the team is here."

                 "When do you think that they will come?" Melvin asked.

                 "They will be here tonight because they already know where I am and that I'm in trouble. We won't know that they are around until it's too late to do anything about them. You will just be sitting there and suddenly you will have been stunned."

                 ~How do they know exactly where you are?" he asked.

                 "Simple. You remember when I had the communicator for a few seconds. I switched to emergency location frequency and pressed the button. I didn't have to say anything because the sensors in the ship instantly locked in on it. I know the sheriff is rather old fashioned and dedicated to his job, but you are young and can look at things in an intelligent manner. You realize the futility of trying to hold me after the team comes, so why don't you let me gather my things and walk out that door. You can tell the sheriff that the team came and you were stunned and couldn't do anything to stop them."

                 "I know that I can't stop them when they get here, but I took an oath when I became a deputy and it is my sworn duty to hold you as long as I can. I just can't let you walk out," he said.

                 "I realize that you are a dedicated law officer, but there comes a time when you have to make decisions on your own. I like you and don't want to see you hurt, but I do have to return to 1986 where I belong. How would you like to get accidentally stuck back in 1906 or some time like that?"

                 "I can see your point, but I just don't know."

                 "To prove that I like you and care what happens to you, I'll give you that watch if you will simply let me walk away. I'm going to go anyway, so you can make it easy on yourself and have an atomic watch thirty years before anyone else."

                 "I'll tell you what," he said suddenly. "I'll lock the cell door but leave you out here in the office. Then I'll leave to take those dishes back to the cafe. If you aren't here when I get back, the sheriff will think that the team came and took you away while I was gone."

                 "OK, just give me all of the time that you can because I'm on foot and not sure just when the shuttle will come."

                 Melvin locked the cell door and waited while I stuffed my clothing into the back pack. "OK, you lead the way to be sure the coast is clear and I'll follow. When you head for the cafe, I'll go the other way. You don't know what a favor you are doing and how much I appreciate it."

                 It was dark but no longer raining when we stepped out the door beneath the front steps of the court house. I shook Melvin's hand and whispered, "Melvin, you're a good man, take care of yourself."

                 Behind us came the sound of a shell being jacked into a pump shotgun, then the sheriff's rough voice, "Get your hands in the air and don't either of you bastards move or I'll blow your asses to kingdom come. I knew that Melvin wasn't too smart and figured that you'd try to talk him into something stupid like this."

                 I felt the cold, round end of the shotgun barrel shoved against the back of my neck. "Don't you even breathe," he said as he reached around Melvin with his free hand and jerked his pistol from its holster.

                 "I'm not moving a muscle, sheriff, and please be careful with that shotgun. I'd hate to have my brains scattered all over the place."

                 "You are attempting to escape jail and I'd be justified if I pulled the trigger right now," the sheriff growled. "You're lucky the FBI knows you are here or I'd finish you off right here. Now move real slow back down the stairs. Melvin, open the doors for us."

                 We walked slowly back into the sheriff's office. Melvin took the ring of keys from the top drawer of the desk and opened the cell door. The sheriff was holding Melvin's pistol in one hand and the shotgun in the other. He prodded me into the cell with the barrel of the shotgun, stepped back and said, "Slip your arms out of that knapsack real easy and push it out the door with your foot, then back up against the wall."

                 I did what the sheriff had ordered and he kicked the cell door shut with a loud clang. He dropped Melvin's pistol into the desk drawer, threw the keys in with it and slammed the drawer shut. Then he turned to his deputy, "Melvin, I'm real disappointed in you. If you weren't my sister's kid, you'd be in that cell too. Now give me your badge and go home, I'll decide what to do with you tomorrow."

                 "Don't be too hard on him Sheriff. He was just doing what he felt was best for everyone concerned," I said.

                 "You keep your two cents worth out of this. I ought to work you over with a sap just to teach you a little respect for me and the law. There's never been a prisoner escape from my custody before and you ain't going to tarnish my record by being the first. Several people have tried to break out of my jail before and none of them are around to brag about it today. If you weren't such an important prisoner and wanted by the FBI, you'd be a dead man right now. You better count your lucky stars that you got away with this try, but let me tell you one thing for sure, attempt to escape again and I'll kill you where you stand. You understand that?"

                 "Yes, Sheriff. I understand you perfectly," I replied as I sat down on the cot.

                 The sheriff kicked a chair against the door, plopped into it and laid the shotgun across his lap. It was obvious that he was going to stand guard over me for the rest of the night. I thought about telling him the same story that I had told Melvin, about people with stun rays coming to rescue me, but decided that might provoke him into putting me in irons or something worse. I finally decided that I would probably be better off to wait for the FBI and try to convince them that I was in 1946 as a result of some terrible mistake. At least they wouldn't be as dangerous as this man. I pulled off my shoes and laid down on the cot. The rough mattress stank of cigarettes, vomit and sweat.

                 Even though it was late August, there was a chilly dampness in the basement. "Any chance that I could have a blanket?" I asked the sheriff.

                 "Hell no you can't have a blanket. This ain't no hotel. You're costing me a night's sleep in my own bed, so you don't deserve one," he shot back. There was no chance that I could reason with a man like this, so I gained what comfort that I could from my light jacket. I finally dosed into a fitful sleep.


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