Project Mastodon | Page 7

remorseless engine of blind destruction.
He flung himself to one side and the giant brushed past him. Out of the tail of his eye, he saw the thrown saber-tooth crash to Earth within the circle of the watchfires.
He brought his rifle up again and caught the area behind Buster's ear within his sights. He pressed the trigger. The mastodon staggered, then regained his stride and went rushing on. He hit one of the watchfires dead center and went through it, scattering coals and burning brands.
Then there was a thud and the screeching clang of metal.
"Oh, no!" shouted Hudson.
Rushing forward, they stopped inside the circle of the fires.
The helicopter lay tilted at a crazy angle. One of its rotor blades was crumpled. Half across it, as if he might have fallen as he tried to bull his mad way over it, lay the mastodon.
Something crawled across the ground toward them, its spitting, snarling mouth gaping in the firelight, its back broken, hind legs trailing.
Calmly, without a word, Adams put a bullet into the head of the saber-tooth.

V
General Leslie Bowers rose from his chair and paced up and down the room. He stopped to bang the conference table with a knotted fist.
"You can't do it," he bawled at them. "You can't kill the project. I know there's something to it. We can't give it up!"
"But it's been ten years, General," said the secretary of the army. "If they were coming back, they'd be here by now."
The general stopped his pacing, stiffened. Who did that little civilian squirt think he was, talking to the military in that tone of voice!
"We know how you feel about it, General," said the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. "I think we all recognize how deeply you're involved. You've blamed yourself all these years and there is no need of it. After all, there may be nothing to it."
"Sir," said the general, "I know there's something to it. I thought so at the time, even when no one else did. And what we've turned up since serves to bear me out. Let's take a look at these three men of ours. We knew almost nothing of them at the time, but we know them now. I've traced out their lives from the time that they were born until they disappeared--and I might add that, on the chance it might be all a hoax, we've searched for them for years and we've found no trace at all.
"I've talked with those who knew them and I've studied their scholastic and military records. I've arrived at the conclusion that if any three men could do it, they were the ones who could. Adams was the brains and the other two were the ones who carried out the things that he dreamed up. Cooper was a bulldog sort of man who could keep them going and it would be Hudson who would figure out the angles.
"And they knew the angles, gentlemen. They had it all doped out.
"What Hudson tried here in Washington is substantial proof of that. But even back in school, they were thinking of those angles. I talked some years ago to a lawyer in New York, name of Pritchard. He told me that even back in university, they talked of the economic and political problems that they might face if they ever cracked what they were working at.
"Wesley Adams was one of our brightest young scientific men. His record at the university and his war work bears that out. After the war, there were at least a dozen jobs he could have had. But he wasn't interested. And I'll tell you why he wasn't. He had something bigger--something he wanted to work on. So he and these two others went off by themselves--"
"You think he was working on a temporal--" the army secretary cut in.
"He was working on a time machine," roared the general. "I don't know about this 'temporal' business. Just plain 'time machine' is good enough for me."
"Let's calm down, General," said the JCS chairman, "After all, there's no need to shout."
The general nodded. "I'm sorry, sir. I get all worked up about this. I've spent the last ten years with it. As you say, I'm trying to make up for what I failed to do ten years ago. I should have talked to Hudson. I was busy, sure, but not that busy. It's an official state of mind that we're too busy to see anyone and I plead guilty on that score. And now that you're talking about closing the project--"
"It's costing us money," said the army secretary.
"And we have no direct evidence," pointed out the JCS chairman.
"I don't know what you want," snapped the general. "If there was any man alive who could crack time, that man was Wesley Adams. We found where he