The Shadow Out of Time | Page 9

all because it
alone had conquered the secret of time.
It had learned all things that ever were known or ever would be known
on the earth, through the power of its keener minds to project
themselves into the past and future, even through gulfs of millions of
years, and study the lore of every age. From the accomplishments of
this race arose all legends of prophets, including those in human
mythology.
In its vast libraries were volumes of texts and pictures holding the
whole of earth's annals-histories and descriptions of every species that
had ever been or that ever would be, with full records of their arts, their
achievements, their languages, and their psychologies.
With this aeon-embracing knowledge, the Great Race chose from every

era and life-form such thoughts, arts, and processes as might suit its
own nature and situation. Knowledge of the past, secured through a
kind of mind-casting outside the recognized senses, was harder to glean
than knowledge of the future.
In the latter case the course was easier and more material. With suitable
mechanical aid a mind would project itself forward in time, feeling its
dim, extra-sensory way till it approached the desired period. Then, after
preliminary trials, it would seize on the best discoverable representative
of the highest of that period's life-forms. It would enter the organism's
brain and set up therein its own vibrations, while the displaced mind
would strike back to the period of the displacer, remaining in the latter's
body till a reverse process was set up.
The projected mind, in the body of the organism of the future, would
then pose as a member of the race whose outward form it wore,
learning as quickly as possible all that could be learned of the chosen
age and its massed information and techniques.
Meanwhile the displaced mind, thrown back to the displacer's age and
body, would be carefully guarded. It would be kept from harming the
body it occupied, and would be drained of all its knowledge by trained
questioners. Often it could be questioned in its own language, when
previous quests into the future had brought back records of that
language.
If the mind came from a body whose language the Great Race could not
physically reproduce, clever machines would be made, on which the
alien speech could be played as on a musical instrument.
The Great Race's members were immense rugose cones ten feet high,
and with head and other organs attached to foot-thick, distensible limbs
spreading from the apexes. They spoke by the clicking or scraping of
huge paws or claws attached to the end of two of their four limbs, and
walked by the expansion and contraction of a viscous layer attached to
their vast, ten-foot bases.
When the captive mind's amazement and resentment had worn off, and

when--assuming that it came from a body vastly different from the
Great Race's--it had lost its horror at its unfamiliar temporary form, it
was permitted to study its new environment and experience a wonder
and wisdom approximating that of its displacer.
With suitable precautions, and in exchange for suitable services, it was
allowed to rove all over the habitable world in titan airships or on the
huge boatlike atomic-engined vehicles which traversed the great roads,
and to delve freely into the libraries containing the records of the
planet's past and future.
This reconciled many captive minds to their lot; since none were other
than keen, and to such minds the unveiling of hidden mysteries of
earth-closed chapters of inconceivable pasts and dizzying vortices of
future time which include the years ahead of their own natural
ages-forms always, despite the abysmal horrors often unveiled, the
supreme experience of life.
Now and then certain captives were permitted to meet other captive
minds seized from the future--to exchange thoughts with
consciousnesses living a hundred or a thousand or a million years
before or after their own ages. And all were urged to write copiously in
their own languages of themselves and their respective periods; such
documents to be filed in the great central archives.
It may be added that there was one special type of captive whose
privileges were far greater than those of the majority. These were the
dying permanent exiles, whose bodies in the future had been seized by
keen-minded members of the Great Race who, faced with death, sought
to escape mental extinction.
Such melancholy exiles were not as common as might be expected,
since the longevity of the Great Race lessened its love of
life--especially among those superior minds capable of projection.
From cases of the permanent projection of elder minds arose many of
those lasting changes of personality noticed in later history--including
mankind's.

As for the ordinary cases of exploration--when the displacing mind had
learned what it wished in the future,