no appointment. He had entered without knocking, in a most unmilitary manner. And—and—
“MISTER!” roared Colonel Pollard. “WHERE ARE YOUR TROUSERS?”
For Lieutenant Hanson obviously was wearing none. Nor was he wearing socks or shoes. And the tattered tails of his shirt barely concealed his shredded shorts.
“SPEAK UP, DAMMIT!”
Vacantly, the Lieutenant glanced at his lower limbs and back again. He began to tremble. “They—they ate them!” he blurted. “That’s what I’m trying to tell you! Lord knows how he does it! He’s about eighty, and he’s a—a foreman in a cuckoo-clock factory! But it’s the perfect weapon! And it works, it works, it works!” He laughed hysterically. “The gnurrs come from the voodvork out!” he sang, clapping his hands. “The voodvork out, the—”
Here Colonel Pollard rose from his chair, vaulted his desk, and tried to calm Lieutenant Hanson by shaking him vigorously. “Disgraceful!” he shouted in his ear. “Turn your back!” he ordered the blushing Katie Hooper. “NONSENSE!” he bellowed when the Lieutenant tried to chatter something about gnurrs.
And, “Vot iss nonzense, soldier boy?” enquired Papa Schimmelhorn from the doorway.
Colonel Pollard let go of the Lieutenant. He flushed a deep red cordovan. For the first time in his military career, words failed him.
The Lieutenant pointed unsteadily at Colonel Pollard. “Gnurrs iss nonzense!” he giggled. “He says so!”
“Ha!” Papa Schimmelhorn glared. “I show you, soldier boy!”
The Colonel erupted. “Soldier boy? SOLDIER BOY? Stand at attention when I speak to you! ATTENTION, DAMN YOU!”
Papa Schimmelhorn, of course, paid no attention whatsoever. He raised his secret weapon to his lips, and, the first bars of Come to the Church in the Wildwood moaned around the room.
“Mister Hanson!” raged the Colonel. “Arrest that man! Take that thing away from him! I’ll prefer charges! I’ll—”
At this point, the gnurrs came from the voodvork out.
It isn’t easy to describe a gnurr. Can you imagine a mouse-colored, mouse-sized critter shaped like a wild boar, but sort of shimmery? With thumbs fore and aft, and a pink, naked tail, and yellow eyes several sizes too large? And with three sets of sharp teeth in its face? You can? Well, that’s about it—except that nobody has ever seen a gnurr. They don’t come that way. When the gnurrs come from the voodvork out, they come all over—like lemmings, only more so—millions and millions and millions of them.
And they come eating.
The gnurrs came from the voodvork out just as Papa Schimmelhorn reached “… the church in the vale.” They covered half the floor, and ate up half the carpet, before he finished, “No scene is so dear to my childhood.” Then they advanced on Colonel Pollard.
Mounting his desk, the Colonel started slashing around with his riding crop. Katie Hooper climbed a filing case, hoisted her skirt, and screamed. Lieutenant Hanson, secure in his nether nakedness, held his ground and guffawed insubordinately.
Papa Schimmelhorn stopped tootling to shout, “Don’dt vorry, soldier boy!” He started in again, playing something quite unrecognizable—something that didn’t sound like a tune at all.
Instantly, the gnurrs halted. They looked over their shoulders apprehensively. They swallowed the remains of the Colonel’s chair cushion, shimmered brightly, made a queasy sort of creaking sound, and turning tail, vanished into the wainscoting.
Papa Schimmelhorn stared at the Colonel’s boots, which were surprisingly intact, and muttered, “Hmm-m, zo!” He leered appreciatively at Katie Hooper, who promptly dropped her skirt. He thumped himself on the chest, and announced, “They are vunderful, my gnurrs!” to the world at large.
“Wh—?” The Colonel showed evidences of profound psychic trauma. “Where did they go?”
“Vere they came from,” replied Papa Schimmelhorn.
“Where’s that?”
“It iss yesterday.”
“That—that’s absurd!” The Colonel stumbled down and fell into his chair. “They weren’t here yesterday!”
Papa Schimmelhorn regarded him pityingly. “Of course nodt! They vere nodt here yesterday because yesterday vas then today. They are here yesterday, ven yesterday is yesterday already. It iss different.”
Colonel Pollard wiped his clammy brow, and cast an appealing glance at Lieutenant Hanson.
“Perhaps I can explain, sir,” said the Lieutenant, whose nervous system apparently had benefited by the second visit of the gnurrs. “May I make my report?”
“Yes, yes, certainly.” Colonel Pollard clutched gladly at the straw. “Ah—sit down.”
Lieutenant Hanson pulled up a chair, and—as Papa Schimmelhorn walked over to flirt with Katie—he began to talk in a low and very serious voice.
“It’s absolutely incredible,” he said. “All the routine tests show that he’s at best a high grade moron. He quit school when he was eleven, served his apprenticeship, and worked as a clockmaker till he was in his fifties. After that, he was a janitor in the Geneva Institute of Higher Physics until just a few years ago. Then he came to America and got his present job. But it’s the Geneva business that’s important. They’ve been concentrating on extensions of Einstein’s and Minkowski’s work. He must have overheard a lot of it.”
“But if he is a moron—” The Colonel had heard of Einstein, and knew that he was very deep indeed “—what good would it do him?”
“That’s just the point, sir! He’s a moron on the conscious level, but subconsciously he’s a genius. Somehow, part of his mind absorbed the stuff, integrated it, and came up with this bassoon thing. It’s got a weird little L-shaped crystal in it, impinging on the reed, and when you blow, the crystal vibrates. We don’t know why it works—but it sure does!”
“You mean the—uh—the fourth dimension?”
“Precisely. Though we’ve left yesterday behind, the gnurrs have not. They’re there now. When a day becomes our yesterday, it becomes their today.”
“But—but how does he get rid of them?”
“He says he plays the same tune backwards, and reverses the effect. Damn lucky, if you ask me!”
Papa Schimmelhorn, who had been encouraging Katie Hooper to feel his biceps, turned around. “You vait!” he laughed uproariously. “Soon, vith my gnurr-pfeife I broadcast to the enemy! Ve vin the var!”
The Colonel shied. “The thing’s untried, unproven! It—er—requires further study—field service—acid test.”
“We haven’t time, sir. We’d lose the element of surprise!”
“We will make a regular report through channels,” declared the Colonel. “It’s a damn’ machine, isn’t it? They’re
