“I didn’t do them any harm.” Alice said guiltily. “I thought they might be gnomes, from the fairy tales.”
But I wasn’t listening to anything else she said. Carefully clutching the little basket to my heart I was running for the videophone. All I could think was, for our visitors, our uncut lawn must have seemed like an immense forest.
And that how we made our First Contact with the Labucillians.
Our Man In The Past
The ordeal with the time machine took place in the Little Hall of Science House. I had picked Alice up from the kindergarten and realized that if I took her home I would miss the demonstration. So I made Alice swear that she would behave herself and we went to Science House together.
The Head of the Temporal Institute, a very large and very bald person, stood in front of the time machine and explained the scientific principles of its construction and operation. The scientific community listened eagerly.
“Our first experiment, as you all know, was rather unsuccessful.” He said. “The cat we sent back to the beginning of the twentieth century exploded in the region of the Tungus river, giving rise to the legend of the Tungus meteorite. Since then we have not experienced serious failure. True, in accordance with certain natural laws with which anyone may become acquainted by perusing our Institute’s brochures, for the moment we can send people and objects back only to the seventh decade of the twentieth century. One has to say that some of our co-workers have spent time there, obviously in the utmost secrecy, and returned home successfully. The temporal transmission procedure is comparatively uncomplicated, in as much as it is the results of the labors of some hundreds of our people over many years. One need only put on the Time Belt… If I could be so fortunate as to have a volunteer from the hall, and I will demonstrate the procedure for preparing to move through time on him…”