Tryst in Time

 

cover art by Howard V. Brown

The December 1936 issue of Astounding Stories features an atmospheric and bizarre time travel tale written by the great C. L. (Catherine Lucille) Moore. 

We immediately meet Eric Rosner and get his backstory--by the time he's 30, his life as an adventurer has left him feeling as if he's done everything. And Moore establishes this effectively in the first few paragraphs, giving enough examples of Eric's accomplishments to make us feel that maybe he has done everything:

At thirty there was not a continent nor a capital that had not known him, not a jungle nor a desert nor a mountain range that had not left scars upon his Viking body. 

Then he meets a scientist who has invented a sort of time machine. You were it as a back pack and everytime you activate it, it unanchors from inertia and essentially tosses you at random into another time and place.

Well, Eric wants to give this a try, with full understanding that he will be lost in the time stream without being able to navigate back to his home time.

But perhaps it's not so random. Eric jumps back and forth along the time stream, but he keeps meeting the same beautiful woman with "smoke blue eyes" and a confident, aristocratic manner. Or perhaps he's meeting different incarnations of her.  Twice, he arrives at a time and place just as she's being killed.

On another occassion, he saves her from being sacrificed by barbarians, but--though they feel an instant connection towards one another--she's promised to another and will not dishonor that promise. 

Once, he finds her while she's still a child. But each time they meet, she recognizes him a little quicker than the last time--even though he's not meeting her in historically chronological order.

In the end--well, its one of those endings that is open to interpretation and that only a author with Moore's skill can pull off and leave the reader feeling satisfied. 

"Tryst in Time" is a great example of Moore's ability to endow a story with an otherworldly atmosphere and great characters in just a few words. You can read it yourself HERE. 

I've been reviewing a lot of short stories recently. This wasn't on purpose--my Thursday posts are randomly chosen other than when I'm doing a Read/Watch 'em In Order post. So it's just been random chance up until now. But I'm thinking of going through an issue of Adventure from the 1920s as my next Read/Watch project, so more short story reviews will be forthcoming.