Duel by Richard Matheson

going back and you’re not stopping me!”
    â€œI’m not stopping you,” said Clemolk, the first signs of peevishness sounding in his voice. “You’re stopping yourself. I’ve told you. You should have considered what you were doing before entering your time-chamber. And, as for your Mary—”
    The sound of her name pronounced with such dispassionate smugness broke the floodgates of Wade’s fury. His hand shot out and fastened around Clemolk’s thin ivory column of neck.
    â€œStop,” Clemolk said, his voice cracking. “You can’t go back. I tell you—”
    His fish eyes were popping and blurred. A gurgle of delicate protest filled his throat as his frail hands fumbled at Wade’s clutching fingers. A moment later the historian’s eyes rolled back and his body went limp. Wade released his fingers and put Clemolk down on the couch.
    He ran to the door, his mind filled with conflicting plans. The door wouldn’t open. He pushed it, threw his weight against it, tried to dig his nails along its edge to pull it open. It was tightly shut. He stepped back, his face contorted with hopeless frenzy.
    Of course!
    He sprang to Clemolk’s inert body, reached in the robe pocket, and drew out the small control board. It had no connections in the robe. Wade pushed a button. The great sign was above him: HISTORY IS LIVING. With an impatient gasp, Wade pushed another, still another. He heard his voice.
    â€œ … The governmental system was based on the existence of three
branches, two of which were supposedly subject to popular vote … .”
    He pushed another button—and yet another.
    The door seemed to draw a heavy breath and opened noiselessly. Wade ran to it and through. It closed behind him.
    Now to find the machine lab. What if the students were there? He had to risk it.
    He raced down the padded hallway, looking for the tube door. It was a nightmare of running. Back and forth he rushed frantically, muttering to himself. He stopped and forced himself back, pushing buttons as he went, ignoring sounds and sights around him—the fading walls, the speaking dead. He almost missed the tube door as he passed it. Its outline blended with the wall.
    â€œStop!”
    He heard the weak cry behind him and glanced hurriedly over his shoulder. Clemolk, stumbling along the hall, waving him down. He must have recovered and got out while Wade was carrying on his desperate search.
    Wade entered the tube quickly, and the door slid shut. He breathed a sigh of relief as he felt the chamber rush through its tunnel. Something made him turn around. He gasped at the sight of the uniformed man who sat on the bench facing him. In the man’s hand was a dull black tube that pointed straight at Wade’s chest.
    â€œSit down,” said the man.
    Defeated, Wade slumped down in a dejected heap. Mary. The name was a broken lament in his mind.
    â€œWhy do you re-forms get so excited?” the man asked. “Why do you? Answer me that?”
    Wade looked up, a spark of hope igniting in him. The man thought—
    â€œI—expected to go soon,” Wade said hurriedly. “In a matter of minutes. I wanted to get down to the machine lab.”
    â€œWhy there, for heaven’s sake?”

    â€œI heard there was a time-chamber there,” Wade said anxiously. “I thought—”
    â€œThought you’d use it?”
    â€œYes, that’s it. I want to go back to my own time. I’m lonely.”
    â€œHaven’t you been told?” asked the man.
    â€œTold what?”
    The tube sighed to a halt. Wade started up. The man waved his weapon and Wade sank down again. Had they passed it? “As soon as your re-formed body returns to air,” the man was saying, “your psychic force returns to the original moment of death—hrumph—separation from the body I mean.”
    Wade was distracted by nervous fear. “What?”