REIGN OF TERROR - by William Welch
The Time Travellers land in the French Revolution.
Doug materializes out of the Vortex of Time on a Paris street and, with
the guillotine rumbling constantly in the background, is arrested by Guards
and thrown into a tumbril cart. Tony, a few streets away, sees the tumbril
and is horrified to recognize Doug. He tackles the cart, frees Doug, then
they’re both saved from the stunned guards by a shopkeeper, who opens
a side door to let them in - it's the French Revolution. The Shopkeeper's
motive in hiding them is that since they’re obviously foreigners, they
must be here to help his Queen, Marie Antoinette, in whose
service he is deeply involved. But while he is having them exchange their
conspicuous apparel for citizen’s sans-culottes, an officcr named Querque,
comes and arrests him taking him off to prison. At the Time Tunnel, Kirk
insists on sending his ring, a family heirloom, through Time to the Travellers
to help get a focus on them. As it drops at their feet, they are immediately
approached by Querque, who takes the ring and orders their arrest. They,
meanwhile, have been utterly disarmed by the sight of him - he is Kirk's
double. Querque, finding an inscription in thc ring that reveals Marie
Antoinette had a lover, uses this as a charge to bring against her, making him
a hero. Tony and Doug, finding themselves in a cell, with the Shopkeeper,
easily arrange a breakout by luring the guards inside, knocking them out and
taking their clothes. Those at the Tunnel are handicapped in trying to pick up
the Time Travelfers because Querque is wearing the ring the Tunnel is focused
on, so they decide to pick up Querque as the only way of keeping him from
doing harm to Doug ond Tony. He arrives, and watches the events of his own
time on the screen. Though it is proved to him, by setting the time lock
forward, that Marie Antoinette will be beheaded whether he does anything or
not, he still watches the events of his own time with mounting rage as Tony,
Doug and the Shopkeeper visit the anguished Queen. The Travellers, knowing
they cannet help her, plot to rescue her son, the Dauphin, whose fate is
destined to be unknown. Querque seethes as he gives them particulars about
where the boy is kept, and when the Tunnel technicians put the ring in the
Tunnel in another attempt to use it to pick up Doug and Tony, he breaks away,
strides into the Tunnal after the ring and with it is sent back to his own
time. He does not catch up with them until they have gottcn the Dauphin and
the Shopkeeper past a young Corsican Lieutenant named Bonaparte by keeping him
spellbound with an account of his great destiny. The Shopkeeper and the boy
are safe by the time Querque pounces on the Time Travellers, but with the
Travellers and the ring in the same focus - they are dematerialized out of his
very hands.
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