The Shadow Girl by Ray Cummings

Out of the misty reaches of time came a man and girl of the distant / future-New York to wreak vengeance upon Dr. Turber, prominent / physician of 1945. But what mystery lay behind Turber's Indian / assistant, who seemed to belong to the New Amsterdam of Peter / Stuyvesant, and how could Turber menace Great-New York of 2445? / An absorbing book-length novel by one of science fiction's prime / favorites.

The extraordinary and mysterious visions of the shadow girl appeared on the television screen which Alan and I had just erected in his workshop. It was nearly midnight -- a hot sultry evening of late June. The instrument was a Farodyne polychrome receiver; latest model of the multiple-cell semi-oscillating type. We had worked all evening installing it. Alan's sister, Nanette, sat quietly in a corner, modeling a little statue in green clay. Occasionally she would ask us how we were getting along.

We were planning to receive the broadcasting from the powerful Bound Brook station -- a program which had been advertised for 11.30 p.m.

The room was dark as we sat at the small instrument table with the six-foot screen erect against the wall and only the flashing beams from the whirling color-filters to cast a lurid glow upon us. The screen hummed as the current went into it. But at once we saw that something was wrong. The screen lighted unevenly; we could not locate with any precision the necessary frequency ranges; not one of the three near-by broadcasting studios which we knew were at that moment on the air, would come in.

Nanette was disappointed and impatient as I manipulated the dials at random, and Alan verified the connections. "Is there nothing on it?"

"Presently, Nan. Alan must have grounded it badly -- I'm sure we have everything else -- "

I stopped abruptly. My grip tightened on her arm. We all sat tense. An image was forming on the screen.

Alan said sharply: "Don't touch it, Ed! " I relinquished the dials.

We sat watching, tense, and interested. Then mystified, awed. And presently upon us all there settled a vague, uneasy sense of fear.

For this, confronting us, was the Unknown.

The screen glowed, not with the normal colors of an interior studio set, but with what seemed a pale, wan starlight. A blurred image; but it was slowly clarifying. A dim purple sky, with misty stars.

We sat staring into the depths of the television screen. Depths unmeasurable; illimitable distance. I recall my first impression when in the foreground faint gray-blue shadows began forming: was this an earthly scene? It seemed not. Blurred shadows in the starlight, crawling mist of shadows, congealing into dim outlines.

We saw presently the wide area of a starlit night. A level landscape of vegetation. Grassy lawns; trees; a purpling brook, shimmering like a thread of pale silver in the starlight. The image was sharp now, distinct, and without suggestion of flicker. Every color rounded and full. Deep-toned nature, pale and serene in the starlight.

A minute passed. In the center foreground of the vista a white wraith was taking form. And suddenly -- as though I had blinked -- there was a shape which an instant before had not been there. Solid reality. Of everything in the scene, it was most solid, most real.

A huge, gray-white skeleton tower, its base was set on a lawn where now I could see great beds of flowers, vivid with colored blossoms. The brook wound beside it. It was a pentagon tower. Its height might have been two hundred feet or more, narrowing at the top almost to a point. Skeleton girders with all the substantiality of steel, yet with a color more like aluminum.

We were, visually, fairly close to this tower. The image of it stood the full six feet of our screen. A balcony girded it near the top. A room, like an observatory, was up there, with tiny ovals of windows. Another larger room was midway down. I could see the interior -- ladder-steps, and what might have been a shaft with a lifting car.

The tower's base was walled solid. It seemed, as we stared, that like a camera moving forward, the scene was enlarging --

We found ourselves presently gazing, from a close viewpoint, at the base of the tower. It was walled, seemingly by masonry, into a room. There were windows, small and high above the ground. Climbing vines and trellised flowers hung upon the walls. There was a broad, front doorway up a stone flight of steps.

And I became aware now of what I had not noticed before: the gardens surrounding the tower were inclosed with a high wall of masonry. A segment of it was visible now as a background to the scene. A wall, looped and turreted at intervals as though this were some fortress.

The whole lay quiet and calm in the starlight. No sign of human movement. Nanette said: