Flash (Science) Fiction Double Bill - 'Just in time' and 'The Whittled Ship'

‘Just In Time’

It had started out as a way of saving the Earth from a Meteor collision; transporting the meteor forward in time to let some more advanced future Earth civilization deal with it.

But each future civilization had just done the same thing; passing the problem on and, each time the meteor, leaping through time, reappeared in the skies it was a little closer to the Earth.

Eventually, it appeared over the Earth in the year 4100.

“Surely we have the technology now to just obliterate the damn thing?”, said the President of the United Earth government.

“Not possible, I’m afraid, Mr President”, said his chief science advisor, “The meteor is just so close now that if we did blow it up it would only splinter into fragments that would still hit the earth and wipe us all out”.

But, just then, the science advisor had a brainwave and, excusing himself, rushed out of the President’s office only to return an hour later with a big smile on his face.

“I’ve got two great pieces of news to tell you Mr President”, he said, excitedly, “The first is that we’ve solved the meteor problem. We just sent the meteor into the past”.

“That’s great”, sighed the President, relief washing over him, “What’s the other good news?”.

His science advisor laughed, “Now we know what happened to the dinosaurs”, he said.

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‘The Whittled Ship’

“You should see this”, said Ambassador Kaleeg, returning aboard his interstellar gunboat, handing a strange carved wooden object to his junior vice ambassador Gronek.

“What is it?”, asked Gronek, sniggering, “Some kind of folk art?”.

“No”, said Kaleeg, laughing, “It’s a sort of voodoo effigy. One of the Marmarians in the tribe we were just exterminating, a kind of witchdoctor I suppose, handed it to me just before I lazered his brains out with my neutronizer. It’s supposed to be a carving of our starship would you believe and the nail driven through it some kind of voodoo curse. I was going to incinerate it but I kept it because I thought it might amuse you”.

Gronek shook his head in disbelief at the primitive object, “They certainly are a backwards sort of people. Not like we Appelgarpians at all”.

But then, Gronek thought he noticed something odd about the carving.

When he pulled out the nail he saw it had been holding something shut, some kind of compartment and there was something…yes…some kind of bleeping noise.

Looking up at the skies above their planet, the surviving Marmarians whooped with delight as the bomb they had hidden inside the wooden carving detonated and blew the Applegarpian starship into atoms.