← Relic Radio Sci-Fi (old time radio)
Relic Radio Sci-Fi (old time radio)
A Sound Of Thunder by SF ’68
We’ll hear from SF '68 on this episode of Relic Radio Science Fiction. Here’s their story from May 10, 1968, titled, A Sound Of Thunder. Listen to more from SF '68 https://traffic.libsyn.com/forcedn/e55e1c7a-e213-4a20-8701-21862bdf1f8a/SciFi907.mp3 Download SciFi907 | Subscribe | Spotify | Support Relic Radio Science Fiction Your support makes this show possible. If you’d like to help, visit donate.relicradio.com for more information. Thank you.
Loading summary
Transcript4 lines
- [00:01]
A
Relic Radio.
- [00:08]
B
This is Relic Radio. Sci Fi Old time radio. Science fiction stories from relicradio.com.
- [00:24]
A
SF68SF68SF60 18 biotechs the new soak and pre wash powder brings you FF68 stories which plunge vividly into other worlds, other dimensions, other times. SF 68. Keep the gleaming new wax finish on your furniture with pledge. You simply spray it on and wipe Pledge waxes and polishes instantly as you dust. There's no rubbing required. Give new life to tired looking furniture with Pledge. Look for the push button aerosol can. Pledge now only 59 cents. I feel great. You are my sunshine. A moment ago you had a splitting headache. That was before I took a grandpa headache powder. Grandpa headache powders kill pain. Those same nerves and lip powders work quickly because their famous triple action formula dissolves almost immediately. Get the quickest relief of any pain. All pain get Grandpa headache powder. Ah, Grandpa. SF68 presents a sound of thunder. Adapted for radio and Produced by Michael McCabe. A sound of Thunder Time Safari Incorporated. Safaris to any year in the past. You name the animal, we take you there, you shoot it. I. I wanted to inquire about your offer this time. Safari. Yes. Does this. Does this safari guarantee I come back alive? We guarantee nothing. Except the dinosaurs. Ask Mr. Travis to come in here, please. Travis is a safari guide. If you're interested, he'll tell you more. The inclusive cost will be $10,000. Safari guide in the past. Yes, yes, I got $10,000. I scraped together all I have. I. I sold property, insurance policies. Just as long as you have the money and understand the conditions. That's all we are interested in, Mr. Oh, Eccles, Bob. Robert Eccles. Gosh. Think. A time machine. A real time machine. Millions of years traveled back millions of years to shoot a dinosaur. Can you credit that? Yes, Mr. Eccles, I can. Oh, yes. Well, sure you can. I mean, you're in charge of the whole thing. This Mr. Travis, the. The guide. You. You said conditions. You said something about conditions. If Travis has no shooting, there's to be no shooting. He'll tell you where and when to shoot. If you disobey instructions, there's a stiff penalty of another $10,000. Plus possible government action on your return. Wow. You know, it's kind of funny. If the election had gone badly yesterday, I might be in here now running away from the result. Thank the stars Keith won. He'll make a fine President of the United States. Yeah, you said it. We're lucky. If Deutscher had gotten in, we'd have had the worst kind of dictatorship. There's an anti everything man for you, Deutsche. A militarist, anti intellectual, anti human, anti every darn thing there is. Everything that's good, that is. People call time Safari Incorporated up. You know, joking and yet not joking. Said if Deutsche became president, they wanted to go live in 1492. Of course, it's not our business to conduct this case. But inform safaris anyway. Keith's president now. All you got to worry about is shooting my dinosaur. A Tyrannoceros Rex. The Thunder lizard. The darndest monster in history. Find this release, anything happens to you, we're not responsible. Those dinosaurs are hungry. Oh, yeah? Trying to scare me? Frankly, yes. We don't want anyone going who panic of the first shot. Six safari leaders were killed last year. And a dozen hunters. We're here to give you the greatest thrill a real hunter ever asked for. Traveling you back 60 million years to bag the biggest darn game in all time. Mr. Kravitz, customer here is all yours. There were four other men in the machine. Travis, the safari leader. His assistant, Nes Baras. And two other hunters, Billings and C.R. the time machine. First a day and then a night. Then a day and then a night. Then it was day, night, day, night, day, night. A week, a month, a year, a decade. A.D. 2055. A.D. 2019-1999-1957-1857. Gone. Gone. Can these guns get a D dinosaur, Cole? Yeah, if you hit them right. Some dinosaurs have two brains. You see one in the head, another right down the spinal column. You put your first two shots into the eyes. If you can blind them, then go for the brain time with a film run backwards. Sun, snake. 10 million moons led after them. Every hunter that ever lived would envy us today. This is going to make Africa seem like Illinois. The sun stopped in the sky. The fog that had enveloped their machine blew away. And they were in an old time. A very old time indeed. Three hunters and their safari guides with their blue metal guns across their knees. That is the jungle of 60,002,055 years before. President Keith Moses hasn't been found in the rushes. A little baby, Hannibal, hasn't crossed the Alps. There's been no Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler. None of them exist. And that you see over there. That is the path laid by Tiny Safari for your use. It floats six inches above the earth. It doesn't touch as much as a single blade of grass. Not a single flower or tree. It's anti gravity metal. Its purpose is to keep you from touching in any way. This world of the past. You must not get off the path. Not under any circumstances. If you fall off, there's a penalty. A big one. And don't shoot any animals. We don't. Okay. Why? Because we don't want to change the future. We don't belong here in the past. The government doesn't like us here. Not knowing it, we might kill an important animal. Small bird, a flower, even. Thus destroying an important link in a growing species. Look out there. It. It's like now. I'm not sure I follow about if we kill something. Okay, okay, look. Say we accidentally killed one mouse here. That'd mean all the future families of that one mouse are destroyed, right? Right. And all the families of the families of the families of that one mouse. With one stamp of your foot, you annihilate first one, then a dozen, a million, a billion possible mice. So they're dead. So what? Take him. We get out there. Hold it. Now, you've got to understand this thing. You kill the mice for the want of those mice, a fox stars to death. For want of 10 foxes, a lion starves. For the want of that lion, all manner of insects, vultures, a million life forms are thrown into chaos and destruction. Ten thousand years later, a caveman goes hunting saber tooth tigers. But you, coming out of the present, have wiped out all the tigers in that region by killing one mouse. So the caveman stars. But this caveman isn't just any old caveman. He's an entire future nation. From his loins would have sprung 10 sons. By destroying this one man, you destroy an entire race, an entire history of life. Never step off the path. Never the path. This machine, everything sterilized. As you know, no bacteria from the future has come here into the past. Okay, let's go. I see. Mr. Travis, how do we know what animals to shoot? They're marked with red paint. Today, before our journey, we sent Les Bronze here back with a machine. He follows certain animals, right? I track them through their entire existences. When I find one that's gonna die through a tree falling on it, or one that drowns in a tar pit, I note the exact hour, the minute, the second I shoot a paint bomb leaves a red stain. Then I correlate our arrival here in the past so that we meet the monster not more than two minutes before it would have died anyway. See, this way, we only kill animals with no future. We're never gonna mate again. We're kept. We destroy nothing that wouldn't have been destroyed. But if you came back this morning, in time, you must have bumped into us. Our safari, was it successful? Tell me. Did we all come through alive? There's no way of telling if this expedition was a success or not, Mr. Echoes. Time stepped aside. We saw nothing. We don't know whether this expedition was a success or not. We don't know if we got our monster or whether all of us, meaning you, Mr. Echoes, got out alive. The jungle was high. The jungle was broad. And the jungle was forever and ever. Sounds like music and sounds like flying tents filled the air. The gentlemen from out of the future walked along their floating roadway into the heart of the past. Stop that, Echoes. Don't even aim that gun for. Sorry. I was just say, when are we going to meet our dinosaurs, huh? Up ahead. If I take this trail in 60 seconds. Look for the red paint and stay on the path. Safety catches off. Everybody release your safes. You first shot, echoes. Second. Mr. Billings. Third. Kramer, my hunted tiger, wild boar and elephant. But. But now I'm shaking like a K. There in the mist. There he is. There's His Royal Majesty now. And everything was suddenly still. It was as if someone had shut a door on the world. And then from out of the mist 100 yards away came Tyrannosaurus Rex. And the sound of thunder. Sam. It came on great oil spining legs like an evil God. His delicate watchmaker's claws folded close to his reptilian chest. Each lower leg was a piston. A thousand pounds of bone sunk in thick ropes of muscle. Each thigh was a ton of meat, ivory and steel mesh. His eyes rolled empty of all expression save hunger. William. Will you look at that? Oh, my. It could reach up and grab the moon. Tyrannosaurus rex. It towered 30ft above the trees. It hasn't seen us yet. Can't be killed. We were forced to come. It's impossible. Shut up. No. No. I, I no. Turn around. Walk quietly back to the machine. We'll remit one half your feet. I didn't realize, that's all. I'm sorry. I didn't know it would be so big. I I want out. Please. It's Jesus. There's a red paint on his chest. Get me away from here. It was even like this before. I always knew I'd come through all right. This is too much for me to get hold of. I'm sorry. Please don't run. Turn around. Get back to the machine, man. No Echo. Not that way. Echoes ran blindly along and off the pathway and into the jungle. The monster twitched its jeweler's hands and Fell. And its thunder faded. In the time machine, Echols lay shivering. He had found his way back to the path, Back to safety. I. I'm sorry. Truly I am. Sorry. You get out. What? Get out there on the path alone. You're not coming back in the machine with us. Wait a minute. Get out of this. Son of a. Near Killips. But it isn't that so much. No, it's his shoes. He ran off the path. Look at his shoes. This ruins us. Nobody could even guess how much we'll have to forfeit. Tens of thousands of dollars of insurance. We guaranteed no one will ever leave the path. And he left it. You don't know. You can't understand what he's done to time. To history. Take it easy. All he did was kick up some dirt. We don't know. How can we possibly know? Get out. Echoes. No. No, please. I. I'll pay anything. I'll give you a hundred thousand dollars. Just let me. Take me back to fix things up. It'll be all right. I swear it. Look. Look. Listen. I can't walk. See? See? See it? Look. Get out there. The body of the thing we kills lying on the path. Stick your arms up to your elbows in its mouth. And then. Then you can come back. God, that's unreasonable. I. Please. No. Dead. You yellow. No. Good. The bullets. Bullets can't be left behind. They don't belong in the past. Here's my knife. You take them out and then you'll. You'll take me back. Please. Get out there. Here's what you want. The place. Oh, the smell. I want to go home. Didn't have to make him do that, didn't I? It's too early to tell. He'll live. He won't go hunting game like this again. Okay, Switch on. Let's. Let's go home. 10 million. 5 million. 2, 1, 500. 10 hundred, 14, 90, 17, 76. 18, 12. 1980, 90. 2000. Don't look at me like that. I. I haven't done anything. Who can tell? Just went off the path, that's all. A little mud on my shoes. What do you want me to do? I might give. I don't know. I've got my gun ready. Oh, no. I'm innocent. I haven't done anything. 2000. 5. 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 50. 1, 2, 3, 4, 20, 55. And the machine stopped. Get out. The room was there just as they left it. The same man sat behind the same desk. But the same man did not quite sit behind the same desk. Everything okay? Here. Hi, I said. Sure, sure, sure. Everything's fine. Welcome home. Travis did not relax, though he seemed to be looking at the very atoms of the air itself, at the way the sun poured through one high window. Okay, echoes, get out and don't ever come back. Well, you heard me. What are you staring at? Eccles stood smelling the air. And there was a thing to the air, a chemical taint so subtle, so slight. The colours light grey, blue, orange on the wall, in the furniture and the sky beyond the window were. And there was a feel what sort of world it was now there was no telling. He could feel them moving there beyond the walls, almost like so many chess pieces blown in a dry wind. Echoes, I said. Wait. What are you staring at? But the immediate thing was painted on the office wall the same sign he had made earlier on first enter it times Safaris. And safaris to any year in the past. You name the animal, we take you there, you shoot it. The same words, except the spelling Safaris was spelled S E F A R I. S. Animal had two elves. Name was N, A I M. Take T, A, E, K, you shoot it, you. It was Y, U. And the simple baby word it spelled with two T's. And any child knows that. Oh, no, it can't be. Not a little thing like this. No. Embedded in the mud on the bottom of the time traveler's shoe, glistening gold and green and black, was a butterfly. Very beautiful and very dead. Not a little thing like this. Not a butterfly. It fell to the floor. An exquisite thing, a small thing that could upset balances and knock down a line of small dominoes all down the years, across time. Not knowing it, we might kill an important animal, a small bird, a fury, thus destroying an important link in a growing species. You kill the mice. You want of those a fox star. Want of those butterflies, a bird star, Lion Star. 10,000 years later, Cave, caveman, caveman coming out of the present have wiped out all the caveman stars. Step on a butterfly and you leave your footprint like the Grand Canyon across eternity. Queen Elizabeth might never be born. Washington might never cross the Delaware. Washington might never thank the stars Keith won. You make a fine president of the United States. If Deutscher had gotten in, we'd have had the worst kind of dictatorship. Killing one one little butterfly couldn't be that important, could it? Who? Who? Who won the presidential election yesterday? They're joking. You know darn well. Deutscher goes. Who else? What's wrong? Please, please. Can't we. Can't we take it back? The butterfly couldn't could we make it live again? Please? Can't we start all over again? He did not move, eyes shut. He waited. He heard Travis breathe loud in the room. He heard Travis shift his rifle and suddenly there was a sound of thunder. It now before you go, I want to say ladies, a little bit more about Biotex, the amazing new washing product now on the market. You've heard what people all over the country are saying about Biotex. They are saying it is different to any washing product they've ever used before. With amazing new Biotex, the stubborn stains will vanish, yes, vanish clean away. Just by soaking your laundry overnight in cold water or for an hour or two in warm water or by pre washing it quickly in your washing machine. So get Amazing New Biotechs today. Clean clean. Everything soon will be clean clean for all the well to see. Milk. Milk spins away easily when you use new biochemicals. You have just been listening to A Sound of Thunder by Ray Bradbury, brought to you by Biotechs, the new Soak and Pre Wash powder. A Sound of Thunder was adapted for broadcasting and Produced by Michael McCabe. Listen again next Friday night at half past nine to SF 68.
- [30:01]
B
That's the show for this week, but don't forget there are thousands more like it at relicradio.com horror, strange tales, science fiction, crime, all available for free like donate to Relic Radio and help keep it all free. You can do that through the website as well. Visit donate. Relicradio.com to find out more to see the special downloadable sets that are available. My thanks to those who have donated and thanks for listening today. Talk to you again next week.