"What Could Be Simpler Than Time" by Clifford Simak, summary

This is a story about the limits of human nature and the impasse of traditional space exploration, confronted with deadly solar radiation. Parakinetics, capable of transporting themselves across light years with the power of their minds, helped overcome these deadly barriers. In 1962, the work was nominated for the prestigious Hugo Award for Best Novel. The book was created outside the series and remains a standalone, complete story. It was published in 1961.

Contact five thousand light years away

Fishhook Corporation scout Shepard Blaine was exploring a planet orbiting an unknown star five thousand light-years from Earth. His mind was contained within a compact, wheeled recording device equipped with sensitive instruments. A strange, roofless blue dwelling emerged in the middle of the sandy desert. A large, pink creature, approximately six meters in diameter, lay motionless on the smooth floor.

The alien showed no fear. Clear, mental words echoed through the scout’s mind: "Hey, buddy! Swapping minds with you." The next second, Blaine’s mind split into two, absorbing the alien’s memories and feelings. The star machine’s automatic timer counted down the final seconds of the thirty-hour session and, at incredible speed, pulled the explorer through space back to his body, resting in northern Mexico.

Escape from headquarters

Shepard’s body lay in the launch pad for thirty hours. A woman in a white coat, following long-standing tradition, served a glass of cold milk. Sensor records were immediately sent for automatic processing. Less than half an hour remained before exposure: the instruments detected contact with an alien life form. Kirby Rand, the corporation’s head of security, met Blaine in the corridor.

Rand insistently invited the intelligence officer into the office and uncorked a bottle of whiskey. The conversation about flight control was stealing precious minutes. Shepard’s memory flashed back to the warning call from researcher Godfrey Stone. Three years ago, Stone had shouted into the phone about the need to flee immediately at the slightest mental change.

In the town square, Shepard abandoned his own car. A casual acquaintance, Freddy Bates, offered him a ride to Charlene Whittier’s party. At a luxurious mansion on a canyon ledge, journalist Harriet Quimby transmitted a telepathic warning to Shepard of an ambush. Freddy appeared in the kitchen with a revolver in his pocket, revealing himself to be Rand’s secret agent. The pink alien within Blaine altered the pace of his perception of time. The world stood still, and the second hand on the wall barely moved. Shepard easily dodged the slowly drawn weapon, knocked the agent out with a punch, and retrieved the revolver. Harriet’s car was waiting for the fugitive in the parking lot, racing up a rocky, dry creek bed.

Trap in the city court

At dawn, the car crossed the border and entered a dusty provincial town. Harriet left a landmark: a moose antler restaurant in Pierre, South Dakota. A frail beggar named Sarah appeared on the street outside the diner. The blind crone pointed a crooked finger at Blaine, shrieking about the glittering mirror in his brain.

The crowd furiously surrounded the strangers. The high sheriff dispersed the onlookers and sent Harriet away in a car. Shepard was locked in solitary confinement because of a revolver found in his pocket. Elderly Father Flanagan arrived at the prison. The priest questioned the prisoner about his journeys to the stars and the church’s doubts in the face of paranormal phenomena.

As dusk fell, the crowd returned to the courthouse with stakes and ropes. The sheriff, frightened by the neighbors, handed over his set of keys. The rioters dragged Shepard out into the street, raining blows on him, and placed a barbed hemp noose around his neck. Mortal terror triggered a defensive reaction. In that instant, the world around him went dark.

A leap into the past and a night flight

Shepard stood in complete silence on the brick alley. There were no people, no grass, no sounds around. Blaine had slipped back in time thirty minutes. The past turned out to be a dead space of motionless shadows, where physical objects lost their solidity. Shepard’s hand passed easily through the wooden railing of the bridge. With a quick step, he reached the edge of the city and, with an effort of will, returned to the vibrant present among the rustling poplars.

That morning, Blaine roasted corn cobs and four salsify tubers over the embers of a campfire by the creek. Down below, Buck Riley, the driver of an ancient truck, began to grind wrenches. Shepard helped clean out the rusty carburetor and fed the driver in exchange for a ride northeast. Riley, terrified of the dark, loaded his shotgun with silver shot and hung burglar signs on the wagon.

At night, teenage levitators soared above a deserted highway. A driver, terrified, fired a shotgun, wounding a young woman named Marie. Blaine knocked the gun out of Riley’s hands and stopped the brawl. Young Anita Andrews thanked the scout for his help and gave him a phone number in Hamilton. At dawn, in the town of Belmont, Riley secretly drove away, abandoning his companion at a gas station.

Meeting in Belmont

Shepard took refuge in the thickets of a ravine near the Missouri River. In a deep trance, Blaine’s mind was transported back to the blue room five thousand light years away. His pink friend removed the mirrored protective screen and shared memories of alien civilizations. Blaine awoke in a Belmont hospital bed, where he had been taken after two days in a coma.

A dying Riley lay on the next bed, having crashed his truck on a river cliff. Before he died, the driver tried to send a message to Lambert Finn. Harriet and fugitive spy Godfrey Stone entered the room. At the motel, Stone explained that he had created an underground network of parakinetics to break the corporation’s monopoly. Lambert Finn, driven insane by the long-distance flight, led a fanatical movement demanding the complete extermination of all mutants and parapsychics.

Returning from the restaurant, Shepard and Harriet found Stone on the floor of the room with a fractured skull. Blaine urgently called Anita. A group of young levitators picked up the dead man’s body and carried it into the night sky just before the police patrols arrived.

Car disappearance and warehouse fire

In an old roadside garage on the outskirts, the stolen star car that Riley was transporting for Stone was parked. Finn planned to display the device before reporters at the morning rally, using it as evidence of the mutants’ guilt. Shepard entered the garage through a broken window. Merging the alien’s memory with his own will, Blaine pushed the mechanism into the future. Only a transparent silhouette remained on the dusty floor.

Kirby Rand emerged from the darkness of the garage. The security chief escorted Shepard to the back room of the local trading post and disappeared into the transo’s teleportation booth. Trader Grunt offered his guest a luxurious striped cape of alien fur. Overnight, the fur came to life and transformed into a dense cocoon, constricting his chest. The alien’s memory prompted Blaine a forgotten sonic command. Freeing himself, Shepard stunned the traitor, dragged him into the courtyard, and set fire to the warehouse along with the teleporter.

Finn’s death and the saving formula

Shepard went up to Lambert Finn’s hotel room. A grim fanatic in black robes sat at the desk. Blaine came close and said, "I’m swapping minds with you." Alien images, the chill of another’s consciousness, and Blaine’s own memories flooded the preacher’s mind. Overwhelmed by madness, Finn slit his throat with an antique razor right there in the room.

That morning, Father Flanagan ferried Shepard across the river in a motorboat, confessing to his own secret abilities. In the village of Hamilton, Elders Andrews, Jackson, and Carter refused to hide the fugitive due to the risk of a raid. Shepard retreated to a river island, where he was caught in a fierce snowstorm.

Freezing in the icy willow bushes, Blaine sifted through the fragments of Finn’s memory and discovered a method for direct teleportation of the physical body without the need for bulky equipment. Shepard calculated the coordinates of a lush, uninhabited planet from the alien’s catalog, made a long jump, warmed himself on the sunlit grass, and returned to Earth.

Exodus to distant worlds

Shepard arrived at Hamilton Square, where all the town’s inhabitants had gathered. The scout revealed the stellar coordinates of the discovered paradise and taught the mind how to move the body through space. Remote telepaths began transmitting the instructions through chains to thousands of outcasts across the planet.

That evening, trucks carrying armed pogromists pulled up to the deserted village. Shepard and Anita, who had waited for him, climbed to the top of the hill, watching the buildings burning below. Ahead of them lay a journey along Earth’s secret paths to gather all the persecuted people and show them the way to new worlds.