“Good!” Doc Brown shouted.
He tossed down the rope, which uncoiled to land a few feet in front of Marty. The young man grabbed it, tied the end to the paddle plug, then waved to Doc Brown.
Doc nodded and began hauling the rope with the cable attached back into the tower. As he continued the handover-hand operation, he saw Marty’s mouth working and heard partial words.
“What?” he yelled down.
Marty cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted as loudly as he could. “I gotta tell you about the future, Doc! Please listen to me!”
The words were lost amid a new rush of wind which nearly tore the rope from Doc’s grasp.
“Can’t hear you!” Doc shouted back.
“The future!” Marty yelled. “On the night I travel back in time, the terrorists show up and get you—”
“Terror—what?”
“Terrorists! They—”
Bong! Bong!!
The clock began to toll ten o’clock. Kicking angrily at the ground, Marty waited, knowing he hadn’t a prayer of being heard.
With the huge bells tolling so close, Doc Brown nearly lost his balance. He quickly regained his footing, however, and was able to haul the rope the rest of the way. Grabbing the paddle plug, he looked down at Marty and gestured that he should get in the car and go.
On the ground, Marty hesitated. He knew what Doc Brown meant and understood the urgency of the situation. Still, he wanted one more shot at telling his friend what was in store for him if he wasn’t careful. He looked up. Doc Brown gestured wildly toward the DeLorean, then at his watch.
Marty sighed, turned and raced back toward the car. “Run, boy, run!” Doc Brown shouted from the clock tower. Seeing Marty do so, he untied the rope from the end of the paddle plug and looked at its socket mate dangling against the face of the clock. It was a good stretch away. Reaching for it, he realized he’d have to go out on the ledge to make the connection.
As he lifted himself cautiously onto the narrow ledge, Doc saw the DeLorean start up and move down the street. “Good,” he whispered. “Now all I have to do is make sure he’s not barreling down the street for nothing.” Creeping along the ledge, his hands flat against the wall with the nails gripping as tightly as possible, Doc tried to think of anything but the wind and distinct possibility of falling. Blasts of lightning cast weird shadows and outlines on the clock tower wall and each roll of thunder caused the building to shudder.
“I’ll be alive in 1985,” he said, realizing even as he said it that he was whistling past the graveyard. “I’ll be alive in ’85—so I’m safe now.”
The words came out but he knew they were fallacious. His being alive in 1985 was predicated on his not climbing clock towers in 1955.
“Well,” he gasped. “Let’s just get it done.”
Leaning into the wind, he reached for the dangling cable, felt it slip through his fingers, took a deep breath and reached out again.
* * *
Marty pulled up to the “starting line” Doc Brown had arranged for him, made a U-turn and sat in the idling DeLorean, his eyes fixed hypnotically on the alarm clock next to him.
“Dammit, Doc,” he murmured. “Why’d you have to tear up that letter? If only there was a little more time for me to explain…”
As he considered the problem, he withdrew his gaze from the alarm clock and looked at the DESTINATION TIME and LAST TIME DEPARTED readouts, both of which were set for 1:31 A.M.
“That’s it,” he said finally. “There’s no way I can have more time at this end, but why can’t I make time at the other end?”
With that, he began pushing the appropriate buttons on the DESTINATION TIME keypad so that it moved from 1:30 to 1:29 and even earlier. “Sure,” he murmured. “I’ll just show up in 1985 a few minutes before the terrorists shoot Doc and warn him then.”
He watched as the DESTINATION TIME readout changed from 1:26 to 1:24 and then paused, wondering if seven minutes was enough.
A moment later, the engine of the DeLorean shook twice and then died. Marty turned the key in the ignition but the car wouldn’t start.
“Come on, come on,” he growled. “Don’t tell me I came this far to run out of gas!”
Doc Brown, holding the loose cable in his left hand, took a small step along the ledge of the clock tower and had his foot poised to take another when he heard the sound. It was the crunch of rapidly disintegrating stone and he heard it a split second before he felt his body start to fall. Dropping the cable, he leaped forward to grab the only object between himself and the ground—the minute hand of the courthouse tower clock.