The Space Machine Page 7

  “Please don’t set our destination too far,” I said, looking at the last dial. “I still have to think of my train.”

  “But we will return to our moment of departure, even if we should travel a hundred years!”

  “Maybe so. Let us not be rash.”

  “If you are nervous, Edward, we need travel only as far as tomorrow.”

  “No…let us make a long trip. You have shown me the Time Machine is safe. Let us go to the next century!”

  “As you wish. We can go to the one beyond, if you prefer.”

  “It is the Twentieth Century I am interested in…let us first go forward ten years.”

  “Only ten? That hardly seems adventurous.”

  “We must be systematic,” I said, for although I am not faint-hearted, I am not an adventurous person. “Let us go first to 1903, and then to 1913, and so on at ten-yearly intervals through the century. Perhaps we will see a few changes.”

  “All right. Are you ready now?”

  “That I am,” I said, settling my arms about her waist again. Amelia made further adjustments to the dials. I saw her select the year 1903, but the day and month dials were too low for me to see.

  She said: “I have selected 22nd June. That is the first day of summer, so we shall probably find the weather clement.”

  She placed her hands on the lever, and then straightened. I braced myself for our departure.

  Then, much to my surprise, Amelia suddenly stood up and moved away from the saddle.

  “Please wait for a moment Edward,” she said. “Where are you going?” I said, in some alarm. “The Machine will take me with it.”

  “Not until the lever is moved. It is just…Well, if we are going such a long distance, I should like to take my hand-bag.”

  “Whatever for?” I said, hardly believing my ears.

  Amelia looked a little embarrassed. “I don’t know, Edward. It is just that I never go anywhere without my hand-bag.”

  “Then bring your bonnet too,” I said, laughing at this most unlikely revelation of feminine foibles.

  She hastened from the laboratory. I stared blankly at the dials for a moment then, on an impulse, I too dismounted and went into the hallway to collect my boater. If an expedition it was to be, I too would travel in style!

  On a further impulse I walked into the drawing-room, poured some more port into the two glasses, and carried them back to the laboratory.

  Amelia had returned before me, and was already mounted on the saddle. She had placed her hand-bag on the floor of the Machine, directly in front of the saddle, and on her head she wore her bonnet.

  I passed one of the port-glasses to her, “Let us toast the success of our adventure.”

  “And futurity,” she replied.

  We each drank about half what was there, then I placed the glasses on a bench to one side. I climbed on to the saddle behind Amelia.

  “We are now ready,” I said, making sure my boater was firmly seated on my head.

  Amelia gripped the lever in both hands, and pulled it towards her.

  iv

  The whole Time Machine lurched, as if it had somehow fallen headlong into an abyss, and I shouted aloud with alarm, bracing myself against the coming impact.

  “Hold on!” Amelia said, somewhat unnecessarily, for I would not have released her for anything.

  “What is happening?” I cried.

  “We are quite safe…it is an effect of the attenuation.”

  I opened my eyes, and glanced timorously about the laboratory, and saw to my astonishment that the Machine was still firmly situated on the floor. The clock on the wall was already spinning insanely forwards, and even as I watched the sun came up behind the house and was soon passing quickly overhead. Almost before I had registered its passing, darkness fell again like a black blanket thrown over the roof.

  I sucked in my breath involuntarily, and discovered that in so doing I had inadvertently inhaled several of Amelia’s long hairs. Even in the immense distractions of the journey I found a moment to rejoice at this furtive intimacy.

  Amelia shouted to me: “Are you frightened?”

  This was no time for prevarication. “Yes!” I shouted back.

  “Hold tight…there is no danger.”

  Our raised voices were necessary only as an expression of our excitement; in the attenuated dimension all was silent.

  The sun came up, and set again almost as quickly. The next period of darkness was shorter, and the following daylight shorter still. The Time Machine was accelerating into futurity!

  In what seemed to us only a few more seconds the procession of day and night was so fast as to be virtually undetectable, and our surroundings were visible only in a grey, twilight glow. About us, details of the laboratory became hazy, and the image of the sun became a path of light seemingly fixed in a deep-blue sky.

  When I spoke to Amelia I had lost the strands of her hair from my mouth. About me was a spectacular sight, and yet for all its wonder it did not compare with the feel of this girl in my arms. Prompted no doubt by the new infusion of port into my blood I became emboldened, and I moved my face nearer and took several strands of her hair between my lips, I raised my head slightly, allowing the hair to slide sensuously across my tongue. Amelia made no response I could detect, and so I allowed the strands to fall and took a few more. Still she did not stop me. The third time I tipped my head to one side, so as not to dislodge my hat, and pressed my lips gently but very firmly on the smooth white skin of her neck.

  I was allowed to linger there for no more than a second, but then she sat forward as if in sudden excitement, and said: “The Machine is slowing, Edward!”

  Beyond the glass roof the sun was now moving visibly slower, and the periods of dark, between the sun’s passages, were distinct, if only as the briefest flickers of darkness.

  Amelia started reading off the dials before her: “We are in December, Edward! January…January 1903. February…”

  One by one the months were called, and the pauses between her words were growing longer.

  Then: “This is June, Edward…we are nearly there!”

  I glanced up at the clock for confirmation of this; but I saw that the device had unaccountably stopped.

  “Have we arrived?” I said.

  “Not quite.”

  “But the clock on the wall is not moving.”

  Amelia looked briefly at it. “No one has wound it, that is all.”

  “Then you will have to tell me when we arrive.”

  “The wheel is slowing…we are almost at rest…now!”

  And with that word the silence of attenuation was broken. Somewhere just outside the house there was a massive explosion, and some of the panes of glass cracked. Splinters fell down upon us.

  Beyond the transparent walls I saw that it was daytime and the sun was shining…but there was smoke drifting past, and we heard the crackle of burning timber.

  v

  There came a second explosion, but this was further away. I felt Amelia stiffen in my arms, and she turned awkwardly in the saddle to face me.

  “What have we come to?” she said.

  “I cannot say.”

  Some distance away somebody screamed horribly, and as if this were a signal the scream was echoed by two other voices. A third blast occurred, louder than either of the previous two. More panes cracked, and splinters tinkled down to the floor. One piece fell on to the Time Machine itself, not six inches from my foot.

  Gradually, as our ears adapted to the confusion of sounds around us, one noise in particular stood out above all others: a deep-throated braying, rising like a factory siren, then howling around the upper note. It drowned temporarily the crackle of the fires and the cries of the men. The siren note fell away, but then it was repeated.

  “Edward!” Amelia’s face was snow-white, and her voice had become a high-pitched whisper. “What is happening?”

  “I cannot imagine. We must leave. Take the controls!”

&
nbsp; “I don’t know how. We must wait for the automatic return.”

  “How long have we been here?”

  Before she could answer there was another shattering explosion.

  “Hold still,” I said. “We cannot be here much longer. We have blundered into a war.”

  “But the world is at peace!”

  “In our time, yes.”

  I wondered how long we had been waiting here in this hell of 1903, and cursed again that the clock was not working. It could not be long before the automatic return took us back through the safety of attenuation to our own blissfully peaceful time.

  Amelia had turned her face so that it was now buried in my shoulder, her body twisted awkwardly on the saddle. I kept my arms around her, doing what I could to calm her in that fearful bedlam.

  I looked around the laboratory, seeing how strangely it had changed from the first time I had seen it: debris was everywhere, and filth and dust overlaid everything bar the Time Machine itself.

  Unexpectedly, I saw a movement beyond the walls of the laboratory, and looking that way I saw that there was someone running desperately across the lawn towards the house. As the figure came nearer I saw that it was that of a woman. She came right up to the wall, pressing her face against the glass. Behind her I saw another figure, running too.

  I said: “Amelia…look!”

  “What is it?”

  “There!”

  She turned to look at the two figures, but just as she did two things happened simultaneously. One was a shattering explosion accompanied by a gust of flame erupting across the lawn and consuming the woman…and the other was a vertiginous lurch from the Time Machine. The silence of attenuation fell about us, the laboratory appeared whole once more, and overhead began the reverse procession of day and night.

  Still turned uncomfortably towards me, Amelia burst into tears of relief, and I held her in my arms in silence.

  When she had calmed, she said: “What were you seeing just before we returned?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “My eyes deceived me.”

  There was no way I could describe to her the woman I had seen. She had been like a wild animal: hair matted and in disarray, blood disfiguring her face, clothes torn so as to reveal the nakedness beneath. Nor did I know how to say what was for me the greatest horror of all.

  I had recognized the woman and knew her to be Amelia, suffering her dying moments in the hellish war of 1903!

  I could not say this, could not even believe what I myself had seen. But it was so: futurity was real, and that was Amelia’s real destiny. In June 1903, on the 22nd day, she would be consumed by fire in the garden of Sir William’s house.

  The girl was cradled in my arms, and I felt her trembling still. I could not allow that destiny to be fulfilled!

  So it was, without understanding the precipitate nature of my actions, that I moved to avert destiny. The Time Machine would now carry us further into futurity, beyond that terrible day!

  vi

  I was in a mad trance. I stood up abruptly and Amelia, who had been leaning against me, stared up in astonishment. Over my head, the days and nights were flickering.

  There was a startling and heady rush of sensations coursing through me, caused I suppose, by the vertigo of the attenuation, but also because some instinct was preparing me for the act that followed. I stepped forward, placing my foot on the floor of the Machine in front of the saddle, and supporting myself on the brass rail, I managed to crouch down in front of Amelia.

  “Edward, what are you doing?” Her voice was trembling, and she sobbed as soon as her sentence was said. I paid her no attention, peering instead at the dials which were now but a few inches from my face.

  In that uncanny light of the procession of day, I saw that the Machine was speeding backwards through Time. We were now in 1902, and I saw the needle pass from August to July as I first glanced at it. The lever, centrally mounted in front of the dials, was standing almost vertically, its attached nickel rods extending forwards into the heart of the crystalline engine.

  I raised myself a little, and sat on the front of the saddle, causing Amelia to move back to accommodate me.

  “You must not interfere with the controls,” she said, and I felt her leaning to one side to see what I was doing.

  I grasped the bicycle handle in both hands, and pulled it towards me. As far as I could see, this had no effect on our journey. July slipped back to June.

  Amelia’s concern became more urgent.

  “Edward, you must not tamper!” she said loudly.

  “We must go on into futurity!” I cried, and swung the handle-bar from side to side, as one does when cornering on a bicycle.

  “No! The Machine must be allowed to return automatically!”

  For all my efforts at the controls, the reverse procession continued smoothly. Amelia was now holding my arms, trying to pull my hands away from the lever. I noticed that above each of the dials was a small metal knob, and I took one of these in my hands. I saw, by turning it, that it was possible to change the setting of the destination. Evidently, this was the way to interrupt our progress, for as soon as Amelia realized what I was doing, her efforts to restrain me became violent. She was reaching, trying to take my hand, and when this failed she took a handful of my hair and snatched it painfully back.

  At this, I released the controls, but my feet kicked instinctively forwards. The heel of my right boot made contact with one of the nickel rods attached to the main lever, and in that instant there was the most appalling lurch to one side, and everything went black around us.

  vii

  The laboratory had vanished, the procession of day and night had ceased. We were in absolute darkness and absolute silence.

  Amelia’s desperate hold on me eased, and we sat numbly in awe of the event that had overtaken us. Only the headlong vertigo—which had now taken on the characteristic of a sickening swoop from one side to another—told us that our journey through Time continued.

  Amelia moved closer to me, wrapping her arms around my body, and pressed her face against my neck.

  The swooping was growing worse, and I turned the handle-bar to one side, hoping to correct it. All I achieved was to introduce a new motion: a most unsettling pitching movement, complicating the ever-worsening sideways swing.

  “I can’t stop it!” I cried. “I don’t know what to do!”

  “What has happened to us?”

  “You made me kick the lever,” I said. “I felt something break.”

  We both gasped aloud then, for the Machine seemed to turn right over. Light suddenly burst in upon us, emanating from one brilliant source. I closed my eyes, for the brilliance was dazzling, and tried again to work the lever to ease our sickening motion. The erratic movements of the Machine were causing the point of light to waltz crazily about us, casting black shadows confusingly over the dials.

  The lever had a new feel to it. The breaking of the rod had made it looser, and as soon as I tried to let go it would sag to one side, thus precipitating more of the violent sideways manoeuvres.

  “If only I can find that broken rod,” I said, and reached downwards with my free hand to see if I could find the pieces. As I did so, there was another swooping to one side, and I was all but unseated. Fortunately, Amelia had not relaxed her hold on me and with her help I struggled back upright.

  “Do keep still, Edward,” she said, softly and reassuringly. “So long as we are inside the Machine, we are safe. No harm can come to us while we are attenuated.”

  “But we might collide with something!”

  “We cannot…we will pass through it.”

  “But what has happened?”

  She said: “Those nickel rods are there to proscribe movement through Space. By dislodging one of them, you have released the Spatial Dimension, and we are now moving rapidly away from Richmond.”

  I was aghast at this thought, and the dizzying effect of our passage only emphasized the terrible dangers we were facing
.

  “Then where will we fetch up?” I said. “Who knows where the Machine will deposit us?”

  Again, Amelia spoke in a reassuring voice: “We are in no danger, Edward. I, grant you the Machine is careering wildly, but only its controls have been affected. The field of attenuation is still around us, and so the engine itself is still working. Now we are moving through Space, we are likely to traverse many hundreds of miles…but even if we should find ourselves a thousand miles from home, the automatic return will bear us safely back to the laboratory.”

  “A thousand miles…?” I said, horrified at the velocity at which we must be travelling.

  She tightened her hold on me momentarily. “I think it will not be as far as that. It seems to me we are spinning wildly in a circle.”

  There was some substance in this, for even as we had been talking the point of light had been circling insanely around us. I was, naturally, comforted by what she said, but the sickening lurches continued, and the sooner this adventure was brought to its end the happier I would be. With this in mind, I decided to search again for the dislodged nickel rod.

  I told Amelia what I was intending to do, and she reached forward to take the main lever in her hand. Thus freed from the necessity to hold on to the lever, I bent forward and groped on the floor of the Machine, dreading that the rod had been thrown to one side by our violent motion. I fumbled around in the erratic light, and felt Amelia’s hand-bag where she had placed it, on the floor in front of the saddle. Thankfully, I found the rod a moment later: it had rolled and wedged itself between the front of the saddle and Amelia’s bag.

  “I’ve found it,” I said, sitting up and holding it so that she could see it. “It is not broken.”

  “Then how was it dislodged?”

  I looked more closely at it, and saw that at each end were helical screw shapings, and that at the tip of these were markings of bright metal which revealed how the rod had been torn from its sockets. I showed this to Amelia.

  “I remember Sir William saying that some of the nickel controls had been machined incorrectly,” she said. “Can you replace it?”