Harry Harrison: The Technicolor Time Machine

“We had to make the machines so they could be used in the horror film,” Blestead said, talking too fast. There was a fine beading of sweat on his face. “The machines had to look realistic.”

“So you make them unrealistic, bah!” Professor Hewett muttered angrily as he made some final adjustments and threw home a large multipoled switch.

The throbbing of the motor-generator changed as the sudden load came on, and a crackling discharge filled the air above the apparatus: sparks of cold fire played over all the exposed surfaces and they felt the hair on their heads rising straight up.

“Something’s gone wrong!” Jens Lyn gasped.

“By no means,” Professor Hewett said calmly, making a delicate adjustment. “Just a secondary phenomenon, a static discharge of no importance. The field is building up now, I think you can feel it.”

They could feel something, a distinctly unpleasant sensation that gripped their bodies solidly, a growing awareness of tension.

“I feel like somebody stuck a big key in my belly button and was winding up my guts,” Dallas said.

“I would not phrase it in exactly that manner,” Lyn agreed, “but I share the symptoms.”

“Locked on to automatic,” the professor said pushing home a button and stepping away from the controls. “At the microsecond of maximum power the selenium rectifiers will trip automatically. You can monitor it here, on this dial. When it reaches zero…”

“Twelve,” Barney said, peering at the instrument, then turning away.

“Nine,” the professor read. “The charge is building up. Eight… seven… six…”

“Do we get combat pay for this?” Dallas asked, but no one as much as smiled.

“Five… four… three…”

The tension was physical, part of the machine, part of them. No one could move. They stared at the advancing red hand and the professor said:

“Two… one…”

They did not hear “zero” because for that fraction of eternity even sound was suspended. Something happened to them, something undefinable and so far outside of the normal sensations of life that an instant later they could not remember what it had been or how it had felt. At that same moment the lights in the warehouse outside vanished, and the only illumination came from the dim glow of the instruments on the tiered panels. Behind the open end of the truck, where an instant before the brightly lit room had been, there was now only a formless, toneless gray nothing that hurt the eyes when you looked at it.

“Eureka!” the professor shouted.

“Anyone want a drink?” Dallas asked, producing a quart of rye from behind the crate he was sitting on, and accepting his own invitation to the marked detriment of the bottle’s liquid contents. It passed quickly from hand to hand—even Tex reached in from the cab for a slug—and all of them, with the exception of the professor, drew courage from it. He was too busy at his instruments, babbling happily to himself.

“Yes—definitely—definitely displacing toward the past… an easily measured rate… now physical displacement as well… wouldn’t do to end up in interstellar space or in the middle of the Pacific… oh dear no!” He glanced into a hooded screen and made more precise adjustments, “I suggest you hold securely to something, gentlemen. I have made as good an approximation as possible to the local ground level, but I am afraid to be too precise. I do not wish us to emerge underground, so there may be a drop of a few inches… Are you ready?” He pulled the master switch open.

The back wheels hit first and an instant later the front of the truck jarred to the ground with a mighty crash, knocking them about. Bright sunlight flooded in through the open rear making them blink, and a fresh breeze brought the sound of distant breakers.

“Well I’ll be double-god-damned!” Amory Blestead said.

The grayness was gone and in its place, framed by the canvas top of the truck like a giant picture window, was a view down a rocky beach to the ocean, where great waves were breaking. Gulls swooped low and screamed while two frightened seals snorted and splashed off into the water.

“This is no part of California I know,” Barney said.

“This is the Old World, not the New,” Professor Hewett said proudly. “To be precise, the Orkney Islands, where there were many settlements of the northmen in the eleventh century, in the year 1003. It undoubtedly surprises you that the vremeatron is capable of physical as well as temporal displacement, but this is a factor—”

“Nothing has surprised me since Hoover was elected,” Barney said, feeling more in control of himself and affairs now that they had actually arrived somewhere—or somewhen. “Let’s get the operation moving. Dallas, roll up the front of the tarp so we can see where we’re going.”

With the front end of the canvas cover out of the way, a rocky beach was disclosed, a narrow strand between water and rounded cliffs. About a half mile away a headland jutted out and cut off any further view.

“Start her up,” Barney called in through the rear of the cab, “and let’s see what there is further along the beach.”

“Right,” Tex said, pulling the starter. The engine ground over and burst into life. He kicked it into gear and they rumbled slowly down the rocky shingle.

“You want this?” Dallas asked, holding out a holstered revolver on a gunbelt. Barney looked at it distastefully.

“Keep it. I’d probably shoot myself if I tried to play around with one of those things. Give the other one to Tex and hold onto the rifle yourself.”

“Aren’t we going to be armed just in case, for our own protection?” Amory Blestead asked. “I can handle a rifle.”

“Not professionally, and we work to union rules around here. Your job is to help the professor, Amory, The vremeatron is the most important thing here. Tex and Dallas will take care of the armaments—that way we can be sure that there won’t be any accidents.”

“ Alt for Satan! Look at that, so beautiful, that I should be seeing this with my own eyes!” Jens Lyn burbled and pointed ahead.

The truck had churned its way around the headland and a small bay opened up before them. A crude, blackened rowboat was pulled up onto the shore, and just above the beach was a miserable-looking building made of clumsily piled turf and stone and covered with a seaweed-thatched roof. There was no one in sight, though smoke was curling up from the chimney hole at one end.

“Where is everybody?” Barney asked.

“It is understandable that the sight and sound of this truck has frightened them and that they have taken refuge in the house,” Lyn said.

“Kill the engine, Tex. Maybe we should have brought some beads or something to trade with the natives?”

“I am afraid that these are not the kind of natives that you are thinking of…”

The rough door of the house crashed open as if to emphasize his words and a man leaped out, howling terribly and waving a broad-bladed ax over his head. He jumped into the air, clashed the ax against a large shield he carried on his left arm, then thundered down the slope toward them. As he approached them with immense bounds they could see the black, horned helmet on his head, and his flowing blond beard and wide moustache. Still roaring indistinctly he began to chew the edge of the shield: foam formed on his lips.

“You can see that he’s obviously afraid, but a Viking hero cannot reveal his fear before the thralls and housecarls, who are undoubtedly watching from concealment in the building. So he works up a berserk rage—”

“Save the lecture, will you, Doc. Dallas, can you and Tex take this guy on, maybe slow him down before he breaks something?”