Christopher Priest - The Space Machine

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.

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?”

“I shall try.”

It took several more minutes of my fumbling in the eerie light to locate both of the metal bushes from which the rod had been torn, and then it took much longer to manipulate the lever so as to bring it into a suitable position so that I could fit the rod into the bushes.

“It’s still too short!” I said in some desperation. “’No matter how I try, the rod is too short.”

“But it must have come from there!”

I found a way of loosening the bush on the lever itself, and this helped to some measure. Now the connection could be made at each end, and with great patience I managed to screw the rod into each of the two sockets (fortunately, Sir William had engineered the screws so that one turn tightened both connections). It was held, but only tenuously so, for barely half a turn had been possible.

I sat up wearily in the saddle, and Amelia’s arms went around my waist. The Time Machine was still lurching, but far less so than before, and the movement of the brilliant point of light was almost imperceptible. We sat in its harsh glare, hardly believing that I had succeeded in correcting the terrible motion.

Directly in front of me the fly-wheel continued to turn quickly, but there had been no return to the orderly procession of day and night.