Christopher Priest - The Space Machine

“I think we are safe again,” I said, but I did not feel sure.

“We must soon be coming to a halt. As soon as the Machine is at rest, we must neither of us move. It will take three minutes for the automatic return to start.”

“And will we be taken back to the laboratory?” I said.

Amelia hesitated before replying, and then said: “Yes.” I felt she was no more sure than I.

Quite unexpectedly, the Time Machine gave another lurch, and we both gasped. I saw that the fly-wheel was still … and then I realized that air was whistling past us, chilling us instantly. I knew that we were no longer attenuated, that we were falling… and in great desperation I reached forward to seize the lever—

“Edward”

Amelia screamed in my ear. It was the last thing I heard, for at that instant there was’ a terrible concussion, and the Machine came to a sudden halt. Both Amelia and I were catapulted from it into the night.

I was lying in absolute darkness, seeming to be entirely covered by something leathery and wet. As I tried to stand, all I could accomplish was a futile thrashing with my arms and legs, and I slid further into the morass of slippery stuff. A sheet of something fell across my face, and I thrust it aside, gasping for breath. Suddenly I was coughing, trying to suck air into my lungs, and like a drowning man I struck instinctively upwards, feeling I should otherwise suffocate. There was nothing on which I could get a hold, as everything that surrounded me was soft, slippery and moist. It was as if I had been pitched head first into an immense bank of seaweed.

I felt myself falling, and this time allowed myself to go, despairing. I would surely drown in this dank foliage, for with each turn of my head my face was covered with the repulsive stuff. I could taste it now: a flat, iron-tainted wateriness.

Somewhere near to hand I heard a gasp.

I shouted: “Amelia!”

My voice emerged as a wheezing croak, and at once I was coughing again.

“Edward?” Her voice was high-pitched and frightened, and then I heard her coughing too. She could not have been more than a few yards away from me, but I could not see her, hardly knew in which direction she lay.

“Are you unhurt?” I called, then coughed weakly again.

“The Time Machine, Edward. We must climb aboard… it will be returning…”

“Where is it?”

“I am by it. I cannot reach it, but I can feel it with my foot”

I realized she was over to my left, and I struck out that way, floundering through the noisome weeds, reaching out, hoping to strike something solid.

“Where are you?” I shouted, trying to make more of my voice than the wretched wheeze which was all I had so far managed.

“I am here, Edward. Come towards my voice.” She was nearer now, but her words were strangely choked, as if she too were drowning. “I’ve slipped … I can’t find the Time Machine … it’s somewhere here…”

I struck desperately through the weed, and almost at once I found her. My arm fell across her chest, and as it did so she grabbed me.

“Edward … we must find the Machine!”

“You say it is here?”

“Somewhere… by my legs…”

I crawled over her, thrashing my arms to and fro, desperately seeking the Machine. Behind me, Amelia had somehow righted herself, and she moved to my side. Face down, slithering and sliding, coughing and wheezing, trembling with the cold that was even now seeping into our bones, we conducted our desperate search well beyond the three minutes neither of us would admit was all the time we had ever had to find it.

Our struggles had been leading us inevitably downwards, and after a few more minutes I found solid ground beneath my feet. At once, I shouted aloud and helped Amelia to her feet. We pressed forward again, trying to maintain our balance while the vegetation tangled around our legs. We were both soaked through, and the air was freezing cold.

At last we broke free of the vegetation, and found we were on rough, pebbly soil. We walked a few yards beyond the fringe of the vegetation then sank down in exhaustion. Amelia was shaking with cold, and she made no protest when I placed my arm around her and hugged her to me for warmth.

At last, I said: “We must find cover.”

I had been glancing around, hoping to see houses, but all I could see by the light of the stars was an apparent wasteland. The only visible feature was the bank of vegetation, looming perhaps a hundred feet into the air.

Amelia had made no reply, and I could feel her shivering still, so I stood up and started to remove my jacket. “Please put this about your shoulders.”

“But you will freeze to death.”

“You are soaked through, Amelia.”

“We are both wet. We must exercise to keep warm.”

“In a moment,” I said, and sat down beside her once more. I kept my jacket on, but I opened it so that she was partially covered by it when I placed my arm around her shoulders. “First I must regain my breath.”

Amelia pressed herself close to me, then said: “Edward, where have we landed?”

“I cannot say. We are somewhere in futurity.”

“But why is it so cold? Why is it so difficult to breathe?”

I could only surmise.

“We must be very high,” I said. “We are in a mountainous region.”

“But the ground is flat.”

“Then we must be on a plateau,” I said. “The air is thin because of the altitude.”

“I think I have reached the same conclusion,” Amelia said. “Last summer I was mountaineering in Switzerland, and on the higher peaks we found a similar difficulty with breathing.”

“But this is obviously not Switzerland.”

“We will have to wait until morning to discover our whereabouts,” Amelia said, decisively. “There must be people near here.”

“And suppose we are in a foreign country, which does seem probable?”

“I have four languages, Edward, and can identify several others. All we need to know is the location of the nearest town, and there we will likely find a British Consul.”

Through all this I had been remembering that moment of violence I had glimpsed through the windows of the laboratory.

“We have seen that there is a war in 1903,” I said. “Wherever we are now, or whichever year this is, could that war still be in progress?”

“We see no sign of it. Even if a war has started, innocent travellers will be protected. There are Consuls in every major city of the world.”

She seemed remarkably optimistic under the circumstances, and I was reassured. On first realizing that we had lost the Machine I had been plunged into despair. Even so, our prospects were doubtful, to say the very least, and I wondered if Amelia appreciated the full scale of our disaster. We had very little money with us, and no knowledge of the political situation, the breakdown of which had certainly caused the war of 1903. For all we knew we could be in enemy territory, and were likely to be imprisoned as soon as we were discovered.

Our immediate problem—that of surviving the rest of the night exposed to the elements—grew worse with every moment. Fortunately, there was no wind, but that was the only clemency we were being afforded. The very soil beneath us was frozen hard, and our breath was clouding about our faces.

“We must exercise,” I said. “Otherwise we will contract pneumonia.”

Amelia did not dissent, and we climbed to our feet. I started jogging, but I must have been weaker than I knew, for I stumbled almost at once. Amelia too was having difficulties, for in swinging her arms about her head she staggered backwards.