Stephen Baxter - The Time Ships

“It is to do with axis-twisting. In a rotating universe, a journey through space, but reaching the past or future, is possible. Our universe rotates, but so slowly that such a path would be a hundred thousand million light years long, and would take the best part of a million million years to traverse!”

“Of little practical use, then.”

“But imagine a universe of greater density than ours: a universe as dense, everywhere, as the heart of an atom of matter. There, a rotation would be complete in mere fractions of a second.”

“But we are not in such a universe.” I waved my hand through empty space. “That is evident.”

“But perhaps you are! — for fractions of a second, and thanks to your machine — or at least to its Plattnerite component.

“My hypothesis is that, because of some property of the Plattnerite, your Time Machine is flickering back and forth to this ultra-dense universe, and on each traverse is exploiting that reality’s axis-twisting to travel along a succession of loops into the past or future! So you spiral through time…”

I considered these ideas. They were extraordinary — of course! — but, it seemed to me, no more than a somewhat fantastic extension of my preliminary thoughts of the intertwining of Space and Time, and the fluidity of their relevant axes. And besides, my subjective impression of time travel was bound up with feelings of twisting — of rotation.

“These ideas are startling — but I believe they would bear further examination,” I told Nebogipfel.

He looked up at me. “Your flexibility of mind is impressive, for a man of your evolutionary era.”

I barely heard his dismissive remark. I was close enough now. Nebogipfel touched a rail of the machine, with one cautious finger. The device shimmered, belying its bulk, and a breeze ruffled the fine hairs on Nebogipfel’s arm. He snatched his hand back. I stared at the studs, rehearsing in my mind the simple action of lifting the levers out of my pockets and fitting them to the studs. It would take less than a second! Could I complete the action before Nebogipfel could render me unconscious, with his green rays?

The darkness closed in around me, and the stink of Morlock was strong. In a moment, I thought with a surge of irrepressible eagerness, I might be gone from all this.

“Is something wrong?” Nebogipfel was watching my face with those great, dark eyes of his, and his stance was upright and tense. Already he was suspicious! — had I betrayed myself? And already, in the darkness beyond, I knew, the muzzles of countless guns must be raised towards me — I had bare seconds before I was lost!

Blood roared in my ears — I hauled the levers from my pockets — and, with a cry, I fell forward over the machine. I jammed the little bars down on their studs and with a single motion I wrenched the levers back. The machine shuddered — in that last moment there was a flash of green, and I thought it was all up for me! — and then the stars disappeared, and silence fell on me. I felt an extraordinary twisting sensation, and then that dreadful feeling of plummeting — but I welcomed the discomfort, for this was the familiar experience of time travel!

I yelled out loud. I had succeeded — I was journeying back through time — I was free!

…And then I became aware of a coolness around my throat — a softness, as if some insect had settled there, a rustling.

I lifted my hand to my neck — and touched Morlock hair!

I wrapped my hand around that thin forearm and prized it from my neck. A hairy body lay sprawled across the nickel and brass beside me — a thin, goggled face was close to mine — the sweet, fetid smell of Morlock was powerful!

“Nebogipfel.”

His voice was small and shallow, and his chest seemed to be pumping. Was he afraid? “So you have escaped. And so easily—”

He looked like a doll of rags and horse-hair, clinging as he was to my machine. He was a reminder of that nightmarish world which I had escaped — I could have thrown him off in a moment, I am sure — and yet, I stayed my hand.

“Perhaps you Morlocks underestimated my capacity for action,” I snapped at him. “But you — you suspected, didn’t you?”

“Yes. Just in that last second… I have become adept, I think, at interpreting the unconscious language of your body. I realized you were planning to operate the machine — I had just time to reach you, before…

“Do you think we could straighten up?” he whispered. “I am in some discomfort, and I fear falling off the machine.”

He looked at me as I considered this proposition. I felt that there was a decision I had to make, of sorts; was I to accept him as a fellow passenger on the machine — or not?

But I would scarce throw him off; I knew myself well enough for that!

“Oh, very well.”

And so we two Chronic Argonauts executed an extraordinary ballet, there amid the tangle of my machine. I kept a grip of Nebogipfel’s arm — to save him from falling, and to ensure that he did not try to reach the controls of the machine — and twisted my way around until I was sitting upright on the saddle. I was not a nimble man even when young, and by the time I had achieved this goal I was panting and irritable. Nebogipfel, meanwhile, lodged himself in a convenient section of the machine’s construction.

“Why did you follow me, Nebogipfel?”

Nebogipfel stared out at the dark, attenuated landscape of time travel, and would not reply.

Still, I thought I understood. I remembered his curiosity and wonder at my account of futurity, while we shared the interplanetary capsule. It had been an impulse for the Morlock to climb after me — to discover if time travel was a reality — and an impulse driven by a curiosity descended, like mine, from a monkey’s! I felt obscurely moved by this, and I warmed to Nebogipfel a little. Humanity had changed much in the years that separated us, but here was evidence that curiosity, that relentless drive to find out — and the recklessness that came with it — had not died completely.

And then we erupted into light above my head I saw the dismantling of the Sphere-bare sunlight flooded the machine, and Nebogipfel howled.

I discarded my goggles. The uncovered sun, at first, hung stationary in the sky, but before long it had begun to drift from its fixed position; it arced across the heavens, more and more rapid, and the flapping of day and night returned to the earth. At last the sun shot across the sky too rapidly to follow, and it became a band of light, and the alternation of day and night was replaced by that uniform, rather cold, pearl-like glow.

So, I saw, the regulation of the earth’s axis and rotation was undone.

The Morlock huddled over himself, his face buried against his chest. He had his goggles on his face, but their protection did not seem to be enough; he seemed to be trying to burrow into the machine’s innards, and his back glowed white in the diluted sunlight.

I could not help but laugh. I remembered how he had failed to warn me when our earth-bound capsule had dropped out of the Sphere and into space: well, here was retribution! “Nebogipfel, it is only sunlight.”

Nebogipfel lifted his head. In the increased light, his goggles had blackened to impenetrability; the hair on his face was matted and appeared to be tear-stained. The flesh of his body, visible through the hair, glowed a pale white. “It is not just my eyes,” he said. “Even in this attenuated state the light is painful for me. When we emerge, into the full glare of the sun…”

“Sun-burn!” I exclaimed. After so many generations of darkness, this Morlock would be more vulnerable, even to the feeble sun of England, than would the palest redhead in the Tropics. I pulled off my jacket. “Here,” I said, “this should help protect you.”