Stephen Baxter - The Time Ships

“You might be surprised,” I said with feeling.

“Hum?” He turned back to his television set. Now it was showing a random assortment of scenes, evidently taken from a series of cameras about the Dome: I saw flying machines take to the air like black gnats, and lids in the ground which were drawn back to reveal a host of Juggernaut machines which toiled out of the ground, spitting steam, to draw up in a line which stretched, it seemed to me, from Leytonstone to Bromley; and all this great horde pressed forward, breaking up the earth, to meet the invading Germans. But then Wallis pressed a switch, and these fragments of Armageddon were banished, as he made his record of the Rota-Mine run through again.

“A desperate business,” he said. “We could have had it first! But what a marvelous development… even I wasn’t sure if it could be done.” His gaze was locked on the screen, his eyes hidden by the flickering, meaningless reflection of the images.

And that was how I left him; with an odd impulse towards pity, I closed his office door softly behind me.

Kurt Gödel stood at the uncurtained window of his office, his arms folded. “At least the gas hasn’t come yet,” he said without preamble. “I once witnessed the result of a gas attack, you know. Delivered by English bombers on Berlin, as it happens. I came down the Unter der Linden and along the Sieges Allee, and there I came upon it… So undignified! The body corrupts so quickly, you know.” He turned and smiled sadly at me. “Gas is very democratic, do you not think?”

I walked up to him. “Professor Gödel. Please… We know you have some Plattnerite. I saw it.”

For answer, he walked briskly to a cupboard. As he passed a mere three feet from Nebogipfel, Gödel did no more than glance at him.; of all the men I met in 1938, Gödel showed the coolest reaction to the Morlock. Gödel took a glass jar from the cupboard; it contained a substance that sparkled green, seeming to retain the light.

Moses, breathed, “ Plattnerite.”

“Quite so. Remarkably easy to synthesize from Carolinum — if you know the recipe, and have access to a fission pile for irradiation.” He looked mischievous. “I wanted you to see it,” he said to me; “I hoped you would recognize it. I find it delightfully easy to tweak the nose of these pompous Englishmen, with their Directorates of This and That, who could not recognize the treasure under their own noses! And now it will be your passage out of this particular Vale of Tears — yes?”

“I hope so,” I said fervently. “Oh, I hope so.”

“Then come!” he shouted. “To the CDV workshop.” And he held the Plattnerite up in the air like a beacon, and led us out of the office.

Once more we entered that labyrinth of concrete corridors. Wallis had been right: the guards had universally left their posts, and, although we came across one or two white-coated scientists or technicians hurrying through the corridors, they made no attempt to impede us, nor even to inquire where we were going.

And then — whump! — a fresh shell hit.

The electric lights died, and the corridor rocked, throwing me to the ground. My face collided with the dusty floor, and I felt warm blood start from my nose — my face must have presented a fine sight by now — and I felt a light body, I think Nebogipfel’s, tumble against my leg.

The shuddering of the foundations ceased within a few seconds. The lights did not return.

I was taken by a fit of coughing, for concrete dust was thick on the air, and I suffered a remnant of my old terror of darkness. Then I heard the fizz of a match — I caught a brief glimpse of Moses’s broad face — and I saw him apply the flame to a candle wick. He held up the candle, cupping the flame in his hands, and its yellow light spread in a pool through the corridor. He smiled at me. “I lost the knapsack, but I took the precaution of loading some of those supplies you recommended in my pockets,” he said.

Gödel got to his feet, a little stiffly; he was (I saw with gratitude) cradling the Plattnerite against his chest, and the jar was unbroken. “I think that one must have been in the grounds of the College. We must be grateful to be alive; for these walls could easily have collapsed in on us.”

So we progressed through those gloomy corridors. We were impeded twice by fallen masonry, but with a little effort we were able to clamber through. By now I was disoriented and quite lost; but Gödel — I could see him ahead of me, with the Plattnerite jar glowing under one arm — made his way quite confidently.

Within a few more minutes we reached the annex Wallis had called the CDV Development Division. Moses lifted his candle up, and the light glimmered about the big workshop. Save for the lack of lights, and one long, elaborate crack which ran diagonally across the ceiling, the workshop remained much as I remembered it. Engine parts, spare wheels and tracks, cans of oil and fuel, rags and overalls — all the paraphernalia of a workshop — lay about the floor; chains dangled from pulleys fixed to brackets on the ceiling, casting long, complex shadows. In the center of the floor I saw a half-drunk mug of tea, apparently set down with some care, with a thin layer of concrete dust scumming the liquid’s surface.

The one almost-complete Time-Car sat in the center of the floor, its bare gunmetal finish shining in the light of Moses’s candle. Moses stepped up to the vehicle and ran a hand along the rim of its boxy passenger compartment. “And this is it?”

I grinned. “The pinnacle of 1930s technology. A ’Universal Carrier,’ I think Wallis called it.”

“Well,” Moses said, “it’s scarcely an elegant design.”

“I don’t think elegance is the point,” I said: “This is a weapon of war: not of leisure, exploration or science.”

Gödel moved to the Time-Car, set the Plattnerite jar on the floor, and made to open one of the steel flasks welded to the hull of the vehicle. He wrapped his hands around the screw-cap lid and grunted with exertion, but could not budge it. He stepped back, panting. “We must prime the frame with Plattnerite,” he said. “Or—”

Moses set his candle on a shelf and cast about in the piles of tools, and emerged with a large adjustable wrench. “Here,” he said. “Let me try with this.” He closed the clamps about the cap’s rim and, with a little effort, got the cap unstuck.

Gödel took the Plattnerite jar and tipped the stuff into the flask. Moses moved around the Time-Car, unfixing the caps of the remaining flasks.

I made my way to the rear of the vehicle, where I found a door, held in place by a metal pin. I removed the pin, folded the door downwards, and clambered into the cabin. There were two wooden benches, each wide enough to take two or three people, and a single bucket seat at the front, facing a slit window. I sat in the driver’s bucket seat.

Before me was a simple steering wheel — I rested my hands on it — and a small control panel, fitted with dials, switches, levers and knobs; there were more levers close to the floor, evidently to be operated by the feet. The controls had a raw, unfinished look; the dials and switches were not labeled, and wires and mechanical transmission levers protruded from the rear of the panel.

Nebogipfel joined me in the cabin, and he stood at my shoulder; the strong, sweet smell of Morlock was almost overpowering in that enclosed space. Through the slit window I could see Gödel and Moses, filling up the flasks.

Gödel called, “You understand the principle of the CDV? This is all Wallis’s design, of course — I’ve had nothing much to do with the construction of it—”