Stephen Baxter - The Time Ships

I brought my face up against the slit window. “I am at the controls,” I said. “But they’re not labeled. And I can see nothing resembling a chronometric gauge.”

Gödel did not look up from his careful pouring. “I’ve a suspicion such niceties as chronometric dials aren’t yet fitted. This is an incomplete test vehicle, after all. Does that trouble you?”

“I have to admit the prospect of losing my bearings in time does not appeal to me very much,” I said, “but — no — it is scarcely important… One can always ask the natives!”

“The principle of the CDV is simple enough,” Gödel said. “The Plattnerite suffuses the sub-frames of the vehicle through a network of capillaries. It forms a kind of circuit… When you close the circuit, you will travel in time. Do you see? Most of the controls you have are to do with the petrol engine, transmission, and so forth; for the vehicle is also a functioning motor-car. But to close the time-circuit there is a blue toggle, on your dashboard. Can you recognize it?”

“I have it.”

Now Moses had fixed the last of the flask caps back into place, and he walked around the car to the door at its rear. He clambered in and placed his wrench on the floor, and he pounded his fists against the cabin’s inner walls. “A good, sturdy construction,” he said.

I said, “I think we are ready to depart.”

“But where — when — are we going to?”

“Does it matter? Away from here — that’s the only significant thing. Into the past — to try to rectify things…

“Moses, we are done with the Twentieth Century. Now we must take another leap into the dark. Our adventure is not over yet!”

His look of confusion dissolved, and I saw a reckless determination take its place; the muscles of his jaw set. “Then let’s do it, or be damned!”

Nebogipfel said: “I think we quite possibly will be.”

I called: “Professor Gödel — come aboard the car.”

“Oh, no,” he said, and he held his hands up before him. “My place is here.”

Moses pushed into the cabin behind me. “But London’s walls are collapsing around us — the German guns are only a few miles away — it’s hardly a safe place to be, Professor!”

“I do envy you, of course,” Gödel said. “To leave this wretched world with its wretched War…”

“Then come with us,” I said. “Seek that Final World of which you spoke—”

“I have a wife,” he said. His face was a pale streak in the candle-light.

“Where is she?”

“I lost her. We did not succeed in getting out together. I suppose she is in Vienna… I cannot imagine they would harm her, as punishment for my defection.”

There was a question in his voice, and I realized that this supremely logical man was looking to me, in that extreme moment, for the most illogical reassurance! “No,” I said, “I am sure she—”

But I never completed my sentence, for — without even the warning of a whistle in the air — a new shell fell, and this was the closest of all!

The last flicker of our candle showed me, in a flash-bulb slice of frozen time, how the westerly wall of the workshop burst inwards — simply that; it turned from a smooth, steady panel into a billowing cloud of figments and dust, in less than a heartbeat.

Then we were plunged into darkness.

The car rocked, and — “ Down!” Moses called — I ducked — and a hail of masonry shards, quite lethal, rattled against the shell of the Time-Car.

Nebogipfel climbed forward; I could smell his sweet stink. His soft hand grasped my shoulder. “Close the switch,” he said.

I peered through the slit-window — and into utter darkness, of course. “What of Gödel?” I cried. “Professor!”

There was no reply. I heard a creak, quite ominous and heavy, from above the car, and there was a further clatter of falling masonry fragments.

“Close the switch,” Nebogipfel said urgently. “Can you not hear? The roof is collapsing — I — we will be crushed!”

“I’ll get him,” Moses said. In pitch darkness, I heard his boots clump over the car’s panels as he made his way to the rear of the cabin. “It will be fine — I’ve more candles…” His voice faded as he reached the rear of the cabin, and I heard his feet crunch on the rubble strewn floor -

— and then there was an immense groan, like a grotesque gasp, and a rushing from above. I heard Moses cry out.

I twisted, intending to dive out of the cabin after Moses — and I felt a nip of small teeth in the soft part of my hand — Morlock teeth!

At that instant, with Death closing in around me, and plunged into primal darkness once more, the presence of the Morlock, his teeth in my flesh, the brush of his hair against my skin: it was all unbearable! I roared and drove my fist into the soft flesh of the Morlock’s face.

…But he did not cry out; even as I struck him, I felt him reach past me to the dash-board.

The darkness fell from my eyes — the roar of collapsing concrete diminished into silence — and I found myself falling once more into the gray light of time travel.

The Time-Car rocked. I grasped for the bucket seat, but I was thrown to the floor, clattering my head and shoulders against a wooden bench. My hand ached, irrelevantly, from the Morlock’s nip.

White light flooded the cabin, bursting upon us with a soundless explosion. I heard the Morlock cry out. My vision was blurred, impeded by the mats of blood which clung to my cheeks and eyebrows. Through the rear door and the various slit-windows, a uniform, pale glow seeped into the shuddering cabin; at first it flickered, but it soon settled to a washed-out gray glow. I wondered if there had been some fresh catastrophe: perhaps this workshop was being consumed by flames…

But then I recognized that the quality of light was too steady, too neutral for that. I understood that we had already gone far beyond that War-time laboratory.

The glow was, of course, daylight, rendered featureless and bland by the overlaying of day and night, too fast for the eye to follow. We had indeed fallen into time; this car — though crude and ill-balanced — was functioning correctly. I could not tell if we were falling into future or past, but the car had already taken us to a period beyond the existence of the London Dome.

I got my hands under me and tried to rise, but there was blood — mine or the Morlock’s — on my palms, and they slid out from under me. I tumbled back to the hard floor, thumping my head on the bench once more.

I fell into a huge, bone-numbing fatigue. The pain of my rattling about during the shellings, deferred by the scramble I had been through, now fell on me with a vengeance. I let my head rest against the floor’s metal ribs and closed my eyes. “What’s it all for, anyhow?” I asked, of no one in particular. Moses was dead… lost, with Professor Gödel, under tons of masonry in that destroyed lab. I had no idea whether the Morlock was alive or dead; nor did I care. Let the Time-Car carry me to future or past as it would; let it go on forever, until it smashed itself to pieces against the walls of infinity and Eternity! Let there be an end to it — I could do no more. “It’s not worth the candle,” I muttered. “Not worth the candle…”

I thought I felt soft hands on mine, the brush of hair against my face; but I protested, and — with the last of my strength — pushed the hands away.

I fell into a deep, dreamless, comfortless darkness.

I was woken by a severe buffeting.

I was rattled against the floor of the cabin. Something soft lay under my head, but that slipped away, and my skull banged against the hard corner of a bench. This renewed hail of pain brought me to my senses, and, with some reluctance, I sat up.