The Time Ships by Stephen Baxter

Author:Stephen Baxter [Stephen Baxter]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9780007397549
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers

16

FALLING INTO TIME

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 grey 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.

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