The Time Ships

[1] Diatryma Gigantica

I found myself on my back, peering up at the tree which had riven through our Time-Car as we fell out of diluted presentation. I heard Nebogipfel’s shallow breathing close by, but I could not see him.

Our tree, now frozen in time, soared up to join its fellows in a canopy, thick and uniform, far above me, and shoots and seedlings sprouted from the ground around its base, and through the wrecked components of the car. The heat was intense, the air moist and difficult for my straining lungs, and the world around me was filled with the coughs, trills and sighs of a jungle, all overlaid on a deep, richer rumble which made me suspect the presence of a large body of water nearby: either a river — some primeval version of the Thames — or a sea.

It was more like the Tropics than England!

Now, as I lay there and watched, an animal came clambering down the trunk towards us. It was something like a squirrel, about ten inches long, but its coat was wide and loose, and hung about its body like a cloak. It carried a fruit in its little jaws. Ten feet from the ground this creature spotted us; it cocked its sharp head, opened its mouth — dropping its fruit and hissed. I saw that its incisor teeth divided at their tips, into five-pronged combs. Then it leapt headlong from its tree trunk. It spread its arms and legs wide and its cloak of skin opened out with a snap, turning the animal into a sort of fur-covered kite. It soared away into the shadows, and was lost to my view.

“Quite a welcome,” I gasped. “It was like a flying lemur. But did you see its teeth?”

Nebogipfel — still out of my sight — replied, “It was a planetatherium. And the tree is a dipterocarps — not much changed from the species which will survive in the forests of your own day.

I pushed my hands into the mulch under me — it was quite rotten and slippery — and endeavored to turn so that I could see him. “Nebogipfel, are you injured?”

The Morlock lay on his side, his head twisted so that he was staring at the sky. “I am not hurt,” he whispered. “I suggest we begin a search for—”

But I was not listening; for I had seen just behind him a beaked head, the size of a horse’s, pushing through the foliage, and dipping down towards the Morlock’s frail body!

For an instant I was paralyzed by shock. That hooked beak opened with a sort of liquid pop, and disc-shaped eyes fixed on me with every evidence of intelligence.

Then, with a heavy swoop, the great head ducked down and clamped its beak over the Morlock’s leg. Nebogipfel screamed, and his small fingers scrabbled at the ground, and bits of leaf clung to his coat of hair.

I scrambled backwards, kicking at the leaves to get away, and finished up against a tree trunk.

Now, with a crackle of smashed branches, the beast’s body came lumbering through the greenery and into my view. It was perhaps seven feet tall, and coated with black, scaly feathers; its legs were stout, with strong, clawed feet, and covered with a sagging yellow flesh. Residual wings, disproportionately small on that immense torso, beat at the air. This bird-monster hauled its head back, and the poor Morlock was dragged across the mulchy ground.

“Nebogipfel!”

“It is a Diatryma,” he gasped. “A Diatryma Gigantica, I — oh!”

“Never mind its phylogeny,” I cried, “get away from it!”

“I am afraid — I have no way to — oh!” Again his speech disintegrated into that wordless yowl of anguish. Now the creature twisted its head from side to side. I realized that it was endeavoring to club the Morlock’s skull against a tree trunk — no doubt as a preliminary to making a feast of his pale flesh!

I needed a weapon, and could think only of Moses’s wrench. I got to my feet and scrambled into the wreckage of our Time-Car. A profusion of struts, panels and wires lay about, and the steel and polished wood of 1938 looked singularly out of place in this antique forest. I could not see the wrench! I plunged my arms, up to the elbows, into the decaying ground cover. It took long, agonizing seconds of searching; and all the while the Diatryma dragged its prize further towards the forest.

And then I had it! — my right arm emerged from the compost clasping the handle of the wrench.

With a roar, I raised, the wrench to shoulder height and plunged through the mulch. Diatryma’s bead-like eyes watched me approach — it slowed its head-shaking — but it did not loosen its grip on Nebogipfel’s leg. It had never seen men before, of course; I doubted that it understood that I could be a threat to it. I kept up my charge, and tried to ignore the awful, scaly skin around the claws of the feet, the immensity of the beak, and the whiff of decaying meat that hung about the thing.

In the manner of a cricket stroke, I swung my makeshift club — thump — into Diatryma’s head. The blow was softened by feathers and flesh, but I felt a satisfying collision with bone.

The bird opened its beak, dropping the Morlock, and squawked; it was a noise like sheet-metal tearing. That huge beak was poised above me now, and every instinct told me to run — but I knew that if I did we should both be done for. I raised my wrench back over my head, and launched it towards the crown of the Diatryma’s skull. This time the creature ducked, and I caught it only a glancing blow; so, after completing my swing, I lifted up my wrench and smote against the underside of the beak.

There was a splintering noise, and Diatryma’s head snapped back. It reeled, then it gazed at me with eyes alight with calculation. It emitted a squawk so deep-pitched it was more like a growl.

Then — quite suddenly — it shivered up its black feathers, turned, and hobbled away into the forest.

I tucked the wrench into my belt and knelt beside the Morlock. He was unconscious. His leg was a crushed, bloody mess, the hair on his back soaked by the bird-monster’s looping spittle.

“Well, my companion in time,” I whispered, “perhaps there are occasions when it is useful to have an antique savage on hand, after all!”

I found his goggles in the mulch, wiped them clear of leaves on my sleeve, and placed them over his face.

I peered into the forest’s gloom, wondering what I should do next. I may have traveled in time, and across space to the Morlocks’ great Sphere — but in my own century, I had never journeyed to any of the Tropical countries. I had only dim recollections of travelers’ tales and other popular sources to guide me now in my quest for survival.

But at least, I consoled myself, the challenges that lay ahead would be comparatively simple! I would not be forced to face my own younger self — nor, since the Time-Car was wrecked, would I have to deal with the moral and philosophical ambiguities of Multiple Histories. Rather, I must simply seek food, and shelter against the rain, and to protect us against the beasts and birds of this deep time.

I decided that finding fresh water must be my first mission; even leaving aside the needs of the Morlock, my own thirst was raging, for I had had no sustenance since before the shelling of London.

I placed the Morlock in the midst of the Time-Car’s wreckage, close to the tree trunk. I thought it as safe a place as anywhere from the predations of the monsters of this Age. I doffed my jacket and placed it under his back, to protect him from the moisture of the mulch — and anything that crawled and chewed that might live therein! Then, after some hesitation, I took the wrench from my belt and laid it over the Morlock, so that his fingers were wrapped around the weapon’s heavy shaft.

Reluctant to leave myself weaponless, I cast about in the car’s wreckage until I found a short, stout piece of iron ribbing, and I bent this sideways until it broke free from the frame. I hefted this in my hand. It did not have the satisfying solidity of my wrench, but it would be better than nothing.

I decided to make for that sound of water; it seemed to lie in a direction away from the sun. I rested my club on my shoulder and struck out through the forest.

[2] The Palaeocene Sea

It was not difficult to make my way, as the trees grew from loose, mixed stands, with plenty of level earth between; the thick, even canopy of leaves and branches excluded the light from the ground, and seemed to be suppressing growth there.

The canopy swarmed with vigorous life. Epiphytes — orchids and creepers — clung to the trees’ bark surfaces, and lianas dangled from branches. There were a variety of birds, and colonies of creatures living in the branches: monkeys, or other primates (I thought, at that first glance). There was a creature something like a pine marten, perhaps eight inches long, with flexible shoulders and joints and a rich, bushy tail, which scampered and leapt through the branches, emitting a cough-like cry. Another climbing animal was rather larger — perhaps a yard long — with grasping claws and a prehensile tail. This did not flee at my approach; rather it clasped the underside of a branch and peered down at me with unnerving calculation.

I walked on. The local fauna were ignorant of man, but had evidently developed strong preservation instincts thanks to the presence of Nebogipfel’s Diatryma, and no doubt other predators, and they would be wary of my attempts to hunt them.

As my eyes became attuned to the general forest background, I saw that camouflage and deception were everywhere. Here was a decaying leaf, for instance, clinging to the trunk of a tree — or so I thought, until, at my approach, the “leaf” sprouted insectile legs, and a cricket-like creature hopped away. Here, on an outcropping of rock, I saw what looked like a scattering of raindrops, glinting like little jewels in the canopy-filtered light. But when I bent to inspect them, I saw these were a clutch of beetles, with transparent carapaces. And here was a splash of guano on a tree trunk, a stain of white and black — and I was scarcely surprised to see it uncurl languid spider-legs.

After perhaps half a mile of this, the trees thinned; I walked through a fringe of palm trees and into the glare of sunlight, and rough, young sand scraped against my boots. I found myself at the head of a beach. Beyond a strip of white sand a body of water glittered, so wide I could not see its far side. The sun was low in the sky behind me, but quite intense; I could feel its warmth pressing on the flesh of my neck and scalp.

In the distance — some way from me, along the long, straight beach — I saw a family of Diatryma birds. The two adults preened, wrapping their necks around each other, while three fledglings waded about on their ungainly legs, splashing and hooting, or sat in the water and shivered moisture into their oily feathers. The whole ensemble, with their black plumage, clumsy frames and minuscule wings, looked comical, but I kept a careful eye on their movements while I was there, for even the smallest of the youngsters was three or four feet tall, and quite muscular.

I walked to the edge of the water; I moistened my fingers and licked them. The water was salty: sea water.

I thought the sun had dipped lower, behind the forest, and it must be descending into the west. Therefore I had walked perhaps half a mile to the east of the Time-Car’s position, so here I was — I pictured it — somewhere near the intersection of Knightsbridge and Sloane Street. And, in this Palaeocene Age, it was the fringe of a Sea! I was looking across this ocean, which appeared to cover all of London to the east of Hyde Park Corner. Perhaps, I mused, this Sea was some extension of the North Sea or Channel, which had intruded into London. If I was right, we had been quite lucky; if the level of the seas had raised itself just a little further, Nebogipfel and I should have emerged into the depths of the ocean, and not at its shore.

I took off my boots and socks, tied them to my belt by their laces, and waded a short way into the water. The liquid was cool as it worked around my toes; I was tempted to dip my face into it, but I refrained, for fear of the interaction of the salt with my wounds. I found a depression in the sand, which looked as if it would form a pool at low tide. I dug my hands into the sand here, and came up immediately with a collection of creatures: burrowing bivalves, gastropods, and what looked like oysters. There seemed to be a small variety of species, but there was evidently a high abundance of specimens in this fertile Sea.

There at the fringe of that ocean, with the gurgling water lapping about my toes and fingers, and with the sun warm on my neck, a great feeling of peace descended on me. As a child I had been taken for day-trips by my parents to Lympne and Dungeness, and I would walk to the edge of the Sea — just as I had today — and imagine I was alone in the world. But now, it was nearly true! It was remarkable to think that no ships sailed this new ocean, anywhere in the world; that there were no cities of men on the other side of the jungle behind me — indeed, the only flickers of intelligence on the planet were myself, and the poor, wounded Morlock. But it was not a forbidding prospect — not a bit of it — not after the awful darkness and chaos of 1938, which I had so recently escaped.

I straightened up. The Sea was charming, but we could not drink salt water! I took careful note of the point at which I had emerged from the jungle — I had no wish to lose Nebogipfel in that arboreal gloom — and I struck barefoot out along the water’s edge, away from the family of Diatryma.

After perhaps a mile, I came to a brook which bubbled out of the forest, and came trickling down the beach to the Sea. When I tested this, I found it to be fresh water, and it seemed quite clear. I felt a great access of relief: at least we should not die today! I dropped to my knees and plunged my head and neck in the cool, bubbling stuff. I drank down great gulps, and then took off my jacket and shirt and bathed my head and neck. Crusted blood, stained brown by exposure to the air, swirled away towards the Sea; and when I straightened up I felt much refreshed.

Now I faced the challenge of how to transport this bounty to Nebogipfel. I needed a cup, or some other container.

I spent some minutes sitting by the side of that stream, peering about in a baffled fashion. All my ingenuity seemed to have been exhausted by my latest tumble through time, and this final puzzle was one step too far for my tired brain.

In the end, I took my boots from my belt, rinsed them out as well as I could, and filled them up with stream water; then I transported them back along the beach and through the forest, to the waiting Morlock. As I bathed Nebogipfel’s battered face, and tried to rouse him to drink, I promised myself that the next day I should find something rather more suitable than an old boot to use as a dinner service.

Nebogipfel’s right leg had been mangled by the assault of the Diatryma; the knee seemed crushed, and the foot was resting at an unnatural angle. Using a sharp fragment of Time-Car hull — I had no knife — I made a rudimentary effort to shave his flaxen hair from the damaged areas. I washed off the exposed flesh as best I could: at least the surface wounds seemed to have closed, and there was no sign of infection.

During my clumsy manipulations — I am no medical man — the Morlock, still unconscious, grunted and mewled with pain, like a cat.

Having cleaned the wounds, I ran my hands along the leg, but could detect no obvious break in the shin or calf bones. As I had noted before, the main damage seemed to be in the knee and ankle areas, and I registered this with dismay, for, while I might have been able to set a broken tibia by touch, I could see no way I could treat such damage as Nebogipfel had sustained. Still, I rummaged through the wreckage of our car until I had found two straight sections of framework. I took my improvised knife to my jacket — I did not anticipate the garment being terribly useful in such a climate as this — and produced a set of bandages, which I washed off.

Then, taking my courage in my hands, I straightened out the Morlock’s leg and foot. I bound his leg tight to the splints, strapping it for support against the other, uninjured leg.

The Morlock’s screams, echoing from the trees, were terrible to hear.

Exhausted, I dined that night on oysters — raw, for I had no strength to construct a fire — and I propped myself up, close to the Morlock, with my back against a tree trunk and Moses’s wrench in my hand.

[3] How We Lived

I established a camp on the shore of my Palaeocene Sea, close to that fresh-water brook I had found. I decided we should be healthier, and safer from attack, there rather than in the gloom of the forest. I set up a sunshade for Nebogipfel, using bits of the Time-Car with items of clothing stretched over them.

I carried Nebogipfel to this site in my arms. He was as light as a child, and still only half conscious; he looked up at me, helpless, through the ruins of his goggles, and it was hard for me to remember that he was a representative of a species which had crossed space, and tamed the sun!

My next priority was fire. The available wood — fallen branches and so forth — was moist and moldy, and I took to carrying it out to the edge of the beach, to allow it to dry. With some fallen leaves to act as kindling, and a spark from a stone beaten against Time-Car metal, I was able to ignite a flame readily enough. At first I went through the ritual of restarting the fire daily, but soon discovered the doubtless ancient trick of keeping coals glowing in the fire’s pit during the day, with which it was a simple matter to re-ignite the blaze as required.

Nebogipfel’s convalescence progressed slowly. Enforced unconsciousness, to a member of a species who do not know sleep, is a grave and disturbing thing, and on his revival he sat in the shade for some days, passive and unwilling to talk. But he proved able to eat the oysters and bivalves I fetched up from the Sea, albeit with a deep reluctance. In time I was able to vary our diet with the cooked flesh of turtle — for that creature was quite abundant, all along the shore. After some practice, I succeeded in bringing down clusters of the fruits of the shoreline palm trees by hurling lumps of metal and rocks high into the branches. The nuts proved very useful: their milk and flesh varied our diet; their empty shells served as containers for a variety of purposes; and even the brown fibers which clung to the shells were capable of being woven into a crude cloth. However, I have no great facility for such fine work, and I never got much further than making myself a cap — a broad-brimmed affair, like a coolie’s.

Still, despite the munificence of the Sea and the palms, our diet was monotonous. I looked with envy at the succulent little creatures which clambered, out of my reach, through the branches of the trees above me.

I explored the shore of the Sea. Many types of creature inhabited that oceanic world. I observed wide, diamond-shaped shadows skimming the surface, which I believe were rays; and twice I saw upright fins — beating with purpose through the water, at least a foot high — which could only be the signs of huge sharks.

I spotted an undulating form, cruising through the surface of the water perhaps a half mile from land. I made out a wide, hinged jaw, inset with small, cruel teeth, and white flesh behind. This beast was perhaps five feet long, swimming by means of undulations of its sinuous body. I reported this sighting to Nebogipfel, who — retrieving a little more of that encyclopedic body of data stored in his little skull — identified it as Champsosaurus: an ancient creature, related to the crocodile, and in fact a survivor of the Age of the Dinosaurs — an Age already long vanished by this Palaeocene period.

Nebogipfel told me that in this period, the ocean-going mammals of my century whales, sea-cows and so forth — were in the midst of their evolutionary adaptation to the Sea, and lived still as large, slow-moving land animals. I kept a wary eye out for a basking land-whale, for surely I should be able to hunt down such a slow-moving animal — but I never saw one.

When I removed Nebogipfel’s splints for the first time, the broken flesh showed itself to be healing. Nebogipfel probed at his joints, however, and pronounced that they had been set incorrectly. I was not surprised, but neither of us could think of a way to improve the situation. Still, after some time, Nebogipfel was able to walk, after a fashion, by using a crutch made of a shaped branch, and he took to hobbling about our little encampment like some desiccated wizard.

His eye, however — which I had ruined with my assault in the Time-Car workshop — did not recover, and remained without sight, to my deep regret and shame.

Being a Morlock, poor Nebogipfel was far from comfortable in the intensity of the daytime sun. So he took to sleeping through the day, within the shelter I constructed, and moving about during the hours of darkness. I stuck to the daylight, and so each of us spent most of his waking hours alone. We met and talked at twilight and dawn, although I have to admit that after a few weeks of open air, heat and hard physical labor, I was pretty much spent by the time the sun fell.

The palms had broad fronds, and I determined to retrieve some of these, intent on using them to construct a better shelter. But all my efforts at hurling artifacts up into the trees were of no avail at fetching down the fronds, and I had no means of cutting down the palms themselves. So I was forced to resort to stripping down to my trousers and shinning up the trees like a monkey. Once at the crown of a tree, it was the work of moments to strip the fronds from the trunk and hurl them to the ground. I found those climbs exhausting. In the fresh sea air and sunshine, I was growing healthier and more robust; but I am not a young man, and I soon found a limit to my athletic ability.

With the retrieved fronds I constructed us a more substantial shelter, of fallen branches roofed over by plaited fronds. I made a wide hat of fronds for Nebogipfel. When he sat in the shade with this affair tied under his chin, and otherwise naked, he looked absurd.

As for me, I have always been pale of complexion, and after the first few days I suffered greatly from my exposure to the sun, and I learned caution. The skin peeled from my back, arms and nose. I grew a thick beard to protect my face, but my lips blistered in a most unsightly fashion — and the worst of it was the intense burning of the bald patch at my crown. I took to bathing my burns, and to wearing my hat and what remained of my shirt at all times.

One day, after perhaps a month of this, while I was shaving (using bits of Time-Car as blade and mirror), I realized, suddenly, how much I had changed. My teeth and eyes shone, brilliant white, from a mahogany-brown face, my stomach was as flat as it had been during my College days, and I walked about in a palm frond hat, cut-off trousers, and barefoot, as naturally as if I had been born to it.

I turned to Nebogipfel. “Look at me! My friends would barely recognize me — I’m becoming an aboriginal.”

His chinless face showed no expression. “You are an aboriginal. This is England, remember?”

Nebogipfel insisted that we retrieve the components of our smashed Time-Car from the forest. I could see the logic of this, for I knew that in the days to come we should need every scrap of raw materials, particularly metals. So we salvaged the car, and assembled the remnants in a pit in the sand. When the more urgent of our survival needs were satisfied, Nebogipfel took to spending a great deal of time with this wreckage. I did not inquire too closely at first, supposing that he was constructing some addition to our shelter, or perhaps a hunting weapon.

One morning, however, after he had fallen asleep, I studied his project. He had reconstructed the frame of the Time-Car; he had laid out the shattered floor section, and built up a cage of rods around it, tied together with bits of wire salvaged from the steering column. He had even found that blue toggle switch which had closed the Plattnerite circuit.

When he next woke, I confronted him. “You’re trying to build a new Time Machine, aren’t you?”

He dug his small teeth into palm-nut flesh. “No. I am rebuilding one.”

“Your intention is obvious. You have remade the frame which bore the essential Plattnerite circuit.”

“As you say, that is obvious.”

“But it’s futile, man!” I looked down at my callused and bleeding hands, and found myself resenting this diversion of his effort, while I was struggling to keep us alive. “We don’t have any Plattnerite. The stuff we arrived with is exhausted, and scattered about in the jungle anyway; and we’ve no possible means of manufacturing any more.”

“If we build a Time Machine,” he said, “we may not be able to escape from this Age. But if we do not build one, we certainly will not be able to escape.”

I growled. “Nebogipfel, I think you should face facts. We are stranded, here in deep time. We will never find Plattnerite here, as it is not a naturally occurring substance. We can’t make it, and no one will bring a sample to us, for no one has the faintest inkling that we are within ten million years of this era!”

For reply, he licked at the succulent meat of his palm-nut.

“Pah!” Frustrated and angry, I stalked about the shelter. “You’d be better advised to spend your ingenuity and effort in making me a gun, so I can bag some of those monkeys.”

“They are not monkeys,” he said. “The most common species are miacis and chriacus—”

“Well — whatever they are — oh!”

Infuriated, I stalked away.

My arguments made no difference, of course, and Nebogipfel continued with his patient rebuilding. But he did assist me in many ways in my quest to keep us alive, and after a time I grew to accept the presence of the rudimentary machine, glittering and complicated and exquisitely useless, there on that Palaeocene beach.

We all need hope, to give purpose and structure to our lives, I decided — and that machine, as flightless as great Diatryma, represented Nebogipfel’s last hope.

[4] Illness and Recuperation

I fell ill.

I was unable to rise from the crude pallet of fronds and dried leaves I had made for myself. Nebogipfel was forced to nurse me, which duty he performed without much in the way of bedside manner, but with patience and persistence.

Once, in the dark pit of night, I came to a state of half-consciousness with the Morlock’s soft fingers probing at my face and neck. I imagined I was once more entrapped in the pedestal of that White Sphinx, with the Morlocks crowding around to destroy me. I cried out, and Nebogipfel scurried backwards; but not before I was able to lift my fist and strike him a blow in the chest. Enfeebled as I was, I retained sufficient strength to knock the Morlock off his feet.

That done, my energy was spent, and I lapsed into unconsciousness.

When I next cane to wakefulness, there was Nebogipfel at my side again, patiently trying to induce me to take a mouthful of shellfish chowder.

At length my senses returned, and I found myself propped up on my pallet. I was alone in our little hut. The sun was low, but the heat of the day still lay on me. Nebogipfel had left a nutshell of water close to my pallet; I drank this.

The sunlight seeped away, and the warm, Tropical darkness of evening settled over our lean-to. The sunset was tall and magnificent: this was because of a surplus of ash in the atmosphere, Nebogipfel had told me, deposited by volcanoes to the west of Scotland. This vulcanism would one day lead to the formation of the Atlantic Ocean; lava was flowing as far as the Arctic, Scotland and Ireland, and the warm climatic zone in which we found ourselves stretched as far north as Greenland.

Britain was already an island, in this Palaeocene, but compared to its configuration in the nineteenth century, its north-west corner was tipped up to a greater altitude. The Irish Sea had yet to form, so that Britain and Ireland formed a single landmass; but the south-east of England was immersed beneath the Sea whose margins we inhabited. My Palaeocene Sea was an extension of the North Sea; if we could have made a boat, we could have traveled across the English Channel and sailed into the heart of France through the Aquitaine Basin, a tongue of water which connected in turn to the Tethys Sea — a great ocean swamping the Mediterranean countries.

With the coming of night, the Morlock emerged from a deeper shade in the forest. He stretched working his muscles more as a cat will than a human — and he massaged his injured leg. Then he spent some minutes on finger-combing the hair on his face, chest and back.

At length he came hobbling over to me; the purple light of the sunset glinted from his starred and cracked goggles. He fetched me more water, and with my mouth moistened, I whispered, “How long?”

“Three days.”

I had to suppress a shudder at the sound of his queer, liquid voice. You might have thought I would be used to Morlocks by now; but after three days spent lying helpless, it came as something of a shock to be reminded that I was isolated in this hostile world, save only for this alien of the far future!

Nebogipfel made me some chowder. By the time I had eaten, the sunset was gone, and the only illumination came from a sliver of young moon which hung low in the sky. Nebogipfel had discarded his goggles, and I could see his huge, gray-red eye, hovering like the moon’s translucent shadow in the dark of the hut.

“What I want to know is,” I said, “what made me ill?”

“I am not certain.”

“Not certain?” I was surprised at this unusual admission of limitation, for Nebogipfel’s breadth and depth of knowledge were extraordinary. I pictured the mind of a nineteenth-century man as something analogous to my old workshop: full of information, but stored in a quite haphazard way, with open books and scraps of notes and sketches scattered over every flat surface. By comparison with this jumble, the mind of a Morlock — thanks to the advanced educational techniques of the Year 657,208 — was ordered like the contents of a fine encyclopedia, with the books of experience and learning indexed and shelved. All this raised the practical level of intelligence and knowledge to heights undreamed of by men of my time. “Still,” he said, “we should not be surprised at the fact of illness. I am, in fact, surprised you have not succumbed earlier.”

“What do you mean?”

He turned to me. “That you are a man out of your time.”

In a flash, I understood what he meant.

The germs of disease have taken toll of Humanity since the beginning — indeed, were cutting down the prehuman ancestors of man even in this ancient Age. But because of this grim winnowing of our kind we have developed resisting power. Our bodies struggle against all germs, and are altogether immune to some.

I pictured all those human generations which still lay ahead of this deep Age, those firefly human souls which would flicker in the darkness like sparks, before being extinguished forever! But those tiny struggles would not be in vain, for — by this toll of a billion deaths — man would buy his birthright of the earth.

It was different for the Morlock. By Nebogipfel’s century, there was little left of the archetypal human form. Everything in the Morlock’s body — bones, flesh, lungs, liver — had been adjusted by machinery to permit, Nebogipfel said, an ideal balance between longevity and richness of life. Nebogipfel could be wounded, as I had seen, but — according to him — his body was no more likely to catch a germ infection than was a suit of armor. And indeed, I had detected no signs of infection about his injured leg, or his eye. The original world of Eloi and Morlock had devised a different solution, I remembered, for I had seen no disease or infection there either, and little decay, and I had surmised that that was a world cleansed of harmful bacteria.

I, however, had no such protection.

After my first brush with illness, Nebogipfel turned his attention to more subtle aspects of our survival needs. He sent me foraging for supplements for our diet, including nuts, tubers, fruit, and edible fungi, all of which were added to our staples of sea food and the flesh of those animals and birds stupid enough to allow themselves to be entrapped by my clumsy hunting with slings and stones. Nebogipfel also attempted to derive simple medicines: poultices, herbal teas, and the like.

My illness filled me with a deep and abiding gloom, for this was a danger of time travel which had not occurred to me before. I shivered, and wrapped my arms around my still feeble body. My strength and intelligence could beat off Diatryma, and other massive natives of the Palaeocene, but they would offer me no defense against the predations of the invisible monsters borne by air, water and flesh.

[5] The Storm

Perhaps if I had had some experience of Tropical conditions before our stranding in the Palaeocene, I might have been prepared for the Storm.

The day had been heavy and more humid than usual, and the air near the Sea had that odd, light-impregnated quality one associates with a forthcoming change of weather. That evening, exhausted by my labors and uncomfortable, I was glad to fall into my pallet; at first, though, the heat was so great that sleep was slow to come.

I was woken by a slow patter of raindrops falling onto our loose roof of palm fronds. I could hear the rain coming down into the forest behind us — bullets of water hammering against the leaves — and pounding into the sand of the beach. I could not hear, or see, Nebogipfel; it was the darkest part of the night.

And then the Storm fell on us.

It was as if some lid had been opened up in the sky; gallons of rainwater came hurtling down, pushing in our palm-frond roof in a moment. The wreckage of our flimsy hut clattered down around me, and I was drenched to the skin; I was still on my back, and lay staring up into the rod-like paths of the raindrops, which receded into a cloud-obscured heaven.

I struggled to get up, but soaked roof-fronds impeded me, and my pallet turned into a muddy swamp. Soon I was coated in mud and filth, and with the water hammering at my scalp and trickling into my eyes, I was all but blind.

By the time I reached my feet, I was dismayed at the alacrity with which our shelter was collapsing; all its struts had fallen, or were leaning crazily. I could make out the boxy structure of Nebogipfel’s reconstructed time-device, but it was already all but buried by bits of the hut.

I cast about in that sodden, slippery wreckage, dragging away fronds and bits of cloth. I found Nebogipfel: he looked like an oversize rat, with his hair plastered against his body and his knees tucked up against his chest. He had lost his goggles and was quivering, quite helpless. I was relieved to find him so easily; for the night was his normal time of operation, and he might have been anywhere within a mile or so of the hut.

I bent to scoop him up, but he turned to face me, his ruined eye a pit of darkness. “The Time-Car! We must save the Time-Car!” His liquid voice was almost inaudible against the Storm. I reached for him again, but, feebly, he struggled away from me.

With the raindrops hammering against my scalp, I growled in protest; but, gamely, I waded through the litter of our home to Nebogipfel’s device. I hauled great handfuls of fronds from it, but found the framework embedded in a deepening mud, all tangled up with clothes and cups and the remnants of our attempts at furniture. I took hold of the frame’s uprights and tried to haul the whole thing free of the mud by main force, but succeeded only in bending the shape of the frame, and then in snapping open its corners.

I straightened up and looked about. The hut was quite demolished now. I saw how the water was beginning to run out of the forest, over the sand and down to the ocean. Even our friendly fresh-water stream was becoming broader and more angry, and itself threatened to burst its shallow banks and overrun us.

I abandoned the Time-Car and stalked over to Nebogipfel. “It’s all up,” I shouted to him. “We have to get away from here.”

“But the time-device—”

“We have to chuck it! Can’t you see? We’re going to get washed into the Sea, at this rate!”

He strove to rise to his feet, with hanks of his hair dangling like bits of sodden cloth. I made to grab him, and he tried to wriggle out of my grasp; if he had been healthy, perhaps, he could have evaded me, but his damaged leg impeded him, and I caught him.

“I can’t save it!” I shouted into his face. “We’ll be lucky to get out of this lot with our blessed lives!”

And with that I threw him over my shoulder, and stalked out of our hut and towards the forest. Instantly I found myself wading through inches of cold, muddy water. I slipped more than once on the squirming sand, but I kept one arm wrapped around the wriggling body of the Morlock.

I reached the fringe of the forest. Under the shelter of the canopy, the pressure of the rain was lessened. It was still pitch black, and I was forced to stumble forward into darkness, tripping on roots and colliding with boles, and the ground under me was sodden and treacherous. Nebogipfel gave up his struggling and lay passive over my shoulder.

At last I reached a tree I thought I remembered: thick and old, and with low side-branches that spread out from the trunk at a little above head-height. I hooked the Morlock over a branch, where he hung like a soaked-through coat. Then — with some effort, for I am long past my climbing days — I hauled myself off the ground and got myself sat on a branch with my back against the trunk.

And there we stayed as the Storm played itself out. I kept one hand resting on the Morlock’s back, to ensure he did not fall or strive to return to the hut; and I was forced to endure a sheet of water which ran down the trunk of the tree and over my back and shoulders.

As the dawn approached, it picked out an eerie beauty in that forest. Peering up into the canopy I could make out how the rain trickled across the engineered forms of the leaves, and was channeled down the trunks to the ground; I am not much of a botanist but now I saw that the forest was like a great machine designed to survive the predations of such a Storm as this, far better than man’s crude constructions.

As the light increased I tore a strip from the remains of my trousers — I was without a shirt — and tied it over Nebogipfel’s face, to protect his naked eyes. He did not stir.

The rains died at midday, and I judged it safe to descend. I lifted Nebogipfel to the ground, and he could walk, but I was forced to lead him by the hand, for he was blind without his goggles.

The day beyond the jungle was bright and fresh; there was a pleasant breeze off the Sea, and light clouds scudded across an almost English sky. It was as if the world was remade, and there was nothing left of yesterday’s oppressiveness.

I approached the remains of the hut with some reluctance. I saw scraps — bits of smashed-up structure, the odd nut-shell cup, and so forth — all half-buried in the damp sand. In the midst of it all was a baby Diatryma, pecking with its great clumsy beak at the rubble. I shouted, “Hoi!” — and ran forward, clapping my hands over my head. The bird-beast ran off, the loose yellow flesh of its legs wobbling.

I poked through the debris. Most of our possessions were lost — washed away. The shelter had been a mean thing, and our few belongings mere shards of improvisation and repair; but it had been our home — and I felt a shocking sense of violation.

“What of the device?” Nebogipfel asked me, turning his blinded face this way and that. “The Time-Car — what of it?”

After some digging about, I found a few struts and tubes and plates, bits of battered gun-metal now even more twisted and damaged than before; but the bulk of the car had been swept into the Sea. Nebogipfel fingered the fragments, his eyes closed. “Well,” he said, “well, this will have to do.”

And he sat down on the sand and cast about blindly for bits of cloth and vine, and he began the patient construction of his time-device once more.

[6] Heart and Body

We never managed to retrieve Nebogipfel’s goggles after the Storm, and this proved to be a great handicap to him. But he did not complain. As before, he restricted himself to the shade during the hours of daylight, and if he was forced to emerge into the light of twilight or dawn he would wear his wide-brimmed hat and, over his eyes, a slitted mask of animal skin which I made for him, to afford him some sight.

The Storm was a mental as well as a physical shock to me, for I had begun to feel as if I had protected myself against such calamities as this world might throw at me. I decided that our lives must be put on a more secure footing. After some thought I decided that a hut of some form, solidly founded, and placed on stilts — that is, above the run-off from future monsoons — was the thing to aim for. But I could not rely on fallen branches for my construction material, for these, by their nature, were often irregular of form and sometimes rotten. I needed tree trunks — and for that I would need an ax.

So I spent some time as an amateur geologist, hunting about the countryside for suitable rock formations. At last I found, in a layer of gravelly debris in the area of Hampstead Heath, some dark, rounded flints, together with cherts. I thought this debris must have been washed here by some vanished river.

I carried these treasures back to our encampment with as much care as if they were made of gold — or more; for that weight of gold would not have been of any value to me.

I took to bashing up the flint on open spaces of the beach. It took a good deal of experimentation, and a considerable wasting of flint, before I found ways to crack open the nodules in sympathy with the planes of the stone, to form extensive and sharp edges. My hands felt clumsy and inexpert. I had marveled before at the fine arrow-heads and ax blades which are displayed in glass cases in our museums, but it was only when I tried to construct such devices for myself that I understood what a deep level of skill and engineering intuition our forefathers had possessed in the Age of Polished Stone.

At last I constructed a blade with which I was satisfied. I fixed it to a short length of split wood, binding it in with strips of animal-skin, and I set off a high mood for the forest.

I returned not fifteen minutes later with the fragments of my ax-head in my hand; for it had shattered on the second blow, with barely a cut made in the tree’s bark!

However, with a little more experimentation I got it correct, and soon I was chopping my way through a forest of young, straight trees.

For our permanent encampment, we would stay on our beach, but I ensured we were well above the tidal line, and away from the possibilities of flood from our stream. It took me some time to dig pits for the founds, deep enough to satisfy me; but at last I had erected a square framework of upright posts, securely fixed, and with a platform of thin logs attached at perhaps a yard above the ground. This floor was far from even, and I planned to acquire the skills of better plank-making one day; but when I laid down on it at night the floor felt secure and solid, and I had a measure of security that we were raised above the various perils of the ground. I almost wished another Storm down on our heads, so that I could test out my new design!

Nebogipfel hauled his fragments of Time-Car up onto the floor by a little ladder I made for him, and continued his dogged reconstruction there.

One day, as I made my way through the forest, I became aware of a pair of bright eyes studying me from a law branch.

I slowed, taking care not to make any jerky movements, and slipped my bow from my back.

The little creature was perhaps four inches long, and rather like a miniature Lemur. Its tail and face were rodent-like, with gnawing incisors quite clear at the front; it had clawed feet and suspicious eyes. It was either so intelligent that it thought it should fool me into ignoring it by its immobility — or else so stupid that it did not recognize any danger from me.

It was the work of a moment to fit the string of the bow into the notch of an arrow, and fire it off.

Now my hunting and trapping skills had improved with practice, and my slings and traps had become moderately successful; but my bows and arrows much less so. The construction of my arrows was sound enough, but I could never find wood of the right flexibility for the bows. And generally, by the time my clumsy fingers had loaded up the bow, most of my targets, bemused by my antics, were well able to scamper for cover.

Not so this little fellow! He watched with no more than dim curiosity as my skewed arrow limped through the air towards him. For once my aim was true, and the flint head pinned his little body to the tree trunk.

I returned to Nebogipfel, proud of my prize, for mammals were useful to us: not just as sources of meat, but for their fur, teeth, fat and bones. Nebogipfel studied the little rodent-like corpse through his slit-mask.

“Perhaps I shall hunt down more of these,” I said. “The little creature really didn’t seem to understand what danger he was in, right until the end. Poor beast!”

“Do you know what this is?”

“Tell me.”

“I believe it is Purgatorius.”

“And the significance—?”

“It is a primate: the earliest known.” He let himself sound amused.

I swore. “I thought I was done with all this. But even in the Palaeocene, one cannot avoid meeting one’s relatives!” I studied the tiny corpse. “So here is the ancestor of monkey, and man, and Morlock! The insignificant little acorn from which will grow an oak which will smother more worlds than this earth… I wonder how many men, and nations, and species, would have sprung from the loins of this modest little fellow, had I not killed him. Once again, perhaps I have destroyed my own past!”

Nebogipfel said, “We cannot help but interact with History, you and I. With every breath we take, every tree you cut down, every animal we kill, we create a new world in the Multiplicity of Worlds. That is all. It is unavoidable.”

After that, I could not bring myself to touch the flesh of the poor little creature. I took it into the forest and buried it.

One day I set myself to follow our little fresh-water stream westwards towards its source, in the interior of the country.

I set off at dawn. Away from the coast, the tang of salt and ozone faded, to be replaced by the hot, moist scents of the dipterocarps forest, and the overpowering perfume of the crowding flowers. The going was difficult, with heavy growth underfoot. It became much more humid, and my cap of nut-fiber was soon soaked through; the sounds around me, the rustling of vegetation and the endless trills and coughs of the forest, took on a heavier tone in the thickening air.

By mid-morning I had traveled two or three miles, arriving somewhere in Brentford. Here I found a wide, shallow lake, from which flowed our stream and a number of others, and the lake was fed in turn by a series of minor brooks and rivers. The trees grew close around this secluded body of water, and climbing plants clung to their trunks and lower branches, including some I recognized as bottle gourds and loofahs. The water was warm and brackish, and I was wary of drinking it, but the lagoon teemed with life. Its surface was covered by groupings of giant lilies, shaped like upturned bottle-tops and perhaps six feet wide, which reminded me of plants I had once seen in Turner’s Waterlily House in the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. (It was ironic, I thought, that the eventual site of Kew itself was less than a mile from where I stood!) The lilies’ saucers looked strong and buoyant enough for me to stand on, but I did not put this hypothesis to the test.

It was the work of a few minutes to improvise a fishing rod, made from the long, straight trunk of a sapling. I fixed a line to this, and I baited a hook of Time-Car metal with grubs.

I was rewarded within a few minutes by brisk tugs of the line. I grinned to imagine the envy of some of my angling friends — dear old Filby, for instance — at my discovery of this un-fished oasis.

I built a fire and ate well that night of broiled fish and tubers.

A little before dawn I was woken by a strange hooting. I sat up and looked about me. My fire had more or less died. The sun was not yet up; the sky had that unearthly tinge of steel blue which prefigures a new day. There was no wind, and not a leaf stirred; a heavy mist lay immobile on the surface of the water.

Then I made out a group of birds, a hundred yards from me around the rim of the lake. Their feathers were dun brown and each had legs as long as a flamingo’s. They stepped about the waters of the lake’s margin, or stood poised on one leg like exquisite sculptures. They had heads shaped like those of modern ducks, and they would dip those familiar-looking beaks through the shimmering surface and sweep through the water, evidently filtering for food.

The mist lifted a little, and more of the lake was revealed; I saw now that there was a great flock of these creatures (which Nebogipfel later identified as Presbyornis) — thousands of them, in a great, open colony. They moved like ghosts through that vaporous haze.

I told myself that this location was nowhere more exotic than the junction of Gunnersbury Avenue with the Chiswick High Road — but a vision more unlike England it is hard to conjure!

As the days wore on in that sultry, vital landscape, my memories of the England of 1891 seemed more and more remote and irrelevant. I found the greatest of satisfactions in my building, hunting and gathering; and the bathing warmth of the sun and the Sea’s freshness were combining to give me a sense of health, strength and immediacy of sensory experience lost since childhood. I had done with Thinking, I decided; there were but two conscious Minds in all this elaborate panoply of Palaeocene life, and I could not see that mine would do me much good from now on, save for keeping me alive a little longer.

It was time for the Heart, and the Body, to have their say. And the more the days wore away, the more I gathered a sense of the greatness of the world, the immensity of time — and the littleness of myself and my concerns in the face of that great Multiple panorama of History. I was no longer important, even to myself; and that realization was like a liberation of the soul.

After a time, even the death of Moses ceased to clamor at my thoughts.

[7] Pristichampus

Nebogipfel’s screaming woke me with a start. A Morlock’s voice, raised, is a kind of gurgle: queer, but quite chilling to hear.

I sat up in the cool darkness; and for an instant I imagined I was back in my bed in my house on the Petersham Road, but the scents and textures of the Palaeocene night came crowding in on me.

I scrambled out of my pallet and jumped down, off the floor of the shelter, and to the sand. It had been a moonless night; and the last stars were fading from the sky as the sun approached. The sea rolled, placid, and the wall of forest was black and still.

In the midst of this cool, blue-soaked tranquillity, the Morlock came limping towards me along the beach. He had lost his crutch, and, it seemed to me, he could barely stay upright, let alone run. His hair was ragged and flying, and he had lost his face-mask; even as he ran I could see how he was forced to raise his hands to cover his huge, sensitive eyes.

And behind him, chasing -

It was perhaps ten feet in length, in general layout something like a crocodile; but its legs were long and supple, giving it a raised, horse-like gait, quite unlike the squat motion of the crocodiles of my time — this beast was evidently adapted to running and chasing. Its slit eyes were fixed on the Morlock, and when it opened its mouth I saw rows of saw-edge teeth.

This apparition was bare yards from Nebogipfel!

I screamed and ran at the little tableau, waving my arms, but even as I did so I knew it was all up for Nebogipfel. I grieved for the lost Morlock, but — I am ashamed to record it — my first thought was for myself, for with his death I should be left alone, here in the mindless Palaeocene…

And it was at that moment, with a startling clarity, that a rifle-shot rang out from the margin of the forest.

The first bullet missed the beast, I think; but it was enough to make that great head turn, and to slow the pumping of those mighty thighs.

The Morlock fell, now, and went sprawling in the sand; but he pushed himself up on his elbows and squirmed onwards, on his belly.

There was a second shot, and a third. The crocodile flinched as the bullets pounded into its body. It faced the forest with defiance, opened his saw-toothed mouth and emitted a roar which echoed like thunder from the trees. Then it set off on its long, determined legs towards the source of these unexpected stings.

A man — short, compact, wearing a drab uniform — emerged from the forest’s margin. He raised the rifle again, sighted along it at the crocodile, and held his nerve as the beast approached.

I reached Nebogipfel now and hauled him to his feet; he was shivering. We stood on the sand together, and waited for the drama to play itself out.

The crocodile could have been no more than ten yards away from the man when the rifle spoke again. The crocodile stumbled — I could see blood streaming from its mouth but it raised itself up with barely a sliver of its momentum lost. The rifle shouted, and bullet after bullet plunged into that immense carcass.

At last, less than ten feet from the man, the thing tumbled, its great jaws snapping at the air; and the man — as cool as you like! — stepped neatly aside to let it fall.

I found Nebogipfel’s mask for him, and the Morlock and I followed the trail of the crocodile up the slope of the beach. Its claws had scuffed up the sand, and the last few pace-marks were strewn with saliva, mucus and steaming blood. Close to, the crocodile-thing was even more intimidating than from a distance; the eyes and jaw were open and staring, and as the last echoes of life seeped from the monster the huge muscles of its rear legs twitched, and hoofed feet scuffed at the sand.

The Morlock studied the hot carcass. “Pristichampus,” he said in his low gurgle.

Our savior stood with his foot on the twitching corpse of the beast. He was aged perhaps twenty-five: he was clean jawed and with a straightforward gaze. Despite his brush with death, he looked quite relaxed; he favored us with an engaging, gap-toothed grin. His uniform consisted of brown trousers, heavy boots, and a brown khaki jacket; a blue beret perched jauntily on his head. This visitor could have come from any Age, or any variant of History, I supposed; but it did not surprise me at all when this young man said, in straightforward, neutrally-accented English, “Damn ugly thing, isn’t it? Tough fellow, though — did you see I had to plug him in the mouth before he fell? And even then he kept on coming. Got to give him credit — he was game enough!”

Before his relaxed, Officer-class manners, I felt clumsy, rather oafish in my skins and beard. I extended my hand. “Sir, I think I owe you the life of my companion.”

He took the hand and shook it. “Think nothing of it.” His grin widened. “Mr. — , I presume,” he said, naming me. “Do you know, I’ve always wanted to say that!”

“And you are?”

“Oh, I’m sorry. The name’s Gibson. Wing Commander Guy Gibson. And I’m delighted to have found you.”

[8] The Encampment

It transpired that Gibson was not alone. He shouldered his rifle, turned and made a beckoning gesture towards the shadows of the jungle.

Two soldiers emerged from that gloom. Sweat had soaked through the shirts of these laden fellows, and, as they stepped into the growing light of the day, they seemed altogether more suspicious of us, and generally uncomfortable, than had the Wing Commander. These two were Indians, I thought — sepoys, soldiers of the Empire — their eyes glittered black and fierce, and each had a turban and clipped beard. They wore khaki drill shirts and shorts; one of them carried a heavy mechanical gun at his back, and bore two heavy leather pouches, evidently holding ammunition for this weapon. Their heavy, silvery epaulets glittered in the Palaeocene sunlight; they scowled at the corpse of Pristichampus with undisguised ferocity.

Gibson told us that he and these two fellows had been involved in a scouting expedition; they had traveled perhaps a mile from a main base, camp, which was situated inland from the Sea. (It struck me as odd that Gibson did not introduce the two soldiers by name. This little incivility — brought on by an unspoken recognition, by Gibson, of differences of rank — seemed to me altogether absurd, there on that isolated beach in the Palaeocene, with only a handful of humans anywhere in the world!)

I thanked Gibson again for rescuing the Morlock, and invited him to join us for some breakfast at our shelter. “It’s just along the beach,” I said, pointing; and Gibson peaked his hand over his eyes to see.

“Well, that looks — ah — as if it’s going to be a jolly solid construction.”

“Solid? I should say so,” I replied, and began a long and rather rambling discourse on the details of our incomplete shelter, of which I felt inordinately proud, and of how we had survived in the Palaeocene.

Guy Gibson folded his hands behind his back and listened, with a set, polite expression on his face. The sepoys watched me, puzzled and suspicious, their hands never far from their weapons.

After some minutes of this, I became aware, rather belatedly, of Gibson’s detachment. I let my prattle slow to a halt.

Gibson glanced around brightly at the beach. “I think you’ve done remarkably well here. Remarkably. I should have thought that a few weeks of this Robinson Crusoe stuff would pretty much have driven me batty with loneliness. I mean, opening time at the pub won’t be for another fifty million years!”

I smiled at this joke — which I failed to follow — and I felt rather embarrassed at my exaggerated pride at such mean achievements, before this vision of dapper competence.

“But look here,” Gibson went on gently, “don’t you think you’d be better off coming back with us to the Expeditionary Force? We have traveled here to find you, after all. And we’ve some decent provisions there — and modern tools, and so forth.” He glanced at Nebogipfel, and added, a little more dubiously, “And the doc might be able to do something for this poor chap as well. Is there anything you need here? We can always come back later.”

Of course there was not — I had no need to return through those few hundred yards along the beach ever again! — but I knew that, with the arrival of Gibson and his people, my brief idyll was done. I looked into Gibson’s frank, practical face, and knew that I could never find the words to express such a sense of loss to him.

With the sepoys leading the way, and with the Morlock supporting himself against my arm, we set off into the interior of the jungle.

Away from the coast, the air was hot and clammy. We moved in single file, with the sepoys at front and back, and Gibson, the Morlock, and myself sandwiched between; I carried the frail Morlock in my arms for much of the journey. The two sepoys kept up their suspicious, hooded glares at us, although after a time they allowed their hands to stray from their webbing holsters. They said not a single word to Nebogipfel or me, in the whole time we traveled together.

Gibson’s expedition had come from 1944 — six years after our own departure, during the German assault on the London Dome.

“And the War is still continuing?”

“I’m afraid so,” he said, sounding grim. “Of course we responded for that brutal attack on London. Paid them back in spades.”

“You were involved in such actions yourself?”

As he walked, he glanced down — apparently involuntarily — at the service ribbons sewn to the chest of his tunic. I did not recognize these at the time — I am no military buff, and in any case some of these awards hadn’t even been devised in my day — but I learned later that they constituted the Distinguished Service Order, and the Distinguished Flying Cross and Bar: high awards indeed, especially for one so young. Gibson said without drama, “I saw a bit of action, yes. A good few sorties. Pretty lucky to be here to talk about it — plenty of good chaps who aren’t.”

“And these sorties were effective?”

“I’ll say. We broke open their Domes for them, without much of a delay after they did us the same favor!”

“And the cities underneath?”

He eyed me. “What do you think? Without its Dome, a city is pretty much defenseless against attack from the air. Oh, you can throw up a barrage from your eighty-eights—”

“ ’Eighty-eights’?”

“The Germans have an eight-point-eight centimeter Flat 36 anti-aircraft gun — pretty useful as a field gun and anti ’Naut, as well as its main purpose: good bit of design… Anyway, if your bomber pilot can get in under such flak he can pretty much dump what he likes into the guts of an un-Domed city.”

“And the results — after six more years of all this?”

He shrugged. “There’s not much in the way of cities left, I suppose. Not in Europe, anyway.”

We reached the vicinity of South Hampstead, I estimated. Here, we broke through a line of trees into a clearing. This was a circular space perhaps a quarter-mile across, but it was not natural: the tree-stumps at its edge showed how the forest had been blasted back, or cut away. Even as we approached, I could see squads of bare-chested infantrymen hacking their way further into the undergrowth with saws and machetes, extending the space. The earth in the clearing was stripped of undergrowth and hardened by several layers of palm fronds, all stamped down into the mud.

At the heart of this clearing sat four of the great Juggernaut machines which I had encountered before, in 1873 and 1938. These beasts sat at four sides of a square a hundred feet across, immobile, their ports gaping like the mouths of thirsty animals; their anti-mine flails hung limp and useless from the drums held out before them, and the mottled green and black coloration of their metal hides was encrusted with guano and fallen leaves. There were a series of other vehicles and items of material scattered around the encampment, including light armored cars, and small artillery pieces mounted on thick-wheeled trolleys.

This, Gibson gave me to understand, would be the site of a sort of graving-yard for time-traveling Juggernauts, in 1944.

Soldiers worked everywhere, but when I walked into the clearing beside Gibson, and with the limping Nebogipfel leaning against me, to a man the troopers ceased their laboring and stared at us with undiluted curiosity.

We reached the courtyard enclosed by the four ’Nauts. At the center of this square there was a white-painted flag-pole; and from this a Union Flag dangled, gaudy, limp and incongruous. A series of tents had been set up in this yard; Gibson invited us to sit on canvas stools beside the grandest of these. A soldier — thin, pale and evidently uncomfortable in the heat — emerged from one of the ’Nauts. I took this fellow to be Gibson’s batman, for the Wing Commander ordered him to bring us some refreshment.

The work of the camp proceeded all around us as we sat there; it was a hive of activity, as military sites always seem endlessly to be. Most of the soldiers wore a full kit of a jungle-green twill shirt and trousers with anklets; on their heads they had soft felt hats with puggrees of light khaki, or else bush hats of (Gibson said) an Australian design. They wore their divisional insignia sewn into their shirts or hats, and most of them carried weaponry: leather bandoliers for small-arms ammunition, web pouches, and the like. They all bore the heavy epaulets I remembered from 1938. In the heat and moisture, most of these troopers were fairly disheveled.

I saw one chap in a suit of pure white which enclosed him head to foot; he wore thick gloves, and a soft helmet which enclosed his head, with an inset visor through which he peered. He worked at the opened side-panels of one of the Juggernauts. The poor fellow must have been melting of the heat in such an enclosure, I surmised; Gibson explained that the suit was of asbestos, to protect him from engine fires.

Not all the soldiers were men — I should think two-fifths of the hundred or so personnel were female — and many of the soldiers bore wounds of one sort or another: burn scars and the like, and even, here and there, prosthetic sections of limb. I realized that the dreadful attrition of the youth of Europe had continued since 1938, necessitating the call-up of those wounded already, and more of the young women.

Gibson took off his heavy boots and massaged his cramped feet with a rueful grin at me. Nebogipfel sipped from a glass of water, while the batman provided Gibson and me with a cup of traditional English breakfast tea — tea, there in the Palaeocene!

“You have made quite a little colony,” I said to Gibson.

“I suppose so. It’s just the drill, you know.” He put down his boots and sipped his tea. “Of course we’re a jumble of Services here — I expect you noticed.”

“No,” I said frankly.

“Well, most of the chaps are Army, of course.” He pointed to a slim young trooper who wore a khaki tag at the shoulders of his Tropical shirt. “But a few of us, like him and myself, are RAF.

“RAF?”

“Royal Air Force. The men in gray suits have finally worked out that we’re the best chaps to drive these great iron brutes, you see.” A trooper of the Army passed by, goggling at Nebogipfel, and Gibson favored him with an easy grin. “Of course we don’t mind giving these foot-sloggers a lift. Better than leaving you to do it yourselves, eh, Stubbins?”

The man Stubbins — slim, red-haired, with an open, friendly face — grinned back, almost shyly, but evidently pleased at Gibson’s attention: all this despite the fact that he must have been a good foot taller than the diminutive Gibson, and some years older. I recognized in Gibson’s relaxed manner something of the poise of the natural leader.

“We’ve been here a week already,” Gibson said to me. “Surprising we didn’t stumble on you earlier, I suppose.”

“We weren’t expecting visitors,” I said drily. “If we had been, I suppose I would have lit fires, or found some other way of signaling our presence.”

He favored me with a wink. “We have been occupied ourselves. We had the devil’s own work to do in the first day or two here. We have good kit, of course — the boffins made it pretty clear to us be fore we left that the climate of dear old England is pretty variable, if you take a long enough view of it — and so we’ve come prepared with an issue of everything from greatcoats to Bombay bloomers. But we weren’t expecting quite these Tropical conditions: not here, in the middle of London! Our clothes seem to be falling apart literally rotting off our backs — and the metal fittings are rusting, and our boots won’t grip in this slime: even my bally socks have shrunk! And the whole lot is being gnawed away by rats.” He frowned. “At least I think they are rats.”

“Probably not, in fact,” I remarked. “And the Juggernauts? Kitchener class, are they?”

Gibson cocked an eyebrow at me, evidently surprised at my display of this fragment of knowledge. “Actually we can barely move the ’Nauts: those wretched elephants’ feet sink into this endless mud…”

And now a clear, familiar voice called out from behind me: “I’m afraid you’re a little out of date, sir. The Kitchener class — including the dear old Raglan — has been obsolete for a number of years now…”

I turned in my chair. Approaching me was a figure dressed in a crisp Juggernaut crew beret and coverall; this soldier walked with a pronounced limp, and a hand was proffered for shaking. I took the hand; it was small but strong.

“Captain Hilary Bond,” I said, and smiled.

She looked me up and down, taking in my beard and animal-skin clothes. “You’re a little more ragged, sir, but quite unmistakable. Surprised to see me?”

“After a few doses of this time traveling, nothing much surprises me any more, Hilary!”

[9] The Chronic Expeditionary Force

Gibson and Bond explained the purpose of the Chronic Expeditionary Force to me.

Thanks to the development of Carolinum fission piles, Britain and America had managed to achieve the production of Plattnerite in reasonable quantities soon after my escape into time. No longer did the engineers of the day have to rely on the scraps and leavings of my old workshop!

There was still a great fear that German chronic warriors were planning some sneak offensive against Britain’s past — and besides, it was known from the wreckage we had left behind in Imperial College, and other clues, that Nebogipfel and I must have traveled some tens of millions of years into the past. So a fleet of time-traveling Juggernauts was rapidly assembled, and equipped with subtle instruments which could detect the presence of Plattnerite traces (based on the radio-active origins of that substance, I was given to understand). And now this Expeditionary Force was proceeding into the past, in great leaps of five million years or more.

Its mission was nothing less than to secure the History of Britain from anachronistic attack!

When stops were made, a valiant effort was made to study the period; and to this end a number of the soldiers had been trained, albeit hastily, to act as amateur scientists: climatologists, ornithologists and the like. These fellows made rapid but effective surveys of the flora, fauna, climate and geology of the Age, and a good deal of Gibson’s daily log was given over to summarizing such observations. I saw that the soldiers, common men and women all, accepted this task with good humor and joking, as such people will, and — it seemed to me — they showed a healthy interest in the nature of the strange, Palaeocene Thames valley around them.

But at night sentries patrolled the perimeter of the encampment, and troopers with field-glasses spent a great deal of their time peering at the air, or the Sea. When engaged in these duties, the soldiers showed none of the gentle humor and curiosity which characterized their scientific or other endeavors; rather, their fear and intent was apparent in the set of their faces, and the thinness of their eyes.

This Force was here, after all, not to study flowers, but to seek Germans: time-traveling human enemies, here amid the wonders of the past.

Proud as I was of my achievements in surviving in this alien Age, it was with considerable relief that I abandoned my suit of rags and animal pelts and donned the light, comfortable Tropical kit of these time-traversing troopers. I shaved off my beard, washed — in warm, clean water, with soap! — and tucked with relish into meals of tinned soya-meat. And at night, it was with a feeling of peace and security that I lay down under a covering of canvas and mosquito netting, and with the powerful shoulders of the ’Nauts all about me.

Nebogipfel did not settle in the camp. Although our discovery by Gibson was the cause of some celebration and marveling — for our retrieval had been the primary objective of the Expedition — the Morlock soon became the object of blatant fascination among the troopers, and, I suspected, a little sly goading. So the Morlock returned to our original encampment, by the edge of the Palaeocene Sea. I did not oppose this, for I knew how eager he was to continue the construction of his time-frame — he even borrowed tools from the Expeditionary Force to facilitate this. Recalling his close shave with the Pristichampus, however, I insisted that he not stay there alone, but be accompanied either by me or an armed soldier.

As for me, after a day or two I tired of being at leisure in this busy encampment — I am not by nature an idle man — and I asked to participate in the soldiers’ chores. I soon proved my worth in sharing my painfully acquired knowledge of the local flora, fauna and surrounding geography. There was a good deal of sickness in the camp — for the soldiers had been no more prepared than I had been for the various infections of the Age — and I lent a hand assisting the camp’s solitary doctor, a rather young and perpetually exhausted naik attached to the 9th Gurkha Rifles.

After the first day I saw little of Gibson, who was consumed by the minutiae of the daily operation of his Expeditionary Force, and — to his own irritation — by a hefty load of bureaucracy, forms and reports and logs, which he was required to maintain daily: and all for the benefit of a Whitehall which would not exist for another fifty million years! I formed the impression that Gibson was restless and impatient with this timetraveling; he would, I think, have been more content if he could have resumed the bombing raids over Germany which he had led, and which he described to me with startling clarity. Hilary Bond had a deal of free time — her duties were most demanding during those periods when the great time-traveling ironclads pushed through the centuries — and she served as my, and Nebogipfel’s, host.

One day the two of us walked along the rim of the forest, close to the shore. Bond pushed her way through the thick patches of undergrowth. She limped, but her gait was blunt and forceful. She described to me the progress of the War since 1938.

“I would have thought the smashing-up of the Domes would have made an end of it,” I said. “Can’t people see — I mean, what is there to fight for after that?”

“It should have been an end of the War, you mean? Oh, no. It’s been an end to city life for a time, I imagine. Our populations have taken a fair old battering. But there are the Bunkers, of course — that’s where the War is being run from now, and where the munitions factories and so forth are mostly located. It isn’t much of a century for cities, I don’t think.”

I thought back to what I had seen of the barbarism of the countryside beyond the London Dome, and I tried to imagine permanent life in an underground Bomb Shelter: I conjured up images of hollow-eyed children scurrying through darkened tunnels, and a population reduced by fear to servility and near-savagery.

“And what of the War itself?” I asked. “The fronts — your great Siege of Europe—”

Bond shrugged. “Well, you hear a lot on the Babbles about great advances here and there: One Last Push — that sort of thing.” She lowered her voice. “But — and I don’t suppose it matters much if we discuss this here — the fliers see a bit of Europe, you know, even if it is by night and lit up by shell-fire, and word gets around. And I don’t think those trench lines have moved across an inch of mud since 1935. We’re stuck, is what we are.”

“I can no longer imagine what you’re all fighting for. The countries are all pretty much bashed up, industrially and economically. None of them can pose much of a threat to the rest, surely; and none of them can have assets left that are worth acquiring.”

“Perhaps that’s true,” she said. “I don’t think Britain has strength left to do much but rebuild her own smashed-up countryside, once the War is done. We’ll not be going conquering for a long time! And, the situation being as even as it is, the view of things from Berlin must be pretty similar.”

“Then why go on?”

“Because we can’t afford to stop.” Beneath the tan she had acquired in this deep Palaeocene, I could see traces of Bond’s former weary pallor. “There are all sorts of reports — some rumors, but some better substantiated, from what I hear — of German technical developments…”

“Technical developments? You mean weapons.”

We walked away from the forest, now, and down to the edge of the Sea. The air burned hot against my face, and we let the water lap around the soles of our boots.

I pictured the Europe of 1944: the smashed cities, and, from Denmark to the Alps, millions of men and women trying to inflict irreparable damage to each other… In this Tropical peace, it all seemed absurd — a fevered dream!

“But what can you possibly hope to invent,” I protested, “that can do significantly more damage than has already been achieved?”

“There is talk of Bombs. A new sort — more powerful than anything we’ve yet seen… Bombs containing Carolinum, they say.” I remembered Wallis’s speculations on those lines in 1938. “And, of course,” Bond said, “there is Chronic-Displacement warfare.

“You see, we can’t stop fighting if it means letting the Germans have a monopoly on such weapons.” Her voice had a sort of quiet desperation. “You can see that, can’t you? That’s why there’s been such a rush to build atomic piles, to acquire Carolinum, to produce more Plattnerite… that’s why so much expense and resource has been invested in these time-traveling Juggernauts.”

“And all to leap back in time before the Germans? To do unto them before they get the chance to do unto you?”

She lifted her chin and looked defiant. “Or to fix the damage they do. That’s another way of looking at it, isn’t it?”

I did not debate, as Nebogipfel might have done, the ultimate futility of this quest; for it was clear that the philosophers of 1944 had not yet come to such an understanding of the Multiplicity of Histories as I had, under the Morlock’s tuition.

“But,” I protested, “the past is a pretty huge place. You came looking for us, but how could you know we would end up here — how could you settle near us, even to within a million years or so.”

“We had clues,” she said.

“What sort of clues? You mean the wreckage left behind in Imperial?”

“Partly. But also archaeological.”

“Archaeological?”

She looked at me quizzically. “Look here, I’m not sure you’d want to hear this—”

That, of course, made my curiosity burn! I insisted — she told me.

“Very well. They — the boffins — knew the general area where you had left for the past — in the grounds of Imperial College, of course — and so they began an intensive archaeological survey of the area. Pits were dug.”

“Good heavens,” I said. “You were looking for my fossilized bones!”

“And Nebogipfel’s. It was reasoned that if any anomalies were found — bones, or tools — we should be able to place you tolerably well by your position in the strata…”

“And were they? Hilary—” She held back again, and I had to insist she answer.

“They found a skull.”

“Human?”

“Sort of.” She hesitated. “Small, and rather misshapen — placed in a stratum fifty million years older than any human remains had a right to be — and bitten clean in two.”

Small and misshapen — it must, I realized, have been Nebogipfel’s! Could that have been the relic of his encounter with Pristichampus — but in some other History, in which Gibson did not intervene?

And did my bones lie, crushed and turned to stone, in some neighboring, undiscovered pit?

I felt a chill, despite the heat of the sun on my back and head. Suddenly this brilliant Palaeocene world seemed faded — a transparency, through which shone the pitiless light of time.

“So you detected your traces of Plattnerite, and you found us,” I said. “But I imagine you were disappointed merely to find me — again! — and no horde of warmongering Prussians. But — look here — can’t you see there is a certain paradox?

“You develop your time ironclads because you fear the Germans are doing the same. Very well. But the situation is symmetrical: from their point of view, the Germans must fear that you will exploit such time machinery first. Each side is behaving precisely in such a way as to provoke the worst reaction in its opponents. And so you both slide towards the worst situation for all.”

“That’s as may be,” Bond said. “But the possession of time technology by the Germans would be catastrophic for the Allied Cause. The role of this Expedition is to hunt down German travelers, and to avert any damage the Germans inflict on History.”

I threw my hands in the air, and Palaeocene water rippled about my ankles. “But — confound it, Captain Bond — it is fifty million years until the birth of Christ! What meaning can that firefly struggle between England and Germany — in such a remote future — have here?”

“We cannot relax,” she said with a grim weariness. “Can’t you see that? We must hunt the Germans, right back to the dawn of Creation — if necessary.”

“And where will this War stop? Will you consume all of Eternity before you are done? Don’t you see that that—” I waved a hand, meaning to summarize all of that awful future of shattered cities and populations huddling in subterranean eaves “ — all that — is impossible? Or will you go on until there are two men left — just two — and the last turns to his neighbor and bashes out his brain with a lump of shattered masonry? Eh?”

Bond turned away — the light of the Sea picked out the lines in her face — and she would not reply.

This period of calm, after our first encounter with Gibson, lasted five days.

[10] The Apparition

It was noon of a cloudless, brilliant day, and I had spent the morning putting my clumsy nursing skills at the service of the gurkha doctor. It was with a sense of relief that I accepted Hilary Bond’s invitation to join her for another of our walks to the beach.

We cut through the forest easily enough — by now, the troopers had cleared respectable paths radiating from the central encampment — and, when we reached the beach, I hauled off my boots and socks and dumped them at the fringe of the forest, and I scampered down to the water’s edge. Hilary Bond discarded her own footwear, a little more decorously, and she piled it on the sand with the hand-weapon she carried. She rolled up the legs of her trousers — I was able to see how her left leg was misshapen, the skin shrunken by an ancient burn — and she waded into the foamy surf after me.

I stripped off my shirt (we were pretty much informal in that camp in the ancient forest, men and women all) and I dunked my head and upper body in the transparent water, disregarding the soaking my trouser legs were receiving. I breathed deep, relishing it all: the heat of the sun prickling on my face, the sparkle of the water, the softness of the sand between my toes, the sharp scents of salt and ozone.

“You’re glad to get here, I see,” Hilary said with a tolerant smile.

“Indeed I am.” I told her how I had been assisting the doctor.

“You know I’m willing enough — more than willing — to help. But by about ten o’clock today my head had got so full of the stench of chloroform, of ether, of various antiseptic fluid — as well as more earthy smells! — that—”

She held her hands up. “I understand.”

We emerged from the Sea, and I toweled myself dry with my shirt. Hilary picked up her gun, but we left our boots piled on the beach, and we strolled by the water’s edge. After a few dozen yards I spotted the shallow indentations which betrayed the presence of corbicula — those burrowing bivalves which inhabited that beach in such numbers. We squatted on the sand, and I showed her how to dig out the compact little creatures. Within a few minutes we had built up a respectable haul; a heap of bivalves sat drying in the sun beside us.

As she picked over the bivalves with the fascination of a child, Hilary’s face, with her cropped hair plastered flat by the water, shone with pleasure at her simple achievement. We were quite alone on that beach — we might have been the only two humans in all that Palaeocene world — and I could feel the sparkle of every bead of perspiration on my scalp, the rasp of every grain of sand against my shins. And it was all suffused by the animal warmth of the woman beside me; it was as if the Multiple Worlds through which I had traveled had collapsed down to this single moment of vividness to Here and Now.

I wanted to communicate something of this to Hilary. “You know—”

But she had straightened up, and turned her face to the Sea. “Listen.”

I gazed about, baffled, at the forest’s edge, the lapping Sea, the lofty emptiness of the sky. The only sounds were the rustle of a soft breeze in the forest canopy, and the gentle gurgle of the lapping wavelets. “Listen to what?”

Her expression had become hard and suspicious — the face of the soldier, intelligent and fearful. “Single-engined,” she said, her concentration apparent. “That’s a Daimler-Benz DB — a twelve-cylinder, I think…” She jumped to her feet and pressed her hands to her brow, shielding her eyes.

And then I heard it too, my older ears following hers. It was a distant thrum — like some immense, remote insect — which came drifting to us off the Sea.

“Look,” Hilary said, pointing. “Out there. Can you see it?”

I sighted along Hilary’s arm, and was rewarded with a glimpse of something: a distortion, hanging over the Sea, far to the east. It was a patch of otherness — a whorl no bigger than the full moon, a kind of sparkling refraction tinged with green.

Then I had an impression of something solid in the middle of it all, congealing and spinning — and then there was a hard, dark shape, like a cross, which came hurtling low out of the sky — from the east, from the direction of a Germany yet to be born. That thrumming noise grew much louder.

“My God,” Hilary Bond said. “It is a Messerschmitt — an Eagle; it looks like a Bf 109F…”

“Messerschmitt… That’s a German name,” I said, rather stupidly.

She glanced at me. “Of course it’s a German name. Don’t you understand?”

“What?”

“That’s a German plane. It is die Zeitmaschine, come to hunt us down!”

As it approached the coast, the craft tipped in the air, like a seagull in flight, and began to run parallel to the Sea’s edge. With a noisy whoosh, and so fast that Hilary and I were forced to swivel on the sand to follow its progress, it passed over our heads, not a hundred feet from the ground.

The machine was some thirty feet long, and perhaps a little more from wing-tip to wing-tip. A propeller whirled at its nose, blurred by speed. The craft’s underside was painted blue-gray, and its upper sections were done out in mottled brown and green. Strident black crosses on the fuselages and wings marked the craft’s country of origin, and there were more gaudy militaristic designs on the painted skin, of an eagle’s head, an upraised sword, and so on. The underside was quite smooth, save for the craft’s single load: a tear-drop mass of metal perhaps six feet long, painted in the ubiquitous blue.

For some moments Bond and I stood there, as stunned by this sudden apparition as if by some religious visitation.

The excitable young man buried inside me — the shade of poor, lost Moses — thrilled at the sight of that elegant machine. What an adventure for that pilot! What a glorious view! And what extraordinary courage it must have taken to haul that machine into the smoke-blackened air of 1944 Germany — to take that plane so high that the landscape of the heart of Europe would be reduced to a kind of map, a textured table-top coated with sand and sea and forest, and tiny, doll-like people — and then to close the switch which launched the craft into time. I imagined how the sun would arc over the ship like a meteorite, while beneath the prow, the landscape, made plastic by time, would flow and deform…

Then the gleaming wings tipped again, and the propeller’s noise came crashing down over us. The craft swooped upwards and away, over the forest and in the direction of the Expeditionary Force.

Hilary ran up the beach, and her uneven limping left asymmetric craters in the sand.

“Where are you going?”

She reached her boots, and began to haul them on roughly, ignoring her socks. “To the camp, of course.”

“But…” I stared at our small, pathetic pile of bivalves. “But you can’t outrun that Messerschmitt. What will you do?”

She picked up her hand-gun and stood up straight. For answer, she looked at me, her expression blank. And then she turned and shoved her way through the fringe of palm trees which lined the edge of the forest, and disappeared into the shadows of the dipterocarps.

The noise of the Messerschmitt aircraft was fading, absorbed by the forest canopy. I was alone on the beach, with the bivalves and the lapping of the surf.

It all seemed quite unreal: War, imported to this Palaeocene idyll? I felt no fear — nothing but a sense of bizarre dislocation.

I shook off my immobility, and prepared to follow Bond into the forest.

I had not even reached my boots when a small, liquid voice came floating across the sand to me: “…No!… go to the water…no!…”

It was Nebogipfel: the Morlock came stumbling across the sand towards me, his improvised crutch digging a series of deep, narrow pits. I saw how a loose edge of his face-mask flapped as he staggered along.

“What is it? Can’t you see what’s happening? Die Zeitmaschine—”

“The water.” He leaned on his crutch, as limp as a rag doll, and his panting tore at his frame. His wheezing had grown so pronounced that his syllables were barely distinguishable. “The water… we must get in the…”

“This is no time for a swim, man!” I bellowed, indignant. “Can’t you see—”

“Do not understand,” he gasped. “You. You do not… Come…”

I turned, abstracted, and looked over the forest. Now I could see the elusive form of die Zeitmaschine as it skimmed over the tree-tops, its green and blue paint making vivid splashes against the foliage. Its speed was extraordinary, and its distant noise was like an insect’s angry buzz.

Then I heard the staccato cough of artillery pieces, and the whistle of shells.

“They’re fighting back,” I said to Nebogipfel, caught up by this spark of War. “Can you see? The flying machine has evidently spotted the Expeditionary Force, but they are firing off their guns at it…”

“The Sea,” Nebogipfel said. He plucked at my arm with fingers as feeble as a baby’s, and it was a gesture of such immediacy, such pleading, that I had to tear my eyes from the aerial battle. The grubby slit-mask exposed mere slivers of his eyes, and his mouth was a down-turned, quivering gash. “It is the only shelter close enough. It might be sufficient…”

“Shelter? The battle is two miles away. How can we be hurt, standing here on this empty beach?”

“But the Bomb… the Bomb carried by the German; did you not see it?…” His hair was lank against his small skull. “The Bombs of this History are not sophisticated — little more than lumps of pure Carolinum… But they are effective enough, for all that.

“There is nothing you can do for the Expedition! — not now… we must wait until the battle is done.” He stared up at me. “Can you see that? Come,” he said, and he tugged, again, at my arm. He had dropped his crutch, now, so that my arm was supporting him.

Like a child, I allowed myself to be led into the water.

Soon we had reached a depth of four feet or more. The Morlock was covered up to his shoulders; he bade me crouch down, so that I, too, was more or less immersed in salt water.

Over the forest, the Messerschmitt banked and came back for another pass, swooping like some predatory bird of metal and oil; the artillery pieces shouted up at die Zeitmaschine, and shells burst into clouds of smoke, which drifted off through the Palaeocene air.

I admit that I thrilled to this aerial contest — the first I had witnessed. My mind raced with visions of the extended conflicts in the air which must have filled the skies over Europe in 1944: I saw men who rode upon the wind, and slough and fell like Milton’s angels. This was the Apotheosis of War, I thought: what was the brutish squalor of the trenches beside this lofty triumph, this headlong swoop to glory or death?

Now the Messerschmitt spiraled away from the bursting shells, almost lazily, and began to climb higher. At the top of this maneuver, it seemed to hover just for a moment, hundreds of feet above the earth.

Then I saw the Bomb — that deadly blue-painted metal pod detach from its parent, quite delicately, and it began its fall to earth.

A single shell arced up, out of the forest, and it punched a hole in the wing of the flying machine. There was an eruption of flame, and die Zeitmaschine looped crazily away, enveloped by smoke.

I emitted a whoop. “Good shooting! Nebogipfel — did you see that?”

But the Morlock had reached up out of the Sea, and hauled with his soft hands at my head. “Down,” he said. “Get down into the water…”

My last glimpse of the battle was of the trail of smoke which marked the path of the tumbling Messerschmitt — and, before it, a glowing star, already almost too bright to look at, which was the falling Bomb.

I ducked my head into the Sea.

[11] The Bomb

In an instant, the gentle light of the Palaeocene sun was banished. A crimson-purple glare flooded the air above the water’s surface. An immense, complex sound crashed over me: it was founded on the crack of a great explosion, but all overlaid by a roaring, and by a noise of smashing and tearing. All of this was diluted by the few inches of water above me, but still it was so loud that I was forced to press my hands to my ears; I called out, and bubbles escaped from my mouth and brushed against my face.

That initial crack subsided, but the roaring went on and on. My air was soon done, and I was forced to push my head above the water. I gasped, and shook water from my eyes.

The noise was extraordinarily loud. The light from the forest was too bright to look into, but my dazzled eyes had an impression of a great ball of crimson fire that seemed to be whirling about, in the middle of the forest, almost like a living thing. Trees had been smashed down like skittles, all around that pirouetting fire, and huge shards of the broken-up dipterocarps were picked up and thrown around in the air as easily as match-stalks. I saw animals tumbling from the forest, fleeing in terror from the Storm: a family of Diatryma, their feathers ruffled and scorched, stumbled towards the water; and there came a Pristichampus, a handsome adult, its hoofed feet pounding at the sand.

And now the fireball seemed to be attacking the exposed earth itself, as if burrowing into it. From the heart of the shattered forest, puffs of heavy incandescent vapor and fragments of rock were hurled high and far; each of these was evidently saturated with Carolinum, for each was a center of scorching and blistering energy, so that it was like watching the birth of a family of meteorites.

A huge, compact fire started up in the heart of the forest now, in response to the Carolinum’s god-like touch of destruction; the flames leaped up, hundreds of feet tall, forming themselves into a tower of billowing light about the epicenter of the blast. A cloud of smoke and ash, laden with flying lumps of debris, began to collect like a thunderhead above the blaze. And, punching through it all like a fist of light, there was a pillar of steam, rising out of the crater made by the Carolinum Bomb, a pillar red-lit from below as if by a miniature volcano.

Nebogipfel and I could do nothing but cower in the water, keeping under for as long as we could, and, in the intervals when we were forced to surface for air, holding our arms above our heads for fear of the shower of scorched, falling debris.

At last, after some hours of this, Nebogipfel decreed it safe enough to approach the land.

I was exhausted, my limbs heavy in the water. My face and neck were stinging with burns, and my thirst raged; but even so I was forced to carry the Morlock for most of the way back to the shore, for his little strength had given out long before the end of our ordeal.

The beach was scarcely recognizable from the gentle spot where I had hunted for bivalves with Hilary Bond, mere hours before. The sand was strewn with debris from the forest — much of it smashed-up branches and bits of tree trunk, some of it still smoldering — and muddy rivulets worked their way across the pocked surface. The heat emanating from the forest was still all but unbearable — fires burned on in many sections of it — and the tall, purple-red glow of the Carolinum column shone out over the agitated waters. I stumbled past a scorched corpse, I think it was a Diatryma chick, and I found a reasonably clear patch of sand. I brushed away a coating of ash which had settled there, and dumped the Morlock on the ground.

I found a little rill and cupped my hand to catch the water. The liquid was muddy and flecked with black soot — the stream was polluted by the burnt flesh of trees and animals, I surmised — but my thirst was so great that I had no choice but to drink it down, in great, dirty handfuls.

“Well,” I said, and my voice was reduced to a croak by the smoke and my exertions, “this is a damned fine fist of things. Man has been present in the Palaeocene for less than a year… and, already — this!”

Nebogipfel was stirring. He tried to get his arms under him; but he could barely lift his face from the sand. He had lost his face-mask, and the huge, soft lids of his delicate eyes were encrusted with sand. I felt touched by an odd tenderness. Once again, this wretched Morlock had been forced to endure the devastation of War among humans — among members of my own, shoddy race — and had suffered as a consequence.

As gently as if I were lifting a child, I lifted him from the sand, turned him over, and sat him up; his legs dangled like lengths of string. “Take it easy, old man,” I said. “You’re safe now.”

His blind head swiveled towards me, his functioning eye leaking immense tears. He murmured liquid syllables.

“What?” I bent to hear. “What are you saying?”

He broke into English. “…not safe…”

“What?”

“We are not safe here — not at all…”

“But why? The fire can’t reach us now.”

“Not the fire… the radiations… Even when the glow is finished… in weeks, or months, still the radiative particles will linger… the radiations will eat into the skin… It is not a safe place.”

I cupped his thin, papery cheek in my hand; and at that moment — burned, thirsty beyond belief — I felt as if I wanted to chuck it all in, to sit on that ruined beach, regardless of fires, Bombs and radiative particles: to sit and wait for the final Darkness to close about me. But some lingering bits of strength coalesced around my concern at the Morlock’s feeble agitation.

“Then,” I said, “we will walk away from here, and see if we can find somewhere we can rest.”

Ignoring the pain of the cracked skin of my own shoulders and face, I slipped my arms under his limp body and picked him up.

It was late afternoon by now, and the light was fading from the sky. After perhaps a mile, we were far enough from the central blaze that the sky was clear of smoke, but the crimson pillar above the Carolinum crater illuminated the darkling sky, almost as steadily as the Aldis lamps which had lit up the London Dome.

I was startled by a young Pristichampus who came bursting from the forest’s rim. The yellow-white mouth of the beast was gaping wide as it tried to cool itself, and I saw that it dragged one hind leg quite badly; it looked as if it was almost blind, and quite terrified.

Pristichampus stumbled past us and fled, screeching in an unearthly fashion.

I could feel clean sand under my bare feet once more, and I could smell the rich brine of the Sea, a vapor which began the job of washing the stink of smoke and ash out of my head. The ocean remained placid and immovable, its surface oily in the Carolinum light, despite all the foolishness of Humanity; and I pledged my gratitude to that patient body — for now the Sea had cradled me, saving my life even as my fellow humans had blown each other to bits.

This reverie of walking was broken by a distant call.

“Ha-llooo…”

It came drifting along the beach, and, perhaps a quarter-mile away ahead of me, I made out a waving figure, walking towards me.

For a moment I stood there, quite unable to move; for I suspect that I had assumed, in some morbid recess of my soul, that all the members of the Chronic Expeditionary Force must have been consumed by the atomic explosion, and that Nebogipfel and I had been once more left alone in time.

The other chap was a soldier who had evidently been far enough away from the action to remain unscathed, for he was dressed in the trooper’s standard jungle-green twill shirt, riflegreen felt hat and trousers with anklets. He carried a light machinegun, with leather ammunition pouches. He was tall, wire-thin, and red-haired; and he seemed familiar. I had no idea how I looked: a frightful mess, I imagine, with scorched and blackened face and hair, white-staring eyes, naked save for my trousers, and with the inhuman bundle of the Morlock in my arms.

The trooper pushed back his hat. “This is all a fine pickle, isn’t it, sir?” He had the clipped, Teutonic accent of the North-East of England.

I remembered him. “Stubbins, isn’t it?”

“That’s me, sir.” He turned and waved up the beach. “I’ve been map-making up that way. Was six or seven miles away when I saw Jerry coming over the water. As soon as I saw that big column of flame go up — well, I knew what was what.” He looked towards the encampment site uncertainly.

I shifted my weight, trying to hide my fatigue. “But I shouldn’t go back to the encampment yet. The fire’s still burning — and Nebogipfel warns of radiative emissions.”

For answer, I lifted the Morlock a little.

“Oh, him.” Stubbins scratched the back of his head; the short hairs there rasped.

“There’ll be nothing you can do to help, Stubbins — not yet.”

He sighed. “Well then, sir, what are we to do?”

“I think we should carry on up the beach a little way, and find somewhere to shelter for the night. I expect we’ll be safe — I doubt that any Palaeocene animal will be unwise enough to interfere with men tonight, after all that — but we perhaps should build a fire. Do you have matches, Stubbins?”

“Oh, yes, sir.” He tapped his breast pocket, and a box rattled. “Don’t you worry about that.”

“I won’t.”

I resumed my steady walking along the beach, but my arms were aching uncommonly, and my legs seemed to be trembling. Stubbins noted my distress, and with silent kindness, he hung his machine-gun from his broad back, and lifted the unconscious Morlock from my arms. He had a wiry strength, and did not find, it seemed, Nebogipfel a burden.

We walked until we found a suitable hollow in the forest’s fringe, and there we made our camp for the night.

[12] The Aftermath of the Bombing

The morning dawned fresh and clear.

I woke before Stubbins. Nebogipfel remained unconscious. I walked down to the beach and to the fringe of the Sea. The sun was rising over the ocean before me, its warmth already strong. I heard the clicks and trills of the forest fauna, busy already with their little concerns; and a smooth black shape — I thought it was a ray — glided through the water a few hundred yards from land.

In those first moments of the new day, it was as if my Palaeocene world was as vigorous and unscarred as it had been before the arrival of Gibson and his Expedition. But that pillar of purple fire still guttered from the central wound in the forest, reaching up through a thousand feet or more. Clots of flame — bits of melted rock and soil — hurled themselves along the flanks of that pillar, following glowing parabolic paths. And over it all there lingered still an umbrella-shaped cloud of dust and steam, its edges frayed by the action of the breeze.

We breakfasted on water and the flesh of nuts from the palms. Nebogipfel was subdued, weakened, and his voice was a scratch; but he counseled Stubbins and me against returning to the devastated camp site. For all we knew, he said, the three of us might have been left alone, there in the Palaeocene, and we must think of our survival into the future. Nebogipfel argued that we should migrate further away — several miles, he said — and set up camp in some more equable spot, safe from the radiative emissions of the Carolinum.

But I saw in Stubbins’s eyes, and in the depths of my own soul, that this course of action was impossible for both of us.

“I’m going back,” Stubbins said at last, with a blunt directness that overcame his natural deference. “I hear what you’re telling me, sir, but the fact is there might be people lying sick and dying back there. I couldn’t just leave them to it.” He turned to me, and his open, honest face was crumpled with concern. “It wouldn’t be right, would it, sir?”

“No, Stubbins,” I said. “Not right at all.”

And so it was, with the day still young, that Stubbins and I set off back along the beach, in the direction of the devastated camp site. Stubbins still wore his jungle-green kit, which had survived the previous day pretty much unscathed; I, of course, was dressed only in the remains of the khaki trousers I had been wearing at the moment of the Bombing. Even my boots were lost, and I felt singularly ill-equipped as we set out. We had no medical supplies whatever, save for the small kit of bandages and ointments Stubbins had been carrying for his own use. But we had gathered some fruit from the palm-trees, emptied out their milk, and filled the shells with fresh water; Stubbins and I each wore five or six such shells around our necks on bits of liana, and we thought with this we might bring some succor to such victims of the Bombing as we found.

There was a steady noise from the Bomb’s slow, continuing detonation: a featureless sound, with the ground-shaking quality of a waterfall’s roar. Nebogipfel had made us promise that we should approach the central Bombsite no closer than a mile; and by the time we reached that part of the beach which was, as best as we could judge it, a mile from the epicenter of the blast, the sun was climbing high in the sky. We were already in the shadow of that lingering, poisonous umbrella-cloud; and the crimson-purple glow of the continuing central explosion was so violent that it cast a shadow before me on the beach.

We bathed our feet in the Sea. I rested my aching knees and calves, and relished the warmth of the sunlight on my face. Ironically it remained a beautiful day, with the sky clear and the Sea bathed in light. I observed how the action of the tide had already repaired much of the damage to the beach wrought by the best efforts of we humans the day before: bivalves burrowed again in the sooty sand, and I saw a turtle scampering through the shallows, almost close enough for us to touch.

I felt very old, and immeasurably tired: quite out of place, here at the dawn of the world.

We struck away from the beach and into the forest. I entered the gloom of that battered wood with dread. Our plan was to work through the forest around the camp site, following a circle a safe mile in radius. School-boy geometry was sufficient to provide an estimate of the six-mile hike we would have to complete around the circumference of that circle before we reached the sanctuary of the beach again; but I knew that we would find it difficult, or impossible, to stick to a precise arc, and I expected our full traverse to be considerably longer, and to take some hours.

We were already close enough to the epicenter of the blast that many of the trees had been toppled and smashed up — trees destroyed in a moment, which might otherwise have stood for a century — and we were forced to clamber over the charred, battered remnants of trunks, and through the forest canopy’s scorched remains. And, even where the effects of the first blast were less marked, we saw the scars of the storm of fire, which had turned whole stands of dipterocarps into clusters of charred, denuded trunks, like immense match-stalks. The canopy was quite disrupted; and the daylight piercing through to the forest floor was much more powerful than I had become accustomed to. But still the forest was a place of shadows and gloom; and the purple glow of that deadly, continuing explosion cast a sickly glow over the scorched remains of trees and fauna.

Not surprisingly, the surviving animals and birds — even the insects — had fled the wounded forest, and we proceeded in an eerie stillness broken only by the rustle of our own footsteps, and by the steady, hot breath of the Bomb’s fire-pit.

In some places the fallen wood was still hot enough to steam, or even to glow dull red, and my bare feet were soon blistered and burned. I tied grass around my soles to protect them, and I was reminded of how I had done the same as I made my way out of the forest I had burned in the Year 802,701. Several times we came across the corpse of some poor animal, caught in a disaster beyond its comprehension; despite the blaze, the putrefactive processes of the forest worked vigorously, and we were forced to endure a stink of decay and death as we walked. Once I stepped on the liquefying remains of some little creature — it had been a planetetherium, I think — and poor Stubbins was forced to wait for me as, with noises of disgust, I scraped the remains of the little animal from the sole of my foot.

After perhaps an hour, we came across a still, hunched form on the floor of the forest. The stench was so bad that I was forced to hold the remains of my handkerchief over my face. The body was so badly burned and misshapen that at first I thought it might be the corpse of some beast — a young diatryma perhaps — but then I heard Stubbins exclaim. I stepped to his side; and there I saw, at the end of a blackened limb stretched out along the ground, the hand of a woman. The hand, by some bizarre accident, was quite undamaged by the fire; the fingers were curled, as if in sleep, and a small gold ring sparkled on the fourth finger.

Poor Stubbins stumbled away into the trees, and I heard him retching. I felt foolish, helpless and desolate, standing there in the ruined forest with those shells of water dangling useless from my neck.

“What if it’s all like this, sir?” Stubbins asked. “You know — this.” He could not bear to look at the corpse, or in any way point to it. “What if we find no one alive — what if they’re all gone, all burnt to a crisp like this?”

I laid a hand on his shoulder, and sought a strength I did not feel. “If that’s so, then we’ll go back to the beach, and find a way to live,” I said. “We’ll make the best of it; that’s what we’ll do, Stubbins. But you mustn’t give up, man — we’ve barely started our searching.”

His eyes were white, in a face as soot-dark as a chimneysweep’s. “No,” he said. “You’re right. We mustn’t give up. We’ll make the best of it; what else can we do? But—”

“Yes?”

“Oh — nothing,” he said; and he began to straighten his kit, in readiness to go on.

He did not have to finish his sentiment for me to understand what he meant! If all the Expedition were finished save the two of us and the Morlock, then, Stubbins knew, the three of us would sit in our huts on the beach, until we died. And then the tide would cover our bones, and that would be that; we should be lucky to leave behind a fossil, to be found by some curious householder digging a garden in Hampstead or Kew, fifty million years from now.

It was a grim, futile prospect; and what — Stubbins would want to know — what was the best that could be made out of all that?

In grim silence, we left the girl’s charred corpse, and pressed on.

We had no way of judging time in the forest, and the day was long in that grisly wreckage; for even the sun seemed to have suspended his daily traverse around the sky, and the shadows of the broken stumps of trees seemed neither to shorten nor to track across the ground. But in reality it was perhaps only an hour later that we heard a crackling, crashing noise, approaching us from the interior of the wood.

At first we could not see the source of the noise — Stubbins’s eyes, wide with fear, were white as ivory in the gloom — and we waited, holding our breath.

A form approached us, coalescing from the charred shadows, stumbling and colliding with the tree stumps; it was a slight figure, clearly in distress but, nonetheless, undoubtedly human.

With my heart in my mouth, I rushed forward, careless now of the crusty, blackened undergrowth under my feet. Stubbins was at my side.

It was a woman, but with her face and upper body burned and so blackened I could not recognize her. She fell into our arms with a gurgled sigh, as if with relief.

Stubbins sat the woman on the ground with her back to a snapped-off tree stump. He muttered clumsy endearments as he worked: “Don’t you worry — you’ll be fine, I’ll look after you—” and so forth, in a voice that was choked. She still wore the charred remnants of a twill shirt and khaki trousers, but the whole was blackened and torn; and her arms were badly scorched, particularly on the underside of the forearms. Her face was burned — she must have been facing the blast — but there were, I saw now, strips of healthy flesh across her mouth and eyes, which remained comparatively unharmed. I surmised that she had thrown her arms across her face when the blast had come, damaging her forearms, but protecting at least some of her face.

She opened her eyes now: they were a piercing blue. Her mouth opened, and an insect-whisper emerged; I bent close to hear, suppressing my revulsion and horror at the blackened ruin of her nose and ears.

“Water. In the name of God — water…”

It was Hilary Bond.

[13] Bond’s Account

Stubbins and I stayed with Hilary for some hours, feeding her sips of water from our shells. Periodically Stubbins set off on little circular tours of the forest, calling boldly to attract the attention of more survivors. We tried to ease Hilary’s wounds with Stubbins’s medical kit; but the contents of the kit — intended to treat bruises and cuts and the like — were quite inadequate to cope with burns of the extent and severity of Hilary’s.

Hilary was weakened, but she was quite coherent, and she was able to give me a sensible account of what she had seen of the Bombing.

After she had left me on the beach, she had plunged through the forest as fast as she could. Even so, she was no closer than a mile to the camp when the Messerschmitt came.

“I saw the Bomb falling through the air,” she whispered. “I knew it was Carolinum from the way it burned — I’ve not seen it before, but I’ve heard accounts — and I thought I was done for. I froze like a rabbit — or like a fool — and by the time I’d got my wits back, I knew I didn’t have time to get to the ground, or duck behind the trees. I threw my arms before my face…”

The flash had been inhumanly bright. “The light burned at my flesh… it was like the doors of Hell opening… I could feel my cheeks melting; and when I looked I could see the tip of my nose burning — like a little candle… it was the most extraordinary…” She collapsed into coughing.

Then the concussion came — “like a great wind” — and she was knocked backwards. She had tumbled across the forest floor, until she had collided with a hard surface — presumably a tree trunk — and, for a spell, knew no more.

When she came to, that pillar of crimson and purple flame was rising like a demon out of the forest, with its attendant familiars of melted earth and steam. Around her the trees were smashed and scorched, although — by chance — she was far enough from the epicenter to have avoided the worst of the damage, and she hadn’t been further injured by falling branches or the like.

She had reached up to touch her nose; and she remembered only a dull curiosity as a great piece of it came away in her hand. “But I felt no pain — it is very odd… although,” she added grimly, “I was compensated for that soon enough…”

I listened to this in a morbid silence, and vivid in my mind’s eye was the slim, rather awkward girl with whom I had hunted bivalves, mere hours before this terrible experience.

Hilary thought she slept. When she came to her senses, the forest was a good deal darker the first flames had subsided and, for some reason, her pain was reduced. She wondered if her very nerves had been destroyed.

With a huge effort, for she was by now greatly weakened by thirst, she pulled herself to her feet and approached the epicenter of the blast.

“I remember the glow of the continuing Carolinum explosion, that unearthly purple, brightening as I moved through the trees… The heat increased, and I wondered how close I would be able to come, before I would be forced back.”

She had reached the fringe of the open space around the parked Juggernauts.

“I could barely see, so bright was the glare of the Carolinum fire-pit, and there was a roar, like rushing water,” she said. “The Bomb had landed slap in the center of our camp — that German was a good marksman — it was like a toy volcano, with smoke and flame pouring up out of it.

“Our camp is flattened and burned, most of our belongings destroyed. Even the ’Nauts are smashed to bits: of the four, only one has retained its shape, and that is gutted; the others are burst open, toppled like toys, burned and exploded. I saw no people,” she said. “I think I had expected…” She hesitated. “Horrors: I expected horrors. But there was nothing — nothing left of them. Oh — save for one thing — the strangest thing.” She laid a hand on my arm; it was reduced by flame to a claw. “On the skin of that ’Naut, most of the paint was blistered away — except in one place, where there was a shaped patch… It was like a shadow, of a crouching man.” She looked up at me, her eyes gleaming from her ruined face. “Do you understand? It was a shadow — of a soldier, I don’t know who — caught in that moment of a blast so intense that his flesh was evaporated, his bones scattered. And yet the shadow in the paint remained.” Her voice remained level, dispassionate, but her eyes were full of tears. “Isn’t that strange?”

Hilary had stumbled about the rim of the encampment for a while. Convinced by now she would not find people alive there, she had a vague idea of seeking out supplies. But, she said, her thoughts were scattered and confused, and her residual pain so intense it threatened to overwhelm her; and, with her damaged hands, she found it impossible to grub through the charred remnants of the camp with any semblance of system.

So she had come away, with the intention of trying to reach the Sea.

After that, she could barely remember anything of her stumble through the forest; it had lasted all night, and yet she had come such a short distance from the explosion site that I surmised she must have been blundering in circles, until Stubbins and I found her.

[14] Survivors

Stubbins and I resolved that our best course would be to take Hilary out of the forest, away from the damaging Carolinum emissions, and bring her to our encampment along the beach, where Nebogipfel’s advanced ingenuity might be able to concoct some way to make her more comfortable. But it was clear enough that Hilary did not have the strength to walk further. So we improvised a stretcher of two long, straight fallen branches, with my trousers and Stubbins’s shirt tied between them. Wary of her blistered flesh, we lifted Hilary onto this makeshift construction. She cried out when we moved her, but once we had her settled on the stretcher her discomfort eased.

So we set off back through the forest, towards the beach. Stubbins preceded me, and soon I could see how his bare, bony back prickled with sweat and dirt. He stumbled in the forest’s scorched gloom, and lianas and low branches rattled against his unprotected face; but he did not complain, and kept his hands wrapped around the poles of our stretcher. As for me, staggering along in my under-shorts, my strength was soon exhausted, and my emptied-out muscles set up a great trembling. At times, it seemed impossible that I could lift my feet for another step, or keep my stiffening hands wrapped around those rough poles. But, watching the stolid determination of Stubbins ahead of me, I strove to mask my fatigue and to follow his pace.

Hilary lay in a shallow unconsciousness, with her limbs convulsing and mumbled cries escaping her lips, as echoes of pain worked their way through her nervous system.

When we reached the shore we set Hilary down in the shade of the forest’s rim, and Stubbins lifted her head, cupping her skull in one hand, as he fed her sips of water. Stubbins was a clumsy man, but he worked with an unconscious delicacy and sensitivity that overcame the natural limitations of his frame; it seemed to me that he was pouring his whole being into those simple acts of kindness for Hilary. Stubbins struck me as fundamentally a good, kind man; and I accepted that his detailed care of Hilary was motivated largely by nothing more nor less than simple compassion. But I saw, too, that it would have been unbearable for poor Stubbins to have survived — thanks only to the lucky chance of following an assignment away from the camp during the disaster — when all of his fellows had perished; and I foresaw that he would spend a good deal of his remaining days on such acts of contrition as this.

When we had done our best we picked up the stretcher and progressed along the beach. Stubbins and I, all but naked, our bodies coated with the soot and ash of the burned forest, and with the broken body of Hilary Bond suspended between us, walked along the firmer, damp sand at the Sea’s fringe, with cool, wet sand between our toes and brine wavelets lapping against our shins.

When we reached our small encampment, Nebogipfel took command. Stubbins fussed about, but he impeded Nebogipfel’s movements, and the Morlock served me with a series of hostile glares until I took Stubbins’s arm and pulled him away.

“Look here, old chap,” I said, “the Morlock might look a little strange, but he knows a sight more medicine than I do — or you, I should hazard. I think it’s best if we keep out of his way for a bit, and let him treat the Captain.”

Stubbins’s great hands flexed.

At length I had an idea. “We still need to seek out any others,” I said. “Why not build a fire? If you use green wood, and produce enough smoke, you should raise a signal which will be visible for miles.”

Stubbins fell in with this suggestion with alacrity, and he plunged without delay into the forest. He was like some clumsy animal as he hauled out branches from the wood, but I felt relief that I had found a useful purpose for the helpless energy surging within him.

Nebogipfel had prepared a series of opened palm-nut shells, set in little cups in the sand, each filled with a milky lotion he had devised. He asked for Stubbins’s clasp-knife; with this, he began to cut away Hilary’s clothing. Nebogipfel scooped up handfuls of his lotion and, with his soft Morlock fingers, he began to work it into her worst-damaged flesh.

At first Hilary, still all but unconscious, cried out at these ministrations; but before long her discomfort passed, and she appeared to be passing into a deeper, more peaceful sleep.

“What is the lotion?”

“A salve,” he said as he worked, “based on palm-nut milk, bivalve oil and plants from the forest.” He pushed his slit-mask more comfortably over his face, and left on it streaks of the sticky lotion. “It will ease the pain of the bums.”

“I’m impressed by your foresight in preparing the salve,” I said.

“It did not take much foresight,” he said coolly, “to anticipate such victims, after your self-inflicted catastrophe of yesterday.”

I felt a stab of irritation at this. Self-inflicted? None of us had asked the confounded German to come through time with his Carolinum Bomb. “Blast you, I was trying to congratulate you on your efforts for this girl!”

“But I would much rather not have you bring me such sad victims of folly, as exercises for my compassion and ingenuity.”

“Oh — confound it!” The Morlock really was impossible at times, I thought — quite un-human!

Stubbins and I maintained our bonfire, feeding it with wood so green it spat and fractured and sent up billows of cloudy-white smoke. Stubbins set off for brief, ineffectual searches of the forest; I was forced to promise him that if the fire met with no success in a few days, we should resume our expedition around the explosion epicenter.

It was on the fourth day after the Bombing that more survivors began to arrive at our beacon. They came alone, or in pairs, and they were burned and beaten up, clothed in the ragged remnants of jungle kit. Soon Nebogipfel was running a respectable field hospital — a row of palm-frond pallets, there in the shade of the dipterocarps — while the able-bodied among us were set to work with rudimentary nursing duties and the collection of more supplies.

For a while we hoped that there might be, elsewhere, some other encampment better equipped than ours. Perhaps Guy Gibson had survived, I speculated, and had taken things in hand, in his practical, level-headed way.

We had a brief burst of optimism along these lines when a light motor vehicle came bounding along the beach. The car bore two soldiers, both young women. But we were to be disappointed. These two girls were merely the furthest-flung of the exploratory expeditions the Force had sent out from its base: they had been following the shore to the west, looking for a way to strike inland.

For some weeks after the attack we maintained patrols along the beach and into the forest. These occasionally turned up the remains of some poor victim of the Bombing. Some of these appeared to have survived for a time after the first blast, but, enfeebled by injuries, had proved unable to save themselves or call for help. Sometimes a bit of kit would be brought back. (Nebogipfel was keen that any scraps of metal should be retrieved, for he argued that it would be some considerable time before our little residual colony would be able to smelt ore.) But of further survivors, we found none; the two women in their car were the last to join us.

We kept the signal fire burning, though, day and night, long after any reasonable hope of more survivors had vanished.

All told, of the hundred or more Expedition members, twenty-one individuals — eleven women, nine men, and Nebogipfel — survived the Bombing and fire-storm. No trace of Guy Gibson was found; and the Gurkha doctor was lost.

So we busied ourselves with caring for the injured, with collecting the supplies necessary to keep us alive from day to day, and with assembling our thoughts for how we should build a colony for the future… for, with the destruction of the Juggernauts, it was soon evident to us all that we should not be returning to our home centuries: that this Palaeocene earth would, after all, receive our bones.

[15] A New Settlement

Four of our number died, of burns and other injuries, soon after being brought to the camp. At least their suffering appeared to be slight, and I wondered if Nebogipfel had tempered his improvised drugs in such a way as to shorten the distress of these afflicted.

I kept such speculations to myself, however.

Each loss cast a deep pall over our little colony. For myself I felt numb, as if my soul was replete with horror, and beyond further reaction. I watched the battered young soldiers, in their ragged, bloodied remnants of military kit, go about their dismal chores; and I knew that these new deaths, in the midst of the brutal, primitive squalor within which we now strove to survive, forced each one of them to confront his or her own mortality anew.

To make things worse, after a few weeks a new sickness began to haunt our thinned ranks. It afflicted some of those already wounded, and, disturbingly, others who had seemed, on the surface, to have been left healthy after the Bombing. The symptoms were gross: vomiting, bleeding from the body’s orifices, and a loosening of the hair, fingernails and even the teeth.

Nebogipfel took me aside. “It is as I feared,” he whispered. “It is a sickness brought on by exposure to Carolinum radiation.”

“Are any of us safe — or will we all succumb?”

“We have no way to treat it, save for the alleviation of some of the worst symptoms. And as for safety—”

“Yes?”

He pushed his hands under his slit-mask to rub his eyes. “There is no such thing as a safe level of radio-activity,” he said. “There are only degrees of risk — of chance. We may all survive — or we may all succumb.”

I found all this most distressing. To see those young bodies, already scarred by years of War, now lying broken on the sand, left this way at the hands of a fellow human, and with only the inexpert ministrations of a Morlock — a stranded alien — to treat their wounds… It made me ashamed of my race, and of myself.

“Once, you know,” I told Nebogipfel, “I think a part of me might have argued that War could ultimately be a force for good — because it might break open the ossified ways of the Old Order of things, and open up the world for Change. And once I believed in an innate wisdom in Humanity: that, after witnessing so much destruction in a War like this, a certain bluff common sense would prevail, to put a stop to it all.”

Nebogipfel rubbed his hairy face. “ ’Bluff common sense’?” he repeated.

“Well, so I imagined,” I said. “But I had had no experience of War — not of the real thing. Once humans start bashing each other up, precious little will stop them until exhaustion and attrition overcome them! Now I can see there’s no sense in War — not even in the outcome of it…”

But on the other hand, I told Nebogipfel, I was struck by the selfless devotion of this handful of survivors to the care and tending of each other. Now that our situation had been reduced to its essentials — to simple human suffering — the tensions of class, race, creed and rank, all of which I had observed in this Expeditionary Force before the Bombing, had dissolved away.

Thus I observed, if I adopted the dispassionate viewpoint of a Morlock, that contradictory complex of strengths and weaknesses that lay at the soul of my species! Humans are at once more brutal, and yet, in some ways, more angelic, than the shallow experience of my first four decades of life had led me to believe.

“It’s a little late,” I conceded, “to be learning such deep lessons about the species with whom I have shared the planet for forty-odd years. But nevertheless, there it is. It seems to me now that if man is ever to achieve peace and stability — at least before he evolves into something new, like a Morlock — then the unity of the species will have to start at the bottom: by building on the firmest foundation — the only foundation — the instinctive support of a man for his fellows.” I peered at Nebogipfel. “Do you see what I’m getting at? Do you think there’s any sense in what I say?”

But the Morlock would neither support nor dismiss this latest rationalization. He simply returned my gaze: calm, observant, analytical.

We lost three more souls to the radiative sickness.

Others showed some symptoms — Hilary Bond, for instance, suffered extensive hair loss — but survived; and some, even one man who had been closer to the original blast than most, showed no ill-effects at all. But, Nebogipfel warned me further, we were not done with the Carolinum yet; for other illnesses — cancers and other disorders of the body — might develop in any of us in later life.

Hilary Bond was the senior officer surviving; and, as soon as she was able to raise herself on her pallet, she began to take a calm and authoritative command. A natural military discipline began to assert itself over our group — though much simplified, given that only thirteen had survived of the Expeditionary Force — and I think the soldiers, particularly the younger ones, found much comfort in the restoration of this familiar framework to their world. This military order could not last, of course. If our colony flourished, grew, and survived beyond this generation, then a chain of command along the lines of an Army unit would be neither desirable nor practicable. But for now, I reflected, needs must.

Most of these troopers had spouses, parents, friends — even children — “back home,” in the twentieth century. Now they must come to terms with the fact that none of us were going home — and, as their remaining equipment slowly fell apart in the humidity of the jungle, the troopers came to realize that all that would sustain them in the future was the fruit of their own labor and ingenuity, and their support for each other.

Nebogipfel, still mindful of the dangers of radiative emissions, insisted that we should make a more permanent encampment further along the coast. We sent out scouting parties, making the best use of our motor-car while its fuel lasted. At length, we decided on the delta of the mouth of a broad river, some five miles south-west of the Expedition’s original encampment — it was in the vicinity of Surbiton, I suppose. The land bordering our river’s plain would be fertile and irrigated, if we chose to develop agriculture in the future.

We made the migration in several stages, for many of the wounded required carrying for much of the journey. At first we used the car, but its supply of petrol soon expired. Nebogipfel insisted we bring the vehicle with us, though, to serve as a mine of rubber, glass, metal and other materials; and so for its final journey we shoved our car like a wheel-barrow along the sand, laden with wounded and with our supplies and equipment.

Thus we limped along the beach, the fourteen of us who had survived, with our ragged clothes and crudely-treated wounds. It struck me that if a dispassionate observer had watched this little trek, he should scarcely have been able to deduce that this ragged band of survivors were the sole representatives, in this Age, of a species which could one day shatter worlds!

Our new colony site was distant enough from the Expedition’s first encampment that the forest here showed no significant damage. We could not yet forget the Bombing, though; for at night, that bruised-purple glow to the east still lingered — Nebogipfel said it would remain visible for many years to come — and, exhausted by the work of the day, I often took to sitting at the edge of the camp, away from the lights and talk of the others, and I would watch the stars rise over that man-made volcano.

At first our new encampment was crude: little more than a row of lean-tos lashed up out of windfall branches and palm fronds. But as we settled in, and as our supply of food and water became assured, a more vigorous program of construction was put underway. The first priority, it was agreed, was a communal Hall, large enough to house us all in the event of a storm or other disaster. The new colonists set to constructing this with a will. They followed the rough outlines I had intended for my own shelter: a wooden platform, set on stilt-like foundations; but its scale was rather more ambitious.

A field beside our river was cleared, so that Nebogipfel could direct the patient cultivation of what might one day become useful crops, bred out of the aboriginal flora. A first boat — a crude dug-out canoe — was constructed, so that the Sea could be fished.

We captured, after much effort, a small family of Diatryma, and contained them within a stockade. Although these bird-beasts broke out several times, causing havoc about the colony, we stuck at containing and taming the birds, for the meat and eggs available from a domesticated flock of Diatryma was a pleasant prospect, and there were even experiments in having the Diatryma draw ploughs.

From day to day, the colonists treated me with a certain polite deference, as befitted my age — I conceded! — and my greater experience of the Palaeocene. For my part, I found myself in the position of leader of some of our projects in their early days, thanks to my greater experience. But the inventiveness of the younger people, coupled with the jungle survival training they had received, allowed them quickly to surpass my limited understanding; and soon I detected a certain tolerant amusement in their dealings with me. I remained an enthusiastic participant in the colony’s burgeoning activities, however.

As for Nebogipfel, he remained, naturally enough, something of a recluse in that society of young humans.

Once the immediate medical problems were resolved, and the demands on his time grew less, Nebogipfel took to spending time away from the colony. He visited our old hut, which still stood some miles to the north-east along the beach; and he went for great explorations into the forest. He did not take me into his confidence as to the purpose of these trips. I remembered the Time-Car he had tried to construct, before the arrival of the Expeditionary Force, and I suspected he was returning to some such project; but I knew that the Plattnerite of the Force’s landcruisers had been destroyed in the Bombing, so I could see no purpose in his continuing with that scheme. Still, I did not press Nebogipfel on his activities, reasoning that, of all of us, he was the most isolated — the most removed from the company of his fellows — and so, perhaps, the most in need of tolerance.

[16] The Establishment of First London

Despite the grisly battering they had endured, the colonists were resilient young people, and they were capable of high spirits. Gradually — once we were finished with the Bombing radiation deaths, and — once it was clear that we should not immediately starve or get washed into the Sea — a certain good humor became more evident.

One evening, with the shadows of the dipterocarps stretching towards the ocean, Stubbins found me sitting, as usual, at the verge of the camp, looking back towards the glow of the Bomb pit. With a painful shyness he — to my astonishment — asked me if I would care to join in a game of football! My protests that I had never played a game in my life counted for nothing, and so I found thyself walking back along the beach with him, to where a rough pitch had been marked out in the sand, and posts — scrap timber from the construction of the Hall — had been set up to serve as goals. The “ball” was a palm-nut shell, emptied of its milk, and eight of us prepared to play out the game, a mixture of men and women.

I scarcely expect that dour battle to go down in the annals of sporting history. My own contribution was negligible, save only to expose that utter lack of physical coordination which had made my days at school such a trial. Stubbins was by far the most skilled of us. Only three of the players, including Stubbins, were fully fit and one of those was me, and I was completely done in within ten minutes of the start. The rest were a collection of strapped-up wounds and — comic, pathetic — missing or artificial limbs! But still, as the game wore on, and laughter and shouts of encouragement started to flourish, it seemed to me that my fellow players were really little more than children: battered and bewildered, and now stranded in this ancient Age — but children nevertheless.

What kind of species is it, I wondered, that inflicts such damage on its own offspring?

When the game was done, we retired from our pitch, laughing and exhausted. Stubbins thanked me for joining in.

“Not at all,” I said. “You’re a fair old player, Stubbins. Maybe you should have taken it up as a professional.”

“Aye, well, I did, as a matter of fact,” he said wistfully. “I signed on as an apprentice with Newcastle United… but that was in the early days of the War. Pretty soon that put a stop to the football. Oh, there’s been some competition since — regional leagues, and the League War Cups — but in the last five or six years, even that has been closed down.”

“Well, I think it’s a shame,” I said. “You’ve a talent there, Stubbins.”

He shrugged, his evident disappointment mingling with his natural modesty. “It wasn’t to be.”

“But now you’ve done something much more important,” I consoled him. “You’ve played in the first football match on the earth — and got a hat-trick of goals.” I slapped him on the back. “Now, that’s a feather fit for any cap, Albert!”

As time wore on, it became increasingly apparent — I mean, at that level of the spirit below the intellectual where true knowledge resides — that we should, truly, never return home. Slowly — inevitably, I suppose — partnerships and ties in the twentieth century became remote, and the colonists formed themselves into couples. This pairing off showed no respect for rank, class or race: sepoy, gurkha and English alike joined in new liaisons. Only Hilary Bond, with her residual air of command, remained aloof from it all.

I remarked to Hilary that she might use her rank as a vehicle for performing marriage ceremonies — much as a sea-captain will join passengers in wedlock. She greeted this suggestion with polite thanks, but I caught skepticism in her voice, and we did not pursue the matter.

A little pattern of dwellings spread along the coast and up the river valley from our sea-shore node. Hilary viewed all this with a liberal eye; her only rule was that — for now — no dwelling should be out of sight of at least one other, and none should be more than a mile’s distance from the site of the Hall. The colonists accepted these strictures with good grace.

Hilary’s wisdom regarding the business of marriage — and my converse folly — soon became obvious, for one day I saw Stubbins strolling along the beach with his arms around two young women. I greeted them all cheerfully but it was not until they had passed that I realized that I did not know which of the women was Stubbins’s “wife"!

I challenged Hilary, and I could tell she was suppressing amusement.

“But,” I protested, “I’ve seen Stubbins with Sarah at the barn dance — but then, when I called at his but that morning last week, there was the other girl—”

Now she laughed, and laid her scarred hands on my arms. “My dear friend,” she said, “you have sailed the seas of Space and Time — you have changed History many times; you are a genius beyond doubt — and yet, how little you know of people!”

I was embarrassed. “What do you mean?”

“Think about it.” She ran her hand over her ravaged scalp, where tufts of grayed hair clung. “We are thirteen — not counting your friend Nebogipfel. And that thirteen is eight women and five men.” She eyed me. “And that’s what we’re stuck with. There’s no island over the horizon, from whence might come more young men to marry off our girls…

“If we all made stable marriages — if we settled into monogamy, as you suggest then our little society would soon tear itself apart. For, you see, eight and five don’t match. And so I think a certain looseness in our arrangements is appropriate. For the good of all. Don’t you think? And besides, it’s good for this ’genetic diversity’ that Nebogipfel lectures us about.”

I was shocked; not (I fondly believed) by any moral difficulties, but by the calculation behind all this!

Troubled, I made to leave her — and then a thought struck me. I turned back. “But — Hilary — I am one of the five men you speak of.”

“Of course.” I could see she was making fun of me.

“But I don’t — I mean, I haven’t—”

She grinned. “Then perhaps it’s time you did. You’re only making things worse, you know.”

I left in confusion. Evidently, between 1891 and 1944, society had evolved in ways of which I had never dreamed!

Work on the great Hall proceeded quickly, and within no more than a few months of the Bombing, the bulk of the construction was done. Hilary Bond announced that a service of dedication would be held to commemorate the completion. At first Nebogipfel demurred — with characteristic Morlock over-analysis, he could see no purpose to such an exercise — but I persuaded him that it would be politic, as regards future relations with the colonists, to attend.

I washed and shaved, and got myself as smart as it is possible to be when dressed only in a ragged pair of trousers. Nebogipfel combed and trimmed his mane of flaxen hair. Given the practicalities of our situation, many of the colonists went around pretty much nude by now, with little more than strips of cloth or animal skin to cover their modesty. Today, however, they donned the remnants of their uniforms, cleaned up and repaired as far as possible, and, while it was a parade which would have scarce passed muster at Aldershot, we were able to present ourselves with a display of smartness and discipline which I, for one, found touching.

We walked up a shallow, uneven flight of steps and into the new Hall’s dark interior. The floor though uneven was laid and swept, and the morning sunlight slanted through the glass less windows. I felt rather awed: despite the crudeness of its architecture and construction, the place had a feeling of solidity, of intent to stay.

Hilary Bond stood on a podium improvised from the car’s petrol tank, and rested her hand for support on Stubbins’s broad shoulder. Her ruined face, topped by those bizarre tufts of hair, held a simple dignity.

Our new colony, she announced, was now founded, and ready to be named: she proposed to call it First London. Then she asked us all to join her in a prayer. I dropped my head with the rest and clasped my hands before me. I was brought up in a strict High Church household, and Hilary’s words now worked nostalgically on me, transporting me back to a simpler part of my life, a time of certainty and surety.

And at length, as Hilary spoke on, simply and effectively, I gave up my attempts at analysis and allowed myself to join in this simple, communal celebration.

[17] Children and Descendants

The first fruits of the new unions arrived within the year, under Nebogipfel’s supervision.

Nebogipfel inspected our first new colonist carefully — I heard that the mother was most uncertain about allowing a Morlock to handle her baby, and protested; but Hilary Bond was there to calm her fears — and at last Nebogipfel announced that the baby was a perfect girl, and returned her to her parents.

Quite quickly — or so it seemed to me — there were several of the children about the place. It was a common sight to see Stubbins bouncing his baby boy on has shoulders, to the little chap’s evident delight; and I knew it should not be long before Stubbins would have the boy kicking bivalve shells for footballs about the beach.

The children were a source of immense joy to the colonists. Before the first births, several of the colonists had been prone to severe bouts of depression, brought on by homesickness and loneliness. Now, though, there were the children to think about: children who would know only First London as their home, and whose future prosperity provided a goal — the greatest goal of all — for their parents.

As for me, as I watched the soft, unmarked limbs of the children, cradled in the scarred flesh of parents who were still young themselves, it was as if I saw the shadow of that dreadful War lifting from these people at last — a shadow banished by the abundant light of the Palaeocene.

Still, though, Nebogipfel inspected each new-born arrival.

The day came, at last, when he would not return a child to its new mother: That birth turned into an occasion of private grief, into which the rest of us did not intrude; and afterwards Nebogipfel disappeared into the forest, following his secret pursuits, for long days.

Nebogipfel spent a good deal of his time running what he called “study groups.” These were open to any and all of the colonists, though in practice three or four at a time would turn up, depending on interest and other commitments. Nebogipfel held forth on practicalities of life in the conditions of the Palaeocene, such as the manufacture of candles and cloth from the local ingredients; he even devised a sort of soap, a coarse, gritty paste concocted of soda and animal fat. But he also expounded on subjects of broader significance: medicine, physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, the principles of time travel…

I sat in on a number of these sessions. Despite the unearthly nature of his voice and manner the Morlock’s exposition was always admirably clear, and he had a knack of asking questions to test the understanding of his audience. Listening to him, I realized that he could have taught the lecturers of the average British university a thing or two!

As for the content, he was careful to restrict himself to the language of his audience — to the vocabulary, if not the jargon, of 1944 — but he summarized for them the main developments in each field in the decades which followed that date. He worked demonstrations where he could, with bits of metal and wood, or produced diagrams sketched in the sand with sticks; he had his “students” cover every scrap of paper we had been able to retrieve with a codification of his knowledge.

I discussed all this with him around midnight, one dark and moonless night. He had discarded his latest slit-mask, and his gray-red eyes seemed luminescent; he was working with a crude mortar and pestle, in which he was mashing up palm fronds in some liquid. “Paper,” he said. “Or at least, an experiment in that direction… We must have more paper! Your human verbal memory is not of sufficient fidelity — they will lose everything when I am gone, within a few years…”

I took it — wrongly, as it turned out — that he was referring to a fear, or expectation at any rate, of death. I sat down beside him and took the mortar and pestle. “But is there a point to all this? Nebogipfel, we’re still barely subsisting. And you talk to them of Quantum Mechanics, and the Unified Theory of Physics! What need have they of this material?”

“None,” he said. “But their children will — if they are to survive. Look: by accepted theory, one needs a population of several hundred, of any of the large mammalian species, for sufficient genetic diversity to ensure long-term survival.”

“Genetic diversity — Hilary mentioned that.”

“Clearly, the available stock of humankind here is far too small for the viability of the colony — even if all the potential genetic material is placed in the pool.”

“And so?” I prompted.

“And so, the only prospect for survival beyond two or three generations is for these people rapidly to attain an advanced grasp of technology. That way, they can become the masters of their own genetic destiny: they need not tolerate the consequences of inbreeding, or the lingering genetic damage inflicted by the Carolinum’s radio-activity. So you see, they do need Quantum Mechanics and the rest.”

I pushed at the pestle. “Yes. But there’s an implied question here — should the human race survive, here in the Palaeocene? I mean, we’re not meant to be here — not for another fifty million years.”

He studied me. “But what is the alternative? Do you want these people to die out?”

I remembered my determination to eradicate the existence of the Time Machine before it was ever launched — to put a stop to this endless splintering of Histories. Now, thanks to my blundering about, I had indirectly induced the establishment of this human colony deep in the past, an establishment which would surely cause the most significant Historical fracturing yet! I had a sudden feeling of falling — it was a little like the vertiginous plummeting one feels when Traveling into time — and I felt that this diverging of History must already be far beyond my control.

And then, I thought of the expression on Stubbins’s face as he gazed at his first child.

I am man, not a god! I must let myself be influenced by my human instincts, for I was surely incapable of managing the evolution of Histories with any conscious direction. Each of us, I thought, could do little to change the course of things — indeed, anything we tried was likely to — be so uncontrolled as to inflict more damage than benefit — and yet, conversely, we should not allow the huge panorama about us, the immensity of the Multiplicity of Histories, to overwhelm us. The perspective of the Multiplicity rendered each of us, and our actions, tiny — but not without meaning; and each of us must proceed with our lives with stoicism and fortitude, as if the rest of it — the final Doom of mankind, the endless Multiplicity — were not so.

Whatever the impact on the future of fifty million years hence, there was a sense of health and rightness about this Palaeocene colony, I thought. So my reply to Nebogipfel’s question was inevitable.

“No. No, of course we must do all we can to help the colonists, and their descendants, survive.”

“Therefore—”

“Yes?”

“Therefore I must find a way to make paper.”

I ground on with the pestle and mortar.

[18] The feast, and Later

One day, Hilary Bond announced that the first anniversary of the Bombing was one week away, and that a celebratory Feast would be held to commemorate the founding of our little village.

The colonists fell on this scheme with a will, and preparations were soon well advanced. The Hall was decorated with lianas and immense garlands of flowers, gathered from the forest, and preparations were made to kill and cook one of the colony’s precious flock of Diatryma.

As for me, I scavenged funnels and lengths of tubing and, in the privacy of an old lean-to, began conducting intense private experiments. The colonists were curious about this, and I was forced to resort to sleeping in the lean-to to keep the secret of my improvised apparatus. It was time, I had decided, to put my scientific understanding to good use — for once!

The day of the Feast dawned. We gathered before the Hall in the bright morning light, and there was an air of great excitement and occasion. Once more the remains of uniforms had been cleaned and donned, and the infants-in-arms were decorated in the new fabrics Nebogipfel had devised of a type of local cotton, colored bright red and purple by vegetable dyes. I passed through the little knot of people, seeking out my closer friends -

— when there was a crash of twigs, and a deep, creaking bellow.

The cry went up. “Pristichampus — it is Pristichampus! Look out…”

And indeed, the bellow had been characteristic of that great land-running crocodile. People ran around, and I cast about for a weapon, cursing myself for being so unprepared.

Then another voice, gentler and more familiar, came floating to us. “Hi! Don’t be afraid — look!”

The panic subsided, and a sprinkle of laughter broke out.

Pristichampus — a proud male — stalked into the clear space in front of the Hall. We moved back to make room for it, and its hoofed feet left great pockmarks in the sand… and there on its back, grinning widely, his red hair flaming in the sunlight, sat Stubbins!

I approached the crocodile. Its scaly hide stank of decaying meat, and one cold eye was fixed on me, swiveling as I walked. Stubbins, bare-backed, grinned down at me; in his wiry hands he held a rein made of plaited lianas, wrapped about Pristichampus’s head.

“Stubbins,” I said, “this is quite an achievement.”

“Aye, well, I know we’ve set the Diatryma to dragging a plow, but this creature is far more agile. Why, we’ll be able to travel miles — it’s better than a horse…”

“Just be careful, even so,” I admonished him. “And, Stubbins, if you join me later—”

“Yes?”

“I might have a surprise for you.”

Stubbins dragged at Pristichampus’s head. It took considerable effort, but he managed to get the beast to turn. The great creature stepped its way out of the clearing and back towards the forest, the muscles of its huge legs working like pistons.

Nebogipfel joined me, his head almost lost beneath a huge, broad-brimmed hat.

“That’s a fine achievement,” I remarked. “But — can you see? — he barely had control of the brute…”

“He will win,” Nebogipfel said. “Humans always do.” He stepped closer to me, his white pelt shining in the morning sunlight. “Listen to me.”

I was startled by this sudden, incongruous whisper. “What? What is it?”

“I have finished my construction.”

“What construction?”

“I leave tomorrow. If you wish to join me, you are welcome.”

And he turned and, noiselessly, walked away towards the forest; in a moment the white of his back was lost in the darkness of the trees. I stood there with the sun at my neck, gazing after the enigmatic Morlock — and it was as if the day had been transformed. My mind was in a perfect turmoil, for his meaning was utterly clear.

A heavy hand clapped me on the back. “So,” said Stubbins, “what’s this great secret you have for me?”

I turned to him, but I found it difficult, for some seconds, to focus on his face. “Come with me,” I said at last, with as much vigour and good humor as I could muster.

A few minutes later, Stubbins — and the rest of the colonists were raising shells full to the brim with my home-made nut-milk liqueur.

The rest of the day passed in a joyous blur. My liqueur proved more than popular — although for my part I should have much preferred to have been able to improvise a pipeful of tobacco! There was much dancing to the sound of inexpert singing and hand-clapping, which impersonated a jolly sort of 1944 music Stubbins called “swing,” that I would like, I think, to have heard more of. I had them sing “The Land of the Leal” for me, and I performed, with my usual solemnity, one of my patent improvised dances; it evoked great admiration and mirth. The Diatryma was roasted on a spit — the cooking of it took most of the day — and the evening saw us sprawled on the scuffed sand, our plates laden with succulent meat.

Once the sun slipped below the tree-line, the party thinned rapidly; for most of us had become accustomed to a dawn-to-dusk existence. I hailed good night one final time, and retired to the ruins of my improvised still. I sat in the entrance to the lean-to, sipping at the last of my liqueur, and I watched the shadow of the forest sweep across the Palaeocene Sea. Dark shapes slid through the water: rays, perhaps, or sharks.

I thought over my conversation with Nebogipfel, and tried to come to terms with the decision I must make.

After a time, there was a soft, uneven footstep on the sand.

I turned. It was Hilary Bond — I could barely make out her face in the last of the day-light — and yet, somehow, I was not surprised to see her.

She smiled. “Can I join you? Do you have any of that moonshine left?”

I waved her to a place in the sand beside me, and I passed her my shell. She drank with some grace. “It’s been a good day,” she said.

“Thanks to you.”

“No. Thanks to all of us.” She reached out and took my hand — quite without warning — the touch of her skin was like an electric jolt. She said, “I want to thank you for all you’ve done for us. You and Nebogipfel.”

“We haven’t—?”

“I doubt if we’d have survived those first few days, without you.” Her voice, soft and level, was nevertheless quite compelling. “And now, with all you’ve shown us, and all Nebogipfel’s taught us — well, I think we’ve every chance of building a new world here.”

Her fingers were delicate and long against my palm, and yet I could feel the scarring from her burns. “Thank you for the eulogy. But you speak as if we are going away…”

“But you are,” she said. “Aren’t you?”

“You know about Nebogipfel’s plans?”

She shrugged. “In principle.”

“Then you know more than I do. If he has built a Time-Car — where did he get the Plattnerite, for example? The Juggernauts were destroyed.”

“From the wreck of die Zeitmaschine, of course.” She sounded amused. “Didn’t you think of that?” She paused. “And you want to go with Nebogipfel. Don’t you?”

I shook my head. “I don’t know. You know, sometimes I feel old — and tired — as if I have seen quite enough already!”

She snorted her contempt for that. “Baloney. Look: you started it—” She waved a hand. “All of this. Time traveling — and all the changes it’s brought about.” She gazed around at the placid Sea. “And now, this is the biggest Change of all. Isn’t it?” She shook her head. “You know, I’ve had a certain amount of dealing with the strategic planners at the DChronW, and I’ve come away downcast every time at the smallness of the thinking of such types. To adjust the course of a battle here, to assassinate some tin-pot figure there… If you have such a tool as a Chronic Displacement Vehicle, and if you know that History can be changed, as we do, then would you, should you, restrict yourself to such footling goals as that? Why restrict yourself to a few decades, and to fiddling with the boyhood of Bismarck or the Kaiser, when you can go back millions of years — as we have? Now, our children will have fifty million years to remake the world… We’re even going to rebuild the human species — aren’t we?” She turned to me. “But you haven’t reached the end of it yet. What’s the Ultimate Change, do you think? Can you go back all the way to the Creation, and start things all over again from there? How far can this — Changing — go?”

I remembered Gödel, and his dreams of the Final World. “I don’t know how far it can go,” I said truthfully. “I can’t even imagine it.”

Her face was huge before me, her eyes wells of darkness in the deepening twilight. “Then,” she said, “you must travel on and find out. Mustn’t you?” She moved closer, and I felt my hand tighten around hers, and her breath was warm against my cheek.

I sensed a stiffness about her — a reticence, which she seemed determined to overcome, if only by force of will. I touched her arm, and I found scarred flesh, and she shuddered, as if my fingers were made of ice. But then she clasped her hand around mine and held it against her arm. “You must forgive me,” she said. “It is not easy for me to be close.”

“Why? Because of the responsibilities of your command?”

“No,” she said, and her tone made me feel foolish and clumsy. “Because of the War. Do you see? Because of all of those who are gone… It’s hard to sleep, sometimes. You suffer now, not then — and that’s the tragedy of the thing, for those who survive. You feel you can’t forget — and that it’s wrong of you to go on living, even. If you break faith with us who died/ We shall not sleep, though poppies grow/ In Flanders field…”

I pulled her closer, and she softened against me, a fragile, wounded creature.

At the last moment, I whispered: “Why, Hilary? Why now?”

“Genetic diversity,” she said, her breath growing shallow.

“Genetic diversity…”

And soon we traveled on — not to the ends of time — but to the limits of our Humanity, there beside the shore of that primeval Sea.

When I awoke it was still dark, and Hilary had gone.

I came to our old encampment in full daylight. Nebogipfel barely glanced at me through his slit-mask as I entered; evidently he was as unsurprised by my decision as Hilary had been.

His Time-Car was completed. It was a box about five feet square, and around it I saw fragments of an unfamiliar metal: bits, I presumed, of the Messerschmitt, salvaged by the Morlock. There was a bench, lashed up from the wood of the dipterocarps, and a small control panel — a crude thing of switches and buttons — that featured the blue toggle switch which Nebogipfel had salvaged from our first Time-Car.

“I have some clothes for you,” Nebogipfel said. He held up boots, a twill shirt, and trousers, all in reasonable order. “I doubt our colonists will miss them now.”

“Thank you.” I had been wearing shorts made of animal skin; I dressed rapidly.

“Where do you want to go?”

I shrugged. “Home. 1891.”

He distorted his face. “It is lost in the Multiplicity.”

“I know.” I climbed into the frame. “Let us travel forward anyway, and see what we find.”

I glanced, one last time, at the Palaeocene Sea. I thought of Stubbins, and the tame Diatryma, and the light off the Sea in the morning. I knew that I had come close to happiness here — to a contentment that had eluded me all my life. But Hilary was right: it was not enough.

I still felt that great desire for home; it was a call in me along the River of Time, as strong, I thought, as the instinct which returns a salmon to its breeding-ground. But I knew, as Nebogipfel had said, that my 1891, that cozy world of Richmond Hill, was lost in the fractured Multiplicity.

Well: if I could not go home, I decided, I would go on: I would follow this road of Changing, until it could take me no further!

Nebogipfel looked at me. “Are you ready?”

I thought of Hilary. But I am not a man to be doing with goodbyes.

“I’m ready.”

Nebogipfel climbed stiffly into the frame, favoring his badly set leg. Without ceremony, he reached for his panel of controls and closed the blue toggle.

[19] Lights In the Sky

I caught one last glimpse of two people — a man and a woman, both naked — who seemed to hurtle across the beach. A shadow fell briefly over the car, perhaps cast by one of the immense animals of this Age; but soon we were moving too rapidly for such details to be discernible, and we fell into the colorless tumult of time travel.

The heavy Palaeocene sun leapt across the Sea, and I imagined how from the point of view of our transition through time the earth spun like a top on its axis, and rocketed around its star. The moon, too, was visible as a hurtling disc, rendered shadowy by the flickering of its phases. Soon the sun’s daily passage merged into the band of silver light which dipped between equinoctial limits, and day and night melted into the uniform blue-gray glow I have described before.

The dipterocarps trees of the forest shivered with growth and death, and were shouldered aside by the vigorous growth of younger plants; but the scene around us — the forest, the Sea smoothed by our time-passage to a glassy plain — remained static in its essentials, and I wondered if, despite all my and Nebogipfel’s efforts, men had after all failed to survive, here in the Palaeocene.

Then — quite without warning — the forest withered and vanished. It was as if a blanket of greenery had been ripped back from the soil. But the land was scarcely left bare; as soon as the forest was cleared, a melange of blocky brown and gray — the buildings of an expanding First London — swept over the earth. The buildings flowed over the denuded hills and down, past us, to the Sea, there to sprout into docks and harbors. The individual constructions shivered and expired, almost too fast for us to follow, though one or two persisted long enough — I suppose for several centuries — to become almost opaque, like crude sketches. The Sea lost its blue tinge and mutated into a sheet of dirty gray, its waves and tides made into a blur by our passage; the air seemed to take on a brown tinge, like an 1890s London fog, which gave the scene something of a dirty, twilit glow, and the air about us felt warmer.

It was striking that as the centuries fell away, regardless of the fate of individual buildings, the general outlines of the city persisted. I could see how the ribbon of the central river — the proto-Thames — and the scars of major road routes remained, in their essentials, unchanged by time; it was a striking demonstration of how geomorphology, the shape of the landscape, dominates human geography.

“Evidently our colonists have survived,” I said to Nebogipfel. “They have become a race of New Humans, and they are changing their world.”

“Yes.” He adjusted his skin slit-mask. “But remember we are traveling at several centuries per second; we are in the midst of a city which has already persisted for some thousands of years. I doubt that little is left of the First London we saw established.”

I peered around, my curiosity strong. Already my little band of exiles must be as remote to these New Humans as had been the Sumerians, say, from 1891. Had any memory persisted, in all this wide and bustling civilization, of the fragile origins of the human species in this antique era?

I became aware of a change in the sky: an odd, green-tinged flickering about the light. I soon realized it was the moon, which still sailed around the earth, waxing and waning through its ancient cycle too fast for me to follow — but the face of that patient companion was now stained green and blue — the colors of earth, and life.

An inhabited, earthlike moon! This New Humanity had evidently traveled to the sister world in Space Machines, and transformed it, and colonized it. Perhaps they had developed into a race of moon-men, as tall and spindly as the low-gravity Morlocks I had encountered in the Year 657,208! Of course I could not make out any detail, as the moon’s month-long orbit took it spinning across my accelerated sky; and of that I was regretful, for I would have loved to have had a telescope and to make out the waters of new oceans lapping those deep, ancient craters, and the forests spreading across the dust of the great maria. How would it be to stand on those rocky plains — to be cut loose of Mother Earth’s leading-strings? With every step in that reduced gravity one would fly through the thin, cold air, with the sun fierce and motionless overhead; it would be like the landscape of a dream, I thought, with all that glare, and plants less like earthly flora than the things I imagined among the rocks at the bottom of the sea…

Well, it was a sight I should never witness. With an effort, I returned in imagination from the moon, and fixed my attention on our situation.

Now there was some movement in the western sky, low against the horizon: firefly lights flickered into life, jerked across the heavens, and settled into place, there to remain for long millennia, before fading to be replaced by others. There was soon quite a crowd of these sparks, and they coalesced into a sort of bridge, which spanned the sky from horizon to horizon; at its peak, I counted several dozen lights in this city in the sky.

I pointed this out to Nebogipfel. “Are they stars?”

“No,” he said evenly. “The earth rotates still, and the true stars must be too obscured to be visible. The lights we see are hanging in a fixed position over the earth…”

“Then what are they? Artificial moons?”

“Perhaps. They are certainly placed there by the actions of men. The objects may be artificial — constructed of materials hauled up from the earth, or from the moon, whose gravity well is so much shallow. Or they may be natural objects towed into place around the earth by rockets: captured asteroids or comets, perhaps.”

I peered at those jostling lights with as much awe as any cave-dweller might stare at the light of a comet beating over his upturned, ignorant head!

“What would be the purpose of such stations in space?”

“Such a satellite is like a tower, fixed over the earth, twenty thousand miles tall…”

I grimaced. “Quite a view! One could sit in it and watch the evolution of weather patterns over a hemisphere.”

“Or the station could serve for the transmission of telegraphic messages from one continent to another. Or, more radically, one could imagine the transfer of great industries — heavy manufacture, or the generation of power, perhaps — to the comparative safety of high earth orbit.”

He opened his hands. “You can observe for yourself the degradation of the air and water around us. The earth has a limited capacity to absorb the waste products of human industry, and with enough development, the planet could even be rendered uninhabitable.

“In orbit, though, the limits to growth are virtually infinite: witness the Sphere, constructed by my own species.”

The temperature continued to increase, as the air grew more foul. Nebogipfel’s improvised Time-Car was functional, but poorly balanced, and it swayed and rocked; I clung to my bench miserably, for the combination of the heat, the swaying and the usual vertigo induced by time travel gave me a most nauseous feeling.

[20] The Orbital City

There was a further evolution of our equatorial Orbital City. The chaotic arrangement of those artificial lights had become significantly more regular, I saw. Now there was a band of seven or eight stations, all dazzling bright, positioned at regular intervals around the globe; I imagined that more such stations must be in position below the horizon, continuing their steady march about the waist of the planet.

Now threads of light, fine and delicate, grew steadily down from the gleaming stations, reaching towards the earth like tentative fingers. The motion was even, and slow enough for us to follow, and I realized that I was watching stupendous engineering projects — projects spanning thousands of miles of space, and occupying whole millennia — and I was awed by the dedication and grasp of the New Humans.

After several seconds of this, the leading threads had descended into the obscuring mist of the horizon. Then one such thread disappeared, and the station to which it had been fixed was snuffed out like a candle-flame in a breeze. Evidently the thread had fallen, or broken loose, and its anchoring station was destroyed. I watched the pale, soundless images, wondering what immense disaster — and how many deaths — they represented! Within moments, though, a new station had been fixed into the vacant position in the equator-girdling array, and a fresh thread extended.

“I’m not sure I believe my eyes,” I told the Morlock. “It looks to me as if they are fixing those cables from space to the earth!”

“So I imagine is happening,” the Morlock said. “We are witnessing the construction of a Space Elevator — a link, fixed between the surface of the earth and the stations in orbit.”

I grinned at the thought. “A Space Elevator! I should relish riding such a device: to rise up through the clouds, and into the silent grandeur of space — but, if the Elevator were glass-walled, it would not be a ride for the vertiginous.”

“Indeed not.”

Now I saw that more lines of light were extending between the geosynchronous stations. Soon the glowing points were linked, and the traces thickened into a glowing band, as broad and bright as the stations themselves. Again — though I had no real wish to curtail our time-traveling — I wished I could see more of this huge, world-girdling City in the sky.

The development of earth over the same period was scarcely so spectacular, however. Indeed, it seemed to me that First London had become static, perhaps abandoned. Some of the buildings became so long-lived that they seemed almost solid to us, although they were dark, squat and ugly; while others were falling into ruin without replacement. (We saw this process as the appearance, with brutal abruptness, of gaps in the complex sky-line). It seemed to me that the air was becoming still thicker, the patient Sea a drabber gray, and I wondered if the battered earth had been abandoned at last, either for the stars or, perhaps, for more palatable havens beneath the ground.

I raised these possibilities with the Morlock.

“Perhaps,” he said. “But you must recognize that already more than a million years have passed since the establishment of the original colony, by Hilary Bond and her people. There is more evolutionary distance between you and the New Humans of this era, than between you and me. So we can make nothing but educated guesses about the way of living of the races extant here, their motives — even their biological composition.”

“Yes,” I said slowly. “And yet—”

“Yes?”

“And yet the sun still shines. So the tale of these New Humans has diverged from your own. Even though they evidently have Space Machines like yours, they have no wish to cloak about the sun, as you Morlocks did.”

“Evidently not.” He raised his pale hand to the heavens. “In fact, their intent seems altogether more ambitious.”

I turned to see what he was indicating. Once again, I saw, that great Orbital City was showing developments. Now, huge shells — irregular, obviously thousands of miles across — were sprouting around the glowing linear town, like berries on a cane. And as soon as a shell was completed it cast off from earth, blossomed with a fire that illuminated the land, and vanished. From our point of view, the development of such an artifact, from embryonic form to departing fledgling, took a second or less; but each dose of flaring light must, I thought, have bathed the earth for decades.

It was a startling sight, and it continued for some time — for several thousand years, by my estimation.

The shells were, of course, huge ships in space.

“So,” I said to the Morlock, “men are traveling from the earth, in those great space yachts. But where are they going, do you think? The planets? Mars, or Jupiter, or—”

Nebogipfel sat with his masked face tilted up at the sky, and his hands in his lap, and the lights of the ships playing on the hairs of his face. “One does not need such spectacular energies as we have seen here to travel such petty distances. With an engine like that… I think the ambition of these New Humans is wider. I think they are abandoning the solar system, much as they appear to have abandoned the earth.”

I peered after the departing ships in awe. “What remarkable people these must be, these New Humans! I don’t want to be rude about you Morlocks, old chap, but still — what a difference of grasp, of ambition! I mean — a Sphere around the sun is one thing, but to hurl one’s children to the stars…”

“It is true that our ambition was limited to the careful husbandry of a single star — and there was logic to that, for more living space for the species is to be obtained by that means than through a thousand, a million interstellar jaunts.”

“Oh, perhaps,” I said, “but it’s scarcely so spectacular, is it?”

He adjusted his grubby skin-mask and stared around at the ruined earth. “Perhaps not. But the husbandry of a finite resource — even this earth — seems to be a competence not shared by your New Humans.”

I saw that he was right. Even as the star-ships’ fire splashed across the sea, the remains of First London were decaying further — the crumbling ruins seemed to bubble, as if deliquescing — and the Sea became more gray, the air still more foul. The heat was now intense, and I pulled my shirt away from my chest, where it had stuck.

Nebogipfel stirred on his bench, and peered about uneasily. “I think if it happens, it will come quickly…”

“What will?”

He would not reply. The heat was now more severe than I remembered ever suffering in the jungles of the Palaeocene. The ruins of the city, scattered over the hills of brown dirt, seemed to shimmer, becoming unreal…

And then — with a glare so bright it obscured the sun — the city burst into flames!

[21] Instabilities

That consuming fire swallowed us, for the merest fraction of a second. A new heat — quite unbearable — pulsed over the Time-Car, and I cried out. But, mercifully, the heat subsided as soon as the City’s torching was done.

In that instant of fire, the ancient city had gone. First London was scoured clean of the earth, and left behind were only a few outcroppings of ash and melted brick, and here and there the tracery of a foundation. The bare soil was soon colonized once more by the busy processes of life — a sluggish greenery slid over the hills and about the plain, and dwarfish trees shivered through their cycles at the fringe of the Sea — but the progress of this new wave of life was slow, and seemed doomed to a stunted existence; for a pearl-gray fog lay over everything, obscuring the patient glow of the Orbital City.

“So First London is destroyed,” I said in wonder. “Do you think there was a War? That fire must have persisted for decades, until there was nothing left to burn.”

“It was not a war,” Nebogipfel said. “But it was a catastrophe wrought by man, I think.”

Now I saw the strangest thing. The new, sparse trees began to die back, but not by withering before my accelerated gaze, like the dipterocarps I had watched earlier. Rather, the trees burst into flame — they burned like huge matches — and then were gone, all in an instant. I saw, too, how a great scorching spread across the grass and shrubs, a blackening which persisted through the seasons, until at last no more grass would grow, and the soil was bare and dark.

Above, those pearl-gray clouds grew thicker still, and the sun- and moon-bands were obscured.

“I think those clouds, above, are ash,” I said to Nebogipfel. “It is if the earth is burning up… Nebogipfel — what is happening?”

“It is as I feared,” he said. “Your profligate friends — these New Humans—”

“Yes?”

“With their meddling and carelessness, they have destroyed the life-bearing equilibrium of the planet’s climate.”

I shivered, for it had grown colder: it was as if the warmth was leaking out of the world through some intangible drain. At first I welcomed this relief from the scorching heat; but the chill quickly became uncomfortable.

“We are passing through a phase of excess oxygen, of higher sea-level pressure,” Nebogipfel said. “Buildings, plants and grasses — even damp wood — will combust, spontaneously, in such conditions. But it will not last long. It is a transition to a new equilibrium… It is the instability.”

The temperature plummeted now — the area took on an air of chill November — and I pulled my jungle shirt closer around me. I had a brief impression of a white flickering — it was the seasonal blanketing and uncovering of the land by winter’s snow and ice — and then the ice and permafrost settled over the ground, unyielding to the seasons, a hard gray-white surface which laid itself down with every impression of permanence.

The earth was transformed. To west, north and south, the contours of the land were masked by that layer of ice and snow. In the east, our old Palaeocene Sea had receded by some several miles; I could see ice on the beach at its fringe, and far to the north — a glint of steady white that told of bergs. The air was clear, and once more I could see the sun and green moon arcing across heaven, but now the air had about it that pearly-gray light you associate with the depths of winter, just before a snow.

Nebogipfel had huddled over on himself, with his hands tucked into his armpits and his legs folded under him. When I touched his shoulder his flesh was icy to the touch — it was as if his essence had retreated to the warmest core of his body. The hairs over his face and chest had closed over themselves, after the manner of a bird’s feathers. I felt a stab of guilt at his distress, for, as I may have indicated, I regarded Nebogipfel’s injuries as my responsibility, either directly or indirectly. “Come now, Nebogipfel. We have been through these Glacial periods before — it was far worse than this — and we survived. We pass through a millennium every couple of seconds. We’re sure to move beyond this, and back into the sunshine, soon enough.”

“You do not understand,” he hissed.

“What?”

“This is no mere Ice Age. Can’t you see that? This is qualitatively different… the instability…” His eyes closed again.

“What do you mean? Is this lot going to last longer than before? A hundred thousand, half a million years? How long?”

But he did not answer.

I wrapped my arms aground my torso and tried to keep warm. The claws of cold sank deeper into the earth’s skin, and the thickness of the ice grew, century on century, like a slowly rising tide. The sky above seemed to be clearing — the light of the sun-band was bright and hard, though apparently without heat and I guessed that the damage done to that thin layer of life-giving gases was slowly healing, now that man was no longer a force on the earth. That Orbital City still hung, glowing and inaccessible, in the sky over the frozen land, but there were no signs of life on the earth, and still less of Humanity.

After a million years of this, I began to suspect the truth!

“Nebogipfel,” I said. “It is never going to end — this Age of Ice. Is it?”

He turned his head and mumbled something.

“What?” I pressed my ear close to his mouth. “What did you say?”

His eyes had closed over, and he was insensible.

I got hold of Nebogipfel and lifted him from the bench. I laid him out on the Time-Car’s wooden floor, and then I lay down beside him and pressed my body against his. It was scarcely comfortable: the Morlock was like a slab of butcher’s meat against my chest, making me feel still colder myself; and I had to suppress my residual loathing of the Morlock race. But I bore it all, for I hoped that my body heat would keep him alive a little longer. I spoke to him, and rubbed at his shoulders and upper arms; I kept at it until he was awake, for I believed that if I let him remain unconscious — he might slip, unknowing, into Death.

“Tell me about this climatic instability of yours,” I said.

He twisted his head and mumbled. “What is the point? Your New Human friends have killed us…”

“The point is that I should prefer to know what is killing me.”

After rather more of this type of persuasion, Nebogipfel relented.

He told me that the atmosphere of the earth was a dynamic thing. The atmosphere had just two naturally stable states, Nebogipfel said, and neither of these could sustain life; and the air would fail into one of these states, away from the narrow band of conditions tolerable by life, if it were too far disturbed.

“But I don’t understand. If the atmosphere is as unstable a mixture as you suggest, how is it that the air has managed to sustain us, as it has, for so many millions of years?”

He told me that the evolution of the atmosphere had been heavily modified by the action of life itself. “There is a balance of atmospheric gases, temperature and pressure — which is ideal for life. And so life works — in great, unconscious cycles, each involving billions of blindly toiling organisms to maintain that balance.

“But this balance is inherently unstable. Do you see? It is like a pencil, balanced on its point: such a thing is ever likely to fall away, with the slightest disturbance.” He twisted his head. “We learned that you meddle with the cycles of life at your peril, we Morlocks; we learned that if you choose to disrupt the various mechanisms by which atmospheric stability is maintained, then they must be repaired or replaced. What a pity it is,” he said, heavily, “that these New Humans — these star-faring heroes of yours — had not absorbed similar simple lessons!”

“Tell me about your two stabilities, Morlock; for it seems to me we are going to be visiting one or the other!”

In the first of the lethal stable states, Nebogipfel said, the surface of earth would burn up: the atmosphere could become as opaque as the clouds over Venus, and trap the heat of the sun. Such clouds, miles thick, would obstruct most of the sunlight, leaving only a dull, reddish glow; from the surface the sun could never be seen, nor the planets or stars. Lightning would flash continually in the murky atmosphere, and the ground would be red-hot: scorched bare of life.

“That’s as may be,” I said, trying to suppress my shivers, “but compared to this damned cold, it sounds like a pleasant holiday resort… And the second of your stable states?”

“White Earth.”

He closed his eyes, and would speak to me no more.

[22] Abandonment and Arrival

I do not know how long we lay there, huddled in the base of that Time-Car, grasping at our remaining flickers of body-warmth. I imagined that we were the only shards of life left on the planet — save, perhaps, for some hardy lichen clinging to an outcropping of frozen rock.

I pushed at Nebogipfel, and kept talking to him.

“Let me sleep,” he mumbled.

“No,” I replied, as briskly as I could. “Morlocks don’t sleep.”

“I do. I have been with humans too long.”

“If you sleep, you’ll die… Nebogipfel. I think we must stop the car.”

He was silent for a while. “Why?”

“We must go back to the Palaeocene. The earth is deadlocked into the grip of this wretched winter — so we must return, to a more equable past.”

“That is a fine idea” — he coughed — “save for the detail that it is impossible. I did not have the means to design complex controls into this machine.”

“What are you saying?”

“That this Time-Car is essentially ballistic. I was able to aim it at future or past, and over a specified duration — we will be delivered to the 1891 of this History, or thereabouts — but then, after the aiming and launch, I have no control over its trajectory.

“Do you understand? The car follows a path through time, determined by the initial settings, and the strength of the German Plattnerite. We will come to rest in 1891 — a frozen 1891 — and not before…”

I could feel my shivering subsiding — but not through any great degree of increasing comfort, but because, I realized, my own strength was at last beginning to be exhausted.

But perhaps we were not finished even so, I speculated wildly: if the planet were not abandoned — if men were to rebuild the earth — perhaps we could yet find a climate we could inhabit.

“And man? What of man?” I pressed Nebogipfel.

He grunted, and his lidded eye rolled. “How could Humanity survive? Man has surely abandoned the planet — or else become extinct altogether…”

“Abandoned the earth?” I protested. “Why, even you Morlocks, with your Sphere around the sun, didn’t go quite so far as that!”

I pushed away from him, and propped myself up on my elbows so I could see out of the Time-Car towards the south. For it was from there — I was sure of it now — from the direction of the Orbital City, that any hope for us would come.

But what I saw next filled me with a deep dread.

That girdle around the earth remained in place, the links between the brilliant stations as bright as ever but I saw now that the downward lines, which had anchored the City to the planet, had vanished. While I had been occupied with the Morlock, the orbital dwellers had dismantled their Elevators, thus abandoning their umbilical ties to Mother Earth.

As I watched further, a brilliant light flared from several of the stations. That glow shimmered from the earth’s fields of ice, as if from a daisy-chain of miniature suns. The metal ring slid away from its position, over the equator. At first this migration was slow; but then the City appeared to turn on its axis — glowing with fire, like a Catherine-Wheel — until it moved so fast that I could not make out the individual stations.

Then it was gone, sliding away from the earth and into invisibility.

The symbolism of this great abandonment was startling, and without the fire from the great engines, the ice fields of the deserted earth seemed more cold, more gray than before.

I settled back into the car. “It is true,” I said to Nebogipfel.

“What is?”

“That the earth is abandoned — the Orbital City has cut loose and gone. The planet’s story is done, Nebogipfel — and so, I fear, is ours!”

Nebogipfel lapsed into unconsciousness, despite all my efforts to rouse him; and after a time, I lacked the strength to continue. I huddled against the Morlock, trying to protect his damp, cold body from the worst of the chill, I feared without much success. I knew that given our rate of passage through time, our journey should last no more than thirty hours in total — but what if the German Plattnerite, or Nebogipfel’s improvised design, were faulty? I might be trapped, slowly freezing, in this attenuated Dimension forever — or pitched, at any moment, out onto the eternal Ice.

I think I slept — or fainted.

I thought I saw the Watcher — that great broad head — hovering before my eyes, and beyond his limbless carcass I could see that elusive star-field, tinged with green. I tried to reach out to the stars, for they seemed so bright and warm; but I could not move — perhaps I dreamt it all — and then the Watcher was gone.

At last, with a groaning lurch, the power of the Plattnerite expired, and the car fell into History once more.

The pearly glow of the sky was dispersed, and the sun’s pale light vanished, as if a switch had been thrown: and I was plunged into darkness.

The last of our Palaeocene warmth fell away into the great sink of the sky. Ice clawed at my flesh — it felt like burning — and I could not breathe, though whether from the cold or from poisons in the air I did not know, and I had a great pressure in my chest, as if I was drowning.

I knew that I should not retain consciousness for many more seconds. I determined that I should at least see this 1891, so wildly changed from my own world, before I died. I got my arms underneath me — already I could not feel my hands — and pushed myself up until I was half-sitting.

The earth lay in a silver light, like moonlight (or so I thought at first). The Time-Car sat, like a crumpled toy, in the center of a plain of ancient ice. It was night, and there were no stars — at first I thought there must be clouds — but then I saw, low in the sky, a sliver of crescent moon, and I could not understand the absence of the stars; I wondered if my eyes were somehow damaged by the cold. That sister world was still green, I saw, and I felt pleased; perhaps people still lived there. How brilliant the frozen earth must be, in the sky of that young world! Close to the moon’s limb, a bright light shone: not a star, for it was too close — it was the reflection of the sun from some lunar lake, perhaps.

A corner of my failing brain prompted me to wonder about the source of the silvery “moonlight,” for this now glinted from frost which was gathering already over the frame of the Time-Car. If the moon was verdant still, she could not be the source of this elfish glow. What, then?

With the last of my strength I twisted my head. And there, in the starless sky far above me, was a glowing disc: a shimmering, gossamer thing, as if spun from spider-web, a dozen times the size of the full moon.

And, behind the Time-Car, standing patiently on the plain of ice -

I could not make it out; I wondered if my eyes were indeed failing. It was a pyramidal form, about the height of a man, but its lines were blurred, as if with endless, insectile motion.

“Are you alive?” — I wanted to ask this ugly vision. But my throat was closed up, my voice frozen out of me, and I could ask no more questions.

The blackness closed around me, and the cold receded at last.