The man who mastered time
other things. The ruins of a dead city do not remain long in visible
existence. Two thousand years more were recorded. Beneath me the
vegetation seemed untouched by the hand of man; only in a few scattered
places were there any remaining ruins: a tumbledown segment of
building; the broken base of a tower; skeletons of crumbling steel here
and there; headstones on the grave of what once had been a city.
With these changes the contour of the landscape itself was forced to my
attention. The rivers had changed; they were broader. South of Manhattan
Island, and somewhat to the west, I could distinguish a great expanse of
water. All the lowlands there--the "Meadows," as we call them--had sunk.
To the north, the land seemed higher than normal, and an arm of the sea
had crept in up there to lap the foothills.
I have not told you of the temperature I was experiencing. When I
started there was an almost immediate drop--a blending of day and night,
winter and summer. It penetrated into the cabin, making the ship almost
cold after the warm August evening of my departure.
Now, however, at seven o'clock, when I had been gone some nine hours, I
felt that it was growing noticeably colder. And the faintest suggestion
of a vague whiteness began to creep into the scene below me. That is an
odd way for me to phrase it. I was seeing each minute only the _effect_
of the snowfalls of thirty winters, blended with all the other seasons.
The snowfalls were increasing in severity; I became aware of that in the
aspect of the scene, but I cannot describe it.
It was after seven o'clock now. I had been gone about nine and a half
hours. The dials showed eleven thousand four hundred and fifty odd
years. I now faced a new problem: the landscape we had seen in our
experiment had nothing in it of great duration. How could I find it, or
tell when I had reached its time? That house in which the girl was held
captive could stand no more than a hundred years, if that. And it was
the only distinguishing mark in the whole scene. I would pass the
lifetime of that house in a minute or two. I puzzled over this for quite
a while. I had almost decided to stop and verify the actual, momentary
conditions beneath me. And then I realized I still had far to go. There
were trees, plenty of them, beneath me. They were constantly shifting
and changing, but quite distinguishable, nevertheless. And in the
enclosure about that house, Father and I had seen a tree--the only tree
in the landscape. It was a curious looking tree, stunted, and with a
look of the far north about it. These below me, at eleven and twelve
thousand years ahead of our present, were more or less normal looking
trees--or they probably would have been, had I stopped to examine them.
I still had far to travel, so I increased the current from the tenth to
the fifteenth intensity. Again I was conscious of that feeling of
lightness in my head, and the humming and vibration of everything
increased. I had almost forgotten my personal sensations; had quite
forgotten them, in fact, for several hours past.
I passed fifteen thousand years. I could see that the ocean to the north
had come further inland. There was now, from my altitude, no evidence of
mankind visible, nor anything to indicate that man had ever lived on
this earth. The scene was more blurred now and grayer. I could still
make out the bay to the south, with a range of hills on Staten Island
and water behind it and to the west as far as I could see. The rivers
bounding Manhattan were still there, but the Palisades along the Hudson
had broken down.
Directly beneath me was forest. I believed I had not drifted much from
my original position. I was still over where Central Park had been some
twenty thousand years before. The forest--it was more like
woods--covered a narrow rolling country between the two rivers. I knew I
was moving through time much more swiftly now, perhaps twice as fast as
before. The vegetation was blurred, almost distorted. It was changing
constantly and, on the whole, was growing sparser, more stunted. It was
as though I were traveling northward, or ascending a mountain almost to
the timber line. Another interval passed. My time-velocity had so
increased that once I thought I could see a hill rising. But that
probably was imagination.
I had been gone some twelve hours--it was almost ten o'clock--when I
realized I was about exhausted. My head was reeling; my eyes burned and
watered. It was growing much colder--so cold that I switched on the
electrical heating apparatus.
That was when the dials recorded between twenty and thirty thousand
years. I don't remember exactly. I was confused. The scene beneath me
was noticeably whiter, and I was now drifting to the south. I felt
perturbed. I was going too far.
I had reached about forty-five thousand years when abruptly I realized
that there was no vegetation in the scene! Just when it melted away I
had not noticed. It was all a whitish blur, now, that suggested very
snowy winters blended with a shorter summer season. I leaped to the
control, and threw its handle back, pausing an instant at each intensity
of current until I had come to the first. There I left it.
These new sensations of decreasing my time-velocity so abruptly were
almost equally as severe as those when I started. The humming slowed up.
My whole body seemed to be turning to lead--or freezing. I was heavy,
stiff, and cold. I was standing up, and I managed to grip the side of
the cabin for support, and reaching down, I threw off the switch,
cutting off the current completely. There came a tremendous, soundless
clap in my head; I seemed tumbling headlong into an abyss of blackness.
I do not think I lost consciousness. My senses reeled for what seemed an
age, but was doubtlessly only a second or two. I fell into a chair and
the horrible dizziness passed. I raised my head and looked about me.
My first impression was of the extraordinary solidity of the cabin
interior. I had not realized how shadowy it had been before. Two little
electric bulbs were burning overhead. They illuminated the compartment.
The windows were black rectangles; It was night outside.
I was cold; I could see my breath in the chill of the room, even though
one of the electric heaters was in operation. Everything close to me was
oppressively silent; the humming still seemed to persist vaguely, but I
knew it was only the reaction from it roaring in my ears. From the next
compartment came the drone of the Frazia motors.
When I had fairly recovered normality, I went to the nearest window. The
sky was blue-black. There was no moon and the stars seemed a trifle
hazy. Beneath me I could make out a barren expanse of snow. I checked my
compass. Its needle had steadied now, and I saw that my drift was almost
directly south. The ship was moving rapidly, and I was alarmed. I knew
that, even with the compass, I could easily get lost--geographically, so
to speak.
My first action was to ascend. When I was up some six thousand feet I
started back northward, against the wind.
I was hopelessly lost, both in time and in space. I could distinguish
nothing in the starlit, snowy landscape that seemed familiar. Whether or
not I had passed the time world I was seeking, I had no idea. Then I
flew low, skimming the snow no more than one or two hundred feet above
it. There were houses! Huts would be a better word. I think they were
built of snow, but I could not tell. It seemed an Arctic world.
I knew then I had gone too far in time. I decided to stay near here in
space until morning. Fortunately that proved only a short time away.
Within half an hour the stars paled; twilight came and passed, and the
sun rose--a huge, red, glowing ball.
I was circling about, quite high--six or eight thousand feet possibly.
By this reddish light of early morning I could see the bay south of me.
There was no Long Island; the ocean had closed in to the north and east,
and I was near its shore--a cold, snowy beach, with lazy rollers. But
west of me there was a river--the Hudson, I was sure--double the breadth
of one I had known. It seemed to come from a mountainous region in the
northwest, and an arm of it north of Manhattan emptied into the sea.
Everywhere there was snow. The bay was full of floating ice. Across the
river was an area of stunted trees. I was over Manhattan Island, I was
sure. I circled around, searching. It was not the time world I was
seeking--that was obvious. Should I go on, or go back through the
centuries I had passed? I decided on the latter.
I had now been away from you nearly sixteen hours. I was worn out. I
flew across the river, found a level plateau to the north. There was no
sign of human habitation in the vicinity. Shutting off my Frazia motors
completely, I descended and came to rest on the surface of the snow, in
a time world forty-six thousand and eight years beyond our present. I
ate a little and, dropping to the floor of the cabin, fell asleep.
Unwise maybe, but I had to take a chance.
At any rate, I awakened without having been disturbed. It was night
again; I had slept some twelve hours. I flew upward, back over Manhattan
Island, and threw the opposite proton current into its first intensity.
I need not go into further details. My sensations were the same as
before, though they bothered me less as I grew more accustomed to them.
I came back through time. At intervals I stopped and examined the
landscape.
The wind was blowing almost continually from the north during all these
centuries. I flew into it slowly, keeping my approximate position
without great difficulty. I tried to hold myself near the south center
of the island, and look northward. I was right in going back through
time, I soon discovered. From close to the ground where I stopped once,
I could see a rolling hill near by that had a familiar contour. I cannot
describe it to you, but once I saw it from that angle, I knew it was in
the landscape we had seen from the laboratory.
Then I found the tree. There was no house. No snow, either, for I had
chanced then to stop in a summer season. The tree was too small. I chose
a ten years later time world, and watching the dials closely, descended
at a period ten and a half years later. I had struck it exactly; it must
have been within a week or two from the time world Father and I had
observed.
I had occupied some eight hours with this search. The dials had stopped
now at twenty-eight thousand two hundred odd years. I was at that
instant flying at an altitude of no more than a few hundred feet. It
was again early morning, just after sunrise, and there was that
familiar, snowy landscape we had seen from the laboratory.
The house, with its enclosure and outbuildings, lay below me. I circled
over it, staring down through the floor window. The Frazia motors are
greatly muffled, as you know, but, even so, their sound carried down to
the house. A figure came out into the enclosure, and stared upward at
me. It was the girl--in a fur garment, but bareheaded--watching my
plane. Before I could think what to do, three huge dogs, each of them
the size of a pony, came leaping from one of the outbuildings and stood
in a group, snarling at me with such volume and power that they made my
blood run cold.
I was circling slowly over the house, cursing my lack of caution and
still too confused to do anything, when the figure of a man appeared in
the enclosure, clad in furs and bareheaded like the girl. He stood head
and shoulders over her. Evidently the noise of the dogs blotted out the
sound of my motors. He did not look up into the air, but striding
angrily to the girl, struck her in the face with the flat of his hand.
Then he dragged her, cowering, into the house.