The moon era
Then the sun came into view, plunging across the sky like a flaming
comet. It swung supernally across my field of vision, vanished.
Appeared again. And again. Its motion became ever swifter.
What was the meaning of such an apparent revolution of the sun about
the sky? It meant, I knew, that earth and moon had swung about the
star. That a year had passed! But were years going by as fast as my
chronometer ticked off the seconds?
Another strange thing. I could recognize the constellations of the
Zodiac, through which the sun was plunging. And it was going backward!
As the earth was spinning backward!
I moved to another window, searched for the moon, my goal. It hung
still among spinning stars. But in its light there was a flicker,
far more rapid than the flashing of the sun across the wild heavens.
I wondered, then knew that I saw the waxing and waning of the moon.
Months, passing so swiftly that soon the flicker became a gray blur.
The flashing past of the sun became more frequent. Until it was a
strange belt of flame about the strange heavens, in which the stars
crept and moved like living things.
A universe gone mad! Suns and planets spinning helpless in the might of
a cosmic storm! The machine from which I watched the only sane thing in
a runaway cosmos!
Then reason came to my rescue.
Earth, moon, sun, and stars could not all be mad. The trouble was with
_myself_! My perceptions had changed. The machine--
Slowly it came to me, until I knew I had grasped the truth.
Time, true time, is measured by the movements of the heavenly bodies.
Our day is the time of earth's rotation on its axis. Our year the
period of its revolution about the sun.
Those intervals had become crowded so thick in my perception that they
were indistinguishable. Then countless years were spinning past, while
I hung still in space!
Incredible! But the conclusion was inevitable.
And the apparent motion of earth and sun had been backward.
That meant--and the thought was staggering--that the ages were reeling
backward. That I was plunging at an incalculable rate into the past.
Vaguely I recalled magazine articles that I had read, upon the nature
of space and time. A lecture. The subject had fascinated me, though I
had only a layman's knowledge of it.
The lecturer had defined our universe in terms of space-time. A
four-dimensional "continuum." Time was a fourth dimension, he had
said. An extension as real as the three of what we call space, and not
completely distinguishable from them. A direction in which motion would
carry one into the past, or into the future.
All memory, he had said, is a groping back along this dimension, at
right angles to each of the three of space. Dreams, vivid memories,
he insisted, carry one's consciousness in reality back along this
dimension, until the body, swept relentlessly along the stream of time,
drags it forward again.
* * * * *
Then I recalled what my uncle had told me of the refusal of his
engineers to try the machine. Recalled Gorton's warning. Muller, they
both had told me, had declared that the machine would move along a
fourth dimension, out of our world. He had made models of the machine,
and they had vanished when the power was turned on.
Now I knew that Muller was right. His models had vanished because they
had been carried into the past. Had not continued to exist in the
present time.
And now I was moving along that fourth dimension. The dimension of
time. And very swiftly, for the years went past too fast for counting.
The reversal of gravitation, it came to me, must be some effect of this
change of direction in time. But I am not a scientist, I can explain
the "Conway Effect" no better than my uncle, for all the wonders that
it has brought into my life.
At first it was horribly strange and terrifying.
After I had thought out my explanation of the mad antics of the earth
and sun and moon, and of the hurrying stars, I was, however, no longer
frightened. I gazed out through my small round ports at the melting
firmament with some degree of equanimity.
I continued to watch the charts my uncle had prepared, and to make
adjustments of the rheostat when they were indicated by the chronometer.
And presently, feeling hungry, I toasted biscuits on the electric
stove, cut off a generous slice of a cheese that I found in the
supplies, opened a vacuum bottle of steaming chocolate, and made a
hearty and very satisfactory meal.
When I had finished, the aspect of the space about me was unchanged.
Crawling stars, already forming themselves into constellations the
most of which were unfamiliar. The sun a broad belt of burning gold,
counting off the years too swiftly for the eye to follow. A living
flame that girdled the firmament. The earth was a huge gray sphere,
spinning so swiftly behind me that no detail was visible.
And even the moon, hanging in space ahead, was turning slowly. No
longer was the same familiar face toward me, and toward the earth.
Already I had reached a point in past time at which the moon was
turning on its axis more rapidly than it revolved about the earth. The
tidal drag had not yet completely stopped the moon's apparent rotation.
And if already the moon was turning, what would it be when I reached
it? Hurtling into the past as I was, would I see oceans cover its dry
sea-floors? Would I see an atmosphere soften the harsh outlines of its
rugged mountains? Would I see life, vegetation, spread over its plains?
Was I to witness the rejuvenation of an aged world?
It seemed fantastic. But it was taking place. The speed of rotation
slowly increased as I watched.
The hours slipped past.
I became heavy with sleep. The two days before the departure had not
been easy. I had worked day and night to familiarize myself with the
machine's operation. The nervous strain had been exhausting. The
amazing incidents of the voyage had kept me tense, sapped my strength.
The chart told me that no change was to be made in the controls for
many hours. I inspected the gauges which showed the condition of the
atmosphere in the chamber. Oxygen content, humidity, temperature, were
correct. The air smelled sweet and clean. I completed the rounds, found
everything in order.
I adjusted the big chair to a reclining position, and threw myself upon
it. For hours I slept, waking at intervals to make a tour of inspection.
Sometimes, in the following days, I wondered if I should be able to
go back. Muller's models had carried no operator, of course to start
them on the flight back through time to the starting point. Would I be
able to reverse the time-flight? If I followed the directions on the
operating chart, on the flight back, would I be flung forward through
the ages, back to my own era?
I wondered. But the speculation brought forth no conclusion. A strange,
unique experience was mine. Glorious adventure. Death was not too high
a price to pay.
It did not even occur to me to attempt to turn back earthward, when I
found that I was slipping through time. And I did not have sufficient
control of the machine to have done so, had I wished. Dependent upon
the chart for navigating instructions, I could not have plotted a
return path from the midway point. And I knew no way to stop my flight,
except by using the repulsion of the moon's reversed gravitation.
My flight lasted six days, by the chronometer.
Long before the end, the moon was spinning very swiftly. And the edges
of its outline had become hazy, so that I knew it had an atmosphere.
I followed the charted directions, until I was in the upper layers of
that atmosphere. The moon's surface was sliding very rapidly beneath
me, and the atmosphere with it, due to the swift rotation of the
satellite. Consequently, fierce winds screamed about the machine.
I hung in the atmosphere, merely using enough power to balance the
moon's comparatively feeble gravitational pull, until the pressure of
that rushing wind swept me with it. The mistily indistinct surface
slowed, became motionless beneath me.
With power decreased still further, I settled slowly, watching alertly
through the ports.
A towering, crimson mountain loomed above the mists below. I dropped
toward it, increasing the power a little. At last I hovered motionless
above a narrow, irregular plateau, near the peak, that seemed covered
with soft scarlet moss.
Slowly I cut down the power. With hardly a shock, the machine settled
in the moss.
I was on the moon! The first of my race to set foot upon an alien
planet! What adventures might await me?
CHAPTER III
When the Moon Was Young
With the power cut off entirely, I ran to the ports. There had been no
time to scan my surroundings during the uncertainties of the landing.
Now I peered out eagerly.
The moonscape was as strange a sight as man had ever seen.
The machine had come down in thick green moss, that looked soft as a
Persian rug. A foot deep it was. Dark green fibers closely intertwined.
In an unbroken carpet it covered the sloping plateau upon which I had
landed, and extended almost to the top of the rugged peak to northward.
To the south and west lay a great valley, almost level, miles across.
Beyond it rose a dim range of green hills, rugged summits bare and
black. A broad river, glinting white in the distance, flowed down the
valley, from northwest, into the south. Then there must be an ocean in
that direction.
Strange jungle covered that valley, below the green moss of the
mountains. Masses of green. Walls of yellow lining the wide smooth
river. Dense forests of gigantic plants, weirdly and grotesquely
strange. They grew more luxuriant, taller, than similar plants could
upon the earth, because a much feebler gravitation opposed their growth.
Equally strange was the sky.
Darker than on earth, perhaps because the atmosphere was thinner. A
deep, pure, living blue. A blue that was almost violet. No cloud marred
its liquid azure splendor.
The sun hung in the glorious eastward sky. Larger than I had known it.
Whiter. A supernal sphere of pure white flame.
Low in the west was an amazing disk. A huge ball of white, a globe of
milky light. Many times the diameter of the sun. I wondered at it. And
realized that it was--the earth! The earth young as Venus had been in
my time. And like Venus, shrouded in white clouds never broken. Were
the rocks still glowing beneath those clouds, I wondered? Or had the
life begun--the life of my farthest progenitors?
Would I ever see my native land again, upon that resplendent,
cloud-hidden planet? Would the machine carry me back into the future,
when I attempted return? Or would it hurl me farther into the past, to
plunge flaming into the new-born and incandescent world?
That question I put resolutely from my mind. A new world was before me.
A globe strange and unexplored. Why worry about return to the old?
My eyes went back to the broad valley below me, along the banks of the
broad river, beneath the majestic range of green mountains. Clumps of
gold, resembling distant groves of yellow trees. Patches of green that
looked like meadows of grass. Queer, puzzling uprights of black.
I saw things moving. Little bright objects, that rose and fell slightly
as they flew. Birds? Gigantic insects? Or creatures stranger than
either?
Then I saw the balloons. Captive balloons, floating above the jungles
of the valley. At first I saw only two, hanging side by side, swaying a
little. Then three more, beyond. Then I distinguished dozens, scores of
them, scattered all over the valley.
I strained my eyes at them. Were there intelligent beings here, who had
invented the balloons? But what would be the object of hanging them
about above the jungles, by the hundred.