Time Travel Omnibus, page 128
Deep in my heart I knew I was setting oat on a mad enterprise; for, whereas on my first trip I believed in Brown implicitly, in this case I was firmly convinced that he was wrong in his original hypothesis. But my idiotic pride, or my vanity, kept me silent, and I followed Brown into the time machine.
Almost before I realized it, he had sealed the globe and turned the control. I recognized the blurring of the lights, the sense of flying upward, away from the world, into a new, boundless, element. I seemed to spiral into space as the mirrors revolved with incredible rapidity. Against my will I had been projected headlong into the future, and at terrific velocity I was approaching the end of time!
A LOW chuckle behind me made me turn on Brown in a fury. But the utter calm of his countenance, and the careless smile which played around his lips made me remember myself in time. After all, he had never been wrong before, and it seemed as though I were fated to share with him one adventure more; the best, and, I hoped—the last.
“Now that you’ve got me here, you may as well show me how to operate this machine of yours,” I said to Brown. “After all. something is liable to happen to you, considering the dangers we are to face, and! ought to have a chance to get back to my own world.”
“Judging by your attitude,” answered the omniscient Brown, with his bitter smile, “you wouldn’t be sorry if something happened to me right now. I should have known better than to take you into my confidence a second time. You don’t trust me any more; you think I’m crazy, and this time you think you have proof of it. Well, before this trip is over, I hope to convince you that I’m as sane as you are—and perhaps a lot saner.”
“I’m sorry, Brown,” I said, genuinely regretting by hasty conclusion. “Say no more about it. I’m with you here and I’ll be with you to the end.”
“That’s the way to talk!” exclaimed the inventor enthusiastically. “And now that I know you won’t try anything, I’ll try to teach you how the machine works.”
And for what appeared to be a long time, as the crystal globe tore through time to its inevitable destination, Brown instructed me in the intricate workings of his marvellous mechanism.
“I wonder if I can see that wonderful city again,” I remarked. “You remember I saw one upon our first trip which seemed to be built of glass, and another that had a vast spinning globe in the center.”
“We are far beyond those,” said Brown solemnly. “We are two million years in the future as we speak!”
I gasped, and then turned to the camera obscura and flashed off the interior lights. A vast panorama spread before us. It was night upon the world. A full moon shone coldly on a vast city of gleaming glass, shining like crystal in the white rays. It seemed more like a continent than a city; for when one looks down upon a city from the air, he can discern its boundaries. But here, as far as the eye could see, was that one vast dome of glass, beneath which the teeming life of a nation pulsed and seethed. Through the mighty arched roof, which seemed to cover the entire earth, flashed the myriad lights that turned night to day inside the magic structure. The entire city, or state, or nation—we could discern no distinguishing characteristics—was one immense chain of structures, all connected, like the apartment houses we had left behind two million years before. But these were of stupendous size, and it was quite evident that elevators were unnecessary, for any number of people rose from the glittering floor of the enclosure and apparently without effort, and in defiance of the laws of gravity, shot up to any ledge of apartments they wished to reach.
“They have conquered gravity,” said Brown. “Apparently they use nullifiers. If I saw any wings I could explain the mechanism, but as it is, I rather think they have miniature atomic energy devices strapped to their backs, which drive them through the air.” He adjusted the lens of the camera to obtain a clearer focus, and exclaimed, “I knew it! You can see they all carry something on their backs—something nature never put there.”
“And I was right after all!” I joined in. “Didn’t I say man would conquer the advancing glacial ages? Evidently this glass dome is used to protect the people from the elements. You can see the snow on parts of it. How they get their fresh air I don’t know, but it’s a pretty sure thing that human beings have learned to conquer the elements. I think you’re wrong, Brown. Man will never die out!”
“You think so?” asked Brown. “Well, that remains to be seen.”
CHAPTER II.
Into the Earth!
THE words had hardly left his mouth when he suddenly put his hand to his head, staggered, and fell. At the same moment the time machine gave a splintering crash and shuddered in every part.
I sprang to the controls to stop our flight through time. There was no need to do so. The machine had stopped of its own accord.
From the base of Brown’s skull trickled a little stream of blood. Evvidently he had been dazed by a sliver of crystal. With my medical skill and with my first-aid kit, it was a matter of a few moments to restore him to consciousness. He sat up and looked at me accusingly.
“We can’t be at the end of our journey,” he said. “I might have known better than to trust you with the controls. Henceforth you will leave the navigating to me, and take the controls only after I am killed.” He rubbed the back of his head ruefully. “A little farther down and you might have come to the last men bearing an unusual gift—a corpse!”
The inventor picked himself up and examined the controls. “I thought so,” he said. “Smashed!”
“Does that mean—” I asked, feeling the blood leave my extremities and congeal around my heart.
“Does that mean that you are stranded out here in time?” mimicked Brown. “No, it does not. Your precious skin is safe. It means only that I must replace this delicate little mechanism with another—and I have only two. Thank heaven I exercised my usual foresight! Otherwise—but I am sure you can imagine the rest for yourself.”
He opened a locker and from it carefully lifted a replica of the damaged control. “There is only one left,” he said significantly, pointing to another in the locker. “You will please confine your activities to observation, not manipulation.”
I was too angry to attempt to explain. Never in my life did I feel so impelled to express myself in blistering profanity. Brown’s contemptuous treatment of me—as thought I were some specimen of imbecile—made me sorrier than ever that I had accompanied him. As the machine shuddered on its way I turned my back on him and walked to the camera obscura. Once more we were hurtling forward through centuries unborn, and as the glittering globe tore onward I gazed again into the future.
“You will probably notice,” said Brown’s mocking voice from behind me, “that the earth is growing colder and colder, and that the glacial areas are spreading. I am afraid we will soon come to the end of all life.”
I glanced over my shoulder. Brown was not looking into the camera; yet he had predicted precisely what was happening before my eyes! As I watched I realized that the extinction of human life was inevitable; for even the glass cities I had seen could no longer protect man from the mortal chill of a cooling earth and a dying sun. Dying the sun might not be; and yet the earth was cooling, losing some of the solar heat, giving way to eternal ice and perpetual gloom. The sun shone down at noon no stronger than the moon I had observed. Perhaps, I thought, the earth had been drawn from its orbit by another body, and was as far from the sun as Mars. But whatever the cause, the effect was plain. Not a living thing was visible. Everywhere ice, gleaming, smooth, cold, implacable; nowhere the cheering sight of a solitary creature that drew breath. Involuntarily I shuddered and turned away.
“You have stopped for a moment at two way stations on our journey,” said Brown, with grim and almost inhuman humor, with an appalling callousness. “The next stop will be the last. Better get your baggage ready, because this is as far as we go.”
“Why,” I almost shouted, “you’re mad! “You’re a monster in human form! I wish I had never seen you or heard of your infernal machine! I—.” I stopped. Something had happened. The time machine comes to rest with a grinding jar. But still I felt it moving—in what direction, I could not tell. I dashed to the camera and dimmed the lights of the car; and before my eyes the various strata of the earth seemed to pass in rapid, in bewildering procession. We seemed to be sinking, down, down, into the very bowels of the earth; past the outer strata, the deposits of the fern age, the fossilized skeletons of fabulous monsters; down, until I noticed a perceptible increase in the temperature. Were we heading for the center of a dying planet?
“YOU didn’t expect this,” chuckled Brown. “Did it ever occur to you that human beings could live inside the earth, as well as on its surface? We’ve reached the end of life on the earth, my friend; we’re on our way to the last remnants of it beneath the surface. This was the best surprise of all,” he continued, unable to restrain his mirth, in spite of the horrible things he tossed off so casually. “Well—who’s crazy now?”
“Brown,” I said, my hatred and contempt drowned in sheer admiration, “you’re the greatest genius the world has ever known—but I wish I had never met you, and I wish to heaven I had never made this horrible journey. The thought of what mankind is coming to, the idea that glorious man, with all his magnificent achievements, is coming to this refuge under the earth, the idea that the sun will go out of human life, and that only hideous cold and darkness will remain, is too much. It will haunt me the rest of my days. I would rather be an ignorant South Sea Islander, laughing at the sun, secure in the knowledge that my descendants will laugh in the sun for generations to come, than the greatest scientist in the world, working on with the realization that all my discoveries will come to naught, and that everything I do for mankind, and everything mankind has ever done, will some day disappear in the eternal ice of a dying planet.”
“Bravo!” exclaimed Brown, smiling cynically and applauding at the same time. “Excellent! And now that you have delivered yourself of a sentiment such as the world has never heard before, you may as well realize that you will have very little time to be haunted by anything, least of all by an idea of what the world will come to in seven million years! Please realize that you are at the end this very minute! If you don’t live to return to your own world, you won’t have to worry about this. And what’s gotten into you? I thought you were a man of science, an explorer in the abstract. I’ve been talking this way only because it seems you have been metamorphosed into a sentimental fool, rather than an alert man of science. Pull yourself together—there’s enough to do right now without weakening. You were a strong man in Atlantis—don’t fail me now!”
“Oh, so that’s why you acted so strangely,” I said, rather relieve at his outburst. “I was about to ask what had gotten into you, to change you so. However—.” . . . . What I was about to say was obvious, but I never said it. As we stood facing each other, in the midst of the crystal globe, the walls of our time machine seemed to melt away into invisibility as a red glow all around the device grew stronger and stronger; and we found ourselves looking with amazement into a ring of venerable faces that gazed at us without surprise and without emotion.
“We have arrived!” exclaimed Brown, with his old laugh. And, gripping my arm as if to reassure me, he stepped boldly forward, and drew me after him into the enchanted circle.
“Wait a minute,” I said. “We’ve forgotten the automatics and everything else. I don’t fancy going among these ghosts empty-handed.”
“Well, we can’t go back for anything now. Don’t forget for a moment this isn’t Atlantis; it’s the very opposite; and any false move on our part may result very unpleasantly—for us.”
I cast longing eyes at the atomic disintegrator; and somehow I didn’t feel completely dressed without my holster and its deadly black burden. But a number of expressionless pairs of eyes were upon me; they seemed peaceful enough, but I was taking no chances with the advanced science of the final product of human evolution.
Meanwhile, as at Atlantis, the time machine had vanished. Had I not known from past experience that it was still there, invisible, I would have given up all hope of ever returning to my own age. Brown, apparently oblivious of everything else, was studying the quiet figures before him. Into my mind flashed a thought which I am sure was duplicated in his: that these strange men were robed very like the ancient Greeks and Romans, in the toga; and that the similarity was heightened by the sandals they wore strapped to their feet and ankles. It was a most remarkable resemblance.
“Perhaps we’ve unwittingly gone back to the time of Plato,” I whispered to Brown. “Or we may be in the presence of Cicero. These outfits are pretty familiar.”
“Nonsense,” he said, sharply. “No Greek or Roman ever had a head such as you see here.”
And indeed he was right. No ancient, not Aristotle himself, could possibly have possessed the cranial development of these silent figures. And surely no one, in those times of sunlit paganism, appeared so inhuman, so free from passions and desires; no, not Plato himself, who is said never even to have lost his temper in eighty years of life. What was most curious, they had uttered not a single word since our arrival. As I had remarked to Brown, they were more like ghosts than men.
A World-Weary Race
AS if reading my thoughts, Brown suddenly exclaimed: “I have it! They don’t need to talk—they have developed thought transference, and by this time they must have agreed among themselves as to who we are, where we come from, and to what species we belong. I feel as though I have been catalogued in a dozen different minds.” Always a good psychologist, Brown was willing to let the other side make the first move; and so he simply held up his right hand, palm outward, in the universal gesture of peace and friendliness. As this was evidently meant for them, the silent spectators raised their own finely moulded hands in a similar salute, and then slowly lowered them and remained looking at us in the same owlish silence.
I felt tempted to laugh. The situation was more than ludicrous—it was a perfect comic opera setting. There is nothing that can be so disconcerting, and at the same time so farcical, as a silent examination by a group of total strangers.
When the silence reached a point beyond the power of human beings to endure, I cast all discretion to the wind and announced, in a ringing voice: “Lafayette, we are here!” Brown himself smiled; and an individual directly opposite me advanced immediately And seized my hand. A curious affinity seemed to spring up between us. Travelers who had been through India used to tell me of the remarkable feats of the Hindu jugglers. Some of these magicians can communicate, by genuine mental telepathy, with people hundreds of miles away, and deliver messages to them in that manner; but first they must be “in sympathy” with them—that is, they must have had physical contact. A clasp of the hand, for example, would be sufficient to establish the “rapport” between the juggler and the subject. So it was with me and this man of the last race of men. The moment our hands clasped, a subtle electrical connection seemed to be established between us; and I felt distinctly the influence of an extremely powerful intellect working on my own. Brown probably realized what was going on, but he merely watched me; evidently he wished to see what would happen before he himself submitted to the process.
Thought images were flowing into my mind, clear-cut and unmistakable; and though I could not translate them into words, I received the unmistakable impression that the man looking deep into my eyes with ancient, world-weary orbs was offering me welcome. I seemed, also, to catch the impression that a long wait had come to an end, and that Brown and I had appeared on the scene in time for something momentous.
“I think they’re friendly,” I reported to Brown, “but don’t try to pose as a god again. They won’t fall for your bluff.”
Brown did not notice what I said—or he pretended not to. Instead, he displayed once more his amazing knowledge of root words, as he had done at Atlantis. Apparently he was asking a question. The men looked a trifle surprised; then one of them clasped his hand and it was obvious that my companion, also, was receiving thought images. I saw him nod; then he beckoned to me; and Brown and I and the welcoming committee moved off in the direction of a powerful light.
“It seems they have been expecting us,” said Brown, “and before we go any farther they want us to undergo a treatment which will purge us of some of the taints of our gross twentieth-century bodies. Apparently they are afraid we will bring them some forgotten disease. I don’t believe there’s anything to be afraid of.”
Brown and I were delivered to the care of two attendants arrayed in curious protective garments, who conducted us into a small chamber in an edifice of some gleaming material unknown to me, and shut the door on us. Instantly we were conscious of the action of powerful, invisible rays. I felt as though a mild electric current were running through the body. I was filled with a sense of exalted physical vitality. The years seemed to fall away; it was as though I sloughed off my former skin and assumed a new one more easily than a snake sheds its old coat. As a physician, the process aroused my curiosity. Could I but carry the secret back with me—that is, if we ever found the time machine, which had disappeared—what a wonderful addition it would make to the medical lore of the twentieth century!
THEN we were forced to submit to a change of attire. I felt ill at ease in my fluttering toga; but Brown seemed to enjoy the experience, and, when he was completely clad in the curious garments, he looked remarkably like an Athenian of the golden age of Pericles. I had never noticed before how finely cut were his features, or how imposing the cast of his head.
