Mists of Dawn

by Chad Oliver

  Tino paused. “Soon now,” he agreed. “How does it go with you, Mark?”

  “Fine, thanks—though I think you two scared Fang here half to death.”

  The Apache winked solemnly. “Injun scalpum,” he said, imitating the strange dialect affected by the tourists when they talked to the Indians.

  Doctor Nye and Mark laughed and waved good-by as the two Apaches moved along on their way to the near-by Mescalero reservation. It was almost dark now, and the evening was hushed with the threat of rain.

  “A lot of history just walked by us then/’ Mark said thoughtfully.

  Doctor Nye puffed on his pipe and nodded agreement. “Tino is a member of a proud race,” he said. “The blood that flows in his veins, the blood of the Mescalero Apaches, is the blood that goes back to Gion-na-tah, who finally had to surrender to his friend, Kit Carson —the blood that goes back to the warriors who fought with the great Victorio, back to the wily Nana, who at eighty years of age led fifteen braves against over a thousand soldiers, and back to the most famous Apache of them all—Geronimo.”

  Mark smiled. “We wouldn’t have walked by them quite so easily seventy-five years ago. Not even Fang could have helped us much.”

  “The Indians were old when Rome was young,’* Doctor Nye mused, as the road began to rise into the hills. “There were Indians here in the United States when our ancestors in Europe still lived in caves.”

  When Rome was young. Mark felt his pulse quicken as the phrase fired his imagination. Out of the corner of his eye, he looked at the figure of his uncle walking beside him. He thought of his uncle’s strange dream, a dream shared with him alone—would it ever come true?

  Could they go back?

  Rome, Imperial Rome. Visions of grandeur raced through Mark’s head—visions made more vivid and real than ever by the secret he shared with his uncle. Rome in the days of the Caesars—a mighty city, hub of a fabulous empire, rich with glories that lived on still in the pages of history, that had never been forgotten. Rome with its seven hills, its mighty temples, its art and literature, its bloody games in the roaring Colosseum, now an empty ruin in modern Rome . . .

  Rome—with the great figures of history walking its streets under a warm Italian sun. Julius Caesar himself, that wonderful, lonely man, and his adopted son, Augustus. Cicero, rich in eloquence, and the plotter Catiline, who heard the orations that spelled his doom. The twisted Nero and the mad Caligula. The curious and appealing Claudius—did he yet live, lost somewhere in the mists of time?

  Could they go back?

  The darkness was upon them now, and it was hard to see. Mark and Doctor Nye knew the road well, however, and proceeded without difficulty. The rain seemed to be suspended above them, waiting only for a trigger to loose a deluge. Flashes of lightning lit up the rocks and pines around them, and the booming of the thunder drew nearer as the road climbed into the hills near Ruidoso. Fang was very much subdued in the face of the storm, and kept tangling himself up in Mark’s legs. Mark could smell the wet smell of rain around them.

  “The Rome of the Caesars is closer than you think,” Doctor Nye said quietly, sensing his nephew’s thoughts. “Rome is only two weeks away.”

  Mark stopped short and then moved on again, his mind spinning with surprise. Two weeks? That meant—

  “It’s all finished,” Doctor Nye went on, his pipe a red glow in the darkness. “I finished the actual construction last night, and all it needs now are a few final touches and supplies. Better brush up on your Latin, Mark.”

  “Hie, haec, hoc,” said Mark, with a lightness that he did not feel. He knew how much this meant to his uncle. It was the result of twenty years of work, twenty years of dreams.

  A machine to carry man backward in time—now a dream no longer!

  The two walked on in silence, working their way back to Doctor Nye’s mountain lodge. Mark could not help feeling a little in awe of the man who walked beside him. Doctor Nye had been father and mother to him ever since he was five years old, when his parents-had been lost in a plane crash. Doctor Nye, with no children of his own, had survived the disaster which had taken the life of his own wife, as well as of Mark’s parents, and had been closer to Mark than to any other person in the world. Yet Mark felt strange beside him tonight, much as he might have felt walking beside Archimedes, Da Vinci, Edison, Einstein—or perhaps. Columbus, sailing into the unknown . . .

  The unknown. What could be more mysterious, more wonderful, than a journey through time into the fabled past of Earth, that most incredible of all planets?

  Doctor Robert Nye, who was a nuclear physicist working with the rocket experiments at near-by White Sands, had all his life been fascinated by the history of ancient Rome. The idea of time travel had been a hobby with him all his adult life, and he had pursued that hobby with the single-minded devotion and energy which men give only to their special dreams. Einstein’s theoretical work on space-time had started him in the right direction, and the harnessing of the atom at Los Alamos had provided him a magnificent power source that enabled him to focus and direct the vast energies necessary to warp an organic substance back through space-time.

  And now, at last, he was ready.

  Mark Nye had seen Italy many times, on trips abroad with his uncle. He had seen Rome and had journeyed across the sea to North Africa where the genius Hannibal had threatened the Roman rule. He had traveled in France and Germany, where he had seen the sites of ancient man—which had fascinated him, just as the aboriginal lore of the Indians of the United States had always fascinated both Mark and his uncle. He had studied the past, and listened to Doctor Nye spin long and glorious tales about the past, and had even prepared himself to be able to accompany his uncle if his dream should ever come true—but now, actually to go . . .

  The yellow outdoor light from Doctor Nye’s lodge loomed up before them as they hurried up the drive. The storm was very close now, and they seemed to be walking along in the middle of a suspended island of nothingness, of electric suspense, where the rain could not reach them. Fang galloped ahead joyfully and camped by the front door, wagging the stump of his tail impatiently. Doctor Nye paused on the doorstep and squinted up into the darkness and the sighing of the pines.

  “Looks like this will be some real weather, Mark.” “Anything wrong?” asked Mark. “We have a lot of storms up here, and this doesn’t look much worse than any of the others. It’ll probably be over in an hour or so.”

  “Oh, I’m not worried about us,” Doctor Nye said, tapping out the ashes in his pipe against his boots. “The house isn’t likely to blow away or anything. I was just thinking—it’s seven-thirty now, and with that storm all around us . . .”

  “What’s going on tonight? Something at White Sands?”

  Doctor Nye nodded and scratched the impatient Fang’s ears. “They were scheduled to test a new rocket tonight,” he explained. “One of the Toney experimental jobs with a small atomic warhead. According to Jim Walls—you remember Jim, in charge of the rocket shoots—the rocket is supposed to go almost straight up, describe a short arc, and come down on a target a few miles away. But if it’s storming like this in White Sands—”

  “They’ll probably call it off, if there aren’t too many generals around,” suggested Mark. “You wouldn’t mind that too much, would you, Uncle Bob?”

  Doctor Nye smiled. “You read my mind like a book, son,” he said. “I’m due to fly my ‘copter over there tomorrow to help Garvin make the radioactivity check, but if they call the shoot off we can work on our plans in the morning, and then maybe sneak off in the afternoon and see if we can’t find some trout around here that aren’t too smart for us.”

  Mark Nye brightened visibly at the prospect. “There are some swell places on the reservation,” he said. “I snagged some beauties there last time, and the Indians invited me to come back and try it again.”

  “We’ll keep it in mind,” Doctor Nye agreed. “But first…”

  “But first, open the door!”
shouted Mark. “Here she comes!”

  There was a sudden hush as the world seemed to pull its defenses together to ward off a mighty blow. Then a livid flash of lightning split the tops of the shuddering pines and a blast of thunder slammed into the earth like a monstrous fist of iron. A clean, fresh, wet smell blew up from the valley below and the first big, heavy drops of rain pattered like lead pellets on the roof of the lodge.

  Doctor Nye threw open the door and they hurried inside, with Fang well in the lead and barking excitedly. Mark shut the door behind them and switched on the inside lights. The storm hit with full fury then, with the wind shaking the lodge and the rain pounding down in torrents on the roof.

  “I’m just as glad we’re not fishing now,” Doctor Nye said. “You wouldn’t be able to tell the fishermen from the fish.”

  Mark grinned. “I remember the last time we got caught out in a storm like this—I got so wet I didn’t have to drink anything for a month.”

  The sitting room of Doctor Nye’s lodge was neat and comfortable, with long shelves full of books, a bust of Caesar by the lamp on the table, Navajo rugs on the floor, and walls of lightly varnished pine. For a few minutes they were content just to sit there and listen to the storm raging outside. Fang had already found his favorite spot in the best armchair in the room and had gone to sleep.

  “Well, who fixes supper tonight?” asked Doctor Nye.

  “I will,” Mark offered. “But before I do . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “You haven’t let me go down with you to see the time machine since you started in on its final construction. You said I could see it when it was finished, Uncle Bob.”

  Doctor Nye nodded. “That’s a bargain, Mark,” he said, “though I’m afraid there isn’t too much to see. If you’re expecting some sort of weird contraption with electricity flying through the air all around it like in the Frankenstein movies, you’re going to be disappointed.”

  “I’m not interested in what it looks like,” Mark assured his uncle. “I’m interested in what it can do”

  “Good boy,” his uncle approved. “You get supper started and we’ll have a look at my little brain child.”

  Mark disappeared into the kitchen, extracted the remnants of the previous night’s roast from the ice box, and shoved it into the oven to warm up. Then he started a fresh pot of coffee and rejoined his uncle.

  “Done,” he reported.

  Doctor Nye laughed. “Okay, Mark. Come with me.”

  While the storm roared around the mountain lodge and the rain turned the creeks into small rivers of foaming water, Mark followed his uncle down the steps into the special basement underneath the lodge. It was a rather ordinary basement, though filled with equipment and tools of a more complex nature than would be likely to be found in the average home workshop, except that the underground room was cut in two by a lead wall across the middle. Mark’s heart pounded in his chest. The lead was a shield against radioactivity, of course, and that meant that on the other side of that lead wall. . .

  Doctor Nye led him across the basement floor and paused at a heavy metal door set in the lead wall. He opened the combination lock and shoved the door open. As it swung back, a clear white light was switched on inside the room. With a strange, tense feeling that he did not understand, Mark followed his uncle into the room.

  “There it is, Mark,” Doctor Nye said quietly. “The space-time machine.”

  Chapter 2 The Space-Time Machine

  The space-time machine almost completely filled the small room. Gleaming dully under the white light, it resembled nothing more than what it was—a gray lead sphere fifteen feet across. Its dull high lights seemed to pulse with faint shadows of life, as though tremendous sleeping energies hung suspended in the metal, waiting. Waiting for the touch of man to burst into flaming strength and power.

  Doctor Nye threw a switch in the side of the sphere and a circular section of metal slid back with a faint hissing sound. The interior of the machine glowed gently with soft light. “After you, Mark.” Doctor Nye smiled. “Be careful not to touch anything.”

  With infinite care, Mark Nye stepped up through the circular entry port and into the sphere. He felt cold sweat in the palms of his hands. He told himself that there was nothing to worry about, but he knew too much about the awful energies imprisoned inside the atom—he had a healthy respect for the compact atomic pile that took up one whole side of the lead sphere.

  There was not a great deal of room in the sphere, but it was not crowded; indeed, since the supplies for their backward trip in time had not yet been placed in the machine, it was virtually empty. There were no chairs. On one side of the sphere, opposite the power source, a control panel had been built up some four feet from the bottom of the machine.

  Hanging from a projection in one wall was a belt holding a holstered .45 automatic. Mark Nye noted the gun with quick understanding. His uncle had carried the .45 in the First World War, when he had been an infantry captain. It had saved his life more than once, and he had kept the gun near him through the years, both as a sentimental good-luck charm and as a practical means of defense in a long and active life.

  “So this is our time machine,” Mark said finally. “It makes me feel so little . . .”

  “That is because you don’t understand it,” Doctor Nye told him. He pulled out his pipe again, filled it with tobacco, and lit it. He blew a smoke ring at the control panel and smiled. “We always fear what we do not understand, Mark,” he said. “I can’t, of course, make entirely clear to you the physics and mathematics involved, but I can explain it more fully than I have before. It is essential that you understand what we are doing before we start out.”

  Mark sat cross-legged. “Fire away,” he said.

  “The idea of traveling through time has fascinated mankind for centuries,” Doctor Nye began, puffing slowly on his pipe. His eyes had a faraway look in them, the way some men’s eyes seem when they look at the stars. “It is customary to say that it has never been done, but that isn’t true.”

  Mark looked at his uncle, wondering. Not true? But that could only mean—

  “The point most people forget is that we are all time travelers,” Doctor Nye explained. “Each and every one of us, every second of the day or night, travels through time. Even as I speak, I am moving forward in time, so to speak. When we came in out of the storm, it was seven-thirty. Now it is eight-fifteen. We have traveled forty-five minutes forward in time—into the future, if you care to look at it that way. In a sense, the world itself is a great time machine. We are all moving into the future, all the time.”

  “I never thought of it that way before,” Mark admitted, feeling the lead sphere all around him, waiting …

  “But to go back into the past—to go from eight-fifteen to seven-thirty—that is something else again,” his uncle continued. “That has never been done, as far as I know. But we’ll do it, you and I! I know we can, and I know that it will be safe, or I would not consider taking you along. You’re all I have in the world, Mark—all that matters to me. I would rather share this moment with you than with any friend I have, and I know you won’t let me down. You’ve worked hard, you’ve learned a lot, and I know I can depend on you to do as I say. Even science has its human side, you know, and this is one dream that I do not care to share with anyone else.”

  Mark did not speak. . . . There were no words.

  “Now then,” Doctor Nye went on, “you understand that it is incorrect to refer to this device as a time machine. It is a space-time machine. What does that mean? Well, simply, it means that it moves through space as it moves through time. This is nothing really new. You know, if you’ll stop and think about it, that space and time are hooked up together. They are both aspects of the same thing. You cannot move through space without moving through time as well—that is, you cannot go from New York to Washington in no time at all. In the same way, you cannot move through time without moving through space simultaneously. Even if you sit
perfectly still in a chair and watch fifteen minutes tick off on a clock, you have moved many, many miles—for the earth is moving through space all the time, and our solar system and our galaxy are moving as well.”

  “I understand,” Mark said. “That is what makes it possible for us to go into the machine here in New Mexico and come out in Italy, isn’t it?”

  “That’s right,” Doctor Nye agreed. “I have determined the exact relationship between space and time with respect to this machine of ours, and it will be possible for us to go from New Mexico to Rome in space while we are going from a.d. 1953 to 46 b.c. in time. One day, it may even be possible to travel through interplanetary space by the same means. That is, we might be able to arrange things so that we could go back millions of years in time and all the way to Mars in space—which might put us on Mars at a time when that planet held a high civilization.”

  Mark Nye’s imagination ran wild at his uncle’s words. Mars!

  “Of course,” said Doctor Nye, “the way the rocket experiments are shaping up it looks like we’ll get to Mars easily enough without the space-time machine, but it’s certainly something to think about.” He drew on his pipe steadily, turning the air hazy with blue smoke. “Now,” he continued, “what this machine actually does is to utilize the tremendous energies of the atom to warp space-time in such a manner that the machine can travel through them at will. But there are a few catches to all of this—a few conditions that you must remember. If you understand these, there is a great deal that would have seemed mysterious to you otherwise that will now be perfectly clear when we start out.”

  “I’m listening,” Mark assured him. His heart was still beating rapidly with excitement. Here he was, sitting in the lead sphere in the basement of his uncle’s home in New Mexico, in the year 1953. Vast energies were sleeping all around him, and yet at the touch of a hand, the flick of a switch, he would go where no man before him had ever gone—back, back past Columbus on his voyage to America, back past Marco Polo, back to ancient Rome two years before the death of Julius Caesar. Would they see him fall? Or could they perhaps prevent his death—warn him in advance of what was coming? What would happen then? What would the course of history have been if Julius Caesar had lived?