Mists of Dawn

by Chad Oliver

  “First of all,” his uncle said, “you must remember that this machine operates with atomic energy as a power source. The particular system that I have employed works on a principle of continuous nuclear reaction—that is, it is set to go a certain way before we start, and then once it is started it cannot be stopped until the space-time machine has reached its destination. There is no way to change the reaction once it has begun. It is like an automatic car that you have set to go to Detroit—once it starts out, you can’t change your mind and go to San Antonio instead. Understand?”

  “Clear so far.”

  “All right,” his uncle continued. “The next thing to remember is that, for all its power, this machine is a very delicately balanced mechanism. You know how long and how hard I’ve worked, and most of the work involved was not in the theory or in the power source, but in the mechanism itself. Everything must balance exactly. I have finally gotten what appears to be the right combination, and of course I have kept detailed records, but whether or not I could ever build a duplicate space-time machine again, I don’t know. Certainly, it would be the work of many years.”

  “I see,” said Mark. “In other words, as far as we know, this is a once-only proposition.”

  “That’s right. It isn’t as though we had a device that would enable us to go backward and forward in time whenever we pleased. It will take us back and bring us home—once. I have picked Rome partly because I have been interested in it all my life, but also because it is relatively close in time—not over several thousand years away. For the first trip I think it wise that we do not attempt too much. Then again, we know a great deal about Rome, which will make it possible for us to conduct ourselves intelligently when we get there. We know the language, the detailed history, and the society and culture we are going into. We will know how to behave and take care of ourselves. It would be sheer and utter folly to attempt to journey into a time that we knew nothing about. We couldn’t speak the language, we couldn’t adjust to the life, we would be dressed in the wrong sort of clothing—everything would be against us. We’d probably wind up dead or in prison or in an insane asylum—if they had them!”

  “How about the future?” Mark asked thoughtfully. “Could we go into the future?”

  “I frankly don’t know about the future,” Doctor Nye said, puffing slowly on his pipe. “It’s still an open question. Theoretically, I believe it could be done. But all the objections I have just raised would apply. We could not possibly know what we were going into, we could not prepare ourselves in any way. And there are other problems. Going into a future that does not yet exist is a risky business—for is it possible to change history, either of the past or of the future? What would happen to you, for instance, if you went back in time and killed your grandfather before your father was born? Time travel is full of unanswered questions. I do believe, however, that we’ll find that it is impossible for us to alter history in any fundamental way. I believe that it would be wiser not to try to change things. Of course, there is the possibility of alternate time streams, multiple futures—”

  “You’re losing me now,” Mark broke in. “We’d better stick to what I can understand or I may wind up being more confused than when we started out!”

  “Okay, Mark, I’m sorry,” Doctor Nye apologized. “Let’s go back to fundamentals. There’s just one more thing that you have to keep in mind—When the space-time machine reaches its destination and stops, it will be impossible for it to make the return trip right away. The balance of energies—the combination of forces-must have time to restore itself. The machine must have time to rebuild the energy potential in order to come back here to 1953.”

  “How long will that take?” asked Mark.

  “Roughly two weeks—perhaps longer. We’ll have to wait and see. Come here a moment.”

  Mark got to his feet and followed Doctor Nye over to the control panel on the side of the sphere. There was a bank of lights along the top of the panel and a carefully calibrated dial in the center. On each side of the dial there was a large knife switch with a black handle. Both switches were open.

  “Careful now,” cautioned Doctor Nye. “Don’t touch anything—this baby is all ready to go. You’ll notice that the controls are quite simple, and there’s nothing mysterious about them. That green light burning there means that the machine is in order and prepared for operation. When the machine starts, the green light goes off and the red light comes on. When that red light is on, you must not try to change anything or the whole machine will explode. Don’t forget that. Finally, when the machine stops, the yellow light goes on. That means it is safe to go out, but the machine is in the process of rebuilding the energy potential and cannot be moved. When the energy potential has been built up again, the yellow light goes off and the green light comes on again.”

  “That’s clear enough,” Mark said. “I suppose that the dial in the center is to fix the machine’s destination?”

  “Check,” said Doctor Nye. He took the turning knob of the dial carefully between his thumb and index finger. “You see that the pointer of the dial is now set for 1953, and that the very fine small pointer that looks something like the large second hand of a watch makes it possible to set the machine for a specific day—even a specific minute and hour. Now, I turn to the dial—”

  Cautiously, Doctor Nye turned the knob. Mark heard a series of faint but precise clicks. He watched the dial swing back across the centuries, back—

  “There we are,” said Doctor Nye. “It’s now set for 46 b.c. and all I would have to do to get us back there would be to throw that left-hand switch. I don’t have to tell you of the work it took to adjust the actual time spans to the calendar times. You know, of course, that the calendar has been often adjusted; by Gregory and Julius Caesar himself among others, in order to make it correspond to the actual lunar and solar years. But it is all integrated in this machine, and allowances made for such things. We can go back almost anywhere, and any time, just by twisting this dial—thus!”

  Smiling, Doctor Nye pressed a release button and gave the dial a hard spin. A slight whirring noise filled the machine. After a moment, he engaged the mechanism again and there was a rapid series of clicks that slowly diminished in speed until there was silence.

  “There we are,” Doctor Nye said. “The machine is now set for—”

  Suddenly, unexpectedly, there was a loud, urgent ringing from outside the sphere. Mark jumped slightly and then recovered himself. The space-time machine, he decided, was no place to hear sudden noises!

  “That’s the upstairs phone,” Doctor Nye said quickly, a worried expression on his face. He glanced at his watch. “It’s not quite nine o’clock—something must have gone wrong with the rocket at White Sands. Hold on, Mark—and don’t touch anything.”

  Doctor Nye hurried out through the circular door and Mark heard his feet on the stairs as he ran up to answer the phone. He looked around him at the dull lead sphere. It was very quiet. He felt a slow, icy cold begin to creep up his spine.

  Mark shivered. He was alone in the space-time machine.

  Chapter 3 Alone in the Unknown

  Mark Nye stood very still in the center of the lead sphere. He could barely hear the sound of his uncle’s voice talking on the upstairs phone, and beyond that, there was a very faint rumble of thunder. It was difficult to tell, isolated as he was by the lead walls, but it seemed to him that the storm was dying down.

  He did not move. The space-time machine, with its silent and impersonal gray walls, filled him with a nameless awe. He felt much as he had when first seeing the newsreel picture of an atomic bomb blast—small and afraid, with a cold knot inside where an icy fist clutched at his heart.

  His eyes strayed to the control panel as though pulled by a force beyond his power to control. The green light looked at him steadily, without blinking, like a strange emerald eye in the black of the panel. It had an almost hypnotic effect on him, and staring into its compelling depths he fancied hims
elf viewing the shadow legions of a vanished past marching before him, the ghost armies of history . . .

  There was Davy Crockett, fighting to the end in the Alamo—and by his side Napoleon and Genghis Khan. There stood Machiavelli and in the shadows, blind Homer sang an immortal song. There was Alexander the Great—there Socrates. David, Moses, Tutankhamen—all still lived and loved and dreamed. And beyond them, as in a cloud of blue smoke, the first men walked through the mists of dawn. Cro-Magnon, Neanderthal, Pithecanthropus—and farther still, lost in the haze of time, the dragons hissed and screamed across the face of the earth as the great reptiles—Brontosaurus, Stegosaurus, the fierce Tyrannosaurus Rex-plodded through the swamps at the beginning of time . . .

  With a visible effort, Mark looked away. He still did not dare to move—he was taking no chances on being thrown by some accident into the time stream alone. When Doctor Nye, with his wide knowledge and calm self-assurance, was with him it was all right and everything was under control, but alone it was a different story. Mark stood very still, waiting for his uncle to come back.

  It was very still now in the lead sphere of the space-time machine. It was so quiet that Mark thought that he could hear his heart beating in his chest. He swallowed hard, ashamed of his nervousness. He clenched his fists tightly, afraid of he knew not what. It was almost as if—

  With a suddenness that numbed his brain, it happened. A slugging, hammering concussion slammed into his body and threw it across the sphere. A sharp, blasting roar boomed through the little room, and Mark felt the house shuddering around him. With desperation, Mark tried to keep his footing.

  The rocket, the rocket, his mind screamed in the chaos. The rocket’s gone off her course and blown up in the hills!

  Swaying, stunned, Mark felt himself going. He fought valiantly not to fall, but his mind was spinning, his legs wobbled, and he sank toward the side of the sphere, falling, falling . . .

  Too late, he saw that he was collapsing on the control panel. The tiny green light looked at him, laughed at him, pulled him down. Mark gasped breathlessly and tried to arch his body back away from it. It was no use. With a shudder he sank down against the control panel—and felt a knife switch click shut under his body.

  Mark screamed once and tried to claw his way up again. It was too late. Horrified, his mind reeling with shock, he saw the green light wink off. The circular lead door of the space-time machine hissed into place, sealing him in. The red light in the control panel flicked on and a vast humming vibration filled the sphere.

  The machine, his mind whispered. It’s started—I’m trapped . . .

  Mark couldn’t get up and he dimly realized that he could do nothing even if he could get to the controls. Once the space-time machine got underway, it could not be tampered with. He was alone—going backward into time! Backward to—where?

  Where was the machine set for? When Doctor Nye had spun the dial, where had it come to rest? Where was he going?

  Desperately, Mark made a final effort to regain his footing. He pulled himself to his knees and felt the blood rushing and pounding in his brain. He gasped with shock and fought to get up. The pounding in his head became a roar—a roaring torrent of darkness that swirled and eddied and wrapped itself around him, pulling him down, down into the cool depths, down.

  With a low moan Mark lost consciousness and slumped to the floor of the space-time machine.

  As in a dream, sounds and faces swam before him. Fang dashed down a dusty road, barking excitedly. The two Apaches marched by under the gathering storm. The bust of Caesar stared at him with eyes of flame. His uncle shook his head, and his voice drifted up out of nothingness: “It would be sheer and utter folly to attempt to journey into a time that we knew nothing about . .

  Mark Nye came to with a start and looked around him. Panic raced through his body, but he fought it down. This was no dream—that was certain. He was in the lead sphere, and the humming vibrations still buzzed in his ears. A gray atmosphere seemed to fill the space-time machine, and there was the feel of electricity in the air. The red light in the control panel was still on, and its flickering rays pushed out with a pinkish glow into the grayness.

  Though sick and dizzy with shock, Mark found that he could move without pain. No bones broken then, he thought gratefully. By a great effort of will, he managed not to think about the terrible situation he was in. He had to keep cool, he knew that. If he gave up to fear and hysteria, he was lost and nothing could save him. He determined to conduct himself in such a way that his uncle would be proud of him.

  His uncle. Would he ever see him again?

  Mark pushed the thought away and struggled to his feet. He closed his eyes a moment, waiting for the dizziness to pass. He had no watch, and no way of telling how long he had been unconscious or what time it was. He smiled without humor. That, he realized, was a question that would take some tall answering. What time was it? Not in terms of minutes or hours, or the time of day. But what year, what century, what era? What time was it?

  He opened his eyes. The red eye in the control panel looked at him, mocking him. Mark took a deep breath and examined the time dial. He started, unable to believe his own eyes. He looked again.

  Mark heard laughter in the sphere, and he looked around sharply to see where it was coming from. There was nothing there. The machine was empty and he was alone. The laughter was his own.

  He clamped an iron vise on his mind. The laughter stopped. He had to keep himself under control, no matter what happened. If his mind once snapped . . .

  But it wasn’t easy. The time dial that his uncle had spun was no longer set for 46 b.c. Nor was it set for 460 b.c. Nor was it even set for 4,600 b.c… .

  The time dial now was set for the year 50,000 b.c.!

  Mark shuddered. He was going back in time fifty thousand years before the birth of Christ—and there was nothing that he could do about it. He sensed the time stream flowing by him as the gray sphere carried him back, back across the centuries and the tens of centuries. He knew roughly where he was going, all right—that was the trouble.

  Still somewhat dizzy, Mark sat down again on the floor to take stock of the situation. He forced himself to examine his problem rationally, as Doctor Nye had trained him to do. Frantic emotion certainly had a place—too large a place, perhaps, in human existence, but its place was emphatically not in the solving of problems. Mark knew that he had a brain, but that was not enough. He had to use that brain.

  Mark thrust the humming of the space-time machine from his mind. He ignored the gray eeriness that surrounded him. He did not look again at the red eye in the control panel. As calmly as possible, he thought the problem through.

  The space-time machine was carrying him back through time and space. In space, of course, he would no longer have Italy for his destination. As he understood it, however, the extra thousands of years would throw him off his course not too far toward the northwest—probably into what in modern times was known as France and Germany. In time, the problem was more difficult. Mark thanked his lucky star that his uncle had drilled him so thoroughly in history and prehistory. The year 50,000 b.c., he knew, would place him in the Pleistocene, or Ice Age. Further, it would place him in the last, or most recent part of it, known as the Upper Pleistocene. Beyond that, a peculiar problem presented itself. Authorities disagreed violently on the exact time sequence of this last part of the Ice Age, and the year 50,000 b.c. might fall almost anywhere, according to which system you followed. However, his uncle had believed that the year 50,000 b.c. would fall roughly in the Upper Paleolithic, or toward the end of the Last Ice Age—and that was as good a guess as any. He would just have to wait and see.

  Mark looked carefully around the inside of the space-time machine, hoping against hope for some sort of miraculous aid. But there was no miracle. Everything was just as it had been when his uncle had left him—how long ago?—to answer the telephone. There were no supplies of any sort in the machine—no food and no water. And he knew
that he would have to spend at the very least two weeks in the Ice Age before he could hope to return, in order to give the energy potential time to rebuild itself. That meant that, somehow, he would have to go out after food and water.

  Knowledge can be a frightening thing, but it can also prevent you from worrying about nonexistent dangers. Mark knew that he needed to waste no time worrying about dinosaurs or other reptilian monsters, since they had died out millions of years before the first men were born. And there were men in the Last Ice Age—strange men . . .

  Mark got to his feet and examined himself. He was dressed in blue jeans, which would be strong and able to take rough wear, and a long-sleeved wool shirt that would at least help to keep him warm. His shoes were less promising, moccasin-type loafers that would probably prove useless in ice or snow. He emptied his pockets as a check and found the usual things—a handkerchief, a comb, a pocket knife, a small box of matches that he carried in order to light his uncle’s pipe when Doctor Nye forgot his own matches, which was most of the time, and a billfold containing ten dollars in bills and a few coins. He smiled—the money wouldn’t come in too handy where he was going.

  There was, however, one fortunate circumstance; Doctor Nye’s .45 was still hanging in its holster from the side of the sphere. Mark took the gun down and looked it over. It was loaded, as always, with a clip of six cartridges. There was no bullet in the chamber, for safety’s sake. Six shots, hardly enough for what he might have to face, but they would have to do. Mark buckled on the holster and felt a little better.

  Then he sat down again to wait—there was nothing else to do. He had no way of knowing how much time had passed inside the sphere, nor did he know how long the journey would take. He was hungry, since he had missed supper, but that was no index. He was always hungry.