The city’s inhabitants had been very similar to Earth people, but of short stature, so that when Alice found herself in one of the re-built houses she felt as though the table and bed and chairs had been made specially for her.
A small train stood beside the train station. The steam engine had a long tube, but the wagons with large round windows and overhanging roofs were similar to old Earth train cars.
One of the archaeologists, a specialist in restoration who had resurrected the steam engine and train from pieces of rusty scrap, kept the guests at the station for what seemed to be forever. He wanted them to be able to appreciate how masterfully all the handles, buttons, and switches in the ancient machine were made.
Then the guests got a chance to tour the museum, into which the excavators had gathered all the small objects found in the city: pictures, statues, pots and pans, clothing, household utensils, knickknacks and decorations, and everything else. It was obvious just how much work would have to go into returning all these artifacts to life.
“Tell me,” Petrov asked, when the guests had finished looking over the museum. “have you been able to determine precisely when the planet Coleida died, and what it died from?”
“Yes.” The little archaeologist Purr said. “I’ve read the remains of their newspapers and magazines and found numerous documents. Very clearly an epidemic was responsible. The epidemic began on Coleida one hundred years, three months, and twenty days ago. From the description, and taking into consideration the terror of the inhabitants who described it, it is very similar to Space Plague.”
“But how could the disease have gotten down to the planet. They’ve shown the virus can’t make it to the surface through the atmosphere. That means, something or someone brought it. Could it have been a meteorite?”
“That we have not been able to determine. It could be.” Purr said. “All that is known, is that the first news of the strange disease appeared in the newspapers on Seventh Day, Thirdmonth, year 3070 by the local calender.
“For the explanation we have turned to our temporalist friends.” Gromozeka finished after him. “That is why they flew here, after all. Consider, my friends, victory is almost in sight!”
Gromozeka shook his tentacles, flashing the sharks’ teeth of his enormous maw; all the archaeologists shouted, and the temporalist Petrov whispered to himself:
“You’re right about then ‘almost.’“
6
For five days all the archaeologists, temporalists, and space ship crews erected the time machine and the atomic batteries that would power it. Finally, in the middle of the empty field rose a structure as high as a three story house.
The Time Cabinet occupied only the very center of this enormous construction; the rest of it was given over to control instruments, computers, back-up computers and back-ups for the back- ups, and vast amounts of recording instruments: tapes, paper read-outs, holographic crystals.
All the work on the excavation came to a halt. Who in their right mind would root about in the dirt if there was the possibility to see these artifacts and their creators in reality?
“Well, that,” Petrov said on the morning of the sixth day, “is that. Everything is in place. There is room for just one individual in the temporal transposition chamber, and, since this model of the machine has never been fully tested before, I’ll be the first to use it.”
“Certainly not!” Richard said, waving long, skinny arms. “We’ve been arguing this for the last four days; I’m the one who has to go first.”
“Why?” Alice asked.
She was smeared with graphine and covered all over in dust. She hadn’t had a chance to wash or do her hair all day she had been so busy. The technicians needed help, and she had been running all over the excavation with Purr, who had discovered he was utterly unable to refuse Alice anything now that she had saved him from certain death.
“Because if anything happens to me, there are a hundred graduate students at the Institute who can take my place, Alice.” Richard said. “But if anything happens to Doctor Petrov, there is no one in the Galaxy who can take his place. It’s simply approaching the matter reasonably; how can we guarantee that absolutely nothing will happen with our machine?”
“There are other things more important.” Petrov said. “Discipline, and I am the one who bears the responsibility for both the machine and for you, Richard.”
“I for one would like to go back into the past myself,” Gromozeka said, “but there is no way I could fit into the time machine.”
“Perfectly understandable.” Alice said. “I’d go too.”
Everyone laughed, and no one seemed able to take her seriously. Alice felt her ears burning and almost spoke back up to them when Petrov and Richard went on trying to convince each other who should be first, but before she could Gromozeka carefully pulled Alice to one side with a tentacle and whispered:
“Listen, my child; I did not invite you hear for purely innocent reasons. I think that you still may very well find yourself on a trip to the past. Not now, not the first, but later. And then, what will fall to you will be the most important and complicated part of our work. It is far too early to speak of that. But I swear to you by all the wonders of space itself that at the decisive moment the two of us are going to have something very interesting to do.”
“That’s not going to happen.” Alice said. “I’ve been here for six days already, and the day after tomorrow the freighter returns to Earth, and it has a place waiting for me on it.”
“You don’t believe me.” Gromozeka was shocked and let fly with yellow smoke from his nostrils. “Do you begin to doubt the word of honor of Gromozeka himself? If so, then I have erred mightily. You are unworthy of the honor for which I have brought you here.”
“I am worthy. I am.” Alice answered quickly. “I won’t say a word.”
They went back to the temporalists.
“Then we’ve decided it.” Petrov said, staring at Richard as though he were hypnotizing him. “Tomorrow morning I will transpose into the past. To begin with we will look at the time frame when the epidemic had already taken hold on Coleida. The transposition will be brief. No more than half an hour. I will not leave the immediate vicinity of the time machine and will return a-as soon as I find out anything. If everything goes according to plan, the next flight into the past will last longer. Is that clear?”
“But, Mikhail Petrovich…” Richard tried to begin.
“That is all. Although I suggest you double and triple check the security system, unless you want our team leader to vanish in the middle of his transition.”
“The most important thing is to bring back the latest newspaper.” Purr said; he had been listening to the argument. “Better yet, as many newspapers as possible.”
“Right.” Petrov said. “What else?”
“You will still have to drop by my laboratory.” The doctor who resembled a giant garden watering can on legs said. “I’ll download the local language into your memory. It will only take about two hours. And it might just come in handy.”
7
On the following day Alice was awakened by a humming sound, as though an enormous bee was hovering over the camp. The morning was cold, the wind rustled the curtains, and Gromozeka tossed and turned on his bed, slapping his tentacles about in his sleep, like a puppy dog waving its paws.
“Alice.” A low voice whispered from behind the curtain. The lower edge of the curtain was pulled aside and in the gap she could see Purr’s lilac eye. “Want to see them test the time machine?”
“Of course I do!” Alice whispered in answer. “Be right with you. I just have to get dressed.”