She hastened from the laboratory. I stared blankly at the dials for a moment then, on an impulse, I too dismounted and went into the hallway to collect my boater. If an expedition it was to be, I too would travel in style!
On a further impulse I walked into the drawing-room, poured some more port into the two glasses, and carried them back to the laboratory.
Amelia had returned before me, and was already mounted on the saddle. She had placed her hand-bag on the floor of the Machine, directly in front of the saddle, and on her head she wore her bonnet.
I passed one of the port-glasses to her, “Let us toast the success of our adventure.”
“And futurity,” she replied.
We each drank about half what was there, then I placed the glasses on a bench to one side. I climbed on to the saddle behind Amelia.
“We are now ready,” I said, making sure my boater was firmly seated on my head.
Amelia gripped the lever in both hands, and pulled it towards her.
iv
The whole Time Machine lurched, as if it had somehow fallen headlong into an abyss, and I shouted aloud with alarm, bracing myself against the coming impact.
“Hold on!” Amelia said, somewhat unnecessarily, for I would not have released her for anything.
“What is happening?” I cried.
“We are quite safe … it is an effect of the attenuation.”
I opened my eyes, and glanced timorously about the laboratory, and saw to my astonishment that the Machine was still firmly situated on the floor. The clock on the wall was already spinning insanely forwards, and even as I watched the sun came up behind the house and was soon passing quickly overhead. Almost before I had registered its passing, darkness fell again like a black blanket thrown over the roof.
I sucked in my breath involuntarily, and discovered that in so doing I had inadvertently inhaled several of Amelia’s long hairs. Even in the immense distractions of the journey I found a moment to rejoice at this furtive intimacy.
Amelia shouted to me: “Are you frightened?”
This was no time for prevarication. “Yes!” I shouted back.
“Hold tight … there is no danger.”
Our raised voices were necessary only as an expression of our excitement; in the attenuated dimension all was silent.
The sun came up, and set again almost as quickly. The next period of darkness was shorter, and the following daylight shorter still. The Time Machine was accelerating into futurity!
In what seemed to us only a few more seconds the procession of day and night was so fast as to be virtually undetectable, and our surroundings were visible only in a grey, twilight glow.
About us, details of the laboratory became hazy, and the image of the sun became a path of light seemingly fixed in a deep-blue sky.
When I spoke to Amelia I had lost the strands of her hair from my mouth. About me was a spectacular sight, and yet for all its wonder it did not compare with the feel of this girl in my arms. Prompted no doubt by the new infusion of port into my blood I became emboldened, and I moved my face nearer and took several strands of her hair between my lips, I raised my head slightly, allowing the hair to slide sensuously across my tongue. Amelia made no response I could detect, and so I allowed the strands to fall and took a few more. Still she did not stop me. The third time I tipped my head to one side, so as not to dislodge my hat, and pressed my lips gently but very firmly on the smooth white skin of her neck.
I was allowed to linger there for no more than a second, but then she sat forward as if in sudden excitement, and said: “The Machine is slowing, Edward!”
Beyond the glass roof the sun was now moving visibly slower, and the periods of dark, between the sun’s passages, were distinct, if only as the briefest flickers of darkness.
Amelia started reading off the dials before her: “We are in December, Edward! January … January 1903. February…
One by one the months were called, and the pauses between her words were growing longer.
Then: “This is June, Edward.; . we are nearly there!”
I glanced up at the clock for confirmation of this; but I saw that the device had unaccountably stopped.
“Have we arrived?” I said.
“Not quite.”
“But the clock on the wall is not moving.”
Amelia looked briefly at it. “No one has wound it, that is all.”
“Then you will have to tell me when we arrive.”
“The wheel is slowing … we are almost at rest … now!”
And with that word the silence of attenuation was broken. Somewhere just outside the house there was a massive explosion, and some of the panes of glass cracked. Splinters fell down upon us.
Beyond the transparent walls I saw that it was daytime and the sun was shining … but there was smoke drifting past, and we heard the crackle of burning timber.
v
There came a second explosion, but this was further away. I felt Amelia stiffen in my arms, and she turned awkwardly in the saddle to face me.
“What have we come to?” she said.
“I cannot say.”
Some distance away somebody screamed horribly, and as if this were a signal the scream was echoed by two other voices. A third blast occurred, louder than either of the previous two. More panes cracked, and splinters tinkled down to the floor. One piece fell on to the Time Machine itself, not six inches from my foot.
Gradually, as our ears adapted to the confusion of sounds around us, one noise in particular stood out above all others: a deep-throated braying, rising like a factory siren, then howling around the upper note. It drowned temporarily the crackle of the fires and the cries of the men. The siren note fell away, but then it was repeated.
“Edward!” Amelia’s face was snow-white, and her voice had become a high-pitched whisper. “What is happening?”
“I cannot imagine. We must leave. Take the controls!”
“I don’t know how. We must wait for the automatic return.”
“How long have we been here?”
Before she could answer there was another shattering explosion.
“Hold still,” I said. “We cannot be here much longer. We have blundered into a war.”
“But the world is at peace!”
“In our time, yes.”
I wondered how long we had been waiting here in this hell of 1903, and cursed again that the clock was not working. It could not be long before the automatic return took us back through the safety of attenuation to our own blissfully peaceful time.
Amelia had turned her face so that it was now buried in my shoulder, her body twisted awkwardly on the saddle. I kept my arms around her, doing what I could to calm her in that fearful bedlam.
I looked around the laboratory, seeing how strangely it had changed from the first time I had seen it: debris was everywhere, and filth and dust overlaid everything bar the Time Machine itself.
Unexpectedly, I saw a movement beyond the walls of the laboratory, and looking that way I saw that there was someone running desperately across the lawn towards the house. As the figure came nearer I saw that it was that of a woman. She came right up to the wall, pressing her face against the glass. Behind her I saw another figure, running too.
I said: “Amelia … look!”
“What is it?”
“There!”
She turned to look at the two figures, but just as she did two things happened simultaneously. One was a shattering explosion accompanied by a gust of flame erupting across the lawn and consuming the woman … and the other was a vertiginous lurch from the Time Machine. The silence of attenuation fell about us, the laboratory appeared whole once more, and over head began the reverse procession of day and night.