"The Space Machine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Priest Christopher)

iii

We left the smoking-room by the door which Sir William had used, and walked along a passage to what was clearly a newly constructed door. This led directly into the laboratory, which was, I now realized, the glass-covered annexe which had been built between the two wings of the house.

I do not know what I had been expecting the laboratory to be like, but my first impression was that it bore a considerable resemblance to the milling-shop of an engineering works I had once visited.

Along the ceiling, to one side, was a steam-lathe which, by the means of several adjustable leather straps, provided motive power to the many pieces of engineering equipment I saw ranged along a huge bench beneath it. Several of these were metal-turning lathes, and there was also a sheet-metal stamp, a presser, some acetylene welding equipment, two massive vices and any number of assorted tools scattered about. The floor was liberally spread with the shavings and fragments of metals removed in the processes, and in many parts of the laboratory were what appeared to be long-abandoned pieces of cut or turned metal.

“Sir William does much of the engineering himself,” said Amelia, “but occasionally he is obliged to contract out for certain items. I was in Skipton on one of these errands when I met you.”

“Where is the Time Machine?” I said.

“You are standing beside it.”

I realized with a start that what I had taken at first to be another collection of discarded metals did, in fact, have a coherent scheme to it. I saw now that it bore a certain resemblance to the model he had shown me, but whereas that had had the perfection of miniaturism, this by its very size appeared to be more crude.

In fact, however, as soon as I bent to examine it I saw that every single constituent part had been turned and polished until it shone as new.

The Time Machine was some seven or eight feet in length, and four or five feet in width. At its highest point it stood about six feet from the floor, but as its construction had been strictly functional, perhaps a description in terms of overall dimension is misleading. For much of its length the Time Machine was standing only three feet high, and in the form of a skeletal metal frame.

All its working parts were visible… and here my description becomes vague of necessity. What I saw was a repetition in-extremis of the mysterious substances I had earlier that day seen in Sir William’s bicycles and flying machine: in other words, much of what was apparently visible was rendered invisible by the eye-deceiving crystalline substance. This encased thousands of fine wires and rods, and much as I peered at the mechanism from many different angles, I was unable to learn very much.

What was more comprehensible was the arrangement of controls.

Towards one end of the frame was a leather-covered seat, rounded like a horse-saddle. Around this was a multiplicity of levers, rods and dials.

The main control appeared to be a large lever situated directly in front of the saddle. Attached to the top of this—incongruous in the context—was the handle-bar of a bicycle. This, I supposed, enabled the driver to grip the lever with both hands. To each side of this lever were dozens of subsidiary rods, all of which were attached at different swivelling joints, so that as the lever was moved, others would be simultaneously brought into play.

In my preoccupation I had temporarily forgotten Amelia’s presence, but now she spoke, startling me a little.

“It looks substantial, does it not?” she said.

“How long has it taken Sir William to build this?” I said.

“Nearly two years. But touch it, Edward… see bow substantial it is.”

“I wouldn’t dare,” I said. “I would not know what I was doing.”

“Hold one of these bars. It is perfectly safe.”

She took my hand, and led it towards one of the brass rods which formed part of the frame. I laid my fingers gingerly on this rail … then immediately snatched them away, for as my fingers closed on the rod the entire Machine had visibly and audibly shuddered, like a living being.

“What is it?” I cried.

“The Time Machine is attenuated, existing as it were in the Fourth Dimension. It is real, but it does not exist in the real world as we know it. It is, you must understand, travelling through Time even as we stand here.”

“But you cannot be serious… because if it were travelling it would not be here now!”

“On the contrary, Edward.” She indicated a huge metal flywheel directly in front of the saddle, which corresponded approximately with the silver cog-wheel I had seen on Sir William’s model. “It is turning. Can you see that?”

“Yes, yes I can,” I said, leaning as near it as I dared. The great wheel was rotating almost imperceptibly.

“If it were not turning, the Machine would be stationary in Time. To us, as Sir William explained, the Machine would then vanish into the past, for we ourselves are moving forward in Time.”

“So the Machine must always be in operation.”

While we had been there the evening had deepened, and gloom was spreading in the eerie laboratory.

Amelia stepped to one side and went to yet another infernal contraption. Attached to this was a cord wound around an external wheel, and she pulled the cord sharply. At once the device emitted a coughing, spitting sound, and as it picked up speed, light poured forth from eight incandescent globes hanging from the frame ceiling.

Amelia glanced up at a clock on the wall, which showed the time of twenty-five minutes past six.

It will be time for dinner in half an hour,” she said. “Do you think a stroll around the garden would be enjoyable before then?”

I tore my attention away from the wondrous machines Sir William had made.

The Time Machine might slowly move into futurity, but Amelia was, to my. way of thinking, stationary. in Time. She was not attenuated, and not at all a creature of past or future.

I said, for I was understanding that my time here in Richmond must soon be at an end: “Will you take my arm?”

She slipped her hand around my elbow, and together we walked past the Time Machine, and the noisy reciprocating engine, through a door in the far corner of the laboratory, and out into the cool evening light of the garden. Only once did I glance back, seeing the pure-white radiance of the electrical lamps shining through the glass walls of the annexe.