Science fiction -- Periodicals; Science fiction, American -- Periodicals
We sped through a period when great lush jungles covered the land. The
dials read 350,000,000 B. C. The gray panorama of landscape had loomed
up to envelope our spectral, humming cage, then fallen away again. The
shore of the sea was constantly changing. I thought once it was over
us. For a period of ten million years the blurred apparition of it
seemed around us. And then it dropped once more, and a new shore line
showed.
150,000,000 B. C. I knew that the dinosaurs, the birds and the archaic
mammals were here now. Then, at 50,000,000 B. C., the higher mammals
had been evolved.
The Time, to Mary Atwood and me, was a minute--but in those myriad
centuries the higher numerals had risen to the anthropoids. The apes!
Erect! Slow-thinking, but canny, they came to take their place in this
world among the things gigantic. But the gigantic things were no
longer supreme. Nature had made an error, and was busy rectifying it.
The dinosaurs--all the giant reptiles--were now sorely pressed. Brute
strength, giant size and tiny brain could not win this struggle. The
huge unwieldy things were being beaten. The smaller animals, birds and
reptiles were more agile, more resourceful, and began to dominate.
Against the giants, and against all hostility of environment, they
survived. And the giants went down to defeat. Gradually, over
thousands of centuries, they died out and were gone....
We entered 1,000,000 B. C. A movement of Migul, the mechanism,
attracted my attention. He left us at the window and went to his
controls.
"What is it?" I demanded.
"I am retarding us. We have been traveling very fast. One million
years and a few thousand are all which remain before we must stop."
I had noticed once or twice before that Migul had turned to gaze
through the Time-telespectroscope. Now he said:
"We are again followed!"
But he would say no more than that, and he silenced me harshly when I
questioned.
Suddenly, Mary touched me. "That little mirror on the table--look! It
holds an image!"
We saw very briefly on the glowing mirror the image of a Time-cage
like our own, but smaller. It was pursuing us. But why, or who might
be operating it we could not then guess.
* * * * *
My attention went back to the Time-dials, and then to the window. The
Cosmorama now was proceeding with a slowing sweep of change. It was
less blurred; its melting outlines could more readily be perceived.
The line of seashore swept like a gray gash across the vista. The land
stretched back into the haze of distance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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