New York (N.Y.) -- Fiction; Science fiction; Time travel -- Fiction
"Yes." The Indian spoke with a low guttural intonation. "Yes. Saw
nothing where could stop."
"No," said Turber. "Well, we'll go forward now." He turned to me. "We
had hoped, along here in these primitive ages there might be some great
reptile lying dead. One with tusks." He grinned. "In civilized times,
ivory is very valuable."
He sat beside Nanette. "I'm not sure that we shall stop, child. Except
in 1664. I am impatient to get back home with you. We will have a
wonderful life, Nanette--riches and power. Master and mistress of all
the world. Wolf Turber--master of the world. You'll be proud of me."
I could not catch her answer. I could see her involuntarily shrinking
away from his caress.
I sat alert with roving thoughts. Nanette and I would have to escape;
but how? If the aero paused in one of these primitive ages, could I
snatch Nanette and leap out? Unthinkable! But in 1664? If we paused
there for a night, I would make my play then. Nanette and I, to live
out our lives together in little Dutch-English New York.
There was nothing I could do now, and presently I was engrossed,
listening to Turber's voice, and regarding the vast scene spread before
us through these windows. The control room was in the bow-peak of the
aero. Banks of windows on both sides gave nearly an unobstructed view.
Tremendous cosmorama! We were still poised motionless about two
hundred feet in the air. My mind went to my own Time-world. New York
City of 1945. Beneath me here would be the New York Central Railroad
tracks; Riverside Drive; the Hudson. Grant's Tomb, just a short
distance to the north. And behind me, the spread of New York's streets
and solid buildings.
This same Space, how different now! Turber was saying to Nanette: "We
are about one billion years, B.C. That's a long time in the past,
isn't it? But we are traveling forward very fast."
I gazed out upon a landscape gray and misty; blurred, unreal as a
shimmering ghost. The colors of nature were blended into gray; melting
phantoms--the changes of a century encompassed within an instant of
my consciousness. It created a pseudo-movement; a blurred, changing
outline.
An unreality, a ghostly aspect upon all the scene. Yet I was the
speeding phantom; and these things at which I stared were the realities.
A vast area of gray land and water lay spread around us. The water
lashed and tumbled; swirls of mist and steam rose from it. The land lay
with a gray look of movement. A naked land. No vegetation here yet. No
soil. A land perhaps almost viscous, congealed from the lashing ocean.
It spread like a great gray plain; the mists and vapors rose from the
land-crust as from the sea. Mists and swirling masses of steam, surging
up into the orange-gray of the sky. Condensing, dissipating, forming
the atmosphere.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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