The Time Ships

There was a final crumbling of the dome, a hail of fragments about me. On my forehead there was a touch of cold, the distant breath of winter, and then there was only the coolness of Nebogipfel’s fingers about mine — it was all I could feel, save for that omnipresent, liquid fumbling of Plattnerite! I imagined cilia detaching and — as they had once before — squirming into the interstices of my body. So rapidly had this invasion of light progressed, I could no longer move so much as a finger, nor could I cry out — I was pi

I was lost, disembodied, immersed in emerald light.

[BOOK SIX]

The Time Ships

[1]

Departure

I was outside Time and Space.

It was not like sleep — for even in sleep, the brain is active, functioning, sorting through its freight of information and memories; even in sleep, I contend, one remains conscious, aware of one’s self and of one’s continued existence.

This interval, this timeless spell, was not like that. It was more as if the Plattnerite web had, subtle and silent, disassembled me. I was simply not there; and the fragments of my personality, my shards of memory, had been broken up and disseminated about that immense and invisible Information Sea of which Nebogipfel was so fond.

…And then — more mysterious by far! — I found myself there again — I ca

I could see again. I had a clear view of the world — of the green-glowing hull of the Time Ship all around me, of the earth’s bone-gleam beyond.

I was existent once again! and a deep panic — a horror — of that interval of Absence pumped through my system. I have feared no Hell so much as nonexistence — indeed, I had long resolved that I should welcome whatever agonies Lucifer reserves for the intelligent Non-Believer; if those pains served as proof that my consciousness still endured!

But I was not permitted to brood on my disquietude, for now came the most extraordinary sensation of being lifted. I realized a growing stress upon me, a feeling as though some huge magnet was drawing me upward. The stress grew — I seemed a mote over which huge forces were fighting — and then of a sudden, that tension was resolved. I flew up, feeling exactly as if I was a small child again, being picked up by the strong, safe hands of my father; I had that same lightness of being, the sensation of flying. The substance of the Time Ship arose with me, so that it was like being at the center of an immense, open, green-glowing balloon, lifting from the ground.

I looked down — or at least I tried to; I could not feel my head or neck, but the sweep of my panoramic vision swiveled downwards. You must imagine that the Ship about me had something of the shape of a steam liner, but hugely blown up — its lenticular keel was miles long — and yet it floated above the landscape with the ease of a cloud. I could see through the open, web-like substance of the Ship to the land beyond, and now I was looking down at our Time-Car, from directly above. Although my view was obscured by the complex, evolving sparkle of the Ship, I thought I saw two bodies in the car, a man and a slighter figure, who slid to the car’s floor, their motions already stiff from the invading cold.

My view had an odd sensation about it. It was without focus: or rather, it lacked a central point of observation. When you look at something, say a tea-cup, you see it, and that’s pretty much the center of your world, with everything else relegated to a sort of side-show around the periphery of your vision. But now I found that my world had no center, or periphery. I saw it all — Ice, Ships, Time-Car — it was as if it were all central, or all peripheral, all at once! It was disorienting and very confusing.

My belly and head seemed to have been numbed, gone quite beyond feeling. I could see, all right; but I could feel nothing of my face, my neck, the posture of my body — nothing, in fact, save a light, almost ghostly touch: the fingers of Nebogipfel, still wrapped around my own. I took some comfort in that, for it was good to know that he was here with me at least!

I thought I was dead — but I recalled I had thought that before, when I had been absorbed and remade by the Universal Constructor. What would become of me now I could not tell.

The Ship began to rise again, and now much more rapidly. The Time-Car and the tower on which it sat were swept away from under me. I was raised a mile, two miles, ten miles above the surface; the whole sparse map of this remote London was laid out beneath me, visible through the sparkle of the Time Ship.

Still we rose — we must have been traveling faster than a ca

Now our height was so great that the curving away of the planet became apparent — it was as if London was the highest point of some immense hill — and I could make out the shape of poor Britain, locked within its frozen Sea of Ice.

I remained without hands or feet, without belly or mouth. I seemed to have been cut loose of matter, quite suddenly, and I saw things with a sort of serenity.

And still we climbed — I knew we were already far beyond the atmosphere — and the frozen plains mutated from a landscape into the surface of a spherical world, which turned, white and serene — and quite dead — beneath me. Beyond the earth’s gleaming limb there were more Time Ships — hundreds of them, I saw now, great, green-glowing, lenticular boats miles long; they made up a loose armada which sailed across the face of space, and their light reflected from the wrinkled ice which coated the earth.

I heard my name called: or rather, it was not hearing, but an awareness, by some means I would be loath to try to explain. I tried to turn, but I found my point of view twisting about.

Nebogipfel? Is that you?

Yes. I am here. Are you all right?

Nebogipfel… I can’t see you.

Nor I you. But that does not matter. Can you feel my hand?

Yes.

Now the earth drifted off to one side, and our Ship moved into formation with its fellows. Soon the Time Ships were all about us, in an array that filled the inter-planetary void for many miles about; it was like being in the middle of a school of great, glowing whales. The light of Plattnerite was brilliant and yet there was a surface of unreality about it, as if it was reflecting from some invisible plane; again I had that feeling of contingency about the Ships, as if they did not belong quite in this Reality, or any other.

Nebogipfel, what is happening to us? Where are we being taken?

Gently, he replied, You know the answer to that. We are to travel back through time… back to its Boundary, to its deepest, hidden heart.

Will we start soon?

We have already started, he said. Look at the stars.

I turned — or felt as if I did — so that I looked away from White Earth, and I saw: