You jumped ten times as far on each shunt as on the one before. But you alternated a swing to the future with one to the past, so each time you returned to the past you landed a hundred times farther back than you had on the last jump. The same with the future. The early swings were very close together, but the hundred-fold factor kept multiplying.
So it was 8.33 hours back, and 83.3 hours forward, and then 833.3 hours back, and 8333.3 hours forward, and then 83,333.3 hours back, which worked out to 9.51 years into the past. Then 95.13 years forward. And then 951.3 years back. Then 9,513 years forward. And then 95,129.3 years back. And then 951,293.7 years forward. Then 9,512,937.5 years back. And then—
And then the top of the pendulum swing, the swing to Time Ultimate, the effective limit of the experiment, at which point he would have been carried some 95 million years into the future and then an equal distance back—back to the Cretaceous Period—back to the time of the dinosaurs—
He listened joyfully to the beat of the rain. Thinking,Yes, carry me back, carry me back, let me look upon the dawn of time.
“Eric?” a voice said.
“Right the first try.”
“Do you know what day this is?”
“Wednesday, March 16, 2016.”
“Yes. Yes, that’s right. And what day is it for you?”
“Just a little bit past Time Zero. Tuesday, the nineteenth of April. At not quite eleven A.M.”
They were staring at him that way that was getting to be so tiresomely familiar to him—staring as if they were looking at a ghost. Dr. Ludwig, Dr. White, Dr. Thomas, Dr. Mukherji, Dr. Camminella, and half a dozen more. The whole crew. They had a pale winter-time look about them and they were wearing heavier clothes than they had on when he had seen them a little while ago at Time Zero.
The lab was different, too. Everything was raw and half finished. Electrical conduits dangled in midair. The displacement cone was unshielded and the singularity cradles lay open and empty. Crates and cartons were scattered all about, still unpacked. A month and three days to go and they still had a ton of work to do, getting everything set up. But of course they were going to finish the job on schedule. There wasn’t any doubt of that. His being here now was the proof of that.
The March rain drummed down in double time.
“If you don’t mind,” Dr. Thomas said. “There are some tests that we’d like to administer—”
10. Sean + 5×104minutes
I know you’re all waiting to stick the electrodes on my head and measure everything that’s going on inside it,” Sean said. “But would it be okay if I stepped out into the fresh air for a moment? I’ve still got a headache from the last batch of tests.”
“Still?” Dr. Thomas asked. “That was a month ago!”
“A month ago for you people, yes. For me the lights and bells are still blasting away.”
“Well, I suppose—for just a few minutes.”
“Don’t worry. I won’t try to escape.”
There was a little forced laughter at that. Even so, Terzunian and Mukherji went with him on his little excursion outside the lab. To look after him? Or to make sure he didn’t bolt off into the night, fleeing Thomas and his dreaded multiphasic machines to enjoy a couple of hours of solitary jogging through the darkness?
It was gorgeous outside. The air was warm and sweet and gentle, and very clear. The moon was bright and the stars were sparkling. The vines on the laboratory’s west wall were in bloom, great yellow flowers filling the air with wondrous fragrance. This was late May, one of the best months of the year, before the worst of the summer heat and the summer smog descended on the San Gabriel Valley.
He thought of poor Eric, back there in rainy March right at this moment, and smiled.
“Okay,” he said, filling his lungs as deeply as he could. “I guess I can face those tests now.”
11. Eric + 5×105minutes
The drumbeat sound of the rain ceased between one moment and the next. It was cut off sharply and suddenly, as if an audio tape had been abruptly sliced. Now Eric heard the chirping of birds and the chattering of grasshoppers instead. The warm golden brightness of a perfect Southern California afternoon came bursting in upon him with startling impact.
He realized that he had made another jump. He must be almost a year in the future this time. Half a million minutes beyond Time Zero—347.2 days. This was March also, but March of a different year, March of 2017.
And he had landed outside the laboratory, on a broad lawn at the far west side of the campus. The time displacement was big enough now that some spatial displacement was occurring also. There were students all around him but nobody seemed to notice his arrival. Or care. Maybe by March of 2017 it was a common thing for time travelers to pop into being here and there around the campus.
Eric felt a heady sense of freedom. He was outdoors in the fresh air, away from Dr. Ludwig and the rest of the Project Pendulum crowd, for the first time in—what? Weeks? Months? All that endless training, testing, rehearsing—he had felt like a rat in a cage, going around and around and around. But there were no Project Pendulum people anywhere in sight now. For however many hours it was until his next shunt, he could go where he pleased, do as he liked.
“Watch it!” someone yelled.
A gravity rotor came skimming by, zigzagging wildly up and down just above eye level. A tall, skinny undergraduate was running alongside it, trying to catch a ride. Eric got out of the way just in time. The student made a desperate lunge and grabbed the rotor just before it went lurching out of reach. It carried him a hundred yards or so through the air until it lost its spin and fluttered to the ground.
A pang of nostalgia went through him. It seemed like a million years since he had played with gravity rotors as a student on this same campus: though actually it was no more than three or four years ago.
Soon, he thought with a little shiver, he would be almost a million years away from his college days. And then a great deal more than that.
A slender blond girl keyed up the rotor again and let it fly. As it began to circle the lawn, Eric found himself suddenly loping after it. There were half a dozen students chasing it too, but he brushed them aside with a quick gesture. Easily, gracefully, he reached up and slipped his hands into the rotor’s holdfasts and let it spin him upward and outward across the campus. He had always been good with gravity rotors. He knew how to play into their axis of rotation so they would take him on a maximum glide.
Up—up—
“Eric! Eric, have you gone crazy?” a hoarse angry voice was shouting, far below.
He laughed and waved.
“Come down from there, you lunatic! What do you think you’re doing?”
“Having—some—fun—” he called, breathless with laughter.
“Then he looked down. Half a dozen grim-faced Project members were wigwagging their arms wildly at him. As he went spinning past them, fifteen feet over their heads, he caught sight of Dr. Thomas, Dr. Mukherji, Terzunian, and a few others, staring at him in shock. Dr. Ludwig was running toward them from the general direction of the laboratory.
Regretfully he guided the gravity rotor into a down-spin and rode it to a landing.
“What kind of absurd stunt was that?” Dr. Ludwig blurted. “Suppose you had broken your neck! What would happen to the project then?”
Eric smiled. “I wouldn’t have gotten hurt,” he said serenely. “It’s impossible. How could anything happen to me? I’m not really here, remember? I’m still back there at Time Zero sitting on the shunt platform. And at an infinite number of other places between there and Time Ultimate, all at once. So what’s the harm in my taking a little ride?”