“And the ball team. I have to pitch for…”
“Bob Andrews can pitch. He’s been dying for the chance all summer.”
“And-”
“Yes?”
Neil suddenly ran to the bed and gripped his father’s hand tightly. For a moment, their eyes met, and there was seriousness in both their faces.
“Do you really want me to go, Dad?”
“Yes, Neil. I’d consider it a great honor if you took my place.”
“And the others. Doctor Manning and Mr. Blake? And Dave?”
“They’ve already agreed. In fact,” and here Doctor Falsen grinned, “you’re leaving the day after tomorrow.”
And that was how a guy suddenly had the whole pattern of his life changed. For here it was the night before they were leaving! And there the machine stood, proud and strong in the light of the moon. Tomorrow. Tomorrow!
“You’d better get some sleep, kid,” Rusty’s voice said from the gate. “Tomorrow’s a big day.”
“Yeah,” Neil agreed. Rusty opened the gate, and Neil stepped through. “You’ll be here when we leave, won’t you, Rusty?”
“I wouldn’t miss it for the world, kid,” Rusty said. “Now go get some sleep.”
“Good night,” Neil said.
“Good night, kid.”
Neil began walking toward the University, looking back at the machine only once.
Like an enormous hourglass, it stood poised against the blackness of the night, waiting.
The next day was clear and bright. The sky stretched for as far as the eye could see in a brilliant, almost-blinding sheet of blue.
The good-bys were over and done with. Neil’s mother had kissed him and cried a little, and then she’d reminded him to change his underwear regularly. Neil’s father had simply shook his hand, the way men do, and wished his son good luck.
And now Neil waited below while Dave Saunders warmed up the engine of the machine. He wore a linen shirt, open at the throat. His blond head was bare, and his skin against the brilliant white of the shirt was a gleaming bronze in the sun. He wore dungarees, rolled at the cuff, and a pair of solid leather boots.
Standing beside him was Arthur Blake, dressed in almost the same fashion. He was a small man, with a balding head and quick, intelligent eyes. Two shaggy black eyebrows sprawled over his eyes like elongated hyphens. His nose was sharp and thin, and he spoke in a soft voice.
“She’s a beauty, isn’t she, Neil?”
“She is,” Neil agreed, staring in wonder at the plastic and aluminum dream that was his father’s.
“Here’s Doctor Manning now,” Arthur Blake said.
Doctor Manning was at least six-feet-four. He had the square, muscular shoulders of a fullback, complete with a waist that rivaled that of the time machine’s for its slenderness. His face seemed to have been chiseled out of hard granite, set with black coal for eyes. His jaw jutted out like the trapdoor on a gallows, and when he spoke, his voice boomed forth from his enormous barrel chest.
“Dave warming her up, I see,” he said.
If anyone looked less like an archaeologist, Neil decided, it was Doctor Manning.
One of the portholes on the side of the control room opened and Dave’s head popped out.
“Let’s go, boys,” he called cheerfully.
Doctor Manning and Arthur Blake started for the machine. Neil walked to where Rusty stood leaning on his rifle. He extended his hand.
“Good luck, kid,” Rusty said.
“Thanks,” Neil answered.
“Come back soon. I won’t know what to do at night, not having that machine to guard.”
Neil smiled and started for the ship. He climbed the ladder that was in place before the platform. The ladder was of the movable type to be found on any airfield, triangular shaped, with wheels under each leg.
As Neil climbed the ladder to the plastic hatchway in the lower bubble, his mind wandered back to what had happened less than a month ago on this very spot. His father, after inspecting the machine, had stepped through the hatchway and reached for the ladder with his foot. A negligent attendant had moved the ladder from the hatchway, and Doctor Falsen had tumbled fifteen feet to the ground below. If it hadn’t been for that accident, Doctor Falsen would be climbing the steps now, rather than Neil.
Neil reached the hatchway and pulled up on the toggle that snapped it open. He climbed through and signaled to the attendant below to wheel the ladder away. Then he pulled the hatchway shut and peered through the plastic. A little way in the distance, the University spires stood out against the sky in dim silhouette. He could almost make out the little house on the campus in Faculty Row. Here, he knew, his mother was probably still crying, and his father would be trying to console her. He bit his lower lip and started for the aluminum ladder that led to the control room. The ladder was bolted securely to the aluminum floor of the plastic bubble, and it rose vertically to an opening in the floor of the control room. Neil climbed it, hand over hand, rung by rung, and poked his head into the control room.
“Hi,” he called.
Dave Saunders looked up from the control panel. He was a young man, twenty-six at the most, with straight brown hair and large, warm brown eyes. He had a finely sculpted face with high cheekbones, and a sensitive, thin mouth. He would have been good-looking if it hadn’t been for his nose. While an engineering student, Dave had been a member of the college boxing squad. From what Doctor Falsen had told Neil, Dave was quite good. But he’d been unlucky in one bout, and he sported a broken nose as a result.
“Good,” Dave said when he saw Neil. “We were waiting for you.”
“Are we ready to go?”
“As ready as we’ll ever be. Help me chase these two coots out of here, will you, Neil?”
“Let’s go, Arthur,” Doctor Manning said. “I can take a hint.”
“Aren’t you going to stay up here for the take-off?” Neil asked.
Dr. Manning shrugged his fullback’s shoulders. “Only two people allowed in the control room, Neil.”
“Well, if you want to stay-” Neil started.
“We’ll go down below,” Doctor Manning said. “I want to see what happens anyway. With all that clear plastic down there, it’d be a shame to stay cooped up here. Coming, Arthur?”
He started down the ladder, with Arthur Blake following close behind him.
“I’ll give you a warning buzzer just before we take off,” Dave said to the descending figures.
“All right,” Arthur Blake answered as his head went below the floor level into the lower bubble.
Dave checked a few dials on the instrument panel and nodded his head.
“Everything seems okay so far. I’d better start the crystal working.”
“The time crystal?” Neil asked,
“That’s it, Neil,” Dave said, smiling. “We’re fancy, and we call it the temporium crystal. But time crystal will do.”
He reached out to a switch on the panel and closed the circuit. A hum, low and steady, filled the machine. Behind it, and almost too faint to be heard, was a slight coughing sound. Dave’s face clouded momentarily, and he studied the dials before him.
“That’s strange,” he said.
“What’s the matter? Is anything wrong?”
Dave hesitated before answering. “No-o-o,” he said slowly. “Not by the instruments anyway. Everything seems to be fine. I could have sworn I heard some rumbling when I threw on the generator, though.”
“I heard something too,” Neil admitted.
Dave shrugged. “Probably just warming up,” he said. “We haven’t used the machine since its test runs, you know.” He checked his dials again. “Want to press that warning buzzer on your right, Neil?”