At last I had the idea that I was becoming something outside not only the world of my birth — but all worlds, and Space and Time as well. What was I to become in my own future but, once again, a mote of consciousness buffeted by the Winds of Time?
It was only as the earth grew perceptibly nearer — a darker shadow against space, with the light of the stars reflected in the ocean’s belly — that I felt drawn back to the ordinary concerns of Humanity; that once again the details of my schemes — and my hopes and fears for my future — worked their life-long clockwork in my brain.
I have never forgotten that brief inter-planetary interlude, and sometimes — when I am between waking and sleeping — I imagine I am again adrift between Sphere and the earth, with only a patient Morlock for company.
Nebogipfel contemplated my vision of the far future. “You said you traveled thirty million years.”
“That or more,” I replied. “Perhaps I can recall the chronology more precisely, if—”
He waved that away. “Something is wrong. Your description of the sun’s evolution is plausible, but its destruction — our science tells us — should take place over thousands of millions of years, not a mere handful of millions.”
I felt defensive. “I have recounted what I saw, honestly and accurately.”
“I do not doubt you have,” Nebogipfel said. “But the only conclusion is that in that other History — as in my own — the evolution of the sun did not proceed without intervention.”
“You mean—”
“I mean that some clumsy attempt must have been made to adjust the sun’s intensity, or longevity — or perhaps even, as we have, to mine the star for habitable materials.”
Nebogipfel’s hypothesis was that perhaps my Eloi and Morlocks were not the full story of Humanity, in that sorry, lost History. Perhaps — Nebogipfel speculated — some race of engineers had left the earth and tried to modify the sun, just as had Nebogipfel’s own ancestors.
“But the attempt failed,” I said, aghast.
“Yes. The engineers never returned to the earth — which was abandoned to the slow tragedy of Eloi and Morlock. And the sun was rendered unbalanced, its lifetime curtailed.”
I was horrified, and I could bear to speak of this no more. I clung to a pole, and my thoughts turned inward.
I thought again of that desolate beach, of those hideous, devolved forms with their echoes of Humanity and their utter absence of mind. The vision had been foul enough when I had considered it a final victory of the inexorable pressures of evolution and retrogression over the human dream of Mind — but now I saw that it might have been Humanity itself, in its overweening ambition, which had unbalanced those opposing forces, and accelerated its own destruction!
Our capture by the earth was elaborate. It was necessary for us to shed some millions of miles per hour of speed, in order to match the earth’s progress around the sun.
We skimmed several times, on diminishing loops, around the belly of the planet; Nebogipfel told me that the capsule was being coupled with the planet’s gravitational and magnetic fields — a coupling enhanced by certain materials in the hull, and by the manipulation of satellites: artificial moons, which orbited the earth and adjusted its natural effects. In essence, I understood, our velocity was exchanged with that of the earth — which, forever after, would travel around the sun a little further out, and a little more rapid.
I hung close to the wall of the capsule, watching the darkened landscape of earth unfold. I could see, here and there, the glow of the Morlocks’ larger heating-wells. I noted several huge, slender towers which appeared to protrude above the atmosphere itself. Nebogipfel told me that the towers were used for capsules traveling from the earth to Sphere.
I saw specks of light crawling along the lengths of those towers: they were inter-planetary capsules, bearing Morlocks to be borne off to their Sphere. It was by means of just such a tower, I realized, that I — insensible — had been launched into space, and carried to the Sphere. The towers worked as lifts beyond the atmosphere, and a similar series of coupling maneuvers to ours — performed in reverse, if you understand me — would hurl each capsule off into space.
The speed acquired by the capsules on launch would not match that imparted by the Sphere’s rotation, and the outward journey thereby took longer than the return. But on arrival at the Sphere, magnetic fields would hook the capsules with ease, accelerating them to a seamless rendezvous.
At last we dipped into the atmosphere of the earth. The hull blazed with frictional heat, and the capsule shuddered — it was the first sensation of motion I had endured for days — but Nebogipfel had warned me, and I was ready braced against the supporting poles.
With this meteoric blaze of fire we shed the last of our interplanetary speed. With some unease I watched the darkened landscape which spread below us as we fell — I thought I could see the broad, meandering ribbon of the Thames — and I began to wonder if, after all this distance, I would, after all, be dashed against the unforgiving rocks of the earth!
But then -
My impressions of the final phase of our shuddering descent are blurred and partial. Suffice it for me to record a memory of a craft, something like an immense bird, which swept down out of the sky and swallowed us in a moment into a kind of stomach-hold. In darkness, I felt a deep jolt as that craft pushed at the air, discarding its velocity; and then our descent continued with extreme gentleness.
When next I could see the stars, there was no sign of the bird-craft. Our capsule was settled on the dried, lifeless soil of Richmond Hill, not a hundred yards from the White Sphinx.
[21]
On Richmond Hill
Nebogipfel had the capsule dilate open, and I stepped from it, cramming my goggles onto my face. The night-soaked landscape leapt to clarity and detail, and for the first time I was able to make out some detail of this world of A.D. 657,208.
The sky was brilliant with stars and the scar of obscurity made by the Sphere was looming and distinct. There was a rusty smell coming off the ubiquitous sand, and a certain dampness, as of lichen and moss; and everywhere the air was thick with the sweet stink of Morlock.
I was relieved to be out of that lozenge, and to feel firm earth beneath my boots. I strode up the hill to the bronze-plated pedestal of the Sphinx, and stood there, halfway up Richmond Hill, on the site that had once, I knew, been my home. A little further up the Hill there was a new structure, a small, square hut. I could see no Morlocks. It was a sharp contrast to my impressions of my earlier time here, when — as I stumbled in the dark — they had seemed to be everywhere.
Of my Time Machine there was no sign — only grooves dug deep into the sand, and the queer, narrow footprints characteristic of the Morlock. Had the machine been dragged into the base of the Sphinx again? Thus was History repeating itself! — or so I thought. I felt my fists bunching, so rapidly had my elevated inter-planetary mood evaporated; and panic bubbled within me. I calmed myself. Was I a fool, that I could have expected the Time Machine to be waiting for me outside the capsule as it opened? I could not resort to violence — not now! — not when my plan for escape was so ripe. Nebogipfel joined me.
“We appear to be alone here,” I said.