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03 - The Time Machine - H G Wells · Classic Science Fiction Books

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  Speaker 1: Chapter three. I told some of you last Thursday of
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  Speaker 1: the principles of the time machine, and showed you the
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  Speaker 1: actual thing itself incomplete in the workshop. There. It is
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  Speaker 1: now a little travel worn, truly, and one of the
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  Speaker 1: ivory bars is cracked and a brass rail bent, but
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  Speaker 1: the rest of it sound enough. I expected to finish
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  Speaker 1: it on Friday. But on Friday, when the pudding together
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  Speaker 1: was nearly done, I found that one of the nickel
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  Speaker 1: bars was exactly one inch too short, and this I
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  Speaker 1: had to get remade, so that the thing was not
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  Speaker 1: complete until this morning. It was at ten o'clock to
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  Speaker 1: day that the first of all time machines began its career.
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  Speaker 1: I gave it at last tap, tried all the screws again,
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  Speaker 1: put one more drop of oil on the quartz rod,
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  Speaker 1: and sat myself in the saddle. I suppose a suicide
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  Speaker 1: who holds a pistol to his skull, feels much the
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  Speaker 1: same wonder at what will come next as I felt.
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  Speaker 1: Then I took the starting lever in one hand and
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  Speaker 1: the stopping one in the other. Pressed the first, and
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  Speaker 1: almost immediately the second I seemed to reel. I felt
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  Speaker 1: a nightmare sensation of falling, and looking around, I saw
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  Speaker 1: the laboratory exactly as before. Had anything happened. For a
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  Speaker 1: moment I suspected that my intellect had tricked me. Then
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  Speaker 1: I noted the clock a moment before, as it seemed
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  Speaker 1: it had stood at a minute or so past ten.
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  Speaker 1: Now it was nearly half past three. I drew a breath,
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  Speaker 1: set my teeth, gripped the starting lever with both hands,
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  Speaker 1: and went off with a thud. The laboratory got hazy
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  Speaker 1: and went dark. Missus Watchett came in and walked, apparently
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  Speaker 1: without seeing me, towards the garden door. I suppose it
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  Speaker 1: took her a minute or so to traverse the place,
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  Speaker 1: but to me, she seemed to shoot across the room
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  Speaker 1: like a rocket. I pressed the lever over to its
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  Speaker 1: extreme position. The night came like the turning out of
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  Speaker 1: a lamp, and in another moment came tomorrow. The laboratory
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  Speaker 1: grew faint and hazy, then fainter and even fainter. Tomorrow
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  Speaker 1: night came black, then day again, night again, day again,
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  Speaker 1: faster and faster still, and Eddie murmur filled my ears,
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  Speaker 1: and a strange, dumb, confusedness descended on my mind. I
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  Speaker 1: am afraid I cannot convey the peculiar sensations of time traveling.
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  Speaker 1: They are excessively unpleasant. There is a feeling exactly like
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  Speaker 1: that one has upon a switchback of a helpless headlong motion.
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  Speaker 1: I felt the same horrible anticipation, too, of an imminent
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  Speaker 1: smash as I put on pace. Night followed day, like
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  Speaker 1: the flapping of a black wing. The day suggestion of
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  Speaker 1: the laboratory seemed presently to fall away from me, and
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  Speaker 1: I saw the sun hopping swiftly across the sky, leaping
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  Speaker 1: it every minute, and every minute marking a day. I
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  Speaker 1: suppose the laboratory had been destroyed, and I had come
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  Speaker 1: into the open air. I had a dim impression of scaffolding,
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  Speaker 1: but I was already going too fast to be conscious
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  Speaker 1: of any moving things. The slowest snail that ever crawled
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  Speaker 1: dashed by too fast for me. The twinkling succession of
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  Speaker 1: darkness and light was excessively painful to the eye. Then,
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  Speaker 1: in the intermittent darknesses, I saw the moon spinning swiftly
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  Speaker 1: through her quarters from new to full, and had a
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  Speaker 1: faint glimpse of the circling stars. Presently, as I went on,
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  Speaker 1: still gaining velocity, the palpitation of night and day merged
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  Speaker 1: into one continuous grayness. The sky took on a wonderful
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  Speaker 1: deepness of blue, a splendid, luminous color like that of
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  Speaker 1: early twilight. The jerking sun became a streak of fire,
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  Speaker 1: a brilliant arch in space, the moon a fainter, fluctuating band,
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  Speaker 1: and I could see nothing of the stars save now
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  Speaker 1: and then a brighter circle flickering in the blue. The
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  Speaker 1: landscape was misty and vague. I was still on the
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  Speaker 1: hillside upon which this house now stands, and the shoulder
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  Speaker 1: rose above me, gray and dim. I saw trees growing
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  Speaker 1: and changing, like puffs of vapor, now brown, now green.
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  Speaker 1: They grew, spread, shivered, and passed away. I saw huge
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  Speaker 1: buildings rise up, faint and fair, and pass like dreams.
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  Speaker 1: The whole surface of the earth seemed changed, melting and
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  Speaker 1: flowing under my eyes. The little hands upon the dials
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  Speaker 1: that registered my speed raced round faster and faster. Presently
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  Speaker 1: I noted that the sun belt swayed up and down
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  Speaker 1: from soulstice to solstice in a minute or less, and
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  Speaker 1: that consequently my pace was over a year a minute,
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  Speaker 1: and minute by minute, the white snow flashed across the
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  Speaker 1: world and vanished, and was followed by the bright, brief
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  Speaker 1: green of spring. The unpleasant sensations of the start were
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  Speaker 1: less poignant now. They merged at last into a kind
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  Speaker 1: of hysterical exhilaration. I remarked, indeed, a clumsy swaying of
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  Speaker 1: the machine for which I was unable to account, But
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  Speaker 1: my mind was too confused to attend to it. So,
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  Speaker 1: with a kind of madness growing upon me, I flung
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  Speaker 1: myself into futurity. At first I scarce thought of stopping,
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  Speaker 1: scarce thought of anything but these new sensations. But presently
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  Speaker 1: a fresh series of impressions grew up in my mind,
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  Speaker 1: a certain curiosity, and therewith a certain dread, until at
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  Speaker 1: last they took complete possession of me. What strange developments
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  Speaker 1: of humanity, What wonderful advances upon our rudimentary civilization, I
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  Speaker 1: thought might not appear. When I came to look nearly
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  Speaker 1: into the dim elusive world that raced and fluctuated before
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  Speaker 1: my eyes, I saw great and splendid architecture rising about me,
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  Speaker 1: more massive than any buildings of our own time, And
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  Speaker 1: yet it seemed built of glimmer and mist. I saw
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  Speaker 1: a richer green flow up the hillside and remain there
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  Speaker 1: without any wintry intermission. Even through the veil of my confusion,
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  Speaker 1: the earth seemed very fair, and so my mind came
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  Speaker 1: round to the business of stopping. The peculiar risk lay
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  Speaker 1: in the possibility of my finding some substance in the
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  Speaker 1: space which I or the machine occupied. So long as
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  Speaker 1: I traveled at a high velocity through time, this scarcely mattered.
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  Speaker 1: I was, so to speak, attenuated, was slipping like a
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  Speaker 1: vapor through the interstices of intervening substances. But to come
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  Speaker 1: to a stop involve the jamming of myself, molecule by
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  Speaker 1: molecule into whatever lay in my way. Meant bringing my
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  Speaker 1: atoms into such intimate contact with those of the obstacle,
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  Speaker 1: that a profound chemical reaction, possibly a far reaching explosion,
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  Speaker 1: would result and blow myself and my apparatus out of
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  Speaker 1: all possible dimensions into the unknown. This possibility had occurred
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  Speaker 1: to me again and again while I was making the machine,
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  Speaker 1: But then I had cheerfully accepted it as an unavoidable risk,
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  Speaker 1: one of the risks a man has got to take.
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  Speaker 1: Now the risk was inevitable. I no longer saw in
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  Speaker 1: the same cheerful light. The fact is that insensibly, the
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  Speaker 1: absolute strangeness of everything, the sickly jarring and swaying of
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  Speaker 1: the machine, above all, the feeling of prolonged falling, had
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  Speaker 1: absolutely upset my nerve. I told myself that I could
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  Speaker 1: never stop, and with a gust of petulance, I resolved
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  Speaker 1: to stop forthwith, like an impatient fool, I lugged over
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  Speaker 1: the lever, and incontinently, the thing went wreathing over, and
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  Speaker 1: I was flung headlong through the air. There was the
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  Speaker 1: sound of a clap of thunder in my ears. I
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  Speaker 1: may have been stunned for a moment. A pitiless hail
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  Speaker 1: was hissing round me, and I was sitting on a
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  Speaker 1: soft turf in front of the overset machine. Everything still
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  Speaker 1: seemed gray, but presently I remarked that the confusion in
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  Speaker 1: my ears was gone. I looked round me. I was
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  Speaker 1: on what seemed to be a little lawn in a garden,
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  Speaker 1: surrounded by rhododendron bushes, and I noticed that their mauve
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  Speaker 1: and purple blossoms were dropping in a shower under the
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  Speaker 1: beating of the hailstones. The rebounding dancing hail hung in
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  Speaker 1: a cloud over the machine and drove along the ground
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  Speaker 1: like smoke. In a moment, I was wet to the skin.
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  Speaker 1: Fine hospitality, said I to a man who has traveled
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  Speaker 1: innumerable years to see you. Presently, I thought what a
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  Speaker 1: fool I was to get wet. I stood up and
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  Speaker 1: looked round me. A colossal figure, carved apparently in some
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  Speaker 1: white stone, loomed indistinctly beyond the rhododendrons through the hazy downpour.
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  Speaker 1: But all else of the world was invisible. My sensations
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  Speaker 1: would be hard to describe. As the columns of hail
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  Speaker 1: grew thinner, I saw the white figure more distinctly. It
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  Speaker 1: was very large for a silver birch tree. Its shoulder
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  Speaker 1: it was of a white marble in shape, something like
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  Speaker 1: a winged sphinx, but the wings, instead of being carried
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  Speaker 1: vertically at the sides, were spread so that it seemed
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  Speaker 1: to hover. The pedestal, it appeared to me, was of
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  Speaker 1: bronze and was thick with verdigris. It chanced that the
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  Speaker 1: face was towards me. The sightless eyes seemed to watch me.
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  Speaker 1: There was the faint shadow of a smile on the lips.
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  Speaker 1: It was greatly weather worn, and that imparted an unpleasant
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  Speaker 1: suggestion of disease. I stood looking at it for a
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  Speaker 1: little space, half a minute, perhaps, or half an hour.
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  Speaker 1: It seemed to advance and to recede, as the hail
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  Speaker 1: drove before it, denser or thinner. At last, I tore
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  Speaker 1: my eyes from it for a moment, and saw that
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  Speaker 1: the hail curtain had worn threadbare, and that the sky
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  Speaker 1: was lightning with the promise of the sun. I looked
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  Speaker 1: up again at the crouching white shape, and the full
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  Speaker 1: temerity of my voyage came suddenly upon me. What might
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  Speaker 1: appear when that hazy curtain was altogether withdrawn? What might
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  Speaker 1: not have happened to men? What if cruelty had grown
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  Speaker 1: into a common passion? What if in this interval the
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  Speaker 1: race had lost its manliness and had developed into something inhuman, unsympathetic,
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  Speaker 1: and overwhelmingly powerful. I might seem some old world savage animal,
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  Speaker 1: only the more dreadful and disgusting for our common likeness,
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  Speaker 1: a foul creature to be incontinently slain. Already I saw
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  Speaker 1: other vast shapes, huge buildings with intricate parapets, and tall columns,
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  Speaker 1: with a wooded hillside dimly creeping in upon me through
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  Speaker 1: the lessening storm. I was seized with a panic fear.
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  Speaker 1: I turned frantically to the time machine and strove hard
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  Speaker 1: to readjust it. As I did so, the shafts of
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  Speaker 1: the sun smote through the thunder storm. The gray downpour
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  Speaker 1: was swept aside and vanished, like the trailing garments of
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  Speaker 1: a ghost. Above me, in the intense blue of the
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  Speaker 1: summer sky, some faint brown shreds of cloud whirled into nothingness.
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  Speaker 1: The great buildings about me stood out clear and distinct,
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  Speaker 1: shining with the wet of the thunder storm, and picked
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  Speaker 1: out in white by the unmelted hailstones piled along their courses.
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  Speaker 1: I felt naked in a strange world. I felt as
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  Speaker 1: perhaps a bird may feel in the clear air, knowing
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  Speaker 1: the hawk wings above and will swoop. My fear grew
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  Speaker 1: to frenzy. I took a breathing space, set my teeth,
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  Speaker 1: and again grappling fiercely wrist and knee with the machine.
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  Speaker 1: It gave under my desperate onset and turned over. It
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  Speaker 1: struck my chin violently, one hand on the saddle, the
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  Speaker 1: other on the lever. I stood, panting heavily in attitude
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  Speaker 1: to mount again, but with this recovery of a prompt retreat,
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  Speaker 1: my courage recovered. I looked more curiously and less fearfully
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  Speaker 1: at this world of the remote future. In a circular
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  Speaker 1: opening high up in the wall of the nearer house,
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  Speaker 1: I saw a group of figures clad in rich soft robes.
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  Speaker 1: They had seen me, and their faces were directed towards me.
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  Speaker 1: Then I heard voices approaching me. Coming through the bushes.
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  Speaker 1: By the white sphinx were the heads and shoulders of
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  Speaker 1: men running. One of these emerged in a pathway leading
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  Speaker 1: straight to the little lawn upon which I stood with
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  Speaker 1: my machine. He was a slight creature, perhaps four feet high,
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  Speaker 1: clad in a purple tunic, girdled at the waist with
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  Speaker 1: a leather belt. Sandals or buskins I could not clearly
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  Speaker 1: distinguished which were on his feet. His legs were bare
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  Speaker 1: to the knees, and his head was bare. Noticing that
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  Speaker 1: I noticed for the first time how warm the air was.
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  Speaker 1: He struck me as being a very beautiful and graceful creature,
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  Speaker 1: but indescribably frail. His flushed face reminded me of the
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  Speaker 1: more beautiful kind of consumptive, that hectic beauty of which
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  Speaker 1: we used to hear so much. At this sight of him,
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  Speaker 1: I suddenly regained confidence. I took my hands from the machine.
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  Speaker 1: End of Chapter three