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

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  Speaker 1: Chapter eleven. I have already told you of the sickness
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  Speaker 1: and confusion that comes with time traveling. And this time
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  Speaker 1: I was not seated properly in the saddle, but sideways
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  Speaker 1: and in an unstable fashion. For an indefinite time. I
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  Speaker 1: clung to the machine as it swayed and vibrated, quite
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  Speaker 1: unheeding how I went. And when I brought myself to
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  Speaker 1: look at the dials again, I was amazed to find
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  Speaker 1: where I had arrived. One dial records days, and another
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  Speaker 1: thousands of days, another millions of days, and another thousands
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  Speaker 1: of millions. Now, instead of reversing the levers, I had
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  Speaker 1: pulled them over so as to go forward with them.
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  Speaker 1: And when I came to look at these indicators, I
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  Speaker 1: found that the thousands hand was sweeping round as fast
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  Speaker 1: as the second's hand of a watch into futurity. As
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  Speaker 1: I drove on, a peculiar change crept over the appearance
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  Speaker 1: of things. The palpitating grayness grew darker. Then, though I
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  Speaker 1: was still traveling with prodigious velocity, the blinking succession of
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  Speaker 1: day and night, which was usually indicative of a slower pace,
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  Speaker 1: returned and more and more marked. This puzzled me very
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  Speaker 1: much At first, the alternations of night and day grew
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  Speaker 1: slower and slower, and so did the passage of the
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  Speaker 1: sun across the sky, until they seemed to stretch through centuries.
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  Speaker 1: At last, a steady twilight brooded over the Earth, a
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  Speaker 1: twilight only broken now and then when a comet glared
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  Speaker 1: across the darkling sky. The band of light that had
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  Speaker 1: indicated the sun had long since disappeared, For the Sun
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  Speaker 1: had ceased to set, It simply rose and fell in
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  Speaker 1: the west, and grew ever broader and more red. All
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  Speaker 1: trace of the moon had vanished. The circling of the stars,
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  Speaker 1: growing slower and slower, had given place to creeping points
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  Speaker 1: of light. At last, some time before I stopped, the Sun,
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  Speaker 1: very red and very large, halted motionless upon the horizon,
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  Speaker 1: a vast dome, glowing with a dull heat, and now
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  Speaker 1: and then suffering a momentary extinction. At one time it had,
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  Speaker 1: for a little while glowed more brilliantly again, but it
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  Speaker 1: speedily reverted to its sullen red heat. I perceived, by
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  Speaker 1: this slowing down of its rising and setting, that the
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  Speaker 1: work of the tidal drag was done. The Earth had
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  Speaker 1: come to rest, with one face to the sun, even
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  Speaker 1: as in our own time. The moon faces the earth
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  Speaker 1: very cautiously. For I remembered my former headlong fall, I
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  Speaker 1: began to reverse my motion. Slower and slower went the
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  Speaker 1: circling hands, until the thousands one seemed motionless, and the
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  Speaker 1: daily one was no longer a mere mist upon its scale.
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  Speaker 1: Still slower, until the dim outlines of a desolate beach
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  Speaker 1: grew visible. I stopped very gently and sat upon the
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  Speaker 1: time machine, looking round. The sky was no longer blue.
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  Speaker 1: Northeastward it was inky black, and out of the blackness
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  Speaker 1: shone brightly and steadily the pale white stars. Overhead it
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  Speaker 1: was a deep Indian red and starless, and southeastward it
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  Speaker 1: grew brighter to a glowing scarlet, where cut by the
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  Speaker 1: horizon lay the huge hull of the sun, red and motionless.
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  Speaker 1: The rocks about me were of a harsh reddish color.
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  Speaker 1: And all the trace of life that I could see
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  Speaker 1: at first was the intensely green vegetation that covered every
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  Speaker 1: projecting point on their southeastern face. It was the same
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  Speaker 1: rich green that one sees on forest moss or on
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  Speaker 1: the lichen in caves, plants which like these grow in
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  Speaker 1: a perpetual twilight. The machine was standing on a sloping beach.
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  Speaker 1: The sea stretched away to the southwest to rise into
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  Speaker 1: a sharp, bright horizon against the wan sky. There were
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  Speaker 1: no breakers and no waves, for not a breath of
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  Speaker 1: wind was stirring. Only a slightly oily swell rose and
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  Speaker 1: fell like a gentle breathing, and showed that the eternal
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  Speaker 1: sea was still moving and living. And along the margin
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  Speaker 1: where the water sometimes broke was a thick incrustation of
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  Speaker 1: salt pink under the lurid sky. There was a sense
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  Speaker 1: of oppression in my head, and I noticed that I
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  Speaker 1: was breathing very fast. The sensation reminded me of my
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  Speaker 1: only experience of mountaineering, and from that I judged the
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  Speaker 1: air to be more rarefied than it is now. Far
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  Speaker 1: away up the deskt slope, I heard a harsh scream
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  Speaker 1: and saw a thing like a huge white butterfly go
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  Speaker 1: slanting and flittering up into the sky and circling disappear
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  Speaker 1: over some low hillocks beyond the sound of its voice
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  Speaker 1: was so dismal that I shivered and seated myself more
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  Speaker 1: firmly upon the machine. Looking round me again, I saw
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  Speaker 1: that quite near what I had taken to be a
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  Speaker 1: reddish mass of rock, was moving slowly towards me. Then
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  Speaker 1: I saw the thing was really a monstrous crablike creature.
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  Speaker 1: Can you imagine a crab as large as yonder table,
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  Speaker 1: with its many legs moving slowly and uncertainly, its big
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  Speaker 1: claws swaying, its long antennae like Carter's whips waving and feeling,
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  Speaker 1: and its stalked eyes gleaming at you at either side
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  Speaker 1: of its metallic front. Its back was corrugated and ornamented
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  Speaker 1: with ungainly bosses, and a greenish in rustation blotched it
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  Speaker 1: here and there. I could see the many palps of
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  Speaker 1: its complicated mouth flickering and feeling as it moved. As
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  Speaker 1: I stared at this sinister apparition crawling towards me, I
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  Speaker 1: felt a tickling on my cheek, as though a fly
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  Speaker 1: had lighted there. I tried to brush it away with
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  Speaker 1: my hand, but in a moment it returned, and almost
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  Speaker 1: immediately came another by my ear. I struck at this
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  Speaker 1: and caught something threadlike. It was drawn swiftly out of
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  Speaker 1: my hand with a frightful qualm. I turned and saw
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  Speaker 1: that I had grasped the antennae of another monster crab
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  Speaker 1: that stood just behind me. Its evil eyes were wriggling
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  Speaker 1: on their stalks, Its mouth was all alive with appetite,
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  Speaker 1: and its vast, ungainly claws, smeared with an algel slime,
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  Speaker 1: were descending upon me. In a moment, my hand was
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  Speaker 1: on the lever, and I placed a month between myself
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  Speaker 1: and these monsters. But I was still on the same
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  Speaker 1: beach and saw them distinctly. Now, as soon as I stopped,
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  Speaker 1: dozens of them seemed to be crawling here and there
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  Speaker 1: in the somber light, among the foliated sheets of intense green.
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  Speaker 1: I cannot convey the sense of abominable desolation that hung
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  Speaker 1: over the world. The red eastern sky, the northward blackness,
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  Speaker 1: the salt dead sea, the stony beach crawling with these foul,
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  Speaker 1: slow stirring monsters, the uniform, poisonous looking green of the
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  Speaker 1: likeness plants, the thin air that hurts one's lungs, all
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  Speaker 1: contributed to an appalling effect. I moved on a hundred years,
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  Speaker 1: and there was the same red sun, a little larger,
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  Speaker 1: a little duller, the same dying sea, the same chill air,
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  Speaker 1: and the same crowd of earthy crustacea creeping in and
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  Speaker 1: out among the green weed and the red rocks, And
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  Speaker 1: in the westward sky I saw a curved pale line
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  Speaker 1: like a vast new moon. So I traveled, stopping ever
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  Speaker 1: and again in great strides of a thousand years or more,
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  Speaker 1: drawn on by the mystery of the Earth's fate, watching
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  Speaker 1: with a strange fascination, the Sun grow larger and duller
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  Speaker 1: in the westward sky, and the life of the old
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  Speaker 1: Earth ebb away at last more than thirty million years.
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  Speaker 1: Hence the huge red hot dome of the Sun had
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  Speaker 1: come to obscure nearly a tenth part of the darkening heavens.
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  Speaker 1: Then I stopped once more, for the crawling multitude of
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  Speaker 1: crabs had disappeared, and the red beech, save for its
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  Speaker 1: livid green liverworts and lichens, seemed lifeless, And now it
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  Speaker 1: was flecked with white. A bitter cold assailed me rare
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  Speaker 1: white flakes. Ever and again came eddying down to the northeastward.
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  Speaker 1: The glare of snow lay under the starlight of the
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  Speaker 1: sable sky, and I could see an undulating crest of
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  Speaker 1: hillocks pinkish white. There were fringes of ice among the
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  Speaker 1: sea margin with drifting masses further out, but the main
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  Speaker 1: expanse of that salt ocean, all bloody under the eternal sunset,
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  Speaker 1: was still unfrozen. I looked about me to see if
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  Speaker 1: any traces of animal life remained. A certain indefinable apprehension
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  Speaker 1: still kept me in the saddle of the machine. But
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  Speaker 1: I saw nothing moving in earth, or sky or sea.
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  Speaker 1: The green slime on the rocks alone testified that life
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  Speaker 1: was not extinct. A shallow sand bank that appeared in
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  Speaker 1: the sea, and the water had receded from the beach,
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  Speaker 1: I fancied I saw some black object flopping about upon
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  Speaker 1: this bank, but it became motionless as I looked at it,
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  Speaker 1: and I judged that my eye had been deceived, and
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  Speaker 1: that the black object was merely a rock. The stars
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  Speaker 1: in the sky were intensely bright and seemed to me
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  Speaker 1: to twinkle very little. Suddenly I noticed that the circular
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  Speaker 1: westward outline of the sun had changed, that a concavity
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  Speaker 1: a bay, had appeared in the curve. I saw this
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  Speaker 1: grow larger for a minute. Perhaps I stared aghast at
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  Speaker 1: this blackness that was creeping over the day, and then
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  Speaker 1: I realized that an eclipse was beginning. Either the Moon
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  Speaker 1: or the planet Mercury was passing across the Sun's disk naturally.
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  Speaker 1: At first I took it to be the Moon, but
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  Speaker 1: there is much to incline me to believe that what
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  Speaker 1: I really saw was the transit of an inner planet
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  Speaker 1: passing very near to the Earth. The darkness grew apace,
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  Speaker 1: A cold wind began to blow in freshening gusts from
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  Speaker 1: the east, and the showering white flakes in the air
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  Speaker 1: increased in number. From the edge of the sea came
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  Speaker 1: a ripple and whisper. Beyond these lifeless sounds, the world
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  Speaker 1: was silent, silent. It would be hard to convey the
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  Speaker 1: stillness of it. All the sounds of man, the bleating
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  Speaker 1: of sheep, the cries of birds, the hum of insects,
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  Speaker 1: the stir that makes the background of our lives. All
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  Speaker 1: that was over. As the darkness thickened, the eddying flakes
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  Speaker 1: grew more abundant, dancing before my eyes, and the cold
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  Speaker 1: of the air more intense. At last, one by one, swiftly,
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  Speaker 1: one after the other, the white peaks of the distant
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  Speaker 1: hills vanished into blackness. The breeze rose to a moaning wind.
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  Speaker 1: I saw the black central shadow of the eclipse sweeping
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  Speaker 1: towards me. In another moment, the pale stars alone were visible.
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  Speaker 1: All else was rayless obscurity. The sky was absolutely black.
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  Speaker 1: A horror of this great darkness came on me. The
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  Speaker 1: cold that smote to my marrow, and the pain I
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  Speaker 1: felt in breathing overcame me. I shivered, and a deadly
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  Speaker 1: nausea seized me. Then like a red hot bow in
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  Speaker 1: the sky appeared the edge of the sun. I got
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  Speaker 1: off the machine to recover myself. I felt giddy and
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  Speaker 1: incapable of facing the return journey. As I stood, sick
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  Speaker 1: and confused, I saw again the moving thing upon the shoal.
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  Speaker 1: There was no mistake now that it was a moving
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  Speaker 1: thing against the red water of the sea. It was
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  Speaker 1: a round thing, the size of a football perhaps, or
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  Speaker 1: it may be bigger, and tentacles trailed down from it.
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  Speaker 1: It seemed black against the weltering blood red water, and
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  Speaker 1: it was hopping fitfully about. Then I felt I was fainting,
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  Speaker 1: but a terrible dread of lying helpless in that remote
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  Speaker 1: and awful twilight sustained me. While I clambered upon the
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  Speaker 1: saddle end of Chapter eleven