The World Below

Book I

The Amphibians

I

Of Place and Time

“Applied science,” said the Professor, “is always incredible to the vulgar mind.”

“You know, George, they really did go—disappeared absolutely—and there’s only one door to the room, and we sat round it. There’s no kid about that,” young Danby added—perhaps recognising that his father lacked somewhat in the amenities of social intercourse.

“If I go at all, I shall take an axe,” I remarked irrelevantly.

Bryant leant forward, and knocked the ashes out of his pipe.

“Templeton went like a Pirate Chief,” he said, smiling slightly.

It was the first time he had spoken.

“Look here, Bryant,” I said, “tell me what really happened, and I’ll do my best to believe it.”

He hesitated a moment, and then answered slowly, “It’s true enough, what they’ve told you, as far as we can tell it. As to theories of time and space, I know no more than you do. I used to think they were obvious. I’ve heard the Professor talk two nights a week for three years, and I’ve realised that it isn’t all quite as simple as it seemed, though I don’t get much further. But the next room’s a fact. We lay things down on the central slab, and the room goes dark, and we go back in two minutes, and it gets light again, and they’re still there. And the Professor says he’s projected them 500,000 years ahead in the interval, and they don’t look any the worse for the journey.”

“And it must be true, because they don’t deny it,” I said flippantly. “It sounds rather a dull game, but not very difficult.”

“Yes, I know how it sounds,” he answered, “and we thought just the same; but it did seem to prove one thing—that it did no harm to the objects of the experiment.

“If they went anywhere, at least they came back safely. So at last we tried it with Harry Brett—and he didn’t. We left him there, and we went back, and the room was empty. It’s just a bare circular room, metal-walled, with one exit. You can see for yourself. It wouldn’t hide a fly.

“The next day Harry’s wife came and kicked up a row, and we got frightened, and told Templeton, and he said he didn’t believe a word of it, but he was going to find out, and so we tried it on him too.”

“And he disappeared in the same way?”

“No, he didn’t. He came out all right, and he said, ‘It’s true enough, but I reckon you’ve settled Brett. But what’s the use of half-an-hour? I’m going back now. Give me a year, and I may find him.’

“The Professor told him he couldn’t repeat the experiment twice the same night, but he could come back the next, and so he did—and that’s the end of it so far.”

“But if he were to be gone for a year, and he went last Tuesday?”

“He wasn’t to be gone for a year; he was to be there for a year, and be back in two minutes. That’s quite simple. The Professor’ll tell you.”

“But—if the Professor will excuse the remark—it wouldn’t be any good if he did. I’ve read The Time Machine, and I know that space is curved, thanks to Einstein’s enterprising investigation. I quite understand that, if I got at the right distance from the earth (and my eyesight were good enough), I should see our Darwinian ancestor shinning up the tree-trunk for the fatal apple, but I don’t profess to follow these mysteries further. When I had to learn science, I always preferred the demonstrations. Now, if the Professor would project a pullet six months old backward, and it returned a chicken—”

Young Danby laughed, and I saw Bryant’s eyes twinkle, but the Professor answered me patiently.

“It is obviously impossible to project anything into the past, which is fixed irrevocably.

“Otherwise there would be no finality, and the confusion would be intolerable. It requires no scientific training of intellect to understand that the ordered experience of life would become chaotic if, for instance, upon reading of a long-past murder, I could project myself into the past, and intervene to save the victim.

“In such event the murder would both have occurred, and been prevented: which is absurd.

“But the future is different. It is unformed, or, at least, its facts are in a condition of fluidity. We are all occupied in forming them. If I kill an insect, I do not destroy it only, but its descendants also. I also influence the lives of other insects with which they would have mated, and which will form other alliances. From such alliances other insects will be born which would not have existed. The present consequences of any action, even the most momentous, are trivial, because the present is but a moment. Its future consequences are incalculably greater, because the future is infinite.

“Realising this, we recognise that our present actions belong to the future almost entirely, and it becomes a less important possibility that we may be able to project ourselves forward into some future period, and influence its circumstances by the physical methods with which we are familiar here.”

I don’t suppose the Professor had finished, but he paused for breath for a second, and I took the chance he offered.

“I’m sorry I came a cropper over the pullet plan. And, anyway, there wasn’t much sense in it. It would be too unprofitable to become popular. But why not get the chickens, and project them forward? Nine months ahead, say, and they come back cackling, with the first egg on the table?—‘Professor Danby, the Magic Poulterer.’ There’s a fortune there, anyway.”

For the first time the Professor showed distinct signs of irritation. “You may not be a scientist,” he said, “but as a business man you must know that you are talking nonsense. Would you send your chickens into the future without a hen to brood them?

“Would you expect the people of some future age to rear them for your benefit? When they discovered that they always vanished at maturity, would they not kill them a few days earlier?—But this is idle talk. Something of the kind you imagine may follow in the years to be, as the penetration of the future, which is now the subject of theory and experiment, becomes an exact science, and when it does, such minds as yours will take it as casually as you now do the transmission of speech and sight over the earth’s surface, in ways which your fathers would have considered incredible. The scientists who have conquered space have less honour in the mouths of men than Napoleon, who conquered Europe—and had not the brains to hold it. It is not reasonable to suppose that those who conquer time will be more highly regarded.

“But all this is beside the point. There are two men who have vanished, or so we tell you. We have no proof, and you are under no obligation to believe us. We may have murdered them, though we have no evident object, and your knowledge of our characters should enable you to discount that possibility. If you will take the same risk, be it much or little, I will find the sum you need, which is somewhat large, and which you tell me is urgent.”

I said, “I do need it; and if I don’t accept at once, it’s because the whole tale sounds too wild for believing. I should like to ask a few questions.

“First, you say these two men have disappeared entirely. I believe what you have told me is genuine, or at least that you believe it to be so. But have you told me all? Is there nothing you are holding back that might influence my decision? No?

“But you say that Templeton returned from his first adventure, and went again the next night. Surely he told you something of his experiences?”

“No; he didn’t seem to want to talk,” Bryant answered; “he only said it was too strange to explain, and he must go back and find out. When we pressed him, he said he supposed we thought that, if a stranger to our planet stood in his back-garden for half-an-hour, he would be able to describe the whole earth in detail, from the marriage customs of Alaska to the flora of the Zambesi. You know Templeton’s way.

“But he was anxious enough to get back, and he turned up next night with a sack of things he thought he would find useful, and enough weapons in his belt to stock an arsenal.”

“And he didn’t return,” I added, “so the things he took don’t seem to have been sufficiently useful. As I said before, if I go, I shall take an axe; for one reason, because I spend half my leisure in tree-felling, and I know how to use it. For another, it’s a useful tool, and not only intended for the destruction of your fellow-men. Whether I shall find any fellow-men, I don’t know, but, if I go into a strange world, I don’t propose to equip myself as though I intended to engage it in single combat. It seems tactless to me.—But did he say nothing about temperature? I don’t want to stumble into a glacial epoch, without even a fur collar in which to face it.”

“You need have no fear of that,” said the Professor, “you will be at least thirty-thousand years away from the nearest glacial epoch, and Templeton didn’t seem to have suffered either from change of air or an excessively high temperature.”

“He took plenty of clothes when he went back,” young Danby added, “but he said it was much easier to throw off clothes you didn’t want than to put on those you hadn’t got, and he didn’t know where he would be going, ‘it might be up, or it might be down!’—whatever that meant.”

“It doesn’t sound as though he had much confidence in the resources of the future world,” I said doubtfully, “and there are about fifty questions I should like to ask, but they wouldn’t make much difference, even if you knew the answers, which you probably don’t.

“I’ve got tomorrow to make any preparations that seem worth while. I’ll take the cheque now, Professor, if you will be so kind as to draw it—and I’ll give you a note tomorrow which will clear you with Clara, if I follow Templeton’s example.”