Time After Time by Karl Alexander Read Free Book Online

easily be operated from a captain’s chair. The chair swiveled so that the passenger would not be affected by the incredibly high-speed rotation. That amount of centrifugal force would certainly kill a man in seconds. The dials indicating years and dates did rotate with the machine, but the steering and pressure mechanisms were also gyroscopically installed so that the device could be controlled when entering a particular time plane. An emergency supply of food, oxygen and clothing was stored in an enclosed space behind the chair.
    H.G. approached the time machine, his face full of wonder. He peered in a window. The chair was empty, so apparently Stephenson had at least gone beyond the present. Then he dropped to his knees, opened the engine hatch and looked inside. He checked several connections (ones where the crystalline bars had been fused with metal gear faces) that he had been losing sleep over. They were intact. Then he carefully placed his hand on the Interstices Vaporizing Regulator. It was still warm, but obviously had not heated up and melted. That was good news. He closed the hatch, straightened up and wiped his hands on a rag.
    He walked around to the front of the machine and tentatively pushed on the cabin door. It was locked. That left no doubt in his mind since the door locked only from the inside. Stephenson had used the machine and left it somewhere on another time plane. Since the man didn’t have the special key to override the Rotation Reversal Lock circuitry, the door had automatically latched. After the prescribed ninety-second delay, the RRL had gone into operation, and the machine had returned to its home hour.
    â€œMy God, it worked,” H.G. said softly. He smiled with pride at the shiny brass plate that he had riveted over the door just yesterday. Etched lettering spelled out THE UTOPIA, the name he had bestowed on his device. He had planned to christen it with a bottle of champagne before the maiden voyage.

    Suddenly he frowned and became indignant. “He comes into my home masquerading as an old friend and a legitimate physician, drinks my claret, devours the hors d’oeuvres, picks my brain and uses my time machine! The bloody bastard! How dare he!”
    But how had Stephenson been able to successfully pilot the machine? Was it that simple-minded? H.G. glanced over at his workbench and saw that his technical diagrams were out of place and had been hurriedly studied. That was how.
    He removed his key ring from a pocket, unlocked the cabin door, stepped inside, sat down and studied the control panel. The Rotator Control was set in the extreme eastward position, and the dials told him that Stephenson had gone to 1979. Why then? Wells frowned and thought. Early in the evening he had predicted that the world would be a Utopia by the late twentieth century, but he hadn’t mentioned a precise date. He smiled grimly. Apparently, Stephenson hadn’t needed one.
    Obviously, the man had used the time machine to escape the police. When inside the device and at the controls, he had no doubt become befuddled, realizing that he couldn’t dally over dates with two Scotland Yard detectives upstairs. So he had dialed today, then added on the first year that came to mind, which was 1979. H.G. frowned. He could not fathom the logic of Stephenson’s decision, but whatever his reasoning, H.G. guessed that Stephenson hadn’t gone that far into the future because he didn’t want to encounter too radical a change in terms of human behavior, dress, speech and so on.
    â€œNot so,” he muttered. If he were right about the late twentieth century, Stephenson would be totally lost and out of place in 1979. The man would have serious problems trying to adjust to a Utopia in that there would be no violence or aberrant behavior with which he could identify. Suddenly, H.G. straightened up. Good Lord, what was he worrying about Stephenson for? What about the happy and contented