Collision with Chronos

“It would probably turn out that your father was somebody else,” Ascar said acidly. “Joking apart, if you did succeed in ‘killing’ your father, you’d find that he was still alive … later. Cause and effect, as we understand it, only takes place in the travelling now-wave – what we call the Absolute Present. We’ve established that experimentally. Elsewhere the universe behaves indifferently, and if you do force changes on the past, then the consequences die away instead of accumulating.”

“You’re beginning to lose me,” Heshke said slowly. “I find it hard to grasp … that even when tomorrow comes I shall still be here today, smoking this roll … only I won’t be aware of it.”

Ascar rubbed his jaw and yawned tiredly. “That’s it: you’ve got it exactly. Now we are here; shortly the Absolute Present will have moved a few minutes further on, taking our consciousness with it. But the past doesn’t vanish, it’s merely that you can’t see it – just as you can’t see the future yet, even though it exists up there ahead of us. The time traveller acts like a lever, detaching a fragment of the present and moving it about independently. If that fragment has your consciousness attached to it you can then see the past, or the future.”

“How far have you been into the future?” asked Heshke suddenly.

Again Ascar looked sour. “Only about a hundred years, no further. There’s no point.”

“Oh? Why not?”

“Because do you know what you find in the future? Just an empty desolation! There are no living forms – no people, no animals, no grass, no birds or trees or anything. Not a virus or a microbe. Just one second futureward of where we’re sitting the world is void of all life, and these chairs we’re sitting on are empty.”

Horrified, Heshke blinked at him. Ascar smiled crookedly. “It’s logical, if you think about it. There’s life in the past, even if it does behave like clockwork, because the now-wave has already swept over it and the now-wave creates life. But it hasn’t reached the future yet. Everything we’ve constructed out of inorganic matter – our buildings, our machines, and so on – are there, but without the hand of man to maintain them they fall into a state of decay. And as for the substance of our own bodies, that’s dust, just dust.”

And Heshke sat contemplating that vast, dead emptiness.

4

The Titan time traveller was considerably larger than its alien prototype. Instead of the latter’s cylindrical form it had a cagelike structure, being square at both ends and ribbed with louvres. One end contained the cabin for the crew and passengers, the other the bulky drive machinery. It did, however, borrow some features from the alien design: the windows were of a thick nearly-opaque material possessing the quality of image-control, capable of being adjusted so as to admit or block light, and the control system copied the alien concept in its entirety.

Initially the machine’s departure from the present was assisted by a second, even larger apparatus from whose maw it currently projected like a tongue, but once dispatched it flew under its own power and had no contact with the home base. This fact was nagging at Heshke’s consciousness as he tried to fight down his fears and allowed himself to be helped into the stiff combat armour the Titans had insisted he wear.

“Are you comfortable?” the young com-tech asked.

He nodded, though he was far from comfortable since the leather-like suit restricted all his movements.

For some minutes the Dispatch Room had been filled with a loud whine as the launcher was warmed up. Ascar was already in his suit, as were the two technical officers who were to pilot the time traveller. Ascar beckoned him forward.

“All set? Your gear all ready?”

“It’s on board.” Not that he anticipated using much; he didn’t really know what he would do when he reached the ruins.

“Then let’s take our places.”

He followed Ascar into the time traveller. The cabin was comparatively large, about nine feet by nine. He sat down beside the physicist, strapping himself in. The tech officers came in, wearing their combat suits with more grace and style, and settled into the pilots’ seats in the front of the cabin. The whine from the Dispatch Room was cut off as the door slid shut: the time traveller was soundproof.

Heshke’s muscles knotted up. The tech officers murmured to one another and through microphones to the team outside. A raw, fuzzy hum arose to their rear.

One of the Titans half turned his head to speak to them. “We’re away.”

Was that all? Heshke’s stomach untensed itself. He felt no sensation of motion; but through the semi-opaque windows he saw a runny blur of motion and colour, phasing wildly to and fro as though the vehicle were pursuing an erratic course.

“Home,” Ascar said to him. “We’re leaving home.”

Heshke looked at him quizzically.

“Well of course it’s home!” the other scowled impatiently. “Don’t you know what I mean? Haven’t you any vision?”

“I guess not.”