The Space Between Time

by Bruce Macfarlane

  I recognised the time cavern immediately for there was the Tesla coil. But it was not the one James had built. This was three times larger and beautifully designed as though made by a craftsman. Above it a large steel globe hung. But as I approached it the vision vanished and I found myself lying on a sofa with James by my side holding my hand and Flory and the Wells looking on.

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  J.

  The Martian had gone. I laid her gently on the settee to check her breathing but before I could stop her, Flory had waved some smelling salts under Elizabeth’s nose, which brought her quickly out of her trance.

  “Thank god you’re back,” I said, feeling her forehead and checking her pulse. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes. It was just one of those awful Martian nightmares.”

  “What do you think it told you?”

  She recounted the dream.

  “So, Wells is right. We have to make another Tesla coil.”

  “I do not think so. I believe the Martians have made one for us.”

  “Great. So, all I have to do is switch it on. Did I tell you that I wasn’t into heroics or suffering an early death from electrocution?”

  I looked around for support or sympathy and got none, save from Elizabeth.

  Flory said, “Is it necessary for us all to go? Would it not be better for just one of us to go,” looking at me, “and operate the machine to return us to our world?”

  So much for ‘Over the top and we’ll be right behind you.’

  “What a good idea,” I said, a bit angry, “I’m quite happy for you to go on your own.”

  There then followed some words from both sisters which I wish I hadn’t started. Eventually it was agreed that we should all go as it was thought if we jumped into another world at least we would be all together.

  The return journey to Cocking was a little more pleasant. I was volunteered to sit in the passenger seat next to Smethers. In the sunshine, the forest was quite a different place from the previous night and we passed through the Pale without incident.

  When we got off the tram at Midhurst we went immediately to the nearest ironmongers and bought torches and spare batteries for everyone. At first, we thought we would go to the time tunnel via the vestry but I didn’t trust the church to keep us in this world; so once again we entered by our room in the coaching inn. God knows what the proprietor and customers thought three women and two men were all doing up there.

  We lit our torches and proceeded in single file down to the time cavern.

  I opened the door very carefully. The air didn’t smell of ozone any more but I remained tense, expecting an electric shock at any moment. I shone my torch into the room and was amazed to see a state-of-the-art Tesla oscillator in the centre of the room. It was a masterpiece. The two coils were neatly wound and the Leyden jars had been replaced by large blue capacitors. My tin foil torus was replaced by a beautiful shiny steel one about three times the size. I noticed my apparatus was now a pile of junk by the console. When we were all in the room I said, “Any volunteers to switch it on?”

  Surprisingly, no one moved so I went over to the console and pressed what was later to referred to in certain select circles as the red button.

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  Part II

  The Space Between Time

  Chapter Nine

  E.

  When I opened my eyes, I found myself floating on my back in a black firmament with the stars shining impossibly sharply around me. I kept perfectly still, not least because I was restrained by an invisible harness which tightly wrapped my body. There was no sense of motion. For a few moments my mind was blank, hypnotised by the view. Then I remembered. A silhouette of James upon the wall of the cavern when the bolt of lightning struck. Was I dead? Was he dead? The thoughts caused a cold clamminess to run down my back. In hope, I tried to turn my head but I was constrained by some invisible force.

  I closed my eyes again and tried to relax and think what I should say to my maker, for although I thought I had not lived a bad life, I knew it had not been entirely virtuous. Just when I had convinced myself that I might have to spend some time in purgatory, I felt something brush my face. I opened my eyes slowly expecting either an angel or devil and nearly jumped out of my skin for there was James’ face grinning above me!

  “Hooray! You’re awake.”

  “I thought we had died!”

  “Nope. Well, not yet. Though that flash of lightening was a bit of a shock.”

  “Where are we?”

  “Don’t know. First, let’s get you out of these straps.”

  He pressed something on my breast and the invisible harness released me.

  I moved my arms and legs and raised my head in relief. Then I felt his hands on my waist.

  “Now, be careful,” he said, “there is virtually no gravity here for some reason. Hold on to me.”

  As I tried to rise I began to float slowly float up into the air. He grabbed my flailing hand.

  My stomach felt as if I were riding in a charabanc.

  “It’s OK. Try and relax.” His hand slowly ran up and down my body. Stroking me until a calm returned and I kissed him.

  “How are you so relaxed?” I asked.

  “I’m not. Seeing you in that state just made me forget about myself. No idea why.” And he returned my kiss.

  After a few moments when my nerves had calmed enough to allow me to think, I began to notice my surrounds. The view did not aid my constitution for there was no floor! We were suspended inside a sphere no more than fifty feet across whose boundary in all directions was formed by large lattice windows made of bronze or red gold through which the dark fields of stars shone. Except I had the distinct feeling that there was no glass and that we were looking directly into space. What held in the air in which we breathed I do not know.

  Suddenly James appeared from nowhere and upside-down in front of me.

  “This seems to be a ship although it may be a time machine.” he said as my poor brain tried to assimilate his image. “I can’t tell from those stars whether we’re moving through space or time or both.”

  I slowly turned around. The chamber was quite empty apart from two large globes which I recognised immediately as Mars and Earth. They seemed to be suspended in the air.

  “Where are the others?” I asked.

  “I’ve no idea. One moment there was a flash, the next we were here.”

  But I wasn’t listening for the stars which I thought had been safely held outside the sphere where moving and coming in through the lattice-work.

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  J.

  At first I didn’t realise what she was staring at. But as I turned around, I saw them. They were coming closer and closer. Tiny globes of orange, blue and white glowing lights.

  “I don’t know what’s going on but I reckon we should try and avoid them.”

  “It’s too late, James! Look!”

  I saw one then another pass through her. Then one emerged from my chest and into her body. I could literally see them pass through us.

  “What are they doing?”

  “I don’t think they’re doing anything. Can you feel them?”

  “No. It is as if we are not here.”

  The light in the room changed and grew brighter and above us I saw a swirling shape, galaxy-like in form rising and slowly moving towards us. It must have been almost ten-feet wide, when it passed through the lattice.

  “This is ridiculous,” I said, watching it approach us. “If that’s what I think it is, we are travelling at hundreds of times the speed of light.”

  “But,” said Elizabeth, with that quizzical expression of hers which usually means a difficult question is coming up. “I know the Laws of Relativity forbid it. But why DOES light only travel at a certain speed? I mean, what stops light going faster?”

  It’s one of those questions where no one listens to what is being asked, like: why do the scales of music start w
ith C instead of A? The usual answer you get is: because it is the middle note of the piano. Missing the point completely.

  I fell into the same trap. “In our universe, it’s the only speed it can go at.”

  She raised her eyebrows, telling me I’d better try again.

  “Do you mean what constrains it from going faster?” I said, watching the tiny stars pass through us and wondering why I wasn’t having a complete panic.

  “Yes.”

  Oh dear.

  “No one knows,” I said, feeling that during my five years of physics I’d been asking the wrong question. “Its speed has been measured and all motion is constrained by its speed.”

  “But what would happen if it travelled at twice that speed?”

  Both neurons were now required.

  “Nothing. I think the world would look the same. As it is constant figure, all the laws of motion and space-time would still work. We would just have a different figure for its speed in our text books.”

  She thought for a moment then said, “But maybe it does change or can change but because all our measuring sticks change as well we would not know.”

  Elizabeth is nothing if not tenacious when she has hold of an idea and will not deviate until she has come to a conclusion.

  “There is another way of looking at it.” I said, “Imagine it as the speed of time.”

  “You mean the speed we travel along the time dimension in four-dimensional space?”

  “You really did absorb all that stuff I gave you on Relativity, didn’t you? Have you got any thick cousins I could trade you in for?”

  “I would like to help, James, but I am afraid I am regarded as the least intelligent amongst my family, apart from Cousin Henry, of course, but I fear you would find him less accommodating.”

  I had a brief vision of her moustached cousin in his fox-hunting gear carrying a 12-bore shotgun pointed in my general direction.

  More galaxies were appearing and coming towards us. A beautiful orange orb appeared out of my head and drifted through Elizabeth’s shoulder.

  “They don’t seem to be coming from any direction.” I said.

  “Maybe we are not traveling through space.”

  “What do you mean?” I said, stalling her while quickly putting my fragile brain back into gear.

  “Perhaps we are going backwards or forwards in time.”

  “Possibly. But why are we so large?”

  “In what way?”

  “All these stars and galaxies.” I said, as half a nebula slowly passed through us. “They’re tiny! And… just a minute. If they are real why aren’t they burning holes through us?”

  “It must be some form of projection for I feel nothing.”

  “Unless…” At last a brain wave arrived. “Your point about the speed of light and yardsticks. I think you’re right. Someone living in a world with double our speed of light would have double the length of the yard sticks. So, in their world…”

  She grabbed me excitedly, “Then everything would seem the same to them as to us but if they could see our world we would look half the size. That’s why the stars and galaxies are so small. We are in a place where the speed of light must be…Oh... hundreds if not thousands of times faster than in our world. You’re a genius, James!”

  She hugged me then noticed my puzzled expression and said, “That was what you meant to say. Wasn’t it James?”

  “Absolutely. Couldn’t have put it better myself.” I answered truthfully.

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  E.

  For a few moments, we congratulated ourselves on reaching a conclusion on our predicament that had no logical basis or evidence to support it before we remembered that we did not know where we were or what we were supposed to do.

  On realisation, our humour left us quickly. James came over to me and pulled me gently to him and we floated slowly, rotating silently, immersing ourselves in stars and galaxies.

  “Right. Let’s recap our meetings with our little friends the Martians.” he said, “They guided us to your home then through one of their telepathic visions they suggested we go back to the cavern.”

  “Where we found a much-improved version of the Tesla coil.” I said.

  “Yes, I did notice. And then I pressed the red button. And next thing we find ourselves here. Anything else I’ve forgotten?”

  “My missing sister, perhaps.” I said rather pointedly.

  “Sorry, too busy thinking about how to get out of here.”

  I could tell by his apologetic expression that he felt my point and I did not pursue it.

  And,” he continued looking at his phone, “there’s no internet.”

  Although I love the world of James, its comforts, the advances in medicine, and so forth, I am sometimes overwhelmed by what I would call the deluge of information which bombards our eyes and ears. I have known people who keep the noise of the television and radio on all day. James is not one of those thankfully and in general only switches on a device when there is something of interest to him. However, he does make up for this by the use of his ‘phone. I am quite convinced that this stream of almost random information has a detrimental effect on one’s ability to concentrate on one subject long enough to reach a conclusion. The knowledge at our fingertips is not only easily accessible but immense in its variety. To be able at one moment to be able to ascertain the latest in fashion and the next to read a discourse on the latest scientific discovery is a wonder which, in my time, would have necessitated a day of research in the British Library. But I must admit, with a little discipline, these devices do, incredibly, allow knowledge to be acquired at an incredible rate.

  Unfortunately, the absence of such facilities in this place made us realise how dependent we had become on these instruments. We were now faced with using as a device for solutions to our problems, our internal computers, which are too heavily influenced by our emotional state affecting their ability for logical deduction. Not helped by the fact that the astral bodies had ceased to move.

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  J.

  Not only had the stars and galaxies stopped moving but those inside the sphere were dissolving or to be more precise, were getting fainter. After a few moments, they had disappeared completely leaving us in an empty cage with just two globes. Then the room started to get darker. I couldn’t tell at first what was causing it until I noticed the lattice work was becoming opaque.

  Elizabeth came closer. “What is happening?”

  Suddenly the room went black. Really black. Only the sound of our breathing and hearts beating told us we still existed.

  Out of the darkness a large room or shed began to appear, in the centre of which was an apparatus about twenty-feet-tall, which looked uncannily like a Tesla coil.

  A large flash of lightning shot from the apparatus across the room then another. But it wasn’t the lightning bolts that concerned me. It was the Victorian gentleman in a dark suit nonchalantly reading a paper, sitting on a chair next to the cylindrical wire cage that surrounded the apparatus.

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  Chapter Ten

  E.

  Despite our presence, the gentleman did not seem to notice us and carried on reading his paper, oblivious to the lightning bolts that flew around him. We decided to introduce ourselves for no other reason than we thought having arrived in someone’s private apartment unannounced and uninvited it was only polite to do so.

  As we approached, rather cautiously I might add in the hope of not being electrocuted, he looked up and folded his paper. Then without a hint of surprise, he said, “Good morning. Sorry, I had forgotten I was receiving visitors. What can I do for you?”

  His accent was rather strange and he had the look of an Eastern European. His head was quite small and his hair oiled and parted in the centre like so many young men of my time. However, his moustache gave him a rather rakish appearance, though that may have been a trick of the lightning flashes casting shado
ws on him.

  James surprised me with the politeness and knowledge of his reply. “Good morning. We are Mr and Mrs Urquhart. Am I speaking to Mr Nikola Tesla?”

  “That is correct. What can I do for you?”

  “How do you know who he is?” I whispered.

  But he ignored me and continued. “We have built and operated an electrical resonant transformer with some success based on a little knowledge of yours.”

  Mr Tesla’s eyes lit up and he interrupted, “You have read my paper?”

  “No. I have only read a newspaper cutting but with the aid of few books on electro-magnetism I managed to put it together.”

  “Who are you?” said Mr Tesla, now looking a little suspicious of us.

  The streams of light continued to play around the room. My head felt a little light and as I touched my hair I heard it crackle.

  “It would best to describe us as involuntary time travellers.”

  A wide smile came upon his face and he grasped James by both hands.

  “You have found a way to time travel using my electro-magnetic apparatus!”