“I don’t know--I just don’t know.”
Lemmy looked at Jet blankly. “You see,” Jet went on, “the stars are constantly shifting and the pole of the heavens is continually moving, tracing a circle in the sky. We hardly notice any difference in a lifetime because the movement is so slow, but over a thousand years the change is quite considerable. Five thousand years ago, back from 1965, that is, the Pole Star was Thuban in Draco, as it was when the Egyptians built their Pyramids. Five thousand years on the Pole Star will be a star in the constellation Cepheus.”
“And how many thousands of years from 1965 before it would be Vega?”
“I’ve already told you.”
“You mean we’ve landed back on Earth either 13,000 years before or after we left it?”
“Not necessarily,” said Jet. “It takes 26,000 years for the star that marks the Pole to make its complete circuit--26,000 years between the time it is the Pole Star and the time it returns to that position.”
“I don’t see what you’re driving at.”
“Just this. How do we know how many times Vega has been the Pole Star since we left Earth?”
Lemmy paused while the full sense of what Jet had said sank in. Then he said, rather weakly, “You mean we might have to add another 26,000 years to the 13,000 we’ve already got?”
“Yes, Lemmy. Perhaps even more--it depends on how often the cycle has been completed.”
“Don’t, Jet. It sends me dizzy just thinking about it.”
“All this is assuming we are on the Earth,” said Mitch.
“Where else could we be?” asked Jet.
“I don’t know, but if this is the Earth it should have a moon, a very large one, revolving round it.”
“Yes, of course,” I said.
“Then where is it?” demanded Mitch.
“Probably hasn’t risen yet,” said Jet, “or else it’s already set. But since we’ve been here the Moon must have southed six times. We just haven’t seen it, that’s all.”
“If we did,” said Mitch, “it would make all the difference. It would be the final proof that we are back on Earth.”
“We’ll keep a watch for it,” said Jet. “It may rise before dawn. If it doesn’t, then we are bound to see it one evening soon, just after sunset.”
We all decided to stay up with Jet. None of us could have slept anyway, we were too excited. An hour before sunrise our patience and vigilance were rewarded. The slim crescent of the old Moon rose above the horizon. We turned the telescope on it. Mitch took first look, then each of us in turn.
Only a small area was illuminated by the Sun but, so far as we could tell, that was identical with the Moon with which we were familiar, which we had so recently left and last saw directly behind us, filling our televiewer screen. Grimaldi and other features of the eastern limb were clearly recognisable.
“Here,” said Lemmy, as he removed his eye from the telescope, “I suppose there’s no way the Moon could help us find out exactly what period of time we’re in?”
“No, Lemmy,” I told him. “I doubt if the features of the Moon have appreciably changed in 10,000 years.”
“But there must be something we can do to find out. Or do we just sit here, worse off, for all our scientific knowledge, than those animals or whatever they are out there in the forest? At least they don’t know that they don’t know what age they’re in.”
“We have one clue,” I suggested.
“What’s that?” asked Mitch.
“The ice cap, it’s large. We must have arrived here either at the beginning or the end of a glacial epoch.”
“Oh, you mean the Ice Age,” ventured Lemmy.
“Not the Ice Age, Lemmy,” said Jet, “there were more than one of them. There are supposed to have been four. The first is estimated to have reached its peak 500,000 years ago.”
“Seems like only yesterday.”
“The second was 400,000 years ago, the third 150,000.”
“And the fourth?” “Assumed to have reached its maximum 50,000 years ago.”
“So we could be somewhere in that period,” I suggested. “Could be,” agreed Jet.
“Look,” said Lemmy, “why bother about the thousands? A hundred years either way is enough to cut us off from life as we know it.”
“Well, my guess is that we are somewhere between the fourth and fifth Ice Ages,” said Jet, “always assuming there was to have been a fifth. I’d say 39,000 years or so before or after our own time.”
“Only it isn’t our time anymore,” I said.
“Well, I know one thing,” put in Lemmy, “it must be back. If we had gone forward in time, the world wouldn’t look like this.”
“Why not?”
“Because over thousands of years man would have progressed. This would be a scientific world with great cities, controlled weather, roads, aeroplanes, space ships--but there’s not a sign of anything, not even any living creature--except for the row we hear coming from the forest at night. We must be in the past.”
“I wish I could be as sure of Man’s future on Earth as you are, Lemmy,” I told him, “but the way he was carrying on when we left, he could easily have destroyed himself by now, or the climatic conditions could have changed so much that his species died out altogether and another has taken its place.”
“You mean we might be the only creatures of our kind on Earth, just the four of us?”
“We have now been on this planet, which can only be the Earth, for 2 weeks. By now, we have got used to the idea. Our life is a peculiar mixture of the primitive and the scientific. Mitch spends most of his time within the ship, observing the heavens with the aid of the telescope and the navigational tables. He hopes, before long, to deduce our position. Finding our latitude was easy: it is approximately 35°, so we might be anywhere along a line drawn from North Africa eastwards through Asia Minor, North India, China or North America. Meanwhile Jet, Lemmy and I attend to the more immediate necessities of life. We catch fish; in fact, we live on fish. So far we have found no fruit or vegetable that we recognise or would risk eating. Perhaps, later, there will be plenty of fruit to be had; certainly the crops along the river bank must ripen within a few weeks. At night we still take turns at keeping watch, listening to the breathing of our companions and the cries of the nocturnal creatures that inhabit the forest.
One evening we were seated in the ship’s cabin after supper, discussing methods of preserving food should winter come. Mitch had been rather silent throughout the meal.
“Something on your mind, Mitch?” Jet asked him.
“Yes,” the engineer replied. “I think I’ve arrived at something.”
“About our position, you mean?”
“Yes.”
“Good for you,” said Jet. “Where are we?” “Well, I just can’t believe we can be where my calculations say we are.”
“And where’s that?”
“In the Mediterranean, right smack in the middle of it.” “Do you mean the sea?” asked Lemmy, his eyes opening wide at the thought. “That’s how it looks.”
“Two weeks ago, with all that rain, I might have believed you. But that country out there looks solid enough to me.” “You quite positive, Mitch?” I asked him. “Well, I’ll go through it all again if you like.”
“No, wait,” said Jet. “You could be right. It doesn’t follow that what was water, or will be water, in 1965 is water now.”
“Of course it doesn’t,” I said.
“Was the Mediterranean ever known to be dry land?” “Yes, Lemmy,” said Jet. “Well, parts of it anyway.”
“How long ago?”
“Fifty thousand years, maybe less. Thirty or even twenty-five thousand.”
“And that would line up with the ice theory, too,” I said. “The fourth Ice Age was receding then.”
“And what kind of animals were there?” It was Lemmy again.
“Oh, all kinds. Most of the animals that we knew in our age were in existence then. Oth
ers, like the mammoth and the sabre-toothed tiger, were rapidly dying out.”
“Were there any men?” persisted Lemmy. “Like us, I mean?”
“Well,” I told him, “it has been estimated that men, not very different from us, have inhabited some parts of the Earth for something like 200,000 years.”
“Could they have planted those crops?”
“I doubt it,” said Jet thoughtfully.
“Then who did plant them, and where are they, and when they turn up, what will they do to us?”
“That’s something we’ll only find out when it happens.”
Another day has passed under a clear blue sky and in warm sunshine. But for our circumstances, life here could be very pleasant. There has still been no sign of the creatures, human or otherwise, that cultivate the fields along the banks of the river, and strangely enough, the crops don’t seem to need any attention. They grow stronger and larger every day, and there are no weeds that we can see to choke them. In fact, they seem to thrive in ideal conditions which often makes me think that if we have moved in time at all, it is forward, to a period when knowledge of cultivation is so advanced that crops can be planted and then left to take care of themselves until harvest time.
It was on the morning of the tenth day that we caught our second glimpse of the ships that we had first seen nestled in the crater on the far side of the Moon. Jet and Lemmy had been collecting fuel for the fire and I had been cutting and cleaning the fish ready for the next meal. Only Mitch was inside the cabin, working on a plan for building a windmill to supply us with electricity.
I don’t know what compelled me to look up when I did but there, high in the sky, picked out by the Sun, were about twenty brilliant spots of light in circular formation. They had appeared over the horizon beyond the forest and were idly climbing, tracing a large arc in the sky. Within a few moments, they were directly over our heads and there they stopped, poised above us. Excitedly I drew Jet’s and Lemmy’s attention to them.
“The telescope,” said Jet urgently. “Let’s get inside the ship and take a look at them.” He ran towards the extended ladder as he spoke, with Lemmy and me hard on his heels.
Mitch got a bit of a fright as we went crashing into the cabin. He thought at first that some animal was chasing us. But when we explained what we had seen, he immediately dashed into the pilot’s cabin to take a look for himself. Meanwhile Jet was already in the astrodome.
“They’re still directly above us,” he said, as he adjusted the telescope, “and there’s the same blue light flashing on and off underneath every one of them.”
“They must be observing us,” I suggested. “Why else should they hang up there like that?”
“Well, let them take a good look,” said Lemmy, “then maybe they’ll do something about us.” “What?” I asked.
“How should I know? But they’ve never been short of ideas before, have they? I know,” he said suddenly, “perhaps they’ve come to help us. Maybe they realise they’ve put us down in quite the wrong place and now want to take us back again.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I told him. “How could they do that?”
“By the same methods as they got us here, of course. We take off and reach free orbit and they surround us, see. Then they do whatever it is they did before, but this time they reverse the process and--whoops--we’re back where we started, on our way home from the Moon, back in 1965.”
“This ship isn’t big enough to take off and reach free orbit,” I told Lemmy. “Not from the Earth, she’s not. She needs a booster stage full of fuel, and we haven’t got one and no hope of ever getting one.”
“But with the power those ships have, perhaps we don’t even need to go that high. Maybe all we need do is take off and they’ll do the rest.”
I didn’t answer him.
“You don’t want to, do you?” Lemmy raised his voice, appealing to Jet and Mitch. “None of you do. But you can’t want to stay here for the rest of your lives, with mammoths and things trampling all over your backyard.”
Of course we didn’t, but there was nothing we could do to prevent it, so far as we could see.
The strange craft were still hovering above us, motionless. Mitch, from the pilot’s canopy, and Jet, from his position at the telescope, continued to watch them.
“I’m sorry, Lemmy,” I said after a long silence, “the only thing we can depend on this ship for now is to get from one part of the globe to another. She’ll never travel through space again.”
A faint gleam of hope brightened Lemmy’s face. “Then why can’t we do just that--go to England at least, London maybe.”
“Because there isn’t any London, Lemmy. Almost certainly the whole of Britain, as far down as the Thames, is ice-covered, frozen solid.”
A sudden cry from Jet told us that the ships were now on the move again. Lemmy and I rushed over to the pilot’s canopy to see them for ourselves. Sure enough the circle of bright silver dots was now moving rapidly westwards. A few minutes later it had disappeared below the horizon and we saw our fleeting visitors no more. We all returned to the centre of the cabin but none of us could find anything to say.
“Well,” said Lemmy at last, “maybe I’d better start cooking the fish. It is my turn, isn’t it?”
“Cheer up, Lemmy,” said Jet. “This may not be as bad as it looks.”
“I hope it’s not as bad as you look, nor as bad as any of us look. I’ll just resign myself to the fact that I’ve got to learn to be a cave-man and like it.”
That night it was Lemmy’s turn to take first watch in the pilot’s cabin. He was his own, cheerful self again and, while I was preparing for bed, came over to my bunk for a chat. “You know,” he said, “all things considered, I don’t think this need be such a bad life.”
“You think not, Lemmy?” I asked.
“Well, it could be one long holiday. We’re not responsible to anybody but ourselves. We can do what we like when we like and nobody to tell us no.”
“That’s the danger,” I told him. “It would pall after a bit, I’m sure.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Lemmy. “A few months from now and we might be quite proud of ourselves. We might even start an entirely new kind of civilisation.”
“We might,” I told him, “but there’d be nobody to carry it on.”
“No, there wouldn’t, would there?” said Lemmy disconsolately. Then he put his hand into the breast pocket of his crew suit. “Doc,” he said as he did so.
“Yes, Lemmy?” I asked him.
“About what you said just now.”
“Well?”
“If I hung this over my bunk, would it matter?” He pulled a photograph out and showed it to me. It was a picture of Becky, his girl!
“Why should it?” I asked him.
“Well, I usually keep it in my pocket, but I thought it might make the place look more homely if I hung it up.”
“I’m sure it would, Lemmy.”
“I wonder what she’s doing now,” he said, gazing at the photograph. “You know, Doc, I never did tell her where I was going, but she found out once we’d landed on the Moon --what with my picture in all the papers. I told her the day I got back to London I was going to take her out and give her the time of her life. We were going to paint the town red and I was going to give her a bit of rock I’d picked up from the Moon’s surface as a souvenir. And now look at the mess we’re in. There’s her picture and, so far as I know, she’s not even born yet.”
“No,” I said.
“Then how can I have her picture?” said Lemmy brightly. “Doc, do you think she is alive, I mean at the same time as we are--you know, everything going on at once like the pages in a book?”
“I don’t quite see what you’re getting at, Lemmy.”
“Well, supposing you’ve got a book and you’re just sitting down to read it.”
“Well?”
“You begin at chapter one and start ploughing your way through, don’t you?�
��
“Yes.”
“Well, you can’t read chapter seven until you’ve read the first six chapters, but that doesn’t mean chapter seven doesn’t exist. You just haven’t reached it yet.”
“Sure,” I said.
“Well, couldn’t time be like that? I mean, the normal thing is to start at the beginning and go on, but I suppose it is possible to skip a few pages, or even turn back a few. Maybe that’s what’s happened to us. Somebody or something’s taken us out of the page where we belong and planted us here on an earlier one, but the other pages are still there. Henry the Eighth is marrying his sixth wife on his proper page and, in our proper place, we are taking off for the Moon or just going to--it all depends on what page you’re at and what part of it you happen to have reached.”
“You mean there’s no such thing as time really. Everything happens at once.”
“Yes, in a way.”
“Then we must be careful, if ever we get back to our right page, as you call it, that we don’t run into ourselves.”
“Eh?”
“I think I’d better get some sleep, Lemmy. We’ve got enough problems without worrying about the true nature of time.”
“Yes, Doc,” he said, and went over to the pilot’s canopy to take over his watch.
Chapter 11 - THE VOICE
We were roused by Lemmy shouting at the top of his voice as he came rushing out of the pilot’s cabin and into the main quarters.
“For heaven’s sake,” called Jet, “what are you yelling about?”
“There’s something outside,” said Lemmy, “coming out of the forest.”
“What?” asked Mitch sceptically.
“I don’t know, a sort of tank. It’s coming towards us, I tell you, and a bright light keeps flashing on and off.”
Jet pushed Lemmy to one side and made for the pilot’s cabin. A second or two later, Mitch and I had joined him, but all we saw was the distant forest outlined against the starry sky.
“Are you sure you saw something, Lemmy?” demanded Jet.
“Of course I’m sure. That thing was there, I tell you, and when the light came on it lit up the countryside for miles around, like a sheet of lightning.”
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