Mists of Dawn (14 page)
Authors: Chad Oliver
Smiling,
Doctor
Nye
pressed
a
release
button
and gave
the
dial
a
hard
spin.
A
slight
whirring
noise
filled the
machine.
After
a
moment,
he
engaged
the
mechanism
again
and
there
was
a
rapid
series
of
clicks
that slowly
diminished
in
speed
until
there
was
silence.
“There
we
are,”
Doctor
Nye
said.
“The
machine
is now
set
for—”
Suddenly,
unexpectedly,
there
was
a
loud,
urgent ringing
from
outside
the
sphere.
Mark
jumped
slightly and
then
recovered
himself.
The
space-time
machine, he
decided,
was
no
place
to
hear
sudden
noises!
“That’s
the
upstairs
phone,”
Doctor
Nye
said
quickly, a
worried
expression
on
his
face.
He
glanced
at
his watch.
“It’s
not
quite
nine
o’clock—something
must have
gone
wrong
with
the
rocket
at
White
Sands.
Hold on,
Mark—and
don’t
touch
anything.”
Doctor
Nye
hurried
out
through
the
circular
door and
Mark
heard
his
feet
on
the
stairs
as
he
ran
up
to answer
the
phone.
He
looked
around
him
at
the
dull lead
sphere.
It
was
very
quiet.
He
felt
a
slow,
icy
cold begin
to
creep
up
his
spine.
Mark
shivered.
He
was
alone
in
the
space-time machine.
3
Alone
in
the
Unknown
Mark N
ye
stood
very
still
in
the
center
of
the
lead sphere.
He
could
barely
hear
the
sound
of
his uncle’s
voice
talking
on
the
upstairs
phone,
and beyond
that,
there
was
a
very
faint
rumble
of thunder.
It
was
difficult
to
tell,
isolated
as
he
was
by the
lead
walls,
but
it
seemed
to
him
that
the
storm was
dying
down.
He
did
not
move.
The
space-time
machine,
with
its silent
and
impersonal
gray
walls,
filled
him
with
a nameless
awe.
He
felt
much
as
he
had
when
first
seeing the
newsreel
picture
of
an
atomic
bomb
blast—small and
afraid,
with
a
cold
knot
inside
where
an
icy
fist clutched
at
his
heart.
His
eyes
strayed
to
the
control
panel
as
though pulled
by
a
force
beyond
his
power
to
control.
The green
light
looked
at
him
steadily,
without
blinking, like
a
strange
emerald
eye
in
the
black
of
the
panel.
It had
an
almost
hypnotic
effect
on
him,
and
staring
into its
compelling
depths
he
fancied
himself
viewing
the shadow
legions
of
a
vanished
past
marching
before him,
the
ghost
armies
of
history
.
.
.
There
was
Davy
Crockett,
fighting
to
the
end
in
the
Alamo—and
by
his
side
Napoleon
and
Genghis
Khan. There
stood
Machiavelli
and
in
the
shadows,
blind Homer
sang
an
immortal
song.
There
was
Alexander the
Great—there
Socrates.
David,
Moses,
Tutankhamen—all
still
lived
and
loved
and
dreamed.
And
beyond
them,
as
in
a
cloud
of
blue
smoke,
the
first
men walked
through
the
mists
of
dawn.
Cro-Magnon,
Neanderthal,
Pithecanthropus—and
farther
still,
lost
in
the haze
of
time,
the
dragons
hissed
and
screamed
across the
face
of
the
earth
as
the
great
reptiles—Brontosaurus,
Stegosaurus,
the
fierce
Tyrannosaurus
Rex-plodded
through
the
swamps
at
the
beginning
of time
.
.
.
