Time Machine

'Certainly,' said the Time Traveller, stooping to light a spill at
the fire. Then he turned, lighting his pipe, to look at the
Psychologist's face. (The Psychologist, to show that he was not
unhinged, helped himself to a cigar and tried to light it uncut.)
'What is more, I have a big machine nearly finished in there'--he
indicated the laboratory--'and when that is put together I mean to
have a journey on my own account.'

'You mean to say that that machine has travelled into the future?'
said Filby.

'Into the future or the past--I don't, for certain, know which.'

After an interval the Psychologist had an inspiration. 'It must have
gone into the past if it has gone anywhere,' he said.

'Why?' said the Time Traveller.

'Because I presume that it has not moved in space, and if it
travelled into the future it would still be here all this time,
since it must have travelled through this time.'

'But,' I said, 'If it travelled into the past it would have been
visible when we came first into this room; and last Thursday when we
were here; and the Thursday before that; and so forth!'

'Serious objections,' remarked the Provincial Mayor, with an air of
impartiality, turning towards the Time Traveller.

'Not a bit,' said the Time Traveller, and, to the Psychologist: 'You
think. You can explain that. It's presentation below the threshold,
you know, diluted presentation.'

'Of course,' said the Psychologist, and reassured us. 'That's a
simple point of psychology. I should have thought of it. It's plain
enough, and helps the paradox delightfully. We cannot see it, nor
can we appreciate this machine, any more than we can the spoke of
a wheel spinning, or a bullet flying through the air. If it is
travelling through time fifty times or a hundred times faster than
we are, if it gets through a minute while we get through a second,
the impression it creates will of course be only one-fiftieth or
one-hundredth of what it would make if it were not travelling in
time. That's plain enough.' He passed his hand through the space in
which the machine had been. 'You see?' he said, laughing.

We sat and stared at the vacant table for a minute or so. Then the
Time Traveller asked us what we thought of it all.

'It sounds plausible enough to-night,' said the Medical Man; 'but
wait until to-morrow. Wait for the common sense of the morning.'

'Would you like to see the Time Machine itself?' asked the Time
Traveller. And therewith, taking the lamp in his hand, he led the
way down the long, draughty corridor to his laboratory. I remember
vividly the flickering light, his queer, broad head in silhouette,
the dance of the shadows, how we all followed him, puzzled but
incredulous, and how there in the laboratory we beheld a larger
edition of the little mechanism which we had seen vanish from before
our eyes. Parts were of nickel, parts of ivory, parts had certainly
been filed or sawn out of rock crystal. The thing was generally
complete, but the twisted crystalline bars lay unfinished upon the
bench beside some sheets of drawings, and I took one up for a better
look at it. Quartz it seemed to be.

'Look here,' said the Medical Man, 'are you perfectly serious?
Or is this a trick--like that ghost you showed us last Christmas?'

'Upon that machine,' said the Time Traveller, holding the lamp
aloft, 'I intend to explore time. Is that plain? I was never more
serious in my life.'

None of us quite knew how to take it.

I caught Filby's eye over the shoulder of the Medical Man, and he
winked at me solemnly.



II


I think that at that time none of us quite believed in the Time
Machine. The fact is, the Time Traveller was one of those men who
are too clever to be believed: you never felt that you saw all round
him; you always suspected some subtle reserve, some ingenuity in
ambush, behind his lucid frankness. Had Filby shown the model and
explained the matter in the Time Traveller's words, we should have
shown _him_ far less scepticism. For we should have perceived his
motives; a pork butcher could understand Filby. But the Time
Traveller had more than a touch of whim among his elements, and we
distrusted him. Things that would have made the frame of a less
clever man seemed tricks in his hands. It is a mistake to do things
too easily. The serious people who took him seriously never felt
quite sure of his deportment; they were somehow aware that trusting
their reputations for judgment with him was like furnishing a
nursery with egg-shell china. So I don't think any of us said very
much about time travelling in the interval between that Thursday and
the next, though its odd potentialities ran, no doubt, in most of
our minds: its plausibility, that is, its practical incredibleness,
the curious possibilities of anachronism and of utter confusion it