Amazing Stories, Vol. 2, No. 2 — page 52: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

aX 156 Some faint brown shreds of clouds whirled into nothingness. The great buildings about me stood out clear and distinct, shining with the wet of the thunderstorm, and picked out in white by the un- melted hailstones piled along their courses. I felt naked in a strange world. I felt as perhaps a bird may feel in the clear air, knowing the hawk flies above and will swoop. My fear grew to a frenzy. I took a breathing space, set my teeth, and again grappled fiercely, wrist and knee, with the ma- chine. It gave under my desperate onset and turned over. It struck my chin violently. One hand on the saddle, the other on the lever, I stood panting heavily in attitude to mount again. “But with this recovery of a prompt retreat my courage recovered. I looked more curiously and less fearfully at this world of the remote future, In a circular opening, high up in the wall of the nearer house, I saw a group of figures clad in rich soft robes. They had seen me, and their faces were directed toward me. “Then I heard voices approaching me. Coming through the bushes by the white sphinx were the heads and shoulders of men running. One of these emerged in a pathway leading straight to the little lawn upon which I stood with my machine. He was a slight creature—perhaps four feet high— clad in a purple tunic, girdled at the waist with a leather belt. Sandals or buskins—I could not clearly distinguish which—were on his feet; his legs were bare to the knees, and his head was bare. Noticing that, I noticed for the first time how warm the air was. “He struck me as being a very beautiful and His: graceful creature, but indescribably frail. flushed face reminded me of the more beautiful kind of consumptive—that hectic beauty of which we used to hear so much. At the sight of him I suddenly regained confidence. I took my hands from the machine. CHAPTER IV The Golden Age 66 N another moment we were standing face | face, I and this fragile thing out of futurity. He came straight up to me and laughed into my eyes. The absence of any sign of fear from his bearing struck me at once. ‘Then he turned to the two others who were following him and spoke to them in a strange and very sweet and liquid tongue. “There were others coming, and presently a little group of perhaps eight or ten of these exquisite creatures were about me. One of them addressed me. - It came into my head, oddly enough, that my voice was too harsh and deep for them. So I shook my head, and pointing to my ears, shook it again. He came a step forward, hesitated, and then touched my hand. Then I felt other soft little tentacles upon my back and_ shoulders. They wanted to make sure I was real. There was noth- ing in this at all alarming. Indeed, there was Something in these pretty little people that in- spired confidence—a graceful gentleness, a certain childlike ease. And besides, they looked so frail that I could fancy myself flinging the whole dozen AMAZING STORIES of them about like ninepins. But I made a sudden motion to warn them when I saw their little pink hands feeling at the Time Machine. Happily then, when it was not too late, I thought of a danger I had hitherto forgotten, and reaching over the bars of the machine I unscrewed the little levers that would set it in motion. and put these in my pocket. Then I turned again to see what I could do in the way of communication. “And then, looking more nearly into their fea- tures, I saw some further peculiarities in their Dresden china type of prettiness. Their hair, which was uniformly curly, came to a sharp end at the neck and cheek; there was not the faintest Suggestion of it on the face, and their ears were singularly minute. The mouths were small, with bright red, rather thin lips, and the little chins ran to a point. The eyes were large and mild: and—this may seem egotism on my part—lI fancied even then that there was a certain lack of the in- terest I might have expected in them. “As they made no effort to communicate with me, but simply stood round me smiling and speak- ing in soft cooing notes to each other, I began the conversation. I pointed to the Time Machine and to myself. Then, hesitating for a moment how to express Time, I pointed to the sun. At once a quaintly pretty little figure in checkered purple and white, followed my gesture, and then aston- ished me by imitating the sound of thunder. “For the moment I was staggered, though the import of his gesture was plain enough. The ques- tion had come into my mind abruptly: Were these creatures fools? You may hardly understand how it took me. You see I had always anticipated that the people of the year Fight Hundred Thousand odd would be incredibly in front of us in knowledge, art, everything. Then one of them suddenly asked me a question that showed him to be on the intel- lectual level of one of our five-year-old children— asked me, in fact, if I had come from the sun in a thunderstorm! It let loose the judgment I had suspended upon their clothes, their frail, light limbs, and fragile features. A flow of disappoint-. ment rushed across my mind. For a moment I felt that I had built the Time Machine in vain. “IT nodded, pointed to the sun, and gave them such a vivid rendering of a thunderclap as startled them. They all withdrew a pace or so and bowed. Then came one laughing toward me, carrying a chain of beautiful flowers, altogether new to me, and put it about my neck. The idea was received with melodious applause; and presently they were all running to and fro for flowers, and laughingly flinging them upon me until I was almost smoth- ered with blossom. You who have never seen the like can scarcely imagine what delicate and won- derful flowers countless years of culture had cre- ated. Then someone suggested that their play- thing should be exhibited in the nearest building, ~ and so I was led past the sphinx of white marble, which had seemed to watch me all the while with a smile at my astonishment, toward a vast gray edifice of fretted stone. As I went with them the memory of my confident anticipations of a pro- foundly grave and _ intellectual posterity came, with irresistible Merrimen*, frst) BYsVa) <e Eom