Amazing Stories, Vol. 2, No. 2 — page 56: what you’re looking at

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

160 what I felt as this conviction came home to me? But you cannot. The Time Machine was gone! “At once, like a lash across the face, came the possibility of losing my own age, of being left help- less in this strange new world. The bare thought of it was an actual physical sensation. I could feel it grip me at the throat and stop my breathing. £6 | strides down the slope. Once I fell head- long and cut my face. I lost no time in stanching the blood, but jumped up and ran on, with a warm trickle down my cheek and chin. All the time I ran I was saying to myself: ‘They have moved it a little—pushed it under the bushes out of the way. Nevertheless, I ran with all my might. All the time, with the certainty that sometimes comes with excessive dread, I knew that such assurance was folly, knew instinctively that the machine was removed out of my reach. “My breath came with pain. I suppose I covered the whole distance, from the hill crest to the little lawn, two miles perhaps, in ten minutes. And I am not a young man. As I ran I cursed aloud at my confident folly in leaving the machine, wasting good breath thereby. I cried aloud, and none an- swered. Not a creature seemed to be stirring in that moonlit world. “When I reached the lawn my worst fears were realized. Not a trace of the thing was to be seen. 1 felt faint and cold when I faced the empty space among the black tangle of bushes. I ran round it furiously, as if the thing might be hidden in a corner, and then stopped abruptly with my hands clutching my hair. Above me towered the sphinx upon the bronze pedestal, white, shining, leprous in the light of the rising moon. It seemed to smile in mockery of my dismay. “I might have consoled myself by imagining the little people had put the mechanism in some shelter for me, had not I felt assured of their physical and intellectual inadequacy. That is what dis- CHAPTER VI The Machine Is Lost N another moment I was in a passion of sear, and running with great, leaping mayed me; the sense of some hitherto unsuspected — power through whose intervention my invention had vanished. Yet of one thing I felt assured: unless some other age had produced its exact dupli- cate, the machine could not have moved in Time. The attachment of the levers—I will show you the method later—prevented anyone from tampering with it in that way when they were removed. It had been moved, and was hid, only in Space. But, then, where could it be? “I think I must have had a kind of frenzy. I remember running violently in and out among the moonlit bushes all round the sphinx, and startling some white animal that in the dim light I took for a small deer. I remember, too, late that night, beating the bushes with my clenched fists until my knuckles were gashed and bleeding from the broken twigs. “Then, sobbing and raving in my anguish of mind, I went down to the great building of stone. The big hall was dark, silent, and deserted. I AMAZING STORIES slipped on the uneven floor and fell over one of the malachite tables, almost breaking my shin. I lit a match and went on past the dusty curtains of which I have told you. “There I found a second great hall covered with cushions, upon which perhaps a score or so of the little people were sleeping. I have no doubt they found my second appearance strange enough, com- ing suddenly out of the quiet darkness with in- articulate noises and the splutter and flare of a match. For they had forgotten about matches. ‘Where is my Time Machine?’ I began, bawling like an angry child, laying hands upon them and shaking them up together. It must have been very queer to them. Some laughed, most of them looked sorely frightened. When I saw them stand- ing round me, it came into my head that I was do- ing as foolish a thing as it was possible for me to.do under the circumstances, in trying to revive the sensation of fear. For reasoning from the daylight behavior I thought that fear must be forgotten. “Abruptly I dashed down the match, and knock- ing one of the people over in my course, went blun- dering across the big dining hall again out under the moonlight. I heard cries of terror and their little feet running and stumbling this way and that. I do not remember all I did as the moon crept up the sky. I suppose it was the unexpected nature of my loss that maddened me. I felt hope- lessly cut off from my own kind, a strange animal in an unknown world. I must have raved to and fro, screaming and crying upon God and Fate. I have a memory of horrible fatigue, as the long night of despair wore away, of looking in this im- possible place and that, of groping among moonlit ruins and touching strange creatures in the black — Shadows; at last, of lying on the ground near the’ sphinx and weeping with absolute wretchedness, for my anger had left me, as I realized the folly of having left the machine. I had nothing left but misery. “Then I slept, and when I woke again it was full day, and a couple of Sparrows were hopping around me upon the turf within reach of my arm. “I sat up in the freshness of the morning trying to remember how I had got there, and why I had such a profound sense of desertion and despair. Then things came clear in my mind. With the plain, reasonable daylight I could look my circum- stances fairly in the face. I saw the wild folly of my frenzy overnight, and I could reason with myself. ‘6¢CNUPPOSE the worst,’ said I, ‘suppose the machine altogether lost — perhaps. de- stroyed. It behooves me to be calm and patient, to learn the way of the people, to get a clear idea of the method of my loss and the means of getting materials and tools; so that in the end, perhaps, I may make another. That would be my only hope, @ poor hope, perhaps, but better than despair. And, after all, it was a beautiful and curious world. ““But probably the machine had only been taken away. Still, I must be calm and patient, find its hiding place, and recover it by force or cun- ning.’ And with that I COMICDOOKS: GOIN