Tunnel Through Time -- Lester del Rey -- (1966)
(Version 2005.03.30 -- Done)
Of Time and Dinosaurs
I knew there was something in the wind from the way they were talking there after dinner -- Dad and Doctor Tom. I sensed it from knowing Dad -- he's been my father for more than seventeen years -- I'll be eighteen in three months. And then as I came into the room, Doctor Tom said, "If its money, I can help. I have an unused appropriation I could swing -- Oh, hello, Bob."
He meant me. I'm Bob Miller. "Anything I shouldn't hear?" I asked.
"Not at all," Dad said. "We were talking about dinosaurs."
"And this unused appropriation: is Doc Tom going to use it to buy one?"
"Not exactly," Dad said. "We were debating the reasons for their extinction."
I'd been helping Grace, our housekeeper, carry the dishes into the kitchen, so I hadn't been in on the first part of it. But I had a hunch it hadn't been all dinosaurs. I know Dad, and there was something more than casualness in his attitude.
I was pretty proud of him, but he's a guy who is very easy to be proud of. He's a physicist, and he was heading up a team at Benson University on time research. The team was under a grant from the Herman Foundation, and it was a real top-secret operation.
Actually it wasn't Dad's theory, but he was figured as the best man in the country to work on it. It had to do with the notion that time and gravity are somehow mixed up together, and Russia was known to be doing intensive work on the gravity riddle.
If Russia came up with a means of negating gravity and eliminating boosters on its space stuff, we would be the last team in the second division, and that had the big boys worried.
Of course there were other teams working on the same problem, and Dad wasn't bound to hold to that line. He could go anywhere that his nose led him inside the broad boundaries of time itself.
And I had a hunch he'd gone someplace.
"I always thought the dinos faded out because mammals came along and ate their eggs," I said.
"Fried or scrambled?" Doc Tom asked innocently.
"Soft-boiled," I told him.
Dad didn't react to the so-called jokes. He had that look he always wore when he was thinking about one thing and talking about another. "The mammals were around a million years before the dinosaurs began diminishing," he said. But I knew dinos weren't even in his mind. I called him on it, which I was always privileged to do. We had a pretty good relationship, Dad and I.
"But what do the bronts and the dinos have to do with time?" I asked.
Dad peered intently at nothing -- another of his predictable traits. When he spoke, he was talking more to himself than to us.
"Did it ever occur to you," he said, "that whatever happens, happens all the time?"
"I don't get it," I said, being honest if nothing else.
"It's a little difficult to explain, Bob, but think of it this way. We look through a telescope and see the explosion of a star."
"That I can understand."
"All right, but for all we know that star could really have exploded a billion years ago."
"Uh-huh. And we're just getting the news because we're so far away."
"Doesn't that suggest an absolute integration of time and distance?"
"Sure but -- "
"What I mean is this: Suppose you get down on the floor right now and start doing push-ups. You'd be doing them here at this exact moment. But inject distance and the speed of light. Then go out in space a million light-years and give someone a telescope strong enough to see you and you'd still be doing your push-ups."
"But I'd be pretty tired by then," I grinned.
"This theoretically demonstrable gambit could be carried on into infinity," my father continued. "Therefore, you would go on doing push-ups into eternity."
"Unless," Doc Tom cut in, "we live in a closed system and not in infinity, as some new discoveries indicate."
He was referring to the exciting new "blue galaxy" discoveries that were changing a lot of basic thinking here and there around the scientific world.
"Rather deep thinking for a paleontologist," I kidded. Which was what Doctor Tom was -- and also a very good friend.
Doc Tom was forty, but his grin always made him look years younger, and tended to cloud the fact that he was one of the top brains in his field. Not as top as Dad, but he came close.
"Deep, maybe," he said, "but also very disturbing. It means that the dinosaurs are still lumbering over the earth. I'd like very much to see one, but to do it I'd have to find a good telescope and plod a few million light-years out into space."
"Perhaps not," Dad said.
His two quiet words were like little bolts of electricity crackling through the room. Neither Doc Tom nor I said anything. We waited.
Dad was silent also, and while I sat there I had a little time to think about things I should have thought about oftener: how lucky I was to have him; how much he'd given me; how he'd been both a father and a mother since I was three years old, when we'd lost Mom. Of course it hadn't been until years later that I realized how hard her death had hit him. But I think he knew that I did understand.
"It's almost impossible to outline even the concept," he growled. "Semantics are mankind's prison. We suffer from lack of tools with which to communicate."
"I'd say the theory negates itself," Doc Tom observed. "It extends an impossibility: that a man could observe the workings of a scene before his own birth. That he could function before his own existence."
"The theory is not new," Dad said, "and that point has always been the great barrier blocking practical application."
We had nothing to say, and after a few moments Dad made a decision. He slapped the arm of his chair with an open palm and got to his feet. "A picture is worth a thousand words," he said. "And I can show you more than a picture. Come with me."
We lived on Faculty Row at the university, and Dad's laboratory was in the Science Building, a short five-minute walk away. But the five minutes seemed like an hour to me as we hurried along.
The laboratory, where Dad and his three assistants worked, was a clean, shining place. I always thought it looked like the kitchen of a modern hotel dining room, although I'd never seen one. But the point was Dad was a stickler for neatness and order. He always said that a sloppy shop indicated a sloppy mind, but I never met enough inventors and research people to know whether he was right or not.
He led us through to what was the back room of the laboratory, a bare place about thirty feet square. There was nothing in it but a square ten-foot platform in the middle -- about a foot off the floor -- and a panel of controls near the entrance.
There was a metal ring about seven feet in diameter mounted in the center of the raised platform. It looked like the kind that is set fire to and has tigers jumping through it at a circus.
Dad stood by the panel and looked at the platform. "There it is," he said.
Doc Tom eyed the metal ring dubiously. "Uh-huh. It's great. But what is it?"
"What we were talking about."
Doc Tom shrugged. "O.K., but it doesn't look like a dinosaur to me. A dinosaur is -- "
"It's a machine," Dad said, "that will allow you to look at your prehistoric beasties firsthand -- " Dad's eyes twinkled here -- "I hope."
Doc Tom blinked. "You hope. Well, that sounds encouraging."
"A time machine," Dad said, "although it isn't a machine at all. Not in the sense that it's a vehicle to carry a time traveler. About the best I can give you by way of explaining it is that it condenses time -- tunnels through it, so to speak. That is, I hope it does."
Doc Tom was walking around the platform, peering at the big hoop. His expression was pensive. "We seem to have all the hope we need," he muttered. "How about the faith and charity?"
Dad smiled. "You will provide the faith if all goes well. And the charity? We discussed that earlier. You said you had some unallocated funds."
"Then it's not finished?"
"Not quite. As yet, there are certain bugs."
"Such as?"
"I'm sure it will function -- that is, it will deliver a man back into time. But exactly where he will land is another matter."
"You mean he could arrive in yesterday or in a time span where nothing in the way of a world existed?"
"Not quite that. The machine is calibrated and responded to all tests. You might think of it as functioning in hops -- long steps back into time. Each hop will double the length of the previous one as momentum is gained. The first one estimates at approximately 10,000 years. If the device continues to function properly, the succeeding ones should be 20,000, then 40,000 and 80,000."
I stood there taking it all in, saying nothing. Doc Tom was circling the platform warily, as though he expected the hoop to reach out and bite him.
"What's the working time? I mean, as we use time for everyday purposes, how long would it take to arrive back at, say 80,000 years?"
"The tests respond to signals spaced at four seconds."
"Then a man wouldn't have time for much sight-seeing on the way."
"I doubt if he would even be conscious of the mechanical stopovers. He would merely arrive at his destination. That is, if all goes well."
"Hoping again," Doc Tom sighed, although there didn't seem to be any great fear in his reactions. "You said you needed money to -- "
"It amounts to this: you would land where I pointed you."
"But you feel you can iron out these bugs, as you call them?"
"I sincerely hope so."
"I do too." Doc Tom stepped onto the platform. "Is this it? Does a man just step through -- ?"
"No. Hold it a minute."
Dad pulled one of the switches. Nothing happened. That is, nothing visible. But you could feel a high-tension sing through the room. And I missed the process because I was watching Dad, until I heard Doc Tom exclaim, "Well, I'll be a monkey's stepson." And I looked and saw that the ring had disappeared.
"It's gone!" I bleated.
"No," Dad said, "it's still there. But the vibrations of the metal have reached a point where your eyes can no longer record the form."
"Why, of course!" Doc Tom said. "It's so simple, I should have known."
Dad pulled a second switch and then began adjusting some of the controls on the board. And where the ring had been there now appeared what can be described only as a circular rainbow.
Doc Tom stepped back off the platform. "H'mmm," he said. "No end. Therefore, no pot of gold."
"The pot of gold is somewhere on the other side," Dad said. "At least I hope it is."
"That's what I like about you, Sam," Doc Tom said. "You're so dead certain about everything."
"The mechanism appears to short-circuit time, if that makes any sense to you. It contracts time, so to speak. Within the dimensions of that circle, time is moving in reverse at an incredible speed. That was the problem: to move time fast enough so that it would have no effect on matter. If it moved slower, the man entering the tunnel's operating range would grow progressively younger as he moved back into earlier time patterns."
"H'mmm," Doc Tom murmured. "You make time move so fast it doesn't have time to -- "
Dad was half smiling. "Tom, I always said you were wasting yourself as a paleontologist. You'd make a better comedian. But now, if you don't mind, take the screwdriver off that table and toss it into the ring."
Doc Tom reached for the screwdriver and did as Dad directed. The tool vanished.
"Where did it go?"
"Into the past, I hope."
The dramatic side of it hit me. "Say!" I exclaimed, "right now maybe someone is holding that screwdriver 10,000 years ago and gibbering about magic."
Dad was frowning. "I'm sorry. I didn't use my head. That wasn't a very smart thing to do. I hope the screwdriver isn't buried in some poor unfortunate's chest."
"The odds are way against it," I said.
"Thank heaven for that. Anyhow, this is my brainchild. A little more money and work -- "
He had turned off the power, and the ring had reappeared. Doc Tom was moving back toward Dad and the door. "Sam," he asked, "what's the situation with this contraption?"
Dad knew what he meant. "Technically -- and ethically -- it belongs to the university, with the Hellman Foundation asserting some control. There's something along those lines in the fine print. The machine is not what we went after in the original research, in that it did nothing to solve the gravity problem -- other than perhaps prove we were on the wrong track."
"Then if I shift some of my money -- "
"You'll get it back eventually. I'm completely free to continue the work, because it comes under the head of my original research."
"So we're on clear ground."
"Oh yes. My big regret is that I can't be the first man to walk through it. I wouldn't dare trust the controls to anyone else at this stage."
"But, Sam, I know you well enough to know you wouldn't send anyone else through it unless you were positive -- "
"As positive as anyone can be about an untried -- "
They hadn't noticed that I wasn't with them, and the door closed, cutting off their voices. I stood there alone, staring at the fantastic metal ring. The reason I'd taken no part in the conversation was that I'd been speechless. Both Dad and Doc Tom were basically scientists. Doc Tom, with all his light kidding, was as rock-solid as they came. So neither of them was greatly moved by the sheer romance and adventure of the thing.
But I was. And I stood there trying to contain my excitement. I'd just listened to two men talking calmly and quietly about going back into the past -- something that not only had never been done but was considered impossible. On the other side of that ring were all the secrets mankind had puzzled over from the beginning.
Beyond that ring Napoleon was still fighting the Battle of Waterloo. On the other side of it was a great stage on which everything that had ever happened was still happening.
There, the War of the Roses and the building of the pyramids would be like yesterday. And the cavemen killing their meat with clubs, only a few months ago.
The age of the dinosaurs! They were still living and fighting and dying back there!
I had enough common sense to know which way the weather vane pointed -- why Dad had shown his secret machine to Doc Tom. It hadn't been for the money. He could have gotten that from several places.
Doc Tom was slated to be the first-time traveler. He was going back to see his dinos firsthand. Obviously Dad had thought that a paleontologist would be the ideal man to make the time trip. And he would know beforehand how greatly Doc Tom would appreciate the privilege.
Behind their light banter and casual approaches, they were both practical, hardheaded dreamers, if that term means anything.
But they'd overlooked someone. Me. Somehow, by hook or crook, I was going to make that trip too. Doc Tom wasn't the only one who liked dinos!
Making this firm resolve, I turned out the lights and ran after them, not wanting to miss anything they might have to say.
The Rainbow Ring
I hardly slept that night; my excitement was at it's peak. But things didn't stay that way, and the letdown was terrible.
I came to breakfast the next morning all primed to talk about Dad's great discovery or invention, or whatever he wanted to call it.
He didn't want to call it either one, and wasn't in the least excited about it.
"The time-travel thing, Bob? Oh yes. It's only research, you understand. Something may come of it."
"Something may come of it! Why, Dad, we saw it last night! You've got it made!"
"Oh, good heavens, no! We may hit a stone wall any day now. We have our other research too -- the important work -- "
"The important work! What could be more important than going back into time?"
"Oh, quite a few things. Finding out exactly what time is, for one thing. Solving the time-space riddle." As usual, he had a magazine propped up in front of his plate and was peering at it over his coffee cup.
"Did you read about the amazing work that was recently done on antibodies? If you're looking for romance in science, that's where you might find it. Imagine a world the exact opposite of ours existing somewhere. It staggers the imagination."
But I wasn't interested in antiworlds. I was interested in time travel, and I badgered Dad into letting me watch the work that he would be doing on the machine in the back room at his laboratory.
And it was pretty dull.
Dad had three assistants. Gabe Rickson was his number one man, and we got along very well together as long as I stayed out of his way. He was in his late fifties and might have been rated as a sourpuss. But when you really knew him, you found this wasn't true. It was only that he had no interest whatever in anything but science, and he didn't want anybody getting in his way -- least of all a gawking seventeen-year-old with big feet. But if I kept my feet out of his way, he was quite friendly and at times would actually talk to me.
Lee Sommes, a younger man, dedicated to science and tennis, always had the same question for me: "Why aren't you in school cracking your books, so you can be half the physicist your father is when you're twice his age?"
First, I told Lee this was summer vacation, but that didn't make any sense to him. Only idiots took vacations. Then I told him I wasn't interested in being a physicist, and that was even worse. Only cretins weren't interested in being physicists.
Dave Wyler was more friendly than Lee Sommes or Gabe Rickson. He was always finding things for me to do -- like going over to the university lab to pick up four neutrons packed in ice cubes so they wouldn't melt, or climbing the clock tower after a bagful of wind to test for high-flying mushroom spores. A real comedian, Dave, but a top scientific mind.
I wasn't able to generate excitement in any of them over the astounding possibilities of Dad's time-travel machine.
Lee Sommes said, "The Dinosaur Age? Sure. Great place to get stranded without a subway token."
Dave Wyler was even more cynical: "Ha! You want to go see the dinosaurs. But I'll bet you haven't been to the local zoo in a year. They've got funny-looking animals there too, you know. And you can make the scene for fifteen cents."
Gabe Rickson didn't kid, but he showed me how tough it was. One day they were making a test -- throwing a small cotton ball through the ring -- and he pointed to a board with twenty-six dials on it and said, "Robert, when every one of those dials reacts by pointing its needle at zero at precisely the same second, we will be close to a real test of the device."
The cotton ball made them point in twenty-six different directions, so to me success seemed almost impossible.
But that was the difference between me and Dad. He and his three able helpers kept on placidly hammering at the impossible until it gave up after long weary days -- probably when it decided that bucking these guys just wasn't worthwhile.
So the work had gone on without a hitch, the necessary money passing smoothly from Doc Tom's budgetary allotment over to Dad's.
Then one evening three weeks later Doc Tom came to dinner again, and this time he brought Pete.
Pete was Doc Tom's son, and while I didn't especially like him, that wasn't to say I disliked him. We were just different types. He was a brain -- no doubt about that -- and I always got the idea he thought of my football and baseball and tennis efforts as a waste of time. The closest he came to athletics was an occasional dip in the pool. But I had to give him credit there. Whatever he did take up, he did well. He could spot me half the length of the pool and beat me every time.
All in all, however, Pete was a nice kid.
So he came along with his dad to dinner that night, and after Grace brought the coffee in, Dad said, "By the way, Tom, that test today was a complete success. It looks as though we're ready."
Evidently they'd had some talks I hadn't been in on, because it all seemed to be arranged. The light mood of the previous dinner was gone too.
"The only possible risk that I see," Dad said, speaking to Doc Tom, "is getting you back. But the risk is reduced to a minimum."
"A small one for the importance of the experiment," Doc Tom said gravely.
"I'd give everything to be able to go myself."
"I know that. But if it were possible, I'd still scramble for the privilege of being first. It's no small honor, you know."
Pete had put down his fork. He was staring at his father. "Dad, what is this?"
He evidently hadn't been told, and I noticed that Doc Tom seemed a little embarrassed. He'd no doubt had his reasons for keeping Pete in the dark, but now he had to face up to it.
"It's an experiment in time travel, son."
Pete's expression hid a lot that was underneath. But it revealed a lot too.
"Is it dangerous?"
Doc Tom laughed. "Why, Pete, crossing the street is dangerous these days."
"But what you're planning is more dangerous than crossing the street."
"A little, perhaps."
"Exactly what is it?"
There was a queer switch here -- as though they'd changed places and Pete was the parent. Pete had no mother either, but she wasn't dead. I'd never inquired, although I was sure Dad knew about it. I thought Doc Tom was divorced, but if Pete had been the victim of a broken home, he seemed to have survived it all right. I guess I read his face with that in mind and saw him wondering if he was going to lose his father too.
"Sam has been working on a time-travel problem," Doc Tom said, "and he's come u...
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