Dave Saunders looked up from the control panel. He was a young man, twenty-six at the most, with straight brown hair and large, warm brown eyes. He had a finely sculpted face with high cheekbones, and a sensitive, thin mouth. He would have been good-looking if it hadn’t been for his nose. While an engineering student, Dave had been a member of the college boxing squad. From what Doctor Falsen had told Neil, Dave was quite good. But he’d been unlucky in one bout, and he sported a broken nose as a result.
“Good,” Dave said when he saw Neil. “We were waiting for you.”
“Are we ready to go?”
“As ready as we’ll ever be. Help me chase these two coots out of here, will you, Neil?”
“Let’s go, Arthur,” Doctor Manning said. “I can take a hint.”
“Aren’t you going to stay up here for the take-off?” Neil asked.
Dr. Manning shrugged his fullback’s shoulders. “Only two people allowed in the control room, Neil.”
“Well, if you want to stay-” Neil started.
“We’ll go down below,” Doctor Manning said. “I want to see what happens anyway. With all that clear plastic down there, it’d be a shame to stay cooped up here. Coming, Arthur?”
He started down the ladder, with Arthur Blake following close behind him.
“I’ll give you a warning buzzer just before we take off,” Dave said to the descending figures.
“All right,” Arthur Blake answered as his head went below the floor level into the lower bubble.
Dave checked a few dials on the instrument panel and nodded his head.
“Everything seems okay so far. I’d better start the crystal working.”
“The time crystal?” Neil asked,
“That’s it, Neil,” Dave said, smiling. “We’re fancy, and we call it the temporium crystal. But time crystal will do.”
He reached out to a switch on the panel and closed the circuit. A hum, low and steady, filled the machine. Behind it, and almost too faint to be heard, was a slight coughing sound. Dave’s face clouded momentarily, and he studied the dials before him.
“That’s strange,” he said.
“What’s the matter? Is anything wrong?”
Dave hesitated before answering. “No-o-o,” he said slowly. “Not by the instruments anyway. Everything seems to be fine. I could have sworn I heard some rumbling when I threw on the generator, though.”
“I heard something too,” Neil admitted.
Dave shrugged. “Probably just warming up,” he said. “We haven’t used the machine since its test runs, you know.” He checked his dials again. “Want to press that warning buzzer on your right, Neil?”
Neil looked over the instrument panel and found a large red button near the right-hand corner. He pressed it with his forefinger, and a loud buzz filled the machine.
“Ready, Neil?” Dave asked.
“Yes.”
“Nervous?”
“A little.”
“Don’t be. Everything’ll turn out fine. We’ll be in Yucatan before you can say Kukulcan.”
“Here we go,” Dave said.
He throttled the big machine and an ominous roar filled the aluminum chamber.
Slowly, steadily, like a giant elevator rising, the machine lifted from the platform.
“Easy as pie,” Dave said, his mouth breaking into a wide grin. “Switch on the inter-com, Neil. We’ll see how the boys in the cheaper seats are enjoying the ride.”
Neil reached up to the speaker on the wall and snapped a toggle. A red light gleamed as the inter-com took on life.
Dave reached over and depressed the “Press-to-talk” lever.
“How is it down there, boys?” He released the lever.
“Fine, just fine,” Doctor Manning and Arthur Blake chorused.
Dave pressed the lever again and said, “We’re clear of the platform now. I’m putting space travel up to top speed and I’m cutting in the crystal.” He waited.
“I’ve been waiting to see this for a long time,” Arthur Blake said.
“There won’t be much to see, Art. It’ll probably look kind of gray out there. Remember that night and day will be changing some thirty times a second.”
“I’ll enjoy it anyway,” Arthur Blake replied.
“Well, here we go,” Dave said. He moved away from the inter-com and snapped another switch on the instrument panel. A louder hum filled the machine, and Neil remembered what Dave had told him about the machine.
And, at the same time, the machine would be plowing forward in space at a speed of more than one hundred miles an hour. Of course, the machine was calibrated so that it would land in the right place at the right time.
“Neil,” Dave said.
And that time and place would be Yucatan in A.D. 50 or perhaps later. It all depended on what they found when-
“Neil!” Dave’s voice was sharp.
Instantly, Neil snapped out of his thoughts.
“What is it, Dave?”
“Something’s wrong.”
“What?”
“Something’s wrong, I said.”
“But, I don’t understand. You said everything was-“
Dave turned a worried face to Neil. His brown eyes were large against a pale face, and his nose somehow looked comical against the seriousness of his features.