“And the towers we found in prehistoric Europe?” He began to fill in the gaps. “A large-scale attempt to harvest some invaluable comet-stuff brouhaha across time?”

  “From what we have ascertained through geological study, several pieces of the largest Atlas comet broke off and hit the earth in the early Cretaceous Period. The comets themselves skimmed our atmosphere. The sublimation that occurred filled an entire hemisphere for months. When we first found the collapsed towers, I was as puzzled as you, Professor Reardon. But now it makes perfect sense. We are destined to achieve large-scale time travel, and our future successors in this endeavour will be even more ambitious than we have dreamed.”

  “Maybe, but they failed, didn’t they? The towers were empty and decrepit. The dream you speak of seems fraught with more dangers than anyone can predict. Is there such a thing as too much ambition?”

  She grinned cruelly. “You mean like trying to conquer fate in order to bring back one’s deceased wife and son?”

  Cecil’s blood flamed. He jabbed a forefinger at her. “If you ever mention them again, I’ll finish what I started in the factory.” He thrust out his chin and began to rub it tauntingly. “You’d best stay out of my way from now on, Gorgon. I’m warning you.”

  “Enough!” Wallingford stepped between them, raised his hands in the manner of a traffic policeman. “I shall make all the arrangements you asked for, Professor. In the meantime, are you satisfied with our disclosure?”

  “For now.”

  “Very well. We shall leave you to rest. Good day.” He escorted his chunnering colleague out of the room, quietly berating her.

  Cecil knew he’d won a victory. Why not gloat a little? “By the way,” he called after them, “I’d like a full English breakfast, eggs over-easy, plenty of toast. Throw in a couple of hash browns, as well. See to it, will you?”

  He laughed at Miss Polperro’s snarl, then lay back against his pillow and surveyed his empty room. He thought of young Billy and Tangeni heading northward to Tromso, and Verity and Embrey wandering the deadly wilds of the Cretaceous, marooned forever unless he could somehow use his newfound influence and figure out how to reach them.

  Until then, he could never truly rest, for he would be as much a prisoner as they.

  One week later…

  An arrowhead formation of geese flying in from the coast reminded Cecil of the first time he’d seen the Hatzegopteryx, high amid the clouds. They’d appeared no bigger than ordinary seabirds.

  All life is about perspective, he thought. Dozens of airships littered the sky, and London city below seemed quiet, restful, oblivious.

  He pulled the main gear lever on the side of his clockwork knee joint to its zero tension setting, rendering it limp. Reclining on a deck chair on the eighty-first floor balcony outside his quarters, Cecil gave a contented sigh. It was the first sunny day since his incarceration in the tower and he was determined to make the most of it. He put on his spectrometer goggles and set the lenses to medium tint. A cool glass of sarsaparilla perspired on the stool next to him. First he opened yesterday’s morning edition of the Daily First, one of the few newspapers that reported overseas news as thoroughly as events at home. He longed for news of Billy and his African aeronaut friends.

  Killer Dinosaur To Be Displayed In London Museum

  That front page headline struck him as the closing of a significant chapter in his life. The wild and indomitable baryonyx, master of its own world, was here a showpiece in a museum. Nothing now remained of his terrible adventure except in his mind. He skimmed through the article until he came to:

  “…it cut a swathe of destruction across Southern England for three days and nights. The rampaging beast reached as far as Winchester before it was finally shelled by artillery during its slaughter of dozens of men and women engaged in a traditional countryside hunt.

  “‘The baryonyx was the apex predator of its time,’ said Miss Agnes Polperro, representative of the Leviacrum Council and one of the few survivors of the Westminster catastrophe. ‘Its brief acquaintance with mankind is smeared with tragedy…for man and beast. It is fitting that everyone be allowed to see this great hunter in its original, ferocious glory, for as we are masters of the twentieth century, so too did he rule over prehistory. He is one of our great predecessors.’”

  And yet, Embrey and Verity still had his kind to contend with. Would that Cecil had a second factory all to himself, where he could reproduce his time machine and bring them back post haste. But that secret he must keep indefinitely. The Council was looking over his shoulder at every turn, and they must not gain control of time travel. The five-past-eight phenomenon had already revealed the damage this meta-science, still in its infancy, could wreak upon the natural order of time.

  “Professor, these just arrived for you.” His personal assistant handed him a telegram and a slender package about fifteen inches by eight in size.

  “Thank you.”

  “Can I get you anything else, sir?”

  “No thank you. That will be all.”

  His assistant nodded and left. Cecil immediately retrieved the telegram from its already-opened envelope-those security stuffed shirts never let anything pass unmolested. The note read,

  PROFESSOR R HOPE YOU ARE WELL THOUGHT YOU MIGHT LIKE TO RESUME OUR LUNCHTIME GAME YOU WERE ON TOP OF BIGGEST LADDER STOP ROLLED FIVE PUTS ME BELOW YOU ON SQUARE DIRECTLY ABOVE THE BROWN SNAKE STOP YOUR TURN PROFESSOR

  He leapt up in his seat and ripped the packaging off what had to be a Snakes and Ladders board. “Billy!”

  But who had helped the lad send a telegram? Tangeni? Sorensen? This had to be some sort of cryptic message. Yet there was nothing unusual about the squares they’d indicated on the board. He checked the back. The only inscription, made in handwritten silver ink, read, Property of Ebony Eyes Bookstore.

  It’s a puzzle. Nothing to do with the actual board itself? All right, then it must be a code of some kind.

  He scrutinized each and every word, paying particular attention to those that might appear normal to anyone else but unusual to him. Lunch, biggest ladder, below you, directly above the brown snake, ebony eyes. There were two brown snakes on the board. “The” brown snake had to have some other meaning. A literal one? What might that signify to Billy, Tangeni and himself? Snake? Dinosaur? Brown dinosaur? The baryonyx on display in the British Museum!

  Directly above that? He wasn’t allowed outside the tower and they must already know that. Above the museum itself then? That seemed to fit. He was on the tallest ladder-the Leviacrum tower-and they wanted him to look below, to the top of the British museum. Where? The roof? An airship hovering over it?

  Excitedly, he pressed the lever in his knee joint to its walking gear, and the clickety-click signalled it was ready. He limped to the edge of the balcony and gazed down, instantly finding the large white-grey building he sought. He twisted the tiny wheels on the sides of his goggles, cycling through the different lenses until he had binocular vision. He adjusted the focus knob minutely, soon gaining a clear view of the museum roof. But there was no airship hovering overhead, and no sign of anyone or anything out of the ordinary atop the structure.

  Frustrated, he fetched the telegram and studied it again.

  Lunchtime game? It was yet a little after ten in the morning, a couple of hours shy of twelve noon.

  He paced about the balcony impatiently, observing the museum roof every few minutes. The two hours seemed to last for days, but during that time he resolved that the handwritten silver name, Ebony Eyes Bookstore, had to be significant. The telegram code had been too intricate, too clever to leave any extraneous information, and the silver lettering stood out on the dark green cardboard backing like moonbeams on a duck pond.

  Ebony eyes-dark eyes-sunglasses? Tinted spectrometer goggles?

  If they were to send some sort of Morse Code message using flashes of light, one way to disguise it from prying eyes would be to emit light from a different spectrum, one undetectable by human vision. Infrared perhaps? Ultraviolet? He would try every lens in the goggles’ cycle.

  Twelve o’clock arrived and his nerves were already shredded with anticipation. He gazed down at the museum roof, fully expecting to see someone crouched atop it.

  No one. Nothing. Had he misinterpreted the message?

  Directly above the brown snake. He lifted his gaze higher and higher until he spied a small dirigible floating there, its propellers motionless. Several figures manned the deck, two of whom stood facing him against the port bulwark. They were too far away for him to recognise but he swore one of them was dark-skinned. Tangeni?

  He carefully cycled through his spectrometer lenses, cursing his luck whenever one failed to produce the result he pined for. He was ready to rush inside his quarters and retrieve an oil lamp, start waving that to at least let his friends know he’d understood the telegram when, through his penultimate lens, the ocular Cavendish, he caught a blinding flash.

  “Oh my God, of course! They’re speaking the language of my machine-psammeticum refraction!”

  It was indeed Morse Code, emitted with clarity and precision. They repeated the entire message twice more.

  Professor, all is well. Hope you like your new leg. Billy, Tangeni and friends are safe with me. Have made tremendous progress with your temporal differentiator. Working on plan to rescue you. Difficult though. Spies are everywhere. Will return here at same time once a week. Hold tight. Wave if you understand. Sorensen.

  He didn’t wave right away. He wanted to prolong this wonderful moment-an illicit communication for his eyes only, from friends willing to brave the wrath of the Council itself. True friends. When he finally did wave, the two figures standing against the bulwark responded in kind.

  As he watched the ship leave, a rousing warmth in the pit of his stomach rose to his throat and his eyes and ears, drawing glad tears. His heart lifted and remained afloat for hours. He barely ate that day and all the next. And despite the enormous responsibilities and the world-altering disclosures heaped upon him by the Council, the only thing he truly cared about that week was obtaining two coloured counters and a single die.

  He and Billy had a game to play. Snakes and Ladders. As when he’d waited indefinitely atop the rickety walkway above his great machine, Cecil was back to rolling his figurative die, hoping for an intervention. This time, it was not only Lisa and Edmond he must save but Verity and Embrey too.

  He opened the board and set the pieces onto square one. The ups and downs were all ahead of him once more, but at least during this wait, he was not alone.

  A small house spider scurried across the board, raising a smirk on Cecil’s lips. So miracles do happen.

  He considered how the game might end, if indeed it could ever end once it had begun. “Well, here goes.” He slid the red counter forward.

  He checked the telegram. The lad had just rolled a five…

  Chapter 21

  Embrey’s Farewell

  To whomever braves time to find this,

  Come and seek us out! At the attached coordinates, you will discover the ruins of the only land-based Leviacrum tower left standing on this continent. We explore constantly, but that edifice is the closest we have to a home in prehistory. Yet it is not sufficient to keep us safe. The deadly creatures that reign over the outside world have made it imperative for us to delve underground, into the stupendous network of manmade tunnels fanning out from those coordinates. There is evidence of a technologically advanced civilization we believe may still exist deep within the bowels of this prehistoric realm. Might it hold the key to our salvation, to our return through time? Though we have unearthed a few of its secrets, we know not how or why it came to exist so far back in time. Even as I write this letter, the great towers rust and crumble. They will one day pass out of all human knowledge unless time is breached again and the breacher returns home. I therefore bequeath this mystery to you, dear traveller, in the event of our death. For we are captives here, driven beneath this vast, unconquered wilderness red in tooth and claw.

  I am Lord Garrett Embrey, exile from the year 1908. Two years have passed since Professor Cecil Reardon, inventor of time travel, disappeared through time with two dozen others. We know nothing of their fates. Of the original survivors of our freak time jump, only I and one other remain. She is Verity Champlain, Captain of the Gannet airship, Empress Matilda, and I love her with all my heart. That she returns those feelings is the solace that sustains me.

  I am securing this letter to the base of Big Ben in hope rather than expectation. We shall not return. Verity and I left these ruins because the area is too dangerous, but I suspect an errant time traveller would not happen upon this specific age by chance, and would therefore already know of the disappearance of Westminster. Let this be the start of your quest, then, dear traveller, and may we meet soon.

  Be wary of the sound of thunder: the giant baryonyx roam these coasts; of sudden shadows: look up to the Hatzegopteryx, cruel kings of the skies; and venture across the lakes at your peril. As the decrepit Leviacrum towers illustrate, dinosaurs and man can never co-exist. Perhaps our erstwhile enemy, Agnes Polperro, was right and Nature only suffers interlopers-in time, in fate, in the food chain-temporarily before expelling them in its own subtle ways. Sooner or later, if Nature is governed by balance, the ebb and flow of time may swallow all man’s attempts to change its course.

  Our airship’s next flight will be its last, as we have almost exhausted the hydrogen reserves. Verity and I will soon begin our next great adventure. For today, as the sun reached its zenith, we joined hands at the foot of Big Ben, a hallowed place where twentieth century grass still grows and time no longer chimes. While the sun’s corona haloed the clock, we turned our faces toward heaven and plighted our troth beneath the eyes of God.

  We live during the infancy of flowers, and she is my rose, the first and only one I shall ever love. We are without flag, without country, without sure means of survival. But we have each other, and that is more than enough.

  What lies in store for us, I wonder.

  Hopefully,

  Garrett R. J. Embrey

  Verity M. Embrey

  Epilogue

  Five Past Eight

  1916

  The howl of the wind outside his single porthole window kept Cecil awake, but barely. The days had grown long, interminable over the past several months without word from outside. Even the meagre telegrams that had arrived with clockwork regularity for many years, each containing but one number-the result of Billy’s die roll for their epic games of Snakes and Ladders-had ceased. At least in his old quarters he’d been able to gaze out across London from his balcony, to pretend he was still a part of the world below. Here, on the 112^th floor, he was nothing but a rusty old cog in the monotonous grind of a soulless machine.

  His bushy beard was silver-white and reached down to his chest. His sore fingers, the prints worn away by too many cuts and abrasions during his obsessive fiddling with sharp edges and brittle lenses, hurt all day until he rested them in bed under his pillow. He slept more and more these days. No one seemed to complain, though, as his sharpness in the lab had long begun to wane. Truth be told, the scraps he’d fed the Council during his first few years spent in the tower, and his utter failure to reproduce his great machine-a deliberate failure-had relegated him to a kind of twilight position within the establishment. They treated him with benign neglect, neither resisting nor rewarding his small breakthroughs in other fields, despite his continued propensity for hard work.

  It was genius they wanted-time travel or nothing-and he had let them down.

  He’d slept peacefully each and every night with that knowledge.

  The shadowy walls of his quarters slithered to life as he conjured, bittersweetly, his great adventure in prehistory. Airships swooped amid flying reptiles, diving bells plumbed the depths of a sea teeming with monstrous creatures, his friends fought with him and for him against impossible odds, and he grew to love them over time.

  Ah, would that I were a young man again. I’d never go near a blasted laboratory. The world outside is much too interesting as it is. Am I right, Lisa? Am I right, Edmond?

  Do everything within your power. Nothing else matters. You will never be complete if you don’t try. Let God stop it if He must.

  Hurtful words from long ago. He hadn’t uttered them for years, but their sentiment haunted him like the scent of African lily perfume whenever he came across it in the tower’s dining hall or the movie theatre. The wound was still tender. It had never healed.

  He closed his eyes, changed sides on the bed and snuggled against a double pillow. Not even rain pelting the window could keep him awake now that he’d found something worth dreaming about. He imagined his wife and son running toward him on the lonely, rickety walkway overlooking his giant machine, moments before its cataclysmic reaction. But their smiles quickly dropped, and they yelled something at him in unison. No sound escaped their lips.

  A terrific crash jolted him, and he sprang upright on the bed. He spun toward the open window, shielding his face from the violent gust of wind he was expecting. But none came. Nor was there any rain. The storm had ceased apoplectically. He checked the wall clock.

  Ah, five past eight. Right on cue. But what broke the glass?

  He got out of bed, put his single slipper on and walked over the shards to the window. Before he reached it, the slick, broad form of a man swung in through the gap, narrowly missing him. The intruder thudded sideways onto the carpet and gave an audible wince.

  “What the devil? What do you mean by breaking in-”

  “Quick, help me untie the rope,” the interloper said as he leapt to his feet. A good six feet tall, he was young and handsome, with wide, straight shoulders and a rough and ready face, like a rugby player. He wore a navy blue slicker.

 

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