Close Up the Sky by James L. Ferrell Page B

of opening the door
into any era of our past, allowing us to step through into history and return
at will."
    Matt was stunned. If
he had not personally seen the gigantic research facility and witnessed the
extensive military involvement, he would have discounted the story as cleverly
designed fiction. If Feldon and Summerhour had been aware of what Durant had
just revealed to him, it was no wonder they couldn't disclose it. He understood
now why Taylor had insisted on avoiding the issue during their flight. The
knowledge made him light-headed. Time travel was something writers and
freethinking scientists had kicked around for years, but no one took them
seriously. Yet here he sat, a hundred feet beneath the surface of the Earth, in
the real world, listening to a noted physicist saying they had actually
accomplished it! The implications of such a thing were staggering. He wanted to
say something intelligent, but visions of Eloi and Morlocks kept disrupting his
thoughts. He felt soft fingers touch his forearm.
    “Matt?” The sound
of Taylor’s voice interrupted his journey aboard Wells’s time machine and
brought him back to the present.
    "I'm okay,
Taylor." He smiled and put his hand over hers. "I was just
daydreaming."
    "Believe me,
Matt. I fully understand what you’re feeling," Kasdan sympathized. "I
underwent the same emotional trauma myself."
    "I know it's
hard to accept, Matt. It's a little like finding out Santa Claus really does
exist, only this is worse," Durant said in an attempt to lighten the
atmosphere. "Would you like more coffee before we continue? I'm afraid
we've only skimmed the surface."
    "No, please
go on." It was the most amazing thing Leahy had ever heard, and he was
anxious to hear more. However, he also felt an inexplicable dread, and wanted
to face it as quickly as possible.
    "Good." Durant
got up and turned toward the star map. He stood staring at it for a few
seconds, hands clasped behind his back.
    "You haven't
yet had time to fully realize the importance of such a discovery, Matt,"
he said. "But then, neither did we at first." He turned to face them
and continued with his story. "After we realized what we had stumbled onto
and had solved the control problems, there were still some very important
questions: what do you use such a device for? Do we hold in our hands the power
to change history as we know it? What about the
present? Could it be altered because of something we changed while tampering
with the past? What about the future? Does it already exist? Can we open a
window and see man's destiny a thousand years from now?
    "The
implications were staggering, and we paid dearly for some of the answers. We
learned through experience that the past and present are locked together into
something like a chain. Each link is composed of an unalterable sequence of
events, so no matter what we do in the past, it appears to have no known effect
on the present. That is, with one very important exception: anything from the present , while operating in the past, can be altered. After a while it became
clear that the main danger involving expeditions into other eras was to the
agents themselves, not the possibility of their accidentally changing the
course of history. Do you follow me?"
    "Let me be
sure," Matt answered. The nerves in the back of
his neck were bunched into a knot. He massaged them absently while he thought
about Durant's question. "Suppose one of these agents caused the death of ..... say, Napoleon before he became Emperor of France. I
don't see any way around the obvious consequences. History would be changed. There
would be no historic retreat from Russia, no Waterloo, and no French history as
we know it today."
    "That's just
the point,” Durant responded. “No one did cause his death before he became emperor. You see, even if someone from the
future actually tried to kill
Napoleon, history tells us it didn't happen. It follows then that even if the
attempt was made, it wouldn't be