“The Germans have an eight-point-eight centimeter Flat 36 anti-aircraft gun — pretty useful as a field gun and anti ’Naut, as well as its main purpose: good bit of design… Anyway, if your bomber pilot can get in under such flak he can pretty much dump what he likes into the guts of an un-Domed city.”
“And the results — after six more years of all this?”
He shrugged. “There’s not much in the way of cities left, I suppose. Not in Europe, anyway.”
We reached the vicinity of South Hampstead, I estimated. Here, we broke through a line of trees into a clearing. This was a circular space perhaps a quarter-mile across, but it was not natural: the tree-stumps at its edge showed how the forest had been blasted back, or cut away. Even as we approached, I could see squads of bare-chested infantrymen hacking their way further into the undergrowth with saws and machetes, extending the space. The earth in the clearing was stripped of undergrowth and hardened by several layers of palm fronds, all stamped down into the mud.
At the heart of this clearing sat four of the great Juggernaut machines which I had encountered before, in 1873 and 1938. These beasts sat at four sides of a square a hundred feet across, immobile, their ports gaping like the mouths of thirsty animals; their anti-mine flails hung limp and useless from the drums held out before them, and the mottled green and black coloration of their metal hides was encrusted with guano and fallen leaves. There were a series of other vehicles and items of material scattered around the encampment, including light armored cars, and small artillery pieces mounted on thick-wheeled trolleys.
This, Gibson gave me to understand, would be the site of a sort of graving-yard for time-traveling Juggernauts, in 1944.
Soldiers worked everywhere, but when I walked into the clearing beside Gibson, and with the limping Nebogipfel leaning against me, to a man the troopers ceased their laboring and stared at us with undiluted curiosity.
We reached the courtyard enclosed by the four ’Nauts. At the center of this square there was a white-painted flag-pole; and from this a Union Flag dangled, gaudy, limp and incongruous. A series of tents had been set up in this yard; Gibson invited us to sit on canvas stools beside the grandest of these. A soldier — thin, pale and evidently uncomfortable in the heat — emerged from one of the ’Nauts. I took this fellow to be Gibson’s batman, for the Wing Commander ordered him to bring us some refreshment.
The work of the camp proceeded all around us as we sat there; it was a hive of activity, as military sites always seem endlessly to be. Most of the soldiers wore a full kit of a jungle-green twill shirt and trousers with anklets; on their heads they had soft felt hats with puggrees of light khaki, or else bush hats of (Gibson said) an Australian design. They wore their divisional insignia sewn into their shirts or hats, and most of them carried weaponry: leather bandoliers for small-arms ammunition, web pouches, and the like. They all bore the heavy epaulets I remembered from 1938. In the heat and moisture, most of these troopers were fairly disheveled.
I saw one chap in a suit of pure white which enclosed him head to foot; he wore thick gloves, and a soft helmet which enclosed his head, with an inset visor through which he peered. He worked at the opened side-panels of one of the Juggernauts. The poor fellow must have been melting of the heat in such an enclosure, I surmised; Gibson explained that the suit was of asbestos, to protect him from engine fires.
Not all the soldiers were men — I should think two-fifths of the hundred or so personnel were female — and many of the soldiers bore wounds of one sort or another: burn scars and the like, and even, here and there, prosthetic sections of limb. I realized that the dreadful attrition of the youth of Europe had continued since 1938, necessitating the call-up of those wounded already, and more of the young women.
Gibson took off his heavy boots and massaged his cramped feet with a rueful grin at me. Nebogipfel sipped from a glass of water, while the batman provided Gibson and me with a cup of traditional English breakfast tea —
“You have made quite a little colony,” I said to Gibson.
“I suppose so. It’s just the drill, you know.” He put down his boots and sipped his tea. “Of course we’re a jumble of Services here — I expect you noticed.”
“No,” I said frankly.
“Well, most of the chaps are Army, of course.” He pointed to a slim young trooper who wore a khaki tag at the shoulders of his Tropical shirt. “But a few of us, like
“RAF?”
“Royal Air Force. The men in gray suits have finally worked out that we’re the best chaps to drive these great iron brutes, you see.” A trooper of the Army passed by, goggling at Nebogipfel, and Gibson favored him with an easy grin. “Of course we don’t mind giving these foot-sloggers a lift. Better than leaving you to do it yourselves, eh, Stubbins?”
The man Stubbins — slim, red-haired, with an open, friendly face — grinned back, almost shyly, but evidently pleased at Gibson’s attention: all this despite the fact that he must have been a good foot taller than the diminutive Gibson, and some years older. I recognized in Gibson’s relaxed manner something of the poise of the natural leader.
“We’ve been here a week already,” Gibson said to me. “Surprising we didn’t stumble on you earlier, I suppose.”
“We weren’t expecting visitors,” I said drily. “If we had been, I suppose I would have lit fires, or found some other way of signaling our presence.”
He favored me with a wink. “We have been occupied ourselves. We had the devil’s own work to do in the first day or two here. We have good kit, of course — the boffins made it pretty clear to us be fore we left that the climate of dear old England is pretty variable, if you take a long enough view of it — and so we’ve come prepared with an issue of everything from greatcoats to Bombay bloomers. But we weren’t expecting quite these Tropical conditions: not here, in the middle of London! Our clothes seem to be falling apart literally rotting off our backs — and the metal fittings are rusting, and our boots won’t grip in this slime: even my bally socks have shrunk! And the whole lot is being gnawed away by rats.” He frowned. “At least I think they are rats.”
“Probably not, in fact,” I remarked. “And the Juggernauts? Kitchener class, are they?”
Gibson cocked an eyebrow at me, evidently surprised at my display of this fragment of knowledge. “Actually we can barely move the ’Nauts: those wretched elephants’ feet sink into this endless mud…”
And now a clear, familiar voice called out from behind me: “I’m afraid you’re a little out of date, sir. The Kitchener class — including the dear old
I turned in my chair. Approaching me was a figure dressed in a crisp Juggernaut crew beret and coverall; this soldier walked with a pronounced limp, and a hand was proffered for shaking. I took the hand; it was small but strong.
“Captain Hilary Bond,” I said, and smiled.
She looked me up and down, taking in my beard and animal-skin clothes. “You’re a little more ragged, sir, but quite unmistakable. Surprised to see me?”
“After a few doses of this time traveling, nothing much surprises me any more, Hilary!”
[9]
The Chronic Expeditionary Force
Gibson and Bond explained the purpose of the Chronic Expeditionary Force to me.
Thanks to the development of Carolinum fission piles, Britain and America had managed to achieve the production of Plattnerite in reasonable quantities soon after my escape into time. No longer did the engineers of the day have to rely on the scraps and leavings of my old workshop!
There was still a great fear that German chronic warriors were planning some sneak offensive against Britain’s past — and besides, it was known from the wreckage we had left behind in Imperial College, and other clues, that Nebogipfel and I must have traveled some tens of millions of years into the past. So a fleet of time-traveling Juggernauts was rapidly assembled, and equipped with subtle instruments which could detect the presence of Plattnerite traces (based on the radio-active origins of that substance, I was given to understand). And now this Expeditionary Force was proceeding into the past, in great leaps of five million years or more.
Its mission was nothing less than to secure the History of Britain from anachronistic attack!
When stops were made, a valiant effort was made to study the period; and to this end a number of the soldiers had been trained, albeit hastily, to act as amateur scientists: climatologists, ornithologists and the like. These fellows made rapid but effective surveys of the flora, fauna, climate and geology of the Age, and a good deal of Gibson’s daily log was given over to summarizing such observations. I saw that the soldiers, common men and women all, accepted this task with good humor and joking, as such people will, and — it seemed to me — they showed a healthy interest in the nature of the strange, Palaeocene Thames valley around them.
But at night sentries patrolled the perimeter of the encampment, and troopers with field-glasses spent a great deal of their time peering at the air, or the Sea. When engaged in these duties, the soldiers showed none of the gentle humor and curiosity which characterized their scientific or other endeavors; rather, their fear and intent was apparent in the set of their faces, and the thinness of their eyes.
This Force was here, after all, not to study flowers, but to seek
Proud as I was of my achievements in surviving in this alien Age, it was with considerable relief that I abandoned my suit of rags and animal pelts and donned the light, comfortable Tropical kit of these time-traversing troopers. I shaved off my beard, washed — in warm, clean water, with soap! — and tucked with relish into meals of tinned soya-meat. And at night, it was with a feeling of peace and security that I lay down under a covering of canvas and mosquito netting, and with the powerful shoulders of the ’Nauts all about me.
Nebogipfel did not settle in the camp. Although our discovery by Gibson was the cause of some celebration and marveling — for our retrieval had been the primary objective of the Expedition — the Morlock soon became the object of blatant fascination among the troopers, and, I suspected, a little sly goading. So the Morlock returned to our original encampment, by the edge of the Palaeocene Sea. I did not oppose this, for I knew how eager he was to continue the construction of his time-frame — he even borrowed tools from the Expeditionary Force to facilitate this. Recalling his close shave with the
As for me, after a day or two I tired of being at leisure in this busy encampment — I am not by nature an idle man — and I asked to participate in the soldiers’ chores. I soon proved my worth in sharing my painfully acquired knowledge of the local flora, fauna and surrounding geography. There was a good deal of sickness in the camp — for the soldiers had been no more prepared than I had been for the various infections of the Age — and I lent a hand assisting the camp’s solitary doctor, a rather young and perpetually exhausted
After the first day I saw little of Gibson, who was consumed by the minutiae of the daily operation of his Expeditionary Force, and — to his own irritation — by a hefty load of bureaucracy, forms and reports and logs, which he was required to maintain daily: and all for the benefit of a Whitehall which would not exist for another fifty million years! I formed the impression that Gibson was restless and impatient with this timetraveling; he would, I think, have been more content if he could have resumed the bombing raids over Germany which he had led, and which he described to me with startling clarity. Hilary Bond had a deal of free time — her duties were most demanding during those periods when the great time-traveling ironclads pushed through the centuries — and she served as my, and Nebogipfel’s, host.
One day the two of us walked along the rim of the forest, close to the shore. Bond pushed her way through the thick patches of undergrowth. She limped, but her gait was blunt and forceful. She described to me the progress of the War since 1938.
“I would have thought the smashing-up of the Domes would have made an end of it,” I said. “Can’t people see — I mean, what is there to fight for after that?”
“It should have been an end of the War, you mean? Oh, no. It’s been an end to city life for a time, I imagine. Our populations have taken a fair old battering. But there are the Bunkers, of
