and became more numerous, yet retained the disturbing quality of seeming simultaneously real and il-lusory.
The nothingness grew and, to Con's horror, advanced to-wards her. She shrank back into her seat. If it had not tightly gripped her, she would have fled and cowered against the wall.
The sensation lasted for 65 million years or, perhaps, only a nanosecond. Duration was irrelevant. Time, in any mean-ingful sense, did not exist. Then it returned abruptly. Solidity surrounded Con. Her body had reality again. The memory of her surreal journey slipped from her mind almost instantly, as if it were beyond her power to conceive of it. What re-mained was a faded disquiet, the echo of a forgotten night-mare. She wiggled a toe and felt it move. The ordeal had left her unscathed. Then, to her surprise, she realized that it had also left her sober.
Con gazed about the cabin. The transparent column seemed virtually empty, the cylinder inside reduced to an insubstantial, flickering thread. The viewscreens peered down on cloud-flecked, blue-and-turquoise sea. The clouds glowed gold in the late-afternoon light. Con peered at the faces of her traveling companions. They looked relieved as the terror of the journey faded.
The saucer began to descend, and Con could make out more details of the sea below them. The water was so clear that the drowned landscape beneath its surface was plainly visible, like a topographic map drawn in shades of green and blue. As they approached, she caught fleeting glimpses of creatures that swam in the sea or flew above it. The images on the viewscreens shifted toward the horizon. The island she had seen in the holovision was visible in the distance, standing out against a backdrop of shadowed mountains.
'There she is,' said Peter Green, 'Montana Isle.'
'God, it's beautiful,' exclaimed Sara.
'Sure is,' agreed John.
The flight to the island took only a few minutes, but to Con it seemed longer. She was anxious to leave the time machine and its vague, yet disquieting, associations with fall-ing. Also, their destination looked beautiful and peaceful. She would be glad to feel it solidly beneath her feet and experi-ence it with all her senses. Eventually, the time machine halted a few hundred feet over the island, then gently de-scended. Only the viewscreens indicated that they had ar-rived—the landing was so soft that it had been imperceptible. An opening formed in the cabin floor revealing stairs leading down to sand-strewn rock. Warm, strangely scented air flowed in. Con's chair relaxed its grip. The new world awaited. PETER GREEN HAD slipped from the role of host to that of a guest. It was James Neville who gave the orders now. He rose from his seat and addressed Rick and Pandit. 'I'll show our guests to their accommodations. You follow me with their luggage, then get started on dinner.' James led the guests down the stairway while Rick and Pandit scurried for their luggage. Pandit was obviously used to the drill, but the delay in seeing the island was torment for Rick. He grabbed a pair of bags and hurried after James.
The time machine stood in a flat depression among the rocks. It was evident that depression was partly artificial. Tops of some of the boulders had been neatly sheared off to level the landing surface. The path away from the land-ing site was also, in places, carved through rock. Rick was amazed that such effort would be expended on a mere trail. The path led to the interior of the island, dom-inated by a towering upthrust of dark gray rock. Rick surmised that the island was the remnant of the core of an ancient volcano, weathered until it was denuded of its mountain. Now it defiantly jutted out of the sea while wind, rain, and the weight of years slowly subdued it.
The island was small, not much more than a quarter of a mile at its widest point, and supported only sparse veg- etation. Most was in the interior, where there was a small grove of trees. The path crossed through it into a clearing at the base of the outcropping. In the center of the clear-ing was an open-sided pavilion. It was a simple, rustic structure constructed of small trees and branches with a palm-thatched roof and a flagstone floor. It was furnished with a single large table, dining chairs, and a sideboard. The remaining three structures provided a startling con-trast to the pavilion, for they were carved out of solid rock. Each featured a colonnade, which served as its outer wall.
'Mr. Green's quarters are on the left,' said James. 'Mr.
Greighton and Ms. Boyton will have the central unit, Miss Greighton will be on the right.' As Rick carried John's and Sara's luggage to their quarters, he examined the structure more closely. The carving featured no em-bellishment, but was executed with great precision. Everything was square or rectangular in form. The planes cut into the stone showed no tool marks and were per-fectly smooth, but unpolished. The colonnade gave the large room behind it an open, airy feel. Farther back into the rock were two additional rooms, a bathroom and a simple storeroom. Rick caught only a glimpse of the bathroom. All its fixtures were carved from rock and ei-ther coated with a sealer or highly polished. He placed the bags in the storeroom. In contrast to the bathroom, it was crudely finished. Its interior wall was covered with plaster, which supported several rows of wooden pegs. There was a simple wooden chest of drawers beneath the pegs.
James poked his head in the colonnade. 'Don't look for light switches,' he called out. 'They work by com-mand. Lights on.' The ceiling, which previously had seemed featureless, began to glow. 'You can tell them to get brighter or dimmer, too.'
'What do you have to say?' asked Sara.
'Long as you don't get too poetic, they'll understand,' replied James. 'The water fixtures in the bathroom work the same way.'
