They hurried back to the boat.
It lay there, in the center of the plaza, glistening in the fine spray that was blowing over it from the fountain. The Martian technicians had finished their work and were gone. The Carlotti transceiver was back in its old place. It was Sonya who noticed that the blankets they had brought from the encampment had gone. It seemed a matter of no great importance—but, thought Grimes, it looked as though it had been decided that they were to take no local artifacts with them to wherever—or whenever—they were being sent.
"Button up, Skipper?" asked Williams.
"Yes, we'd better," Grimes told him.
The doors slid shut, sealing the hull.
What was going to happen now? That great bell was still tolling with slow, solemn deliberation, measuring off the remaining minutes of time. The plaza was deserted, as were the streets and the bridges. There was a brooding atmosphere of tense expectancy.
Grimes said, more to himself than to anybody else, "I wonder if we're supposed to switch on the Carlotti . . ." He walked slowly to the instrument, put out his finger to the On-Off button. But it was no longer there. The panel was featureless. "Ruth!" he called. "Come here! What do you make of this?"
Then the bell stopped, and the silence was like a heavy blow. "Look!" shouted Carnaby. "Look!"
They looked. Atop the towers surrounding the plaza the antennae were starting to rotate, slowly at first, about their long axes, the sunlight flashing from the polished, twisted surfaces. And—"Look!" cried Ruth Macoboy. The miniature antenna of the Carlotti transceiver was rotating too, in synchronization. Slowly at first, then faster and faster, the sun was setting, falling back towards the eastern horizon. Abruptly there was deep shadow as it was obscured by the towers. Then there was twilight, but morning not evening twilight, come again. There was twilight, and night, and day, with the sun rising in the west and setting in the east.
Night followed day and day followed night, faster and faster, a flicker of alternating light and darkness that became too fast to register on the retina, that was seen as a grey dusk. Overhead the sun was a wavering band of yellow light in the sky, with Phobos as a narrower, dimmer band. The stars were streaks of silver.
Yet the buildings surrounding the plaza were still substantial, were glowing with a hard luminosity. The whirling antennae at their pinnacles flared like torches in the dimness.
For hours this went on.
It was fascinating to watch, at first, but the fascination wore off. One can get used to anything in time. Brenda Coles left the port beside which she was seated, went into the little galley. She returned with mugs of instant coffee, which all of them sipped gratefully. It was not very good coffee, but the very ordinariness of what they were doing was psychologically beneficial. They talked a little, in disjointed sentences. They wondered what was going to happen next, more for the sake of idle speculation than in the hope that any questions would be answered thereby.
Said Grimes, "I hope that we are able to watch the first colonists landing. I'd like to see what sort of ship they have . . ."
Williams said, "It must be about time for our learned friends to start putting on the brakes . . . I don't know when we are—but at this rate we shall be slung back to the birth of the Solar System . . ."
"Our Carlotti antenna is still spinning as fast as ever," commented Ruth Macoboy. "They must have fitted it with new bearings . . ."
"Mphm?" grunted Grimes. He looked into his empty mug. "Any more of this vile brew, Brenda?"
"I'll get some for you, Commodore."
"Don't bother. A short stroll to the galley will stretch my legs."
He got to his feet. He glanced out through the nearest viewport. The mug dropped from his hand, bounced noisily on the deck.
"What's wrong?" asked Sonya sharply.
"Something," he said at last. "Something is very much wrong!"
He thought bitterly, The bastards! They said all along that they didn't want us, and now they've got rid of us!
No longer were the towers of the city visible from the viewports. Outside was just a featureless landscape, although overhead the sun and the larger moon still were arches of light in the grey sky. The boat was still falling through Time, but the city must have been left many years in the future. And that city, Grimes realized, had been to the boat no more than a temporal booster, analogous to the first stage of a primitive space rocket, a booster that had given the small craft escape velocity from Now.
"Ruth," he said, "stop that bloody thing!"
"I . . . I can't, Commodore. There are no controls . . ."
"Open it up. Take a hammer to it. An axe . . ."
"No," said Mayhew. "No."
"And why not?"
"Can't you see, John? This is intentional . . ."
"I know bloody well it's intentional. Your longheaded friends put over a far better marooning stunt than even Dalzell could have managed. We must stop this blasted time machine before it's too late, and then we return to Earth . . ."
"And get nibbled by dinosaurs, John?" asked Sonya. "No, thank you. Hear Ken out before you do anything rash."
"We must have faith . . ." persisted the telepath.
"Faith?"
"They meant us no harm, John. They were doing their best for us. They gave us a chance to get back to our own Time . . ."
"Looks like it, doesn't it?"
Grimes glared through the port. Was that water out there, a vast, sullen sea? How far back had they come? Seas on Mars? Was that water, or was it barren rock, glowing incandescently, flowing like water? Was it molten rock—or a fire mist?
Was it a fire mist—or nothingness?
The nothingness before the birth of the worlds, of the suns, of the universe itself . . .
There is no place to go, thought Grimes.
"There is no place to go," he said.
"But there will be," stated Mayhew with an odd certainty. "There will be, or there was. There must be."
"I'll make some more coffee," said Brenda Coles.