Timeline - Michael Crichton [121]
Another cage, still larger, perhaps three feet high, and recognizably like the cages that were now used. The same three bars, the same laser arrangement.
“And?” Stern said.
“We verified that the object went out and back,” Gordon said. “So we sent more elaborate objects. Pretty soon we succeeded in sending a camera, and got back a picture.”
“Yes?”
“It was a picture of the desert. Actually, this exact site. But before any buildings were here.”
Stern nodded. “And you could date it?”
“Not immediately,” Gordon said. “We kept sending the camera out, again and again, but all we got was the desert. Sometimes in rain, sometimes in snow, but always desert. Clearly, we were going out to different times—but what times? Dating the image was quite tricky. I mean, how would you use a camera to date an image of a landscape like that?”
Stern frowned. He saw the problem. Most old photographs were dated from the human artifacts in the image—a building, or a car, or clothing, or ruins. But an uninhabited desert in New Mexico would hardly change appearance over thousands, even hundreds of thousands, of years.
Gordon smiled. “We turned the camera vertically, used a fish-eye lens, and shot the sky at night.”
“Ah.”
“Of course it doesn’t always work—it has to be night, and the sky has to be clear of clouds—but if you have enough planets in your image, you can identify the sky quite exactly. To the year, the day and the hour. And that’s how we began to develop our navigation technology.”
“So the whole project changed. . ..”
“Yes. We knew what we had, of course. We weren’t doing object transmission anymore—there wasn’t any point in trying. We were doing transportation between universes.”
“And when did you start to send people?”
“Not for some time.”
Gordon led him around a wall of electronic equipment, into another part of the lab. And there, Stern saw huge hanging plastic sheets filled with water, like water beds turned on end. And in the center, a full-size machine cage, not as refined as the ones he had seen in the transit room, but clearly the same technology.
“This was our first real machine,” Gordon said proudly.
“Wait a minute,” Stern said. “Does this thing work?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Does it work now?”
“It hasn’t been used for some time,” Gordon said. “But I imagine it does. Why?”
“So if I wanted to go back and help them,” Stern said, “then I could—in this machine. Is that right?”
“Yes,” Gordon said, nodding slowly. “You could go back in this machine, but—”
“Look, I think they’re in trouble back there—or worse.”
“Probably. Yes.”
“And you’re telling me we have a machine that works,” Stern said, “right now.”
Gordon sighed. “I’m afraid it’s a little more complicated than that, David.”
29:10:00
Kate fell in slow motion as the ceiling stones gave way. As she descended, her fingers closed on the ragged mortared edge, and with the practice of many years, she gripped it, and it held. She hung by one hand, looking down as the falling stones tumbled in a cloud of dust onto the floor of the chapel. She didn’t see what had happened to the soldiers.
She raised her other hand, grabbing the stone edge. The other stones would break away any minute, she knew. The whole ceiling was crumbling. Structurally, the greatest strength was near the reinforced line of the groin, where the arches met. There, or at the side wall of the chapel, which was vertical stone.
She decided to try and get to the side wall.
The stone broke away; she dangled from her left hand. She crossed one hand over the other, reaching as far as she could manage, trying again to spread the weight of her body.
The stone in her left hand broke loose, falling to the floor. Again she swung in the air, and found another handhold. She was now only three feet from the