Mists of Dawn Read Online Free

offered. “But before I do . . .”
    “Yes?”
    “You haven’t let me go down with you to see the time machine since you started in on its final construction. You said I could see it when it was finished, Uncle Bob.”
    Doctor Nye nodded. “That’s a bargain, Mark,” he said, “though I’m afraid there isn’t too much to see. If you’re expecting some sort of weird contraption with electricity flying through the air all around it like in the Frankenstein movies, you’re going to be disappointed.”
    “I’m not interested in what it looks like,” Mark assured his uncle. “I’m interested in what it can do”
    “Good boy,” his uncle approved. “You get supper started and we’ll have a look at my little brain child.”
    Mark disappeared into the kitchen, extracted the remnants of the previous night’s roast from the ice box, and shoved it into the oven to warm up. Then he started a fresh pot of coffee and rejoined his uncle.
    “Done,” he reported.
    Doctor Nye laughed. “Okay, Mark. Come with me.”
    While the storm roared around the mountain lodge and the rain turned the creeks into small rivers of foaming water, Mark followed his uncle down the steps into the special basement underneath the lodge. It was a rather ordinary basement, though filled with equipment and tools of a more complex nature than would be likely to be found in the average home workshop, except that the underground room was cut in two by a lead wall across the middle. Mark’s heart pounded in his chest. The lead was a shield against radioactivity, of course, and that meant that on the other side of that lead wall. . .
    Doctor Nye led him across the basement floor and paused at a heavy metal door set in the lead wall. He opened the combination lock and shoved the door open. As it swung back, a clear white light was switched on inside the room. With a strange, tense feeling that he did not understand, Mark followed his uncle into the room.
    “There it is, Mark,” Doctor Nye said quietly. “The space-time machine.”

Chapter 2     The Space-Time Machine
    The space-time machine almost completely filled the small room. Gleaming dully under the white light, it resembled nothing more than what it was—a gray lead sphere fifteen feet across. Its dull high lights seemed to pulse with faint shadows of life, as though tremendous sleeping energies hung suspended in the metal, waiting. Waiting for the touch of man to burst into flaming strength and power.
    Doctor Nye threw a switch in the side of the sphere and a circular section of metal slid back with a faint hissing sound. The interior of the machine glowed gently with soft light. “After you, Mark.” Doctor Nye smiled. “Be careful not to touch anything.”
    With infinite care, Mark Nye stepped up through the circular entry port and into the sphere. He felt cold sweat in the palms of his hands. He told himself that there was nothing to worry about, but he knew too much about the awful energies imprisoned inside the atom—he had a healthy respect for the compact atomic pile that took up one whole side of the lead sphere.
    There was not a great deal of room in the sphere, but it was not crowded; indeed, since the supplies for their  backward trip in time had not yet been placed in the machine, it was virtually empty. There were no chairs. On one side of the sphere, opposite the power source, a control panel had been built up some four feet from the bottom of the machine.
    Hanging from a projection in one wall was a belt holding a holstered .45 automatic. Mark Nye noted the gun with quick understanding. His uncle had carried the .45 in the First World War, when he had been an infantry captain. It had saved his life more than once, and he had kept the gun near him through the years, both as a sentimental good-luck charm and as a practical means of defense in a long and active life.
    “So this is our time machine,” Mark said finally. “It makes me feel so little . . .”
    “That