Out of Time Read Online Free Page A

undeterred,confident. 150° 50’ 51”, 34° 15’ 21”, and this time the date with the century prefix. The time, 1328. Enter.
    Suddenly, for the briefest instant of time, for a blink, James saw nothing. Not a blankness, not a greyness or blackness, not a wall, not a vast open space, but nothing. He felt disgustingly sick in the stomach. Then, at enormous speed, waves of dizziness pulsated through his body, as though he was being rocked by all the storms in all the ships in all the seas of the world. He realised he had shut his eyes at some stage and that they were still shut, but that was the only coherent thought he had. He had no inclination to open them, did not even think of it, could not form intentions. He felt that he was coming apart, ceasing to be. Until, with equally dazzling sudden speed, he felt his body tingling together again, stinging into a kind of giddy, staggering unity. He was on his feet, lurching a little, then stable, settled, with nothing worse than a ringing in his ears. His legs started to move, his senses to operate. He was just a few steps from the mound in the middle of the paddock. He went to it and squatted behind it, then extricated the machine from his pocket and looked at it. A large sheet of newspaper blew towards him, almost into his face. Suddenly he was filled with a tearing panic. Gritting his teeth he pressed ‘Return’ on the machine. Again there was the shocking glimpse of nothing before the disgusting sickness rocked through him, and the dizziness, the fuzziness, the sense that he had become empty inside and out.
    And there he was, standing on a street corner. Helooked blankly around him, failing to recognise the scene. It took several seconds before he slowly identified it as the corner of Handbury Road and Wilson Street, about two blocks from the Centre, about three blocks from the Toyne Paddock. He looked at his watch. It said 1.33. He assumed that he was back in the present. Then he realised that he would never know.
    MOST OF THAT afternoon James wandered restlessly around his room, picking the machine up and fingering it, putting it down again. He felt confused and shaky, and he thought he had a headache. Several times he felt an overwhelming desire to go and hang around Mr Woodforde’s lab, and twice he actually started getting out the window to go there. It was only then that this death, the death of his friend, began to have meaning for him. He realised that it meant ‘never again’, it meant ‘an end’, it meant changes forced upon him. Now when he swung a leg out of the window he might as well swing it right back in. Once again, a slice of his life had been cut out: it had not been replaced and in its stead was nothing. Eventually some sand might dribble in and occupy the same space, but sand was always and only sand.
    Half way through the afternoon he lay on his bed and cried a little into his pillow. His thoughts were for himself; his misery was his own. He did not know that his tears were the only tears shed by anyone as a result of Mr Woodforde’s death.
    Later, as he hung out of his window, he heard two Americans talking in the square below.
    â€˜. . . yeah, I heard some guy hit the eject button, out in one of the old laboratories.’
    â€˜Yeah, Woodfull, some name like that. Big star once, according to Gary. Child prodigy, you know? Could spell physics when he was six years old.’
    â€˜Hell, I still can’t spell it. So what was he doing out there? Was he working on anything?’
    â€˜Just playing around, I think. They let him have one of the old labs, out of respect. Gary said there was nothing in there, just books, and piles of papers, calculations. But the numbers didn’t add up to anything.’
    â€˜I heard he was dead three days before they found him.’
    â€˜Not three days. A day and a half maybe. Yeah, pretty sad. That’s how we’ll all end up.’
    They walked