"A good question, I'd like to know the whole answer myself. What
happened in part was that I suddenly found myself in the air, falling
toward a river. It was night and cloudy, but there was light enough to
show it was a thoroughly inhospitable river.... And now I believe"--his
voice slowed thoughtfully--"I believe I understand why my brother was
found outside the closed door of this building. Over there, Dowland.
What does that look like to you?"
Near the far left of the building, beyond the immediate range of
the light that streamed from the machine stand, a big packing crate
appeared to have been violently--and rather oddly--torn apart. The
larger section of the crate lay near the wall, the smaller one
approximately twenty feet closer to the machine platform. Assorted
items with which it had been packed had spilled out from either
section. But the floor between the two points of wreckage was bare
and unlittered. Except for that, one might have thought the crate had
exploded.
* * * * *
"It wasn't an explosion," Trelawney agreed when Dowland said as
much. He was silent a moment, went on, "In this immediate area, two
space-time frames have become very nearly superimposed. There is a
constant play of stresses now as the two frames attempt to adjust
their dissimilarities. Surrounding our machine we have a spherical
concentration of those stresses, and there are moments when space here
is literally wrenched apart. If one were caught at such an instant--ah!"
To Dowland it seemed that a crack of bright color had showed briefly in
the floor of the building, between the door and the machine platform.
It flickered, vanished, reappeared at another angle before his ears
had fully registered the fact that it was accompanied by a curiously
chopped-off roar of sound. Like a play of lightning. But this was....
The air opened out before him, raggedly framing a bright-lit
three-dimensional picture. He was staring down across a foaming river
to the rim of a towering green and yellow forest. The crash of the
river filled the building. Something bulky and black at the far
left ... but the scene was gone--
The interior of the laboratory building lay quiet and unchanged before
them again. Dowland said hoarsely, "How did you know what was going to
happen?"
"I was in a position to spend several hours observing it," Trelawney
said, "from the other side. You see now, I think, that we can put your
mountaineer's kit to some very practical use here."