The Man Who Conquered Time

by John E. Muller, Lionel Fanthorpe, Patricia Fanthorpe

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Space Opera

Synopsis

Darryl Whitesmith was engaged upon a new line of research at the Horological Central Institute. He was familiar with the famous saying of Minkowski: "From henceforth space in itself and time in itself sink to mere shadows and only a kind of union of the two preserves an independent existence."

But he had no idea to what extent that saying would be borne upon him. It was difficult for Darryl's mind to make the transition from subjective to objective time, but once that transition had been made there was no turning back. It began as a simple experiment, an experiment which concerned space-time, relativity and the four dimensional continuum.

Whitemith's first indication that something was wrong was when the clock on the wall raced backwards in a blur of speed to fast to follow. The laboratory faded, day and night blended into a welter of greyness.

He was back in the Jurassic Age - but not for long. The machine was still dragging him back into the remote epochs of the Past...

Release date: July 31, 2014

Publisher: Orion Publishing Group

Print pages: 320

Sample

DARRYL WHITESMITH was a tall, energetic, impetuous young man with one of those locks of hair that persist in straying across the forehead no matter how carefully one fastens them down with hair cream or shellac preparations. In consequence. Darryl Whitesmith had an odd little nervous habit of flicking his head back to remove the lock from the position of his eyes.

As a lad it had annoyed him so intensely that despite a proud parental desire that their son’s hair should conform to some sort of human standard, young Darryl had persuaded his hairdresser to clip it off short so that it didn’t get in his eyes when he was playing football.

As he had progressed through the romantic ‘teen’ years, he had allowed it to grow longer, and pressed it into all kinds of elaborate quiffs and waves, only to find that the slightest breeze, or movement of the head, would leave him with a bent, greasy ‘rat’s-tail’ hanging down in front of his face … an object which he did not consider romantic. Apparently none of his teen-age girl friends had considered it romantic either, for Darryl Whitesmith was still a bachelor—albeit not a very gay one—and he was now just turning thirty.

The lock still continued to pester him; it had surrendered to an Army barber ten years ago, but then, so had the rest of his hair, and he had spent the rest of his service career, like his fellow conscripts, with a head that resembled a prolific gooseberry, or a porcupine. But since demobilisation his hair was his own concern once more. He was passing beyond the vanities of the middle twenties into the early onset of a comfortable middle age. At least, he should have been, only Darryl Whitesmith wasn’t the comfortable type. Darryl Whitesmith was as nervous and feckless and uncontrolled deep down within his mind, as the hair was upon his head….

It seemed somehow symbolic, that lock of uncontrollable hair. It would not do as it was told, and something, perhaps some spirit of adventure that he had repressed, save for a spell overseas in the forces, was trying to break free, just as that lock of hair was trying to break free, from the cream, from the shellac, from the sprayed on and rubbed in preparations, with which he belaboured it.

Beneath the errant lock was a wide, high, intelligent forehead, the eyes clear, straightforward, honest; set perhaps a little close together by some people’s standards of beauty. But then the amateur physiologists and physiognomists, who claim that they can tell a man’s character by looking at his physical proportions and deciding whether he is an extomorph, a mesomorph or an endomorph, have long since passed into the realms of doubt.

That there certainly is a connection between certain physical characteristics and temperamental attributes is undeniable, but the connections are not always what the popular folk mythologies would have us believe. The old adage about men with narrow eyes being shifty and unreliable has not been found to be a particularly true one.

Some of the greatest soldiers and statesmen that the world has produced have had eyes that were more closely set together than the eminent gentlemen who claim to read a man’s character from his face, would have favoured. Large, outstanding ears do not necessarily mean that a man is musical. Darryl Whitesmith, for example possessed large, outstanding ears, and Darryl Whitesmith could not play a note. He could not sing a note. He was, as near as matters, tone deaf, but it was probably an instilled tone-deafness. He had no interest in music. To him the only music in the world was the chiming of a clock. Or the striking of a bell that told the hour. These were the only tones to which he would listen, and perhaps like Quasimodo, overmuch listening to his bells had made him deaf. In the case of Darryl Whitesmith not physically deaf, but tonally deaf.

Between the ears, set in the middle of a not terribly prepossessing face, was a nose. The nose was longer than the physiognomists would have it be, but it was Darryl Whitesmith’s lot to possess such a nose, and he bore his lot with good grace. Besides its length it had a rather interesting bend … for in his youth Whitesmith had amused himself with what our Victorian forebears would have deemed ‘the noble art of self-defence’, and in consequence the Whitesmith proboscis had given way under an offensive right hook, from a very enthusiastic fellow pugilist, and after that painful occasion it had never been a particularly ornamental thing again. But Whitesmith didn’t mind. When he had staggered back from the right hook he had come across with a left swing that had connected with his opponent’s jaw and put him down not merely for a count of ten but for the next fifteen minutes!

The pain of a sudden blow on the end of the nose can be a great stimulus to vigorous action! Somewhere among his souvenirs Darryl Whitesmith had a medal that reminded him of that auspicious bout. He had also enjoyed the sensation of the crowd; standing, cheering, clapping, shouting. It had been very nice to be at the centre of the crowd, thought Whitesmith. It was an experience that had not often come his way before or since. Life had dealt him a rather mixed hand. Part of him loved the acclaim of the crowd, longed to be in the centre of things, the man in the limelight, so to speak. The other part of him, perhaps the dominant part, was afraid of public failure, and this counter balanced his desire for acclaim and popularity. But the two conflicting desires between them managed to set up a conflict of emotions that occasionally pushed Whitesmith towards the edge of neurosis.

The nose was founded upon a gargantuan moustache, which was Darryl’s main vanity in life. It led off from either side of his upper lip like an explorer in the 15th century seeking to circumnavigate the globe! Below the great moustache, and largely hidden by it, was a firm, clear mouth and strong, square jaw. In that respect, at any rate, the physiognomists would have been correct, for whatever else he might have been Darryl Whitesmith had a strength of character, and the big, square jaw portrayed it.

If his features were lacking in the seven points of beauty physically, Nature had made it up to him with a magnificent, athletic body. Darryl was just on the six-foot mark, he weighed somewhere in the vicinity of fourteen stone—plus or minus a few pounds, depending on how much or how little he had trained lately.

He was not a burly man, but he had one of those wire-and-whipcord physiques which are capable of enduring great physical strains and are capable of undertaking prolonged feats of stamina. Like a Zulu warrior of the best kind, Darryl Whitesmith had one of those inexhaustible bodies. His was the kind of build that made a Marathon runner, but he combined with it the speed and a dexterity of a juggler, or a tight-rope walker. Muscle, nerve, sinew; brain and bone, co-ordinated with fascinating precision, and the semi-neurotic mind that controlled them all was as restless and intellectual as the body was lithe and muscular.

With all his faults and his tendency towards becoming a neurotic Shakespeare might well have said of him,

“This was a man”

but his manliness had not taken him very far. Apart from a trip that he had made in his Service days to British posts across the sea, to what Kipling would have described as the

“Far-flung bounds of Empire”

Darryl Whitesmith’s life ran in a groove.

He was one of the few men who had been able to indulge his hobby and to earn his living at it. Since he was a child Darryl Whitesmith had loved clocks. He had loved clocks, watches, sundials and every appurtenance thereto. He had studied his subject, taken examination after examination in it till the day when he finally achieved his boyhood ambition and become a staff officer at the Central Horological Institute.

Perhaps it wasn’t everybody’s idea of excitement. It didn’t completely satisfy Darryl Whitesmith, but it was something that he always longed to do, and he found a great sense of pride and achievement in the doing. The Institute itself was housed in a rambling old 17th century manor house. Originally the staff had lived and moved and had their being in London. But for various reasons—expansion of their activities and the price of land among them—it had been decided that, as nine-tenths of the business was conducted by post, anyway, it would be no disadvantage to move out into one of the new garden cities. Prices of garden-city office blocks were again expensive and some of the delicate experiments required fresh, clean open air. Another compromise was decided upon, and the East Anglian manor house was bought, for the purpose of housing the Institute.

THE great mansion into which the Central Horological Institute had finally moved its august presence stood in the centre of a gently undulating spread of open country. It was autumn outside as Darryl Whitesmith looked out through the lead-paned windows. Deciduous trees had spread a leafy carpet like a rolled-out welcome for the entire length of the drive. The drive itself was dotted with cars, and the cars in a way reflected the personalities of their owners. The Institute Director was a smooth, controlled individual and was responsible for the presence of the great chauffeur-driven Rolls, a huge grey-and-black two-tone affair. Even as it stood parked it seemed to pervade the ground around it with a semi-audible, semi-tactile sensation, of speed, grace and power. It was a dream of a car. It was perfection on wheels.

The assistant-Directors had a chauffeur-driven Daimler and a chauffeur-driven Bentley respectively. They stood symbolically one on either side of the Rolls.

The departmental heads were driving their own factory-built limousines, sleek, graceful, fast chromium plated cars, as new and as bright as the morning sunrise. There were Morris’. Standards. Austins. Hillmans, Triumphs—all the household words of the car-trade in a host of beautiful spray colours, every one gleaming newly-washed and polished every one in meticulously good order. That was the common denominator, from the tiniest bubble car belonging to one of the clerks up to the great Rolls belonging to the Director. Each car was in perfect order, perfectly clean, this was the thing that united the minds of the men of the Central Horologic. . .