The Shadow Girl by Ray Cummings

Alan did not lose consciousness. But it was a terrible sensation of falling; a soundless, clattering chaos. The room seemed going dim; glowing silver-bright, with every smallest detail sharp and clear -- and then fading. There was the sense that his body was suddenly spectral, with a lightness of thistledown, whirling away in all this soundless confusion.

The sensations were momentary; the room presently was almost normal again. Alan sat still and gazed around him. A solid, white metal floor; gray-white metal walls; a metal ceiling, windows and doors, all closed. A solid room, unmoving -- standing in the bottom of a tower planted solidly upon the ground. It felt like that. Almost normal. But not quite. For under his feet Alan could feel the floor vibrating. A whirring, infinitely tiny, infinitely rapid vibration. It thrilled up into his body like a gentle current; it gave him a sense of lightness, buoyancy.

Alan knew that the tower was traveling in Time. Into our Past, or our Future he could not tell which. Across the room at a table of instruments Lea and the young man sat gazing at a bank of whirring dials. They talked together in low tones; words unintelligible to Alan. Lea, glancing over, caught his gaze and smiled. He stood up; stood trembling and dizzy. At once she came and took his arm.

"Let me see the dials," he said. He knew she could not understand the words, but he gestured, and she understood and steadied him to a seat by the table.

"San," she said, and pointed to her companion.

The young man smiled, and offered his hand in the fashion of Alan's time. He was a trifle taller than Lea; similar of aspect -- a gentle-looking youth, but with strongly masculine features. Blue eyes, like Lea's, brown hair, long to his neck; a robe of fabric, dark-blue, in form not unlike hers. It revealed his delicately molded limbs. A very gentle, handsome young fellow, but there was nothing girlish, nothing effeminate about him. He stood up with a quiet dignity -- almost an unconscious aspect of superiority, as though he were a gracious little prince, shook hands with Alan, and sat again at his dials.

Alan surmised he was Lea's brother. Certainly they looked alike. Alan made them understand that he wanted to read the dials. Most of the dials were unintelligible, but there was one, with a slowly moving pointer, which Alan could read. It marked 1980 A. D. Into the future! Alan cursed the fact that he could not talk to his two companions. His mind leaped back to Nanette and to me. Captured by Turber. Taken -- where? He did not know. But one thing was clear, Lea and this San were friendly to him. They had forced him into the tower because they knew it was the best thing for him. They were taking him now -- ahead, into what we call the Future. Doubtless to their own Time-world.

Alan believed it must be far into the future -- a time when English was lost and forgotten, a dead language of history. But once there, Alan thought that they would have a way of communicating with him. Their smiles were reassuring. Lea examined his head and shoulder wounds. They were no more than severe bruises.

"Nothing," said Alan. "I'm all right. But Nanette? " He tried to gesture to make it mean something.

"Nanette," said Lea. She smiled again, but then her face went solemn.

San said abruptly: "Lea -- San -- Alan. " His gesture included the three of them. And then he pointed to the dial. Alan understood. He was indicating the year to which they were going.

It was the year 7012 A. D.

"But Nanette," Alan insisted. "Nanette? Turber? " He swung his finger over the dial. But they both shook their heads. They were solemn, perturbed. They did not know Turber's destination. Alan's heart sank, yet there was nothing he could do but wait.

Presently Lea was showing him about the tower room. It was some thirty feet square, occupying the entire base of the tower. There was furniture which seemed to be of metal. A gray-white room, windows closed now and covered by opaque metal plates, a dim glow of light, the source of which he could not determine, lighted all this gray interior.

Two small sections of the room were divided off by hangings of what might have been a gray metallic fabric -- one inclosure where it seemed food was stored; the other, an instrument room. A low hum came from there. Alan saw lines of tiny wires of cobweb fineness, which began there and spread like a tiny white network woven into the walls and ceiling and floor of the room. And, in one corner, there was a small metal staircase -- an incline spiraling upward through a trapdoor of the ceiling. Lea gestured.

"Want us to go up? " said Alan.

She evidently did. She showed him the dials again. They were passing the year 1995. She spoke to San. He remained at the instruments; Alan and Lea went up into the tower.

Amazing sight! They stood on the narrow balcony which girdled the small tower room near its top. Alan had not dared to look down as they climbed the ladder. It seemed that around him was a gray, luminous fog. On the balcony he clung to the breast-high railing and stared.

A gray monochrome of city -- blended colors of whirling days and nights, seasons, years -- all blended into this flat, shadowless gray. A blurred scene, crawling with movement. Melting outlines, changing with the progressive altered aspect of the passing years.

1995! 2000! Our great city of 1945, here just a few moments ago, now seemed so small and antiquated! What a tremendous giant, rearing itself here now around him! And it was still growing. Its great buildings had come up and were encroaching upon the park. They loomed far higher than the tower.