Explore "The Time Armada" by Fox B. Holden on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Doug worked silently. His eyes stung, and he wasted a moment to rub them again, because he must see, must see so precisely, so exactly. The work table was almost bare of the equipment he had ordered. The new Contraption had devoured it into its fantastic vitals as fast as his taut hands and flagging memory were able to feed. Yet it was useless work -- the gleaming thing he had built would never so much as fry an egg.
Yet he worked as though the power-pack were resting on the table among the scraps of wire, bits and pieces that were left, as though somehow it would be there when he needed it, and then they could go, could escape, and then forget. The two shiny terminals glared at him dully like two tiny eyes, each telling him that he was such a fool to hope that they could ever be anything else than bare. They glared at him, told him that he was finished now, finished, but with the end impossibly far away.