“Hmm,” I said. “I find myself with a deep distrust of such normalizing, Is it really so desirable that the future of the human species should be filtered through the ’tolerance’ of the Englishman of 1938? Should his long shadow stretch down, through all the millions of years to come?”

“It’s all Planning, you see,” Moses said. “And, they say, the only alternative is a relapse through chaotic barbarism — to final extinction.”

“Are men — modern men — capable of such epochal deeds?”

Moses said, “There will surely be bloodshed and conflict on a scale not yet envisaged — even by the standards of this dull, ghastly War as the majority of the world resists the imposition of a flawed Plan by these Allied technocrats.”

I met Moses’s eyes, and I recognized there a certain righteous anger, an infuriation at the foolishness of mankind, which had informed my own, younger soul. I had always had a distrust of the advancement, willy-nilly, of civilization, for it seemed to me an unstable edifice which must one day collapse about the foolish heads of its makers; and this Modern State business seemed about the most extreme folly, short of actual War, I had heard in awhile! It was as if I could see Moses’s thoughts in his gray eye — she had thrown off his funk, and become a younger, more determined version of me — and I had not felt closer to him since we met.

“Well, then,” I said, “the matter is decided. I don’t think any of us can tolerate such a future.” Moses shook his head — Nebogipfel appeared to acquiesce — and, for my part, I renewed my resolve to put an end to this time-traveling business once and for all. “We must escape. But how—”

And then, even before I could finish framing the question, the house shook.

I was hurled down, nearly catching my head on the desk. There was a rumble — a deep boom, like the slamming of a door, deep inside the earth. The lamps flickered, but did not die. All around me there were cries — poor Filby whimpered — and I heard the tinkle of glass, the clatter of falling furniture.

The building seemed to settle. Coughing, for an inordinate quantity of dust had been raised, I struggled to my feet. “Is everyone all right? Moses? Morlock?”

Moses had already turned to help Nebogipfel. The Morlock seemed unhurt, but he’d got himself caught under a fallen bookcase.

I let them be and looked for Filby. The old chap had been lucky; he’d not even been thrown out of his chair. But now he stood up and made his way to the window, which was cracked clean across.

I reached him and put my arms around his bowed shoulders. “Filby, my dear chap — come away.”

But he ignored me. His rheumy eyes streaming with water, and his face caked with dust, he raised a crooked finger to the window. “Look.”

I leaned closer to the glass, cupping my hand against the reflection of the electric lamps. The Babble Machine Aldis lamps had died, as had many of the street-lamps. I saw people running, distraught an abandoned bicycle — a soldier with his mask over his face, firing shots into the air… and there, a little further in the distance, was a shaft of brilliant light, a vertical slice of scudding dust-motes; it picked out a cross-section of streets, houses, a corner of Hyde Park. People stood in its glare, blinking like owls, their hands before their faces.

The shaft of brilliancy was daylight. The Dome was breached.

Our street door was hanging from its hinges, evidently shaken open by the concussion. There was no sign of the soldiers who had been guarding us — not even of the faithful Puttick. Outside in the Terrace, we heard the clatter of running footsteps, screams and angry shouts, the shrill of whistles, and we could smell dust, smoke and cordite. That fragment of June daylight, bright and sharp, hung over everything; the people of carapaced London blinked like disturbed owls, baffled and terrified.

Moses clapped me on the shoulder. “This chaos won’t last long; now’s our chance.”

“Very well. I’ll fetch Nebogipfel and Filby; you collect some supplies from the house—”

“Supplies? What supplies?”

I was irritated: what fool would proceed into time equipped with nothing more than a house-coat and slippers? “Oh — candles. And matches! As many as you can find. Any fashion of a weapon — a kitchen knife will do if there’s nothing better.” What else — what else? “Camphor, if we have it. Underwear! — fill your pockets with the stuff…”

He nodded. “I understand. I’ll pack a satchel.” He turned from the door and made for the kitchen.

I hurried back to the smoking-room. Nebogipfel had donned his schoolboy’s cap; he had gathered up his notes and was slipping them into a cardboard file. Filby — poor old devil! — was down on his knees beneath the window-frame; he had his bony knees tucked up against his concave chest, and his hands were up before his face, like a boxer’s guard.

I knelt before him. “Filby. Filby, old chap—” I reached out to him but he flinched from me. “You must come with us. It’s not safe here.”

“Safe? And will it be safer with you? Eh? You… conjurer. You quack.” His eyes, flooded with tears from the dust, were bright, like windows, and he hurled those words at me as if they were the vilest insults imaginable. “I remember you — when you scared the life out of all of us with that damned ghost trick of yours, that Christmas-time. Well, I’ll not be fooled again!”

I restrained myself from shaking him. “Oh, have some sense, man! Time travel is no trick — and certainly this desperate War of yours isn’t!”

There was a touch on my shoulder. It was Nebogipfel; his pale fingers seemed to glow in the fragments of daylight from the window. “We cannot help him,” he said gently.

Filby had dropped his head into his trembling, liver-spotted hands now, and I was convinced he could no longer hear me.

“But we can’t leave him like this!”

“What will you do — restore him to 1891? The 1891 you remember doesn’t even exist any more — except across some unreachable Dimension.”

Now Moses burst into the smoking-room, a small, crammed knapsack in his hand; he had donned his epaulets and his gasmask was at his waist. “I’m ready,” he gasped. Nebogipfel and I did not respond immediately, and Moses glanced from one to the other of us. “What is it? What are you waiting for?”

I reached out and squeezed Filby’s shoulder. At least he did not resist, and I took this as a last shred of friendly contact between us.

That was the last I saw of him.

We looked out into the street. This had been a comparatively quiet part of London, to my memory; but today people poured through the Queen’s Gate Terrace, running, stumbling, bumping up against each other. Men and women had simply decanted from their homes and work-places. Most of them had their heads hidden by gas-masks, but where I could see faces, I read pain, misery and fear.

There seemed to be children everywhere, mostly in drab school uniforms, with their small, shaped gas-masks; for the schools had evidently been closed up. The children wandered about the street, crying for their parents; I considered the agony of a mother searching for a child in the huge, teeming ant-hill which London had become, and my imagination recoiled.

Some people carried the paraphernalia of the working day — briefcases and handbags, familiar and useless — and others had already gathered up bundles of household belongings, and bore them in bulging suitcases or wrapped up in curtains and sheets. We saw one thin, intense man stumbling along with an immense dresser, packed no doubt with valuables, balanced on the handlebars and saddle of a bicycle. The wheel of his cycle bumped against backs and legs. “Go on! Go on!” he cried, to those ahead of him.