Gödel got to his feet, a little stiffly; he was (I saw with gratitude) cradling the Plattnerite against his chest, and the jar was unbroken. “I think that one must have been in the grounds of the College. We must be grateful to be alive; for these walls could easily have collapsed in on us.”

So we progressed through those gloomy corridors. We were impeded twice by fallen masonry, but with a little effort we were able to clamber through. By now I was disoriented and quite lost; but Gödel — I could see him ahead of me, with the Plattnerite jar glowing under one arm — made his way quite confidently.

Within a few more minutes we reached the annex Wallis had called the CDV Development Division. Moses lifted his candle up, and the light glimmered about the big workshop. Save for the lack of lights, and one long, elaborate crack which ran diagonally across the ceiling, the workshop remained much as I remembered it. Engine parts, spare wheels and tracks, cans of oil and fuel, rags and overalls — all the paraphernalia of a workshop — lay about the floor; chains dangled from pulleys fixed to brackets on the ceiling, casting long, complex shadows. In the center of the floor I saw a half-drunk mug of tea, apparently set down with some care, with a thin layer of concrete dust scumming the liquid’s surface.

The one almost-complete Time-Car sat in the center of the floor, its bare gunmetal finish shining in the light of Moses’s candle. Moses stepped up to the vehicle and ran a hand along the rim of its boxy passenger compartment. “And this is it?”

I grinned. “The pinnacle of 1930s technology. A ’Universal Carrier,’ I think Wallis called it.”

“Well,” Moses said, “it’s scarcely an elegant design.”

“I don’t think elegance is the point,” I said: “This is a weapon of war: not of leisure, exploration or science.”

Gödel moved to the Time-Car, set the Plattnerite jar on the floor, and made to open one of the steel flasks welded to the hull of the vehicle. He wrapped his hands around the screw-cap lid and grunted with exertion, but could not budge it. He stepped back, panting. “We must prime the frame with Plattnerite,” he said. “Or—”

Moses set his candle on a shelf and cast about in the piles of tools, and emerged with a large adjustable wrench. “Here,” he said. “Let me try with this.” He closed the clamps about the cap’s rim and, with a little effort, got the cap unstuck.

Gödel took the Plattnerite jar and tipped the stuff into the flask. Moses moved around the Time-Car, unfixing the caps of the remaining flasks.

I made my way to the rear of the vehicle, where I found a door, held in place by a metal pin. I removed the pin, folded the door downwards, and clambered into the cabin. There were two wooden benches, each wide enough to take two or three people, and a single bucket seat at the front, facing a slit window. I sat in the driver’s bucket seat.

Before me was a simple steering wheel — I rested my hands on it — and a small control panel, fitted with dials, switches, levers and knobs; there were more levers close to the floor, evidently to be operated by the feet. The controls had a raw, unfinished look; the dials and switches were not labeled, and wires and mechanical transmission levers protruded from the rear of the panel.

Nebogipfel joined me in the cabin, and he stood at my shoulder; the strong, sweet smell of Morlock was almost overpowering in that enclosed space. Through the slit window I could see Gödel and Moses, filling up the flasks.

Gödel called, “You understand the principle of the CDV? This is all Wallis’s design, of course — I’ve had nothing much to do with the construction of it—”

I brought my face up against the slit window. “I am at the controls,” I said. “But they’re not labeled. And I can see nothing resembling a chronometric gauge.”

Gödel did not look up from his careful pouring. “I’ve a suspicion such niceties as chronometric dials aren’t yet fitted. This is an incomplete test vehicle, after all. Does that trouble you?”

“I have to admit the prospect of losing my bearings in time does not appeal to me very much,” I said, “but — no — it is scarcely important… One can always ask the natives!”

“The principle of the CDV is simple enough,” Gödel said. “The Plattnerite suffuses the sub-frames of the vehicle through a network of capillaries. It forms a kind of circuit… When you close the circuit, you will travel in time. Do you see? Most of the controls you have are to do with the petrol engine, transmission, and so forth; for the vehicle is also a functioning motor-car. But to close the time-circuit there is a blue toggle, on your dashboard. Can you recognize it?”

“I have it.”

Now Moses had fixed the last of the flask caps back into place, and he walked around the car to the door at its rear. He clambered in and placed his wrench on the floor, and he pounded his fists against the cabin’s inner walls. “A good, sturdy construction,” he said.

I said, “I think we are ready to depart.”

“But where — when — are we going to?”

“Does it matter? Away from here — that’s the only significant thing. Into the past — to try to rectify things…

“Moses, we are done with the Twentieth Century. Now we must take another leap into the dark. Our adventure is not over yet!”

His look of confusion dissolved, and I saw a reckless determination take its place; the muscles of his jaw set. “Then let’s do it, or be damned!”

Nebogipfel said: “I think we quite possibly will be.”

I called: “Professor Gödel — come aboard the car.”

“Oh, no,” he said, and he held his hands up before him. “My place is here.”

Moses pushed into the cabin behind me. “But London’s walls are collapsing around us — the German guns are only a few miles away — it’s hardly a safe place to be, Professor!”

“I do envy you, of course,” Gödel said. “To leave this wretched world with its wretched War…”

“Then come with us,” I said. “Seek that Final World of which you spoke—”

“I have a wife,” he said. His face was a pale streak in the candle-light.

“Where is she?”

“I lost her. We did not succeed in getting out together. I suppose she is in Vienna… I cannot imagine they would harm her, as punishment for my defection.”

There was a question in his voice, and I realized that this supremely logical man was looking to me, in that extreme moment, for the most illogical reassurance! “No,” I said, “I am sure she—”

But I never completed my sentence, for — without even the warning of a whistle in the air — a new shell fell, and this was the closest of all!

The last flicker of our candle showed me, in a flash-bulb slice of frozen time, how the westerly wall of the workshop burst inwards — simply that; it turned from a smooth, steady panel into a billowing cloud of figments and dust, in less than a heartbeat.

Then we were plunged into darkness.

The car rocked, and — “Down!” Moses called — I ducked — and a hail of masonry shards, quite lethal, rattled against the shell of the Time-Car.

Nebogipfel climbed forward; I could smell his sweet stink. His soft hand grasped my shoulder. “Close the switch,” he said.

I peered through the slit-window — and into utter darkness, of course. “What of Gödel?” I cried. “Professor!”

There was no reply. I heard a creak, quite ominous and heavy, from above the car, and there was a further clatter of falling masonry fragments.

“Close the switch,” Nebogipfel said urgently. “Can you not hear? The roof is collapsing — I — we will be crushed!”

“I’ll get him,” Moses said. In pitch darkness, I heard his boots clump over the car’s panels as he made his way to the rear of the cabin. “It will be fine — I’ve more candles…” His voice faded as he reached the rear of the cabin, and I heard his feet crunch on the rubble strewn floor -