Mists of Dawn (17 page)

The
time
dial
now
was
set
for
the
year
50,000
b.c.!

Mark
shuddered.
He
was
going
back
in
time
fifty thousand
years
before
the
birth
of
Christ—and
there was
nothing
that
he
could
do
about
it.
He
sensed
the time
stream
flowing
by
him
as
the
gray
sphere
carried him
back,
back
across
the
centuries
and
the
tens
of centuries.
He
knew
roughly
where
he
was
going,
all right—that
was
the
trouble.

Still
somewhat
dizzy,
Mark
sat
down
again
on
the floor
to
take
stock
of
the
situation.
He
forced
himself to
examine
his
problem
rationally,
as
Doctor
Nye
had trained
him
to
do.
Frantic
emotion
certainly
had
a place—too
large
a
place,
perhaps,
in
human
existence, but
its
place
was
emphatically
not
in
the
solving
of problems.
Mark
knew
that
he
had
a
brain,
but
that was
not
enough.
He
had
to
use
that
brain.

Mark
thrust
the
humming
of
the
space-time
machine from
his
mind.
He
ignored
the
gray
eeriness
that
surrounded
him.
He
did
not
look
again
at
the
red
eye
in the
control
panel.
As
calmly
as
possible,
he
thought the
problem
through.

The
space-time
machine
was
carrying
him
back through
time
and
space.
In
space,
of
course,
he
would no
longer
have
Italy
for
his
destination.
As
he
understood
it,
however,
the
extra
thousands
of
years
would throw
him
off
his
course
not
too
far
toward
the
northwest—probably
into
what
in
modern
times
was
known as
France
and
Germany.
In
time,
the
problem
was more
difficult.
Mark
thanked
his
lucky
star
that
his uncle
had
drilled
him
so
thoroughly
in
history
and
prehistory.
The
year
50,000
b.c.,
he
knew,
would
place him
in
the
Pleistocene,
or
Ice
Age.
Further,
it
would place
him
in
the
last,
or
most
recent
part
of
it,
known as
the
Upper
Pleistocene.
Beyond
that,
a
peculiar
problem
presented
itself.
Authorities
disagreed
violently
on the
exact
time
sequence
of
this
last
part
of
the
Ice
Age, and
the
year
50,000
b.c
.
might
fall
almost
anywhere, according
to
which
system
you
followed.
However,
his uncle
had
believed
that
the
year
50,000
b.c
.
would
fall roughly
in
the
Upper
Paleolithic,
or
toward
the
end
of the
Last
Ice
Age—and
that
was
as
good
a
guess
as
any. He
would
just
have
to
wait
and
see.

Mark
looked
carefully
around
the
inside
of
the space-time
machine,
hoping
against
hope
for
some
sort of
miraculous
aid.
But
there
was
no
miracle.
Everything
was
just
as
it
had
been
when
his
uncle
had
left him—how
long
ago?—to
answer
the
telephone.
There were
no
supplies
of
any
sort
in
the
machine—no
food and
no
water.
And
he
knew
that
he
would
have
to spend
at
the
very
least
two
weeks
in
the
Ice
Age
before he
could
hope
to
return,
in
order
to
give
the
energy potential
time
to
rebuild
itself.
That
meant
that,
somehow,
he
would
have
to
go
out
after
food
and
water.