There were just three of us left.
"Remember me," the short dark technician called out. "Remember Charli Nate! As long as you remember me, I'll never… "
Coypu and I were alone, the walls going, the air darkening.
"The end! Touch it!" he called out. Was his voice weaker?
I stumbled, half fell toward the glowing end of the helix, my fingers outstretched. There was no sensation, but when I touched it, I was instantly surrounded by the same green glow, could barely sec through it. The professor was at a console, working the controls, reaching for a rather large switch.
Pulling it down…
Chapter 3
Everything stopped.
Professor Coypu stood frozen at the controls with his hand locked on the closed switch. I had been looking in his direction, or I would not have seen this because my eyes were fixed rigidly ahead. My body as well—and my brain gave a flutter of panic and tried to bounce around in its bony pan as I realized that I had stopped breathing. For all I knew, my heart wasn't beating either. Something had gone wrong, I was sure of that, since the time-helix was still tightly coiled. More soundless panic as Coypu grew transparent and the walls behind him took on a definitely hazy quality. It was all going, fading before my eyes. Would I be next? There was no way to know.
A primitive part of my mind, the apeman's heir, gibbered and wailed and rushed about in little circles. Yet at the same time I felt a cold detachment and interest; it isn't everyone who is privileged to watch the dissolving of his world while hanging from a helical force field that may possibly whip him back into the remote past. It was a privilege I would be happy to pass on to any volunteers. None presented themselves, so I hung there, popeyed and stiff as a statue while the laboratory faded away around me and I was floating in interstellar space. Apparently even the asteroid on which the Special Corps base had been built no longer had any reality in this new universe.