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he contemplated the possibilities.
    I was not thinking quite as clearly as I should have been; I’d been working long and hard in the previous few days and my brain was still befuddled with the effects of the stimulants. As they cleared out of my system, though, I began to see a way through the problem. I had no confidence that I could persuade anyone to take my doubts seriously unless I could complete the work and prove my case. For that I needed more time. So I decided the best thing would be to get hold of some. In the meantime, I had to make sure no one else fiddled around with the machine in my absence.
    Going into hiding was not an option, of course. I could, perhaps, have evaded detection for a day or so, but not for much longer than that. In fact, there was only one possibility, which was to use the machine myself. I knew it worked, but it was hard to get everything ready on my own and with no one noticing.
    I managed, though; I rerouted the power supply from a few generators to ensure that all trace of my destination would be erased and the data hopelessly jumbled when I left. I had built that possibility in years ago, as I had seen enough of scientific integrity by then not to trust my colleagues further than I could throw them. If Hanslip and Oldmanter wanted to experiment, then let them. They’d have to do all the work themselves from scratch. I doubted they’d get very far.
    It took a long time to prepare, but at one in the morning I was ready to go. As I heard the hum in the final moments before thepower engaged, I felt very pleased with myself. I was prepared to bet Hanslip hadn’t anticipated my move. He worked purely in the realm of calculated rationality; I did not. In a world of chemically induced sanity, a little lunacy confers immense advantages.
    Perhaps I should explain what this is about? There is a risk, I am sure, that I am giving the impression that I was petulant and egotistical, that my only concern was to bathe in the light of glory that was my due.
    Very well; I admit that was a reason. But only one. There were other issues at stake, and my desire that the whole of humanity should not be wiped out played a small part in my decision also.
    It began with my unofficial experiments, which demonstrated that the fundamental assumptions underlying the entire project were wrong. Not to put too fine a point on it, I stuffed one of the cleaning staff into the machine to see what happened. He was a somewhat nervous fellow called Gunter, who needed a lot of tranquillisers to make him cooperate. Admittedly, I should not have done this, especially as I did not ask official permission first, but – there we are. I couldn’t use an animal, or an inanimate object, as the chances of finding it again were non-existent. Only a human being could possibly be tracked.
    He was. Alex Chang, one of the most junior people in the department and thus too insecure to snitch on me, was given the job and spotted the unfortunate cleaner in 1895. Three hundred and twenty-seven years back. It was a good piece of work on Chang’s part, as he had to learn a lot of new techniques to analyse the evidence. Gunter had gone mad when he arrived and, not surprisingly, had eventually entered the priesthood. Without going into the details – what I had done was not really ethical and I knew it would be used against me – I tried to tell Hanslip that we had a problem, but he couldn’t see what I was on about.
    ‘Don’t you understand?’ I told him one evening. ‘This whole project is based on the assumption that what we are doing is not time travel. Laws of physics. Accepted and proven for twocenturies or more. All we can possibly do is transit to a parallel universe. Right?’
    He nodded, looking around him to see if there was anyone he could summon for protection in case I got too vehement.
    ‘Wrong,’ I went on. ‘Wrong, wrong. It’s all wrong. I know it is. Think. In theory, we should be able to access any number of