Mists of Dawn Read Free Page A

he shared with his uncle. Rome in the days of the Caesars—a mighty city, hub of a fabulous empire, rich with glories that lived on still in the pages of history, that had never been forgotten. Rome with its seven hills, its mighty temples, its art and literature, its bloody games in the roaring Colosseum, now an empty ruin in modern Rome . . .
    Rome—with the great figures of history walking its streets under a warm Italian sun. Julius Caesar himself, that wonderful, lonely man, and his adopted son, Augustus. Cicero, rich in eloquence, and the plotter Catiline, who heard the orations that spelled his doom. The twisted Nero and the mad Caligula. The curious and appealing Claudius—did he yet live, lost somewhere in the mists of time?
    Could they go back?
    The darkness was upon them now, and it was hard to see. Mark and Doctor Nye knew the road well, however, and proceeded without difficulty. The rain seemed to be suspended above them, waiting only for a trigger to loose a deluge. Flashes of lightning lit up the rocks and pines around them, and the booming of the thunder drew nearer as the road climbed into the hills near Ruidoso. Fang was very much subdued in the face of the storm, and kept tangling himself up in Mark’s legs. Mark could smell the wet smell of rain around them.
    “The Rome of the Caesars is closer than you think,” Doctor Nye said quietly, sensing his nephew’s thoughts. “Rome is only two weeks away.”
    Mark stopped short and then moved on again, his mind spinning with surprise. Two weeks? That meant—
    “It’s all finished,” Doctor Nye went on, his pipe a red glow in the darkness. “I finished the actual construction last night, and all it needs now are a few final touches and supplies. Better brush up on your Latin, Mark.”
    “Hie, haec, hoc,” said Mark, with a lightness that he did not feel. He knew how much this meant to his uncle. It was the result of twenty years of work, twenty years of dreams.
    A machine to carry man backward in time—now a dream no longer!
    The two walked on in silence, working their way back to Doctor Nye’s mountain lodge. Mark could not help feeling a little in awe of the man who walked beside him. Doctor Nye had been father and mother to him ever since he was five years old, when his parents-had been lost in a plane crash. Doctor Nye, with no children of his own, had survived the disaster which had taken the life of his own wife, as well as of Mark’s parents, and had been closer to Mark than to any other person in the world. Yet Mark felt strange beside him tonight, much as he might have felt walking beside Archimedes, Da Vinci, Edison, Einstein—or perhaps. Columbus, sailing into the unknown . . .
    The unknown. What could be more mysterious, more wonderful, than a journey through time into the fabled past of Earth, that most incredible of all planets?
    Doctor Robert Nye, who was a nuclear physicist working with the rocket experiments at near-by White Sands, had all his life been fascinated by the history of ancient Rome. The idea of time travel had been a hobby with him all his adult life, and he had pursued that hobby with the single-minded devotion and energy which men give only to their special dreams. Einstein’s theoretical work on space-time had started him in the right direction, and the harnessing of the atom at Los Alamos had provided him a magnificent power source that enabled him to focus and direct the vast energies necessary to warp an organic substance back through space-time.
    And now, at last, he was ready.
    Mark Nye had seen Italy many times, on trips abroad with his uncle. He had seen Rome and had journeyed across the sea to North Africa where the genius Hannibal had threatened the Roman rule. He had traveled in France and Germany, where he had seen the sites of ancient man—which had fascinated him, just as the aboriginal lore of the Indians of the United States had always fascinated both Mark and his uncle. He had studied the past,