these new sensations. But presently a fresh series of impressions

grew up in my mind--a certain curiosity and therewith a certain

dread--until at last they took complete possession of me. What

strange developments of humanity, what wonderful advances upon our

rudimentary civilization, I thought, might not appear when I came to

look nearly into the dim elusive world that raced and fluctuated

before my eyes! I saw great and splendid architecture rising about

me, more massive than any buildings of our own time, and yet, as it

seemed, built of glimmer and mist. I saw a richer green flow up the

hill-side, and remain there, without any wintry intermission. Even

through the veil of my confusion the earth seemed very fair. And so

my mind came round to the business of stopping.

'The peculiar risk lay in the possibility of my finding some

substance in the space which I, or the machine, occupied. So long

as I travelled at a high velocity through time, this scarcely

mattered; I was, so to speak, attenuated--was slipping like a vapour

through the interstices of intervening substances! But to come to

a stop involved the jamming of myself, molecule by molecule, into

whatever lay in my way; meant bringing my atoms into such intimate

contact with those of the obstacle that a profound chemical

reaction--possibly a far-reaching explosion--would result, and blow

myself and my apparatus out of all possible dimensions--into the

Unknown. This possibility had occurred to me again and again while I

was making the machine; but then I had cheerfully accepted it as an

unavoidable risk--one of the risks a man has got to take! Now the

The Time Machine