As I stood there, the full moon came up, yellow, in the north-east. The little figures below stopped moving about, and I shivered in the cold night air. I decided to go down and find a place to sleep.
I looked for the White Sphinx on its bronze base. I could see the silver birch beside it, the black rhododendron bushes, and the little lawn. I looked at the lawn again. “No,” I said firmly to myself, “that isn’t the lawn.”
But it was the lawn. The Time Machine was gone!
At once I thought: I might never get back to my own time. In a moment I was running down the hill in terror. Once I fell and cut my face, but I jumped up and ran on, with blood running down my cheek. All the time I said to myself, “They have moved it a little. They have pushed it under the bushes.” But I knew it was not true.
When I reached the lawn, there was no sign of the machine. Above me the sphinx shone white in the moonlight. It seemed to smile at me.
The little people were too weak to move it. That was what frightened me: some other power, which I knew nothing about, had taken my invention. But of one thing I was sure. Without its levers, the machine could not travel in time. It had only been hidden somewhere. But where?
I think I went a little mad. I ran in and out among the bushes and hit them with my fists until my hands were bleeding. Then I went into the great stone building. In a second hall about twenty of the little people were sleeping on cushions. I lit a match. “Where is my Time Machine?” I shouted, like an angry child, and I shook them. Some laughed, but most of them looked very frightened. Then I understood how foolish I was. I thought these people had forgotten fear, and I was teaching it to them again.
I ran out into the moonlight again. I felt completely alone, a strange animal in an unknown world. I searched among the ruins and touched strange creatures in the black shadows. At last I lay on the ground near the sphinx and cried until I slept. When I woke, it was broad daylight, and two sparrows were hopping round me on the grass.
In the clear daylight I could think calmly. “Suppose the worst,” I said. “Suppose the machine is lost. Then I must be patient, learn the ways of these people, and find out how I lost it. In the end, perhaps, I can make another.” It was a poor hope, but better than none.
But probably the machine had only been taken away. I looked carefully at the ground. There was a long trail of torn grass, from the place where I had left the machine to the base of the sphinx. Next to it were strange, narrow footprints. I looked closely at the base. It was made of bronze, with large panels on each side. I knocked on them. The base was hollow. There were no handles and no keyholes, but perhaps the panels were doors that opened from the inside. My Time Machine was inside that base, I was sure. But how had it got there?
Then two of the little people came past. I pointed to the bronze base and tried to show them that I wanted to open it. At once they looked at me as if I had said something terribly rude, and they walked away. I tried a sweet little man in white next. When he turned away too, I lost my temper. I caught him by his robe and began to pull him towards the sphinx. Then I saw the horror in his face, and I let him go.
I hit the bronze panels with my fists, and then with a big stone from the river. I thought I heard something inside, like a laugh, but I must have been wrong. Nothing happened.
At last I walked away towards the hill. “Patience,” I said to myself. “If you want your machine back, leave the sphinx alone. Learn about this world, watch it, and in the end you will find the answers.” Then suddenly I saw how funny my situation was. I had worked for years to reach the future, and now I wanted desperately to get out of it. I laughed out loud.
For the next few days I learnt as much of their language as I could. I tried to put the Time Machine out of my mind until I knew more. But I never went more than a few miles from the White Sphinx.