Dear God! How the devil could such a tiny little box have captured them in pictures like this, color pictures, moving pictures? He pressed the controls she had manipulated and the box whirred softly, the pictures flashing with such speed he couldn’t follow the motion. People racing backwards, colors flashing and rippling across the surface, a blur of sight and confusion. When he fumbled at the controls again, hands shaking, the motion slowed abruptly. He found himself staring at a place straight out of nightmare. Vast open rooms, with whole buildings inside, hundreds of tiny people moving about the floor and climbing staircases made of metal, insanely colored lights glowing in strange shapes. “What is this place?” he demanded, voice shaking.
She blinked slowly and focused on the camera he held. “Shangri-La Station,” she murmured. “The time terminal . . .”
Lachley drew a whole series of deep breaths, gulping down the damp air, gradually steadied his shaking nerves. “You,” he said slowly, enunciating each word with care, “are from my future?”
“Had to come down time, through the gate, to catch the Ripper, to photograph him . . .”
He didn’t really believe it, didn’t want to believe it, such things were fantasy, the maunderings of popular authors like that Frenchman Jules Verne. Yet he was holding a camera that no craftsman in the British Empire could possibly have constructed, made of things Lachley had never seen or heard of, and the bitch was drugged, couldn’t be lying, not with what he’d given her. Excitement stirred to life, with tantalizing glimpses of a world which could offer him more power than anything he’d dreamed possible. “Eddy,” he whispered, “tell me about Eddy. Prince Albert Victor. When does he become king?”