A/N - I definitely don't own either the Time Machine or Quatermass. Please let me know what you think.
He had been travelling into the early 20th century, and stopping off at different intervals of 5 to 10 years - the Time Traveller had only stopped in 1940 when his Time Machine had been buffeted from side to side, making him fearful a part had been worn out before he saw the fighting in the air; he had seen engravings, illustrations depicting people flying, but he could easily tell from his earlier sightings of the flying machines known as 'Spitfires' according to the newspapers he had read, operated by the Royal Air Force, these machines made those crude illustrations look primitive, but the Second World War, as later historians called it, was brutal.
And the Time Traveller believed that, after he had witnessed it more than once thanks to his journeys in the Time Machine, and ever since he had learnt of the Many-Worlds hypothesis wherein all time travel into the past created a new, divergent temporal reality, to prevent what a 20th century physicist called Stephen Hawking referred to as the Chronology protection Hypothesis, which asked where all the time travellers from the future were, the Time Traveller had seen dozens of new futures unfolding before his eyes, and he had become very good at reading one of the histories for differences with the others; a reality where the Nazis conquered Britain and much of Europe, a world where the British launched a number of aircraft and rockets after their Prime Minister quietly ordered for preparations to begin for a new fresh conflict to deal with Nazi Germany, who were becoming increasingly war like and aggressive, a world where Adolf Hitler died during an assassination and his successor was a more intelligent Nazi who realised Germany's gains were enough for the time being and they needed to dial it down, or a world where the opposite occurred after a similar assassination.
However, one of the more unique worlds he had seen was the one where the First World War was still being waged after it had changed leadership partway through.
But while the Time Traveller was awed by the scale of differences between all the worlds, one thing was constant; in virtually every world, no matter the differences, no matter if what he found was similar but totally wrong, the Eloi and the Morlocks would rise. It seemed inevitable.
Of course, there were differences between those worlds, too. But as the Time Traveller passed through into the 20th century, he stopped during one of his customary visits.
After making sure to remove the levers from the console, the Time Traveller left the Time Machine and found a newspaper article.
"BRITAIN BLASTS OFF INTO SPACE!"
The Time Traveller had read of and seen many miracles in several history books in some of the realities that he'd encountered over the course of his travels, but space travel was not something really new to him. But while he had seen Gagarin, Aldrin and so many other pioneers, this one was a different story. The Time Traveller waited until somebody dumped a newspaper (he wasn't sure if the money he had on himself would be enough, but while some of the realities he had visited were different in some subtle way, he had been time-travelling long enough to realise it was better to be safe than sorry) before he got the full story.
After speed-reading a few paragraphs, the story unfolded for him nicely enough. A scientist called Professor Bernard Quatermass, who was a noted rocket scientist who had worked for the British government during this version of the Second World War, had been working on building a space station in orbit around the Earth. A space station? The Time Traveller's memory jogged as he remembered clearly some of the space stations he had heard and read about, but he knew they would come later. This was the 1950s.
Professor Quatermass and his team at the British Rocket Group had spent the last few years designing a way of building a space station, discovering extremely quickly if they were to just simply send the whole thing up in one go, then the amount of rocket fuel would prove to be far greater than what was practical.
There had been some who called for the project to be scrapped, but the argument for the project to remain was far greater although there were good reasons for the argument to be waged in the first place. In this world, the British had put up a stronger fight against Nazi Germany, although many believed the cost was terrifyingly damning, and yet much of the country was still ravaged by the bombings; London itself was still repairing itself from the Blitz, and would need a great deal of attention; many in the government and outside had spent months and months championing for that precious money to not be squandered away in rockets and chemicals but to rebuild Britain's cultural heritage.
But the doubters were silenced when Professor Quatermass's team were inspired to simply break the space station up into modules, and segments, and then ship them up in rockets to be reassembled in space. The training and the logistics for completing these tasks and for answering the questions that were expected - and the Time Traveller had formed a few of them in his mind when he'd read that part; how did you build a space station in orbit? How long would it take? What would happen if there was an accident? - but the project went ahead, and the first structure to be constructed and placed in orbit around Earth.
Already a group of trained scientists had been sent to the station and had begun a number of experiments in an environment of no gravity to see how the human body coped, while they ran a number of delicate experiments to discover new scientific truths that nobody could expect. As a scientist himself even if his knowledge was outdated by this point, the Time Traveller was excited by the idea of new sciences and questions being answered and new ideas sprouting like flowers appearing from the ground in the springtime.
The Time Traveller, taking the newspaper with him, went back to the Time Machine. Once he was back and slotted the levers back into the console, the Time Traveller moved ahead two years. It might have seemed like a short time, but the Time Traveller had discovered that big things could happen in a relatively short span of time.
Leaving the Time Machine again and making it secure, the Time Traveller spent the rest of that day he was visiting trying to look up what new discoveries had been made; fortunately, there were enough books on space travel now for him to peruse. To his amazement, because of the zero gravity environment, new medical techniques had been discovered and had gone to save lives, and electronic devices had been designed to help pregnant mothers and doctors see their unborn children.
As he left that version of the 20th century, the Time Traveller decided to travel to the year AD 2022 to see just how much had been discovered in the decades since.