Journey to the Center of Time

Stanton, now in charge of the research company, confronts scientists and sets a hard deadline: without clear proof that their time travel experiments work, funding will be cut. He presses Mark Mannin, Doc Gordon, and Karen White for tangible results. The ultimatum triggers renewed urgency among the team, pushing them toward risky experiments.

In a desperate bid, the team pushes the equipment beyond safe limits and activates the time machine. Their miscalibrations send them 5000 years into the future. They must adapt to an unfamiliar world and the dangers of an unstable machine.

They meet aliens led by Vina who seek Earth as a new home. Earth is in the midst of a devastating global war, making humans wary of outsiders. Vina pleads for help and urges them to warn humanity, but she dies in a human attack.

The travelers retreat to their time chamber and decide to go back to the present to warn humanity of the looming danger. They prepare for their return journey, hoping to avert catastrophe on Earth. Their mission shifts from exploration to urgent warning.

They detect another time machine approaching, creating a perilous collision scenario. Manning tries to establish contact but is unable to communicate with the stranger vessel. Their weapon fails to stop it, forcing Stanton to boost power and destroy the rival machine.

The machine overshoots the present and lands in the age of dinosaurs, where the ruby key is destroyed and the travelers are stranded. They face prehistoric dangers and must survive with their craft crippled. Hope for a quick return fades as time distorts around them.

While exploring nearby, they discover a cave studded with jewels, including rubies. Greed overcomes Stanton as he stuffs his pockets with precious gems and abandons the other scientists. He returns to the time machine, replaces the ruby, and takes off, leaving them behind.

On his return trip, Stanton confronts another time traveling machine on a collision course. He hears a radio broadcast from Manning and realizes he is racing toward the earlier version of his own machine. A blast from the earlier self kills him.

Meanwhile, Gordon stumbles and falls into molten lava and dies. Mark and Karen observe that their time machine has vanished and later reappears again, adding to the sense that time has gone awry.

They board the reappeared time machine and attempt to return to their present, but arrive a day before their initial departure. They witness their past selves living in a much slower time rate, a baffling consequence of the timeline collapse.

Realizing the timeline is tangled, they rush to repair the damage, but their actions only deepen the confusion. They become hopelessly lost in time and space, unable to restore a coherent present.

In the final scene, the time machine drifts among the stars with the two scientists aboard, heading toward an unknown fate. The movie closes on a note of unresolved peril as their fate hangs in the balance.