‘‘I’m not looking for any, Doc” said Saunders. “Eve here won’t believe we aren’t going to be eaten by monsters with stalked eyes and long fangs. I keep telling her all we’re going to do is check your automatic machines, if we can find them, and make a few astronomical observations, and come back.”

“There’ll be people in the future,” said Eve.

“Oh, well, if they invite us in for a drink we won’t say no,” shrugged Hull. “Which reminds me—” He fished a pint out of his capacious coverall pocket. We ought to drink a toast or something, huh?”

Saunders frowned a little. He didn’t want to add to Eve’s impression of a voyage into darkness. She was worried enough, poor kid, poor, lovely kid. “Hell,” he said, “we’ve been back to nineteen fifty-three and seen the house standing. We’ve been ahead to nineteen ninety-three and seen the house standing. Nobody home at either time. These jaunts are too dull to rate a toast.”

“Nothing,” said Hull, “is too dull to rate a drink.” He poured and they touched glasses, a strange little ceremony in the utterly prosaic laboratory. “Bon voyage!”

“Bon voyage.” Eve tried to smile, but the hand that lifted the glass to her lips trembled a little.

“Come on,” said Hull. “Let’s go, Mart. Sooner we set out, the sooner we can get back.”

“Sure.” With a gesture of decision, Saunders put down his glass and swung toward the machine. “Good-bye, Eve. I’ll see you in a couple of hours—after a hundred years or so.”

“So long—Martin.” She made the name a caress.

MacPherson beamed with avuncular approval.

Saunders squeezed himself into the forward compartment with Hull. He was a big man, long-limbed and wide-shouldered, with blunt, homely features under a shock of brown hair and wide-set gray eyes lined with crow’s feet from much squinting into the sun. He wore only the plain blouse and slacks of his work, stained here and there with grease or acid.

The compartment was barely large enough for the two of them, and crowded with instruments—as well as the rifle and pistol they had along entirely to quiet Eve’s fears. Saunders swore as the guns got in his way, and closed the door. The clang had in it an odd note of finality.

“Here goes,” said Hull unnecessarily.

Saunders nodded and started the projector warming up. Its powerful thrum filled the cabin and vibrated in his bones. Needles flickered across gauge faces, approaching stable values.

Through the single porthole he saw Eve waving. He waved back and then, with an angry motion, flung down the main switch.

The machine shimmered, blurred, and was gone. Eve drew a shuddering breath and turned back to MacPherson.

* * *

Grayness swirled briefly before them, and the drone of the projectors filled the machine with an enormous song. Saunders watched the gauges, and inched back the switch which controlled their rate of time advancement. A hundred years ahead—less the number of days since they’d sent the first automatic, just so that no dunderhead in the future would find it and walk off with it.