“If we could recharge them—”

“We don’t have such equipment with us. But maybe—”

They climbed out of the ruined basement and looked eagerly towards the river. There was no sign of the village. It must have been torn down or otherwise destroyed still further back in the past at a point they’d been through.

“No help there,” said Saunders.

“We can look for a place. There must be people somewhere!”

“No doubt.” Saunders fought for calm. “But we could spend a long time looking for them, you know. And—” His voice wavered. “Sam, I’m not sure even recharging at intervals would help. It looks very much to me as if the curve of energy consumption is approaching a vertical asymptote.”

“Talk English, will you?” Hull’s grin was forced.

“I mean that beyond a certain number of years an infinite amount of energy may be required. Like the Einsteinian concept of light as the limiting velocity. As you approach the speed of light, the energy needed to accelerate increases ever more rapidly. You’d need infinite energy to get beyond the speed of light—which is just a fancy way of saying you can’t do it. The same thing may apply to time as well as space.”

“You mean—we can’t ever get back?”

“I don’t know.” Saunders looked desolately around at the smiling landscape. “I could be wrong. But I’m horribly afraid I’m right.”

Hull swore. “What’re we going to do about it?”

“We’ve got two choices,” Saunders said.

“One, we can hunt for people, recharge our batteries, and keep trying. Two, we can go into the future.”

“The future!”

“Uh-huh. Sometime in the future, they ought to know more about such things than we do. They may know a way to get around this effect. Certainly they could give us a powerful enough engine so that, if energy is all that’s needed, we can get back. A small atomic generator, for instance.”

Hull stood with bent head, turning the thought over in his mind. There was a meadowlark singing, somewhere, maddeningly sweet.

Saunders forced a harsh laugh. “But the very first thing on the agenda,” he said, “is breakfast.”

Chapter 2

Belgotai of Syrtis

The food was tasteless. They ate in a heavy silence, choking the stuff down. But in the end they looked at each other with a common resolution.

Hull grinned and stuck out a hairy paw. “It’s a hell of a roundabout way to get home,” he said, “but I’m for it.”

Saunders clasped hands with him, wordlessly. They went back to the machine.

“And now where?” asked the mechanic.

“It’s two thousand eight,” said Saunders.

“How about—well—two thousand five hundred A.D.?”

“Okay. It’s a nice round number. Anchors aweigh!”

The machine thrummed and shook. Saunders was gratified to notice the small power consumption as the years and decades fled by. At that rate, they had energy enough to travel to the end of the world.

Eve, Eve, I’ll come back. I’ll come back if I have to go ahead to Judgment Day…