He added a few remarks about himself. Belgotai was of a dying age, the past era of small states who employed mercenaries to fight their battles. Born on Mars, Belgotai had hired out over the whole Solar System. But the little mercenary companies were helpless before the organized levies of the rising nations, and after the annihilation of his band Belgotai had fled to Earth where he dragged out a weary existence as thief and assassin. He had little to look forward to.

“Nobody wants a free comrade now,” he said ruefully. “If de Watch don’t catch me first, Ih’ll hang when de Atlantics take de city.”

Saunders nodded with a certain sympathy.

Belgotai leaned close with a gleam in his slant eyes. “But yuh can help me, Mahtin Saundahs,” he hissed. “And help yuhself too.”

“Eh?” Saunders blinked wearily at him.

“Sure, sure. Take me wid yuh, out of dis damned time. Dey can’t help yuh here, dey know no more about time travel dan yuh do—most likely dey’ll trow yuh in de calabozo and smash yuh machine. Yuh have to go on. Take me!”

Saunders hesitated, warily. What did he really know? How much truth was in Belgotai’s story? How far could he trust—

“Set me off in some time when a free comrade can fight again. Meanwhile Ih’ll help. Ih’m a good man wid gun or vibrodagger. Yuh can’t go batting alone into de future.”

Saunders wondered. But what the hell—it was plain enough that this period was of no use to him. And Belgotai had saved him, even if the Watch wasn’t as bad as he claimed. And—well—he needed someone to talk to, if nothing else. Someone to help him forget Sam Hull and the gulf of centuries separating him from Eve.

Decision came. “Okay.”

“Wonnaful! Yuh’ll no be sorry, Mahtin.” Belgotai stood up. “Come, le’s be blasting off.”

“Now?”

“De sooner de better. Someone may find yuh machine. Den it’s too late.”

“But—you’ll want to make ready—say goodbye—”

Belgotai slapped his pouch. “All Ih own is heah.” Bitterness underlay his reckless laugh. “Ih’ve none to say good-bye to, except mih creditors. Come!”

Half dazed, Saunders followed him out of the tavern. This time-hopping was going too fast for him, he didn’t have a chance to adjust.

For instance, if he ever got back to his own time he’d have descendants in this age. At the rate at which lines of descent spread, there would be men in each army who had his own and Eve’s blood, warring on each other without thought of the tenderness which had wrought their very beings. But then, he remembered wearily, he had never considered the common ancestors he must have with men he’d shot out of the sky in the war he once had fought.

Men lived in their own times, a brief flash of light ringed with an enormous dark, and it was not in their nature to think beyond that little span of years. He began to realize why time travel had never been common.