“Hist!” Belgotai drew him into the tunnel of an alley. They crouched there while four black-caped men of the Watch strode past. In the wan red light, Saunders had a glimpse of high cheekbones, half-Oriental features, the metallic gleam of guns slung over their shoulders.

They made their way to the machine where it lay between lowering houses crouched in a night of fear and waiting. Belgotai laughed again, a soft, joyous ring in the dark. “Freedom!” he whispered.

They crawled into it and Saunders set the controls for a hundred years ahead. Belgotai scowled. “Most like de world’ll be very tame and quiet den,” he said.

“If I get a way to return,” said Saunders, ‘‘I’ll carry you on whenever you want to go.”

“Or yuh could carry me back a hundred years from now,” said the warrior. “Blast away, den!”

* * *

3100 a.d. A waste of blackened, fused rock. Saunders switched on the Geiger counter and it clattered crazily. Radioactive! Some hellish atomic bomb had wiped Liung-Wei from existence. He leaped another century, shaking.

3200 a.d. The radioactivity was gone, but the desolation remained, a vast vitrified crater under a hot, still sky, dead and lifeless. There was little prospect of walking across it in search of man, nor did Saunders want to get far from the machine. If he should be cut off from it…

By 3500, soil had drifted back over the ruined land and a forest was growing. They stood in a drizzling rain and looked around them.

“Big trees,” said Saunders. “This forest has stood for a long time without human interference.”

“Maybe man went back to de caves?” suggested Belgotai.

“I doubt it. Civilization was just too widespread for a lapse into total savagery. But it may be a long ways to a settlement.”

“Le’s go ahead, den!” Belgotai’s eyes gleamed with interest.

The forest still stood for centuries thereafter. Saunders scowled in worry. He didn’t like this business of going farther and farther from his time, he was already too far ahead ever to get back without help. Surely, in all ages of human history—

4100 a.d. They flashed into materialization on a broad grassy sward where low, rounded buildings of something that looked like tinted plastic stood between fountains, statues, and bowers. A small aircraft whispered noiselessly overhead, no sign of motive power on its exterior.

There were humans around, young men and women who wore long colorful capes over light tunics. They crowded forward with a shout. Saunders and Belgotai stepped out, raising hands in a gesture of friendship. But the warrior kept his hands close to his gun.

The language was a flowing, musical tongue with only a baffling hint of familiarity. Had times changed that much?

They were taken to one of the buildings. Within its cool, spacious interior, a grave, bearded man in ornate red robes stood up to greet them. Someone else brought in a small machine reminiscent of an oscilloscope with microphone attachments. The man set it on the table and adjusted its dials.