Their batteries were taken out of the machine for them and a small atomic engine with nearly limitless energy reserves installed in its place. Avard gave them a psychophone for communication with whoever they met in the future. Everyone was very nice and considerate. But Saunders found himself reluctantly agreeing with Belgotai. He didn’t care much for these overcivilized gentlefolk. He didn’t belong in this age.

Avard bade them grave good-bye. “It is strange to see you go,” he said. “It is a strange thought that you will still be traveling long after my cremation, that you will see things I cannot dream of.” Briefly, something stirred in his face. “In a way I envy you.” He turned away quickly, as if afraid of the thought. “Good-bye and good fortune.”

4300 a.d. The campus buildings were gone, but small, elaborate summerhouses had replaced them. Youths and girls in scanty rainbow-hued dress crowded around the machine.

“You are time travelers?” asked one of the young men, wide-eyed.

Saunders nodded, feeling too tired for speech. “Time travelers!” A girl squealed in delight. “I don’t suppose you have any means of traveling into the past these days?” asked Saunders hopelessly.

“Not that I know of. But please come, stay for a while, tell us about your journeys. This is the biggest lark we’ve had since the ship came from Sirius.”

There was no denying the eager insistence. The women, in particular, crowded around, circling them in a ring of soft arms, laughing and shouting and pulling them away from the machine. Belgotai grinned. “Le’s stay de night,” he suggested.

Saunders didn’t feel like arguing the point. There was time enough, he thought bitterly. All the time in the world.

It was a night of revelry. Saunders managed to get a few facts. Sol was a Galactic backwater these days, stuffed with mercantile wealth and guarded by nonhuman mercenaries against the interstellar raiders and conquerors. This region was one of many playgrounds for the children of the great merchant families, living for generations off inherited riches. They were amiable kids, but there was a mental and physical softness over them, and a deep inward weariness from a meaningless round of increasingly stale pleasure. Decadence.

Saunders finally sat alone under a moon that glittered with the diamond-points of domed cities, beside a softly lapping artificial lake, and watched the constellations wheel overhead—the far suns that man had conquered without mastering himself. He thought of Eve and wanted to cry, but the hollowness in his breast was dry and cold.

Chapter 3

Trapped in the Time-Stream

Belgotai had a thumping hangover in the morning which a drink offered by one of the women removed. He argued for a while about staying in this age. Nobody would deny him passage this time; they were eager for fighting men out in the Galaxy. But the fact that Sol was rarely visited now, that he might have to wait years, finally decided him on continuing.

“Dis won’ go on much longer,” he said. “Sol is too tempting a prize, an’ mercenaries aren’ allays loyal. Sooner or later, dere’ll be war on Eart’ again.”