“I give up,” said Saunders. “I can’t argue with you.”

They were shown through the spaceship’s immense interior, the luxurious apartments of the expedition, the looming intricate machinery which did its own thinking. Arsfel tried to show them his art, his recorded music, his psycho-books, but it was no use, they didn’t have the understanding.

Savages! Could an Australian aborigine have appreciated Rembrandt, Beethoven, Kant, or Einstein? Could he have lived happily in sophisticated New York society?

“We’d best go,” muttered Belgotai. “We don’t belong heah.”

Saunders nodded. Civilization had gone too far for them, they could never be more than frightened pensioners in its hugeness. Best to get on their way again.

“I would advise you to leap ahead for long intervals,” said Arsfel. “Galactic civilization won’t have spread out this far for many thousands of years, and certainly whatever native culture Sol develops won’t be able to help you.” He smiled. “It doesn’t matter if you overshoot the time when the process you need is invented. The records won’t be lost, I assure you. From here on, you are certain of encountering only peace and enlightenment…unless, of course, the barbarians of Terra get hostile, but then you can always leave them behind. Sooner or later, there will be true civilization here to help you.”

“Tell me honestly,” said Saunders. “Do you think the negative time machine will ever be invented?”

One of the beings from Quulhan shook his strange head. “I doubt it,” he said gravely. “We would have had visitors from the future.”

“They might not have cared to see your time,” argued Saunders desperately. “They’d have complete records of it. So they’d go back to investigate more primitive ages, where their appearance might easily pass unnoticed.”

“You may be right,” said Arsfel. His tone was disconcertingly like that with which an adult comforts a child by a white lie.

“Le’s go!” snarled Belgotai.

* * *

In 26,000 the forests still stood and the pyramid had become a high hill where trees nodded and rustled in the wind.

In 27,000 a small village of wood and stone houses stood among smiling grain fields.

In 28,000 men were tearing down the pyramid, quarrying it for stone. But its huge bulk was not gone before 30,000 a.d., and a small city had been built from it.

Minutes ago, thought Saunders grayly, they had been talking to Lord Arsfel of Astracyr, and now he was five thousand years in his grave.

In 31,000 they materialized on one of the broad lawns that reached between the towers of a high and proud city. Aircraft swarmed overhead and a spaceship, small beside Arsfel’s but nonetheless impressive, was standing nearby.

“Looks like de Empire’s got heah,” said Belgotai.

“I don’t know,” said Saunders. “But it looks peaceful, anyway. Let’s go out and talk to people.”

They were received by tall, stately women in white robes of classic lines. It seemed that the Matriarchy now ruled Sol, and would they please conduct themselves as befitted the inferior sex? No, the Empire hadn’t ever gotten out here; Sol paid tribute, and there was an Imperial legate at Sirius, but the actual boundaries of Galactic culture hadn’t changed for the past three millennia. Solar civilization was strictly home-grown and obviously superior to the alien influence of the Vro-Hi.