“The patients are actually in those—coffins?”

“Yes. The Seaton generator throws an almost cubical field about the subject. You’ve seen pictures or movies of it—a totally reflecting region, six or seven feet on a side. This field is, as I said, inherently self-maintaining. I heard Seaton himself lecture once, and he said something like the field requiring finite time in which to break down—only there is no time in it. Anyway, we find it most convenient to store those, uh, blocks of frozen time in the vaults you see.”

Hart licked his lips again. He had always had a touch of necrophobia, and his hands were damp and cold now. To be frozen in time like a fish in a chunk of ice; and stowed away in a steel box for no one knew how long…He had a morbid desire to see his own coffin, but did not indulge it. That would not have fitted the picture he had of himself, which was somewhere between Epicure and Stoic.

They came into a smaller room at the end of the Crypt. It was crowded with apparatus which was meaningless to Hart. A couple of technicians stood by, smoking and talking and most infernally casual about it all.

“Well,” said the doctor, a little awkwardly, “I guess this is it. Are you sure you don’t want to leave any farewell messages or—?”

“No,” said Hart. “I hate good-byes. I’ve said mine, and don’t want that railway-platform waiting at the end. Let’s get it over with.”

“Okay. Mount that plate over there, please, between those four big coils. And—good luck.” The doctor extended his hand and Hart shook it, thinking to himself that it was a wholly unnecessary gesture. Maybe they’d have better taste in the future.

He climbed up onto the silvery disk and stood looking out between coils that were taller than he was. His knees were a little weak—almost, he was tempted to shout to call a halt—but that would be silly, of course.

The technicians busied themselves about the generator with that casual competence he had always found irritating in their breed. He heard the list of instrument readings called out, someone else said, “Check,” and he thought briefly and wildly, Maybe it’s also mate. A switch slammed down and a blue glow hovered over the coils. He heard a low, rising hum.

* * *

It faded. “Alri, no,” said the doctor. “Du can downstep no.”

Hart had a moment where his mind wobbled, where he thought wildly that it hadn’t worked after all. Great Heaven he was still in the world, still at home—

What had happened to the doctor? Where were the technicians? These weren’t the same men they had been an instant ago!

An instant—no, an age. There was no time flow in the stasis field—he was in the future.

He had thought himself mentally prepared. But it was too sudden. The shock was too blurringly great—shattering, devastating shock of suddenly alien men, alien speech, alien world. He staggered a little, and the doctor stepped up on the platform to support him.