No man here will forgive you for breaking your word. Even Dr. Lightner may refuse to help you after all.

STRAT

Above Strat spread a sky vast and dark, pierced by a thousand stars and a sliver of moon. Torches burned in tall posts, illuminating pyramid, pillar and stone.

He stood exactly where he had been standing in another time, fifty feet from the causeway. He had arrived at the beginning, when Khufu's Pyramid was perfect. It was a ghost, or he was.

Strat's breath came in shallow spurts, as if he were afraid of antique air. Slowly his lungs returned, his legs and strength, and he could feel again the sweet beating of his heart.

He was surrounded by temples and mastabas and monuments he could not identify because they did not exist in 1899. He could not see the Sphinx. The causeway, mostly destroyed or buried in his time, was lined with statues, covered by awnings and scented by flowers in massive pots.

He became aware of a steady, rhythmic tapping. He turned and looked toward the Nile. The sound of feet marching, he decided; guards, perhaps, walking back and forth during their night watch. Partially visible through the tall pillars of an open temple, motionless in the water of a lagoon that had vanished long before Strat's time, lay a large and well-lit boat. Although he judged the hour to be very late, there was a good deal of activity on its deck.

It seemed best not to attract attention. Strat stayed well away from the torchlight.

First he would examine the Pyramid. He had climbed it, photographed it, fallen in love with it—but only its core. Think of seeing it as Khufu's architects had planned! Strat was astonished to see a wall around the Pyramid, with the obvious intent of preventing visitors from scaling the monument. The year 1899 had its advantages after all; you need not just stand at the bottom and stare up.

Suddenly he saw the Sphinx. It existed, not halfbroken, but half-carved.

O mystery of mysteries, thought Strat reverently. You are a creation of man, and that man must be Khufu!

He was startled by a sudden clatter and some sharply issued orders.

In ancient Egyptian! He was thrilled. He strained to hear, for nobody in 1899 knew how to pronounce the words so painstakingly translated from hieroglyphs.

A phalanx of soldiers was forming near the lagoon. They marched through the temple, pivoted sharply and turned onto the causeway. Their boots and the shafts of their spears slammed against the pavement. Strat drew deeper in the shadows. There were not many soldiers, and yet the sound they made was the sound of many: the relentless echo of men who would show no mercy and give no quarter … men not unlike his own father.