The gravel road wound its way through quiet country fields cloaked in the fresh green of early summer. Andy Pearce watched it with expectant eyes and the odd feeling that it was winding up within him like twine, making an ever-growing ball of tension.

It wouldn't be long now, he thought. He was excited—and not a little afraid.

Abruptly Pearce leaned toward the windshield of the coupe. "That's the place, Dave!" He pointed to a wall of trees that had just come into view around a curve.

"At last!" Ellen Thorpe sighed, from her seat between the two men. "I was beginning to think it would take all day to reach this wonderful picnic spot of yours, Andy."

"It better be good," Dave Fuller growled. "After letting myself be coaxed into this trip and driving all morning."

"Good?" Pearce was grinning, though his voice held no humor. "Dave, I guarantee it's going to be better than anything you can possibly imagine."

Ellen frowned at Pearce. "You know, Andy, somehow you scare me."

"It's the beast in him," Fuller put in. "The gals are always fooled by Andy's curly hair and soulful eyes, but sooner or later they wake up to his true nature."

She wrinkled her nose at him. "I think you're a beast, too. All men are beasts. But as for Andy, he takes first prize. He had to go and ruin the date I made for him and Susie. It practically broke her heart that she wasn't going with us today."

Pearce moved his hands in a helpless gesture. "I'm sorry about Susie, but this was one time I didn't want to be fixed up with a date."

"I don't think you ever did," Ellen said bitterly. "I practically had to browbeat you into all the dates I made for you."

"Your concern for my ... well, call it social life, is deeply appreciated," Pearce returned with mild sarcasm.

"Yours?" she protested. "Andy Pearce, I assure you that arranging your dates was nothing more or less than self-defense on my part. I didn't want people to get the idea that I was preparing for a life of bigamy by always going out with two men."

"I plead self-defense, too." Pearce was sober. "Romantic complications are something I wanted to avoid. Anyhow, getting back to this picnic today, I wanted it to be strictly a family affair."

Fuller's red head swung around in dismay. "Good grief, Andy, don't tell me all your relatives are going to be out here! If that's the reason you wanted to visit your boyhood stamping grounds—"

"Relax," Pearce said. "No relatives. I was speaking figuratively. I never had enough relatives to mention. An uncle brought me up, and he departed this vale of tears a long time ago."

Fuller looked relieved. "Relatives make me nervous."

"Then you'd better stop this rattle-trap of yours." Pearce gestured at the trees, now almost abreast of the coupe. "Not that the fact we've arrived has anything to do with it."

Fuller turned the car into a stretch of grass beside the road and braked to a stop. "End of the line!" he announced. Then he glanced at Pearce in uneasy speculation. "Or is it? I hope it doesn't take a stiff hike to get to your boyhood Eden."

"Quit griping," Pearce said. "We're almost there now. And don't forget I promised that this is going to be worth your trouble."

"I'll bet!" Fuller muttered. Despite his skeptical tone, his blue eyes lingered on Pearce in veiled wonder.

Pearce let himself stiffly out of the car. Ellen followed, glancing about her curiously. She was a slim, graceful girl, dark, yet with a quality of glowing vividness. Her shining hair had been cut short in the current fashion, its boyish effect offset by her large, lustrous eyes and full red lips.

She stretched on tiptoe, for a moment standing motionless and statuesque. Pearce watched her with a sudden, flashing intensity. Pain touched him, and regret.

But it was too late—too late even to think of what might have been....

She turned. "This is a wild, lonely-looking place you've dragged us out to, Andy."

He nodded, his gray eyes kindling with memories. "It hasn't changed since I was a kid. Except for the road. It's got gravel on it now."

"What, no red carpet?" Fuller asked in mock surprise, as he too emerged from the coupe. "A lousy welcome for our boy Andy. No red carpet."

"Cut it out," Ellen admonished. "These aren't the surroundings for low comedy. Let's just be simple, sociable folk enjoying a picnic. Bring out the eats, and we'll get started."

Looking exaggeratedly chastened, Fuller opened the trunk at the rear of the coupe and began handing out objects. There was a basket of food, blankets, a record player, and a cardboard carton containing beer packed in dry ice. There was also a large suitcase belonging to Pearce.

Fuller hefted this exploratively. "Just a little something for the picnic," he said, glancing at Ellen. "That's what Andy told me when he put this hunk of luggage in the car. Why, it's as heavy as the national debt!"

"Nobody's asking you to carry it," Pearce said mildly.

"No—but I wish I could figure out what you're up to," Fuller returned.

Pearce shook a warning finger, "If wishes were limousines, the accident toll among joy-riding beggars would be terrific."

"Very funny." Fuller turned to Ellen again. "Do you think it's decent of Andy to worry his friends like this?"

She studied Pearce a moment, her dark eyes solemn. Then she moved her slim shoulders in a philosophical shrug. "Since we've come this far, I guess we'll just have to put up with it."

"That's the spirit!" Pearce said. "Just put your lives in my hands, little ones—and let the insurance premiums fall where they may." He bent to pick up the suitcase and the record player, hoping that he had moved quickly enough to hide the pain and unhappiness that had momentarily showed in his face. The situation was proving more difficult than he had thought it would be. He had hoped to make the picnic a light-hearted affair, to keep Fuller and Ellen from suspecting at the very outset that something unusual was taking place.

He strode into the woods. Fuller followed with the blankets and the beer carton, and Ellen with the basket of food.

The glade proved easy enough to locate. It was smaller than Pearce remembered, but the semi-circle of large stones along one side was much the same. The trees that rose all around gave their old effect of seclusion, of shutting out the world. Beyond the enclosure they made were the shadows cast by inter-laced boughs, and through these came the plaintive cries of birds, somehow like the sound of waves on an island shore.

Pearce glanced around him slowly, relishing the familiarity of the scene, his thoughts leaping a chasm of fifteen years. One memory in particular was suddenly very vivid.

"So this is the place, Andy," Ellen said behind him. "Why, it's just perfect!" She swung to Fuller. "Don't you think this is worth the drive?"

"I refuse to give my opinion until I've had enough beer to put me in the proper mood," Fuller growled.

"Start opening it, then," Ellen said. "I'll get the food ready."

They ate seated on the blankets, around the appetizingly laden tablecloth Ellen had spread. Pearce was too intense to have much of an interest in food, but he managed to consume what normally would have been expected of him. He was sharply aware that the minutes were running out, that the deadline was now swiftly approaching. The knowledge strengthened the undercurrent of dread within him, brought a pang of sadness.

But he did not want these last moments with Ellen and Dave to be touched with melancholy, nor did he want them to sense his troubled emotional state. He helped to keep a casual conversation going, and whenever this threatened to lag, he started the record player.

Shadows deepened within the glade as the afternoon wore on. Pearce helped Ellen to clean up the picnic remains, then sprawled beside Fuller to finish what was left of the beer. From the record player came the strains of a symphony. Ellen seated herself nearby, tapping one slender foot in time to the music.

Distractedly Pearce thought of the fleeting, precious minutes. He glanced at his watch.

Fuller abruptly sat up. "There you go again, Andy!"

"What?" Pearce was startled.

"Looking at that doggoned watch of yours." Fuller's expression was accusing. "You aren't fooling anybody, Andy. You're up to some thing—and it's about time you explained yourself. This beating around the bush is no way to treat your friends. You drag us out here, to the place where you grew up. You have a suitcase along that certainly doesn't have bricks in it. You drop mysterious hints about something special."

Fuller's voice softened, his blue eyes turned anxious. "Just what have you got up your sleeve, Andy?"

Pearce looked away, pain, a sudden tightness in his chest. He said slowly, "Well, I'm taking a sort of trip, Dave. I ... I'm afraid I'm never going to see you and Ellen again."

"Andy!" Ellen's voice was a stricken whisper.

"Never see us again...." Fuller muttered blankly.

The symphony came to an end. There was a moment of strained quiet.

"What are you talking about, Andy?" Fuller demanded in hurt bewilderment. "Where are you going that you'll never see me and Ellen again?"

"It's a long story," Pearce said. He grinned faintly. "I mean that. It's a story that begins fifteen years in the past and ends some two thousand years in the future."

Fuller and Ellen were rigid, staring. Pearce drained the last of his beer and lighted a cigarette.

"In another way," he went on, "the story really begins right where we are now. This part of the woods always was a favorite spot of mine. I'd sneak off here to read books and magazines that I borrowed from a neighbor whose taste in literature was on the blood and thunder side—lucky for me. My uncle didn't like to see me reading, thought it a waste of time. But it was in the middle of the Depression, and there wasn't much else to do. Uncle was an intolerant old bird, a widower, and he wasn't happy about getting stuck with me. I didn't like it, either, but there didn't seem anything a twelve-year-old kid could do about it."

Pearce drew at his cigarette, his gray eyes squinting into distance. "Uncle's chicken farm was a lonely place, and in self-defense I guess I developed a lot more imagination than most kids my age. Most of the time I wasn't on the farm at all—except when Uncle gave me a spanking by way of a reminder. I was out on the deserts of Mars, or walking the streets of a lost city in Africa, or tracking down an international spy ring in London. This day-dreaming, as I can see now, was pretty important."

Fuller said impatiently, "But Andy, what on earth does this build-up have to do with the trip you're going to make?"

"Keep your shirt on," Pearce said. "You'll see."

He resumed. "What I've outlined was the general situation when I came here one summer afternoon, to read a book. About a half-hour later something happened that practically made me jump out of my skin. The air in the glade seemed suddenly to thicken, and the trees all around grew crazily twisted, as though seen through optical glass. I felt oddly light, dizzy and sick at the same time. And from somewhere came a deep, humming sound—the kind of sound that might have been made by a string on a giant harp.

"The next thing I knew there was a sort of machine in the glade that seemed to have popped right out of nowhere. It was a metal globe about eight feet across, with tapering legs or supports on the bottom to keep it upright. There was the outline of a door in the side turned toward me.

"I was scared stiff, of course, but I had been reading about this kind of thing happening in stories—and as far as I was concerned, there was hardly any dividing line between stories and real life. So I stayed put. I knew the machine was something special, because I'd never seen anything like it outside of the illustrations in the more imaginative type of magazines."

Pearce drew at his cigarette again. Fuller and Ellen were like store window figures, arranged in attitudes of rapt attention.

"After several seconds the door in the side of the machine opened and a woman stepped out. I thought she was the most beautiful creature I had ever seen, a princess—or an angel. She looked the way ancient Egyptian women must have looked. She made me think of a tropical flower, which wasn't far from truth, considering that she came from a time when the Earth was—or will be—a great deal warmer than it is now. She was wearing a sort of thin dress that sparkled as though covered with jewels, and over this she held a long cloak. It was summer, but I suppose it was a bit too cool for her.

"She smiled at me—and I was glad I had stuck around. She said she hoped I hadn't been frightened by the appearance of her machine, and I guess I tried to sell her the idea that I strangled lions with my bare hands just for exercise. Then she explained that her name was Nela, and that she had come from two thousand years in the future especially to see me. Her machine, of course, was a time machine."

"Good grief!" Fuller said explosively. "What kind of a gag are you trying to put over, Andy?"

"I know just how it all sounds," Pearce returned. "But believe me, for one of the few times in my life I'm dead serious. Keep quiet and listen. I don't have much time left."

"Go on, Andy," Ellen said. "I'm fascinated."

Pearce took a final puff of his cigarette crushed it out in the grass, and continued. "Nela explained how it was possible to travel in time, but in the sort of terms a kid would understand. Even what I've figured out up to now isn't specific enough to be worth detailing, except to say that what we consider space and time are merely illusions of sense perception. They are really one stationary system or complex—stationary, yet dynamic and changing within itself—and under certain conditions one can travel through this system, from future to past, or the other way around, like through a museum—the biggest museum that can possibly be imagined.

"Nela's machine operated on energy principles that won't be known for a great many years yet, and it will be even longer before those principles are put into application. She was, in effect, making a round-trip from one part of the museum to another—a trip that took her across two thousand years of what we call time, or across a couple of hundred light years of what we call space. It's one and the same thing. Actually, she was following a sort of huge orbit, and was, so to speak, stopping off along the route. A trip between one point and another can be made only once, because even that one trip brings changes which affect the whole system, or complex. One point, it seems, is always shifted so that it lies outside of any orbit which can be plotted from the other.

"Nela told me about the kind of world she came from, too, and it sounded—and still sounds—like a perfect place. There was, so she said, practically no government, practically no laws, restrictions, or penalties. In two thousand years enough had been learned about the mind to make these unnecessary. Men at last were truly equal. There was no longer any need to work for a living. Machines of all sorts attended to every task and human requirement. Earth was one huge garden—and there was plenty of room for everyone. Men had reached the stars and had found new homes almost beyond number.

"An ideal picture—but there was a catch to it. The machines on which Nela's people depended were breaking down, and it seemed nobody knew even how to begin repairing them. The men of her time could take suns apart and put them back together again, but the machines baffled them in much the same way that our atomic scientists would be baffled when it came to repairing a suit of Medieval armor. The answer to the problem was to obtain the help of persons who understood the construction and operation of the machines at least as well as Medieval armorers understood their steel suits. And that answer—in both cases—lay back in time."

Pearce changed position on the blanket under him and glanced at his watch. He went on, "Time travel had been accomplished well before Nela's period, but the process had proved too involved and tricky for serious, large-scale use. The important thing, though, was that a number of machines were immediately available for time travel, and Nela was one of those chosen to operate them. She was, it seems, a gal of parts. In addition to being one of the leaders of a world-wide group which had been formed to deal with the machine break-down problem, she was also an expert on time travel and an authority on Twentieth Century life.

"Actually, you see, Nela's people were undergoing a cultural renaissance, a reawakening of interest in every field of knowledge and endeavor. For many hundreds of years there had been stagnation. The machines had filled every human want, and there had been little need for effort of any kind. Also, progress had been discouraged by a hidebound government, which had remained in power through its control of certain of the more important machines. The government had fallen when realization came that it could do nothing to keep the machines in repair, but the damage had been done. After centuries of a hands-off attitude toward the machines, nobody else knew how to repair them, either. Rapid progress was made everywhere except in this one direction.

"Nela and the others decided to travel to different points in time and obtain specialists who would each be able to deal with some particular repair job on the machines. The machines, of course, were not the product of any one time period, but were the cumulative result of the knowledge and skills of different periods. I was the specialist with whom contact was made at this point in time. It was, I realize now, quite a complicated business.

"When a beautiful girl appears in a time machine and tells some young man she needs his help, he doesn't just drop whatever he happens to be doing and go sailing blithely off into the mysterious future. Not in real life. He has to consider his family and friends, the career he was working on, all the things familiar and important to him, his surroundings, interests and amusements, climate, customs, clothing—all the rest. He has to consider that he might not be happy in the future, that he might not fit, that he might not even be physically comfortable, that the beautiful girl herself might very well turn out to be disappointing.

"But if he is a young man of average intelligence, he most likely wouldn't even bother to consider these things. He simply would refuse to believe the beautiful girl from the future, would be certain it was some sort of a hoax. Or he might even be scared stiff by the very idea of traveling in time. All of which boils down to the fact that the girl from the future would face a mighty tough job getting the right kind of young man to help her."

"I get it now," Fuller broke in musingly. "So that's what your suitcase is for, Andy." Then his voice sharpened with protest. "But it ... it's ridiculous! I just can't believe it's possible."

"The young man of average intelligence speaking," Pearce murmured.

"Yeah?" Fuller swung to Ellen. "What do you think?"

She shook her dark head slightly, lower lip caught between her teeth. "I'm trying not to think... Go on, Andy—before I start thinking."

"Hate to have that happen, if Dave's mental acrobatics are any example." Pearce abruptly sobered, glancing at his watch. "Well," he resumed, "Nela and the others foresaw the difficulties they would encounter in obtaining help, and they figured out what they hoped would be a fool-proof method of approach. What happened in my case shows what this was. It seems Nela first scouted out a group of specialists to find a couple with the right qualifications. The man she wanted had to be young and adventurous, without any family or romantic ties. Then she narrowed her field still further by tracing her selection back to childhood and making direct contact there.

"It was clever—for after all, the child is father to the man. A child is credulous and imaginative to an extent a man is not. And a child is adventurous, will let his enthusiasms carry him spontaneously where a man will hesitate and look for a catch. Most of all a child is impressionable and can be imbued with an idea which he will follow like a beacon light all his life.

"I was the child Nela finally settled on. The Andy Pearce she had first scouted still existed in time, and nothing would change for him. But no paradox is involved, for what we call time is an illusion, a subjective quality arising from an awareness of objective conditions—and these conditions are not quite what we think they are. That first Andy Pearce was something like a bubble moving in a glass tube. All Nela did was put another bubble in motion. The tube itself was not affected, nor was time shifted, bent, nullified, or anything of the sort. Each bubble was as real as anything can be said to be real, each existed in its own particular space-time, each was completely distinct and independent of the other.

"Nela visited me here several times, while she told me all the details of her mission. She was also getting acquainted with me and giving me time to thoroughly digest the idea of going with her. I agreed to go, of course. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to do, and I didn't change my mind. Once she had satisfied herself on that score, she worked out a plan of operations for me to follow until I was finally ready to leave. The plan took in schools, subjects, finances, and the like. Nela, you see, was making a big improvement on the first Andy Pearce.

"I never saw Nela again after those first visits. It was quite unnecessary, as I can see now. For she and her people understood the mind with an amazing thoroughness, and during her talks she subtly injected me with knowledge, emotions and ideals that set me in motion toward my goal as effectively and undeviatingly as though I had been hypnotized. And I suspect that she set other bubbles in motion as well, to guide and assist me and generally keep me moving in one direction."

Pearce gestured. "I've kept moving, all right. Fifteen years have passed, and I know all I need to know about the particular technical subject Nela chose me to handle. I'm ready to leave—and I'm leaving very soon. Nela is coming here to pick me up, having meanwhile been moving to this point along her orbit to make one last stop-off before completing the swing back to her own point in time. There can be no return, for once I leave, this point in time can never be reached again. But then I've had fifteen years to get used to the idea.

"This picnic today was in the nature of a farewell party. You, Dave and Ellen, have been the only friends I've allowed myself—and you've both been fine friends. I wanted you both to know exactly where I was going instead of doing a mysterious fade-out. I felt I owed you that much. I've never told anyone about Nela before—not because the information was likely to prove harmful, or anything of the sort, but simply because it would have created doubts about my sanity. I know I can trust you with it for the same reason."

Pearce spread his hands, grinning crookedly. "Well, I hope that leaves me and my suitcase explained to the complete satisfaction of everyone."

Fuller ran his hand through his red hair in agitation and rose to his feet. "It's the damnedest story I've ever heard, Andy. I wish I could be dead certain it isn't a gag. I can't believe it—or maybe it's just that I can't accept the idea of never seeing you again. If this hadn't come all of a sudden—" He broke off, gesturing helplessly.

"Picnics," Ellen muttered to no one in particular, "are going to be permanently spoiled for me."

"Hell!" Fuller growled. "I need a drink. I guess we all need a drink." He reached out as though to detain Pearce. "Andy, I've got a bottle in the car. For emergencies, you know—and this certainly is an emergency. So stay right here, Andy. Don't go running off into the future until I get back. Promise?"

"On my word of honor," Pearce said.

"Don't drop that bottle, Dave," Ellen put in.

With a last anxious glance at Pearce, Fuller turned and hurried away through the trees. Pearce was abruptly, sharply aware that he was alone with Ellen.

She seemed aware of it also. For a moment her dark eyes met his with a kind of pensive directness, then dropped.

There was an uncomfortable silence.

"I'll never be quite the same again after today, Andy," Ellen murmured at last.

He stared morosely at his hands. "I'm sorry. I guess I did spring the story a bit too suddenly. Maybe I shouldn't have said anything at all, done a quiet fade-out."

"I think I'd rather have known what happened to you than otherwise." She traced a design on the blanket with one slim finger, then said, "Andy, you made a remark in the car—about avoiding what you called romantic complications. Were you avoiding them because you were eventually going away with this Nela female?"

He nodded. "Something like that."

"Wasn't it because you were in love with her?"

"Why, I ... I don't think so." He was startled. "I guess it's true that I had a crush on her as a kid, but I haven't seen her for fifteen years. I hardly feel I ever knew her."

"Then even though you're going away with her, there is someone you care for?"

He hesitated for an aching instant, finally managed a shrug. "It isn't important. Not any more."

"It is—to me. Andy, this is no time for historical novel gallantry or radio soap opera self-renunciation. This is the last chance we'll ever have to be completely frank with each other." Her dark eyes were intent. "Andy, do you love me?"

"I ... well—" He groped in confusion, with the feeling that he had suddenly found himself on a tight-rope, hundreds of feet in the air. Then he nodded miserably. "Yes."

"Then just why did you take it for granted that I was Dave's girl?" Ellen demanded bitterly.

"I thought Dave was the one you were interested in. He was my best friend, and I didn't want to—"

"You thought! Didn't it ever occur to you to find out?"

He made a helpless gesture. "I wanted to, Ellen—but I don't see what good it could have done. I was going away, you know."

"Don't you think I could have changed your mind about that? Don't you think I can change your mind—even now?" Abruptly she leaned toward him, her small face lighted as though by some fierce inner fire, at once pleading and demanding. "Andy—kiss me!"

Despite himself, that fire touched him, kindled to a blaze. His lips met hers with a quickening pressure, his hands slipped from her shoulders to draw her tightly against him. For long seconds nothing else had reality or importance. The glade dissolved around him, and he seemed to float in a dark sea that rose and fell with a wild rhythm.

Then awareness of his act exploded in him. He released the girl abruptly and drew away.

"It's hopeless, Ellen! I can't back down now."

She shook her dark head in swift protest. "It isn't hopeless, Andy. It isn't too late. I just proved that to you."

"But Nela is depending on me. I can't let her down."

"You owe her nothing! She took advantage of you at a time when you weren't mature and experienced enough to exercise good judgment. Why should you feel obligated to her now?"

"I agreed to go with her. If I let her down, she won't be able to obtain a replacement with my particular type of training. She can visit this point in time only once."

"That's her problem, Andy. You have your own life to live. Why shouldn't you be able to live it as you choose? You don't know just what sort of a life the future holds for you—but you do know what you'll find here."

He gripped his knees hard, finally shook his head. "This is something bigger than we are, Ellen—something more important than your personal happiness, or mine. It isn't just that Nela is depending on me. Behind her is a whole civilization. It's the greatest responsibility a man can be given. If I backed down, I'd never feel right again. I'd always have it on my conscience."

She slumped in despair. "Then there's nothing else I can do to change your mind?"

"Nothing, Ellen. I'm sorry."

Silence closed down again. A painful, uneasy silence, the silence of people between whom an unsurmountable barrier exists.

The silence added fuel to Pearce's inner turmoil. He wished that it had been possible to leave without hurting Ellen, even without discovering that she returned his own feelings. The knowledge that he would never see her again had been difficult enough to face. For in these last months the picture of her had come to haunt him—Ellen, with her shining dark hair and her slim vital body, at once gaily humorous and warmly sympathetic. He knew that he would never forget her, or cease thinking of the happiness he might have found with her.

"It might be a good idea to wipe that lipstick off your face, Andy," Ellen murmured at last.

Pearce fumbled for a handkerchief and scrubbed at his mouth. The action brought forward something that had been hovering at the back of his mind.

"What about Dave?" he asked abruptly. "I hope I haven't spoiled anything for him."

She shook her head with a grave seriousness. "Dave knows how I feel. And it isn't much of a loss where he's concerned, because he's been taking a growing interest in Susie. She has a terrific crush on him, and that's the reason she wanted to come with us so badly today. But you insisted on a three-sided party and as usual left Dave to nursemaid me."

Pearce felt a dull amazement. Engrossed with his preparations for leaving he had not sensed the emotional undercurrents beneath the outwardly placid surface of Dave and Ellen.

Ellen, he thought suddenly. Dave was accounted for—but Ellen? He could not voice the question, feeling himself too inextricably bound up in it.

There was the sound of footsteps as Fuller returned, brandishing a bottle. "Here it is!" he announced. "Get out the glasses, Ellen."

She produced three plastic tumblers from the basket, and Fuller poured a generous drink in each. He raised his own tumbler in a solemn gesture.

"Here's to Andy. Bon voyage—and a high old time in the future!"

"Thanks," Pearce said in self-conscious acknowledgement. He swallowed the whisky in a gulp, felt its raw warmth spread through him.

Bon voyage, he thought. The voyage part was true enough. But he doubted if he would have a high old time. He would always think of Ellen. And Dave. And all the other people he had known, who would continue to move against the old familiar background of their existence, among all the old familiar things, without sudden violent change, or pain, or loss. He would think of movies and dances, baseball games and parties. And restaurants and nightclubs and small quiet bars. And apple pie and coffee, hamburgers and malted milk. And his favorite brand of cigarettes, and two pants suits and straw hats in the summer. And beer and sport pages and classical records on a drowsy Sunday afternoon. And politics and elections and critical internal situations. And crowded downtown streets and quiet suburban cottages—all the other things he had known and liked, or had taken for granted and had not thought much about. He would think of them because they wouldn't exist in the future any more, because people would have changed, would have different ideals, habits and tastes.

Fuller filled the tumblers again and made an effort at the sort of artificially cheerful small talk that precedes the sailing of a troop ship.

Pearce, who had surreptitiously been keeping check on his watch, finally gestured. "It's almost time for Nela to pick me up—and I'd like to be alone when she comes. The situation might be too complicated if you and Ellen were present, Dave. I want things to be as easy as possible all around."

Fuller looked disappointed. "I was kind of hoping to get a look at this gal from the future, Andy. I still don't know whether to believe your story or not."

"Give me the benefit of the doubt, anyway, will you?" Pearce pleaded. He turned to Ellen. "You'll do this last favor for me?"

She nodded and leaned forward on tiptoe. "Good-bye, Andy—and good luck." Her voice was little more than a whisper.

He touched her lips with his and for a moment stood looking down at her, thinking once more of what might have been. An echo of his own thoughts seemed to glisten wetly in her dark eyes. Abruptly she turned away.

Pearce gripped Fuller's hand. "So long, Dave."

"Take care of yourself, Andy." Fuller looked painfully reflective, then suddenly held out the bottle. "Here, Andy, you take this. You might need it."

Pearce watched with a deep inward aching as Fuller and Ellen strode from the glade. Reaching the trees, they turned to look back at him. They hesitated, waved—were gone.

Pearce felt that the last door to the past had been irrevocably closed.

He looked down at the bottle he was holding and lifted it to his mouth. Then he lighted a cigarette, glanced at his watch again, and fell to pacing along one edge of the glade. His eyes roved tensely about him, expectant and dreading.

Thoughts shifted uneasily in his mind. Would Nela actually appear? Fifteen years had passed for him—a matter of a few hours to her. But perhaps something had gone wrong. Perhaps she had miscalculated somewhere.

And on mental scales he balanced Ellen against the future, wondering if his choice had been wise. Could the future possibly hold the happiness he might have known with Ellen, in the age familiar to him?

He heard a car motor start up in the distance. The sound rose in volume, then began fading. Dave and Ellen were on their way back to the city.

He felt suddenly alone—somehow abandoned.

Raising the bottle to his lips again, he resumed his nervous pacing. And then he stopped, frozen, aware of a change in his surroundings. The air in the glade was thickening queerly, the trees all around were growing crazily distorted. And he heard a deep humming sound—the kind of sound that might have been made by a string on a giant harp.

Across the glade, appearing as though from nothingness itself, an object was taking shape—a metal globe. Bands of distortion surrounded it like ripples in water. For an instant the globe seemed unsubstantial, illusory—then it was solid, resting quietly on the floor of the glade.

Andy stood out in the small clearing, waving a goodbye to them, while behind him a strange metallic globe suddenly shimmered in the air....

Pearce watched it, his heart pounding.

"Andy!"

The call hit him like a physical blow. Stunned, he whirled to see Ellen hurrying toward him through the trees.

"Andy!" she cried again. "Are you all right?"

"Ellen!" he gasped. "What are you doing here? I thought you left with Dave."

She caught breathlessly at his arm, steadying herself. "I made him go without me. I ... I couldn't leave you, Andy." Her voice rose. "I'm going with you!"

His mind whirled in dismayed confusion. He sent a swift glance at the metal globe. Any moment now, the door would open—

"Ellen, you can't go!"

"Why not? I'm willing to take the risk. And I'll be happy, whatever the future is like, as long as I'm with you."

He shook his head in despair. "It ... well, I'm afraid it's just impossible, that's all. No provision has been made for you. I don't know even if there would be room for you. I don't know if Nela can allow you in her plans, or—"

He broke off. Glancing at the globe again, he saw that the door was opening.

He waited for Nela to appear, wondering what her reaction would be when she saw Ellen, wondering how this hopelessly tangled situation could possibly be resolved.

The door of the globe stood fully open. Nothing else happened.

Pearce waited a moment longer, puzzled, then slowly looked into the globe. Except for two padded seats and a myriad of instruments on the curving walls, the interior of the machine was empty.

He turned in bewilderment to Ellen. "Something's wrong! Nela isn't inside."

Ellen looked gravely thoughtful. "Andy, I think I know what happened to her. She was an authority on Twentieth Century life, you know. She no doubt had all sorts of records to help her. She could speak the kind of English used here, she understood social customs, the economic situation, knew how to dress and act. What she didn't know, she could pick up by being careful and observing. In short, she could pass as an ordinary Twentieth Century girl, and hardly anyone would guess she was different."

Pearce's bewilderment grew. "What are you getting at?"

"Well, Andy, suppose this Nela wanted to make absolutely sure you'd be happy in the future, that nothing would interfere with your efficiency and general well-being. There was a big job ahead of you, and a lot depended on your particular field of knowledge and type of skill. So to make absolutely sure of you she stopped off along her route back to spend your last several months here with you. It wouldn't be hard for a clever girl like her to get acquainted with you and Dave. And you hadn't seen her for fifteen years, Andy. You wouldn't recognize her easily—especially if she'd had her hair cut short and wore Twentieth Century clothes and make-up."

Pearce stared at her a moment longer, then caught at her arms. "Ellen! You ... you're Nela!"

She nodded slowly, her smile uncertain and touched with shyness. "I hope you aren't disappointed, Andy, or that you hate me for having tricked you the way I did."

He laughed, a wild delight surging up in him. "Neither," he said. "And I'm going to prove it!"

He proved it to her entire satisfaction. Finally, hand in hand, they turned to the doorway of the globe.

"I suppose you brought the machine here by remote control or something of the sort," Pearce told Nela.

"Yes. I had a special gadget in my purse. The machine was here all along, you see, traveling a few minutes ahead in time."

"And Dave?" he said suddenly. "Did you tell him?"

"I told him I was going with you and hinted the reason why. He'll figure it out presently—even if he never completely believes it. Little has really changed for Dave. He'll marry Susie and lead a perfectly normal life."

Pearce halted Nela as she was about to enter the globe. "There's a little custom of this time that I'd like to observe. If you're as much of an authority on Twentieth Century life as you claim, you'll understand."

He gathered her up in his arms and carried her over the threshold. Her smile and then the pressure of her lips indicated that she understood.

The door closed. The trees at the edge of the glade grew crazily distorted, shimmering bands enclosed the globe like ripples in water, there was a humming sound like a giant harp string—

And then the glade was empty.