as circumstances allowed.

Sincerely yours,

OLIVER B. MCALLEN

Barney dropped the letter on the desk, stared down at it, his mouth
open. His face had flushed red. "Why, he's crazy!" he said aloud at
last. "He's crazier than--" He straightened, looked uneasily about the
room again.

Whether a maniac McAllen made a more desirable jailer than a secret
association engaged in keeping dangerous scientific developments under
cover could be considered an open question. The most hopeful thought
was that Dr. McAllen was indulging an unsuspected and nasty sense of
humor.

Unfortunately, there wasn't the slightest reason to believe it.
McAllen was wise to him. The situation was no gag--and neither was it
necessarily what McAllen wanted him to think. Unless his watch had
been reset, he had been knocked out by whatever hit him for roughly
five hours--or seventeen, he amended. But he would have been hungry if
it had been the longer period; and he wasn't.

Five hours then. Five hours wouldn't have given them time to prepare
the "cabin" as it was prepared: for someone's indefinite stay. At a
guess, McAllen had constructed it as a secure personal retreat in the
event of something like a nuclear holocaust. But, in that case, why
vacate it now for Barney Chard?

Too many questions, he thought. Better just keep looking around.

* * * * *

The blank metal face on the grandfather clock swung back to reveal a
group of four dials, each graduated in a different manner, only one of
them immediately familiar. Barney studied the other three for some
seconds, then their meaning suddenly came clear. The big clock had
just finished softly talking away the fourth hour of the first day of
the first month of Year One. There were five figures on the Year Dial.

He stared at it. A five-year period of--something seemed to be the key
to the entire setup.

Barney shook his head. Key it might be, but not one he could read
without additional data. He snapped the cover disk shut on the
unpleasantly suggestive dials, and began to go mentally over McAllen's
letter.

The business that in twenty-four hours--twenty now--the manner of
leaving the cabin would become "apparent" to him--that seemed to
dispose of the possibility of being buried underground here. McAllen
would hardly have provided him with a personal model of the Tube; he
must be speaking of