t is probable
that you have very little of the ancient race in you. Fortunately
those who do not show progress destroy themselves. You had not
imagined that there were only two phases of time, had you?"

"Lately I have come to suspect that there are many more," said
Charles Vincent.

"And you understand that only one step cannot succeed?"

"I understand that the life I have been living is in direct
violation of all that we know of the laws of mass, momentum, and
acceleration, as well as those of conservation of energy, the
potential of the human person, the moral compensation, the golden
mean, and the capacity of human organs. I know that I cannot
multiply energy and experience sixty times without a compensating
increase of food intake, and yet I do it. I know that I cannot
live on eight minutes' sleep in twenty-four hours, but I do that
also. I know that I cannot reasonably crowd four thousand years
of experience into one lifetime, yet unreasonably I do not see
what will prevent it. But you say I will destroy myself."

"Those who take only the first step destroy themselves."

"And how does one take the second step?"

"At the proper moment you will be given the choice."

"I have the most uncanny feeling that I will refuse the choice."

"From present indications, you will refuse it. You are
fastidious."

"You have a smell about you, Old Man without a face. I know now
what it is. It is the smell of the pit."

"Are you so slow to learn that?"

"It is the mud from the pit, the same from which the clay tablets
were formed, from the old land between the rivers. I've dreamed
of the six-fingered hand reaching up from the pit and overshadowing
us all. And I have read: 'The people first counted by fives and
tens from the number of fingers on their hands. But before the
people--for the reason that they had--counted by sixes and
twelves.' But time has left blanks in those tablets."

"Yes, time in one of its manifestations has deftly and with a
purpose left those blanks."

"I cannot discover the name of the thing that goes in one of
those blanks. Can you?"

"I am part of the name that goes into one of those blanks."

"And you are the man without a face. But why is it that you
overshadow and control people? And to what purpose?"

"It will be long before you know those answers."

"When the choice comes to me, it will bear very careful
weighing."

After that a chill descended on the life of Charles Vincent, f