effective. You'd evacuate your population not in space, but time.
You'd have the sure and absolute defense against any kind of
bombing--fission, fusion, bacteriological or whatever else the
labs had in stock.

And if the worst should come--which it never would with a setup
like that--you'd have a place to which the entire nation could
retreat, leaving to the enemy the empty, blasted cities and the
lethally dusted countryside.

Sanctuary--that had been what Hudson had offered the
then-secretary of state fifteen years ago--and the idiot had
frozen up with the insult of it and had Hudson thrown out.

And if war did not come, think of the living space and the vast
new opportunities--not the least of which would be the opportunity
to achieve peaceful living in a virgin world, where the old
hatreds would slough off and new concepts have a chance to grow.

He wondered where they were, those three who had gone back into
time. Dead, perhaps. Run down by a mastodon. Or stalked by tigers.
Or maybe done in by warlike tribesmen. No, he kept forgetting
there weren't any in that era. Or trapped in time, unable to get
back, condemned to exile in an alien time. Or maybe, he thought,
just plain disgusted. And he couldn't blame them if they were.

Or maybe--let's be fantastic about this--sneaking in colonists
from some place other than the watched Wisconsin farm, building up
in actuality the nation they had claimed to be.

They had to get back to the present soon or Project Mastodon would
be killed entirely. Already the research program had been halted
and if something didn't happen quickly, the watch that was kept on
the Wisconsin farm would be called off.

"And if they do that," said the general, "I know just what I'll
do."

He got up and strode around the room.

"By God," he said, "I'll show 'em!"

VIII

It had taken ten full days of back-breaking work to build the
pyramid. They'd hauled the rocks from the creek bed half a mile
away and had piled them, stone by rolling stone, to the height of
a full twelve feet. It took a lot of rocks and a lot of patience,
for as the pyramid went up, the base naturally kept broadening
out.

But now all was finally ready.

Hudson sat before the burned-out campfire and held his blistered
hands before him.

It should work, he thought, better than the logs--and less
dangerous.

Grab a handful of sand. Some trickled back between your fingers,
but most stayed in your grasp. T