umbled out of the rumpled bed-clothing, a
striking slender figure in purple-striped pajamas. He smiled fondly
across to the other of the twin beds, where Nada, his pretty bride, lay
quiet beneath light silk covers. With a groan, he stood up and began a
series of fantastic bending exercises. But after a few half-hearted
movements, he gave it up, and walked through an open door into a small
bright room, its walls covered with bookcases and also with scientific
appliances that would have been strange to the man of four or five
centuries before, when the Age of Aviation was beginning.

Yawning, Mr. Eric Stokes-Harding stood before the great open window,
staring out. Below him was a wide, park-like space, green with emerald
lawns, and bright with flowering plants. Two hundred yards across it
rose an immense pyramidal building--an artistic structure, gleaming with
white marble and bright metal, striped with the verdure of terraced
roof-gardens, its slender peak rising to help support the gray,
steel-ribbed glass roof above. Beyond, the park stretched away in
illimitable vistas, broken with the graceful columned buildings that
held up the great glass roof.

[Illustration: Suddenly there was a sharp tingling sensation where they
touched the polished surface.]

Above the glass, over this New York of 2432 A. D., a freezing blizzard
was sweeping. But small concern was that to the lightly clad man at the
window, who was inhaling deeply the fragrant air from the plants
below--air kept, winter and summer, exactly at 20 deg. C.

With another yawn, Mr. Eric Stokes-Harding turned back to the room,
which was bright with the rich golden light that poured in from the
suspended globes of the cold ato-light that illuminated the snow-covered
city. With a distasteful grimace, he seated himself before a broad,
paper-littered desk, sat a few minutes leaning back, with his hands
clasped behind his head. At last he straightened reluctantly, slid a
small typewriter out of its drawer, and began pecking at it impatiently.

For Mr. Eric Stokes-Harding was an author. There was a whole shelf of
his books on the wall, in bright jackets, red and blue and green, that
brought a thrill of pleasure to the young novelist's heart when he
looked up from his clattering machine.

He wrote "thrilling action romances," as his enthusiastic publishers and
television directors said, "of ages past, when men were men. Red-blooded
heroes responding vigorously to the