er place where it was
compatible. To Harl and Tugh, it vanished. Into their Past, or their
Future: they did not know which.

I set down merely the crudest fundamentals of theory in order to avoid
the confusion of technicalities. The Time-traveling cages, intricate
in practical working mechanisms beyond the understanding of any human
mind of my Time-world, nevertheless were built from this simple
theory. And we who used them did but find that the Creator had given
us a wider part to play; our pictures, our little niches were engraven
upon the scroll over wider reaches.

* * * * *

Again to consider practicality, I asked Tina what would happen if I
were to travel to New York City around 1920. I was a boy, then. Could
I not leave the cage and do things in 1920 at the same time in my
boyhood I was doing other things? It would be a condition unthinkable.

But there, beyond all calculation of Science, the all-wise Omnipotence
forbids. One may not appear twice in simultaneity upon the
Time-scroll. It is an eternal, irrevocable record. Things done cannot
be undone.

"But," I persisted, "suppose we tried to stop the cage?"

"It would not stop," said Tina. "Nor can we see through its windows
events in which we are actors."

One may not look into the future! Through all the ages, necromancers
have tried to do that but wisely it is forbidden. And I can recall,
and so can Larry, as we traveled through Time, the queer blank spaces
which marked forbidden areas.

Strangely wonderful, this vast record on the scroll of Time! Strangely
beautiful, the hidden purposes of the Creator! Not to be questioned
are His purposes. Each of us doing our best; struggling with our
limitations; finding beauty because we have ugliness with which to
compare it; realizing, every one of us--savage or civilised, in every
age and every condition of knowledge--realizing with implanted
consciousness the existence of a gentle, beneficent, guiding Divinity.
And each of us striving always upward toward the goal of Eternal
Happiness.

To me it seems singularly beautiful.

CHAPTER XI

_Back to the Beginning of Time_

As Mary Atwood and I sat chained to the floor of the Time-cage, with
Migul the Robot guarding us, I felt that we could not escape. This
mechanical thing which had captured us seemed inexorable, utterly
beyond human frailty. I could think of no way of surprising it, or
tricking it.

The Robot said. "Soon