d a
small viewing machine, and scanned the centuries of the past in the hope
that a sanctuary might reveal itself to my aching eyes. Kwel tediety
that was! Back, back I went through the ages. Back to the Century of the
Dog, back to the Age of the Crippled Men. I found no time better than
my own. Back and back I peered, back as far as the Numbered Years. The
Twenty-Eighth Century was boredom unendurable, the Twenty-Sixth a morass
of dullness. Twenty-Fifth, Twenty-Fourth--wherever I looked, tediety was
what I found.

* * * * *

I snapped off the machine and considered. Put the problem thus: Was
there in all of the pages of history no age in which a 9-Hart Bailey's
Beam might find adventure and excitement? There had to be! It was not
possible, I told myself, despairing, that from the dawn of the dreaming
primates until my own time there was no era at all in which I could
be--happy? Yes, I suppose happiness is what I was looking for. But where
was it? In my viewer, I had fifty centuries or more to look back upon.
And that was, I decreed, the trouble; I could spend my life staring into
the viewer, and yet never discover the time that was right for me. There
were simply too many eras to choose from. It was like an enormous
library in which there must, there had to be, contained the one fact I
was looking for--that, lacking an index, I might wear my life away and
never find.

"_Index!_"

I said the word aloud! For, to be sure, it was the answer. I had the
freedom of the Learning Lodge, and the index in the reading room could
easily find for me just what I wanted.

Splendid, splendid! I almost felt cheerful. I quickly returned the
viewer I had been using to the keeper, and received my deposit back. I
hurried to the Learning Lodge and fed my specifications into the index,
as follows, that is to say: Find me a time in recent past where there is
adventure and excitement, where there is a secret, colorful band of
desperadoes with whom I can ally myself. I then added two
specifications--second, that it should be before the time of the high
radiation levels; and first, that it should be after the discovery of
anesthesia, in case of accident--and retired to a desk in the reading
room to await results.

It took only a few moments, which I occupied in making a list of the
gear I wished to take with me. Then there was a hiss and a crackle, and
in the receiver of the desk a book appeared. I unzipped