h time unless it worked that way. If
you'd look at my point of view, you'd see that I lose my investment if
you don't bring back the data. I can't withdraw your money, you
realize."

"I don't know what to think," I said, dissatisfied with myself because
I couldn't find out what, if anything, was wrong with the deal. "I'll
get you the data for the power box if it's at all possible and then
we'll see what happens."

Finished eating, we went upstairs and I got into the cage.

She closed the circuit. The motors screamed. The mesh blurred.

And I was in a world I never knew.

* * * * *

You'd call it a city, I suppose; there were enough buildings to make
it one. But no city ever had so much greenery. It wasn't just
tree-lined streets, like Unter den Linden in Berlin, or islands
covered with shrubbery, like Park Avenue in New York. The grass and
trees and shrubs grew around every building, separating them from each
other by wide lawns. The buildings were more glass--or what looked
like glass--than anything else. A few of the windows were opaque
against the sun, but I couldn't see any shades or blinds. Some kind of
polarizing glass or plastic?

I felt uneasy being there, but it was a thrill just the same, to be
alive in the future when I and everybody who lived in my day was
supposed to be dead.

The air smelled like the country. There was no foul gas boiling from
the teardrop cars on the glass-level road. They were made of
transparent plastic clear around and from top to bottom, and they
moved along at a fair clip, but more smoothly than swiftly. If I
hadn't seen the airship overhead, I wouldn't have known it was there.
It flew silently, a graceful ball without wings, seeming to be borne
by the wind from one horizon to the other, except that no wind ever
moved that fast.

One car stopped nearby and someone shouted, "Here we are!" Several
people leaped out and headed for me.

I didn't think. I ran. I crossed the lawn and ducked into the nearest
building and dodged through long, smoothly walled, shadowlessly lit
corridors until I found a door that would open. I slammed it shut and
locked it. Then, panting, I fell into a soft chair that seemed to
form itself around my body, and felt like kicking myself for the
bloody idiot I was.

[Illustration]

What in hell had I run for? They couldn't have known who I was. If I'd
arrived in a time when people wore togas or bathing suits, there w