guely see the blurred,
shifting, melting vistas of New York City hastening through the
changes Time had brought to it.
* * * * *
This young man, Harl, and this girl, Tina, lived in New York City in
the Time-world of 2930 A. D. To Larry it was a thousand years in the
future. Tina was the Princess of the American Nation. It was an
hereditary title, non-political, added several hundred years
previously as a picturesque symbol. A tradition; something to make
less prosaic the political machine of Republican government. Tina was
loved by her people, we afterward came to learn.
Harl was an aristocrat of the New York City of Tina's Time-world, a
scientist. In the Government laboratories, under the same roof where
Tina dwelt, Harl had worked with another, older scientist, and--so
Tina told me--together they had discovered the secret of
Time-traveling. They had built two cages, a large and a small, which
could travel freely through Time.
The smaller vehicle--this one in which Larry now was speeding--was, in
the Time-world of 2930, located in the garden of Tina's palace. The
other, somewhat larger, they had built some five hundred feet distant,
just beyond the palace walls, within a great Government laboratory.
Harl's fellow scientist--the leader in their endeavors, since he was
much older and of wider experience--was not altogether trusted by
Tina. He took the credit for the discovery of Time-traveling; yet,
said Tina, it was Harl's genius which in reality had worked out the
final problems.
And this older scientist was a cripple. A hideously repulsive fellow,
named Tugh!
"Tugh!" exclaimed Larry.
"The same," said Tina in her crisp fashion. "Yes--undoubtedly the
same. So you see why what you have told us was of such interest. Tugh
is a Government leader in our world; and now we find he has lived in
_your_ Time, and in the Time of this Mary Atwood."
From his seat at the instrument table, Harl burst out: "So he murdered
a girl of 1935, and has abducted another of 1777? You would not have
me judge him, Tina--"
"No one," she said, "may judge without full facts. This man here--this
Larry of 1935--tells us that only a mechanism is in the larger
cage--which is what we thought, Harl. And this mechanism, without a
doubt, is the treacherous Migul."
* * * * *
There was, in 2930, a vast world of machinery. The god of the machine
had developed them to alm
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