ingle
small segment of Space! The larger vehicle seemed speeding back and
forth. A dash into the year 1777! as Larry learned from Mary Atwood.

And there had been several evidences of the cage halting in 1935.
Larry's account explained two such pauses. But the others? Those
others, which brought to the City of New York such amazing disaster?
We did not learn of then until much later. But Alten lived through
them, and presently I shall reconstruct them from his account.

The larger cage was difficult to trace in its sweep along the
corridors of Time. Never once had Tina and Harl been able to stop
simultaneously with it, for a year has so many separate days and
hours. The nearest they came was the halt in the night of June 8-9,
when they encountered Larry, and, startled, seized him and moved on
again.

* * * * *

Harl continued to gaze through the eyepiece of the detecting
instrument. But nothing showed, and the mirror-grid on the table was
dark.

"But--which way are we going?" Larry stammered.

"Back," said Tina. "The retrograde.... Wait! Do not do that!"

Larry had turned toward where the bars, less luminous, showed a dark
rectangle like a window. The desire swept him to gaze out at the
shining, changing scene.

But Tina checked him. "Do not do that! Not yet! It is too great a
shock in the retrograde. It was to me."

"But where are we?"

In answer she gestured toward a series of tiny dials on the table
edge. There were at least two score of them, laid in a triple bank.
Dials to record the passing minutes, hours, days; the years, the
centuries! Larry stared at the small whirring pointers. Some were a
blur of swift whirling movement--the hours and days. Tina showed Larry
how to read them. The cage was passing through the year 1880. In a few
moments of Larry's consciousness it was 1799. Then 1793. The infant
American nation was here now. But with the cage retrograding, soon
they would be in the Revolutionary War.

Tina said. "The other cage may go back to 1777, if Tugh meant ill to
Mary Atwood, or wants revenge upon her father, at you said. We shall
see."

They had reached 1790 when Harl gave a low ejaculation.

"You see it?" Tina murmured.

"Yes. Very faintly."

Larry bent tensely forward. "Will it show on the mirror?"

"Yes; presently. We are about ten years from it. If we get closer, the
mirror will show it."

But the mirror held dark. No--now it was glowing a trifl