Part 2

But he had not been alone. With him were three other hard-faced men. They helped him to his feet and came pacing toward Orth and Horgan. Their hands were inching down toward their big holstered spring guns. Orth reached for his own hand machine gun, and with his movement their four enemies went for their own weapons.

Horgan was slapping his bolts at the quartet. Ayna was hugging the dirty street. Orth felt one smashing impact before his weapon started sewing the explosive little pellets across the four men's middles. Pain was just starting to throb in his left elbow when the last of the others slumped, dead, into the dusty street. Horgan staggered toward him, a six gun bolt in his right side.

"Just nicked me," he said calmly, his hand holding back the blood that seeped through his coarse-woven shirt.

Orth found it hard to believe that these fallen men were actually but pseudo-men, robots. Their laboratory-given life blood was as red and sticky as a true man's, and their dying struggles were as realistic as his own might have been.

The bartender came sidling up to Orth. He was but one of a score of muttering, staring onlookers.

"Better clear outta town," he advised. "Krepp's brother is sheriff. And if he don't hang you Krepp's mob will do you up."

"Thanks," Orth said. There were a dozen horses, saddled and bridled, drooping at a nearby hitchrail, and toward these he moved.

"Come on," he told Horgan and Ayna. "We're riding out of here."

Horgan shrugged. "Might as well get neckties for rustling a horse as for killing Krepp," he conceded, reloading his two spring guns.

They climbed into the saddles, Orth snapping a warning burst of explosive slugs into the road and Horgan menacing the glowering knot of townspeople and riders, and went riding eastward out of the village street.

Once they were free of the town and climbing a long easy grade into the low tree-clad hills the men of Hardpan City organized their pursuit. Orth saw horses, light waggons, and high-wheeled vehicles resembling bicycles come streaming up the highway after them.

Drums began to boom all along the cleared valley they had left and in the hills ahead.

"News broadcasters," Horgan informed him, "warning all cruising scout waggons and squad carts of our escape. Their squad carts are fast--they have pulley drives that can be shifted. If we can only reach the forests again...."

"We'll make it," Orth said. He grinned encouragingly at Ayna. "Maybe we'll find your precious Ivath, too," he added.

At that moment they were riding up a short grade, tree-lined and stony, beyond which they could see nothing but an endless stretch of undulating tree-tops. Nothing, Orth was thinking, could now keep them from achieving safety.

Suddenly the ground swayed underfoot and their horses spilled them from the saddles.

* * * * *

There was a moment of rushing blackness, as though they were falling into a pit of tar, and then they felt themselves being whirled horizontally along for a time into a blurring twilight, only to slide softly to a stop.

Orth heard a click and a whir from somewhere above him and saw a vast square section of grayness detach itself from the sky above and disappear. He lay quietly for a long minute but the ground was solid underfoot and so he stood up.

"That," said Ayna, laughing rather breathlessly, "was some of Ivath's work. He's brought this section of the crust inside for repairs." She hesitated. "Or perhaps because of you, Devin Orth."

"Me? I get it. If he took the _Time Bubble_ this same way.... Yeah."

Orth swallowed thickly. No telling what the mysterious Ivath might be planning to do with them. He was glad Ayna was along. She knew this insane future world.

"Here he comes now," said Ayna, low-voiced. "Ivath, I mean. And, by the way, he is my great grandfather. So don't mind him too much."

Orth found himself looking at a transparent bubble of plastic, with a puffy over-sized belt of jade-green metal fixed about its middle. It floated a few feet above the ground, sparks buzzing faintly as it dropped too low and was forced upward again.

Inside there was a bony little parody of a man's body, or rather, its upper torso. Below the arms there was nothing save a shining metallic cylinder. The huge blue-veined skull was supported by soft wide bands of plastic material, and the bony arms rested on cushioned ledges.

"Greetings, Earthman," something inside his brain seemed to say. "I have your fellows here, my honored guests. You will join them."

"They are here, my companions?" asked Orth stupidly. "You mean Horn and Neilson? Did you say that to me?"

"He speaks only in thoughts," said Ayna. "When our people reach the age of two hundred they submit to this operation. With their lungs gone there is, of course, no vocal speech. But we live on for centuries untroubled by bodily breakdowns."

Ivath motioned with his feeble old arms.

"Come," he flashed at them, "we will join them."

* * * * *

As they sat in a small spacer cruising within the vast hollow of Ivath's world-sized stage, Ayna explained more of the mysteries of this future world. How the planets had been cut up into smaller spheres and moved into the dwindling radiations of Sol. How their fleets of space ships crossed the void to trade and mine the precious elements they required, and of the other galactic cultures they met.

"It is sad," said the girl at last, "that you can never return to the past. It is there that our science has utterly failed. Travel in time is but a one-way voyage."

"You mean, Ayna," Orth said slowly, "we can't carry back the knowledge of an atomic shield that will arrest the spread of sterility--that mankind must abandon his use of atomic power?"

"You cannot go back," smiled Ayna, putting her hand on his shoulder as she spoke. "But there is no need. In 1980--if our records are not too wrong--Eric Ensamoff discovered such a shield."

"Great!" cried Orth. "I won't mind being stranded here. There's Ivath to set right on his ancient history. There's your perfected civilization to study." He swallowed his tongue momentarily and recovered it.

"And then there's you, Ayna," he blurted. "You're...."

The girl slid her fingers across a toggle-switch in the wall. "No use letting all the worlds hear us," she said softly, "much less see us. You see, I was sent to interview you and get your reactions. All the world was watching while you explored."

Orth took the girl and pulled her closer. He studied her face. She smiled.

"Sure it's turned off?" he demanded. She nodded.

"Fine ... no, they don't need to see _this_ reaction...."