Chapter II

Snader’s “station” proved to be a middle-sized, middle-cost home in a good neighborhood. Lights glowed in the windows. Jeff could hear the whisper of traffic on a boulevard a few blocks away. Through the warm dusk, he could dimly see the mountains on the horizon. All was peaceful.

Snader unlocked the front door with a key which he drew from a fine metal chain around his neck. He swept open the front door with a flourish and beamed at them, but Ann drew back.

“‘Walk into my parlor, said the spider to the fly,’” she murmured to Jeff. “This could be a gambling hell. Or a dope den.”

“No matter what kind of clip joint, it can’t clip us much,” he said. “There’s only four bucks in my wallet. My guess is it’s a ‘temple’ for some daffy religious sect.”

They went in. A fat man smiled at them from a desk in the hall. Snader said, “Meet Peter Powers. Local agent of our bureau.”

The man didn’t get up, but nodded comfortably and waved them toward the next room, after a glance at Snader’s key.

The key opened this room’s door, too. Its spring lock snapped shut after them.

The room was like a doctor’s waiting room, with easy chairs along the walls. Its only peculiar aspects were a sign hanging from the middle of the ceiling and two movie screens--or were they giant television screens?--occupying a whole wall at either end of the room.

The sign bore the number 701 in bright yellow on black. Beneath it, an arrow pointed to the screen on the left with the word Ante, and to the right with the word Post.

Jeff studied the big screens. On each, a picture was in motion. One appeared to be moving through a long corridor, lined with seats like a railroad club car. The picture seemed to rush at them from the left wall. When he turned to the right, a similar endless chair-lined corridor moved toward him from that direction.

“Somebody worked hard on this layout,” he said to Snader. “What’s it for?”

“Time travel,” said Snader. “You like?”

“Almost as good as Disneyland. These movies represent the stream of time, I suppose?”

Instead of answering, Snader pointed to the screen. The picture showed a group of people chatting in a fast-moving corridor. As it hurtled toward them, Snader flipped his hand in a genial salute. Two people in the picture waved back.

Ann gasped. “It was just as if they saw us.”

“They did,” Snader said. “No movie. Time travelers. In fourth dimension. To you, they look like flat picture. To them, we look flat.”

“What’s he supposed to be?” Jeff asked as the onrushing picture showed them briefly a figure bound hand and foot, huddled in one of the chairs. He stared at them piteously for an instant before the picture surged past.

Snader showed his teeth. “That was convict from my time. We have criminals, like in your time. But we do not kill. We make them work. Where he going? To end of line. To earliest year this time groove reach. About 600 A.D., your calendar. Authorities pick up when he get there. Put him to work.”

“What kind of work?” Jeff asked.

“Building the groove further back.”

“Sounds like interesting work.”

Snader chortled and slapped him on the back. “Maybe you see it some day, but forget that now. You come with me. Little trip.”

Jeff was perspiring. This was odder than he expected. Whatever the fakery, it was clever. His curiosity as a technician made him want to know about it. He asked Snader, “Where do you propose to go? And how?”

Snader said, “Watch me. Then look at other wall.”

He moved gracefully to the screen on the left wall, stepped into it and disappeared. It was as if he had slid into opaque water.

Jeff and Ann blinked in mystification. Then they remembered his instruction to watch the other screen. They turned. After a moment, in the far distance down the long moving corridor, they could see a stocky figure. The motion of the picture brought him nearer. In a few seconds, he was recognizable as Snader--and as the picture brought him forward, he stepped down out of it and was with them again.

“Simple,” Snader said. “I rode to next station. Then crossed over. Took other carrier back here.”

“Brother, that’s the best trick I’ve seen in years,” Jeff said. “How did you do it? Can I do it, too?”

“I show you.” Grinning like a wildcat, Snader linked his arms with Ann and Jeff, and walked them toward the screen. “Now,” he said. “Step in.”

Jeff submitted to Snader’s pressure and stepped cautiously into the screen. Amazingly, he felt no resistance at all, no sense of change or motion. It was like stepping through a fog-bank into another room.