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.

In fact, that was what they seemed to have done. They were in the chair-lined corridor. As Snader turned them around and seated them, they faced another moving picture screen. It seemed to rush through a dark tunnel toward a lighted square in the far distance.

The square grew on the screen. Soon they saw it was another room like the waiting room they had left, except that the number hanging from the ceiling was 702. They seemed to glide through it. Then they were in the dark tunnel again.

Ann was clutching Jeff's arm. He patted her hand. "Fun, hey? Like Alice through the looking-glass."

"You really think we're going back in time?" she whispered.

"Hardly! But we're seeing a million-dollar trick. I can't even begin to figure it out yet."

Another lighted room grew out of the tunnel on the screen, and when they had flickered through it, another and then another.

"Mr. Snader," Ann said unsteadily, "how long--how many years back are you taking us?"

Snader was humming to himself. "Six years. Station 725 fine place to stop."

For a little while, Jeff let himself think it might be true. "Six years ago, your dad was alive," he mused to Ann. "If this should somehow be real, we could see him again."

"We could if we went to our house. He lived with us then, remember? Would we see ourselves, six years younger? Or would--"

Snader took Jeff's arm and pulled him to his feet. The screen was moving through a room numbered 724.

"Soon now," Snader grunted happily. "Then no more questions."

He took an arm of each as he had before. When the screen was filled by a room with the number 725, he propelled them forward into it.

Again there was no sense of motion. They had simply stepped through a bright wall they could not feel. They found themselves in a replica of the room they had left at 701. On the wall, a picture of the continuous club-car corridor rolled toward them in a silent, endless stream.

"The same room," Ann said in disappointment. "They just changed the number. We haven't been anywhere."

* * * * *

Snader was fishing under his shirt for the key. He gave Ann a glance that was almost a leer. Then he carefully unlocked the door.

In the hall, a motherly old lady bustled up, but Snader brushed past her. "Official," he said, showing her the key. "No lodging."

He unlocked the front door without another word and carefully shut it behind them as Jeff and Ann followed him out of the house.

"Hey, where's my car?" Jeff demanded, looking up and down the street.

The whole street looked different. Where he had parked his roadster, there was now a long black limousine.

"Your car is in future," Snader said briskly. "Where it belong. Get in." He opened the door of the limousine.

Jeff felt a little flame of excitement licking inside him. Something was happening, he felt. Something exciting and dangerous.

"Snader," he said, "if you're kidnaping us, you made a mistake. Nobody on Earth will pay ransom for us."

Snader seemed amused. "You are foolish fellow. Silly talk about ransom. You in different time now."

"When does this gag stop?" Jeff demanded irritably. "You haven't fooled us. We're still in 1957."

"You are? Look around."

Jeff looked at the street again. He secretly admitted to himself that these were different trees and houses than he remembered. Even the telephone poles and street lights seemed peculiar, vaguely foreign-looking. It must be an elaborate practical joke. Snader had probably ushered them into one house, then through a tunnel and out another house.

"Get in," Snader said curtly.

Jeff decided to go along with the hoax or whatever it was. He could see no serious risk. He helped Ann into the back seat and sat beside her. Snader slammed the door and slid into the driver's seat. He started the engine with a roar and they rocketed away from the curb, narrowly missing another car.

Jeff yelled, "Easy, man! Look where you're going!"

Snader guffawed. "Tonight, you look where you are going."

Ann clung to Jeff. "Did you notice the house we came out of?"

"What about it?"

"It looked as though they were afraid people might try to break in. There were bars at the windows."

"Lots of houses are built that way, honey. Let's see, where are we?" He glanced at house numbers. "This is the 800 block. Remember that. And the street--" He peered up at a sign as they whirled around a corner. "The street is Green Thru-Way. I never heard of a street like that."