bushes that was audible through the sound pickup. Hradzka pulled the
main switch; there was a click as the shielding went out and the door
opened. A breath of cool night air drew into the hollow sphere.

Then there was a loud _bang_ inside the mechanism, and a flash of
blue-white light which turned to pinkish flame with a nasty crackling.
Curls of smoke began to rise from the square black box that housed the
"time-shift" mechanism, and from behind the instrument-board. In a
moment, everything was glowing-hot: driblets of aluminum and silver were
running down from the instruments. Then the whole interior of the
"time-machine" was afire; there was barely time for Hradzka to leap
through the open door.

The brush outside impeded him, and he used his blaster to clear a path
for himself away from the big sphere, which was now glowing faintly on
the outside. The heat grew in intensity, and the brush outside was
taking fire. It was not until he had gotten two hundred yards from the
machine that he stopped, realizing what had happened.

The machine, of course, had been sabotaged. That would have been young
Zoldy, whom he had killed, or that old billy-goat, Kradzy Zago; the
latter, most likely. He cursed both of them for having marooned him in
this savage age, at the very beginning of atomic civilization, with all
his printed and recorded knowledge destroyed. Oh, he could still gain
mastery over these barbarians; he knew enough to fashion a crude
blaster, or a heat-beam gun, or an atomic-electric conversion unit. But
without his books and records, he could never build an antigrav unit,
and the secret of the "temporal shift" was lost.

For "Time" is not an object, or a medium which can be travelled along.