The bitterness was back. It was an actual taste in Caxton’s mouth and this time he had a thought with it: Really, Selanie owes me nothing. So why does it bother me that she left? It was not so much that he missed her, but there was a criticism in him of himself for having importuned her when, in fact, his every word was a nuisance to her.

  An hour later, Caxton thought grimly of an historical parallel to Selanie’s departure: Even the Black Plague had its good side - for the survivors. Suddenly, people who had never had any rights, who had never owned anything, and who had not even had a hope of affluence - suddenly they were heirs to bits and pieces and lumps of property.

  So, he thought, I guess as a starter, I get the bike.

  Johns was in his laboratory busy with something; and so there was no one to deny Caxton as he manipulated the machine out of its fold-in, pressed the button as he had seen Selanie do, and watched it set itself up. A minute later, he was astride it, gliding through the air, heading upstream.

  He looked down on a three-dimensional wilderness that was as fascinating to watch as playing solitaire hour after hour. Distance. Mountains. Streams. Blue sky. Clouds…. Don’t get too far away. Know your landmarks…

  The same game of solitaire in flight was his during the next day, and the next.

  Came the fourth morning after Selanie’s departure. After breakfast, Johns stood up from the little table and said, ‘Any time you want to come into my lab and see what I’m busy with, you’re welcome. I’ll be glad to explain it.’

  Caxton muttered a thank you. But he didn’t move. And the memory of the invitation faded as Johns walked through the doorway.

  Sometime during that day, as he took the bike and flew off to his hours-long reverie in motion, Caxton asked himself: Is it possible that I can continue in this semiconscious state for the entire ten days?

  It turned out that he had lost count of the days. Twice, on what must have been the tenth morning, he called to Johns to come and get breakfast.

  Silence replied, except for a faint echo of his own voice.

  ‘Hey!’ whispered Caxton. ‘You’re not gone?’

  He was talking to himself.

  Caxton went outside. The mental numbness of the past ten days seemed to be extending to his body; for he was standing in the icy stream, wet almost to the waist, before he realised that he had unseeingly walked straight into the water.

  Sobered, he waded ashore. That’s all I need, he thought. Catch a cold and die of pneumonia.

  About noon, when he was still waiting for his trousers, shoes and socks to dry in the sun, it struck him that all his problems were internal, for the man who owned - as he now did - the combination super-trailer-truck-airplane, in all this land there was nothing physical to worry about. And he was good for a balance of ninety years.

  He had to make a decision. That was it. A decision.

  About what?

  As darkness settled slowly over the wilderness universe of a primitive America, he still didn’t have the faintest idea. Except that, as a strictly practical matter, he was inside the trailer with the door firmly secured against… fear. He admitted the fear to himself without shame.

  In spite of his anxiety, he fell asleep instantly.

  It had been a clear day, and yet the first time he awakened, he heard the sound of rain on the trailer roof. Once more, sleep came easily. He awakened to two awarenesses.

  It had stopped raining. That was one. The second: he realised what his decision must be. He was a man - he had to face it now, as he had faced it in the past - who blew his mind just about every hour on the hour. It was a handicap that would have put most people into a permanent spin. But somehow he had rescued his wounded ego each time, and carefully tucked it back into his head and he had thereafter, each time, counted his winnings.

  I haven’t counted my winnings, he thought now. The fantastic trailer, with all the things in it that he had never more than glanced at in passing.

  He realised he was wide awake. His watch said nine minutes after three as he entered Claudan Johns’s laboratory. Instantly, and for the first time, he realised it was the largest room in the huge vehicle, and that it was beyond all question the most compact scientific workroom he had ever seen.

  A few minutes of tentative checking verified that every spare inch of wall was utilised for some fold-in of the same complexity as Selanie’s bike. And each fold-in was itself a structure designed to do many things. The largest item was a heavy lead-lined projecting mechanism which occupied a portion of one wall and had a book of instructions soldered to its base. The book opened on the sensational statement: ‘Manufactures all 154 elements from air. (Warning: will produce no radioactive materials unless certain special preconditions are met -see page 98.)

  Caxton backed away from those words - literally took several steps back. His intent was to study the remarkable machine. What happened was, in his final backward step he stumbled over the coffin-like box on the floor, and half-fell, half-knelt to save himself.

  Crouched there, he saw the letter lying on the bottom of the box. On its face was written: ‘for Peter Caxton.’

  Opening it and snatching out the contents was the act of moments. The contents consisted of several sheets of paper with a covering letter.

  Caxton climbed to his feet and carried the letter over to a fold-down table beside a chair. He intended to sit down and read it, but the first words had already grabbed his attention. He stood there, then, and read the letter from beginning to end.

  Dear Peter C:

  I can well understand your reluctance to undertake what in your era — the late twentieth century — was still an experimental method. What I want to say is that, with the power available in this vehicle, and the environment which it makes possible, you can feel reassured. Thus, with temperature control absolutely guaranteed (so long as the trailer itself is not destroyed by the elements - and I suggest a cave as the best place to make certain that doesn’t happen), you have my assurance that the equipment will take you as far as you want to go. However, I recommend for you either the twentieth century (1979) or 2476 A.D. Don’t go anywhere else, is my advice. Selanie and I are agreed that you are not stable enough emotionally to be able to withstand a foray into another era. I regret to inform you that we (Selanie and I) are also agreed that the Possessors will not accept you into the Palace of Immortality. Still, it’s your choice where you go. Just make sure you survive.

  Claudan Johns

  The attached sheets consisted of drawings - which Caxton quickly identified as being connected with the transparent coffin on the floor - and a fairly technical description of machinery which would perform various functions. One arrow finally grabbed his attention, for it pointed at a container and said, ‘Blood drains in here and is frozen!’

  Caxton sat down suddenly in the chair; and as he now rapidly read the other items, with a jump of comprehension he abruptly came to a gulping reality.

  Cryonics!

  But that was unproved.

  It took a while, then, to get back to Claudan Johns’s letter, with its certainties. It took longer to make up his mind; yet in the end his reason was the same: For a man with his purposes, what else was there to do?

  The faint light of dawn was breaking in the east as Caxton opened the outer door and stepped down to the rain-wet grass. Later, he ate an uneasy breakfast, but he realised he was waiting for daylight and that waiting is hard when you know at last what you intend to do… . He intended to look for a suitable cave.

  When he found it, on the third day, he flew over and carefully backed the trailer in. It required another day to block off the front of the cave. But at last the job was done. He took off his clothes and lay down in the bottom of the coffin.

  What he did next would have been easier if he had had a helper, but the equipment was there. The instructions had been to insert four of the needles into his legs and two into his left arm. Caxton winced with each needle insert, but as in 2476 A.D. the insertion was not painful, it was the anticipation that hurt, not the needle.

  It took a while to tape each needle into position with the special material provided; that was very important, Johns had written.

  But the job was finally completed, and Caxton lay back gingerly and carefully drew the cover down into position and locked it into place.

  The instructions had said, ‘Once the cover is down, don’t waste any oxygen. Continue with the next step immediately.’

  But he couldn’t help it. He reached up for the button that would start the ‘process’ of time travel by freezing. And there, finger touching the button, he stopped.

  Am I crazy? he asked himself.

  For God’s sake, this will be my second trip into a distant time… . Somehow, the journey by way of the Palace of Immortality didn’t have the same stark reality.

  Once again, it was a case of the wheels of his mind spinning in a vacuum. For even as he had the holding-back thoughts, his finger, driven by an obstinacy that had no give in it, pushed.

  He heard a click.

  What happened next was not quite as he would have anticipated, if he had considered that there might be anything but blankness (which he hadn’t). Somewhere, somebody said in astonishment, ‘I felt a distance call from below. Check fast, all you tuners.’ There was a pause, and then another voice - a woman’s said, ‘It’s not a call. It’s an energy flow.’ A third voice - that of a second man - said, ‘But from where? It feels a long way off.’ Once more, the woman spoke: ‘A man’s body has broken the barrier…. ‘ The voices began to recede. Like whispers, they became progressively less identifiable as being male or female: ‘.. . It’s a dead body - feels like…’ Now someone else: ‘Not really dead; frozen… . Yes - ‘ Another voice: ‘But artificially… . Oh, one of those; they don’t normally show that strong…This one starts with enough, so he’ll make it….All right, trace him -’

  For a time after that they seemed to be still whispering, but there was no longer any sound that Caxton could identify. Presently the shadow whispering also ended.

  Caxton tried to open his eyes - and couldn’t.

  Stiff - that was the feeling that his body communicated to him … Don’t move!

  He didn’t.

  XXV

  If someone knew that on the night of September tenth, 2476 A.D., at about eleven p.m., a Peter Caxton went aboard the aircraft of Kameel Bustaman and went off somewhere - and if Peter Caxton walked into the hotel at midnight that same night, there would be no problems of confusion of identity.

  And this time, Caxton told himself, there would be no nonsense. He would go on that trip with Renfrew and Blake; and, while on it, learn the science of this era.

  Actually, he used one of the trailer’s Fly-O’s, and landed on the little Fly-O balcony of his own room. He went inside, gulping a little at the perfection of it all.

  But Johns had been right: the trailer equipment was superb. He had set the timing of it for September third, giving himself a week to recuperate. By the fifth day, he was chafing for action. But he had resisted his impatience; and here he was.

  I’ll take that trip. Then I’ll come back here, and discover from the research firm the present home of Daniel Magoelson — and take it from there.

  The beauty of it was all that fantastic experience, but here in this room he had a replacement keep-the-odor-in suit, and so he could go downstairs tomorrow, and nobody would suspect.

  It was not, it developed, quite like that. In a universe of sharp observers, there was that sharp observer, Ned Blake, who took one long, speculative look at Caxton the next morning and said, ‘You’ve changed. What happened?’

  Caxton was curious. ‘Changed - how?’

  ‘You look like the cat that has caught the mouse,’ said Blake, ‘and is not going to share it.’

  ‘I’d have thought,’ replied Caxton glibly, ‘that it’d be the other way around. I’ve finally decided to make my peace with this era, go on that trip with Jim and you - peacefully - and not be thinking of where else I should be, which is what I’ve been doing.’

  ‘Well.’ Blake stared at him doubtfully. ‘I guess that could be it. But there’s a different expression in your eyes and face. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that you’ve become a tougher type. More like you know where you’re going.’

  Caxton was silent, a little startled. He’d been a winner, he thought, he’d taken chances. He had made the decision to risk another dangerous trip to the future.

  That took toughness, all right. But in a way, that had always been in him. His great problem in the past had been uncertainty as to what he wanted to do, and where he wanted to go.

  Now he knew. First, away into space with Renfrew and Blake. And he would spend his time really learning what the science score was.

  Three months - more or less - for that.

  Then, back here, and over to Dan Magoelson’s house - and off, running. Would he reenter the Palace of Immortality immediately? That decision could wait.

  It was a curious three months that followed. For a while Caxton felt a sense of awe at the vastness of the cosmos. Silent planets swung into their viewing plates, and faded into remoteness behind them, leaving nostalgic memories of uninhabited, wind-lashed forests and plains, deserted, swollen seas, and nameless suns.

  The sight and the remembrance brought loneliness like an ache, and the knowledge, the slow knowledge, that this journeying was not lifting the weight of strangeness that had settled upon them ever since their arrival at Alpha Centauri.

  There was nothing here for their souls to feed on, nothing that would satisfactorily fill one year of their lives, let alone fifty. People really do belong to their own era, Caxton thought. He intended to fight that feeling in himself.

  But he watched the realisation grow on Blake, and he waited for a sign from Renfrew that he felt it, too. The sign didn’t come. Then he grew aware of something else: Renfrew was watching him. Watching Blake also, with a hint in his manner of secret knowledge, a suggestion of secret purpose. We’ve got to remember he’s sick, Caxton thought. In spite of that warning to himself, Renfrew’s perpetual cheerfulness lulled him. Caxton was lying on his bunk at the end of the third month, thinking uneasily about the whole unsatisfactory situation, when the door opened and Renfrew came in.

  He carried a paralyzer gun and a rope. He pointed the gun at Caxton and said, ‘Sorry, Peter. Cassellahat told me to take no chances, so just lie quietly while I tie you up.’

  ‘Blake!’ Caxton yelled.

  Renfrew shook his head gently. ‘No use,’ he said. ‘I was in his room first.’

  The gun was steady in his fingers, his blue eyes were steely. All Caxton could do was tense his muscles against the ropes as Renfrew tied him, and trust to his belief that he was probably stronger than the other.

  Renfrew stepped back finally, said again, ‘Sorry, Peter.’ He added, ‘I hate to tell you this, but both of you went off the deep end mentally when we arrived at Centaurus - you with your Lakeside obsession, and Blake so disturbed about our odor. This is the cure prescribed by the psychologist whom Cassellahat consulted. You’re supposed to get a shock as big as the one that knocked you for a loop.’

  The first time, Caxton paid no attention to the mention of Cassellahat’s name. But the second reference snatched his attention. ‘Oh, come on, now, Jim,’ he urged, ‘think hard. That isn’t exactly what Cassellahat said. Think. What were the exact words?’

  The question seemed to catch at the other man’s mind. He stopped. For just a moment he seemed to be trying to remember. The moment went by. He shook himself. He said, ‘It won’t be long now. We’re already entering the field of the bachelor sun.’

  ‘Bachelor sun!’ Caxton shouted.

  Renfrew made no reply. The instant the door closed behind him, Caxton began to work on his bonds; all the time he was thinking: What was it Cassellahat had said? Bachelor suns maintained themselves in this space by a precarious balancing.

  In this space! The sweat poured down his face as he pictured their vessel being precipitated into another plane of the spacetime continuum. He could feel the ship falling as he finally worked his hands free of the rope.

  He hadn’t been tied long enough for the cords to interfere with his circulation. He headed for Blake’s room. In two minutes, they were on their way to the control room.

  Renfrew didn’t see them until they had him. Blake grabbed his gun; Caxton hauled him out of the control chair with one mighty heave, and dumped him on to the floor.

  He lay there, unresisting, grinning up at them. ‘Too late,’ he taunted. ‘We’re approaching the first point of intolerance, and there’s nothing you can do except prepare for the shock.’

  Caxton scarcely heard him. He plumped himself into the chair and glared into the viewing plate. Nothing showed. That stumped him for a second. Then he saw the recorder instruments. They were trembling furiously, registering a body of infinite size.

  For a long moment, Caxton stared crazily at those incredible figures. Then he plunged the decelerator far over. Before that pressure of full-driven adeledicnander, the machine grew rigid; Caxton had a sudden fantastic picture of two irresistible forces in full collision. Gasping, he jerked the power out of gear.

  They were still falling.

  ‘An orbit,’ Blake was saying. ‘Get us into an orbit’

  With shaking fingers, Caxton pounded one out on the keyboard, basing his figures on a sun of Sol-ish size, gravity, and mass.

  The bachelor wouldn’t let them have it.

  He tried another orbit, and a third, and more - finally one that would have given them an orbit around mighty Antares itself. But the deadly reality remained. The ship plunged on, down and down.

  And there was nothing visible on the plates, not a shadow of substance. It seemed to Caxton that he could make out a vague blur of greater darkness against the black reaches of space. But the stars were few in every direction and it was impossible to be sure.

  Finally, in despair, Caxton whirled out of the seat and knelt beside Renfrew, who was still making no effort to get up. ‘Listen, Jim,’ he pleaded, ‘what did you do this for? What’s going to happen?’