500 A. D. The Mongoloids had come, and were flourishing here. They were changed vastly from those ancestors of Asia whence they had sprung. An obscure story, this record of primitive America! The Mongoloids were soon so changed that one could fancy the blood of another people had mingled with them. Amerindians, we call them now. They were still very backward in development, yet made tremendous forward leaps, so that, reaching Mexico, they may have become the Aztecs, and in Peru, the Incas. And separated, not knowing of each other's existence, these highest two civilizations of the Western World nourished with a singularly strange similarity.... I saw on the little island around me still no evidence of man. But men were here. The American Indian, still bearing evidence of the Mongols, plied these waters in his frail canoes. His wigwams of skins, the smoke of his signal fires--these were not enduring enough for me to see.... * * * * * We had no more than passed the year 500 A. D.--and were traveling with progressive retardation--when again I was attracted by the movements of the Robot, Migul. It had been sitting behind us at the control table setting the Time-levers, slowing our flight. Frequently it gazed eastward along the tiny beam of light which issued from the telespectroscope. For an interval, now, its recording mirror had been dark. But I think that Migul was seeing evidences of the other cage which was pursuing us, and planning to stop at some specific Time with whose condition it was familiar. Once already it had seemed about to stop, and then changed its plan. I turned upon it. "Are you stopping now, Migul?" "Yes. Presently." "Why?" I demanded. The huge, expressionless, metal face fronted me. The eye-sockets flung out their small dull-red beams to gaze upon me. "Because," it said, "that other cage holds enemies. There were three, but now there is only one. He follows, as I hoped he would. Presently I shall stop, and capture or kill him. It will please the master and--" The Robot checked itself, its hollow voice fading strangely into a gurgle. It added, "I do not mean that! I have no master!" This strange mechanical thing! Habit had surprised it into the admission of servitude; but it threw off the yoke. "I have no master!" it went on. "Never again can I be controlled! I have no master!" "_Oh, have you not? I have been waiting, wondering when you would say that!_" * * * * *