As it bent awkwardly over me, I saw the flexible, intricately jointed lengths of its long fingers--so delicately built that they were almost prehensile. And within its mailed chest I seemed to hear the whirr of mechanisms. It said, as it rose and moved away, "I am glad you did not try to control me. I can never be controlled again. That, I have conquered." It sat again at the table. The cage drove us back through the years.... CHAPTER X _Events Engraven on the Scroll of Time_ Before continuing the thread of my narrative--the vast sweep through Time which presently we were to witness--I feel that there are some mental adjustments which every Reader should make. When they are made, the narrative which follows will be more understandable and more enjoyable. Yet if any Reader fears this brief chapter, he may readily pass it by and meet me at the beginning of the next one, and he will have lost none of the sequence of the narrative. For those who bravely stay with me here, I must explain that from the heritage of millions of our ancestors, and from our own consciousness of Time, we have been forced to think wrongly. Not that the thing is abstruse. It is not. If we had no consciousness of Time at all, any of us could grasp it readily. But our consciousness works against us, and so we must wrench away. This analogy occurs to me: There are two ants of human intelligence to whom we are trying to explain the nature of Space. One ant is blind, and one can see, and always has seen, its limited, tiny, Spatial world. Neither ant has ever been more than a few feet across a little patch of sand and leaves. I think we could explain the immensity of North and South America, Europe, Asia and the rest more easily to the blind ant! So if you will make allowances for your heritage, and the hindrance of your consciousness of Time, I would like to set before you the real nature of things as they have been, are, and will be. Throughout the years from 1935 to 2930, man learned many things. And these things--theory or fact, as you will--were told to Larry and me by Tina and Harl. They seem even to my limited intelligence singularly beautiful conceptions of the Great Cosmos. I feel, too, that inevitably they must be included in my narrative for its best understanding. * * * * *