"Migul, let us come to the window," I asked at last. The Robot swung around. "You wish it very much, George Rankin?" "Yes." "There is no harm, I think. You and this girl have caused me no trouble. That is unusual from a human." "Let us loose. We've been chained here long enough. Let us stand by the window with you," I repeated. We did indeed have a consuming curiosity to see out of that window. But even more than that, it seemed that if we were loose something might transpire which would enable us to escape. At all events it was better than being chained. "I will loose you." It unfastened the chain. I whispered: "Mary, whatever comes, be alert." She pressed my arm. "Yes." "Come," said the Robot. "If you wish to see the Cosmorama, now, from the Beginning, come quickly." We joined him at the window. We had made the turn, and were speeding forward again. At that moment all thought of escape was swept from me, submerged by awe. This vast Cosmorama! This stupendous pageant of the events of Time! CHAPTER XII _A Billion Years in An Hour!_ I saw at first, from the window of the cage, nothing more than an area of gray blur. I stared, and it appeared to be shifting, crawling, slowly tossing and rolling. It was a formless vista of Nothingness, yet it seemed a pregnant Nothingness. Things I could sense were happening out there; things almost to be seen. Then my sight, my perception, gradually became adjusted. The gray mist remained, and slowly it took form. It made a tremendous panorama of gray, a void of illimitable, unfathomable distance; gray above, below--everywhere; and in it the cage hung poised. The Robot said, "Is it clearing? Are you seeing anything?" "Yes," I murmured. I held Mary firmly beside me; there was the sense, in all this weightless void, that we must fall. "Yes, but it is gray; only gray." "There are colors," said the Robot. "And the daylight and darkness of the days. But we are moving through them very rapidly, so they blend into gray." The Time-dials of the cage controls showed their pointers whirling in a blur. We were speeding forward through the years--a thousand years to a second of my consciousness; or a hundred thousand years to a second: I could not say.[2] All the colors, the light and shade of this great changing void, were mingled to this drab monochrome. [Footnote 2: Upon a later calculation I judged that the average passage of the years in relation to my perception of Time-rate was slightly over 277,500 years a second. Undoubtedly throughout the myriad centuries preceding the birth of mankind our rate was very considerably faster than that; and from the dawn of history forward--which is so tiny a fraction of the whole--we traveled materially slower.]