Head up, shoulders back, Burke strolled along the wet, glistening walk towards the campus. He felt somehow detached, apart from the world about him, and it was a good feeling, even though he also enjoyed the smell of the rain-soaked earth, and the way leaves had piled up in little dams along the gutter, and the hissing, whispering sound of tires on wet pavement every time a car went by. Once he even caught himself smiling a little, a small, quiet, secret smile, over the way The Director and The Girl and The Professor each in turn had looked as they took their stands and walked out of his life. The main door of the Science Institute was still unlocked, so Burke went on in, pausing only to nod pleasantly to a campus policeman who happened to pass by at the moment. The laboratory had a glass-paned door. Without hesitation, Burke rapped a hole in it with the butt of his revolver, reached in long enough to turn back the bolt, then stepped inside and locked the door again behind him. Now he turned to the inner room where The Professor dealt with his most private matters. The first thing he noted upon entering was a cluttered desk, on one corner of which lay a flat box perhaps five by eight by two inches in size. That pleased him, for by its grilled front he recognized the thing as the incredible, transistor-packed device The Professor described as a "computational translator." Experiments with assorted foreign students and American Indians of various tribes indicated that it would enable a man to conduct a successful two-way conversation in any language. Strapping the box in place flat against his belly, Burke moved on past the desk. Beyond it, around a corner, loomed the time inverter. It was a cumbersome-looking thing, a cramped platform suspended amid grids of wire. Each grid, in turn, fitted within a larger framework appropriately equipped with calibrated spindles, so that the grids' relative position to each other and to the inner platform could be adjusted at will. To one side, a neat control-board occupied a wall-space. A larger area was given over to a screen somewhat like that of a television set. Warily, Burke picked his way over to the screen. Now that he was here, his stomach showed a strong tendency to quiver. Despite all the long nights he'd spent in this room with The Professor, he found himself doubting his own ability to operate the inverter. As for the theory of the thing, that was completely beyond him. But it was no time for doubt. Switching on the power, Burke carefully set about adjusting the control dials. Latitude and longitude came first, down to minutes and then seconds. A moment's tuning, and Crete and then the Great Palace of Knossos lay before him on the scanner screen. Falling back a step, Burke rubbed the nape of his neck where it ached from strain. Time adjustment, now. A new set of dials.