Before he could ask, Ann popped another question. "Mr. Snader, you heard us talking. You know we're in trouble because Jeff missed a good chance five years ago. Do you claim people can really go back into the past and correct mistakes they've made?" "They can go back. What they do when arrive? Depends on them." "Don't you wish it were true?" she sighed to Jeff. "You afraid to believe," said Snader, a glimmer of amusement in his restless eyes. "Why not try? What you lose? Come on, look at station. Very near here." Ann jumped up. "It might be fun, Jeff. Let's see what he means, if anything." Jeff's pulse quickened. He too felt a sort of midsummer night's madness--a yearning to forget his troubles. "Okay, just for kicks. But we go in my car." Snader moved ahead to the cashier's stand. Jeff watched the weasel-like grace of his short, broad body. "This is no ordinary oddball," Jeff told Ann. "He's tricky. He's got some gimmick." "First I just played him along, to see how loony he was," Ann said. "Now I wonder who's kidding whom." She concluded thoughtfully, "He's kind of handsome, in a tough way." II Snader's "station" proved to be a middle-sized, middle-cost home in a good neighborhood. Lights glowed in the windows. Jeff could hear the whisper of traffic on a boulevard a few blocks away. Through the warm dusk, he could dimly see the mountains on the horizon. All was peaceful. Snader unlocked the front door with a key which he drew from a fine metal chain around his neck. He swept open the front door with a flourish and beamed at them, but Ann drew back. "'Walk into my parlor, said the spider to the fly,'" she murmured to Jeff. "This could be a gambling hell. Or a dope den." "No matter what kind of clip joint, it can't clip us much," he said. "There's only four bucks in my wallet. My guess is it's a 'temple' for some daffy religious sect." They went in. A fat man smiled at them from a desk in the hall. Snader said, "Meet Peter Powers. Local agent of our bureau." The man didn't get up, but nodded comfortably and waved them toward the next room, after a glance at Snader's key. The key opened this room's door, too. Its spring lock snapped shut after them. The room was like a doctor's waiting room, with easy chairs along the walls. Its only peculiar aspects were a sign hanging from the middle of the ceiling and two movie screens--or were they giant television screens?--occupying a whole wall at either end of the room. The sign bore the number 701 in bright yellow on black. Beneath it, an arrow pointed to the screen on the left with the word _Ante_, and to the right with the word _Post_. Jeff studied the big screens. On each, a picture was in motion. One appeared to be moving through a long corridor, lined with seats like a railroad club car. The picture seemed to rush at them from the left wall. When he turned to the right, a similar endless chair-lined corridor moved toward him from that direction.