Hute took his hand from Carl's shoulder and gravely shook hands with Carl's aides. It was his simple gesture of reward for their great sacrifice. They would die with the gratifying knowledge that the Leader himself had taken their hand and shaken it in gratitude at a service well performed. Then he squared his massive shoulders and stepped onto the tri-matter slab--and vanished. One by one the members of his general staff followed. When the last of them stepped into thin air above the softly glowing square, Carl walked over to a switch board and pulled the disconnects that broke the surge of power playing over the room. His pale assistants watched, hypnotized. Carl smiled at them encouragingly. He glanced at his watch and estimated the time left. "Another hour at the most now," he said quietly. "It could come any second." The wooden walls of the room closed them in with brooding foreboding. A heavily barred window brought a view of the steel bridge that led to the city. A large clock on the wall became the center of attention. A red second hand moved with slowly deliberate swiftness around the dial. And in the center of the waiting group the luminous square built flush with the wooden floor waited too, its face inscrutible, its substance anchored in three roots of Being. An electrical tension was building up around the hushed group of scientists. Vague stirrings of cold light rippled the surface of the square block of tri-matter. "The cleavage is beginning," Carl said quietly. "When I say the word step through. The entropy shift must be just right or we'll find ourselves with Hitle and his gang. Now!" As one man the group stepped onto the block and vanished. An instant later the holocaust broke loose. * * * * * Carl Grinch stood before the tribunal of the United Nations of the planet Amba. Video cameras pointed at him from every direction. The audience room was filled to overflowing with officials, and over the whole planet people had paused in their work to watch him and listen to his words. "We, of Aleme," he was saying. "Dared not openly defy Hute Hitle. He was too strongly entrenched. Unless we obeyed his orders to the letter we were executed; and a dead man cannot serve the interests of all Amba. My researches gave me the plan I had been looking for. "As you all know, time travel was discovered many centuries ago. It amounted to nothing more than perfect stasis. A person could travel forward in time to any period, but not backward. The time machine in marching forward existed at every instant, and was therefore always present to the view of outsiders.