"Gag?" repeated Harg wonderingly. "Oh, yes--gag! A jest; a trick. Why, there is no--er--gag. I was merely attempting to place your position in the world line. You see, _this_ is the year M-62. You would call it--" He pondered briefly. "You would call it--25,983 A.D." "What!" Larry's fingers crept tighter about the butt of his automatic. "Hey, Sandra, let's get out of here! This guy's nuts!" Harg smiled upon the young engineer benignly, but his hand toyed with one of the metallic studs on his harness. "I shouldn't attempt anything--er--rash, if I were you," he suggested quietly. "I believe the young lady is beginning to comprehend. Am I not right, Miss Day?" "I--I think so," nodded the girl faintly. "Larry, this really is the two-hundred-and-sixtieth century. Harg is not fooling us. Through some incredible accident ... or maybe by design...." Harg rubbed his wee hands together triumphantly. "But by design!" he cried. "Oh, most assuredly by design! _I_ brought you here! I, Harg-Ofortu! You are the results of my experiments." "Experiments?" Larry didn't like the sound of the word. His eyes narrowed. "Yes. The results of my experiments with the Time warp. Surely you know that Time can be warped? But, yes--of course you do. Even in your unenlightened era men had begun to recognize that fact. Still, it has taken all these intervening millenia for a human brain to unravel the problem of utilizing this knowledge. And I, Harg-Ofortu, have done it! I have brought you here, alive and unharmed, as a living proof of my genius." "And now that we're here--?" began Sandra. Harg beamed. "Ah, the glory that is yours! You most fortunate children of a slumbrous past. From you we shall learn many things, things to fill gaps in our history of mankind. From your infantile brains we can extract racial memories stretching back to the early simian beginnings. From your bodies we can learn the history of man's early structure. "You have hair! Teeth! Ears! It would not even surprise me to find that you have rudimentary gills. Maybe vermiform appendices! Oh, what marvelous subjects you will make for the dissecting table!" Sandra's color fled; her breath hissed sharply. "Dissecting table! But surely you can't mean to use us for--" Harg silenced her with a tiny gesture. "Come, now. Let us waste no more time in idle chatter. We have delayed long enough, and I am afire with impatience. We will go to the laboratory." * * * * * Until this morning, Larry had maintained an incredulous silence. But now, with a sudden movement, he stepped before Sandra, his automatic leveled.