The next sights came and went so fast that I never fully saw nor comprehended any of them. In turn and variously we found ourselves in: a quiet village inhabited by plump little farmers who spoke German; a towering city lighted only by flickering gas-lamps; a dirty little slum-section wherein evil roisterers roared bawdy songs in a French _patois_; a big temple, gilded and magnificent, surrounded by chanting rows of priests; the middle of a brick-and-plaster wall; a huge airfield upon which were reared fully a dozen monstrous egg-shaped crafts, one of which, as we stared bewildered, hurled itself heavenward in a tremendous burst of flame to be lost, a flaming dot, in the ebon reaches of the sky. Then a thriving little town, where for the first time we saw printed words we could understand. "POST OFFICE ... Hunter's Fort ... Virginia ... C.S.A." All these and dozens more, until my brain staggered before the questions it could not answer. And Hank continued to punch keys with--I could not help thinking--a desperate intentness. But it was Helen who broke first. She was atremble with emotion as she reached forward and stayed Hank's fingers on the studs, stayed our mad voyage in what was, by now, the almost pleasant grayness of the void. And, "Hank!" she cried. "No more, Hank! Oh, please, no more! I can't stand it. Not without knowing where we are, what these places are, what it all means...." Hank took his hands from the controls reluctantly. For a long moment he studied us. Then, "I should think you'd understand by now," he said. "I been tryin' to 'splain it to you all along. What we been seein' is just a fraction o' them other possible worlds I was talkin' about. These are the worlds that _might_ o' been!" CHAPTER IV "A Stitch in Time" "M-might have been?" I repeated. I didn't say it just like that, I guess. I said it more like, "M-m-m-might have b-b-been?" All right, so my teeth were chattering! So what? So maybe it was cold; how do you know? Hank said woefully, "There's millions of 'em, mebbe billions. Mebbe trillions; I dunno. I was just 'sperimentin', tryin' to find which course this here machine took--if any--so I'd know--" Helen's eyes were deep with surmise. She said, "Do you mean, Hank, that any of these different existences _might_ have been the history of the United States if other things had happened?" "Might have been," agreed Hank, "and is. You gotta get that clear in your minds. These places is just as real to the people in 'em as our world is to _us_. If we was to try to tell 'em about our civilization, they'd think we was nuts. Because things took a different twist for them, and they got a way of livin' which don't even conceive of our ways."