Our own time-machine! With us sitting in it! CHAPTER V The Time Twins It's funny how, in moments of stress, dejection, or great elation, your mind will focus upon some tiny, relatively unimportant point. I should have been whooping with joy to look upon a set of familiar faces, even though those faces were our own. But do you know, my first conscious reaction was one of rage? And why? Because, naturally, the first guy I looked at was myself--and there I was, sitting in that other ship, calmly munching on a great big rosy apple! I said, "Why, you damn glutton! You ought to be ashamed! I've got half a notion to--" I grinned at me ... I mean, _he_ grinned at me ... or I mean I grinned at he ... oh, hell, you know what I mean! The other Jim Blakeson grinned at me and said, "What's the fuss, pal? Hungry? We figured you might be. Here, catch!" And he tossed the remainder of his apple at me. I clutched at it greedily. But of course it fell right into and through my grasping fingers, through my lap and the base of the time-ship, and into the emptiness below. I've often wondered what became of that apple. At that particular moment, we had just lifted ourselves from a weird America where the ruling class was made up of magicians, necromancers and students of demonology. I've often wondered if the apple came tumbling out of the sky to smack some son of a witch on the head. Then the other Hank leaned forward and yelled to our Hank. "Got here soon as I could, Cleaver. I had to get the machine finished proper so they wouldn't be no mess this time!" And our Hank nodded. "Figgered as much," he replied. "Kinda thought you'd come atter us, but I didn't know whether you'd find us or not. How'd you trail us?" Hank Number 2 looked sort of modest. He said, "Why, I had to fix up a new type o' gadget. 'Peared like since me an' you was almost identical the same person, so to speak, we ought to have sort of psychic bonds. You know, like this E.S.P. they talk about? So I whipped up a psychic trailer an'--an' it seemed to work right well." If I had needed any further proof that these Hanks were, fundamentally, the same person, I had it now. Both of them were 'scientific pioneers'. They had a native, inborn ability to create, seemingly at a moment's notice, gadgets of such scientific scope that no other man would have believed them possible. But neither of them could ever give a plain, coherent reason as to how their invention worked or why they had dared think it would work in the first place! My Hank accepted the statement as if it were quite commonplace. "Nice goin'!" he said calmly. "You gonna lead us back where we belong?" The other Hank shook his head.