Kane shook his head. "Whether this world is real or not, I belong to it. And you'll be bucking enough paradoxes as it is." * * * * * The glider dropped at first like a stone from the great height; then its wings began to find support and it descended in vast looping turns that in the troposphere became at last a tightly circling glide over the Schwarzwald. The air over Germany was empty; now, short hours before the coming of the dust, everyone who could command aerial transportation had escaped from the country. But the roads, from the great _Autobahnen_ to the narrowest country lanes, were crawling with traffic, snarled and choked by the fear that drove it. Manning strained his eyes for landmarks as they lost altitude; he wanted to spare the batteries in the glider. "Say," remarked Dugan worriedly, "if we find the thing, how far do you figure on going back?" "Mmm--say 1935. We'll need a few years to work if we're going to change history." "We might meet ourselves!" Dugan voiced his fears. Manning grinned. "We ought to be able to duck ourselves. We know where we were, don't we?" Dugan digested that, then advanced another problem: "If we go back to 1935, I'll only be thirty when the war starts. What do they do when two of a guy try to enlist in the Army at once, especially if he's already missing four years later?" "Maybe there won't be any war." "Want to bet?" "No," answered Manning soberly. But a moment later his face lit as he recognized, only a couple of miles away, the big clearing on the plateau where the time traveler had rested. Minutes later, he set the glider bumpily down on the meadow. From on high the sun had been visible, but here only a gray dawn was breaking. Where the forest fire had passed the trees raised black desolate arms to the light, but those still green were greeting the morning with cool balsam scent and awakening bird song, oblivious of the rain of death falling through space to wipe out all life in this land. They climbed out of the glider--and froze, for in the same moment both saw the two long black cars, one with an official swastika on its sleek flank, that were parked under the trees, and the uniformed men who were springing to their feet around the vehicles and lifting rifles. "Turn on your invisibility unit and run for the woods!" hissed Manning. The soldiers gaped for seconds at the spot where the arrivals from the sky had vanished, then fired a useless volley at the glider and huddled together in panic. Both of the Americans were wearing the units Kane had given them, but had tucked the hoods under their belts. Manning stumbled, unable to see his own feet as he ran, and paused on the edge of the woods to cram his hood down over his head. As he did so he saw Dugan a few yards away, doing likewise. "Somebody's got the same idea as us!" called Manning. "Maybe Kahl convinced them, or--We'd better get there fast!"