The windows of his apartment on the fourteenth floor were open and a gentle breeze chilled the sweat on his face as he worked with the knife. He had previously removed four jewels from the metal globe, but the large ruby he'd selected this time seemed to be embedded deeper. The blade slipped and slashed the palm of his left hand. Cursing the artifact and all Martians in general, he attacked the ruby furiously and grunted with satisfaction when he dislodged it. The red jewel rolled across the table and fell to the floor. Picking it up gingerly as if it were a fragile thing of glass, he held it in the sunlight and watched the myriad facets sparkle like a one-color kaleidoscope. It was the largest jewel of all and worth a small fortune.... A sharp pain in his hand reminded him of his wound and he went to the bathroom. After carefully washing the cut, he applied iodine and was trying to find a bandage when.... * * * * * _The ruby rolled across the table and fell to the floor._ Startled, he leaped back and upset the chair. A second before, he'd been in the bathroom and now he was at the table! Amnesia? He couldn't remember walking back to the living room and although he thought he'd put iodine on the cut, there was none on it that he could see. He went to the bathroom.... * * * * * _The ruby rolled across the table and fell to the floor._ He was sitting before the table again without any memory of having left the bathroom! It had happened _twice_. Taking the globe to the window, he examined it carefully and saw that where the ruby had been lodged, there was now an opening through the metal. When he held it at a certain angle, he saw a maze of wiring and tiny mechanisms inside. He had fought the Martians for two years. He had traveled across their red deserts, crawled on the muddy bottoms of their gigantic dead canals, walked through the remains of their ancient cities and heard legends about the great Martian empire that had slowly crumbled during the centuries. He remembered the legends about Martian time machines and he accepted the fact readily: the object in his hand was a time trap. An ancient, intricate, scientific booby-trap! The Martian had known he would die and had deliberately planned his revenge. Perhaps the machine wasn't strong enough to take anyone far into the past or future; that would explain why he hadn't used it to escape. But it was evidently strong enough to be used as a trap, and perhaps it had even been designed for that purpose centuries ago. Removing the ruby had triggered it.... Ironic, he reflected, that he'd gone to so much trouble and expense to smuggle the thing from Mars to Earth. The jewels were worth a fortune and it had never occurred to him that the metal globe might have some _function_. Actually, he had smuggled an ingenious death-trap back to Earth with him. He shuddered at the thought. * * * * *