On the bridge a group of tense officers watched the slaughter without being greatly interested in it. They knew that the guns of the Idaho were proof against any creature of earth, sky, or water, in this world. They were not afraid of the beasts of this strange time into which they had been thrust. The scouting plane was still out, searching the waste of water for land. The officers of the Idaho were all thinking the same thing. Captain Higgins put their thoughts into words. "Mr. Michaelson," the captain said slowly. "I can't argue with you. I am forced to believe that somehow we have been forced back in time. However I am charged with the responsibility for this ship. Back where we came from, the Idaho is needed. I want to get her back where she belongs. How can we accomplish this?" The scientist hesitated. He did not want to say what he had to say. He shook his head. "I question whether or not we can accomplish it," he said at last. "But we _have_ to return!" Higgins protested. "I know," Michaelson said sympathetically. "The problem is _how_!" "You mean there is no way to return?" The scientist shrugged. "If there is, I do not know of it." "But can't you make any suggestion? After all, this is your field. You're a scientist." "This is my field but even I know little or nothing about it. Almost nothing is known about the true nature of the space-time continuum. Only recently have we even guessed that such things as space-time faults existed. We were hurled through this particular fault by accident, the result of an unfortunate combination of circumstances. Whether we can duplicate that accident, and whether it would return us to our own time--I just don't know. Nobody knows." The officers of the Idaho received this information with no sign of pleasure. Craig felt sorry for them. After all, some of them had wives, all of them had friends back in the United States. Or was it _forward_ in the United States, in the America that was to be? It was hard to remember that Columbus had not as yet sailed westward, would not sail westward for--how many hundreds of thousands of years? All human history would have to unroll before there was an America. If the theory of continental drift was correct, there might not even be an American continent, it might still be joined to Europe. Babylon and Nineveh, Karnak and Thebes, Rome and London--there were no such cities in the world, would not be for-- * * * * * The men on this ship were probably the only human beings alive on earth! Men had not yet become human, or maybe hadn't. The Neanderthal Man, the Cro-Magnons, maybe the Java Man, the Piltdown Man, had not yet appeared on the planet! "As I understand it," an officer said, "we were sailing directly across a space-time fault when the explosion of the bombs sent us through the fault? Is that correct?" "That is correct," Michaelson answered.