"The scene actually was there," Rogers put in. "Loto used a telescope quite as he would have used one through the window to see Central Park. Go on, Loto." "The girl..." George prompted. "She was a small girl. Very slender--about sixteen, I guess. She had long, golden hair, but it was red when she stood outside with the sun on it. That's because the sun was red; an enormous glowing red ball, like the end of a cigar. It tinged the snow with blood, but there didn't seem to be much heat from it. "Sometimes I could see the girl through the doorway. There was a door, but it was transparent--glass, perhaps--and the house was lighted inside. She would sit on a low seat, with her hair in sort of braids down over her shoulders. Once she played on some little stringed instrument. And sang. I could see her so plainly it seemed curious not to hear her voice. "They appeared to treat her kindly, even though she was a captive. But once the man came in and tried to kiss her. She fended him off. Then he went out and got on his sled and drove away. He was gone several hours. "The girl cried that night. She cried for a long time. Once she ran outside, but one of those huge dogs came leaping out of the other building and drove her back. The dog's baying must have aroused the place. The old man and the woman appeared, and they locked the girl up in some other room. I never saw her again. "A week or two went by and father was better. But the next time I went to the laboratory, the apparatus wouldn't work. Perhaps the chemicals on the screen were worn out--We're not really sure. But we've never been able since to make a screen that would do more than glow. We've never had another that would affect the time-space behind it." "You mean," said the Big Business Man softly, "that after those brief glimpses into the future, it is closed again to you?" Rogers spoke. "Tell them the rest, Loto." The younger man was hesitant. "Perhaps you gentlemen wouldn't understand. We have seen nothing more, but I couldn't forget that girl." "_I_ understand," George murmured. But Loto went on unheeding: "It wasn't the scientific part of our discovery that impressed me most. We kept that secret because we had no proof of what we had done, and we couldn't seem to get any. It was the girl that bothered me. That girl--a captive--facing some danger.... You gentlemen will say she isn't living, that she won't be alive for thousands of years yet. But _I_ say your conception of it is wrong." Loto's voice had gained sudden power. He seemed abruptly years older--forceful, commanding. "_You_ say that girl _will_ be living in the future. I say she _is_ living in the future. She is living just as you and I are living--right here in this exact space that we call New York--within a few hundred yards of this room. She is separated from us, not by space, but only by time.