"And his idea, as expressed in his notes, was that the Raider's movement along the time-dimension was based on electronic acceleration. You know the electronic system as well as I, and realize that the smallest division of matter, the atom, is nothing but a number of electrons, or particles of electricity, revolving around a nucleus. Cannell believed, and I think he was right, that that movement of electrons is the basis of the movement along the time-dimension. "To make you understand that, let me take an example. Suppose all motion on earth stopped entirely, so that there was not the least bit of visible motion in earth or heavens. Sun, moon, stars, ships, clocks, trains, rivers, people, every form of motion stopping completely, so that the earth was a completely motionless world. Then would it not be a timeless world also? In other words, without change there would be no such thing as time, for time depends on and is measured by change. So that all movement along the fourth or time-dimension is intimately related to movement along the other three or space-dimensions. "It is exactly the same with a single, isolated object. Take a metal ball, for instance. It moves steadily along the time-dimension, _from_ the past _toward_ the future, only because the electrons that compose it are constantly moving along the space-dimensions, are constantly revolving around their nucleus, at the same unvarying speed. If you stopped that revolving of electrons, the ball of metal would become static, timeless, would cease to move along the time-dimension. But suppose instead of stopping the electronic movement, you accelerated it, speeded it up? Then the ball of metal whose electronic activity was thus accelerated would move on through time _faster_. Everything around it would still move along the time-dimension at the same rate, but it would be going faster, would speed on into the future, ahead of the things around it. And the more its electronic motion was accelerated, the farther into the future it would go. "In the same way, if the electronic motion was reversed, the metal ball would go _backward_ along the time-dimension, would speed back into the past. Thus you see how such a principle could be applied practically and enable one to speed into past or future at will, simply by accelerating or reversing the motion of the electrons making up his vehicle, or car." "It seems reasonable," I admitted, "but the difficulty remains, for how could the movement of electrons be thus accelerated or reversed at will? Why, no man has ever even seen an electron, or ever will, they're so infinitesimally tiny. Then how affect their speeds, their directions?"