"Listen," he said, "and listen good, because I don't have time to say it twice. I've got the sixteen Romans waiting in a trigger area. There's a trip mechanism that will throw them back to their own time the minute there's an opening for them to fit into. I'm going to stay here and operate the machine. I want you to ride the time-grapple back to the Arena and see that the others--you said they were Roundheads?--and nobody but they get into the time-grapple for transference back to their own time." "Me?" I said. "Into the time-grapple. I certainly will not--" Before I could finish he seized me by the shoulders and pushed me into the time-grapple area. The moment I stumbled across the line the laboratory faded around me. I felt a moment of nausea, and then I was swinging, unsupported and apparently invisible above the royal box in the arena. When I leaned down I was right on a level with Nero himself. I took one horrified look at him, gasped, and turned away. I looked down in the arena, and saw immediately why Myers had sent me back. The time-grapple would, of course, have to get the Roundheads all on one grab and it would be impossible until they were all close together. I knew that, back in the laboratory, Myers could see me apparently standing on the floor in front of him and his devilish machine. He could also, of course, see Nero and part of the Royal box. I would have to direct him to the Roundheads when the time came. I looked out in the arena, and groaned. The door to the cells was just opening and the Roundheads were filing out onto the field. The gladiators were already out; the Roundheads were too far dispersed for the time-grapple to grab them. "Get together, get together!" I cried--but of course they couldn't hear me as long as I was in the time-grapple field. Just then Nero spoke up next to my ear, and I _could_ hear him, because of the auditory equipment built into the field. "My dear," he was saying petulantly to a thickly powdered, fat-faced woman beside him. "Look at those Christians! And Lictus promised me that I shouldn't be disappointed. Look how sober and dull they are. They usually come on with their faces lit up, almost exalted." "Perhaps," said the woman, "this group doesn't feel so much like being martyred. Maybe they'll run around a bit more." I could stand no more of this, and signaled Myers to move the field down toward the Roundheads. The idiots were still too far apart to be picked up and were talking together in that odd, seventeenth century English. "What think you, Sergeant," said one fresh-faced youngster, "are we to be put to trial by those armored demons, yonder?" "It may be, John," replied the individual addressed as Sergeant. The young man sighed. "I feel the hand of the Lord strong upon me," he said. "None the less, had I but my claymore--"