Beti Sparr steered Dorlup into the automatic cafeteria, chattering and whispering in his ear. Elsewhere in the state of New York, one of the forty-eight United States in the year 1954, a policeman on motorcycle chased a motorist, flagged him down and gave him a summons although in truth he had not violated the speed limit. This was his third such summons in a period of eighteen months, and under state law his driver's license would be revoked. He complained long and loud but to no avail. Actually, his life had been saved, for three months hence he was to be involved in a fatal automobile accident. The summons which revoked his license also revoked the need for his obituary. He never knew this, but the policeman did. The policeman--not a policeman at all in the accepted twentieth century meaning of the word--was guilty of an act of time-tinkering. The man was an artist, though, a promising sculptor, and would in the next few years--if he lived--make a valuable contribution to twentieth century culture. Thousands of miles away in a many-centuries-old tumble of gaunt, grim buildings called the Kremlin in a city named Moscow, capitol of Russia, the other great power in the twentieth century, a massive man with sallow, pallid face and a ponderous gait paced back and forth waiting for the state scientists to summon him. This was the half-Tartar, Georgi Malenkov, crushed by the weight of empire on his incapable shoulders. And when the scientists called, Malenkov plodded fearfully into a huge, windowless room where great, unfamiliar machinery throbbed strangely. What he encountered there was also a case of time-tinkering--but of an entirely different nature. Malenkov stared in frightened fascination at the contents of a bell-jar suspended from the ceiling and bathed in white, vaguely violet radiation. A voice, metallic, far away, wavering, said: "Ahh, Georgi." And Malenkov, heir to the mantle of Stalin and ruler of all the Russian people and their hundreds of millions of satellite subjects fell on his knees and cried, "It speaks! It speaks!" Many hundreds of miles distant, in an unimportant place called Afghanistan, Domique Hadrien waited impatiently and with growing alarm for word from his daughter. He had chosen Afghanistan precisely for its unimportance. Although he knew Laniq was a capable girl, their adversaries were shrewd, merciless men possessed of a megalomania which would readily lead to acts of violence. Domique Hadrien decided to wait one day longer and then send his most experienced time-traveler after Laniq. * * * * * The trail led to Ur of the Chaldees, to ancient Sumeria, to Babylonia, the cradle of civilization. Always Tedor arrived too late, always the angry little pip darting about on his chronoscreen indicated Laniq Hadrien was one step ahead of him.