h for the evening air to permeate the
interior of the TSB; long enough, in other words, to have permitted
someone to ride across the imaginary drawbridge that spanned the
mirage-moat. Afterward, the lock had slammed back into place of its
own accord.

He hurried into the rec-hall. Easy Money stood all alone behind the
tourist-bar. The black rohorse was gone.

His eyes leaped to the rec-hall table. The Sangraal was gone, too.

He groaned. The little idiot was taking it back! And after he had
forbidden her to leave the "castle" too! Well no, he hadn't forbidden
her exactly: he had forbidden her to leave it _during his absence_.

He walked over to the telewindow nearest the lock and scrutinized the
screen. She was nowhere in sight, but night was on hand and the range
of his vision, while considerably abetted by the light of the rising
moon, was limited to the nearer trees.

Presently he frowned. Was it still the same night, or had he been
unconscious for almost twenty-four hours?

It _couldn't_ be the same night--the position of the moon disproved
that. And yet he could swear that he had been unconscious for no more
than a few hours.

* * * * *

Belatedly, he remembered his gauntlet timepiece, and returned to the
bedroom-office. The timepiece registered 10:32. But that didn't make
any sense either: the moon was still low in the sky.

He knew then that there could be but one answer, and he headed for the
control room posthaste. Sure enough, the jump-board time-dial had been
set for 8:00 p.m. of the same day. He looked at the space-dial. That
had been set to re-materialize the _Yore_ one half mile farther west.

He wiped his forehead. Good Lord, she might have sent the TSB all the
way back to the Age of Reptiles! Even worse, she might have plunked it
right down in the middle of WWIII!

She hadn't, though. In point of fact, she had done exactly what she
had set out to do--taken the _Yore_ back to a point in time from which
the Sangraal could be returned to the castle of Carbonek less than an
hour after it had been stolen.

Suddenly he remembered how she had watched him from the doorway of the
control room each time he had reset the time and space-dials.
Technologically speaking, she was little more than a child, but
jump-boards were as uncomplicated as modern technology could make
them, and a person needed to be but little more than a child to
operate them.

Grimly, Mallory retu