grasp just by
hearing it. Across the galaxy...."

"That isn't too important just now. How long did you think the journey
took?"

Temple nodded eagerly. "That's what gets me. It was amazing, Alaric.
Really amazing. The whole trip couldn't have taken more than a moment
or two. I don't get it. Did we slip out of normal space into some
other--uh, continuum, and speed across the length of the galaxy like
that?"

"The answer to your question is yes. But your statement is way off.
The journey did not take seconds, Kit."

"No? Instantaneous?"

"Far more than seconds. To reach here from Earth you travelled five
thousand years."

"What?"

"More correctly, it was five thousand years ago that you left Mars.
You would need a time machine to return, and there is no such thing.
The Earth you know is the length of the galaxy and five thousand years
behind you."

CHAPTER VII

It could have been a city in New England, or maybe Wisconsin. Main
Street stretched for half a mile from Town Hall to the small
department store. Neon tubing brightened every store front, busy
proprietors could be seen at work through the large plate glass
windows. There was the bustle you might expect on any Main Street in
New England or Wisconsin, but you could not draw the parallel
indefinitely.

There were only men. No women.

The hills in which the town nestled were too purple--not purple with
distance but the natural color of the grass.

A somber red sun hung in the pale mauve sky.

This was Earth City, Nowhere.

Arkalion had deposited Temple in the nearby hills, promised they would
see one another again. "It may not be so soon," Arkalion had said,
"but what's the difference? You'll spend the rest of your life here.
You realize you are lucky, Kit. If, you hadn't come, you would have
been dead these five thousand years. Well, good luck."

Dead--five thousand years. The Earth as he knew it, dust. Stephanie, a
fifty generation corpse. Nowhere was right. End of the universe.

Temple shuffled his feet, trudged on into town. A man passed him on
the street, stooped, gray-haired. The man nodded, did a mild
double-take. _I'm an unfamiliar face_, Temple thought.

"Howdy," he said. "I'm new here."

"That's what I thought, stranger. Know just about everyone in these
here parts, I do, and I said to myself, now there's a newcomer. Funny
you didn't come in the regular way."

"I'm here," said Temple.

"Yeah. Funny thing, you get to know eve