see again.

Mechanically, he glanced down at his watch, lifting his wrist into his
line of vision as slowly and ponderously as though it bore a great
weight.

"Two ... two minutes," he whispered huskily. "Then the automatic switch
will close, back in my laboratory. If I am not standing where ... where
you found me ... between the disc and the grid of my time machine, where
the reversed energy can reach me, to ... to take me back ... God!"

He sagged in my arms and dropped to his knees, sobbing.

"And yet ... what you say is true. It is already written that I did
not return." His sobs cut harshly through the silence of the room.
Pitying his despair, I reached down to give him a sympathetic pat on
the shoulder. It is a terrible thing to see a man break down as
Harbauer had done.

As he felt my grip on him relax, he suddenly shot his fist into the
pit of my stomach, and leaped to his feet. Groaning, I doubled up,
weak and nerveless, for the instant, from the vicious, unexpected
blow.

"Ah!" shrieked Harbauer. "You soft-hearted fool!" He struck me in the
face, sending me crashing to the floor, and snatched up his pistol.

"I'm going, now," he shouted. "Going! What do I care for your records
and your histories? They are not yet written; if they were I'd change
them." He bent over me and snatched from my hand the ring of keys, one
of which I had used to unlock the door of the navigating room. I tried
to grip him around the legs, but he tore himself loose, laughing
insanely in a high-pitched, cackling sound that seemed hardly human.

"Farewell!" he called mockingly from the doorway. Then the door
slammed, and as I staggered to my feet, I heard the lock click.

* * * * *

I must have acted then by instinct or inspiration. There was no time
to think. It would take him not more than three or four seconds to
make his way to the exit, stroll by the guard to the spot where we had
found him, and--disappear. By the time I could arouse the crew, and
have my orders executed, his time would be up, and--unless the whole
affair were some terrible nightmare--he would go hurtling back through
time to his own era, armed with a devastating knowledge.

There was only one possible means of preventing his escape in time. I
ran across the room to the emergency operating controls, cut in the
atomic generators with one hand and pulled the Vertical-Ascent lever
to Full Power.

There was a sudden shriek o