paper thrust in his pocket, Larry ran with Tina from the Atwood
garden. Unseen they scurried back through the field. Under a distant
tree they stopped and read the note.

"2930!" Larry exclaimed. "The Robot is taking them back to your world,
Tina!"

"Then we will go there. Let us get back to Harl, now."

But when they reached the place where they had left the cage, it was
not there! The corner of the field behind the clump of shadowing trees
was empty.

"Harl! Harl!" Larry called impulsively. And then he laughed grimly.
What nonsense to try and call into the past or the future to their
vanished vehicle!

"Why--why, Tina--" he said in final realization.

They stared at each other, pale as ghosts in the moonlight.

"Tina, he's gone. And we are left here!"

They were marooned in the year 1777!

CHAPTER IX

_Migul--Mechanism Almost Human_

Mary Atwood and I lay on the metal grid floor of the largest
Time-cage. The giant mechanism which had captured us sat at the
instrument table. Outside the bars of the cage was a dim vista of
shadowy movement. The cage-room was humming, and glowing like a
wraith; things seemed imponderable, unsubstantial.

But as my head steadied from the shock of the vehicle's start into
Time, my viewpoint shifted. This barred room, the metal figure of the
Robot, Mary Atwood, myself--we were the substance. We were real,
solid. I touched Mary and her arm which had seemed intangible as a
ghost now looked and felt solid.

The effects of the dull-red chilling ray were also wearing off. I was
unharmed. I raised myself on one elbow.

"You're all right, Mary?" I asked.

"Yes."

The Robot seemed not to be noticing us. I murmured, "He--it--that
thing sitting there--is that the one which captured you and brought
you to 1935?"

"Yes. Quiet! It will hear us."

It did hear us. It turned its head. In the pale light of the cage
interior, I had a closer view now of its face. It was a metal mask,
welded to a gruesome semblance of a man--a great broad face, with
high, angular cheeks. On the high forehead, the corrugations were
rigid as though it were permanently frowning. The nose was squarely
solid, the mouth an orifice behind which there were no teeth but, it
seemed, a series of tiny lateral wires.

* * * * *

I stared; and the face for a moment stared back at me. The eyes were
deep metal sockets with a round lens in each of them, behind which, it
seemed, ther