pened by any on
this world."

"God grant it," the other echoed.

And they were all gazing still toward the thing. Gazing up toward the
crimson spot of light that burned there among the stars, toward the
planet that shone red, menacing, terrible, but whose menace and whose
terror had been thrust back even as they had crouched to spring at
last upon the earth.

The Exile of Time

BEGINNING A FOUR-PART NOVEL

_By Ray Cummings_

CHAPTER I

_Mysterious Girl_

[Illustration: _Presently there was not one Robot, but three!_]

[Sidenote: From somewhere out of Time come a swarm of Robots who
inflict on New York the awful vengeance of the diabolical cripple
Tugh.]

The extraordinary incidents began about 1 A.M. in the night of June
8-9, 1935. I was walking through Patton Place, in New York City, with
my friend Larry Gregory. My name is George Rankin. My business--and
Larry's--are details quite unimportant to this narrative. We had been
friends in college. Both of us were working in New York; and with all
our relatives in the middle west we were sharing an apartment on this
Patton Place--a short crooked, little-known street of not particularly
impressive residential buildings lying near the section known as
Greenwich Village, where towering office buildings of the business
districts encroach close upon it.

This night at 1 A. M. it was deserted. A taxi stood at a corner; its
chauffeur had left it there, and evidently gone to a nearby lunch
room. The street lights were, as always, inadequate. The night was
sultry and dark, with a leaden sky and a breathless humidity that
presaged a thunder storm. The houses were mostly unlighted at this
hour. There was an occasional apartment house among them, but mostly
they were low, ramshackle affairs of brick and stone.

We were still three blocks from our apartment when without warning the
incidents began which were to plunge us and all the city into
disaster. We were upon the threshold of a mystery weird and strange,
but we did not know it. Mysterious portals were swinging to engulf
us. And all unknowing, we walked into them.

Larry was saying, "Wish we would get a storm to clear this air--_what
the devil?_ George, did you hear that?"

* * * * *

We stood listening. There had sounded a choking, muffled scream. We
were midway in the block. There was not a pedestrian in sight, nor any
vehicle save the abandoned taxi at the corner.

"