nt over the two sheets of typed paper.
It wasn't complete, not by a long shot. There were little tones of
meaning that a printed, or even a spoken word couldn't put over. There
were evidences of a vast and certainly superhuman civilization; of an
alien and yet somehow completely human way of thinking.

But that was the gist of it. The man he had seen in that new building
at Carlson Spacecraft was no ordinary human being.

That, however, didn't bother Karnes half so much as the gray globe the
man had disappeared into after he had been shot at. And Karnes knew,
now, that the shots probably hadn't missed.

The globe was one of two things. And the intruder had been one of two
groups.

(A) One of the Surveyors of Ancient Earth, in which case the globe had
been a--well, a time machine. Or

(B) A student, in which case the machine was a type of spacecraft.

The question was: Which?

If it were (A), then he and the world around him were real, living,
working out their own destinies toward the end point represented by
the man in the gray globe.

But if it were (B)--

Then this was the Shrine, and he and all the rest of Earth were
nothing but glorified textbooks!

And there would come crises on the Shrine, duplicates of the crises on
old Earth. Except that they wouldn't be permitted to happen. The poor
ignorant people on the Shrine had to be coddled, like the children
they were. Damn!

Karnes crumpled the sheets of paper in his hands, twisting them
savagely. Then he methodically tore them into bits.

* * * * *

When the first dawnlight touched the sea, Karnes was watching it out
the east window. It had been twenty-four hours since he had seen the
superman walk into his gray globe and vanish.

All night, he had been searching his brain for some clue that would
tell him which of the two choices he should believe in. And he
couldn't bring himself to believe in either.

Once he had thought: _Why do I believe, then, what the impressor said?
Why not just forget it?_

But that didn't help. He _did_ believe it. That alien instrument had
impressed his mind, not only with the facts themselves, but with an
absolute faith that they _were_ facts. There was no room for doubt;
the knowledge imparted to his mind was true, and he knew it.

For a time, he had been comforted by the thought that the gray globe
must be a time machine because of the way it had vanished. It was very
comforting until