and energy, they met with no
opposition. Finally, they came to the spiral stairway which led up to
the great metal sphere which capped the whole structure.

General Zarvas, the Army Commander who had placed himself at the head of
the revolt, stood with his foot on the lowest step, his followers behind
him. There was Prince Burvanny, the leader of the old nobility, and
Ghorzesko Orhm, the merchant, and between them stood Tobbh, the
chieftain of the mutinous slaves. There were clerks; laborers; poor but
haughty nobles: and wealthy merchants who had long been forced to hide
their riches from the dictator's tax-gatherers, and soldiers, and
spacemen.

"You'd better let some of us go first sir," General Zarvas' orderly, a
blood-stained bandage about his head, his uniform in rags, suggested.
"You don't know what might be up there."

The General shook his head. "I'll go first." Zarvas Pol was not the man
to send subordinates into danger ahead of himself. "To tell the truth,
I'm afraid we won't find anything at all up there."

"You mean...?" Ghorzesko Orhm began.

"The 'time-machine'," Zarvas Pol replied. "If he's managed to get it
finished, the Great Mind only knows where he may be, now. Or when."

He loosened the blaster in his holster and started up the long spiral.
His followers spread out, below; sharp-shooters took position to cover
his ascent. Prince Burvanny and Tobbh the Slave started to follow him.
They hesitated as each motioned the other to precede him; then the
nobleman followed the general, his blaster drawn, and the brawny slave
behind him.

The door at the top was open, and Zarvas Pol stepped through but there
was nothing in the great spherical room except a raised dais some fifty
feet in diameter, its polished metal top strangely clean and empty. And
a crumpled heap of burned cloth and charred flesh that had, not long
ago, been a man. An old man with a white beard, and the seven-pointed
star of the Learned Brothers on his breast, advanced to meet the armed
intruders.

"So he is gone, Kradzy Zago?" Zarvas Pol said, holstering his weapon.
"Gone in the 'time-machine', to hide in yesterday or tomorrow. And you
let him go?"

The old one nodded. "He had a blaster, and I had none." He indicated the
body on the floor. "Zoldy Jarv had no blaster, either, but he tried to
stop Hradzka. See, he squandered his life as a fool squanders his money,
getting nothing for it. And a man's life is not money, Zarvas Pol."