wheeled cradle, ready to be rolled out to the blast-off point. Hurrying technicians swarmed about it with last-minute checks. I walked over, saluted the officer who was supervising and began to witness events which I had crossed so tremendous a span of years to observe.

The atom-rocket was a long, silvery torpedo, a cluster of tubes at the rear, a snub-nosed warhead at the front. A panel in the side of it was open, and technicians were setting dials according to the figures read off by a white-haired old officer with the insignia of a general on his collar.

I listened in awe and reverence, straining to note and remember everything that occurred. To think that I was actually present at the climactic moment of the legendary War of Annihilation! It was the most thrilling moment of my life. Almost I forgot to curse Master Lys and his duplicity as I watched.

Almost—but not quite. For the thing was too fresh in my mind, and I was aware that I was still in danger.

It had begun with a routine notice that my preparatory work had been approved, and that I was authorized to enter a theme in ortho-history for my final Citizenship Ratings. The theme, I saw with a sinking heart, was the War of Annihilation.

I had hurried to Master Lys, my instructor, sure that there was an error.

"Master, you give me an impossible task," I had said. "The theme regulations are that I must make a 'real and complete contribution to human knowledge.' But how can I? We have so pitifully few records of the War of Annihilation—all of them have been studied, and analyzed, and worked over for thousands of years. There is no way for me to add to what has been written already!"

He cackled at me in his insufferable Tri-Alpha way.

"There is a way," he mumbled, peeping at me out of his rheumy old eyes.

It took me a moment to realize what he meant.

"The time-belts!" And Master Lys nodded.

Well, I argued with him, of course. The time-belts were too dangerous; not one time-traveler in ten returned from the past, even when their projects were as recent as a hundred years ago. And the farther into the past one ventured, the more certain it became that return would be impossible.

For although the mechanism of the time-belts could be 

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