argument…'
'There was a news item the other day,' the stranger said. 'About a man named Michaelson who claimed he went into the future.'
Adams snorted. 'I read that. One second! How could a man know he went one second into time? How could he measure it and know? What difference would it make?'
'None,' the stranger agreed. 'Not the first time, of course. But the next time he will go into the future five seconds. Five seconds, Mr. Adams. Five tickings of the clock. The space of one short breath. There must be a starting point for all things.'
'Time travel?'
The stranger nodded.
'I don't believe it,' Adams said.
'I was afraid you wouldn't.'
'In the last five thousand years,' said Adams, 'we have conquered the galaxy…'
' 'Conquer' is not the right word, Mr. Adams.'
'Well, taken over, then. Moved in. However you may wish it. And we have found strange things. Stranger things than we ever dreamed. But never time travel.'
He waved his hand at the stars.
'In all that space out there,' he said, 'no one had time travel. No one.'
'You have it now,' the stranger said. 'Since two weeks ago. Michaelson went into time, one second into time. A start. That is all that's needed.'
'All right, then,' said Adams. 'Let us say you are the man who in a hundred years or so will take my place. Let's pretend you traveled back in time. What about it?'
'To tell you that Sutton will return.'
'I would know it when he came,' said Adams. 'Why must I know now?'
'When he returns,' the stranger said, 'Sutton must be killed.'
II
The tiny, battered ship sank lower, slowly, like a floating feather, drifting down toward the field in the slant of morning sun.
The bearded, ragged man in the pilot's chair sat tensed, straining every nerve.
Tricky, said his brain. Hard and tricky to handle so much weight, to judge the distance and the speed…hard to make the tons of metal float down against the savage pull of gravity. Harder even than the lifting of it when there had been no consideration but that it should rise and move out into space.
For a moment the ship wavered and he fought it, fought it with every shred of will and mind…and then it floated once again, hovering just a few feet above the surface of the field.
He let it down, gently, so that it scarcely clicked when it touched the ground.
He sat rigid in the seat, slowly going limp, relaxing by inches, first one muscle, then another. Tired, he told himself. The toughest job I've ever done. Another few miles and I would have let her crash.
Far down the field was a clump of buildings and a ground car had swung away from them and was racing down the strip toward him.
A breeze curled in through the shattered vision port and touched his face, reminding him…
Breathe, he told himself. You must be breathing when they come. You must be breathing and you must walk out and you must smile at them. There must be nothing they will notice. Right away, at least. The beard and clothes will help some. They'll be so busy gaping at them that they will miss a little thing. But not breathing. They might notice if you weren't breathing.
Carefully, he pulled in a breath of air, felt the sting of it run along his nostrils and gush inside his throat, felt the fire of it when it reached his lungs.
Another breath and another one and the air had scent and life and a strange exhilaration. The blood throbbed in his throat and beat against his temples and he held his fingers to one wrist and felt it pulsing there.
Sickness came, a brief, stomach-retching sickness that he fought against, holding his body rigid, remembering all the things that he must do.
The power of will, he told himself, the power of mind…the power that no man uses to its full capacity. The will to tell a body the things that it must do, the power to start an engine turning after years of doing nothing.
One breath and then another. And the heart is beating now, steadier, steadier, throbbing like a pump.
Be quiet, stomach.
Get going, liver.
Keep on pumping, heart.
It isn't as if you were old and rusted, for you never were. The other system took care that you were kept in shape, that you were ready at an instant's notice on a stand-by basis.
But the switch-over was a shock. He had known that it would be. He had dreaded its coming, for he had known what it would mean. The agony of a new kind of life and metabolism.
In his mind he held a blueprint of his body and all its working parts…a shifting, wobbly picture that shivered and blurred and ran color into color.
But it steadied under the hardening of his mind, the driving of his will, and finally the blueprint was still and sharp and bright and he knew that the worst was over.
He clung to the ship's controls with hands clenched so fiercely they almost dented metal and perspiration poured down his body and he was limp and weak.
Nerves grew quiet and the blood pumped on and he knew that he was breathing without even thinking of it.
For a moment longer he sat quietly in the seat, relaxing. The breeze came in the shattered port and brushed against his cheek. The ground car was coming very close.
'Johnny,' he whispered, 'we are home. We made it. This is my home, Johnny. The place I talked about.'
But there was no answer, just a stir of comfort deep inside his brain, a strange, nestling comfort such as one may know when one is eight years old and snuggles into bed.
'Johnny!' he cried.
And he felt the stir again…a self-assuring stir like the feel of a dog's muzzle against a held-down palm.
Someone was beating at the ship's door, beating with his fists and crying out.
'All right,' said Asher Sutton, 'I'm coming. I'll be right along.'
He reached down and lifted the attache case from beside the seat, tucked it underneath his arm. He went to the lock and twirled it open and stepped out on the ground.
There was only one man.
'Hello,' said Asher Sutton.
'Welcome to Earth, sir,' said the man, and the 'sir' struck a chord of memory. His eyes went to the man's forehead and he saw the faint tattooing of the serial number.
He had forgotten about androids. Perhaps a lot of other things as well. Little habit patterns that had sloughed away with the span of twenty years.
He saw the android staring at him, at the naked knee showing through the worn cloth, at the lack of shoes.
'Where I've been,' said Sutton, sharply, 'you couldn't buy a new suit every day.'
'No, sir,' said the android.
'And the beard,' said Sutton, 'is because I couldn't shave.'
'I've seen beards before,' the android told him.
Sutton stood quietly and stared at the world before him…at the upthrust of towers shining in the morning sun; at the green of park and meadow, at the darker green of trees and the blue and scarlet splashes of flower gardens on sloping terraces.
He took a deep breath and felt the air flooding in his lungs, seeking out all the distant sacs that had been
