The chief of protocol said, "Mr. Hudson of—ah—Mastodonia." The secretary of state held out his hand. "I'm glad to see you, Mr. Hudson. I understand you've been here several times." "That's right," said Hudson. "I had a hard time making your people believe I was in earnest." "And are you, Mr. Hudson?" "Believe me, sir, I would not try to fool you." "And this Mastodonia," said the secretary, reaching down to tap the document upon the desk. "You will pardon me, but I've never heard of it." "It's a

President Wesley Adams and Secretary of State John Cooper sat glumly under a tree in the capital of Mastodonia and waited for the ambassador extraordinary to return. "I tell you, Wes," said Cooper, who, under various pseudonyms, was also the secretaries of commerce, treasury and war, "this is a crazy thing we did. What if Chuck can't get back? They might throw him in jail or something might happen to the time unit or the helicopter. We should have gone along." "We had to stay," Adams said. "You

They built the nightly fires circling the camp to keep out the animals. "It'll be the death of me yet," said Adams wearily, "cutting all this wood." "We have to get to work on that stockade," Cooper said. "We've fooled around too long. Some night, fire or no fire, a herd of mastodon will come busting in here and if they ever hit the helicopter, we'll be dead ducks. It wouldn't take more than just five seconds to turn us into Robinson Crusoes of the Pleistocene." "Well, now that this recognition

Hudson lay in his sleeping bag, staring at the sky. It bothered him a lot. There was not one familiar constellation, not one star that he could name with any certainty. This juggling of the stars, he thought, emphasized more than anything else in this ancient land the vast gulf of years which lay between him and the Earth where he had been—or would be—born. A hundred and fifty thousand years, Adams had said, give or take ten thousand. There just was no way to know. Later on, there might be. A me

General Leslie Bowers rose from his chair and paced up and down the room. He stopped to bang the conference table with a knotted fist. "You can't do it," he bawled at them. "You can't kill the project. I know there's something to it. We can't give it up!" "But it's been ten years, General," said the secretary of the army. "If they were coming back, they'd be here by now." The general stopped his pacing, stiffened. Who did that little civilian squirt think he was, talking to the military in that

The helicopter would never fly again, but the time unit was intact. Which didn't mean that it would work. They held a powwow at their camp site. It had been, they decided, simpler to move the camp than to remove the body of Old Buster. So they had shifted at dawn, leaving the old mastodon still sprawled across the helicopter. In a day or two, they knew, the great bones would be cleanly picked by the carrion birds, the lesser cats, the wolves and foxes and the little skulkers. Getting the time un

The general sat alone in his office and held his head between his hands. The fools, he thought, the goddam knuckle-headed fools! Why couldn't they see it as clearly as he did? For fifteen years now, as head of Project Mastodon, he had lived with it night and day and he could see all the possibilities as clearly as if they had been actual fact. Not military possibilities alone, although as a military man, he naturally would think of those first. The hidden bases, for example, located within the v

It had taken ten full days of back-breaking work to build the pyramid. They'd hauled the rocks from the creek bed half a mile away and had piled them, stone by rolling stone, to the height of a full twelve feet. It took a lot of rocks and a lot of patience, for as the pyramid went up, the base naturally kept broadening out. But now all was finally ready. Hudson sat before the burned-out campfire and held his blistered hands before him. It should work, he thought, better than the logs—and less da

The chief of Central Intelligence was white-lipped when he finished talking. "You're sure of your information?" asked the President. "Mr. President," said the CIA chief, "I've never been more sure of anything in my entire life." The President looked at the other two who were in the room, a question in his eyes. The JCS chairman said, "It checks, sir, with everything we know." "But it's incredible!" the President said. "They're afraid," said the CIA chief. "They lie awake nights. They've become c

The two hunters trudged homeward late in the afternoon, with a deer slung from a pole they carried on their shoulders. Their breath hung visibly in the air as they walked along, for the frost had come and any day now, they knew, there would be snow. "I'm worried about Wes," said Cooper, breathing heavily. "He's taking this too hard. We got to keep an eye on him." "Let's take a rest," panted Hudson. They halted and lowered the deer to the ground. "He blames himself too much," said Cooper. He wipe

The crash brought Gen. Leslie Bowers (ret.) up out of bed—about two feet out of bed—old muscles tense, white mustache bristling. Even at his age, the general was a man of action. He flipped the covers back, swung his feet out to the floor and grabbed the shotgun leaning against the wall. Muttering, he blundered out of the bedroom, marched across the dining room and charged into the kitchen. There, beside the door, he snapped on the switch that turned on the floodlights. He practically took the d

The night editor read the bulletin just off the teletype. "Well, what do you know!" he said. "We just recognized Mastodonia." He looked at the copy chief. "Where the hell is Mastodonia?" he asked. The copy chief shrugged. "Don't ask me. You're the brains in this joint." "Well, let's get a map for the next edition," said the night editor....

Tabby, the saber-tooth, dabbed playfully at Cooper with his mighty paw. Cooper kicked him in the ribs—an equally playful gesture. Tabby snarled at him. "Show your teeth at me, will you!" said Cooper. "Raised you from a kitten and that's the gratitude you show. Do it just once more and I'll belt you in the chops." Tabby lay down blissfully and began to wash his face. "Some day," warned Hudson, "that cat will miss a meal and that's the day you're it." "Gentle as a dove," Cooper assured him. "Would

He was. Not he alone, but a thousand others, working desperately, knowing that the time was short, working not alone for two men trapped in time, but for the peace they all had dreamed about—that the whole world had yearned for through the ages. For to be of any use, it was imperative that they could zero in the time machines they meant to build as an artilleryman would zero in a battery of guns, that each time machine would take its occupants to the same instant of the past, that their operatio