Martin watched it go far away and vanish.
At the meadow’s edge the mayor, supported by several men, beckoned.
“He’s gone,” said Martin, walking up.
“Yes, poor man, he’s gone,” said the mayor. “And he’ll go on, planet after planet, seeking and seeking, and always and always he will be an hour late, or a half hour late, or ten minutes late, or a minute late. And finally he will miss out by only a few seconds. And when he has visited three hundred worlds and is seventy or eighty years old he will miss out by only a fraction of a second, and then a smaller fraction of a second. And he will go on and on, thinking to find that very thing which he left behind here, on this planet, in this city—”
Martin looked steadily at the mayor.
The mayor put out his hand. “Was there ever any doubt of it?” He beckoned to the others and turned. “Come along now. We mustn’t keep him waiting.”
They walked into the city.
Time in Thy Flight
A wind blew the long years away past their hot faces.
The Time Machine stopped.
“Nineteen hundred and twenty-eight,” said Janet. The two boys looked past her.
Mr. Fields stirred. “Remember, you’re here to observe the behavior of these ancient people. Be inquisitive, be intelligent, observe.”
“Yes,” said the girl and the two boys in crisp khaki uniforms. They wore identical haircuts, had identical wristwatches, sandals, and coloring of hair, eyes, teeth, and skin, though they were not related.
“Shh!” said Mr. Fields.
They looked out at a little Illinois town in the spring of the year. A cool mist lay on the early morning streets.
Far down the street a small boy came running in the last light of the marble-cream moon. Somewhere a great clock struck 5 A.M. far away. Leaving tennis-shoe prints softly in the quiet lawns, the boy stepped near the invisible Time Machine and cried up to a high dark house window.
The house window opened. Another boy crept down the roof to the ground. The two boys ran off with banana-filled mouths into the dark cold morning.
“Follow them,” whispered Mr. Fields. “Study their life patterns. Quick!”
Janet and William and Robert ran on the cold pavements of spring, visible now, through the slumbering town, through a park. All about, lights flickered, doors clicked, and other children rushed alone or in gasping pairs down a hill to some gleaming blue tracks.
“Here it comes!” The children milled about before dawn. Far down the shining tracks a small light grew seconds later into steaming thunder.
“What is it?” screamed Janet.
“A train, silly, you’ve seen pictures of them!” shouted Robert.
And as the Time Children watched, from the train stepped gigantic gray elephants, steaming the pavements with their mighty waters, lifting question-mark nozzles to the cold morning sky. Cumbrous wagons rolled from the long freight flat
s, red and gold. Lions roared and paced in boxed darkness.
“Why—this must be a—circus!” Janet trembled.
“You think so? Whatever happened to them?”
“Like Christmas, I guess. Just vanished, long ago.”
Janet looked around. “Oh, it’s awful, isn’t it.”
The boys stood numbed. “It sure is.”
Men shouted in the first faint gleam of dawn. Sleeping cars drew up, dazed faces blinked out at the children. Horses clattered like a great fall of stones on the pavement.