"The war?"

"Mainly. I'm interested in seeing the claws in actual operation. At one time they were in complete control of Terra, according to the War Office records."

"Let's not get too close, Ryan."

Ryan laughed. "We won't land. We'll make our observations from the air. The only actual contact we'll make will be with Schonerman."

Ryan closed the power circuit. Energy flowed through the ship around them, flooding into the meters and indicators on the control board. Needles jumped, registering the load.

"The main thing we have to watch is our energy peak," Ryan explained. "If we build up to much of a load of time ergs the ship won't be able to come out of the time stream. We'll keep moving back into the past, building up a greater and greater charge."

"An enormous bomb."

"That's right." Ryan adjusted the switches before him. The meter readings changed. "Here we go. Better hang on."

He released the controls. The ship shuddered as it polarized into position, easing into the time flow. The vanes and knobs changed their settings, adjusting themselves to the stress. Relays closed, braking the ship against the current sweeping around them.

"Like the ocean," Ryan murmured. "The most potent energy in the universe. The great dynamic behind all motion. The Prime Mover."

"Maybe this is what they used to mean by God."

Ryan nodded. The ship was vibrating around them. They were in the grip of a giant hand, an immense fist closing silently. They were in motion. Through the port the men and walls had begun to waver, fading out of existence as the ship slipped out of phase with the present, drifting farther and farther into the flow of the time stream.

"It won't be long," Ryan murmured.

All at once the scene beyond the port winked out. There was nothing there. Nothing beyond them.

"We've not phased with any space-time objects," Ryan explained. "We're out of focus with the universe itself. At this moment we exist in non-time. There's no continuum in which we're operating."

"I hope we can get back again." Kastner sat down nervously, his eyes on the blank port. "I feel like the first man who went down in a submarine."

"That was during the American Revolution. The submarine was propelled by a crank which the pilot turned. The other end of the crank was a propeller."

"How could he go very far?"

"He didn't. He cranked his ship under a British frigate and then bored a hole in the frigate's hull."

Kastner glanced up at the hull of the time ship, vibrating and rattling from stress. "What would happen if this ship should break open?"

"We'd be atomized. Dissolved into the stream around us." Ryan lit a cigarette. "We'd become a part of the time flow. We'd move back and forth endlessly, from one end of the universe to the other."

"End?"

"The time ends. Time flows both ways. Right now we're moving back. But energy must move both ways to keep a balance. Otherwise time ergs in vast amounts would collect at one particular continuum and the result would be catastrophic."

"Do you suppose there's some purpose behind all of this? I wonder how the time flow ever got started."

"Your question is meaningless. Questions of purpose have no objective validity. They can't be subjected to any form of empirical investigation."

Kastner lapsed into silence. He picked at his sleeve nervously, watching the port.

Across the time map the cable arms moved, tracing a line from the present back into the past. Ryan studied the motion of the arms. "We're reaching the latter part of the war. The final stages. I'm going to rephase the ship and bring it out of the time flow."

"Then we'll be back in the universe again?"

"Among objects. In a specific continuum."

Ryan gripped the power switch. He took a deep breath. The first great test of the ship had passed. They had entered the time stream without accident. Could they leave it as easily? He opened the switch.

The ship leaped. Kastner staggered, catching hold of the wall support. Outside the port a gray sky twisted and wavered. Adjustments fell into place, leveling the ship in the air. Down below them Terra circled and tilted as the ship gained equilibrium.

Kastner hurried to the port to peer out. They were a few hundred feet above the surface, rushing parallel to the ground. Gray ash stretched out in all directions, broken by the occasional mounds of rubbish. Ruins of towns, buildings, walls. Wrecks of military equipment. Clouds of ash blew across the sky, darkening the sun.

"Is the war still on?" Kastner asked.

"The claws still possess Terra. We should be able to see them."

Ryan raised the time ship, increasing the scope of their view. Kastner scanned the ground. "What if they fire at us?"

"We can always escape into time."

"They might capture the ship and use it to come to the present."

"I doubt it. At this stage in the war the claws were busy fighting among themselves."

To their right ran a winding road, disappearing into the ash and reappearing again later on. Bomb craters gaped here and there, breaking the road up. Something was coming slowly along it.

"There," Kastner said. "On the road. A column of some sort."

Ryan maneuvered the ship. They hung above the road, the two of them peering out. The column was dark brown, a marching file making its way steadily along. Men, a column of men, marching silently through the landscape of ash.

Suddenly Kastner gasped. "They're identical! All of them are the same!"

They were seeing a column of claws. Like lead toys, the robots marched along, tramping through the gray ash. Ryan caught his breath. He had expected such a sight, of course. There were only four types of claws. These he saw now had all been turned out in the same underground plant, from the same dies and stampers. Fifty or sixty robots, shaped like young men, marched calmly along. They moved very slowly. Each had only one leg.

"They must have been fighting among themselves," Kastner murmured.

"No. This type was made this way. The Wounded Soldier Type. Originally they were designed to trick human sentries to gain entrance into regular bunkers."

It was weird, watching the silent column of men, identical men, each the same as the next, plodding along the road. Each soldier supported himself with a crutch. Even the crutches were identical. Kastner opened and closed his mouth in revulsion.

"Not very pleasant, is it?" Ryan said. "We're lucky the human race got away to Luna."

"Didn't any of these follow?"

"A few, but by that time we had identified the four types and were ready for them." Ryan took hold of the power switch. "Let's go on."

"Wait." Kastner raised his hand. "Something's going to happen."

To the right of the road a group of figures were slipping rapidly down the side of a rise, through the ash. Ryan let go of the power switch, watching. The figures were identical. Women. The women, in uniforms and boots, advanced quietly toward the column on the road.

"Another variety," Kastner said.

Suddenly the column of soldiers halted. They scattered, hobbling awkwardly in all directions. Some of them fell, stumbling and dropping their crutches. The women rushed out on the road. They were slender and young, with dark hair and eyes. One of the Wounded Soldiers began to fire. A woman fumbled at her belt. She made a throwing motion.

"What -" Kastner muttered. There was a sudden flash. A cloud of white light rose from the center of the road, billowing in all directions.

"Some kind of concussion bomb," Ryan said.

"Maybe we better get out of here."

Ryan threw the switch. The scene below them began to waver. Abruptly it faded. It winked out.

"Thank God that's over," Kastner said. "So that's what the war was like."

"The second part. The major part. Claw against claw. It's a good thing they started fighting with each other. Good for us, I mean."