"We'll never know," said Maxwell. "The Wheeler will haul off the Artifact tomorrow."

"And buy the crystal planet with it," said Oop. "It seems to me we shouldn't just be sitting here. If we could have held onto Shakespeare..."

"It wouldn't have done a bit of good," Maxwell told him. "This business of kidnapping Shakespeare."

"We never kidnapped him," said Oop, outraged at the thought. "He came along with us very peaceably. He was glad to come. He'd been figuring all the time how he could lose this escort that Time had sent along. It was really his own idea. We only helped a little."

"Like clunking the escort on the head?"

"No, never," declared Oop. "We were genteel about it. We created what you might have called a mild diversion."

"Well, anyhow," said Maxwell, "it was a bum idea. There was too much money involved. You could have kidnapped a dozen Shakespeares and you'd never got Harlow Sharp to give up his deal for the Artifact."

"But even so," said Carol, "there should be something that we could be doing. Like rousting Arnold out of bed."

"The only way," said Maxwell, "that Arnold could help us is by giving Time the kind of money the Wheeler is paying Sharp. I can't see that, can you?"

"No, I can't," said Oop.

He picked up the jar, put it to his mouth and drained it, got up and went to the hideout in the floor and got another jar. Ponderously, he unscrewed the lid and handed the jar to Carol.

"Leave us settle down," he suggested, "to building up a hangover. The newsmen will be here by morning and I got to build up the strength for throwing them all out."

"Now, wait a second," said Maxwell. "I feel an idea coming on."

They sat and waited for the idea to come on.

"The translator," said Maxwell. "The one I used to read the records on the crystal planet. I found it in my bag."

"Yes?" asked Oop.

"What if the Artifact were simply another record?"

"But Carol says..."

"I know what Carol says. But she can't be sure. She only thinks she saw that eye staring out at her. And it seems improbable."

"That's right," said Carol. "I can't be absolutely sure. And what Pete says does make a crooked sort of sense. If he's right, it would have to be a very important record- and a rather massive one. Perhaps a whole new world of knowledge. Maybe something the crystal planet left here on Earth, believing that no one would ever think of looking for it here. A sort of hidden record."

"Even if that should be the case," said Oop, "what good will it do us. The museum is locked and Harlow Sharp is not about to open it for us."

"I could get us in," said Carol. "I could phone the guard and say I had to get in and do some work. Or that I had left something there and wanted to pick it up. I have clearance for that sort of thing."

"And lose your job," suggested Oop.

She shrugged. "There are other jobs. And if we worked it right..."

"But there's so little point to it," protested Maxwell. "It's no better than a million-to-one shot. Maybe less than that. I don't deny I'd like to have a try at it, but-"

"What if you found that it was really something important?" asked Carol. "Then we could get hold of Sharp and explain it to him and maybe..."

"I don't know;" said Maxwell. "I would doubt that we could find anything so important that Harlow would renege upon the deal."

"Well," said Oop, "let's not waste time sitting here and talking about it. Let us be about it."

Maxwell looked at Carol. "I think so, Pete," she said. "I think it's worth the chance."

Oop reached out and took the jar of moonshine from in front of her and screwed on the cap.

Chapter 22

The past surrounded them, the cabineted and cased and pedestaled past, the lost and forgotten and unknown snatched out of time by the far-ranging field expeditions that had probed into the hidden corners of mankind's history. Art and folklore objects that had been undreamed of until men went back and found them; still new pottery that had heretofore been known only as scattered shards, if even that; bottles out of ancient Egypt with the salves and ointments still imprisoned, fresh, within them; ancient iron weapons new-taken from the forge; the scrolls from the Alexandrian library which should have burned, but didn't, because men had been sent back in time to snatch them from the flames at the moment before they would have been destroyed; the famed tapestry of Ely that had disappeared from the ken of man in a long-gone age-all these and many more, a treasure trove of articles, many of them no treasures in themselves, snatched from the bowels of time.

The place was misnamed, `Maxwell thought. Not Time Museum, but rather the Museum of No Time, a place where all ages came together, where there was no time distinction, a building where all the accomplishments and dreams of mankind might eventually be gathered, not aged things, but all fresh and new and shiny, fashioned only yesterday. And here one would not have to guess from old and scattered evidence what it had been like back there, but could pick up and hold and manipulate the tools and instruments and gadgets that had been made and used through all the days of his development.

Standing beside the pedestal which held the Artifact, he listened to the footsteps of the guard as he tramped away again on his regular rounds.

Carol had managed it, and there had been a time he had doubted she would be able to. But everything had gone OK. She'd phoned the guard and told him she and a couple of friends had wanted one last look at the Artifact before it was carted off and he had been waiting to let them in at the little entryway set into one of the large doors that were opened when the museum was open to the public.

"Don't take too long," he grumbled. "I'm not sure I should let you do this."

"It's all right," she'd told him. "There is no need for you to worry."

He had shuffled off, mumbling to himself.

A bank of overhead spotlights shone down on the black block that was the Artifact.

Maxwell ducked beneath the velvet rope that guarded the pedestal and clambered up beside the Artifact, crouching down beside it, fumbling in his pocket for the interpreting apparatus.

It was a crazy hunch, he told himself. It was no hunch at all. It simply was an idea born of desperation and he was wasting his time, more than likely making himself somewhat ridiculous. And even if this wild venture should prove to have some point, there was nothing that he could do, at this late hour, about it. Tomorrow the Wheeler would take possession of the Artifact and of the knowledge stored on the crystal planet and so far as the human race might be concerned that would be the end of fifty billion years of knowledge dredged most laboriously and devotedly from two universes-knowledge that should have belonged to the University of Earth, that could have belonged to the university, but that now would be lost forever to an enigmatic cultural bloc which might, in turn, prove to be that potential cosmic enemy Earth had always feared would be found in space.

His start had been too late, he knew. Given a bit more time and he could have turned the deal, could have found the people who would have listened to him, could have gained some backing. But everything had worked against him and now it was too late.

He slid the interpreter onto his head and fumbled with it, for somehow it didn't want to fit.

"Let me help," said Carol. He felt her fingers manipulating it deftly, straightening out the straps, sliding them into place.

Glancing down, he saw Sylvester, seated on the floor beside the pedestal, sneering up at Oop.

Oop caught Maxwell's look. "That cat doesn't like me," said the Neanderthaler. "He senses that I'm his natural enemy. Some day he'll work up his nerve to have a go at me."