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sandglasses, pocketwatches, grandfather clocks, chronometers,

which succeeded generation by generation in shaving time down finer and

finer, smaller and smaller . . . until the obsessive nature of the whole

procedure had been recognized, and Wenlock and his fellow workers blew

the gaff on the whole conspiracy.

But the conspiracy had been necessary. Without it, unsheltered from the

blind desert of space-time, man would still be with the other animals,

wandering in tribes by the rim of the echoing Quaternary seas. Or so

the theory went. At least it was clear there had been a conspiracy.

Now the shield was down. The complexities of the cerebrum and cerebellum

were naked to the co-continuous universe: and were devouring all they

came across.

Minding was a momentary process. It looked easy, although there was

rigorous training behind it. As the CSD tilted their metabolisms, Bush

and Ann went into the discipline -- that formula the Institute had devised

for guiding them through the prohibitions of the human mind. The Devonian

dissolved now, appearing to be a huge marching creature of duration,

with spatial characteristics serving simply as an exoskeleton. Bush

opened his mouth to laugh, but no sound came. In the exhilaration of

travel, one lost most physical characteristics. Everything seemed to go,

except the sense of direction. It was like swimming against a current; the

difficult way was towards one's own "present"; to drift into the remote

past was relatively easy -- and led to eventual death by suffocation,

as many had found. If a foetus in the womb were granted the ability to

mind-travel, it would be faced with much the same situation: either to

battle forward to the climactic moment of birth, or to sink easefully

back to the final -- or was it first? -- moment of non-existence.

He was not aware of duration, nor of the pulse within him that served

as his chronometer. In a strange hypnoid state, he felt only a sense

of being near to a great body of reality that seemed to bear as much

kinship to God as to Earth. And he caught himself trying to laugh again.

Then the laughter died, and he felt he was in flight. Ages rolled below

him like night. He was aware of the discomfort of having someone with

him -- and then he and Ann were surrounded by a dark green world and

reality as it was generally experienced was about them again.

Jurassic reality.

Chapter 3

AT THE SIGN OF THE AMNIOTE EGG

Bush had never liked the Jurassic. It was too hot and cloudy, and reminded

him of one long and miserable day in his childhood when, caught doing

something innocently naughty, he had been shut out in the garden all day

by his mother. It had been cloudy that day too, with the heat so heavy

the butterflies had hardly been able to fly above flower-top level.

Ann let go of him and stretched. They had materialized beside a dead tree.

Its bare shining arms were like a reproof to the girl; Bush realized

for the first time what a slut she was, how dirty and unkempt, and

wondered why it did not alter what he felt about her -- whatever that

might precisely be.

Not speaking, they moved forward, full of the sense of disorientation

that always followed mind-travel. There was no rational way of knowing

whereabouts or whenabouts on Earth they were; yet an irrational part of

the undermind knew, and would gradually come through with the information.

It, after all, had brought them here, and presumably for purposes of

its own.

They were in the foot-hills of mountains on which jungle rioted. Halfway

up the mountain slopes, the clouds licked away everything from sight.

All was still; the foliage about them seemed frozen in a long Mesozoic hush.

"We'd better move down into the plain," Bush said. "This is the place

we want, I think. I have friends here, the Borrows."

"They live here, you mean?"

"They run a store. Roger Borrow used to be an artist. His wife's nice."

"Will I like them?"

"I shouldn't think so."

He