Highway of Eternity Read Online Free PDF Page B

you can never leave this place. If there were any possibility of your leaving, we would have been forced to kill you.”
    â€œHorace is so dour,” said Enid. “He has no sense of grace. He is like a hammer. He hammers everything. He could have said that he was sorry you could never leave, but assure you we are glad you’re here.”
    â€œI’m not sure I am glad they are here,” said Horace. “It is only another indication the situation is getting out of hand. Martin and Stella disappearing into thin air and no trace of them and the story that Ghost …”
    â€œHenry!” Enid said. “Henry, not Ghost.”
    â€œâ€¦ The story that Henry told us last night about something snooping all around the Acre, sensing a certain strangeness and trying to sniff out the strangeness. I tell you, they are closing in on us. Now here come these two from New York, with a not entirely satisfactory explanation of how they gained entrance to Martin’s traveler and knowing, of all things, about Hopkins Acre.”
    â€œWe’ve been here too long,” Emma complained. “We should have broken the trail by going someplace else. No one should stay in one place for a century and a half.”
    â€œMoving to some other place would have involved some danger in itself,” said Horace. “We’d have had to make arrangements for a team of technicians who could handle such an operation. We would, first of all, have had to scout another place to go. We could have done the scouting for ourselves, but we could not, unaided, have made the move to another place. We do not have the skill by half.”
    â€œI was under the impression,” said David, rather nastily, “that you, unaided, can handle any sort of job.”
    Horace hunched his shoulders like an angry bull.
    â€œStop it,” said Timothy, in his gentle way. “Stop it, the both of you. Instead of arguing among ourselves, we should be seeking to explain, as best we can, the situation these visitors have stumbled into as our guests.”
    â€œI sincerely wish you would,” said Corcoran. “You tell us we can never leave, and yet David—it is David, is it not?”
    â€œYes,” said David. “I am David and I leave occasionally. London and Paris mostly. Once to New York.”
    â€œAnd you mentioned that someone would be coming in from Athens. So there are comings and goings.”
    â€œThe comings and goings, as you call them,” said Timothy, “are by means of vehicles we call travelers. The traveler Martin lived in brought you here from New York, but that’s not the entire story.”
    â€œI pushed buttons,” said Corcoran.
    â€œYou could have gone on pushing buttons and still the traveler would not have stirred. What you did was push certain buttons that tuned in the traveler with the control panel in this house. Once that was done, Horace could operate Martin’s traveler.”
    â€œYou mean only certain people can operate the travelers?”
    â€œThe point is,” said Horace, “that you’re inside a time bubble—a simplistic term, of course—through which no one can pass, not even us. The only way to get through it is by traveler.”
    They all sat silent for a moment.
    â€œI forgot,” said Horace. “Ghost is the only one who can get through unaided and he is a special case.”
    â€œHenry,” Enid reminded him. “Henry. Not Ghost.”
    â€œIt seems to me,” said Boone, “that we must accept as gracefully as we are able all that you have told us. We are here, you say, and we are not about to leave. I don’t understand much of what I’ve heard. There are a lot of questions, but I suppose there’ll be time later to voice all of them.”
    â€œI am pleased you see it that way,” said Timothy. “We ourselves are bound by certain restrictions we cannot ignore. We hope you will be