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could not possibly know what we were going into, we could not prepare ourselves in any way. And there are other problems. Going into a future that does not yet exist is a risky business—for is it possible to change history, either of the past or of the future? What would happen to you, for instance, if you went back in time and killed your grandfather before your father was born? Time travel is full of unanswered questions. I do believe, however, that we’ll find that it is impossible for us to alter history in any fundamental way. I believe that it would be wiser not to try to change things. Of course, there is the possibility of alternate time streams, multiple futures—”
    “You’re losing me now,” Mark broke in. “We’d better stick to what I can understand or I may wind up being more confused than when we started out!”
    “Okay, Mark, I’m sorry,” Doctor Nye apologized. “Let’s go back to fundamentals. There’s just one more thing that you have to keep in mind—When the space-time machine reaches its destination and stops, it will be impossible for it to make the return trip right away. The balance of energies—the combination of forces-must have time to restore itself. The machine must have time to rebuild the energy potential in order to come back here to 1953.”
    “How long will that take?” asked Mark.
    “Roughly two weeks—perhaps longer. We’ll have to wait and see. Come here a moment.”
    Mark got to his feet and followed Doctor Nye over to the control panel on the side of the sphere. There was a bank of lights along the top of the panel and a carefully calibrated dial in the center. On each side of the dial there was a large knife switch with a black handle. Both switches were open.
    “Careful now,” cautioned Doctor Nye. “Don’t touch anything— this baby is all ready to go. You’ll notice that the controls are quite simple, and there’s nothing mysterious about them. That green light burning there means that the machine is in order and prepared for operation. When the machine starts, the green light goes off and the red light comes on. When that red light is on, you must not try to change anything or the whole machine will explode. Don’t forget that. Finally, when the machine stops, the yellow light goes on. That means it is safe to go out, but the machine is in the process of rebuilding the energy potential and cannot be moved. When the energy potential has been built up again, the yellow light goes off and the green light comes on again.”
    “That’s clear enough,” Mark said. “I suppose that the dial in the center is to fix the machine’s destination?”
    “Check,” said Doctor Nye. He took the turning knob of the dial carefully between his thumb and index finger. “You see that the pointer of the dial is now set for 1953, and that the very fine small pointer that looks something like the large second hand of a watch makes it possible to set the machine for a specific day—even a specific minute and hour. Now, I turn to the dial—”
    Cautiously, Doctor Nye turned the knob. Mark heard a series of faint but precise clicks. He watched the dial swing back across the centuries, back—
    “There we are,” said Doctor Nye. “It’s now set for  46 b .c . and all I would have to do to get us back there would be to throw that left-hand switch. I don’t have to tell you of the work it took to adjust the actual time spans to the calendar times. You know, of course, that the calendar has been often adjusted; by Gregory and Julius Caesar himself among others, in order to make it correspond to the actual lunar and solar years. But it is all integrated in this machine, and allowances made for such things. We can go back almost anywhere, and any time, just by twisting this dial—thus!”
    Smiling, Doctor Nye pressed a release button and gave the dial a hard spin. A slight whirring noise filled the machine. After a moment, he engaged the mechanism again and there was a