as though a litter of wreckage were lying there—wreckage which for a hundred years did not seem to be cleared away.
A monstrous cataclysm? I was murmuring it to Doris; and then I was aware that a man had come and was quietly sitting beside us.
"War," he said. "The war of 5550. So much destroyed, and there was no one left here with the heart to rebuild."
I turned to face him. His soft voice, with queer clipped accent was not like the rough voices of these other men. He was a smallish pallid young fellow, in a grey-white, embroidered tunic with tight cloth trousers beneath. His head, small and round, was surmounted by close-clipped blond hair. His face, smooth-shaven, was clean-cut, patrician highly intelligent.
"I am Georg Allaire," he said through thin lips. "Queer to stare out now at my time-world. I was born in 6000—just after the war. It was terrible—the end of civilization here."
Tork momentarily had moved away. Blake and I talked in half whispers to young Allaire. He had been a surgeon here in the unbuilt ruins of Great New York—a vassal state then of the Great Dictator. A surgeon—
His gaze went to Doris as he told us. And she heard him.
"Oh," she murmured. "And you will give me my sight? Could you?"
He smiled his gentle smile; and left us. He had freedom of movement here. He went down the grey, luminous ship's corridor. In a moment he was back.
With goggles on his eyes and an instrument in his hand, he examined Doris carefully. More than four thousand years of medical progress!—My mind, with expanded viewpoint, flung back to my own unenlightened time—our physcians and surgeons, back there in 1950—what puny knowledge they had possessed!
Then Allaire nodded, spoke strange medical words which we had no way of understanding.
"A simple growth-spore," he said. "Non-malignant, but it desensitizes the sheating of the optic nerves. I could remove it in half an hour. How terrible and stupid that it should have been left there so long."
I held Doris as she trembled with her happiness. Blake leaned closer to Allaire.
"You're not like the rest of this outfit, "Blake whispered. "How did you happen to—"
"I had trouble." Allaire's smile was a little wistful. "I was glad to escape."
"Where is he taking us?" I demanded. "His New Era—"
"Yes. You'll see." He suddenly felt perhaps that he should not tell us too much. He had made several trips on the time-ship—from the New Era, back almost to the first coming of the Indians on Manhattan Island. Gathering supplies. Stealing things of science. Recruiting men. . . . Stealing women. . . . A new civilization to be built by Tork—its Emperor.
"Only some five hundred of us men are there now," Allaire was saying. "And we're taking thirty women this trip. Several hundred have already been taken. That will be enough, they say, for the drawing, when we get there. The men are very impatient."
His slow smile was whimsical.
"They have made me the physician and surgeon. We had casulities this trip. One of our men was wounded when we stopped at 3000. And back in 1950( where you came aboard—one was shot with what I hear you call a bullet—a leaden, base-metal chunk. I am afraid he will die."
