Oh, but that was easier said than done. The next morning, old Tip was found dead in the barn. Most likely it was just chance-the dog was very old and there were no signs of violence. But the timing was suggestive. Rapture saw “homens.” Had one of the infuriated townspeople taken his revenge? The intentional poisoning of animals was not an uncommon way of making a point in places like Zanesville. Lloyd wanted to do an autopsy, but Hephaestus insisted on keeping Tip’s dignity and body intact. He was an old dog that had lived a good life. Maybe it was just his time to go. Besides, if anyone was to blame…

Despite Crane’s good-intentioned support, which would not have been popular just at that moment if it had been voiced in public, Hephaestus felt inclined to reprimand his son for causing such a ruckus when they were in such heavy debt. But the compulsive inventor in him was curious about how the boy had made the creature. Lloyd shrugged, as if there were no more to it than making a daisy chain. He showed no sign of regret, and felt none, although he was angry and depressed about Tip. He retreated into his own labyrinthine section of the barn-the lamentable workshop designed to restrain him, which he had turned into a subtle machine and in which he had constructed the beaver every bit as easily as he said he had.

It was at the burial of dear Tip, with fleas still departing the carcass like the proverbial rats fleeing a sinking ship, that Lloyd conceded that immunity from Time was beyond his present capabilities and Hephaestus announced his plans to curtail work on the Ark. “Let’s hope Farmer Miller got his arithmetic wrong.”

When the old dog was in the ground, wrapped in his favorite blanket, Hephaestus, Rapture, and Lloyd, with the help of Pegasus, their splay-backed cream draft horse, tugged the Time Ark across the wreck of their farm and, on Lloyd’s suggestion, toppled it into the pit where Grady Smeg had endured his enforced therapy.