No one had been able to make any sense of it at all. A massive block of some sort of material that now appeared to be neither stone nor metal, although at one time it had been thought to be a stone, and later on, a metal, it had defied all investigation. Six feet long, four feet on each side it was a mass of blackness that absorbed no energy and emitted none, that bounced all light and other radiation from its surface, that could not be cut or dented, stopping a laser beam as neatly as if the beam had not existed. There was nothing that could scratch it, nothing that could probe it-it gave up no information of any sort at all. It rested on its raised base in the forecourt of Time Museum, the one thing in the world about which no one could even make a valid guess.

"Then," asked Carol, "why the consternation?"

"Because," said Oop, "Pete here has the hunch it may, at one time, have been the god of the Little Folk. That is, if the lousy little stinkers had the capacity to recognize a god."

"I'm sorry," Carol said. "I am truly sorry. I didn't know. Perhaps if Time knew..."

"There's not enough data," Maxwell said, "to make any talk about it. Just a hunch is all. Just a feeling from certain things I've heard among the Little Folk. But even they don't know. It was so long ago."

So long ago, he thought. For the love of God, almost two hundred million years ago!

Chapter 7

"This Oop," said Carol. "I can't get over him. That funny house he has out at the end of nowhere."

"He'd be offended," said Maxwell, "if he heard you calling it a house. It's a shack and he's proud of it as a shack. The jump from cave to house would have been too great for him. He'd have felt uncomfortable."

"A cave? He really lived in a cave?"

"Let me tell you something about old friend Oop," said Maxwell. "He is an awful liar. You can't believe all the stories that he tells. The cannibalism, for instance..."