He came out exhausted and wringing wet. Mr. Gordon offered him a cigarette and swept eyes rapidly over a series of coded sheets which the assistant gave him. Now and then he muttered a phrase: “…Zeth-20 cortical… undifferentiated evaluation here… psychic reaction to antitoxin… weakness in central coordination…” He had slipped into an accent, a lilt and a treatment of vowels which were like nothing Everard had heard in a long experience of the ways in which the English language can be mangled.

It was half an hour before he looked up again. Everard was getting restless, a faint anger stirring at this cavalier treatment, but interest kept him sitting quietly. Mr. Gordon flashed improbably white teeth in a broad, satisfied grin. “Ah. At last. Do you know, I’ve had to reject twenty-four candidates already? But you’ll do. You’ll definitely do.”

“Do for what?” Everard leaned forward, conscious of his pulse picking up.

“The Patrol. You’re going to be a kind of policeman.”

“Yeh? Where?”

“Everywhere. And everywhen. Brace yourself, this is going to be a shock.

“You see, our company, while legitimate enough, is only a front and a source of funds. Our real business is patrolling time.”

2

The Academy was in the American West. It was also in the Oligocene period, a warm age of forests and grasslands when man’s ratty ancestors scuttled away from the tread of giant mammals. It had been built a thousand years ago; it would be maintained for half a million—long enough to graduate as many as the Time Patrol would require—and then be carefully demolished so that no trace would remain. Later the glaciers would come, and there would be men, and in the year 19352 A.D. (the 7841st year of the Morennian Triumph), these men would find a way to travel through time and return to the Oligocene to establish the Academy.