As Fournet turned to signal the guards, Mahler asked him, “What’s the man’s medical report, by the way?”

“From here to here,” Fournet said somberly. “You name it, he’s carrying it. Better get him shipped off to the Moon as quickly as you can. I won’t feel safe until he’s off this planet.”

The big medic waved to the guards. Mahler smiled. Fournet’s overcautiousness was proverbial in the Bureau. Even if a jumper were to show up completely free from disease, Fournet would probably insist that he was carrying everything from asthma to leprosy.

The guards brought the jumper into Mahler’s office. He was fairly tall, Mahler saw—and quite young. It was difficult to see his face clearly through the dim plate of the protective spacesuit which all jumpers were compelled to wear. But Mahler could tell that the young time traveler’s face had much of the lean, hard look of Mahler’s own. It was just possible that the jumper’s eyes had widened in surprise as he entered the office, but Mahler could not be sure.

“I never dreamed I’d find you here,” the jumper said. The transmitter of the spacesuit brought the young man’s voice over deeply and resonantly. “Your name is Mahler, isn’t it?”

“That’s right,” Mahler conceded.

“To go all these years—and find you. Talk about wild improbabilities!”

Mahler ignored him, declining to take up the challenge. He had found it to be good practice never to let a captured jumper get the upper hand in conversation. His standard procedure was firmly to explain to the jumper just why it was imperative for him to be sent to the Moon, and then to summon the guards as quickly as possible.

“You say this is a two-way time rig?” Mahler asked, holding up the flimsy-looking piece of equipment.

“That’s right,” the other agreed. “It works both ways. If you pressed the button you’d go straight back to the year two thousand, three hundred and sixty, or thereabouts.”