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able to live a pleasant life with us.”
    â€œThere is one further question that seems to me too important to wait. Who are you?” Boone asked.
    â€œWe are refugees,” said David. “Refugees cowering in the depths of time.”
    â€œNot so,” Horace shouted. “You keep babbling about us as refugees. We are revolutionaries, I tell you. Some day we’ll be going back.”
    Enid said to Boone, “Pay no attention to these two. They are always at one another’s throats. What you meant, I’m sure, is where we came from. We are people who once lived a million years from now. We are from your very distant future.”
    Nora spoke from the door that led into the dining room. “Lunch is on.”
    Lunch was civilized and pleasant with no bickering. David talked of the few days he had spent in twentieth-century New York and asked Boone and Corcoran about the city. Timothy talked about some of the reading he had been doing. Enid said little. Emma was sweetly silent. Horace sat hunched over, occupied with his own thoughts. Finally he was moved to speech. “I wonder what has happened to Gahan. He should be here by now.”
    â€œGahan is from Athens,” said Emma. “He is bringing Timothy a new book.”
    â€œWe always say Athens,” Timothy explained. “But they’re really not in Athens, although quite close to it.”
    â€œWe also have a small group in the Pleistocene,” said David. “Southern France. The early days of the last glaciation.”
    â€œNeanderthals,” said Boone.
    â€œYes, a few of them. Early Neanderthal.”
    â€œWhat I can’t understand,” said Horace, still tied up in worry, “is why Martin should have left so hurriedly. And Stella, too. Apparently he had a small traveler hidden in a warehouse and he used that to get away, alerting Stella so that she could join him. He should have used his residence traveler to get away. But he didn’t. He panicked. The damn fool panicked. He got scared and ran.”
    â€œHe was afraid of being trapped at the hotel,” said Enid. “That seems quite clear to me. Perhaps he did not place complete trust in Mr. Corcoran.”
    â€œThere was no reason that he should have,” said David. “According to Mr. Corcoran’s own admission, he had men watching Martin and Stella. They were watched at every move.”
    â€œHe bought my trust and paid very well for it,” said Corcoran. “I’ll work for anyone wholeheartedly if he pays me for it. Never, in all my life, have I ever double-crossed a client.”
    â€œBut you didn’t trust your client in this case,” said David.
    â€œI can’t say I did. He gave me no reason to. I watched him not to do him harm, but to be certain he did no harm to me. He was a curiously secretive man. He was a slippery character.”
    â€œHe must have known the hotel was to be razed,” said Horace. “Surely the tenants would have been notified. To have left the resident traveler, knowing that, facing the possibility that its presence might have been revealed, is inexcusable.”
    â€œMaybe he didn’t know about the hotel,” said Corcoran. “The tenants were not notified until the last possible legal moment. And even then, there was no public announcement. It was one of those quiet deals. It was long after Martin left that I heard of it. And there is little rumor that I miss.”
    â€œThen,” said David, “perhaps he left on some quick errand, thinking he’d soon be back. That may be why he left the residence traveler.”
    Horace rumbled at Boone, “What you have not fully explained is how the two of you were able to get into the traveler. Not how you detected it; that I can understand. But how you got into it.”
    â€œI told you what I could,” said Boone. “I stepped around a corner. I can’t tell you more. I don’t understand