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regions below the grass, silent and dark. Eventually morning comes and the world resumes its solidity, but another tiny thread of ice has been stitched into your heart forever.
    Â Â Such was the illumination by which I saw the ruins of London. But now they did not seem just freshly battered by war, but weathered away by passing centuries. The heaps of rubble had lost their jagged edges, sinking under mould and decaying vegetation. The road was cracked and riven, as though the Earth beneath was shrinking with age. As I surveyed the appalling scene a small, shinyblack thing like a salamander darted to the crest of one low mound, glared at us with eyes like two pinpoints of light, then darted away. Another one, but with inky bat wings, flapped up from one of the street's cracks, then curved away on the chilling breeze that came from the west.
    Â Â "Not a pretty sight, eh, Hocker." Ambrose lifted his walking stick and pointed with it to the horizon. "This is the way it is all the way to the ocean, and in all the lands beyond as well."
    Â Â "My God," I said. "What have you brought me to? Is this some future time when Man and Morlock both have rotted away? What comes after this, for God's sake?"
    Â Â "Nothing comes after this, actually," said Ambrose briskly. "And nothing before, either. Your good, comfortable year of 1892 and all the other years of Victoria's reign, and all the rest of the Earth's existence from its gaseous birth to its final fiery plunge back into the sun, are no more. What you see around you are the rocks and shoals of Eternity after the Sea of Time has been drained away. Such is the final upshot of all that mucking about with Time Travel."
    Â Â "You don't mean–" I stammered. "Surely not– surely this isn't the end of it all." The scene's oppressive gloom weighed heavier and heavier upon me.
    Â Â "My dear fellow," said Ambrose mildly, "this is no end to everything, this is everything. The Alpha and Omega of the Earth's existence. Nothing but this through all Time, Past and Present – if those words still meant anything."
    Â Â "But how?" I seized his arm in desperation. "How could it, have happened?"
    Â Â "You yourself ate dinner with the man who built the Time Machine, and heard his story. Even such a trifling little excursion as his was in fact so gross a violation of the Universe's natural order as to make distant galaxies warp from their courses! That such power ever fell, however unwittingly, into a mortal man's control was no license for him to actually go and use it. And then when the Morlocks gained control of the Time Machine, and sent whole armies trooping back and forth between your century and theirs – can't you imagine what happened? A temporal implosion! Our little pocket of the Universe was sucked out of the flow of Time and into this dark, unchanging abyss."
    Â Â His language and manner of speaking had become more vehement, breaking through the cool demeanour with which he had first addressed me. Evidently the sight of the Earth forsaken by Time – and God? – affected him more deeply than he had wished to show.
    Â Â "Then what are we to do?" I cried. "If Time no longer exists – are we to stay like this without end?" I could conceive of no more cheerless hell than being condemned to this wretched spot.
    Â Â "Well, Mr. Hocker," said Dr. Ambrose, again smiling. "Of all the questions that a man can ask, I do love that one. What are we to do? The best question that can ever be asked, indeed. Because you must know what to do before you can do it. Eh? Don't you think so, my good Hocker?"
    Â Â "For God's sake, you torment me with these riddles." Anger and indignation filled my breast, as I felt he was making mock of me. "If you know of some way of escaping this dreadful place, show it to me. I've, near gone out of my head as it is from all you've done to me. To me, and to – Tafe!" A pang of guilt struck me as I realised I