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had news that would surely interest the great wizard. "Tell him, 'Man from tomorrow.' 'Tis a password. Got it?"
    "It makes not sense," complained the guard.
    "Passwords need not make sense," said Everard with hauteur.
    The Jute clanked off, shaking his head dolefully. All these newfangled notions!
    "Are you sure this is wise?" asked Whitcomb. "He'll be on the alert now, you know."
    "I also know a VIP isn't going to waste time on just any stranger. This business is urgent, man! So far, he hasn't accomplished anything permanent, not even enough to become a lasting legend. But if Hengist should make a genuine union with the Britons. . . ."
    The guard returned, grunted something, and led them up the stairs and across the peristyle. Beyond was the atrium, a good-sized room where modern bearskin rugs jarred with chipped marble and faded mosaics. A man stood waiting before a rude wooden couch. As they entered, he raised his hand, and Everard saw the slim barrel of a thirtieth-century blast-ray.
    "Keep your hands in sight and well away from your sides," said the man gently. "Otherwise I shall belike have to smite you with a thunderbolt."
    * * *
    Whitcomb sucked in a sharp, dismayed breath, but Everard had been rather expecting this. Even so, there was a cold knot in his stomach.
    The wizard Stane was a small man, dressed in a fine embroidered tunic which must have come from some British villa. His body was lithe, his head large, with a face of rather engaging ugliness under a shock of black hair. A grin of tension bent his lips.
    "Search them, Eadgar," he ordered. "Take out aught they may bear in their clothing."
    The Jute's frisking was clumsy, but he found the stunners and tossed them to the floor. "Thou mayst go," said Stane.
    "Is there no danger from them, my lord?" asked the soldier.
    Stane grinned wider. "With this in my hand? Nay, go." Eadgar shambled out. At least we still have sword and ax, thought Everard. But they're not much use with that thing looking at us.
    "So you come from tomorrow," murmured Stane. A sudden film of sweat glistened on his forehead. "I wondered about that. Speak you the later English tongue?"
    Whitcomb opened his mouth, but Everard, improvising with his life at wager, beat him to the draw. "What tongue mean you?"
    "Thus-wise." Stane broke into an English which had a peculiar accent but was recognizable to twentieth-century ears: "Ih want know where an' when y're from, what y'r 'tendons sir, an' all else. Gimme d' facts 'r Ih'll burn y' doon."
    Everard shook his head. "Nay," he answered in Jutish. "I understand you not." Whitcomb threw him a glance and then subsided, ready to follow the American's lead. Everard's mind raced; under the brassiness of desperation, he knew that death waited for his first mistake. "In our day we talked thus. . . ." And he reeled off a paragraph of Mexican-Spanish chatter, garbling it as much as he dared.
    "So . . . a Latin tongue!" Stane's eyes glittered. The blaster shook in his hand. " When be you from?"
    "The twentieth century after Christ, and our land hight Lyonesse. It lies across the western ocean—"
    "America!" It was a gasp. "Was it ever called America?"
    "No. I wot not what you speak of."
    Stane shuddered uncontrollably. Mastering himself: "Know you the Roman tongue?"
    Everard nodded.
    Stane laughed nervously. "Then let us speak that. If you know how sick I am of this local hog language. . . ." His Latin was a little broken, obviously he had picked it up in this century, but fluent enough. He waved the blaster. "Pardon my discourtesy. But I have to be careful."
    "Naturally," said Everard. "Ah . . . my name is Mencius, and my friend is Iuvenalis. We came from the future, as you have guessed; we are historians, and time travel has just been invented."
    "Properly speaking, I am Rozher Schtein, from the year 2987. Have you . . . heard of me?"
    "Who else?" said Everard. "We came back looking for this mysterious Stane who seemed to be one of the crucial figures of