Oh, clever Mooney! He crouched under a snowy tree, watching the man
from the future speed effortlessly away ... in the wrong direction.
The cop was hailing him; clever cop! All it had taken was a couple of
full-throated yells and at once the cop had perceived that someone was
in the park. But cleverer than any cop was Mooney.
Men from the future. Why, thought Mooney contentedly, no Mrs.
Meyerhauser of the suburbs would have let me get away with a trick like
that to sell her a freezer. There's going to be no problem at all. I
don't have to worry about a thing. Mooney can take care of himself!
By then, he had caught his breath--and time was passing, passing.
He heard a distant confused yelling. Harse and the cop? But it didn't
matter. The only thing that mattered was getting to the Nexus Point at
one minute past one.
He took a deep breath and began to trot. Slipping in the snow, panting
heavily, he went down the path, around the little glade, across the
covered bridge.
He found the shallow steps that led down to the Vale.
And there it was below him: a broad space where walks joined, and in
the space a thing shaped like a dinosaur egg, rounded and huge. It
glowed with a silvery sheen.
Confidently, Mooney started down the steps toward the egg and the
moving figures that flitted soundlessly around it. Harse was not the
only time traveler, Mooney saw. Good, that might make it all the
simpler. Should he change his plan and feign amnesia, pass himself off
as one of their own men?