“So you’ve never seen a place like mine! Nothing to equal it in the next thousand years!” Bruton paused. “But — doesn’t my house still exist in your time?”

“I am not aware of that.”

“Ngumbwe promised me it would last a thousand years! Five thousand! No one would tear a place like this down! Listen, Vornan, stop and think. It must be there somewhere. A monument of the past — a museum of ancient history—”

“Perhaps it is,” said Vornan indifferently. “You see, this area lies outside the Centrality. I have no firm information on what may be found there. However, I believe the primitive barbarity of this structure might have been offensive to those who lived in the Time of Sweeping, when many things changed. Much perished then through intolerance.”

“Primitive — barbarity—” Bruton muttered. He looked apoplectic. I wished I had Kralick on hand to get me out of this.

Vornan went on planting barbs in the billionaire’s unexpectedly thin hide. “It would have been charming to retain a place like this,” he said. “To stage festivals in it, curious ceremonies in honor of the return of spring.” Vornan smiled. “We might even have winters again, if only so we could experience the return of spring. And then we would dance and frolic in your house, Sir Bruton. But I think it is lost. I think it has gone, hundreds of years ago. I am not sure. I am not sure.”

“Are you making fun of me?” Bruton bellowed. “Laughing at my house? Am I just a savage to you? Do—”

I cut in quickly. “As an expert on electricity, Mr. Bruton, perhaps you’d like to know something about power sources in Vornan-19’s era. At one of his interviews a few weeks ago he said a few things about self-contained power sources involving total energy-conversion, and possibly he’d elaborate, now, if you’d care to question him.”

Bruton forgot at once that he was angry. He used his arm to wipe away the sweat that was trickling into his browless eyes and grunted, “What’s this? Tell me about this!”

Vornan put the backs of his hands together in a gesture that was as communicative as it was alien. “I regret that I know so little about technical matters.”

“Tell me something, though!”

“Yes,” I said, thinking of Jack Bryant in his agony and wondering if this was my moment to learn what I had to learn. “This system of self-sufficient power, Vornan. When did it come into use?”

“Oh… very long ago. In my day, that is.”

“Howlong ago?”

“Three hundred years?” he asked himself. “Five hundred? Eight hundred? It is so difficult to calculate these things. It was long ago… very long ago.”

“What was it?” Bruton demanded. “How big was each generating unit?”

“Quite small,” said Vornan evasively. He put his hand lightly against Bruton’s bare arm. “Shall we go upstairs? I am missing your so-interesting party.”

“You mean it eliminated the need for power transmission altogether?” Bruton could not let go. “Everybody generated his own? Just as I’m doing down here?”

We mounted a catwalk, spidery and intricate, that swung us to an upper level. Bruton continued to pepper Vornan with questions as we threaded our route back to the master control room. I tried to interject queries that would pin down the point in time at which this great changeover had come about, hoping to be able to ease Jack’s soul by telling him it had happened far in our future. Vornan danced gaily about our questions, saying little of substance. His lighthearted refusal to meet any request for information squarely aroused my suspicions once more. How could I help but swing on a pendulum, now gravely grilling Vornan about the events of future history, now cursing myself for a gullible fool as I realized he was a fraud? In the control room Vornan chose a simple method to relieve himself of the burden of our inquisitiveness. He strode to one of the elaborate panels, gave Bruton a smile of the highest voltage, and said, “This is deliciously amusing, this room of yours. I admire it greatly.” He pulled three switches and depressed four buttons; then he turned a wheel ninety degrees and yanked a lengthy lever.

Bruton howled. The room went dark. Sparks flew like demons. From far above came the cacophonous wail of disembodied musical instruments and the sounds of crashing and colliding. Below us, two movable catwalks clanged together; an eerie screech rose from the generator. One screen came to life again, showing us by its pale glow the main ballroom with the guests dumped into a disheveled heap. Red warning lights began to flash. The entire house was awry, rooms orbiting rooms. Bruton was madly clawing at the controls, pressing this and twisting that, but each further adjustment he made seemed only to compound the disruption. Would the generator blow, I wondered? Would everything come crashing down on us? I listened to a stream of curses that would have put Kolff into ecstasy. Machinery still gnashed both above and below us. The screen presented me with an out-of-focus view of Helen McIlwain riding piggyback on the shoulders of a distressed Sandy Kralick. There were the sounds of alarums and excursions. I had to move on. Where was Vornan-19? I had lost sight of him in the dark. Fitfully I edged forward, looking for the exit from the control room. I spied a door; it was in paroxysms, moving along its socket in arhythmic quivering jerks. Crouching, I counted five complete cycles and then, hoping I had the timing at least approximately correct, leaped through just in time to avoid being crushed.

“Vornan!” I yelled.

A greenish mist drifted through the atmosphere of the room I entered now. The ceiling tilted at unlikely angles. Bruton’s guests lay slumped on the floor, some unconscious, a few injured, at least one couple locked in a passionate embrace. I thought I caught sight of Vornan in a room vaguely visible to my left, but I made the mistake of leaning against a wall, and a panel responded to my pressure and pivoted, thrusting me into a different room. I had to squat here; the ceiling was perhaps five feet high. Scuttling across it, I pushed open a folding screen and found myself in the main ballroom. The waterfall of wine had become a fountain, spurting its bubbly fluid toward the dazzling ceiling. Guests milled vacantly, grabbing at one another for comfort and reassurance. Underfoot buzzed the mechanical insects that cleared away debris; half a dozen of them had caught one of Bruton’s metal birds and were rending it with tiny beaks. None of our group could be seen. A high whining sound now came from the fabric of the house.

I prepared myself for death, thinking it properly absurd that I should perish in the home of one lunatic at the whim of another while I was engaged on this lunatic mission. But still I fought my way onward through the smoke and noise, through the tangled, screaming figures of the elegant guests, through the sliding walls and collapsing floors. Once more it seemed to me I saw Vornan moving ahead of me. With maniacal persistence I went after him, feeling that it was somehow my duty to find him and lead him out of the building before it demolished itself in one final expression of petulance. But I came to a barrier beyond which I could not pass. Invisible yet impermeable, it held me fast. “Vornan!” I shouted, for now I saw him plainly. He was chatting with a tall, attractive woman of middle years who seemed wholly undisturbed by what had happened. “Vornan! It’s me, Leo Garfield!” But he could hear nothing. He gave the woman his arm, and they strolled away, sauntering in an irregular course through the chaos. I hammered with my fists against the invisible wall.

“That’s no way to get out,” said a husky feminine voice. “You couldn’t smash that in a million years.”

I turned. A vision in silver had appeared behind me: a slender girl, no older than nineteen, whose entire form gleamed in whiteness. Her hair had a silken glitter; her eyes were silver mirrors; her lips were silvered; her body was encased in a silver gown. I looked again and realized it was no gown, but merely a layer of paint; I detected nipples, a navel, twin muscle-ridges up the flat belly. From throat to toes she wore the silver spray, and by the ghostly light she seemed radiant, unreal, unattainable. I had not seen her before at the party.