A chill touched Burke; and though he'd seen this sight a dozen times before, his fingers trembled.
Back farther ... farther....
As swiftly as it had darkened, the screen came bright. The palace rose again, white gypsum walls and columns aglisten in the sunlight.
Skillfully, Burke adjusted the detail dial, working forward again to the moment when the palace had crumbled.
The disaster came at night; that was plain to see. And so fast that the screen could not record the instant when it happened. One second, the buildings were there, solid as only rock could make them.
The next, there were only dark, blighted ruins.
Of course, the destruction could conceivably have taken hours, yet still show as instantaneous on the scanner.
But if a man were to go back to a time, say, twelve hours before the cataclysm....
He'd need to choose the right place, too ... somewhere out of the line of palace traffic—that apartment off the Queen's Megaron, for instance.