It was a long chore. The further the time button was displaced from the center, the poorer the control became. It took patient practice to be able to stop the image within a century or so of the period he wanted. It was in the course of this experimentation that he discovered what he had once looked for, a fractional control―a vernier, in effect. It was as simple as the primary control, but twist the bead instead of moving it directly.
He steadied down on the twentieth century, approximated the year by the models of automobiles, types of architecture and other gross evidence, and stopped in what he believed to be 1942. Careful displacement of the space controls took him to the university town where he had started―after several false tries; the image did not enable him to read road signs.
He located his boardinghouse, brought the Gate into his own room. It was vacant, no furniture in it.
He panned away from the room, and tried again, a year earlier. Success―his own room, his own furniture, but empty. He ran rapidly back, looking for shadows.
There! He checked the swing of the image. There were three figures in the room, the image was too small, the light too poor for him to be sure whether or not one of them was himself. He leaned over and studied the scene.
He heard a dull thump outside the booth. He straightened up and looked over the side.
Sprawled on the floor was a limp human figure. Near it lay a crushed and battered hat.
He stood perfectly still for an uncounted time, staring at the two redundant figures, hat and man, while the winds of unreason swept through his mind and shook it. He did not need to examine the unconscious form to identify it. He knew. he knew―it was his younger self, knocked willy-nilly through the Time Gate.
It was not that fact in itself which shook him. He had not particularly expected it to happen, having come tentatively to the conclusion that he was living in a different, an alternative, future from the one in which he had originally transitted the Time Gate. He had been aware that it might happen nevertheless, that it did happen did not surprise him.
When it did happen, he himself had been the only spectator!