Part Four: Corrective Action to be Taken.
At certain points in the history of ancient Earth, certain crises arose which, in repetition, would be detrimental to the Shrine. These crises must be mitigated in order that—
Karnes stopped. That was all there was. Except—except for one more little tail end of thought. He tapped the keys again.
(Continued on Stratum Two)
Whatever in hell that means, he thought.
He sat back in his chair and went over the two sheets of typed paper. It wasn't complete, not by a long shot. There were little tones of meaning that a printed, or even a spoken word couldn't put over. There were evidences of a vast and certainly superhuman civilization; of an alien and yet somehow completely human way of thinking.
But that was the gist of it. The man he had seen in that new building at Carlson Spacecraft was no ordinary human being.
That, however, didn't bother Karnes half so much as the gray globe the man had disappeared into after he had been shot at. And Karnes knew, now, that the shots probably hadn't missed.
The globe was one of two things. And the intruder had been one of two groups.
(A) One of the Surveyors of Ancient Earth, in which case the globe had been a—well, a time machine. Or