"Who are you?" Kennely demanded.
"I am Tarman, Chief Transport Agent, American Carriers, and this is our technician, Croul. We lost our valuable cargo and were about ready to pay the three quarters million that it would have cost us. We are certainly grateful to you for unjamming the matrix and helping us locate it. We are not able, however, to spot it exactly with our equipment until you turn off your local radiation. If you would be so kind as to do that, we will move the shipment from your premises."
Kennely and Devon continued to stare while the strangers spoke. It must have been a considerable number of seconds after he was finished that Kennely finally opened his mouth.
"We don't understand all that," he said, "We never heard of American Carriers, much less a system of transport that could lose a cargo such as this inside a building. We thought this box belonged here. Explain yourself."
Tarman paled slightly and turned to Croul, who nodded. "I told you we were in the antique era. We shot clear beyond the delivery date. We'll lose our charter if this gets out. It's happened too often."
Tarman nodded and faced the engineers again. "This must seem all quite strange to you. We operate a transportation system through time, a temporal exchange agency. You know nothing of this, of course, because we have not touched your era before. It is not judged prudent that we do so by the Charter Council.
"The appearance of our cargo here was caused by some malfunction of our equipment, and our present inability to salvage it is caused by the radiation with which you have surrounded it. I trust that you will release it so that we may remove the cargo."
Devon whispered to Kennely, "Are we dreaming, or just crazy? This doesn't happen to a couple of solder slingers like us."
"We're neither — and it is happening to us," Kennely said with a fierce exultation that Devon did not comprehend.
"What kind of a cargo is this?" Kennely asked Tarman.