A sharp pain in his hand reminded him of his wound and he went to the bathroom. After carefully washing the cut, he applied iodine and was trying to find a bandage when....
The ruby rolled across the table and fell to the floor.
Startled, he leaped back and upset the chair. A second before, he'd been in the bathroom and now he was at the table! Amnesia? He couldn't remember walking back to the living room and although he thought he'd put iodine on the cut, there was none on it that he could see.
He went to the bathroom....
The ruby rolled across the table and fell to the floor.
He was sitting before the table again without any memory of having left the bathroom! It had happened twice.
Taking the globe to the window, he examined it carefully and saw that where the ruby had been lodged, there was now an opening through the metal. When he held it at a certain angle, he saw a maze of wiring and tiny mechanisms inside.
He had fought the Martians for two years. He had traveled across their red deserts, crawled on the muddy bottoms of their gigantic dead canals, walked through the remains of their ancient cities and heard legends about the great Martian empire that had slowly crumbled during the centuries.