"Somebody's got the same idea as us!" called Manning. "Maybe Kahl convinced them, or—We'd better get there fast!"
They plunged through the fire-cleared woodland toward their goal. From behind a voice shrieked warning to someone ahead: "Hutet euch! Zwei Unsichtbare!"
Then they saw among the trees the cubical bulk of the time machine. Its door was open, and around it was a squad of soldiers who gripped their weapons with shaking hands and peered wild-eyed about them.
"Never mind them!" gasped Manning. "There's somebody inside—"
The words died on his lips. In the doorway of the traveler had appeared a big man in civilian clothes. His face was hidden beneath a hood exactly like their own, in his hands was a machine gun, and he was looking at them.
"Schwinzog!" Manning recognized the beefy figure.
"Sie kennen mich? Aber naturlich—you are the other two time travelers!" The gun's muzzle moved in a peremptory arc. "Remove those masks, please. I want to be sure that it is really you who have come to see me off."
Manning wavered, torn by a suicidal impulse to rush the machine gun and get it over with. But despair lamed him. He thought numbly, "Time is immutable after all, and something was sure to stop us from changing what's already happened. The fatalists are right." He bowed his head and slipped off the wired hood; then he could no longer see it or his own hands. He felt still more like a ghost, impotent to stir reality.
"Now the invisibility units," ordered Schwinzog. "Throw them in front of you." As Manning and Dugan became visible, the goggling soldiers that surrounded them snapped up their rifles to cover them.