"Far more than seconds. To reach here from Earth you travelled five thousand years."
"What?"
"More correctly, it was five thousand years ago that you left Mars. You would need a time machine to return, and there is no such thing. The Earth you know is the length of the galaxy and five thousand years behind you."
CHAPTER VII
t could have been a city in New England, or maybe Wisconsin. Main Street stretched for half a mile from Town Hall to the small department store. Neon tubing brightened every store front, busy proprietors could be seen at work through the large plate glass windows. There was the bustle you might expect on any Main Street in New England or Wisconsin, but you could not draw the parallel indefinitely.
There were only men. No women.
The hills in which the town nestled were too purple—not purple with distance but the natural color of the grass.
A somber red sun hung in the pale mauve sky.
This was Earth City, Nowhere.