And suddenly they were tumbling head over heels along the rocky ground of the little planetoid again.
"Johnny...."
"Helen...."
"At least we got them out of that," Pud puffed. "The sub-temporal field, Gop ... help me lift it ... hurry!"
"Master, all our experiments are activated! The tharn radiated enough to activate everything!"
"Help me lift the sub-temporal field!"
"Master, it's too late ... they're in it!"
A million miles above their heads was the vast sweep of All Time, like a rushing, glassy, upside-down river ... they tumbled through a chaos where Time, twice in each beat of their hearts, bounced back and forth between creation and entropy, and took them with it.... Time was a torrent beneath whose surface they were yanked back and forth from Beyond the End to Before the Beginning like guppies on a deepsea line; a torrent whose banks were dark eternity, and whose waters were the slippery substance of years....
"Johnny...."