"It is!" Don was really interested now. He squatted in the path and took a red-covered book from his schoolbag and laid it on the ground. He turned the cage until the lizard was on the bottom and placed it carefully on the book. "Will it really turn color?"
"To an observable amount, yes. Now if you release her—"
"How do you know it's a her? The time-traveler bit again?"
"If you must know, yes. The creature was purchased from a pet store by one Jim Benan, and is one of a pair. They were both released two days ago when Benan, deranged by the voluntary drinking of a liquid-containing quantities of ethyl alcohol, sat on the cage. The other, unfortunately, died of his wounds, and this one alone survives. The release—"
"I think this whole thing is a joke and I'm going home now. Unless you come out of there so I can see who you are."
"I warn you…"
"Goodbye." Don picked up the cage. "Hey, she turned sort of brick red!"
"Do not leave. I will come forth."
Don looked on, with a great deal of interest, while the creature walked out from between the trees. It was blue, had large and goggling independently moving eyes, wore a neatly cut brown jumpsuit, and had a pack slung on its back. It was also only about seven inches tall.
"You don't much look like a man from the future," Don said. "In fact you don't look like a man at all. You're too small."
"I might say that you are too big: size is a matter of relevancy. And I am from the future, though I am not a man."
"That's for sure. In fact you look a lot like a lizard." In sudden inspiration, Don looked back and forth at the traveler and at the cage. "In fact you look a good deal like this chameleon here. What's the connection?"
"That is not to be revealed. You will now do as I command or I will injure you gravely." 17 turned and waved toward the woods. "35, this is an order. Appear and destroy that growth over there."
Don looked on with increasing interest as the green basketball of metal drifted into sight from under the trees. A circular disk slipped away on one side and a gleaming nozzle, not unlike the hose nozzle on a toy fire truck, appeared through the opening. It pointed toward a hedge a good thirty feet away. A shrill whining began from the depths of the sphere, rising in pitch until it was almost inaudible. Then, suddenly, a thin line of light spat out towards the shrub, which crackled and instantly burst into flame. Within a second it was a blackened skeleton.
"The device is called a roxidizer, and is deadly," 17 said. "Release the chameleon at once or we will turn it on you."
Don scowled. "All right. Who wants the old lizard anyway." He put the cage on the ground and started to open the cover. Then he stopped and sniffed. Picking up the cage again he started across the grass toward the blackened bush.
"Come back!" 17 screeched. "We will fire if you go another step."
Don ignored the lizardoid, which was now dancing up and down in an agony of frustration, and ran to the bush. He put his hand out and apparently right through the charred stems.
"I thought something was fishy," he said. "All that burning and everything just upwind of me and I couldn't smell a thing." He turned to look at the time traveler, who was slumped in gloomy silence. "It's just a projected image of some kind, isn't it? Some kind of three-dimensional movie." He stopped in sudden thought, then walked over to the still hovering temporal transporter. When he poked at it with his finger he apparently pushed his hand right into it.
"And this thing isn't here either. Are you?"
"There is no need to experiment. I, and our ship, are present only as what might be called temporal echoes. Matter cannot be moved through time, that is an impossibility, but the concept of matter can be temporally projected. I am sure that this is too technical for you. ."
"You're doing great so far. Carry on."
"Our projections are here in a real sense to us, though we can only be an image or a sound wave to any observers in the time we visit. Immense amo*nits of energy are required and almost the total resources of our civilization are involved in this time transfer."
"Why? And the truth for a change. No more fairy godmother and that kind of malarkey."
"I regret the necessity to use subterfuge, but the secret is too important to reveal casually without attempting other means of persuasion."
"Now we get to the real story." Don sat down and crossed his legs comfortably. "Give."
"We need your aid, or our very society is threatened. Very recently on our time scale strange disturbances were detected by our instruments. Ours is a simple saurian existence, some million or so years in the future, and our race is dominant. Yours has long since vanished in a manner too horrible to mention to your young ears. Something is threatening our entire race and research quickly uncovered the fact that we are about to be overwhelmed by a probability wave and wiped out, a great wave of negation sweeping toward us from our remote past."
