- Control Voice: Through all the legends of ancient peoples - Assyrian, Babylonian, Sumerican, Semitic - runs the saga of the Eternal Man, the one who never dies. Called by various names in various times, but historically known as Gilgamesh, the man who has never tasted death, the hero who strides through the centuries.
- Trent: Where are the future people of the Earth?
- The Glass Hand: In hiding. You are the key to releasing them.
- Trent: Where? Tell me.
- The Glass Hand: I am unable to answer. My mechanism is not whole.
- Trent: I'm trapped in a building with the Kyben. There's a woman with me. We can't escape. Tell me, what can I do?
- The Glass Hand: One hundred percent possibility of success is not available. Next success quotient only forty-seven percent probable.
- Trent: Well, tell me, what is it?
- The Glass Hand: Let them kill you.
- The Glass Hand: You come from the Earth one thousand years in the future. The Kyben came from the stars, and Man had no defense against them. They conquered the planet Earth in a month, but before they could slaughter the millions of humans left, overnight without warning, without explanation, every man, woman and child of Earth vanished. You were the only one left, Mr. Trent. The glass hand the vanished earthmen have given you, to help you. They called you, "the last hope of humanity." The medallion you stole let you escape into Now, The Present, Today, and now you are among all the men of Earth who are alive today, but the Kyben gained possession of three parts of your hand, the computer that could answer all the questions. You have to get those three lobes to me, the computer brain, and find out what the alien Kyben really want from you, why you were the only man left alive one thousand years in the future, on the planet Earth. You must destroy the time mirror, to keep them from sending more Kyben through to the present, to close that doorway completely.
- Trent: Explain the gold medallions to me.
- Breech: The time mirror works safely only one way; coming into the past from the future.
- Trent: And when the medallions are pulled off?
- Breech: They're focusing elements for the mirror. It's... it's-it's as if time were a rubber band, and you were on one end stretched out tight. As long as the medallion's present, the band stays tight, but when you rip it off, we snap back up to the future.
- Trent: I'm wearing one. That makes me vulnerable?
- Breech: Yes, you're vulnerable... and we'll get you. We'll have to get you, finally. If you kill me, another will take my place. And if you kill him, another.
- Battle: We all knew we'd die when we came on this mission. It was worth it.
- Trent: You can stay alive in this time.
- Battle: I don't care about that. Helping my race is more important.
- Trent: Bargain week on patriots.
- Battle: Call it what you like. I'm not afraid to die.
- Trent: Really? Then why are you whispering?
- Control Voice: [closing narration] Like the eternal man of Babylonian legend, like Gilgamesh, one thousand plus two hundred years stretches before Trent. Without love, without friendship, alone, neither man nor machine, waiting, waiting for the day he will be called to free the humans who gave him mobility, movement, but not life.
- [Trent surreptitiously enters the building through the basement]
- Trent: Is this it?
- The Glass Hand: The Dixon Building. Once the most exclusive office building in the city, it has become the center of a slum. Now it houses cut-rate garment-piece goods offices, passport photographers and the like. One of these offices is a front for the Kyben and their time mirror.
- Arch: [off camera] Welcome, Mr. Trent. I see Breech died a hero, Mr. Trent. He brought you to us. Infinitely easier than going to look for you. Ah, come along, Mr. Trent. We're here, all of us, and we're waiting for you. You don't think you can escape us, do you? One thousand years in the future, we conquered your planet in nineteen days. What chance do you think you have in the present? We've thrown a force bubble around the building. Invisible, impossible to break. You're trapped.
- Trent: [talking to Consuelo about the Kyben lying unconscious in front of them] This is going to sound insane, but it's true, it's real, and you must listen to me. This is not a human being. He's from another planet, another solar system. He wants to kill me. He and the others like him. There's more, much more, but, uh, I have to get you to believe me, and there's only one way to do it. Now watch.
- [grabbing the medallion around the Kyben's neck, Trent rips it off, and the alien vanishes]
- Consuelo: Gone! Where?
- Trent: [dropping the medallion on the floor] Doesn't matter where. Just gone. Now do you believe me?
- Trent: I was born ten days ago. A full grown man, born ten days ago. I woke on a street of this city. I don't know who I am, or where I've been, or where I'm going. Someone wiped my memories clean. And they tracked me down, and tried to kill me. Why? Who are you? I ran. I managed to escape them the first time. And the hand, my... hand, told me what to do.