"They make me uncomfortable," Tozzo agreed. "But I suppose they're supposed to."
The three of them stepped onto the descent ramp – and dropped at breathtaking speed to level one below. Fermeti shut his eyes, wincing at the loss of weight. It was almost as bad as takeoff itself. Why did everything have to be so rapid, these days? It certainly was not like the previous decade, when things had gone leisurely.
They stepped from the ramp, shook themselves, and were approached instantly by the building's polpol chief.
"We have a report on your man," the gray-uniformed officer told them.
"He hasn't taken off?" Fermeti said. "Thank God." He looked around.
"Over there," the officer said, pointing.
At a magazine rack, Poul Anderson was looking intently at the display. It took only a moment for the three Emigration Bureau officials to surround him.
"Oh, uh, hello," Anderson said. "While I was waiting for my ship I thought I'd take a look and see what's still in print."
Fermeti said, "Anderson, we require your unique abilities. I'm sorry, but we're taking you back to the Bureau."
All at once Anderson was gone. Soundlessly, he had ducked away; they saw his tall, angular form become smaller as he raced for the gate to the field proper.
Reluctantly, Fermeti reached within his coat and brought out a sleep-gun. "There's no other choice," he murmured, and squeezed.
The racing figure tumbled, rolled. Fermeti put the sleep-gun away and in a toneless voice said, "He'll recover. A skinned knee, nothing worse." He glanced at Gilly and Tozzo. "Recover at the Bureau, I mean."
Together, the three of them advanced toward the prone figure on the floor of the spaceport waiting room.
"You may return to your own time-continuum," Fermeti said quietly, "when you've given us the mass-restoration formula." He nodded, and a Bureau workman approached, carrying the ancient Royal typewriter.
Seated in the chair across from Fermeti in the Bureau's inner business office, Poul Anderson said, "I don't use a portable."
"You must cooperate," Fermeti informed him. "We have the scientific know-how to restore you to Karen; remember Karen and remember your newly-born daughter at the Congress in San Francisco's Sir Francis Drake Hotel. Without full cooperation from you, Anderson, there will be no cooperation from the Bureau. Surely, with your pre-cog ability you can see that."
After a pause Anderson said, "Urn, I can't work unless I have a pot of fresh coffee brewing around me at all times, somewhere."
Curtly, Fermeti signaled. "We'll obtain coffee beans for you," he declared. "But the brewing is up to you. We'll also supply a pot from the Smithsonian collection and there our responsibility ends."
Taking hold of the carriage of the typewriter, Anderson began to inspect it. "Red and black ribbon," he said. "I always use black. But I guess I can make do." He seemed a trifle sullen. Inserting a sheet of paper, he began to type. At the top of the page appeared the words:
NIGHT FLIGHT
– Poul Anderson
"You say If bought it?" he asked Fermeti.
"Yes," Fermeti replied tensely.
Anderson typed:
Difficulties at Outward, Incorporated had begun to nettle Edmond Fletcher. For one thing, an entire ship had disappeared, and although the individuals aboard were not personally known to him he felt a twinge of responsibility. Now, as he lathered himself with hormone-impregnated soap
"He starts at the beginning," Fermeti said bitingly. "Well, if there's no alternative we'll simply have to bear with him." Musingly, he murmured, "I wonder how long it takes… I wonder how fast he writes. As a pre-cog he can see what's coming next; it should help him to do it in a hurry." Or was that just wishful thinking?
"Have the coffee beans arrived yet?" Anderson asked, glancing up.
"Any time now," Fermeti said.
"I hope some of the beans are Colombian," Anderson said.
Long before the beans arrived the article was done.
Rising stiffly, uncoiling his lengthy limbs, Poul Anderson said, "I think you have what you want, there. The mass restoration formula is on typescript page 20."
Eagerly, Fermeti turned the pages. Yes, there it was; peering over his shoulder, Tozzo saw the paragraph:
If the ship followed a trajectory which would carry it into the star Proxima, it would, he realized, regain its mass through a process of leeching solar energy from the great star-furnace itself. Yes, it was Proxima itself which held the key to Torelli's problem, and now, after all this time, it had been solved. The simple formula revolved in his brain.
And, Tozzo saw, there lay the formula. As the article said, the mass would be regained from solar energy converted into matter, the ultimate source of power in the universe. The answer had stared them in the face all this time!
Their long struggle was over.
"And now," Poul Anderson said, "I'm free to go back to my own time?"
Fermeti said simply, "Yes."
"Wait," Tozzo said to his superior. "There's evidently something you don't understand." It was a section which he had read in the instruction manual attached to the time-dredge. He drew Fermeti to one side, where Anderson could not hear. "He can't be sent back to his own time with the knowledge he has now."
"What knowledge?" Fermeti inquired.
"That – well, I'm not certain. Something to do with our society, here. What I'm trying to tell you is this: the first rule of time travel, according to the manual, is don't change the past. In this situation just bringing Anderson here has changed the past merely by exposing him to our society."
Pondering, Fermeti said, "You may be correct. While he was in that gift shop he may have picked up some object which, taken back to his own time, might revolutionize their technology."
"Or at the magazine rack at the spaceport," Tozzo said. "Or on his trip between those two points. And – even the knowledge that he and his colleagues are pre-cogs"
"You're right," Fermeti said. "The memory of this trip must be wiped from his brain." He turned and walked slowly back to Poul Anderson. "Look here," he addressed him. "I'm sorry to tell you this, but everything that's happened to you must be wiped from your brain."
After a pause, Anderson said, "That's a shame. Sorry to hear that." He looked downcast. "But I'm not surprised," he murmured. He seemed philosophical about the whole affair. "It's generally handled this way."
Tozzo asked, "Where can this alteration of the memory cells of his brain be accomplished?"
"At the Department of Penology," Fermeti said. "Through the same channels we obtained the convicts." Pointing his sleep-gun at Poul Anderson he said, Come along with us. I regret this… but it has to be done."
At the Department of Penology, painless electroshock removed from Poul Anderson's brain the precise cells in which his most recent memories were stored. Then, in a semi-conscious state, he was carried back into the time-dredge. A moment later he was on his trip back to the year 1954, to his own society and time. To the Sir Francis Drake Hotel in downtown San Francisco, California and his waiting wife and child.
When the time-dredge returned empty, Tozzo, Gilly and Fermeti breathed a sigh of relief and broke open a bottle of hundred-year-old Scotch which Fermeti had been saving. The mission had been successfully accomplished; now they could turn their attention back to the Project.
"Where's the manuscript that he wrote?" Fermeti said, putting down his glass to look all around his office.
There was no manuscript to be found. And, Tozzo noticed, the antique Koyal typewriter which they had brought from the Smithsonian -it was gone, too. But why?
Suddenly chill fear traveled up him. He understood.
"Good Lord," he said thickly. He put down his glass. "Somebody get a copy of the journal with his article in it. At once."