“Hey!” said my man, more loudly. The others broke off, and came round him. Out of the corner of my eye I saw Sylvia and Rose turn to one another. They giggled like a couple of schoolgirls, and then started whispering.
“Listen,” said the man beside me. “Something’s going haywire here. Neither of these guys is Speckleton.”
They all regarded, us for a moment.
“Well, I don’t know that I mind that a lot,” said one, turning to look at Rose, who blushed.
“Nor me,” agreed the other. “Just my climate around here.” And Sylvia blushed even more than Rose had.
“Maybe,” said my man. But the point is there’s no work for us to do here. No Speckleton no drawings. These folks come from thirty-five years before.”
“I’m not worrying about that a bit,” one of the others assured him. “Nice folks,” he added. And the girls giggled.
“All the same. It’s a washout. So what do we do?”
“Wait for instructions,” one said promptly.
“That’s so. Then we’ll be right on hand when they correct the error,” added the other.
“Okay. Then I’ll put a report through.” The man turned and walked back toward the vehicle. The man who had been talking to Doug went with him. Rose, still a little pink, and with a touch of that demureness which isn’t meant to deceive anybody, said in a hostess way: “I’m sure you must be terribly thirsty after all that dust. Won’t you have some coffee?”
They had no hesitation at all about accepting the offer. Doug and I were left to watch them push their way through the hedge which separated our gardens, and stroll up, laughing, to his house. We looked at one another.
“Well!” I said.
Maybe Doug’s years had improved his philosophic outlook. He said, calmly: “I’ll have to hand it to you, George. Your deductions were dead right.”
“Huh,” I said, watching the others go into the house.
“Yes. There has been time transposition someway. And apparently some kind of hitch in it so you were right, too, about it just being an accident for us that we’re here.”
“Huh,” I said again. “It might help if I could understand what the hell goes on when there isn’t a hitch.”
“It’s not so difficult. That fellow gave me the general idea. You see, in a few years” time the offices of the Solarian Rocket Corporation, Inc. will be standing on this site with a man called Julian Speckleton in charge of the drawing department. Okay? Well, the guys who operate this timelift dingum just whisk away a part of the block to... er... whatever time it is out there. Just the way we were whisked.”
“But what for?”
“Ah, that’s where these chaps come in. They arrive and photograph all drawings and documents of interest.”
“I don’t see what for. They must be centuries ahead of us, anyway.”
“Sure. But the way they work they’ve got a second timelift in operation someplace. Now that brings along some guy called Paladanov. They give him the photographic copies. Then they reverse the timelift, and put things back.”
I thought that over. “I don’t see” I began.
“There’s a subtlety there,” said Doug. “The office block goes back to the split-second it left, so that nothing appears to have been touched. But this Paladanov and his place don’t, not quite. It has to be missing from its proper place for a few minutes long enough for him to collect the photographs so that they are in the house when it goes back.”
“This is horribly bewildering.”
“Well, if the Paladanov guy went back to the same splitsecond in which he left, he’d not have the photographs they weren’t in his house at that second, you see.”
“I suppose not. But it’s so involved. Why don’t they just whisk up Paladanov here and tell him a few things that’ll put him years or generations ahead of his competitors, anyway? Surely that’d be easier?”
“It would be. But would these guys get anything out of it? Somewhere in this there’s a racket. There always is. It could be that Paladanov’s employers put money on deposit, and leave it to accumulate, maybe? In that case the more slowly the information is dribbled out, the longer the racket would last. Or it could equally well be that they work the thing the other way round as well, and keep both sides plodding along neck and neck on one another’s secrets. That’d be very nice smooth work.” He paused to contemplate the idea admiringly. “I know one thing,” he added. “If and when we get back, the first thing I do is to buy my house and ground.”
“But, look here,” I said. “It’s crazy and unpatriotic.”
“How? I don’t see that an information office in time if you can move about in time is any more crazy than one in space. Properly operated, it could make big money. As for being unpatriotic, that depends on the distance, doesn’t it? The way I see it, to give the Germans radar around 1938 would be bad, but to let the Trojans in on the wooden horse gag wouldn’t matter a lot.”
“There’s no difference in the morals,” I said coldly.
“Maybe they don’t have those, anyway,” suggested Doug.
“I’ve been wondering about just that,” I admitted tineasily, looking up toward his house. I listened to the sounds coming from there. It seemed to me there was a pretty unnatural amount of highpitched giggling going on.
“Don’t you think we’d better?” I asked, jerking my head in that direction.
Doug listened, too, for a moment.
“Maybe we had,” he agreed. We turned, and walked up the garden. At the door he paused.
“Er—pretty big fellows, aren’t they strong-looking?” he suggested.
I had to agree with that.
I shall have, I am afraid, to draw a veil over most of the three following days. I never would have believed that two decently brought up girls… and respectably married, too.
Mind you, I didn’t take it all lying down. I told Sylvia what I thought about it one time when I did manage to get her alone. Her response wasn’t amiable: “Will you please stop interfering in my affairs?” she demanded.
“But it’s your affair that I’m complaining of,” I pointed out, reasonably.
“If you don’t like Alaric being a friend of mine, you’d better go and tell him so and see what he does,” she said.
Alaric was, I think, slightly the tallest of the four.
“I don’t mind him being a friend of anybody’s,” I said, “what I mean is”
“Well, what do you mean?” she asked, dangerously. “Are you accusing him of anything? Because maybe he ought to hear it.”
“I’m not talking about him. I’m talking about you.”
“Well?”
“When a married woman throws herself at another man’s head” I began.
“I thought you said you weren’t talking about him?”
“Hell, I’m not. I’m just pointing out”
“Now look here,” she said. “You’re having all the fun of one of your damn silly magazine stories coming true. So what right have you to interfere in mine?”
“It isn’t at all the same sort of thing,” I said shortly. “Anyway, I didn’t ask for this. It just happened.”
Sylvia softened unexpectedly.
“Yes,” she said. “That’s how love is for women it just happens,” she added gently.
“That’s all very well in those fool stories” I began.
Her softness suddenly vanished.
“Fool stories,”
” she said. “And from you, too!” She gave an exceedingly unnatural laugh.
“At least mine are harmless and clean,” I replied.
“Well, mine always end up most morally. They have to,” she countered.
“It’s not so much the ending that I’m concerned about at the moment” I was pointing out when she snapped: “What are you going to do about it?”