"I'm no spy!" Roger shouted over the hubbub that greeted the girl's dramatic charge. "I was just an ordinary citizen, going about my business, until she came along!"
"I've never seen this person before in my life," his accuser stated coldly.
"You gave me the message!" Roger countered. "You said it was of vast importance, and that—"
"The one you gave me after you were dead! You made me steal that vegetable's motorcycle and go into the men's room!"
"He's raving," Q'nell said. "S'lunt, you'd better disassociate him at once! I'm sure he's part of some sort of plot to abort our probe!"
"Just a moment," S'lunt said. "What was that about a message?"
"S'lunt! Technor S'lunt? It was addressed to you!" Roger blurted. "I remember now!"
"What was the substance of this message?"
"She said she'd been, ah, partially successful, that was it!"
"I, ah, don't exactly remember the rest, but . . . "
"How unfortunate," S'lunt said grimly. "Just where is it you claim to have met Q'nell?"
"A few miles outside of the town of Mongoose, Ohio! In a rainstorm! At one o'clock in the morning!"
"Highly circumstantial," Q'nell conceded. "However, inasmuch as I have never been near Mongoose, Ohio, particularly in a rainstorm, your story doesn't hold up."
"There was an accident!" Roger insisted. "You, er, fell off your machine, and I rushed forward to render aid!"
"How selfless of you," the girl replied icily. "However—"
"That was when you told me to take that little gold button and put it in my ear!"
A shocked silence greeted this remark. Q'nell put a hand up, touched her ear.
"Why, he's talking about the Reinforcer," S'lunt said.
"Look!" R'heet pointed. All eyes went to Roger's ear. He angled his head to give them a better view.
"You see?" he said. "There it is, just like I said!"
"That's impossible," a man in mauve gasped. "There is only one Reinforcer, as we know only too well!"
"And I'm wearing it!" Q'nell stated emphatically.
"No, you're not!" Roger contradicted. "I took it, just like you told me to, and—"
"Look!" She turned her head. The gold button gleamed dully in her ear.
"I wonder!" S'lunt said suddenly. "Q'nell—you say the fellow was reading your mind?"
"There is one possible explanation . . . " S'lunt looked thoughtfully at Roger. "What is she thinking at this moment?"
"Ah . . . she's thinking I'd be kind of cute if my nose wasn't so big . . . " He broke off to finger his nose and dart a resentful glance at the girl.
"Q'nell, can you detect his thoughts?"
"Why . . . I don't know . . . " She cocked her head as if listening. She gasped. "Well, of all the fresh things!"
"It was me," Roger confirmed smugly.
"S'lunt, you were about to offer an explanation," R'heet reminded him.
"Yes. It's a bit fantastic, but then what isn't these days? We're preparing to launch our probe in exactly thirty-three minutes. Suppose we do so—and that the attempt is partially successful, as this chap stated Q'nell had reported. That would imply that rather than tracing the Channel to its origin, the mission was aborted at some point short thereof—possibly in the locality of Mongoose, Ohio. If Q'nell then encountered this person—"
"You mean—she's already gone!" R'heet looked puzzled.
"Not yet. Still, in the future she will have gone, and if subsequently a message regarding her attempt were transmitted back here to us, via this rather unlikely messenger—"
"But—she was to be dispatched in a retrogressive direction! Thus, if she did drop out of the Channel along the way, it would have been in the past—and this man comes from the future, as demonstrated by his encyclopedic grasp of upcoming developments.
"Perhaps our assumptions regarding the orientation of the manifold were in error; but that's a detail we can work out later. At the moment, the question is: What was the substance of the message which Q'nell will send back?"
"Look here, fellow—" R'heet started.
"Tyson," Roger supplied. "I'm sorry about the message. It was something about rocks, I remember that."
"Well, I suppose we might as well deploy the mind-stripper again," R'heet said ominously.
"Hold it! I just remembered something else. Something about sending a, ah, null-engine to . . . to the terminal to, er, break something or other!"
"A null-engine? But that would be a measure of desperation!" R'heet muttered.
"Still, it hangs together," S'lunt pointed out. "Your mission, Q'nell, was to determine the nature of the Entity, and attempt to deal with it. Failing that, alternatives were to be explored.
"And it seems the former approach failed. Leaving us no choice but to plunge all the way to the terminal coordinates and shatter the time lock utterly!"
"Ummmm. That being the case, we'd best extract what we can from this fellow—"
"Wait!" Q'nell said sharply. "If what you're saying is correct—then his story is also true! He must have come to my assistance and then undertaken to deliver my message just out of sheer altruism! Are we to reward him by boiling his brain and leaving him a babbling idiot?"
"Hmmm. Seems a little ungrateful," S'lunt conceded. "Still—we need to know all we can before you go."
"You mean you're still sending her on this mission—knowing she'll be killed?" Roger charged. "Why don't you just let me and all your other victims out of our cages and call the whole operation off!"
"I'm afraid you have an erroneous grasp of matters," S'lunt said in the surprised silence that greeted this proposal. "We're as much prisoners of the Museum as you seem to be. And unless we can solve the mystery of its construction—soon—we will all remain trapped here, for all eternity!"
"When we first discovered ourselves to be entoiled in a trap," S'lunt explained, leading the way out onto an unrailed terrace jutting over an orderly landscape half a mile below, "we of Culture One refused to panic. The enclave, happily, included the laboratory complex you see about you. We at once set to work to establish the parameters of our situation."
Roger held back as the others started across a yard-wide walkway arching over empty space to the adjoining structure. S'lunt gave him an interrogatory glance. "Why are you crouching in that fashion, sir?"
"It's just a thing I've got about heights," Roger confided. "Suppose I just wait here."
"Nonsense. I insist you join us on the pinnacle for a cuppa."
"You go ahead, then. I'll follow in my own way."
"Our studies," S'lunt said, strolling slowly as Roger progressed on all fours at his side, "have not been entirely fruitless. We have made certain determinations regarding the nature of the spatio-temporal distortion. Using a special tracer beam to follow our explorers through the point of tangency through which it is possible to pass from one display to another, we have determined that a progressive degeneration of temporal binding forces is at work, allowing artifacts and fauna of each era to wander into anachronistic settings, thus engendering massive energy imbalances which must end in disaster! On the basis of those findings, we designed and constructed the Reinforcer. With the aid of this device, the selected agent would, we hoped, be enabled to pass not only transversely across the Museum, but longitudinally along the Axial Channel as well, thus tracing the phenomenon to its source, and, hopefully, discovering the identity of the power behind it."
"How do you know it's a museum?" Roger inquired. He opened one eye and quickly closed it again.
"An assumption. The displays present a panorama of Terrestrial history from the dawn of life to its eventual sublimation."
"Then—why not just find another, ah, display, from the distant future where they have even more advanced science that you folks here in Culture One and—"
"Impossible. In the first place, the displays number ten billion, four hundred and four million, nine hundred and forty-one thousand, six hundred and two. Thus, investigating them at the rate of one per minute, the time required—"
"I get the idea," Roger interrupted. "What's the second place?"
"It would be the merest chance if we happened on a center of population or a scientific installation which would afford the necessary hardware, even if we succeeded in pinpointing a suitably advanced culture. So we have devoted the available time and manpower to the probe scheme."
"Say, that reminds me . . . " Roger said as he rose to his feet on the far side, where tables were placed under gay-colored umbrellas. "Some friends of mine were about to be eaten by a bear. How about just fetching them along here the way you did me?"
"Impossible. In your case, we were able to trace your movements via the emanations of the Reinforcer—though we didn't understand the nature of the signal at the time. But I'm afraid there's nothing we can do about the others. However, don't fret. They'll be right as rain after Turnover."
"Another thing I just remembered: I had some, uh, baggage with me . . . "
"Lost, I'm afraid. You must have dropped it when we put the grappler on you. Don't fret, however, I can lend you whatever you need."
"See here, Tyson," R'heet steered the conversation back to the problem at hand. "You might be a big help to us, having wandered through a number of the displays. Why don't you just let us strip down your brain a little—we'll leave you with the ability to feed yourself and possibly even tie your own shoelaces—"
"You can't!" Q'nell said promptly.
"Q'nell, your scruples are interfering with the orderly exploration of the facts," R'heet complained. "If I'd realized you were so emotional, I'd never have offered to sign a cohabitation agreement with you!"
"No need to upset yourself," Q'nell said coolly. "It has nothing to do with emotion. But have you stopped to think that his brain is linked to mine by an identical Reinforcer? You see the obvious corollary, I assume."
"Hmmm. If we squeeze his brain, the harmonics will destroy your mind as well."
"Too bad, fellows," Roger said. "Much as I'd like to help you out, I can't see letting the little lady suffer."
"I don't suppose we could remove the Reinforcer?" a man in puce vestments said doubtfully.
"You know better than that, D'olt. The filamentary system is inextricably intermingled with T'son's neural circuitry. Tampering with it would instantly prove fatal, as it did when T'son here removed it from Q'nell."
"You mean—I killed her?" Tyson blurted. "Good night, Miss Q'nell—excuse me!"
"It's nothing. If I ordered you to do so, I doubtless had my reasons."
"You're certainly being a sport about it," Roger said admiringly.
"We citizens of Culture One seldom descend to the level of purely emotional reactions," the girl stated calmly.
"Oh, really?" Roger raised an eyebrow. "I seem to recall seeing you blush just a few minutes ago."
"My physiological reactions system bears no relationship to my intellectually determined course of action," Q'nell snapped.
"Ah-ah! Anger, anger!" Roger said playfully. "Actually you're not a bad-looking girl at all, you know. Why don't you and I—"
"May I remind you, T'son," R'heet put in, "that I have offered Q'nell a cohabitation contract. Your attentions are therefore unwelcome."
"Well, let's just see what she says about that . . . "
"I say that it's only twelve minutes until jump-off," Q'nell said flatly. "I'd better be getting into position."
"Don't let her do it! She'll be killed!" Roger protested.
"Possibly not," R'heet said calmly. "The change in the nature of her mission from exploratory probe to a bombing run introduces a new factor into the equation."
"You're a cold-blooded one!" Roger said. "At least delay the launch! Give me time to try to remember the rest of what she said!"
"No delay is possible," S'lunt put in. "The cyclical nature of the phenomenon requires that the attempt be within six hours, or never—at least not for another hundred and twelve years, by which time the deterioration of the temporal matrix will have progressed to the point where the entire space-time continuum will collapse on itself, with disastrous results!"
"Then wait six hours! There's no use going before the last second!"
"Turnover is in fifteen minutes. At that time, of course, the Reinforcer, if still in this temporal matrix, will revert to its constituent parts. Thus, let us make haste."
"But—but you can't send a girl like that out alone with a bomb!"
S'lunt made a burping sound at R'heet, who belched a reply. S'lunt turned to Roger with outstretched hand.
"Capital!" he said. "R'heet and I have discussed the matter in depth, and we agree there's no reason to refuse your courageous offer!"
"To accompany her, of course! Let's hurry along, now! There's just time to pump the canned hypno-briefing into you before you go!"
"Comfort yourself, T'son," S'lunt said in a tone of easy assurance as he and the half dozen other launch technicians studied their instrument readings. "The perceptor circuits indicate that you have correctly absorbed your briefing and are now as aware as necessary of the parameters within which you will function. Everything is in readiness for your departure. Q'nell has the null-engine tucked away in her pocket, armed and ready. No point in waiting."
Glumly, Roger allowed himself to be escorted across the wide milk-glass floor to the spot where Q'nell waited beside a vast coil of thick white-painted tubing. R'heet emitted a terse blap! as he came up.
"I don't savvy the local Speedspeak," Roger said, noting the girl's pert features, short-clipped jet-black hair, and appealingly pink lips, slightly parted to show perfect teeth. "What was that all about?"
Q'nell gave him a glance which had receded several degrees toward the impersonal.
"He was just mentioning that your fear index was rising steadily. If it ascends another point or two, you'll be rigid with terror."
"Oh, I will, will I?" Roger said hotly. "Well, go check your dials, buster! Sure, I'm a little nervous! Who wouldn't be? For all I know, when I step into that thing I may wind up on an ice floe with a polar bear—or in the midst of a dinosaur's lunch—or swimming in the middle of the Indian Ocean—or—" His voice rose higher as a succession of images presented themselves, none of them pleasant.
"Oh, no danger of that," S'lunt said encouragingly. "Once launched along the Channel proper, you'll be outside the Museum entirely, moving in a physical context regarding the exact nature of which we can make only the vaguest conjectures."
"I remember you saying something like that, but I didn't know what it meant," Roger said. "By the way, what does it mean?"
"It means," the girl put in, "that if your control should fail, we'll be ejected from the Channel into a nonspatial context."
"I've been thinking it over," Roger said promptly, "and I've decided this is too dangerous for a girl. Too bad; we might have solved everything—and of course I'd have loved going—but it means risking the life of a fragile little creature like you—"
"You're right, R'heet," Q'nell said, nodding. "I can sense the terror from here."
"Terror?" Roger came back hotly. "I was just . . . " He swallowed. "Scared," he finished. "But I've been scared before, and it never did me any good." He straightened his back. "Let's get going before I examine that statement too closely." He gripped the girl's hand and advanced to the opening in the coil. As he stepped through, the familiar gray mist folded in about him.
"Now—we pause here!" Q'nell said. "Remember S'lunt's instructions!"
Roger closed his eyes and attempted to rotate his self-concept ninety degrees. Imagining his eyes to be peering out from the approximate position of his right ear was a difficult trick; a lifetime of orientation toward an arbitrarily designated "front" was not easy to overcome. But after all, he reminded himself, there was no reason the mind, an intangible field produced by the flow of current in a neural circuit, should be bound by such mundane restrictions . . .
Suddenly he succeeded, was aware of the nose on the side of his head, of the sideburn growing down between his imaginary eyes, of his arms, one on the front, one on the back . . .
And then he was falling through some medium that was not space . . .