lying there in Their temple, defaming it in blasphemy by your sleep.
But when I tried to enter, I could not. Their will prevented me. Some
shielding force protected you. And then I knew you were a Holy One.
Forgive me. Let me live to expiate my sin."

"Louie, Louie," Cal said sadly.

As if in tangled ball, the thought stream of Louie, twisted and warped
by the false reasonings and interpretations fed to him in childhood,
seemed clearly revealed to Cal. Again a change in concept of
relationship to reality, the schematic of forces visualized, the
untangling, straightening of thought.

Louie scrambled to his feet, a rueful grin on his face.

"Sorry, Cal," he said. "I must have gone nuts there for a while, shock
and all. I'm all right now. Don't worry anymore about me. I'll get on
back to the rest."

"Sure, Louie. See you there," Cal agreed.

A rearrangement of relationships, and Cal walked out from behind a bush
to approach Jed and Tom.

"You must not have gone all the way to the top," Jed said when he looked
up and caught sight of Cal. "It's just barely past noon, I reckon.
Didn't expect to see you back until nightfall."

"I took a short cut," Cal said with a grin. "Little past noon," he
continued, as if musing with a thought. "About the same time of day that
everything happened a couple of weeks ago."

"Yeah, about the same time of day," Jed said, and looked at him
curiously.

Tom had arisen to his feet and was staring at Cal curiously, sensing a
difference in the E. Now Jed felt it too, and looked at Cal with
puzzlement on his face.

"There's something important about it being around this time of day,
Cal?" he asked.

"Not really," Cal said, "but I thought it might be helpful. I could
restore the village, the fields, the escape ship, everything just as it
was; make it feel like a continuation of the same day to the people. It
being the same time of day would help the illusion that no time had
passed, nothing had happened."

Tom's eyes narrowed in speculation.

"You can do that, Cal?" he asked. "You've solved the problem?"

"Yes," Cal said simply. "I'll tell you about it sometime. There's quite
a few loose ends to catch up right now." He turned to Jed. "How about
it, Jed?" he asked. "Think it'll be too much of a shock to put things
back as they were?"

In spite of himself, Jed was trembling. He drew a deep breath, firmed
his jaw. Seemed to set himself as one does in the dentist's chair at the
approa