clues so positive that we didn't even hesitate--we drove
straight to the old deserted farm where Adams and his friends had
worked. Don't you see how it all fits together?"

"I presume," the man from the state department said nastily, "that
you even have an explanation as to why they chose that particular
location."

"You thought you had me there," said the general, "but I have an
answer. A good one. The southwestern corner of Wisconsin is a
geologic curiosity. It was missed by all the glaciations. Why, we
do not know. Whatever the reason, the glaciers came down on both
sides of it and far to the south of it and left it standing there,
a little island in a sea of ice.

"And another thing: Except for a time in the Triassic, that same
area of Wisconsin has always been dry land. That and a few other
spots are the only areas in North America which have not, time and
time again, been covered by water. I don't think it necessary to
point out the comfort it would be to an experimental traveler in
time to be certain that, in almost any era he might hit, he'd have
dry land beneath him."

The economics expert spoke up: "We've given this matter a lot of
study and, while we do not feel ourselves competent to rule upon
the possibility or impossibility of time travel, there are some
observations I should like, at some time, to make."

"Go ahead right now," said the JCS chairman.

"We see one objection to the entire matter. One of the reasons,
naturally, that we had some interest in it is that, if true, it
would give us an entire new planet to exploit, perhaps more wisely
than we've done in the past. But the thought occurs that any
planet has only a certain grand total of natural resources. If we
go into the past and exploit them, what effect will that have upon
what is left of those resources for use in the present? Wouldn't
we, in doing this, be robbing ourselves of our own heritage?"

"That contention," said the AEC chairman, "wouldn't hold true in
every case. Quite the reverse, in fact. We know that there was, in
some geologic ages in the past, a great deal more uranium than we
have today. Go back far enough and you'd catch that uranium before
it turned into lead. In southwestern Wisconsin, there is a lot of
lead. Hudson told us he knew the location of vast uranium deposits
and we thought he was a crackpot talking through his hat. If we'd
known--let's be fair about this--if we had known and believed him
about going back i