n time, we'd have snapped him up at once and all
this would not have happened."

"It wouldn't hold true with forests, either," said the chairman of
the JCS. "Or with pastures or with crops."

The economics expert was slightly flushed. "There is another
thing," he said. "If we go back in time and colonize the land we
find there, what would happen when that--well, let's call it
retroactive--when that retroactive civilization reaches the
beginning of our historic period? What will result from that
cultural collision? Will our history change? Is what has happened
false? Is all--"

"That's all poppycock!" the general shouted. "That and this other
talk about using up resources. Whatever we did in the past--or are
about to do--has been done already. I've lain awake nights,
mister, thinking about all these things and there is no answer,
believe me, except the one I give you. The question which faces us
here is an immediate one. Do we give all this up or do we keep on
watching that Wisconsin farm, waiting for them to come back? Do we
keep on trying to find, independently, the process or formula or
method that Adams found for traveling in time?"

"We've had no luck in our research so far, General," said the
quiet physicist who sat at the table's end. "If you were not so
sure and if the evidence were not so convincing that it had been
done by Adams, I'd say flatly that it is impossible. We have no
approach which holds any hope at all. What we've done so far, you
might best describe as flounder. But if Adams turned the trick, it
must be possible. There may be, as a matter of fact, more ways
than one. We'd like to keep on trying."

"Not one word of blame has been put on you for your failure," the
chairman told the physicist. "That you could do it seems to be
more than can be humanly expected. If Adams did it--_if_ he did, I
say--it must have been simply that he blundered on an avenue of
research no other man has thought of."

"You will recall," said the general, "that the research program,
even from the first, was thought of strictly as a gamble. Our one
hope was, and must remain, that they will return."

"It would have been so much simpler all around," the state
department man said, "if Adams had patented his method."

The general raged at him. "And had it published, all neat and
orderly, in the patent office records so that anyone who wanted it
could look it up and have it?"

"We can be most sincerely thankful," said