ng for your actual arrival, and the
one that hung on your arriving within the five minutes they actually
waited. In which are you interested?"

"Oh--the last one." That seemed the likeliest. After all, it was too
much to expect that Dixon Wells could ever be on time, and as to the
second possibility--well, they _hadn't_ waited for me, and that in a way
removed the weight of responsibility.

"Come on," rumbled van Manderpootz. I followed him across to the Physics
Building and into his littered laboratory. The device still stood on the
table and I took my place before it, staring at the screen of the
Horsten psychomat. The clouds wavered and shifted as I sought to impress
my memories on their suggestive shapes, to read into them some picture
of that vanished morning.

Then I had it. I made out the vista from the Staten Bridge, and was
speeding across the giant span toward the airport. I waved a signal to
van Manderpootz, the thing clicked, and the subjunctivisor was on.

The grassless clay of the field appeared. It is a curious thing about
the psychomat that you see only through the eyes of your image on the
screen. It lends a strange reality to the working of the toy; I suppose
a sort of self-hypnosis is partly responsible.

I was rushing over the ground toward the glittering, silver-winged
projectile that was the _Baikal_. A glowering officer waved me on, and I
dashed up the slant of the gangplank and into the ship; the port dropped
and I heard a long "Whew!" of relief.

"Sit down!" barked the officer, gesturing toward an unoccupied seat. I
fell into it; the ship quivered under the thrust of the catapult, grated
harshly into motion, and then was flung bodily into the air. The blasts
roared instantly, then settled to a more muffled throbbing, and I
watched Staten Island drop down and slide back beneath me. The giant
rocket was under way.

"Whew!" I breathed again. "Made it!" I caught an amused glance from my
right. I was in an aisle seat; there was no one to my left, so I turned
to the eyes that had flashed, glanced, and froze staring.

It was a girl. Perhaps she wasn't actually as lovely as she looked to
me; after all, I was seeing her through the half-visionary screen of a
psychomat. I've told myself since that she _couldn't_ have been as
pretty as she seemed, that it was due to my own imagination filling in
the details. I don't know; I remember only that I stared at curiously
lovely silver-blue eyes and velve