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Ten minutes later he felt a slight swish of air and
116 Robert A. Heinlein
ceased. He snapped the light switch. The sofa was
empty, even of books.
Frost and Jenkins kept an uneasy vigil while await-
ing Estelle's return. Jenkins wandered nervously
around the study, examining objects that didn't in-
terest him and smoking countless cigarets. The Pro-
fessor sat quietly in his easy chair, simulating a
freedom from anxiety that he did not feel. They
conversed in desultory fashion.
"One thing I don't see," observed Jenkins, "is why
in the world Helen could go a dozen places and not
change, and Bob goes just one place and comes back
almost unrecognizable shorter, heavier, decked out
in outlandish clothes. What happened to his ordinary
clothes anyhow? How do you explain those things,
Professor?"
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"Eh? I don't explain them I merely observe them.
I think perhaps he changed, while Helen didn't,
because Helen was just a visitor to the places she
went to, whereas Monroe belonged over there as
witness he fitted into the pattern of that world. Per-
haps the Great Architect intended for him to cross
over."
"Huh? Good heavens, Doctor, surely you don't
believe in divine predestination!"
"Perhaps not in those terms. But, Howard, you
mechanistic skeptics make me tired. Your naive abil-
ity to believe that things 'jest growed' approaches
childishness. According a you a fortuitous accident of
entropy produced Beethoven's Ninth Symphony."
"I think that's unfair. Doctor. You certainly don't
expect a man to believe in things that run contrary to
his good sense without offering him any reasonable
explanation."
Frost snorted. "I certainly do if he has observed
it with his own eyes and ears, or gets it from a source
known to be credible. A fact doesn't have to be
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understood to be true. Sure, any reasonable mind
ELSEWHEN 117
wants explanations, but it's silly to reject facts that
don't fit your philosophy.
"Now these events tonight, which you are so anx-
ious to rationalize in orthodox terms, famish a clue
to a lot of things that scientists have been rejecting
because they couldn't explain them. Have you ever
heard the tale of the man who walked around the
horses? No? Around 1810 Benjamin Bathurst, British
Ambassador to Austria, arrived in his carriage at an
inn in Perleberg, Germany. He had his valet and
secretary with him. They drove into the lighted court-
yard of the inn. Bathurst got out, and, in the pres-
ence of bystanders and his two attaches, walked around
the horses. He hasn't been seen since."
"What happened?"
"Nobody knows. I think he was preoccupied and
inadvertently wandered into another time track. But
there are literally hundreds of similar cases, way too
many to laugh off. The two-time-dimensions theory
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accounts for most of them. But I suspect that there
are other as-yet-undreamed-of natural principles op-
erating in some of the rejected cases."
Howard stopped pacing and pulled at his lower
hp. "Maybe so. Doctor. I'm too upset to think. Look
here it's one o'clock. Oughtn't she to be back by
now?"
"Fm afraid so. Son."
"You mean she's not coming back."
"It doesn't look like it."
The younger man gave a broken cry and collapsed
on the sofa. His shoulders heaved. Presently he calmed
down a little. Frost saw his lips move and suspected
that he was praying. Then he showed a drawn face to
the Doctor.
"Isn't there anything we can do?"
"That's hard to answer, Howard. We don't know
where she's gone; all we do know is that she left here
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under hypnotic suggestion to cross over into some
other loop of the past or future."
Robert A. Heinlein
118
"Can't we go after her the same way and trace
her?"
"I don't know. I haven't had any experience with
such a job."
"I've got to do something or I'll go nuts."
"Take it easy, son. Let me think about it." He
smoked in silence while Howard controlled an im-
pulse to scream, break furniture, anything!
Frost knocked the ash off his cigar and placed it
carefully in a tray. "I can think of one chance. It's a
remote one."
"Anything!"
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"I'm going to listen to the record that Estelle
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