Ambition
to do?"

He shook her hand off. "I may not get to the Moon, but I'm going to teach one superman the advantage of honesty!"

"Wait! That won't get you anywhere."

"He may be bigger than I am," Maitland gritted, "but—"

She squeezed his arm violently. "You don't understand. He would not fight you. He'd use a gun."

"If I could catch him by surprise...."

She took hold of his shoulders firmly. "Now, listen, Bob Maitland. I love you. And I think it's the most important thing in the world that you get to see the stars. Swarts will never let me time travel, anyway."

"What are you thinking?"

"I'll go down to the village and get a vliegvlotter. It won't take twenty minutes. I'll come back, see that Swarts is out of the way, let you out of here, and take you—" she hesitated, but her eyes were steady—"wherever you want to go."

He was trembling. "Your career. I can't let you...."

She made as if to spit, then grinned. "My career! It's time I went home to the fiord, anyway. Now you wait here!"

The vliegvlotter was about 50 feet long, an ellipsoid of revolution. Maitland and Ingrid ran hand in hand across the lawn and she pushed him up through the door, then slammed it shut and screwed the pressure locks tight.

They were strapping themselves into the seats, bathed in sunlight that flooded down through the thick plastic canopy, when she stopped, pale with consternation.

"What's the matter?" he demanded.

"Oh, Bob, I forgot! We can't do this!"

"We're going to," he said grimly.

"Bob, sometime this morning you're going to snap back to 1950. If that happens while we're up there...."

His jaw went slack as the implication soaked in. Then he reached over and finished fastening the buckle on her wide seat belt.


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