I turned to go to death, almost eagerly. In my heart I whispered:

"Elren! Elren, my lost love!"

The technician who had unmasked me interfered.

"Wait!" he begged. "Let me question him, sir. Perhaps he's telling the truth."

The general glowered. "What's the difference? He's wrecked the bomb!" But he hesitated and finally said, "All right. Question him. The harm's done anyhow."

Sunk in despair I scarcely heard the other officer's sharp queries, but he was hesitant and I told him whence I had come, and why. He looked at me incredulously.

"But the bomb?" he demanded. "What did you do to it?"

I patted the photon-pack cartridges strung along my belt. "I had to drain it," I said. "It was about to explode—"

"Drain it? How?"

"With the katonator." I explained to him how the energies of the exploding atoms were drawn off through the katonator-beams and trapped in the photon-pack.

He stared at the tiny power cells, eyes wide but showing a sudden glint of hope.

"Can you take that energy out again and send it into another object?"

"You mean to energize the atom-bomb again?" I said. "No, of course not."

He was shaking his head. "I mean something else," he said. "Can you send them across fifty million miles of space?"

I stared at him, fascinated and afraid.

"I dare not interfere," I whispered.

"But, you have interfered," he yelled. "You've wrecked our chance to win this war. You've got to help us!"

I stepped back, bewildered. What he said was true enough. Yet all my training, all the warnings of Elren and Master Lys, said over and over: You must not interfere!

Yet I had interfered already; I had started a new time-sequence by destroying Earth's chance to wipe out Venus. If I could neutralize that act by helping them now, perhaps there would be a chance.

"I 

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