was adamant under its smoothness.

Ned grunted, and then impulse led him to look again. He'd seen the man somewhere. He hunted for it, then dismissed it, knowing that his memory was tricky these days. But he motioned the robot aside. "We don't allow interruptions for junior members," he told the man, letting his voice soften the words. "Still, if you want to sit down and listen—quietly—nobody'll stop you."

"But...."

"Quietly!" The robot stressed the word. The man looked at it, then swiveled to Ned Brussels. For a moment, the bitterness halted, as if frozen, then gave place to a sudden sharp amusement. His eyes searched Ned's, and he nodded, dropping into a chair.

Lem took up the conversation again. "It worked. And if it works for four days, it should work for four centuries. You're just scared of paradoxes, Ned—going back and killing your grandfather, or such rot. You've been reading too many stories on it."

"Fifty years ago, Pete LeFranc said the same thing. Young man, either sit down, or get out! This is the Old Men's section! He had answers for all the paradoxes, too—except one question."

Ned had been young, then, just getting started at synthanatomy drafting, and not rich enough for wine of the type Pete always kept. He sipped it with relish, and looked at the odd cage Pete was displaying. "All the same, it won't work!"

Pete laughed. "Reality doesn't mean a thing to an artist, does it? Be damned to your paradoxes—there's some answer to them. It did work; the dog appeared exactly four weeks later, just finishing his bark!"

"Then why haven't time machines come back from the future?" Ned shot at him. He's been saving that as his final argument, and he sat back to watch the bomb explode.

For a second, Pete blinked. "You never figured that out yourself."

"Nope. I got it from a science fiction story. But why haven't they? If yours works, there'll be more time machines built. With more built, they'll be improved. They'll get to be commonplace. People'd use them—and someone would turn up here with one. Or in the past. Why haven't we met time travellers, Pete?"

"Maybe we have met them, but didn't know it?"

"Nonsense. You get in that machine and go back to Elizabethan England. Try to pass yourself off as being native to that time even an 

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