I thought of Cleopatra and Helen of Troy and wondered if they would be the goddesses of love that people imagined or the scrawny, big-nosed redhead and fading old woman of scholarship. Then I noticed the detective's hand that had been resting idly on a round brass weight of unknown sort to me. His tapered fingertips had indented the metal. His bright eyes followed mine and he smiled faintly. "Withdrawal symptoms." The admiration and affection for this man that had been slowly building up behind my hatred unbrinked. I remembered now that he had stopped. He was not _really_ a snowbird. After a time, I asked the doctor a question. "Why, yes. I'm flattered. This is the first manuscript. Considering my professional handwriting, I recopied it more laboriously." Accepting the sheaf of papers and not looking back at these two great and good men, I concentrated on my own time and Doc. Nothing happened. My heart raced, but I saw something dancing before me like a dust mote in sunlight and stepped toward it.... ... into the effective range of Miss Casey's tiny gun. * * * * * She inclined the lethal silver toy. "Let me see those papers, Kevin." I handed her the doctor's manuscript. Her breath escaped slowly and loudly. "It's all right. It's all right. It exists. It's real. Not even one of the unwritten ones. I've read this myself." Doc was lying on the cot, half his face twisted into horror. "Don't move, Kevin," she said. "I'll have to shoot you--maybe not to kill, but painfully." I watched her face flash blue, red, blue and knew she meant it. But I had known too much in too short a time. I had to help Doc, but there was something else. "I just want a drink of coffee from that container on the chair," I told her. She shook her head. "I don't know what you think it does to you." It was getting hard for me to think. "Who are you?" She showed me a card from her wrist purse. Vivian Casey, Constable, North American Mounted Police. I had to help Doc. I had to have some coffee. "What do you want?" "Listen, Kevin. Listen carefully to what I am saying. Doc found a method of time travel. It was almost a purely mathematical, topographical way divorced from modern physical sciences. He kept it secret and he wanted to make money with it. He was an idealist--he had his crusades. How can you make money with time travel?" I didn't know whether she was asking me, but I didn't know. All I knew was that I had to help Doc and get some coffee. "It takes money--money Doc didn't have--to make money," Miss Casey said, "even if you know what horse will come in and what stock will prosper. Besides, horse-racing and the stock market weren't a part of Doc's character. He was a scholar." Why did she keep using the past tense in reference to Doc? It scared me. He was lying so still with the left side of his face so twisted. I needed some coffee.