"No.... But I must have hoped it; I think we all did. Guess you're the only realist I know, Igor." Kane straightened his shoulders. "We might as well land. Maybe there's still a chance to bring something decent out of this mess when the smoke clears. Anyway, I'd rather get into the thick of it than sit out here listening any longer. We shouldn't have anything more to fear from the Germans." Manning, who had sat for long brooding silently over the controls, looked up sharply. "Before we start down," he said, "I'd like to ask a last favor." * * * * * Manning smiled grimly. "One way or another. I just want one of those emergency-escape gliders we saw when we were hiding down below. You mean to land in America, I guess, but before you do I wish you'd take a little swing out of your way and drop me off in one of those over Germany. I don't know whether Eddie will want to go with me--" "Hell, what do you take me for?" asked Dugan aggrievedly. "Maybe you've cracked up--but I'll take a chance." "I think you _have_ gone crazy," said Kane. "If the Germans didn't get you, the dust would." "It's a chance, all right.... But I've been thinking about how Kahl's time machine disappeared, back there in the Black Forest. It was powered by ordinary storage cells, and when he turned it on and left it on it used them up in a hurry. But in rapid discharge polarization will stop the flow of current in a battery before the charge is all gone--and after it's rested a little, it'll give out some more. I think that's what happened. We left the switch closed, and when the batteries depolarized they gave another kick. So the time traveler went on--into the future again. Not very far, maybe. Maybe only a couple of days." "So--you think it may be there now. And if it is?" "Those gliders have a battery-powered auxiliary motor, don't they? If we land near the machine, we can get it going again and return to our own time, or a few years earlier." "I don't blame you for wanting to, but--" "It's not just that." Manning's eyes met Kane's and held them with odd intensity. He asked slowly: "Wouldn't it have been better, Kane, if the last hundred years of history had never happened?" Kane stared at him, first blankly and then with dawning understanding. "But--that's impossible," he stammered. "A paradox." "Paradoxes are an occupational disease of time travel, I guess.... I don't know just what we can do, if we do get back. We'd have to be careful or we might end up in a padded cell. We couldn't hope to prevent the development of atomic energy--that seems inevitable, with progress--but we might warn America in time to assure our beating the Germans to the punch." Kane said quietly, "It's true that our world has taken a wrong turning. What you suggest, Manning, is quite unimaginable--but it's possible, all the same--an experimental destiny, perhaps. Anyway, I'll help you get the glider ready." "Would you like to come with us?"