He looked at them dumbly, breathing as well as he could, his palms flat against the wall. There were stocky old women, round-shouldered men, younger men with pinched faces, and young girls with an incalculable wisdom in their eyes. And there was a bird-like older woman, coming quickly along the sidewalk, glancing at him curiously, then hurrying by, skirting around the crowd.... There was one possibility of his escape to this world that Professor Kempfer had not allowed himself to consider. He pushed himself away from the wall, scattering the crowd as though by physical force, and lurched toward the passing woman. "_Marthe!_" She whirled, her purse flying to the ground. Her hand went to her mouth. She whispered, through her knuckles: "Jochim ... Jochim...." He clutched her, and they supported each other. "Jochim ... the American bombers killed you in Hamburg ... yesterday I sent money to put flowers on your grave ... Jochim...." "It was a mistake. It was all a mistake. Marthe ... we have found each other...." * * * * * From a distance, she had not changed very much at all. Watching her move about the room as he lay, warm and clean, terribly tired, in her bed, he thought to himself that she had not aged half as much as he. But when she bent over him with the cup of hot soup in her hand, he saw the sharp lines in her face, around her eyes and mouth, and when she spoke he heard the dry note in her voice. How many years? he thought. How many years of loneliness and grief? _When_ had the Americans bombed Hamburg? How? What kind of aircraft could bomb Germany from bases in the Western Hemisphere? They had so much to explain to each other. As she worked to make him comfortable, the questions flew between them. "It was something I stumbled on. The theory of probability worlds--of alternate universes. Assuming that the characteristic would be a difference in atomic vibration--minute, you understand; almost infinitely minute--assuming that somewhere in the gross universe every possible variation of every event _must_ take place--then if some means could be found to alter the vibratory rate within a field, then any object in that field would automatically become part of the universe corresponding to that vibratory rate.... "Marthe, I can bore you later. Tell me about _Hamburg_. Tell me how we lost the war. Tell me about Berlin."