Nodding emphatically, Chuck said, "Of course. Your Utopia is as remote to me as Heaven or Hell. The important thing is not the hundreds of lives you could have led or all the possibilities that occur in your lifetime. The thing that counts is what you do with the one lifetime that's given to you. You're not happy with Estelle so you blame Estelle, thinking you'd be happier with Kathy or someone else. I felt the same way about Kathy and thought I'd be happier with Estelle. Now that you've given us both the opportunity to see ourselves ruining _both_ lives, we can see that it's probably us at fault. If you want to find the perfect Charles Mead, you have to find him inside yourself--not in some untouchable otherworld." "You should have been a minister," Charles told him. "You preach a good sermon." Chuck's boyish face reddened suddenly. "It still goes, anyway. Perhaps I've spent more time than you lately wondering why my marriage was breaking up. Maybe I have the answer now." "So you're going back to the little woman, filled with love and kisses and a heart full of hope!" "Forget it," Chuck said. "Forget I said anything at all." "Don't worry about it. No hard feelings. You're perfectly free to do or say what you like." He suddenly smiled and then began to laugh aloud. "What's funny?" Chuck asked. "Plenty," said Charles. "I just realized we both made decisions a few minutes ago. We both chose between two alternatives. You decided to go home to Kathy instead of going with me. I decided to go on with my quest instead of going back to Estelle." "What about it?" "Remember what I told you? Every time you choose one of two alternative courses of action, _another world comes into existence in which you follow the other course of action_! Don't you see what that means?" * * * * * Charles Mead said good-by to Chuck as they stood on top of Hobson's Hill. Then, when Chuck had vanished, he switched off his equipment and set about camouflaging the black boxes in the bushes. It was too late in the day to make a second attempt at crossing into another world and he decided to wait until tomorrow. When a man was seeking perfection, he told himself, it paid to be patient and cautious and not to rush headlong into things. Presently, when he was satisfied with his work of concealing the apparatus, he set off down the hill. * * * * * Chuck Mead came through the harrowing experience of crossing worlds and stood once more on the top of Hobson's Hill in his own world. He glanced all around him, nervously reassuring himself that he _was_ in his own world again. Then he took a crumpled cigarette from his shirt pocket and inhaled hungrily while he waited for his heart to stop its frantic hammering.