"They are, but into yesterday, and new ones from tomorrow are continually coming in to take their place. It's like Fred Hoyle's theory of the continuous birth of hydrogen." "You're making me feel like my poor husband," Katherine said. "I understand the necessity of hyper-time to describe the motion of consciousness along time, but what's this got to do with the atoms?" * * * * * There was a knock at the door and Phil stood up, just as Doctor Russell Chalmers Farley came in without waiting for an answer. Phil and Katherine felt faintly embarrassed--there was scarcely any need to knock on the door to the physics lab; it somehow suggested that the door should be kept open when entertaining callers. Doctor Farley was a handsome man of thirty-eight with a blond mustache that gave him the look of a Kipling colonial officer. "Ah, there you are, Katherine," he said cheerfully. "Hello, Kaufman. How's the Research Magnificent?" "It's beginning to show signs of life," Phil said. "I think I can detect a sort of fetal pulse." Doctor Farley blinked his pale eyelashes and smiled. He sat down at the end of the couch where Phil had been sitting and looked up at him. Part of his charm was that, when he talked to a man shorter than himself, he got below him and looked up. At his evening "sherries" at home, he had a way of deferring to the newest and least important visitor, who was thus raised to the temporary rank of philosopher, while Russell Chalmers Farley was reduced to the position of listener. The role of humble servitor of the Truth was his most useful one--it had worked rather well with Katherine, and he had an adroit and imaginative way of expressing his ideas, which usually disguised the fact that they were generally borrowed. They had met at a street corner in New York City where she was waiting for the sound of traffic to abate so that she could cross. He was on the opposite side, and with his extraordinary eyesight and intuition instantly recognized that the beautiful, odd-looking girl facing him on the other side of the street was blind. He was at her side before the light--and the sound of traffic--had changed, and said, "I hope you don't think I'm being forward, but let me offer you my arm. Taxis have a way of making illegal turns sometimes...." "You are very kind," she replied, pulling him back from the path of a taxi making an illegal turn. "You have a very nice voice," she said as they got to the other side. "I guess being blind makes one ... forward!" She laughed and started to walk on. "No, please wait!" he said, and caught up with her. "I wish you hadn't said that. It can be taken in another way: that I am forward because you are blind. I should like to say that _you_ have a very nice voice." She stopped and laughed again. "That's one of the nicest things I've ever had said to me!" "Do let's ... I mean would you let me...." He floundered, and laughed, too. "Can't we have a drink together? Now?"