"There isn't much more to tell," he said. "I happened to be chosen to execute the plan. It was a great honor, but not an easy one to accept. Remember, I was about to be married. If anything went wrong it meant that we'd be separated forever.... We couldn't even die together. But I accepted. I had one day with her--one day; and then I set up the fields and waited for the attack. Just one micro-second before it would have reached us, I released the energy that was channeled through me--and the next instant, I was falling into the ocean out there." He turned a tormented face to Maxwell. "It was the worst possible luck!" he said. "You can see for yourself, there was less chance of my landing anywhere near a planet than of--finding one given pebble on all the beaches of this planet." Maxwell felt as if he had missed the point of a joke. "I still don't understand," he said. "You say _you_ landed--but what about the universe? Where did it--?" The Beachcomber made an impatient gesture. "You don't think we could bring it back into a space it already occupied, do you? It was in stasis, all but a fraction out of this time-line. Just a miniature left, so that it could be controlled. A model of the universe, so big." He spread his thumb and forefinger an inch apart--"Just a pebble." Maxwell's jaw dropped open. He stared at the giant. "You don't mean--you--" "Oh, yes," said the Beachcomber, "I landed about twenty miles out from shore--five years ago." He stared out across the sea, while his fingers groped nervously among the pebbles at his feet. "And when I hit the water," he said, "I dropped it."