He walked that way and found himself standing on the lip of a sharply eroded gully. Someone or something had kicked the bank down recently, there was a great pile of new earth in the bottom of the gully. He kicked around in the leaves and mold at his feet. There was a dark crusted substance on the leaves. The door of the cottage slammed. He slipped the empty cartridges in his pocket and stepped hastily back to the path, listening. Were those footsteps hurrying toward him? He began to stroll slowly back toward the cottage. Around the first turn he met Moirta. The girl now, he thought, where does she really fit? Possible ally? Enemy? Or neutral? She came up to him a little breathless and took his hand. "Were you going back to the house?" she asked. "Not specially. Just walking around." "Let's not go back just yet, then," she said. They turned and walked slowly back up the path, hand-in-hand. After a while they came out on an open shoulder from which they could look down, catching glimpses of the path they had climbed here and there, and at its end the cottage. They sat down close together, leaning back against a large tree, not speaking at first. After a while the girl sighed. "I shall feel very sorry when we leave this time," she said. "Me, too." He kissed her. After a moment she pulled away and looked at him searchingly. "There is something bothering you?" she asked. She flushed a little. "That was not very ... ardent." Dolan looked away, feeling foolish. "I guess not," he said. She took his hand and squeezed it. "Poor George. It must be very confusing for you. Can I help?" Perhaps she could, he thought. "Look here," he said cautiously, "what happens when I get this thing fixed, if I do? You folks go on back to your own time, I suppose, but what happens to me?" She hesitated. "I don't think I understand," she said. "Mr. Brown pays you for your work, I suppose, and you stay here, that's all. Should there be more?" Dolan smiled grimly. "Like the first technician, huh?" "What do you mean?" "I mean, Brown pays me, and I stay here, like the first technician." He took his hand out of his pocket with the two empty cartridge cases in it and rolled them gently back and forth in his open palm. Moirta stared at them fascinated. "Oh," she said faintly, "I didn't know. I thought ... I didn't know...." "Well, you know now," he said. "And your job is to keep me cheered up and plugging away at the job until payday comes. Right?" "No," she said. "Oh, no. Please, George. They wouldn't do that ... that is, I don't think ... it's so unnecessary." "Unnecessary?" "Yes. You see--I shouldn't tell you this, but I can't have you thinking ... you see, after we are gone, you will forget all this. Why should they kill you when there's no reason?" She did not seem very strongly convinced herself, Dolan thought. "How do you mean, I'll forget it? You mean they'll hypnotize me, something like that?"