"You won't find it or the secret of the machine," I answered miserably. "I told you they said the secret would be lost. This is how. Now I'll never be able to visit the future again. I'll never see them or May Roberts. They'll straighten her out, get rid of her hate and vindictiveness, and it won't do me a damned bit of good because the machine is gone and she's generations ahead of me." He turned to me puzzledly. "You're not afraid to have us dig for her body, Mark?" "Tear the place apart if you want." "We'll have to," he said. "I'm calling Homicide." "Call in the Marines. Call in anybody you like." "You'll have to stay in my custody until we're through." I shrugged. "As long as you leave me alone while you're doing your digging, I don't give a hang if I'm under arrest for suspicion of murder. I've got to do some straightening out. I wish the people in the future could take on the job--they could do it faster and better than I can--but some nice, peaceful quiet would help." * * * * * He didn't touch me or say a word to me as we waited for the squad to arrive. I sat in the chair and shut out first him and then the men with their sounding hammers and crowbars and all the rest. She'd been ruthless and callous, and she'd murdered old people with no more pity than a wolf among a herd of helpless sheep. But Blundell and Carr had told me that she was as much a victim as the oldsters who'd died of starvation with the riches she'd given them still untouched, on deposit in the banks or stuffed into hiding places or pinned to their shabby clothes. She needed treatment for the illness her father had inflicted on her. But even he, they'd said, had been suffering from a severe emotional disturbance and proper care could have made a great and honored scientist out of him. They'd told me the truth and made me hate her, and they'd told me their viewpoint and made that hatred impossible. I was here, in the present, without her. The machine was gone. Yearning over something I couldn't change would destroy me. I had no right to destroy myself. Nobody did, they'd told me, and nobody who reconciles himself to the fact that some situations just are impossible to work out ever could. I'd realized that when the squad packed up and left and Lou Pape came over to where I was sitting. "You knew we wouldn't find her," he said. "That's what I kept telling you." "Where is she?" "In Port Said, exotic hellhole of the world, where she's dancing in veils for the depraved--" "Cut out the kidding! Where is she?" "What's the difference, Lou? She's not here, is she?" "That doesn't mean she can't be somewhere else, dead." "She's not dead. You don't have to believe me about anything else, just that." He hauled me out of the chair and stared hard at my face. "You aren't lying," he said. "I know you well enough to know you're not." "All right, then."