“I think that’s unfair. Doctor. You certainly don’t expect a man to believe in things that run contrary to his good sense without offering him any reasonable explanation.”
Frost snorted. “I certainly do-if he has observed it with his own eyes and ears, or gets it from a source known to be credible. A fact doesn’t have to be understood to be true. Sure, any reasonable mind wants explanations, but it’s silly to reject facts that don’t fit your philosophy.
“Now these events tonight, which you are so anxious to rationalize in orthodox terms, famish a clue to a lot of things that scientists have been rejecting because they couldn’t explain them. Have you ever heard the tale of the man who walked around the horses? No? Around 1810 Benjamin Bathurst, British Ambassador to Austria, arrived in his carriage at an inn in Perleberg, Germany. He had his valet and secretary with him. They drove into the lighted courtyard of the inn.
Bathurst got out, and, in the presence of bystanders and his two attaches, walked around the horses. He hasn’t been seen since.”
“What happened?”
“Nobody knows. I think he was preoccupied and inadvertently wandered into another time track. But there are literally hundreds of similar cases, way too many to laugh off. The two-time-dimensions theory accounts for most of them. But I suspect that there are other as-yet-undreamed-of natural principles operating in some of the rejected cases.”
Howard stopped pacing and pulled at his lower hp. “Maybe so. Doctor. I’m too upset to think. Look here-it’s one o’clock. Oughtn’t she to be back by now?”
“Fm afraid so. Son.”
“You mean she’s not coming back.”
“It doesn’t look like it.”
The younger man gave a broken cry and collapsed on the sofa. His shoulders heaved. Presently he calmed down a little. Frost saw his lips move and suspected that he was praying. Then he showed a drawn face to the Doctor.
“Isn’t there anything we can do?”
“That’s hard to answer, Howard. We don’t know where she’s gone; all we do know is that she left here under hypnotic suggestion to cross over into some other loop of the past or future.”
“Can’t we go after her the same way and trace her?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t had any experience with such a job.”
“I’ve got to do something or I’ll go nuts.”
“Take it easy, son. Let me think about it.” He smoked in silence while Howard controlled an impulse to scream, break furniture, anything!
Frost knocked the ash off his cigar and placed it carefully in a tray. “I can think of one chance. It’s a remote one.”
“Anything!”
“I’m going to listen to the record that Estelle heard, and cross over. I’ll do it wide awake, while concentrating on her. Perhaps I can establish some rapport, some extra-sensory connection, that will serve to guide me to her.” Frost went immediately about his preparations as he spoke. “I want you to remain in the room when I go so that you will really believe that it can be done.”
In silence Howard watched him don the headphones. The Professor stood still, eyes closed. He remained so for nearly fifteen minutes, then took a short step forward. The ear-phones clattered to the floor. He was gone.
Frost felt himself drift off into the timeless limbo which precedes transition.
He noticed again that it was exactly like the floating sensation that ushers in normal sleep, and wondered idly, for the hundredth time, whether or not the dreams of sleep were real experiences. He was inclined to think they were. Then he recalled his mission with a guilty start, and concentrated hard on Estelle.
He was walking along a road, white in the sunshine. Before him were the gates of a city. The gateman stared at his odd attire, but let him pass. He hurried down the broad tree-lined avenue which (he knew) led from the space port to Capitol Hill. He turned aside into the Way of me Gods and continued until he reached the Grove of the Priestesses. There he found the house which he sought, its marble walls pink in the sun, its fountains tinkling in the morning breeze. He turned in.