She paused. Already, she saw ahead, saw her sequence of actions, for Jack had already sketched them into the future.
She would go onto the lawn, call his name, smile, and walk over to him when he smiled back. Then they would stroll together to the seat and sit down, one at each end.
The knowledge drained all spontaneity from her. She might have been working a treadmill, for what she was about to do had already been done as far as Jack was concerned, yddi his head start in time. Then if she did not go, if she mutinied, turned back to the discussion of the day’s chores with her mother-in-law… That left Jack mouthing like a fool on the lawn, indulging in a fantasy there was no penetrating. Let him do that, let Stackpole see; then they could drop this theory about Jack’s being ahead of time and would have to treat him for a more normal sort of hallucinatory insanity. He would be safe in Clem’s hands.
But Jack’s actions proved that she would go out there. It was insane for her not to go out there. Insane? To disobey a law of the universe was impossible, not insane. Jack was not disobeyinghe had simply tumbled over a law that nobody knew was there before the first expedition to Mars; certainly they had discovered something more momentous than anyone had expected, and more unforeseen. And she had lostNo, she hadn’t lost yet! She ran out onto the lawn, calling to him, letting the action quell the confusion in her mind.
And in the repeated event there was concealed a little freshness, for she remembered how his smile, glimpsed through the window, had held a special warmth, as if he sought to reassure her. What had he said? That was lost. She walked over to the seat and sat beside him.
He had been saving a remark for the statutory and unvary-ing time lapse.
“Don’t worry, Janet,” he said. “It could be worse.”
“How?” she asked, but he was already answering: “We could be a day apart. 3.3077 minutes at least allows us a measure of communication.”
“It’s wonderful how philosophical you are about it,” she said. She was alarmed at the sarcasm in her tone.
“Shall we have a talk together now?”
“Jack, I’ve been wanting to have a private talk with you for some time.”
“I?”
The tall beeches that sheltered the garden on the north side were so still that she thought, “They will look exactly the same for him as for me.”
He delivered a bulletin, looking at his watch. His wrists were thin. He appeared frailer than he had done when they left hospital. “I am aware, my darling, how painful this mus< be for you. We are both isolated from the other by this amazing shift of temporal function, but at least I have the consolation of experiencing the new phenomenon, whereas you” “I?” Talking of interstellar distances “I was going to say that you are stuck with the same old world all of mankind has always known, but I suppose you don’t see it that way.” Evidently a remark of hers had caught up with him, for he added inconsequentially, “I’ve wanted a private talk with you.” Janet bit off something she was going to say, for he raised a finger irritably and said, “Please time your statements, so that we do not talk at cross purposes. Confine what you have to say to essentials. Really, darling. I’m surprised you don’t do as Clem suggests, and make notes of what is said at what time.” “That1 just wantedwe can’t act as if we were a board meeting. I want to know your feelings, how you are thinking, so that I can help you, so that eventually you will be able to live a normal life again.” He was timing it so that he answered almost at once, “I am not suffering from any mental illness, and I have completely recovered my physical health after the crash. There is no reason to foresee that my perceptions will ever lapse back into phase with yours. They have remained an unfluctuating 3.3077 minutes ahead of terrestrial time ever since our ship left the surface of Mars “