"Will you marry me?" I asked prayerfully and Munich got into the act
with "_Willst Du nicht mich heiraten?_"
"Yes," she said so softly I barely heard.
I swung a frantic glance over my shoulder. His Honor the Mayor of
Racine and sub-alterns were behind me.
"Elaine?" I yelled.
"Whoops!" she said; then, "I'm back at Hanford."
"Sosnowski," I said sharply. "You heard my order. You will not activate
the AGS again!"
"I haven't been touching it for the last ten minutes," Sosnowski said.
"There's something wrong with the activator; it's turning itself off
and on at random."
"Then get a technician and damp the pile!"
"I'll do what I can," he said. "Anyway, Elaine's gone!"
Siberia was back in the act. Then Gibraltar. Then Munich.
"Elaine," I cried. "You're coming home--_now_!"
I cut the AGS; then reactivated it and she was here, oh! so wondrously
close to me, and the mayor handed her a pen and she signed the marriage
license and--
Sosnowski said he was sorry.
The chaplain arrived. I refuse to mention his name or faith; he asks
for anonymity. Suffice it to say that he is a man of God and a man of
science.
He looked at me questioningly and I nodded. The service began.
Elaine heard parts of the ceremony at sixteen different locations
in the world. And my errant colleagues (bless them!), despite their
playful reactivations of their AGS units, maintained a decent silence
when the chaplain made the fateful invitation to that someone to speak
now or forever hold his peace.
At last the chaplain said, "Do you, Robert, take this woman--there at
Hanford on the monitor--to be thy lawful wedded wife?"
And I said, "I do," and hoped I didn't sound facetious as I added,
"except that she's at Gibraltar now!"
"Do you, Elaine, take this man Robert--"
And Al Benson cut in from Phoenix saying, "The computer says to degauss
her, Bob!"
And I snapped on WAGS, full power--and Elaine was here, here beside me
saying, "I do, I do, I do!"