Laurie Blaine shook her head. "Don't be a pessimist," she said. Then
she turned to Ackerman with pleading eyes. "Please be careful," she
said. "After all, you haven't met Tansie Lee yet; and I am your woman,
Lester."
Joan Laplane, as attractively dark as Laurie Blaine was beautifully
blonde, stood beside the other girl. There was no sign of scorn, nor
even embarrassment between them, and she added her bit to the moment:
"You'd not destroy a world for the love of a woman, Lester. That's
commendable. I've not mentioned how I felt because of reasons known
to both of us. But," she said to Ackerman, but facing both Tansie Lee
and Laurie Blaine, "until Lester places a wedding ring on some girl's
finger, I'm considering myself as active competition."
Tansie laughed confidently. "Dream on," she said, "but remember, I'm
the one he'll marry."
"That's only a good probability," said Laurie. "But no certain thing."
"Shut up," said Calvin Blaine. "This is no time to get his nerves on
edge. Ackerman, don't do it. Let these worlds diverge again, and go on
whole."
Ackerman shook his head. "Can't be done," he said.
Then the cyclotron started beside him, and a stream of bluish haze
surrounded the target and the sample. Ackerman timed it, and then
clamped his hand down hard on the bit of temperon in the machine....
* * * * *
There was a solid wave of sound, and a torrent of sheer energy that
stormed at them. The earth shook in a series of abrupt shocks, and from
somewhere there converged a film of shimmering something that marked
the boundary of a field of energetic force. It came closing in, and
disappeared within the bit of temperon. That much Ackerman saw before
he blacked-out completely, shaken with pain.
But this was no atomic explosion. Instead of sending the laboratory
skyward in a billowing cloud of energetic particles, the force of the
blast was confined to the space within the cyclotron room.
And then the energy that was compressed by the spherical shell was
driven into the "past"--into the era of "fissioned-time". That period
needed that cosmic energy in order to function at all.
The cycle was ended, the story finished. Ackerman had started the
fission, and had effected its end.
The cyclotron workers, all unknowing, had coalesced; had become a
single probability again. They entered, and found Ackerman lying there.
It never was explained to their satisfaction. Nor could they understand
why and how he managed to be in the cyclotron chamber during a
bombardment without getting badly irradiated. Ackerman accepted their
help and their solace for his aches, but said no more.
He started to leave the laboratory, and he was very thoughtful. He
alone of them all was here. The Fords, Laplanes, and Blaines were all
gone inexplicably--possibly back into the realm of unreal "time". That
meant that the Blaines went back to their laboratory to be--
Not necessarily. Forewarned is forearmed and Ackerman had no proof
that they were in the explosion. They could not stop the blow-up,
but they could, and probably would, leave for safety so soon as the
time-conservation-energy factor returned them.
But even so, Ackerman was sorry. Sorry, and yet glad. For his possible
woman-trouble had gone along with the trouble with the time-split.