She thrust a packet into his hands, "We've got to go," she said. "There
isn't much time. They were late."
"Just relax a minute." He ripped open the packet. A roll of photostats
fell out into his lap, still damp. He threw them on the dressing table,
and snapped on a dirty yellow light.
"You can't read them now--"
He didn't even hear her. He stared at the names on the papers before
him. Names he had never seen before. Not all new, though. Bob Whittaker
had kept his old name. But the others--changed, just as their faces
had changed. He read the entries under Whittaker's name. Job after job
on Earth, months of drifting, observing, then drifting again. A run on
the Mars-Earth line as a crew-hand. Imagine Whittaker a crew-hand on a
space liner! Work in the mines on Mars. Back to Earth, and married to a
girl he had never heard of.
And then, at the end of the page, a number, and a letter, and a date,
and the words: CHECKED THROUGH.
There was nothing else.
Griffin stared at the paper, his heart pounding in his throat. The next
was shorter. But at the bottom, the same story. Joe Meyer's picture,
with a name Griffin had never seen before--