“We were all in Oxford,” he said. “Sorry, I don’t know what I was thinking. But we can send a message through them.”

“A message?”

“Yes. We find Verity and Ned before they go back and have them tell the lab where we are and that our drops won’t open and to reset the drop so it opens in our time. There’s no reason we can’t do that, is there?”

“Yes, there is. Because we didn’t.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do. If we’d found them and told them what had happened, Oxford would have known what was going to happen when it sent us through. We’d have known what was going to happen.”

He considered that. “Maybe they couldn’t tell us because it would create a paradox. If we knew we were going to be trapped, we wouldn’t come, and we had to come because we had come.”

“But Mr. Dunworthy wouldn’t have let us come. You know how overprotective he is. He’d never have let you come knowing they couldn’t get you out after you were injured.” And he wouldn’t have let me come knowing I had a deadline.

But she couldn’t say that. “This is a man who was worried I might get my foot caught in a barrage-balloon rope,” she said instead. “He’d never have let us get trapped in the Blitz. Or let you go to Coventry to get us out. The entire city burned. It would be suicide for you to go there. You’re here to observe heroes, not die trying to be one.”

“Then we need to come up with somebody besides Ned and Verity. Who else was here? Didn’t Dunworthy go to the Blitz at some point?”

“He went several times, but—”

“When?”

“I don’t know. I know he observed the big raids on May tenth and eleventh, because he talked about watching the fire in the House of Commons, and that happened on the tenth.”

“And you said before that the ninth and tenth were the worst raids of the Blitz?”

“Yes. Why?”

“Nothing. We need something sooner. When else was he here?”

“I don’t know. I remember him telling a story about attempting to get to his drop, and the gates at Charing Cross Railway Station being shut and him not being able to get in.”

“But you don’t know the date?”

“No.”

“But if he told you he was trying to get to his drop, that means it must have been somewhere in Charing Cross.”

“No, it doesn’t. He might have been taking the train to his drop. He could have been going anywhere.”

“But it’s a place to start, and we can’t afford to leave any stone unturned. I want you to go check it while I’m at Beachy Head. Unless one of these names I got at Biggin Hill turns out to be Phipps’s airfield. Speaking of which, what’s keeping Eileen?” he asked, glancing at his watch. “I need to read them to her. I managed to wangle a ride to Beachy Head, and the guy’s leaving at two, but I don’t want to waste my time there if Gerald’s at one of these other airfields.”