“He can’t help being…old,” said Greenstein.

Herries glanced at the boy. “You know,” he said, “you’re the first man in the Jurassic Period who’s had a good word for Ephraim Symonds. I appreciate that. I’d better not say whether or not I share the sentiment, but I appreciate it.”

His boots sludged ahead, growing heavier with each step. “You still haven’t answered my first question,” he resumed after a while. “I didn’t ask if you enjoyed the work, I asked how you feel about it. Its purpose. We have the answers here to questions which science has been asking—will be asking—for centuries. And yet, except for a couple of under-equipped paleobiologists, who aren’t allowed to publish their findings, we’re doing nothing but rape the earth in an age before it has even conceived us.”

Greenstein hesitated. Then, with a surprising dryness: “You’re getting too psychoanalytic for me, I’m afreud.”

Herries chuckled. The day seemed a little more alive, all at once. “Touché! Well, I’ll rephrase Joe Polansky’s question of last night. Do you think the atomic standoff in our home era—to which this operation is potentially rather important—is stable?”

Greenstein considered for a moment. “No,” he admitted. “Deterrence is a stopgap till something better can be worked out.”

“They’ve said as much since it first began. Nothing has been done. It’s improbable that anything will be. Ole Olson describes the international situation as a case of the irresistibly evil force colliding with the immovably stupid object.”

“Ole likes to use extreme language,” said Greenstein. “So tell me, what else could our side do?”

“I wish to God I had an answer.” Herries sighed. “Pardon me. We avoid politics here, as much as possible; we’re escapists in several senses of the word. But frankly, I sound out new men. I was doing it to you. Because in spite of what Washington thinks, a Q clearance isn’t all that a man needs to work here.”

“Did I pass?” asked Greenstein, a bit too lightly.

“Sure. So far. You may wish you hadn’t. The burning issue today is not whether to tolerate ‘privileged neutralism,’ or whatever the latest catchword is up there. It’s: Did I get the armament I’ve been asking for?”

The transceiving station bulked ahead. It was a long corrugated-iron shed, but dwarfed by the tanks which gleamed behind it. Every one of those was filled, Herries knew. Today they would pump their crude oil into the future. Or rather, if you wanted to be exact, their small temporal unit would establish a contact and the gigantic main projector in the twentieth century would then “suck” the liquid toward itself. And in return the compound would get—food, tools, weapons, supplies, and mail. Herries prayed there would be at least one howitzer…and no VIP’s. That Senator a few months ago!

For a moment, contemplating the naked ugliness of tanks and pumps and shed, Herries had a vision of this one place stretching through time. It would be abandoned some day, when the wells were exhausted, and rain and jungle would rapidly eat the last thin traces of man. Later would come the sea, and then it would be dry land again, a cold prairie scoured by glacial winds, and then it would grow warm and…on and on, a waste of years until the time projector was invented and the great machine stood on this spot. And afterward? Herries didn’t like to think what might be here after that.