Chuck's boyish face reddened suddenly. "It still goes, anyway. Perhaps I've spent more time than you lately wondering why my marriage was breaking up. Maybe I have the answer now."
"So you're going back to the little woman, filled with love and kisses and a heart full of hope!"
"Forget it," Chuck said. "Forget I said anything at all."
"Don't worry about it. No hard feelings. You're perfectly free to do or say what you like." He suddenly smiled and then began to laugh aloud.
"What's funny?" Chuck asked.
"Plenty," said Charles. "I just realized we both made decisions a few minutes ago. We both chose between two alternatives. You decided to go home to Kathy instead of going with me. I decided to go on with my quest instead of going back to Estelle."
"What about it?"
"Remember what I told you? Every time you choose one of two alternative courses of action, another world comes into existence in which you follow the other course of action! Don't you see what that means?"
Charles Mead said good-by to Chuck as they stood on top of Hobson's Hill. Then, when Chuck had vanished, he switched off his equipment and set about camouflaging the black boxes in the bushes. It was too late in the day to make a second attempt at crossing into another world and he decided to wait until tomorrow. When a man was seeking perfection, he told himself, it paid to be patient and cautious and not to rush headlong into things.