McKay tried to shove Blake bodily off the platform. But Blake twisted free. If he did not go through with it now, guards would come and hustle him out of the dome.
"Look, here in my bag," he begged. "An old-time relic, one I stumbled on looking for paydirt under deep ice. I knew it was a real old timer when I saw it. Maybe it's the biggest strike I ever made."
McKay took his hand away from Blake's collar. "Another relic of Earth, you mean? They're so scarce ... let me see it. Hurry, man."
At last Blake fumbled it out of his bag and held it up.
Two cross-pieces of rusted metal, welded at right angles to a common bar, freakishly preserved by some oily patina, and with lettering still legible in white. From under glacial ice, it must be old as old.
FIFTH AVENUE read one cross-piece, to Professor McKay's trained eye. The other, 42nd STREET.
He stared.
Blake grinned suddenly. "And you know where I found it? Not here on Procyon V but over on Sol III. You know, about eleven light-years galactic east."
Blake grinned more, shrewdly measuring what he saw in McKay's face, and let go his bombshell, whose fuse had been burning uncertainly inside him all this time. "So this was the wrong Earth all the time, eh? Guess that really rocks you. It'll rock the galaxy too. I'll be famous—"
"Don't be a fool," hissed the professor, signalling guards. "You're mistaken ... that is—but I'll explain later."