Our trick has succeeded, Dotty dreamt. The other gods have passed our hiding place a dozen times without noticing. They search the Universe for us many times in vain. They finally decide that we have found a door going out of the Universe. Yet they fear us all the more. They think of us as devils who will some day return through the door to destroy them. So they watch everywhere. We lie quietly smiling in our camouflaged boats, yet hardly daring to move or think, for fear that the faintest echoes of our doings will give them a clue. Hundreds of millions of years pass by. They seem to us no more than drugged hours in a prison.
Theodor rubbed his eyes and pushed his chair back from the table. "We need a break."
Frieda agreed wearily. "We've gone through everything."
"Good idea," Edmund said briskly. "I think we've hit on several crucial points along the way and half disentangled them from the great mass of inconsequential material. I'll finish up that part of the job right now and present my case when we're all a bit fresher. Say half an hour?"
Theodor nodded heavily, pushing up from his chair and hitching his cloak over a shoulder.
"I'm going out for a drink," he informed them.
After several hesitant seconds, Rosalind quietly followed him. Frieda stretched out on a couch and closed her eyes. Edmund scanned microfilms tirelessly, every now and then setting one aside.
Celeste watched him for a minute, then sprang up and started toward the room where Dotty was asleep. But midway she stopped.