In this strange world to which he had been hurled, did they—by the Great Harry—use atomic power to light their cigarettes?
Bronson's mind, of course, was overwhelmed by the suddenness of events and its natural inability to accept such a vast conglomeration of new concepts at the same time. It merely watched, saw, cataloged. Anything outrageous would be given the same consideration as something quite normal in Bronson's nervous state of complete wonder. His mental state bordered on shock.
Noiselessly the traffic moved, noiselessly and without odor. Dress and appointment were brilliant and entirely new. The overhead wires of Ed Bronson's world were gone, as were the poles that bore them. Nor were there street lights. Streetcars plied their routes with a minimum of thundering racket but there was neither trolley above nor slot in the street below.
Bronson paused before a large toy shop and watched a man manipulating an electric train. The miniature train had all the maneuverability of a real train because of the multiplicity of controls under the fingers of the man in the window. Beside the train was a large box containing cubic bits of metal and non-metal.
The explanation on the box said that the contents would build a miniature fission-reacting pile that worked but which employed Kenium metal instead of uranium since the use of the latter was dangerous, requiring ton upon ton of fissionable material as well as a moderator.
That was the clincher.
Bronson's mind cleared once the facts were driven home. He was not on Earth Two. He was most certainly not on Earth One.
But Ed Bronson's mind leaped to the foregone conclusion with simple reasoning. Earth One, Earth Two—and Earth Three, where the third possibility had taken place at Alamogordo, on July sixteenth, 1945. This was where the bomb had fizzled—and where, because of that, all forms of atomic research went on without regulation.
Not one world, not two worlds, but three!
Well, there was a perfect way to check this. Bronson knew where the library was, had used it often. It might still be there, for the one in Earth One had been erected in—ah—he did not recall the date but it was something like MDCCCLXXXVI.