"Yup," he said with a grin, waving a bit of temperon, held in his temperon-clad glove.
Again the explosion boiled skyward, and the flame and the blast seared the eyeballs and battered at the eardrums. Then it was over, and they were gone again.
"And now?" asked Tansie.
"Now we effect the coalescence of two worlds of probability," he told her.
Les Ackerman drove the "time-space" vehicle at a head-long pace into the "future". He nodded with satisfaction when he noted that the destruction of Calvin Blaine's world was not to be. And though he had never seen the opposing success in probability—the destruction of the world of free research—he knew about when its probable destruction took place. He watched, and was gratified to know that his acts had averted the successful culmination of either side's plans for conquest.
On through "time-space" went Ackerman and Tansie Lee, across the years until it was apparent that the twin worlds of dual probability were, indeed, coming closer together. For as Les explained it, when the world of throttled research opened up, and the world of too-free research closed down, they began to become more and more like one another. So they were coming closer together not only in attitude, but in "space" as well.
Slowly and ponderously they came together. It took years from the initial tangential contact to where their surfaces were almost in perfect register.
And Ackerman sought through the doubled-world again and found running the "time-space" vehicle difficult because the congruency of the two worlds made through-passage impossible. But across the world he went, even so.