"That's great, Doc. Now that you know how I do it, how about helping me to get rid of it? Although—" She hesitated. "I would like to see Launce again. I wonder if he's married?"
"Perhaps," I mused, "this phenomenon manifested itself here on Venus and not when you were on Earth because of the peculiar orbit of the Venusian—" And then I realized she was waiting for me to answer her.
"Launcelot? I—uh—think he's been carrying on an affair with a lady named—um—Guinevere."
"A two-timer, huh?"
I avoided this trend in the conversation. "Miss LaTour, apparently it depends where you do your—um—contortions. Apparently in your dressing-room you emerged onto a desert. While in my apartment, it brought you straight into an ancient age—"
"Hot asteroids, so that's it!" Her lovely face was suffused with an unmistakable eagerness. "Look, Doc, supposin' I come up here again some time, so I can see him again?"
I was properly outraged. "Hardly! Come to my apartment so that you can carry on an affair with a man dead for thousands of years? Certainly not!"
She was puzzled. "He didn't seem dead to me."
"Miss LaTour!" I was desperate. "Do you realize what this would mean to science?" I tried to explain to her, "For centuries, man has tried to find the answer to the secrets of the action of mass subject to certain movements at certain speeds, knowing that mass and energy were identical—"
"I coulda given them the answer any time they wanted to catch me at the Little Venus Burly-que," she retorted fliply. "I use plenty of energy, but, brother, I never waste a movement."