"You must throw off the illusion of time! To the Niss only a few days have passed. But here—where I spend only minutes from each night in the engagement, as the patterns coincide—it has been long years."
"Why don't you bring in help? Why do you have to work alone?"
"The power required to hold the Portal in focus against the stresses of space-time is tremendous. Even then the cycle is brief. It gave us first a fleeting contact of a few seconds; it was through that that we detected the Niss activity here. The next contact was four days later, and lasted twenty-four minutes—long enough to set up the Repellor. I fought them then ... and saw that victory was in doubt. Still, it was a fair world; I could not let it go without a struggle. A third identity was possible twenty days later; I elected to remain here until then, attempt to repel the Niss, then return home at the next contact. The Portal closed, and my crew and I settled down to the engagement.
"The next night showed us in full the hopelessness of the contest. By day, we emerged from where the Niss had focussed the Aperture, and explored this land, and came to love its small warm sun, its strange blue sky, its mantle of green ... and the small humble grass-blades. To us of an ancient world it seemed a paradise of young life. And then I ventured into the town ... and there I saw such a maiden as the Cosmos has forgotten, such was her beauty....
"The twenty days passed. The Niss held their foothold—yet I had kept them back.
"The Portal reopened. I ordered my crew back. It closed. Since then, have I been alone...."
"Bram," Miss Carroll said. "Bram ... you stayed when you could have escaped—and I—"
"I would that I could give you back those lost years, Linda Carroll," Bram said. "I would that we could have been together under a brighter sun than this."
"You gave up your world, to give this one a little time," Tremaine said. "And we rewarded you with a shotgun blast."