"You go back into the past. Back past Egypt and Atlantis. That's recent," he said with scorn. "And on back, and on back, and all of a sudden it's future."
"That isn't the way I did it." Star tossed her head contrarily. "I reasoned the future. I reasoned what would come next, and I went there, and then I reasoned again. And on and on. I can, too, reason."
"It's the same future," Robert told us dogmatically. "It has to be, because that's all that ever happened." He turned to Star. "The reason you never could find any Garden of Eden is because there wasn't any Adam and Eve." Then to me, "And man didn't come from the apes, either. Man started himself."
Jim almost strangled as he leaned forward, his face red and his eyes bulging.
"How?" he choked out.
Robert sent his gaze into the far distance.
"Well," he said, "a long time from now—you know what I mean, as a Stupid would think of Time-From-Now—men got into a mess. Quite a mess—
"There were some people in that time who figured out the same kind of traveling Star and I do. So when the world was about to blow up and form a new star, a lot of them teleported themselves back to when the Earth was young, and they started over again."
Jim just stared at Robert, unable to speak.
"I don't get it," I said.