Then the other Hank leaned forward and yelled to our Hank. "Got here soon as I could, Cleaver. I had to get the machine finished proper so they wouldn't be no mess this time!"
And our Hank nodded. "Figgered as much," he replied. "Kinda thought you'd come atter us, but I didn't know whether you'd find us or not. How'd you trail us?"
Hank Number 2 looked sort of modest. He said, "Why, I had to fix up a new type o' gadget. 'Peared like since me an' you was almost identical the same person, so to speak, we ought to have sort of psychic bonds. You know, like this E.S.P. they talk about? So I whipped up a psychic trailer an'—an' it seemed to work right well."
If I had needed any further proof that these Hanks were, fundamentally, the same person, I had it now. Both of them were 'scientific pioneers'. They had a native, inborn ability to create, seemingly at a moment's notice, gadgets of such scientific scope that no other man would have believed them possible. But neither of them could ever give a plain, coherent reason as to how their invention worked or why they had dared think it would work in the first place!
My Hank accepted the statement as if it were quite commonplace.
"Nice goin'!" he said calmly. "You gonna lead us back where we belong?"
The other Hank shook his head.
"It's a leetle more complicated than that," he demurred. "I been figgerin' it out, an' it works oney up to a certain point. You see, I c'n oney take you back to where I was where I fust seen you. If I take you back to your place, I don't exist. But you do exist in my place, because you was in it once, see? So—"
"Mmm-hmm!" nodded our Hank gravely. And he glanced at Helen and me speculatively. "Did you tell them the rest of it?"
"Why, no, I didn't. I figgered whut they don't know won't disturb 'em. O' course there'll be a leetle bit o' confusion at first, but—"