"So we got to do the next best thing. That is, we got to merge with ourselves an' become the same person again except that we will never have made this trip? Get it?"
"If I do," I howled wildly, "I'm crazy—and if I don't, I'm crazy anyhow. I lose whether I win or lose. But if you think I'm going to become part of that silly-looking ape over there—"
The other me was howling with equal frenzy. "Silly-looking ape yourself! Let me out of here, Hank! I'm not going to let him be part of me—"
And the two Helens were squawking, too. Neither of them entirely fancied the other. Now both began yammering at the same time. The two Hanks looked at each other. And our Hank said, "Now?"
"Now!" said the other Hank.
I saw the two machines drifting together. I cried aloud. I felt the hulls contact ... then there came a moment of brilliant dizziness ... a jolting sense of concussion ... and a prickling sense of motion....
Helen eyed with disdain the wavering, nebulous egg-shaped machine standing before us. "And what," she demanded, "do you call this?"
"It—it's a time-machine, honey," said Hank. Then a strange look dawned in his eyes. "Hey!" he said. "Hey—it worked!"
I couldn't answer him. Because momentarily I was a riot of mental confusion. My thoughts were so wild, and so chaotic, that they simply didn't make sense. Here I was, Jim Blakeson, standing in a room before Hank Cleaver's brand-new time-machine. Helen had just entered the room a moment ago. And yet—and yet my memory told me that hours had passed in this room, and that Helen and Hank and I had not only talked about the machine, but had stepped into it, had gone places in it, seen incredible things....