"Snubnose, you know that's not true. But I'll tell you something." She lowered her voice. "I told Bump-arch not to listen to you and to go ahead with his demonstration."
"But why? Even if you are only a biologist, you ought to know from your basic studies that all the best thinkers in physics for five hundred years have regarded time travel as a physical impossibility and all old traditions of time travel as myths."
"Oh little gods. Whatever we can't do any more is impossible and a myth. We just won't admit we are not as good scientists as our remote ancestors. But some of us are as good, or even better."
"By all the gods, big and little, you really do love the poor fellow. He's good, but not that good. What will you do now? Wait till he finishes another apprenticeship and hope mother changes her mind meanwhile? And then he would probably come up with another impossible demonstration. Listen," he said, whispering in her ear, "if you two are thinking of something crazy like Private Law at least let me know so I can help you. I wish father were alive," he added helplessly.
"So do I. He was the only one in our family with any sense. Thanks just the same, Snubnose," she said, and she pressed his hand.
For a little while he solemnly held her hand, then suddenly dropped it.
"I didn't think," he said. "This is worse than ever. If you really believe that Bump-arch's demonstration is going to work, you don't seem a bit worried about the fact that you won't see him for five years. And another thing," said the young man, "if his physics are right you will be getting old and he will be the same age he is now."
"In five years I'll be an old, old woman," said the girl sarcastically, "and you'll be an old, old man, and we'll sit in the square in the sun and talk about all this. But right now let's quit talking about it, because I see that little Shrill-voice ahead of us there is pricking up her ears."
But she herself said one more thing. "If you're so anxious to worry, worry about the Principles. That's the one thing that is bothering me."
Then they smiled at each other and were silent. And soon a wave of silence washed back to them as the head of the procession turned from the Street of the Scientists, lined with its wind-ruffled oaks, to the open shining Avenue of the Sun, where no person might speak without sacrilege.