Dorothy laughed nervously. "Don't leave it there. I think I'm really insane. The things that are happening can't happen. That's a good test of insanity isn't it?"
"Don't be silly," Lin said. "When a thing happens it can happen, no matter how impossible it may seem. Let me tell you what happened to cause all this."
"Please do," she said. "I'm sure it can't be any more impossible than my bones healing up and a bad cut on my cheek vanishing overnight without even leaving a scar."
"You think not?" Lin said grimly. "Then listen to this. You remember when we were about to hit? A fraction of a second before the crash? At that precise instant when you were staring at me reproachfully I suddenly found myself in—I don't know where it was, but I know it wasn't on this earth. I followed a path up to a high tablerock overlooking an immense valley, and there on that high perch was a statue."
"A statue?" Dorothy echoed.
"Don't interrupt," Lin said. "You can't possibly understand. I don't myself. So just listen to what happened and what I think it means. It was a moving statue. Like a robot, in a way. But it was more than that. I'm sure of that now. It was, in some way, a god. The god of Fate. It was typing on a typewriter of some sort that had an automatic feed to supply a new sheet of paper every time the old one was yanked out. And beside the typewriter was a wastebasket sort of thing with a flame burning at the bottom. This statue would fill a sheet of paper with typing and then yank it out and drop it in the basket, and it would instantly burn. And I know now that the very process of burning that sheet of paper made reality out of whatever was written on it. And to cut a long story short, I yanked a sheet of paper out of the statue's fingers just as it was about to be dropped into the flame."
"But—" Dorothy said weakly.
"That piece of paper," Lin said firmly, "was our fate. Yours and mine. On it was written that we were to die in that accident. And until that paper is returned to that place and burned in the flame, we cannot die!"
She was looking at him queerly now.