"I didn't have time for anything involved," Phil apologized. "I rather expected him to be after me before I could go far."
"What did you write?"
"Just one word," Phil said, "Cancelled."
"Cancelled?" Lin and Dorothy echoed dumbly, then, comprehendingly, "Cancelled!"
"Sure," Phil said. "That way when it was burned it wouldn't do anything. They'll have to start over on you."
They stared at him wordlessly.
"It must have been burned by now," he added weakly. "So my scheme worked."
They turned their heads and looked into each other's eyes. Two ghostly windshields obscured their vision. The tables and people about them faded, to be replaced by ghostly pines, a more solid concrete highway.
They stared into each other's eyes, knowing all that had been, feeling it slip away.
But abruptly it vanished and they were looking at each other across the table while a waiter asked them if they wanted another drink. For a long second their minds hovered in that other stream of time before the realization came that it was over and they were safe.