"I'm going down to the lab," I said. "Maybe I'm nuts but I think we've still got a chance to beat this infernal thing."
The sun came up round and rosy while we walked down to the lab and I felt my scalp prickle when I saw the no-colored shaft of the Blazers' Di-tube rising against it like a black finger of doom.
"There used to be an early mail rocket out of Waterbury at sunrise," Dora said softly, "and a passenger flight just afterward. Remember how we used to complain because they woke us up, Jerry? And now—"
"Now there won't be any more rockets," I said. "There won't be any more movie dates or drive-ins or corny floor shows, no more football games or Sunday afternoon spins in the country. There won't be any more people after awhile, except a scattering of gee-strung savages running wild in packs and maybe eating each other. Go back and look after Doc, will you? He needs you."
But she wouldn't go.
The original Di-tube model was still in its corner, undamaged. I had done a solid job of wiring and testing that rig and it had stood the blast without even so much as a bent helix.
I checked it over, working fast, and bolted on a power feed rectifier that would adapt it to a mobile a.c. input. The little cabinet was too heavy to lift, so I edged it onto a hand-truck and trundled it out of the lab and across the graveled landing court to the shed where Doc's gyro stood.
Dora helped me hoist it inside and bolt it down. Ten minutes later, when it was all set to go, I tried again to talk her into going back. There wasn't more than a chance in ten thousand that my idea would work and if it did I'd be left stranded in an alien dimension. And besides that....
I should have saved my breath. "I don't know what you're planning," Dora said, squeezing into the seat beside me. "But it doesn't matter. I'm going with you, Jerry."
I looked out at the Blazers' Di-tube, standing black against the sunrise, and I didn't argue. Maybe she was right. Why not go now, together, and get it over with?