"It's priceless," Wesley said. The text was undecipherable, but the photography so perfect that his eyes misted and refused to leave it. "It more than repays me."
Anxiety dimmed his rapture. "You did mean that I could keep it, didn't you?"
Clelling looked abashed. "Of course. It's only a sort of tourist travelogue.... I'll select a group of them dealing with worlds that might interest you and see that our local outpost makes up English translations. They will be mailed to you as they are completed."
His wife appeared out of the shrub-and-file background, leading a chastened Mitsik, and stood beside him. Her fair head was hardly even with the seated Wesley's shoulder.
"We mustn't leave Sonimuira out of the group," she said. Her lilac eyes laughed with an inner, private amusement. "He'll like Sonimuira."
"Out of this group we can offer you one physical visit to the world of your choice," Clelling said. "Each brochure will have round-trip tear-off coupons attached. Bring them here when you have decided where you will go."
"If I have the nerve," Wesley said. The prospect dazzled him until he remembered his Aunt Jessica. "You'll still be here?"
"This is a permanent relay point," Clelling told him. "Our agency's galactic transporter has been here for centuries of your time."
There was more, but none of it was clear to Wesley later. It seemed only seconds before he was standing again on the banks of Sampson's Creek, perhaps a hundred yards upstream from the pool from which he had fished Mitsik. But the sun hung lower over the mountains and the birds were choosing perches for the night; he had been "away," Wesley estimated, for something over an hour.
It did not occur to him until he had walked back to the inn, and discovered in the walking that he had left the Aldhaferian booklet behind, that he might only have dozed during his stroll and dreamed it all. The dampness of his clothing reassured him—and disturbed his Aunt Jessica and Miriam—without eliminating that doubt.