"What about on the trip," Freylinghuysen offered. "Could something have happened—"
"What?" Blackburn replied. "He went back in time exactly one hour. He was to walk to Ethel Chattinger's apartment." ("That fabulous woman," Freylinghuysen murmured.) "All he had to do was spill india ink over one of the two new dresses she'd bought. Apparently, the most trying problem of her recent existence was to decide which of the two to wear to her Spanish coach this morning. But he'd be ruining the dress he'd already seen her wearing an hour later on the Mall."
"And that's as subtle a way of getting a girl's dress off as you're likely to find," Freylinghuysen remarked. "Although tearing them off has its points too," he added, looking at the ceiling.
"Then what could have gone wrong?" Blackburn asked.
"As far as I can see," Freylinghuysen answered, "the only flaw in this experiment was the scientists themselves. Your observations positively reek with subjectivity. To Rowan, the dress was green, always green. This just happens to prove Rowan's original belief, namely that the past can't be altered and therefore He exists. The atheist on the other hand," he glanced at Blackburn, "has seen what looks like a miracle—a material object changing a basic physical quality right before his eyes. Strangely enough this miracle goes to prove that there are no such things as miracles. Blackburn's case is also proven. You saw what you wanted to. Take Shaheen here. He was positive the dress was blue all the time—until he saw Rowan's experimenter's sample—and so now he's back at his old stand: the fence."
There was an embarrassed silence, since two scientists had quietly to own up to the crime of subjectivity in the laboratory while the theologian had to somehow dispose of a piece of spurious rationality that might be forgiven but would never be forgotten.
And then the door opened and a smiling face appeared.
"What'd everyone run away for?" Pendelton said.
The president was the first to recover.