This time de Witt lost him. He went back to the time he'd been at when he last saw Hedges, and went over it carefully. At last he picked up a glimpse of Hedges bouncing out of his chair and running for the door. De Witt adjusted the setter carefully, and managed to stop just as Hedges reached the door.
De Witt ran after him. He had to keep him in sight, not only in the three spacial dimensions, but in time also. Although he was a better runner than Hedges, as he caught up with his victim, Hedges twirled the dial on his wrist and began to fade.
De Witt did the almost impossible feat of running after Hedges and spinning his setter at the same time. They were" outside the Bureau of Standards building. De Witt knew that if he once thoroughly lost his man, he'd never find him.
They stopped running. Hedges slowed down his setter to where de Wilt could glimpse motor-vehicles flashing backwards past them. Several went right through them.
"Look out!" yelled dc Witt, as Hedges almost stopped his time-travel at a point that intersected the space-time track of a big truck. No sound came; you could move while traveling in time, but you couldn't hear. Hedges saw his danger and speeded up again.
Hedges gave up time-flight: since it had only one dimension, you could always find a man by moving back and forth along it far enough. He began running physically again, de Witt after him. They raced down Pennsylvania Avenue. De Witt stole a glance at his watch. It read 1959, Hedges, he thought, must have had that bomb ready so that he could carry out his threat by going into the past and blowing up some innocent bystanders. De Witt, tough as he was, was shocked. He reached for his pistol, which he had hoped not to have to use.
Hedges was getting winded. He bumped into a pedestrian. De Witt felt a psychic jar run through him.
Hedges bumped another pedestrian. The pistol vanished from de Witt's grasp, and an umbrella took its place. He knew what had happened: the bumping of the pedestrian, a trivial matter in itself, was one of those first links in a chain of events that change history.
They were approaching a traffic-circle. In the middle of this was a circular bit of park with an ornamental fountain. A lot of people were sitting around the fountain. De Witt grasped Hedges' intention when Hedges pulled out his bomb. If he couldn't get away, he was going to change history right there.
De Witt dodged a couple of automobiles, and with straining lungs caught up with Hedges. He hooked the umbrella-handle around Hedges' ankle. Brakes squealed and Hedges fell in front of a car. De Witt leaped on him. Again came that jarring sensation. De Witt knew that they Were both changing as they struggled. People were looking at them, and the sight was entering into their histories ...
Hedges got the pin out of his bomb just as de Witt remembered his paralyzing eye. He blinked his real eye, and sighted the phoney on the back of Hedges' neck. The bomb fell to the asphalt. De Witt snatched it up and tossed it into the fountain. He screamed: "Duck!" People looked at him blankly. Then the bomb went off, sending up a fountain of water and tossing a statue of a Triton high in the air.
The jarring sensation became almost unbearable. De Witt was horrified to feel that he had grown a beard.
A couple of people were cut a little by flying shreds of concrete. But the heavy concrete rim of the fountain had stopped all the bomb-fragments.
A police-car appeared. De Witt became aware, in that second, of many things he hadn't had time to notice—the ancient appearance of the motor-cars; the colorful costume of the people (colorful, that is, in comparison with the grim black-and-white of his own time).
Hedges lay on the asphalt looking blankly up at him. De Witt stooped down, took the setter of Hedges' time-watch between the fingers of his left hand, and grasped the setter of his own watch with his right fingers. He gave both setters a twist.
They were still in the traffic-circle. But it was early morning, and almost nobody in sight. The fountain supported another Triton, very new-looking. De Witt had tried to send them ahead one year, and had succeeded.
The effect of the paralysis wore off Hedges; he crawled over to the curb around the fountain and sat on it with his head in his hands.
De Witt looked at him sharply. "Say," he said, "you aren't the same guy."
"You aren't cither."
There was little doubt of that; de Witt was six inches taller than he had been, and he still had the horrible beard. His hair was disgustingly long. Mixed up with his memory of his career as a C. B. I. man came another memory, of an easy-going life on a microscopic income, devoted to disreputable friends and the writing of quantities of stickily sentimental poetry.
"I don't know why I did it," said Hedges. "I'm not ambitious. All I want is a quiet place in the country."
"That's because you aren't the same man," said de Witt. "I'm not cither. I'm a damned poet." He looked at the flower-bed around the fountain, and began to compose:
"What rhymes with 'once'?"
"Dunce," said Hedges. "Are you going to do that all the time?"
"Probably."
"It's awful. But aren't you going to arrest me or something?"
"N-No. I'm not a policeman any more." He ran his hand through his long hair. "I think I'll just stay here and be a poet."
"I really ought to be arrested."
"You'll have to go back—or forward—to your own time and give yourself up, then. I don't want you."
Hedges sighed. "The best-laid schemes of mice and men—in changing the history leading up to our time, we of course changed our own history and background. I think I'd like this time too. I brought quite a wad of money along; it ought to be good. I'll buy a little place in the country and raise flowers, and you can come out and write poetry about them."
"Russell!"
"Mendez!" Friends for life, they shook hands.
The soundless, motionless earthquake brought Coordinator Bloss and Vincent M. S. Collingwood to their feet. They stared at each other in terror until the disturbance subsided.
"You've changed," said Bloss.
"So have you, Your Efficiency."
"Not very much though."
"No, thank God. I imagine Hedges has done all the damage he can. What's this?"
On the Chief Executive's desk appeared two time-watches, and a pencilled note. The note read:
To His Efficiency the Co-ordinator of North America, or to Vincent M. S. Collingwood, Director of the C.B.I.:
We've decided to stay here, in 1960. We will try not to disturb the space-time structures any more than is necessary for the rest of our lives. The time watches we are sending back to you, as a means of transporting this note. We advise you to destroy them utterly.
If you want to see how I made out, look up a late twentieth century poet of my name. Regards.
MENDEZ S. D. DE WITT
Bloss pulled out volume Dam to Edu of the encyclopedia. "Here he is," he announced. "Yes, he was quite a well-known poet. Married in 1964, no children. Died in 1980. It even mentions his friend Hedges. I bet that story wasn't in the encyclopedia last week. What did you do with those watches?"
Collingwood was staring popeyed at the blank desk. "Nothing—they up and disappeared. That's the most sinister thing I ever saw."
"Not at all," said the Co-ordinator. "Hedges and de Witt disturbed the history between their time and ours to the point where Hedges never did any timetravel backwards in our time. So those time-watches never existed."