Transcriber's Note:

 This etext was produced from _A Martian Odyssey and Others_ published in 1949. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U. S. Copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note. 

THE WORLDS OF IF

I stopped on the way to the Staten Island Airport to call up, and thatwas a mistake, doubtless, since I had a chance of making it otherwise. But the office was affable. "We'll hold the ship five minutes for you, "the clerk said. "That's the best we can do. "

So I rushed back to my taxi and we spun off to the third level and spedacross the Staten bridge like a comet treading a steel rainbow. I had tobe in Moscow by evening, by eight o'clock, in fact, for the opening ofbids on the Ural Tunnel. The Government required the personal presenceof an agent of each bidder, but the firm should have known better thanto send me, Dixon Wells, even though the N. J. Wells Corporation is, soto speak, my father. I have a--well, an undeserved reputation for beinglate to everything; something always comes up to prevent me from gettinganywhere on time. It's never my fault; this time it was a chanceencounter with my old physics professor, old Haskel van Manderpootz. Icouldn't very well just say hello and good-bye to him; I'd been afavorite of his back in the college days of 2014. 

I missed the airliner, of course. I was still on the Staten Bridge whenI heard the roar of the catapult and the Soviet rocket _Baikal_ hummedover us like a tracer bullet with a long tail of flame. 

We got the contract anyway; the firm wired our man in Beirut and he flewup to Moscow, but it didn't help my reputation. However, I felt a greatdeal better when I saw the evening papers; the _Baikal_, flying at thenorth edge of the eastbound lane to avoid a storm, had locked wings witha British fruitship and all but a hundred of her five hundredpassengers were lost. I had almost become "the late Mr. Wells" in agrimmer sense. 

I'd made an engagement for the following week with old van Manderpootz. It seems he'd transferred to N. Y. U. As head of the department of NewerPhysics--that is, of Relativity. He deserved it; the old chap was agenius if ever there was one, and even now, eight years out of college, I remember more from his course than from half a dozen calculus, steamand gas, mechanics, and other hazards on the path to an engineer'seducation. So on Tuesday night I dropped in an hour or so late, to tellthe truth, since I'd forgotten about the engagement until mid-evening. 

He was reading in a room as disorderly as ever. "Humph!" he grunted. "Time changes everything but habit, I see. You were a good student, Dick, but I seem to recall that you always arrived in class toward themiddle of the lecture. "

"I had a course in East Hall just before, " I explained. "I couldn't seemto make it in time. "

"Well, it's time you learned to be on time, " he growled. Then his eyestwinkled. "Time!" he ejaculated. "The most fascinating word in thelanguage. Here we've used it five times (there goes the sixth time--andthe seventh!) in the first minute of conversation; each of usunderstands the other, yet science is just beginning to learn itsmeaning. Science? I mean that _I_ am beginning to learn. "

I sat down. "You and science are synonymous, " I grinned. "Aren't you oneof the world's outstanding physicists?"

"One of them!" he snorted. "One of them, eh! And who are the others?"

"Oh, Corveille and Hastings and Shrimski--"

"Bah! Would you mention them in the same breath with the name of vanManderpootz? A pack of jackals, eating the crumbs of ideas that dropfrom my feast of thoughts! Had you gone back into the last century, now--had you mentioned Einstein and de Sitter--there, perhaps, are namesworthy to rank with (or just below) van Manderpootz!"

I grinned again in amusement. "Einstein was considered pretty good, wasn't he?" I remarked. "After all, he was the first to tie time andspace to the laboratory. Before him they were just philosophicalconcepts. "

"He didn't!" rasped the professor. "Perhaps, in a dim, primitivefashion, he showed the way, but I--_I_, van Manderpootz--am the first toseize time, drag it into my laboratory, and perform an experiment onit. "

"Indeed? And what sort of experiment?"

"What experiment, other than simple measurement, is it possible toperform?" he snapped. 

"Why--I don't know. To travel in it?"

"Exactly. "

"Like these time-machines that are so popular in the current magazines?To go into the future or the past?"

"Bah! Many bahs! The future or the past--pfui! It needs no vanManderpootz to see the fallacy in that. Einstein showed us that much. "

"How? It's conceivable, isn't it?"

"Conceivable? And you, Dixon Wells, studied under van Manderpootz!" Hegrew red with emotion, then grimly calm. "Listen to me. You know howtime varies with the speed of a system--Einstein's relativity. "

"Yes. "

"Very well. Now suppose then that the great engineer Dixon Wells inventsa machine capable of traveling very fast, enormously fast, nine-tenthsas fast as light. Do you follow? Good. You then fuel this miracle shipfor a little jaunt of a half million miles, which, since mass (and withit inertia) increases according to the Einstein formula with increasingspeed, takes all the fuel in the world. But you solve that. You useatomic energy. Then, since at nine-tenths light-speed, your ship weighsabout as much as the sun, you disintegrate North America to give yousufficient motive power. You start off at that speed, a hundred andsixty-eight thousand miles per second, and you travel for two hundredand four thousand miles. The acceleration has now crushed you to death, but you have penetrated the future. " He paused, grinning sardonically. "Haven't you?"

"Yes. "

"And how far?"

I hesitated. 

"Use your Einstein formula!" he screeched. "How far? I'll tell you. _Onesecond!_" He grinned triumphantly. "That's how possible it is to travelinto the future. And as for the past--in the first place, you'd have toexceed light-speed, which immediately entails the use of more than aninfinite number of horsepowers. We'll assume that the great engineerDixon Wells solves that little problem too, even though the energyout-put of the whole universe is not an infinite number of horsepowers. Then he applies this more than infinite power to travel at two hundredand four thousand miles per second for _ten_ seconds. He has thenpenetrated the past. How far?"

Again I hesitated. 

"I'll tell you. _One second!_" He glared at me. "Now all you have to dois to design such a machine, and then van Manderpootz will admit thepossibility of traveling into the future--for a limited number ofseconds. As for the past, I have just explained that all the energy inthe universe is insufficient for that. "

"But, " I stammered, "you just said that you--"

"I did _not_ say anything about traveling into either future or past, which I have just demonstrated to you to be impossible--a practicalimpossibility in the one case and an absolute one in the other. "

"Then how _do_ you travel in time?"

"Not even van Manderpootz can perform the impossible, " said theprofessor, now faintly jovial. He tapped a thick pad of typewriter paperon the table beside him. "See, Dick, this is the world, the universe. "He swept a finger down it. "It is long in time, and"--sweeping his handacross it--"it is broad in space, but"--now jabbing his finger againstits center--"it is very thin in the fourth dimension. Van Manderpootztakes always the shortest, the most logical course. I do not travelalong time, into past or future. No. Me, I travel across time, sideways!"

I gulped. "Sideways into time! What's there?"

"What would naturally be there?" he snorted. "Ahead is the future;behind is the past. Those are real, the worlds of past and future. Whatworlds are neither past nor future, but contemporary andyet--extemporal--existing, as it were, in time parallel to our time?"

I shook my head. 

"Idiot!" he snapped. "The conditional worlds, of course! The worlds of'if. ' Ahead are the worlds to be; behind are the worlds that were; toeither side are the worlds that might have been--the worlds of 'if!'"

"Eh?" I was puzzled. "Do you mean that you can see what will happen if Ido such and such?"

"No!" he snorted. "My machine does not reveal the past nor predict thefuture. It will show, as I told you, the conditional worlds. You mightexpress it, by 'if I had done such and such, so and so would havehappened. ' The worlds of the subjunctive mode. "

"Now how the devil does it do that?"

"Simple, for van Manderpootz! I use polarized light, polarized not inthe horizontal or vertical planes, but in the direction of the fourthdimension--an easy matter. One uses Iceland spar under colossalpressures, that is all. And since the worlds are very thin in thedirection of the fourth dimension, the thickness of a single light wave, though it be but millionths of an inch, is sufficient. A considerableimprovement over time-traveling in past or future, with its impossiblevelocities and ridiculous distances!"

"But--are those--worlds of 'if'--real?"

"Real? What is real? They are real, perhaps, in the sense that two is areal number as opposed to √-2, which is imaginary. They are the worldsthat would have been _if_-- Do you see?"

I nodded. "Dimly. You could see, for instance, what New York would havebeen like if England had won the Revolution instead of the Colonies. "

"That's the principle, true enough, but you couldn't see that on themachine. Part of it, you see, is a Horsten psychomat (stolen from one ofmy ideas, by the way) and you, the user, become part of the device. Yourown mind is necessary to furnish the background. For instance, if GeorgeWashington could have used the mechanism after the signing of peace, hecould have seen what you suggest. We can't. You can't even see whatwould have happened if I hadn't invented the thing, but _I_ can. Do youunderstand?"

"Of course. You mean the background has to rest in the past experiencesof the user. "

"You're growing brilliant, " he scoffed. "Yes. The device will show tenhours of what would have happened _if_--condensed, of course, as in amovie, to half an hour's actual time. "

"Say, that sounds interesting!"

"You'd like to see it? Is there anything you'd like to find out? Anychoice you'd alter?"

"I'll say--a thousand of 'em. I'd like to know what would have happenedif I'd sold out my stocks in 2009 instead of '10. I was a millionaire inmy own right then, but I was a little--well, a little late inliquidating. "

"As usual, " remarked van Manderpootz. "Let's go over to the laboratorythen. "

The professor's quarters were but a block from the campus. He ushered meinto the Physics Building, and thence into his own research laboratory, much like the one I had visited during my courses under him. Thedevice--he called it his "subjunctivisor, " since it operated inhypothetical worlds--occupied the entire center table. Most of it wasmerely a Horsten psychomat, but glittering crystalline and glassy wasthe prism of Iceland spar, the polarizing agent that was the heart ofthe instrument. 

Van Manderpootz pointed to the headpiece. "Put it on, " he said, and Isat staring at the screen of the psychomat. I suppose everyone isfamiliar with the Horsten psychomat; it was as much a fad a few yearsago as the ouija board a century back. Yet it isn't just a toy;sometimes, much as the ouija board, it's a real aid to memory. A maze ofvague and colored shadows is caused to drift slowly across the screen, and one watches them, meanwhile visualizing whatever scene orcircumstances he is trying to remember. He turns a knob that alters thearrangement of lights and shadows, and when, by chance, the designcorresponds to his mental picture--presto! There is his scene re-createdunder his eyes. Of course his own mind adds the details. All the screenactually shows are these tinted blobs of light and shadow, but the thingcan be amazingly real. I've seen occasions when I could have sworn thepsychomat showed pictures almost as sharp and detailed as realityitself; the illusion is sometimes as startling as that. 

Van Manderpootz switched on the light, and the play of shadows began. "Now recall the circumstances of, say, a half-year after the marketcrash. Turn the knob until the picture clears, then stop. At that pointI direct the light of the subjunctivisor upon the screen, and you havenothing to do but watch. "

I did as directed. Momentary pictures formed and vanished. The inchoatesounds of the device hummed like distant voices, but without the addedsuggestion of the picture, they meant nothing. My own face flashed anddissolved and then, finally, I had it. There was a picture of myselfsitting in an ill-defined room; that was all. I released the knob andgestured. 

A click followed. The light dimmed, then brightened. The picturecleared, and amazingly, another figure emerged, a woman. I recognizedher; it was Whimsy White, erstwhile star of television and premiere ofthe "Vision Varieties of '09. " She was changed on that picture, but Irecognized her. 

I'll say I did! I'd been trailing her all through the boom years of '07to '10, trying to marry her, while old N. J. Raved and ranted andthreatened to leave everything to the Society for Rehabilitation of theGobi Desert. I think those threats were what kept her from accepting me, but after I took my own money and ran it up to a couple of million inthat crazy market of '08 and '09, she softened. 

Temporarily, that is. When the crash of the spring of '10 came andbounced me back on my father and into the firm of N. J. Wells, her favordropped a dozen points to the market's one. In February we were engaged, in April we were hardly speaking. In May they sold me out. I'd been lateagain. 

And now, there she was on the psychomat screen, obviously plumping out, and not nearly so pretty as memory had pictured her. She was staring atme with an expression of enmity, and I was glaring back. The buzzesbecame voices. 

"You nit-wit!" she snapped. "You can't bury me out here. I want to goback to New York, where there's a little life. I'm bored with you andyour golf. "

"And I'm bored with you and your whole dizzy crowd. "

"At least they're _alive_. You're a walking corpse. Just because youwere lucky enough to gamble yourself into the money, you think you're atin god. "

"Well, I _don't_ think _you're_ Cleopatra! Those friends of yours--theytrail after you because you give parties and spend money--_my_ money. "

"Better than spending it to knock a white walnut along a mountainside!"

"Indeed? You ought to try it, Marie. " (That was her real name. ) "Itmight help your figure--though I doubt if anything could!"

She glared in rage and--well, that was a painful half hour. I won't giveall the details, but I was glad when the screen dissolved intomeaningless colored clouds. 

"Whew!" I said, staring at Van Manderpootz, who had been reading. 

"You liked it?"

"Liked it! Say, I guess I was lucky to be cleaned out. I won't regret itfrom now on. "

"That, " said the professor grandly, "is van Manderpootz's greatcontribution to human happiness. 'Of all sad words of tongue or pen, thesaddest are these: It might have been!' True no longer, my friend Dick. Van Manderpootz has shown that the proper reading is, 'It might havebeen--worse!'"

 * * * * *

It was very late when I returned home, and as a result, very late when Irose, and equally late when I got to the office. My father wasunnecessarily worked up about it, but he exaggerated when he said I'dnever been on time. He forgets the occasions when he's awakened me anddragged me down with him. Nor was it necessary to refer so sarcasticallyto my missing the _Baikal_; I reminded him of the wrecking of the liner, and he responded very heartlessly that if I'd been aboard, the rocketwould have been late, and so would have missed colliding with theBritish fruitship. It was likewise superfluous for him to mention thatwhen he and I had tried to snatch a few weeks of golfing in themountains, even the spring had been late. I had nothing to do with that. 

"Dixon, " he concluded, "you have no conception whatever of time. Nonewhatever. "

The conversation with van Manderpootz recurred to me. I was impelled toask, "And have you, sir?"

"I have, " he said grimly. "I most assuredly have. Time, " he saidoracularly, "is money. "

You can't argue with a viewpoint like that. 

But those aspersions of his rankled, especially that about the _Baikal_. Tardy I might be, but it was hardly conceivable that my presence aboardthe rocket could have averted the catastrophe. It irritated me; in away, it made me responsible for the deaths of those unrescued hundredsamong the passengers and crew, and I didn't like the thought. 

Of course, if they'd waited an extra five minutes for me, or if I'd beenon time and they'd left on schedule instead of five minutes late, orif--_if_!

If! The word called up van Manderpootz and his subjunctivisor--theworlds of "if, " the weird, unreal worlds that existed beside reality, neither past nor future, but contemporary, yet extemporal. Somewhereamong their ghostly infinities existed one that represented the worldthat would have been had I made the liner. I had only to call up Haskelvan Manderpootz, make an appointment, and then--find out. 

Yet it wasn't an easy decision. Suppose--just suppose that I foundmyself responsible--not legally responsible, certainly; there'd be noquestion of criminal negligence, or anything of that sort--not evenmorally responsible, because I couldn't possibly have anticipated thatmy presence or absence could weigh so heavily in the scales of life anddeath, nor could I have known in which direction the scales would tip. Just--responsible; that was all. Yet I hated to find out. 

I hated equally not finding out. Uncertainty has its pangs too, quite aspainful as those of remorse. It might be less nerve-racking to knowmyself responsible than to wonder, to waste thoughts in vain doubts andfutile reproaches. So I seized the visiphone, dialed the number of theUniversity, and at length gazed on the broad, humorous, intelligentfeatures of van Manderpootz, dragged from a morning lecture by my call. 

 * * * * *

I was all but prompt for the appointment the following evening, andmight actually have been on time but for an unreasonable traffic officerwho insisted on booking me for speeding. At any rate, van Manderpootzwas impressed. 

"Well!" he rumbled. "I almost missed you, Dixon. I was just going overto the club, since I didn't expect you for an hour. You're only tenminutes late. "

I ignored this. "Professor, I want to use your--uh--yoursubjunctivisor. "

"Eh? Oh, yes. You're lucky, then. I was just about to dismantle it. "

"Dismantle it! Why?"

"It has served its purpose. It has given birth to an idea far moreimportant than itself. I shall need the space it occupies. "

"But what _is_ the idea, if it's not too presumptuous of me to ask?"

"It is not too presumptuous. You and the world which awaits it soeagerly may both know, but you hear it from the lips of the author. Itis nothing less than the autobiography of van Manderpootz!" He pausedimpressively. 

I gaped. "Your autobiography?"

"Yes. The world, though perhaps unaware, is crying for it. I shalldetail my life, my work. I shall reveal myself as the man responsiblefor the three years' duration of the Pacific War of 2004. "

"You?"

"None other. Had I not been a loyal Netherlands subject at that time, and therefore neutral, the forces of Asia would have been crushed inthree months instead of three years. The subjunctivisor tells me so; Iwould have invented a calculator to forecast the chances of everyengagement; van Manderpootz would have removed the hit or miss elementin the conduct of war. " He frowned solemnly. "There is my idea. Theautobiography of van Manderpootz. What do you think of it?"

I recovered my thoughts. "It's--uh--it's colossal!" I said vehemently. "I'll buy a copy myself. Several copies. I'll send 'em to my friends. "

"I, " said van Manderpootz expansively, "shall autograph your copy foryou. It will be priceless. I shall write in some fitting phrase, perhapssomething like _Magnificus sed non superbus_. 'Great but not proud!'That well described van Manderpootz, who despite his greatness issimple, modest, and unassuming. Don't you agree?"

"Perfectly! A very apt description of you. But--couldn't I see yoursubjunctivisor before it's dismantled to make way for the greater work?"

"Ah! You wish to find out something?"

"Yes, professor. Do you remember the _Baikal_ disaster of a week or twoago? I was to have taken that liner to Moscow. I just missed it. " Irelated the circumstances. 

"Humph!" he grunted. "You wish to discover what would have happened hadyou caught it, eh? Well, I see several possibilities. Among the world of'if' is the one that would have been real if you had been on time, theone that depended on the vessel waiting for your actual arrival, and theone that hung on your arriving within the five minutes they actuallywaited. In which are you interested?"

"Oh--the last one. " That seemed the likeliest. After all, it was toomuch to expect that Dixon Wells could ever be on time, and as to thesecond possibility--well, they _hadn't_ waited for me, and that in a wayremoved the weight of responsibility. 

"Come on, " rumbled van Manderpootz. I followed him across to the PhysicsBuilding and into his littered laboratory. The device still stood on thetable and I took my place before it, staring at the screen of theHorsten psychomat. The clouds wavered and shifted as I sought to impressmy memories on their suggestive shapes, to read into them some pictureof that vanished morning. 

Then I had it. I made out the vista from the Staten Bridge, and wasspeeding across the giant span toward the airport. I waved a signal tovan Manderpootz, the thing clicked, and the subjunctivisor was on. 

The grassless clay of the field appeared. It is a curious thing aboutthe psychomat that you see only through the eyes of your image on thescreen. It lends a strange reality to the working of the toy; I supposea sort of self-hypnosis is partly responsible. 

I was rushing over the ground toward the glittering, silver-wingedprojectile that was the _Baikal_. A glowering officer waved me on, and Idashed up the slant of the gangplank and into the ship; the port droppedand I heard a long "Whew!" of relief. 

"Sit down!" barked the officer, gesturing toward an unoccupied seat. Ifell into it; the ship quivered under the thrust of the catapult, gratedharshly into motion, and then was flung bodily into the air. The blastsroared instantly, then settled to a more muffled throbbing, and Iwatched Staten Island drop down and slide back beneath me. The giantrocket was under way. 

"Whew!" I breathed again. "Made it!" I caught an amused glance from myright. I was in an aisle seat; there was no one to my left, so I turnedto the eyes that had flashed, glanced, and froze staring. 

It was a girl. Perhaps she wasn't actually as lovely as she looked tome; after all, I was seeing her through the half-visionary screen of apsychomat. I've told myself since that she _couldn't_ have been aspretty as she seemed, that it was due to my own imagination filling inthe details. I don't know; I remember only that I stared at curiouslylovely silver-blue eyes and velvety brown hair, and a small amusedmouth, and an impudent nose. I kept staring until she flushed. 

"I'm sorry, " I said quickly. "I--was startled. "

There's a friendly atmosphere aboard a trans-oceanic rocket. Thepassengers are forced into a crowded intimacy for anywhere from seven totwelve hours, and there isn't much room for moving about. Generally, onestrikes up an acquaintance with his neighbors; introductions aren't atall necessary, and the custom is simply to speak to anybody youchoose--something like an all-day trip on the railroad trains of thelast century, I suppose. You make friends for the duration of thejourney, and then, nine times out of ten, you never hear of yourtraveling companions again. 

The girl smiled. "Are you the individual responsible for the delay instarting?"

I admitted it. "I seem to be chronically late. Even watches lose time assoon as I wear them. "

She laughed. "Your responsibilities can't be very heavy. "

Well, they weren't of course, though it's surprising how many clubs, caddies, and chorus girls have depended on me at various times forappreciable portions of their incomes. But somehow I didn't feel likementioning those things to the silvery-eyed girl. 

We talked. Her name, it developed, was Joanna Caldwell, and she wasgoing as far as Paris. She was an artist, or hoped to be one day, and ofcourse there is no place in the world that can supply both training andinspiration like Paris. So it was there she was bound for a year ofstudy, and despite her demurely humorous lips and laughing eyes, I couldsee that the business was of vast importance to her. I gathered that shehad worked hard for the year in Paris, had scraped and saved for threeyears as fashion illustrator for some woman's magazine, though shecouldn't have been many months over twenty-one. Her painting meant agreat deal to her, and I could understand it. I'd felt that way aboutpolo once. 

So you see, we were sympathetic spirits from the beginning. I knew thatshe liked me, and it was obvious that she didn't connect Dixon Wellswith the N. J. Wells Corporation. And as for me--well, after that firstglance into her cool silver eyes, I simply didn't care to look anywhereelse. The hours seemed to drip away like minutes while I watched her. 

You know how those things go. Suddenly I was calling her Joanna and shewas calling me Dick, and it seemed as if we'd been doing just that allour lives. I'd decided to stop over in Paris on my way back from Moscow, and I'd secured her promise to let me see her. She was different, I tellyou; she was nothing like the calculating Whimsy White, and still lesslike the dancing, simpering, giddy youngsters one meets around at socialaffairs. She was just Joanna, cool and humorous, yet sympathetic andserious, and as pretty as a Majolica figurine. 

We could scarcely realize it when the steward passed along to takeorders for luncheon. Four hours out? It seemed like forty minutes. Andwe had a pleasant feeling of intimacy in the discovery that both of usliked lobster salad and detested oysters. It was another bond; I toldher whimsically that it was an omen, nor did she object to consideringit so. 

Afterwards we walked along the narrow aisle to the glassed-inobservation room up forward. It was almost too crowded for entry, but wedidn't mind that at all, as it forced us to sit very close together. Westayed long after both of us had begun to notice the stuffiness of theair. 

It was just after we had returned to our seats that the catastropheoccurred. There was no warning save a sudden lurch, the result, Isuppose, of the pilot's futile last-minute attempt to swerve--just thatand then a grinding crash and a terrible sensation of spinning, andafter that a chorus of shrieks that were like the sounds of battle. 

It _was_ battle. Five hundred people were picking themselves up from thefloor, were trampling each other, milling around, being cast helplesslydown as the great rocket-plane, its left wing but a broken stub, circleddownward toward the Atlantic. 

The shouts of officers sounded and a loudspeaker blared. "Be calm, " itkept repeating, and then, "There has been a collision. We have contacteda surface ship. There is no danger-- There is no danger--"

I struggled up from the debris of shattered seats. Joanna was gone; justas I found her crumpled between the rows, the ship struck the water witha jar that set everything crashing again. The speaker blared, "Put onthe cork belts under the seats. The life-belts are under the seats. "

I dragged a belt loose and snapped it around Joanna, then donned onemyself. The crowd was surging forward now, and the tail end of the shipbegan to drop. There was water behind us, sloshing in the darkness asthe lights went out. An officer came sliding by, stooped, and fastened abelt about an unconscious woman ahead of us. "You all right?" he yelled, and passed on without waiting for an answer. 

The speaker must have been cut on to a battery circuit. "And get as faraway as possible, " it ordered suddenly. "Jump from the forward port andget as far away as possible. A ship is standing by. You will be pickedup. Jump from the--". It went dead again. 

I got Joanna untangled from the wreckage. She was pale; her silvery eyeswere closed. I started dragging her slowly and painfully toward theforward port, and the slant of the floor increased until it was like theslide of a ski-jump. The officer passed again. "Can you handle her?" heasked, and again dashed away. 

I was getting there. The crowd around the port looked smaller, or was itsimply huddling closer? Then suddenly, a wail of fear and despair wentup, and there was a roar of water. The observation room walls had given. I saw the green surge of waves, and a billowing deluge rushed down uponus. I had been late again. 

That was all. I raised shocked and frightened eyes from thesubjunctivisor to face van Manderpootz, who was scribbling on the edgeof the table. 

"Well?" he asked. 

I shuddered. "Horrible!" I murmured. "We--I guess we wouldn't have beenamong the survivors. "

"We, eh? _We?_" His eyes twinkled. 

I did not enlighten him. I thanked him, bade him good-night, and wentdolorously home. 

 * * * * *

Even my father noticed something queer about me. The day I got to theoffice only five minutes late, he called me in for some anxiousquestioning as to my health. I couldn't tell him anything, of course. How could I explain that I'd been late once too often, and had fallen inlove with a girl two weeks after she was dead?

The thought drove me nearly crazy. Joanna! Joanna with her silvery eyesnow lay somewhere at the bottom of the Atlantic. I went around halfdazed, scarcely speaking. One night I actually lacked the energy to gohome and sat smoking in my father's big overstuffed chair in his privateoffice until I finally dozed off. The next morning, when old N. J. Entered and found me there before him, he turned pale as paper, staggered, and gasped, "My heart!" It took a lot of explaining toconvince him that I wasn't early at the office but just very late goinghome. 

At last I felt that I couldn't stand it. I had to do something--anythingat all. I thought finally of the subjunctivisor. I could see--yes, Icould see what would have transpired if the ship hadn't been wrecked! Icould trace out that weird, unreal romance hidden somewhere in theworlds of "if". I could, perhaps, wring a somber, vicarious joy from thethings that might have been. I could see Joanna once more!

It was late afternoon when I rushed over to van Manderpootz's quarters. He wasn't there; I encountered him finally in the hall of the PhysicsBuilding. 

"Dick!" he exclaimed. "Are you sick?"

"Sick? No. Not physically. Professor. I've got to use yoursubjunctivisor again. I've _got_ to!"

"Eh? Oh--that toy. You're too late, Dick. I've dismantled it. I have abetter use for the space. "

I gave a miserable groan and was tempted to damn the autobiography ofthe great van Manderpootz. A gleam of sympathy showed in his eyes, andhe took my arm, dragging me into the little office adjoining hislaboratory. 

"Tell me, " he commanded. 

I did. I guess I made the tragedy plain enough, for his heavy brows knitin a frown of pity. "Not even van Manderpootz can bring back the dead, "he murmured. "I'm sorry, Dick. Take your mind from the affair. Even weremy subjunctivisor available, I wouldn't permit you to use it. That wouldbe but to turn the knife in the wound. " He paused. "Find something elseto occupy your mind. Do as van Manderpootz does. Find forgetfulness inwork. "

"Yes, " I responded dully. "But who'd want to read my autobiography?That's all right for you. "

"Autobiography? Oh! I remember. No, I have abandoned that. Historyitself will record the life and works of van Manderpootz. Now I amengaged in a far grander project. "

"Indeed?" I was utterly, gloomily disinterested. 

"Yes. Gogli has been here, Gogli the sculptor. He is to make a bust ofme. What better legacy can I leave to the world than a bust of vanManderpootz, sculptured from life? Perhaps I shall present it to thecity, perhaps to the university. I would have given it to the RoyalSociety if they had been a little more receptive, if they--if--_if_!"The last in a shout. 

"Huh?"

"_If!_" cried van Manderpootz. "What you saw in the subjunctivisor waswhat would have happened _if_ you had caught the ship!"

"I know that. "

"But something quite different might really have happened! Don't yousee? She--she-- Where are those old newspapers?"

He was pawing through a pile of them. He flourished one finally. "Here!Here are the survivors!"

Like letters of flame, Joanna Caldwell's name leaped out at me. Therewas even a little paragraph about it, as I saw once my reeling brainpermitted me to read:

 "At least a score of survivors owe their lives to the bravery of twenty-eight-year-old Navigator Orris Hope, who patrolled both aisles during the panic, lacing life-belts on the injured and helpless, and carrying many to the port. He remained on the sinking liner until the last, finally fighting his way to the surface through the broken walls of the observation room. Among those who owe their lives to the young officer are: Patrick Owensby, New York City; Mrs. Campbell Warren, Boston; Miss Joanna Caldwell, New York City--"

I suppose my shout of joy was heard over in the Administration Building, blocks away. I didn't care; if van Manderpootz hadn't been armored instubby whiskers, I'd have kissed him. Perhaps I did anyway; I can't besure of my actions during those chaotic minutes in the professor's tinyoffice. 

At last I calmed. "I can look her up!" I gloated. "She must have landedwith the other survivors, and they were all on that British trampfreighter the _Osgood_, that docked here last week. She must be in NewYork--and if she's gone over to Paris, I'll find out and follow her!"

Well, it's a queer ending. She was in New York, but--you see, DixonWells had, so to speak, known Joanna Caldwell by means of theprofessor's subjunctivisor, but Joanna had never known Dixon Wells. Whatthe ending might have been if--_if_-- But it wasn't; she had marriedOrris Hope, the young officer who had rescued her. I was late again.