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wondering in panicky fashion if his—and Valerie’s—having been born might not be rescinded.
    “I think,” he said uncomfortably, “that we’d better go to see Carroll. It seems to follow. We found each other, by accident, which led to my finding Valerie, by accident, and brought it about, by accident, that she told me where he was. It seems to make a sort of pattern. I think we ought to follow it along.”
    “I didn’t know you were superstitious,” observed Pepe.
    “Anyhow,” said Harrison without conviction, “as former students of his, it would be only natural for us to pay him a visit. Pay our respects, so to speak.”
    “Oh, yes!” said Pepe ironically. “Oh, definitely! I spend much of my time looking up professors who used to try to educate me, to thank them for their efforts and display their lack of success. But in this case I agree. Absolutely!”
    “Let’s get a cab,” said Harrison. “The American Express can tell us how to get there.”
    They walked until a raffish Parisian taxicab hove into sight. They climbed into it, with dignity. It took off at that hair-raising speed all Parisian taxicabs affect.
    On the way, Harrison said reflectively, “Do you know, Pepe, this is a silly sort of thing for us to do! Carroll will probably think us crazy!”
    “If he will only convince me of it,” said Pepe, “I will be grateful to him forever!”
    He sank back in his seat. The taxicab hurtled onward.
    Somewhere very high overhead, a jet-plane dove and circled and dove again. Somewhere on the high seas, the multi-nation crew of a NATO rocket-carrying surface ship went through a launching-drill, theoretically getting away all their missiles at imaginary targets at intervals of twenty-two seconds each. There were atomic submarines under the arctic ice-pack. There were underground silos ready to fire trans-continental rockets if or when they received properly authenticated orders to do so. It was officially admitted that enough atomic warheads existed to make, if detonated, the very atmosphere of the earth lethal to all animal and vegetable life.
    In a universe designed for human beings to live in, there would have to be safety-devices. People being as they are, it would be necessary. Harrison and Pepe found out where St. Jean-sur-Seine happened to be and promptly arranged to be transported there. They did not feel any high sense of mission, or that they acted with particular wisdom or to great effect. Perhaps there was no reason for any such sensations. Perhaps their journey was just another thing that happened.
    A decision on whether or not the happenings that gave them so much concern amounted to a safety-device, of course, would depend on whether one considers that the universe makes sense, or that it does not.

3
    The town of St. Jean-sur-Seine was remarkably like very many other small municipalities over the length and breadth of the French republic. When—as rarely happened—tourists stumbled upon it, they found it both unspoiled and unattractive. Some ate one meal at the principal café. Very, very few returned for a second. It had once had a foundry which had cast some guns for Napoleon’s army. The guns were unsatisfactory, and the foundry closed down. For a time there had been a traffic in truffles, found by misguided pigs and subdued trained dogs for the benefit of men. But truffles, whose mode of propagation has never been satisfactorily settled, did not propagate with much energy near St. Jean-sur-Seine. That traffic died out. In the 1880’s there was an epidemic of measles in which the entire civic body, including the mayor and the whole municipal administration, was simultaneously incapacitated. There had been a murder in the town in the early 1900’s. There was no other history to impress a visitor.
    Harrison and Pepe Ybarra arrived on an asthmatic bus in mid-afternoon. It took an inordinate time to locate M. le Professeur Carroll. Eventually they found someone who made the