The little voice was almost dry now, so rigidly had she harnessed herself. “He was tracing the migrations of the different Aryan clans. They’re very obscure, you know. You have to start at a point when the history is known for certain, and work backward. So on this last job, Keith was going to Iran in the year 558 B.C. That was near the close of the Median period, he said. He’d make inquiries among the people, learn their own traditions, and then afterward check back at a still earlier point, and so on… But you must know all about this, Manse. You helped him once, before we met. He often spoke about that.”

“Oh, I just went along in case of trouble,” shrugged Everard. “He was studying the prehistoric trek of a certain band from the Don over the Hindu Kush. We told their chief we were passing hunters, claimed hospitality, and accompanied the wagon train for a few weeks. It was fun.”

He remembered steppes and enormous skies, a windy gallop after antelope and a feast by campfires and a certain girl whose hair had held the bittersweet of woodsmoke. For a while he wished he could have lived and died as one of those tribesmen.

“Keith went back alone this time,” continued Cynthia. “They’re always so shorthanded in his branch, in the entire Patrol, I suppose. So many thousands of years to watch and so few man-life-times to do it with. He’d gone alone before. I was always afraid to let him, but he said… dressed as a wandering shepherd with nothing worth stealing… he’d be safer in the Iranian highlands than crossing Broadway. Only this time he wasn’t!”