keep it secret, she was a threat to his plans." He
paused. "Her name was Luise Obispo."

* * * * *

He didn't have to turn his head. From the corner of his eye, he could
see startlement flash across her face. She'd got her name right; and
it was he who had erred in choosing a name.

"Putsyn hired a criminal, Dorn Starret, to get rid of her for him," he
said harshly. "That was the way Starret made his living. He was an
expert at it.

"Starret slugged her one night on Mars. He didn't retro her at once.
He loaded her on a spaceship and brought her to Earth. During the
passage, he talked to her and got to like her a lot. She wasn't as
developed as she is now, kind of mousy maybe, but you know how those
things are--he liked her. He made love to her, but didn't get very
far.

"He landed in another city on Earth and left his spaceship there; he
drugged her and brought her to the Shelter here and retroed her.
That's what he'd been paid to do.

"Then he decided to stick around. Maybe she'd change her mind after
retrogression. He stayed in a Shelter just across from the one she was
in. And he made a mistake. He hid the retro gun behind the screen.

"Putsyn came around to check up. He didn't like Starret staying
there--a key word or a familiar face sometimes triggers the memory. He
retroed Starret, who didn't have a gun he could get to in a hurry.
Maybe Putsyn had planned to do it all along. He'd built up an airtight
alibi when Luise disappeared, so that nobody would connect him with
that--and who'd miss a criminal like Starret?

"Anyway, that was only part of it. He knew that people who've been
retroed try to find out who they are, and that some of them succeed.
He didn't want that to happen. So he put an advertisement in the paper
that she'd see and answer. When she did, he began to use his machine
on her, intending to take her from the present to the past and back
again so often that her mind would refuse to accept anything, past or
present.

"But he'd just started when Starret showed up, and he knew he had to
get him too. So he pulled what looked like a deliberate slip and got
Starret interested, intending to take care of both of them in the same
way at the same time."

He leaned against the wall. It was over now and he knew what he could
expect.

"That's all, but it didn't work out the way Putsyn wanted it. Starret
was a guy who knew how to look after his own interests."

Except