Everyone has done what I did, time and time again. I do not recall
anything of my walk back to the car, lost in a whirl of thoughts, ideas,
plans and questions. I would probably have driven all the way back to my
apartment with my mind in that whirligig, driving by habit and training,
but I was shaken out of it because I could not start my car by poking
that bit of metal in the lock. It did not fit.

I laughed, a bit ashamed of my preoccupation, and flung the bit of metal
into the grass, poked my key in the lock--

And then I was out pawing the grass for that piece of metal.

For the small piece of metal I had found on the floor of the abandoned
workshop was the spoke of that road sign that had been missing when
Catherine and I cracked up!

I drove out along the highway and stopped near one of the standards. I
esped the sign, compared my impression against my eyesight. I made sure.

That bit of metal, a half inch long and a bit under a quarter inch in
diameter, with both ends faintly broken-ragged, was identical in size
and shape to the unbroken spokes in the sign!

Then I noticed something else. The trefoil ornament in the middle did
not look the same as I recalled them. I took Thorndyke's card out of my
pocket and looked at the stereo. I compared the picture against the real
thing before me and I knew that I was right.

The trefoil gizmo was a take-off on the fleur-de-lis or the Boy Scout
Tenderfoot badge, or the design they use to signify North on a compass.
But the lower flare of the leaves was wider than any of the more
familiar emblems; almost as wide as the top. It took a comparison to
tell the difference between one of them right-side-up and another one
upside-down. One assumes for this design that the larger foils are
supposed to be up. If that were so, then the ones along that road out
there in or near Yellowstone were right-side-up, while the ones along my
familiar highway were upside-down.

I goaded myself. #Memory, have these things been turned or were they
always upside-down?#

The last thing I did as I turned off the highway was to stop and let my
esper dig that design once more. I covered the design itself, let my
perception roam along the spokes, and then around the circlet that
supported the spokes that held the trefoil emblem.

Oh, it was not obvious. It was designed in, so to speak. If I were asked
even today for my professional opinion I would have to admit that the
way the circlet snap