told
me they did--although often I was, very much.

The trouble with these people is that they no longer know how to lie,
if that can be listed as trouble. I don't think it can. Neither did
Krasnow, obviously. He'd never have sent me off on my expensive
side-trip if he had.

Of course, Krasnow looked at it objectively. What he wanted from
Timeline Seventeen Point Zero Eight was not for himself. It was for
everybody else. He wanted the formula for the truth gas these people
had developed long ago and loosed upon their world to put a stop to
wars.

They had been in a bad way, although no worse than the sort of problem
we were up against. Their trans-ocean squabbles and power politics
seemed to have settled into a pattern of a war or two per generation.
Just like us. Hence, the man who invented the truth gas became a
global hero, after a certain amount of cynicism and skepticism. All
the doubts vanished, naturally, once the gas got to working. And so
did war.

[Illustration]

You can't do much plotting and scheming if, every time you open your
mouth to tell a lie, you stammer, sweat, turn red and gasp for breath.
It's a dead giveaway. Nobody tries it more than once.

One or two men had tried to nullify the gas or work out a local
antidote, either as a pure research project or through power-madness.
But, because they had had to state their purposes as soon as they
thought of them, they were put away. Neat. Very neat.

What I wanted was the formula for the truth gas. Its location wasn't
exactly a secret in this land of complete candor, but it wasn't writ
large on any wall for all to see, either. They kept it in their
capital--located about where our Omaha is--on file among the Vital
Statistics.

I took a superjet out there.

* * * * *

I had no trouble posing as a historian entitled to the facts. The gas
didn't work on me, you see, because it was adjusted to the physiology
of that timeline. There was just enough difference between us for it
not to make me stick to the truth.

"We'll write out the formula for you," I was told obligingly. "But
you'll have to sign the usual statement."

"Of course," I said. "Which one is that?"

"The one that says you won't publish it, and will destroy your copy
when it has served your research purpose, without letting anyone else
see it."

"Oh, _that_ statement," I said.

I signed freely, told my elephant story and departed in an aura of
go