XL

The android investigator said, "We checked Bridgeport back to the year 2000 and we are convinced nothing ever happened there. It was a small village and it lay off the main trunk of world happenings."

"It wouldn't have to be a big thing," Eva Armour told him. "It could have been a little thing. Just some slight clue. A word out of the context of the future, perhaps. A word that Sutton might have dropped in some unguarded moment and someone else picked up and used. Within a few years a word like that would become a part of the dialect of that community."

"We checked for the little things, miss," the investigator said. "We checked for any aberration, any hint that might point to Sutton's having been in that community. We used approved methods and we covered the field. But we found nothing, absolutely nothing. The place is barren of any leads at all."

"He must have gone there," said Eva. "The robot at the information center talked to him. He asked about Bridgeport. It indicated that he had some interest in the place."

"But it didn't necessarily indicate that he was going there," Herkimer pointed out.

"He went someplace," said Eva. "Where did he go?"

"We threw in as large a force of investigators as was possible without arousing suspicion, both locally and in the future," the investigator told them. "Our men practically fell over one another. We sent them out as book salesmen and scissors grinders and unemployed men looking for work. We canvassed every home for twenty miles around, first at twenty-year intervals, then, when we found nothing, at ten, and finally at five. If there had been any word or any rumor we would have run across it."