"Umm, no," the sandy-haired man relieved the colonel. "There's
absolutely no evidence to support it, and scientists don't accept
unsupported assumptions unless they need them to explain something, and
they don't need this assumption for anything. Well, it would come in
handy to make some of these reports of freak phenomena, like mysterious
appearances and disappearances, or flying-object sightings, or reported
falls of non-meteoric matter, theoretically respectable. Reports like
that usually get the ignore-and-forget treatment, now."

"Zen you believe zat zeese ozzer world of zee alternate probabeelitay,
zey exist?"

"No. I don't disbelieve it, either. I've no reason to, one way or
another." He studied his drink for a moment, and lowered the level in
the glass slightly. "I've said that once in a while things get reported
that look as though such other worlds, in another time-dimension, may
exist. There have been whole books published by people who collect
stories like that. I must say that academic science isn't very
hospitable to them."

"You mean, zings sometimes, 'ow-you-say, leak in from one of zees ozzer
worlds? Zat has been known to 'appen?"

"Things have been said to have happened that might, if true, be cases of
things leaking through from another time world," the sandy-haired man
corrected. "Or leaking away to another time world." He mentioned a few
of the more famous cases of unexplained mysteries--the English diplomat
in Prussia who vanished in plain sight of a number of people, the ship
found completely deserted by her crew, the lifeboats all in place;
stories like that. "And there's this rash of alleged sightings of