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It was well enough, I thought, for a smug, complacent commentator to sit in the bright-lit studio a thousand miles away and analyse these happenings in a measured and well-modulated manner. And it was well enough, perhaps, for people other than myself even here in Millville, to sit and listen to him. But I couldn't listen—I couldn't stand to listen.

Я выключил телевизор и пошел бродить по дому; быстро темнело, шаги мои непривычно гулко отдавались в пустынных комнатах.

Хорошо этому благодушному, самодовольному комментатору сидеть где-то там, за тысячу миль, в ярко освещенной студии и, по-актерски играя отлично поставленным голосом, неторопливо рассуждать о том, что происходит. Хорошо им всем, всем, кроме меня, даже здесь, в Милвилле, сидеть и слушать его рассуждения. А я не могу слушать... просто выдержать не могу.

Guilt, I asked myself? And it might be guilt, for I had been the one who'd brought the time machine to Earth and I had been the one who had taken Smith to meet the newsmen at the barrier. I had played the fool—the utter, perfect fool and it seemed to me the entire world must know."

"Or might it be the conviction that had been growing since I talked with Nancy that there was some hidden incident or fact—some minor motive or some small point of evidence -that I had failed to see, that we all had failed to grasp, and that if one could only put his finger on this single truth then all that had happened might become simpler of understanding and all that was about to happen might make some sort of sense?

I sought for it, for this hidden factor, for this joker in the deck, for the thing so small it had been overlooked and yet held within it a vast significance, and I did not find it.

Отчего я терзаюсь, виноват я, что ли? Может, и виноват, ведь не кто-нибудь, а я принес на Землю ту машинку, не кто-ни будь, а я привел Смита на пресс-конференцию у барьера. Я свалял дурака  — ох, какого же я свалял дурака!  — и мне чудится, что всему свету это известно.