"What is it?"

"It's a device by which I may track you if we should become separated," Wells explained. "It has a temporal beacon as well as a locational one, just on the chance that we might become separated by time as well as space. One never knows what may happen during time travel -- especially when a time-traveling criminal is involved."

He decided to evade the question for the moment. "I was in the warehouse when those guys brought you in," he said. "I heard you call him Mr. Temple. Do you know who he is?"

"Do you?"

He resisted the urge to shrug. "Sort of. His name isn't Temple. It's Tempus. He's a criminal."

"I figured that part out," she said. "What were you doing there ... and how did we get here?"

"I saw him haul you into that machine of his," Clark said. "I tried to get to you before he started it up, but I'm afraid I didn't quite make it."

She was staring at him. "What were you doing there?"

Clark shrugged. "I was looking for you."

Again the wary look. "Why?"

"I'd had information you were in danger. My name is Clark Kent."

She studied him, still with that wary expression, but seemed to shelve the obvious follow-up questions for the moment. "How did we get here?"

"If I told you, I don't think you'd believe me," he said. "That machine of his is something straight out of Star Trek."

He was doing something that he'd almost lost hope of ever doing again -- flying with Lois Lane held securely in his arms, and this time it was a Lois Lane who was free; the Lois Lane of his own universe; the Lois that was meant for *him*.

Of course, she didn't know that, or anything else about him, and telling her that would almost certainly come across the wrong way. If he had learned anything about her from the other Lois and from what he had been told of her by others, Lois Lane depended on no one, and the very thought of anyone -- or anything, even Fate itself -- directing the course of her life was likely to cause her to declare war. No, he was going to have to go about this with extreme caution.

"Assuming he does find us, of course," Lois said. "I don't suppose you have the stuff you need to build a time machine, do you?"

He shook his head regretfully. "I'm afraid not."

"That's what I was afraid of," Lois said. She sighed. "Oh well. At least I'm alive, and that's a lot better than the alternative."

"I guess not." She had turned to look at him again. "You know," she said with forced lightness, "it isn't really fair."

"What isn't?"

"That you know so much about me and I don't know anything about you except your name, and a little of what you can do. Tell me about yourself."