What year is this now, my friend?' he asked me.

"I found voice to answer. 'Surely, sirs, whoever you be, you know that
this is the year fourteen hundred and forty-four,' I said.

"That set them off again into a babble of excited talk, of which I could
make out only a word here and there. They lifted me up, seeing how sick
and weak I felt, and seated me in a strange, but very comfortable chair.
I felt dazed. The two were still talking excitedly, but finally the
white-bearded one, Rastin, turned to me. He spoke to me, very slowly, so
that I understood him clearly, and he asked me my name. I told him.

"'Henri Lothiere,' he repeated. 'Well, Henri, you must try to
understand. You are not now in the year 1444. You are five hundred years
in the future, or what would seem to you the future. This is the year
1944.'

"'And Rastin and I have jerked you out of your own time across five
solid centuries,' said the other, grinning.

"I looked from one to the other. 'Messieurs,' I pleaded, and Rastin
shook his head.

"'He does not believe,' he said to the other. Then to me, 'Where were
you just before you found yourself here, Henri?' he asked.

"'In a field at the outskirts of Paris,' I said.

"'Well, look from that window and see if you still believe yourself in
your 15th-century Paris.'

* * * * *

"I went to the window. I looked out. Mother of God, what a sight before
my eyes! The familiar gray little houses, the open fields behind them,
the saunterers in the dirt streets--all these were gone and it was a new
and terrible city that lay about me! Its broad streets were of stone and
great buildings of many levels rose on either side of them. Great
numbers of people, dressed like the two beside me, moved in the streets
and also strange vehicles or carriages, undrawn by horse or ox, that
rushed to and fro at undreamed-of speed! I staggered back to the chair.

"'You believe now, Henri?' asked the whitebeard, Rastin, kindly enough,
and I nodded weakly. My brain was whirling.

"He pointed to the circle of metal on the floor and the machines around
the room. 'Those are what we used to jerk you from your own time to this
one,' he said.

"'But how, sirs?' I asked. 'For the love of God, how is it that you can
take me from one time to another? Have ye become gods or devils?'

"'Neither the one nor the other, Henri,' he answered. 'We are simply
scientists, physicists--men who want to know as much