chunk of H. V. Kaltenborn raising hell in your subconscious."

"It wasn't just World War III; it was everything. My four years at high
school, and my four years at Penn State, and my seven years as a
reporter on the Philadelphia Record. And my novels: '_Children of the
Mist_,' '_Rose of Death_,' '_Conqueror's Road_.' They were no kid stuff.
Why, yesterday I'd never even have thought of some of the ideas I used
in my detective stories, that I published under a _nom-de-plume_. And my
hobby, chemistry; I was pretty good at that. Patented a couple of
processes that made me as much money as my writing. You think a
thirteen-year-old just dreamed all that up? Or, here; you speak French,
don't you?" He switched languages and spoke at some length in good
conversational slang-spiced Parisian. "Too bad you don't speak Spanish,
too," he added, reverting to English. "Except for a Mexican accent you
could cut with a machete, I'm even better there than in French. And I
know some German, and a little Russian."

* * * * *

Blake Hartley was staring at his son, stunned. It was some time before
he could make himself speak.

"I could barely keep up with you, in French," he admitted. "I can swear
that in the last thirteen years of your life, you had absolutely no
chance to learn it. All right; you lived till 1975, you say. Then, all
of a sudden, you found yourself back here, thirteen years old, in 1945.
I suppose you remember everything in between?" he asked. "Did you ever
read James Branch Cabell? Remember Florian de Puysange, in 'The High
Place'?"

"Yes. You find the same idea in 'Jurgen' too," Allan said. "You know,
I'm beginning to wonder if Cabell mightn't have known something he
didn't want to write."

"But it's impossible!" Blake Hartley hit the table with his hand, so
hard that the heavy pistol bounced. The loose round he had ejected from
the chamber toppled over and started to roll, falling off the edge. He
stooped and picked it up. "How can you go back, against time? And the
time you claim you came from doesn't exist, now; it hasn't happened
yet." He reached for the pistol magazine, to insert the cartridge, and
as he did, he saw the books in front of his son. "Dunne's 'Experiment
with Time,'" he commented. "And J. N. M. Tyrrell's 'Science and
Psychical Phenomena.' Are you trying to work out a theory?"

"Yes." It encouraged Allan to see that his father had unconsciously
adopted an adult-to-ad