ingness.

"Are you in your right mind?" I asked slowly. "Your question strikes
me as damnably odd, sir."

The man laughed wildly, and slowly straightened up in the chair. His
long, bony fingers clasped and unclasped slowly, as though feeling
were just returning to them.

"Your question," he replied in his odd, unfamiliar accent, "is not
unnatural, under the circumstances. I assure you that I am of sound
mind; of very sound mind." He smiled, rather a ghastly smile, and made
a vague, slight gesture with one hand. "Will you be good enough to
answer my question? What year is this?"

"Earth year, you mean?"

He stared at me, his eyes flickering.

"Yes," he said. "Earth year. There are other ways of ... figuring time
now?"

"Certainly. Each inhabited world has its own system. There is a master
system for the Universe. Who are you, what are you, that you should
ask me a question the smallest child should know?"

"First," he insisted, "tell me what year this is, Earth reckoning."

I told him, and the light flickered up in his eyes again--a cruel,
triumphant light.

"Thank you," he nodded; and then, slowly and softly, as though he
spoke to himself, he added, "Less than half a century off. Less than a
half a century! And they laughed at me. How--how I shall laugh at
them, presently!"

"You choose to be mysterious, sir?" I asked impatiently.

"No. Presently you shall understand, and then you will forgive me, I
know. I have come through an experience such as no man has ever known
before. If I am shaken, weak, surprising to you, it is because of that
experience."

* * * * *

He paused for a moment, his long, powerful fingers gripping the arms
of the chair.

"You see," he added, "I have come out of the past into the present. Or
from the present into the future. It depends upon one's viewpoint. If
I am distraught, then forgive me. A few minutes ago, I was Jacob
Harbauer, in a little laboratory on the edge of a mountain park, near
Denver; now I am a nameless being hurtled into the future, pausing
here, many centuries from my own era. Do you wonder now that I am
unnerved?"

"Do you mean," I said slowly, trying to understand what he had babbled
forth, "that you have come out of the past? That you ... that you...."
It was too monstrous to put into words.

"I mean," he replied, "that I was born in the year 2028. I am
forty-three years old--or I was a few minutes ago. But,"--and his eye