"More," he whispered. He drank the second glass more slowly, his eyes darting swiftly, curiously, around the room. Then his brilliant, piercing glance fell upon my face. "Tell me," he commanded sharply, "what year is this?" * * * * * I stared at him. It occurred to me that my friends might have conceived and executed an elaborate hoax--and then I dismissed the idea, instantly. There were no scientists among them who could make a man materialize out of nothingness. "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.