The policeman got to his feet. "Jimmy," he said, "Jimmy Tremaine." He came to the counter and put out his hand. "How are you, Jimmy? What brings you back to the boondocks?" "Let's go somewhere and sit down, Jess." In a back room Tremaine said, "To everybody but you this is just a visit to the old home town. Between us, there's more." Jess nodded. "I heard you were with the guv'ment." "It won't take long to tell; we don't know much yet." Tremaine covered the discovery of the powerful unidentified interference on the high-security hyperwave band, the discovery that each transmission produced not one but a pattern of "fixes" on the point of origin. He passed a sheet of paper across the table. It showed a set of concentric circles, overlapped by a similar group of rings. "I think what we're getting is an echo effect from each of these points of intersection. The rings themselves represent the diffraction pattern--" "Hold it, Jimmy. To me it just looks like a beer ad. I'll take your word for it." "The point is this, Jess: we think we've got it narrowed down to this section. I'm not sure of a damn thing, but I think that transmitter's near here. Now, have you got any ideas?" "That's a tough one, Jimmy. This is where I should come up with the news that Old Man Whatchamacallit's got an attic full of gear he says is a time machine. Trouble is, folks around here haven't even taken to TV. They figure we should be content with radio, like the Lord intended." "I didn't expect any easy answers, Jess. But I was hoping maybe you had something ..." "Course," said Jess, "there's always Mr. Bram ..." "Mr. Bram," repeated Tremaine. "Is he still around? I remember him as a hundred years old when I was kid." "Still just the same, Jimmy. Comes in town maybe once a week, buys his groceries and hikes back out to his place by the river." "Well, what about him?" "Nothing. But he's the town's mystery man. You know that. A little touched in the head." "There were a lot of funny stories about him, I remember," Tremaine said. "I always liked him. One time he tried to teach me something I've forgotten. Wanted me to come out to his place and he'd teach me. I never did go. We kids used to play in the caves near his place, and sometimes he gave us apples." * * * * * "I've never seen any harm in Bram," said Jess. "But you know how this town is about foreigners, especially when they're a mite addled. Bram has blue eyes and blond hair--or did before it turned white--and he talks just like everybody else. From a distance he seems just like an ordinary American. But up close, you feel it. He's foreign, all right. But we never did know where he came from." "How long's he lived here in Elsby?"