There stepped out a man in a uniform of pale blue, having insewn upon the breast a piece of white linen, cut to the shape of a swan. He came toward me with hesitancy, and stood over me, staring at me and at my clothes with an expression indicative of the greatest bewilderment. “Where’s your brass, friend?” he inquired after a few moments, speaking in a high-pitched, monotonous, and rather nasal tone. He rubbed his smooth-shaven face in thought. “Where’s your brass?” he repeated. I perceived that he wore about his neck a twisted cord whose ends were tied through the loop of a brass plate, stamped with letters and figures. “For God’s sake tell me what year this is!” I cried. At the profane expletive, which had been drawn from me by my anguish, he recoiled in dismay; he seemed less shocked than frightened; he glanced about him quickly, and then cast a very searching look at me. But next he began to smile in a half-humorous, kindly way. “You’re one of the escaped defectives, aren’t you?” he inquired. “You have nothing to fear from me, friend. We airplane scouts have no love for the Guard. You can go on your way. But where are you lying up? Are your friends near?” “Will you tell me what year this is?” I demanded frantically. “Yap, certainly,” he answered. “This is Thirty-seven, Cold Solstice less five.” He shook his head and began staring at me again. I laughed hysterically. “I don’t know what that jargon means,” I answered, “but I went to sleep in the vault of the Biological Institute in the year 1915.” Perplexity had succeeded alarm. The airscout shook his head again. He was one of those deliberate, slow-moving men whose resolutions, tardily made, harden to inflexibility; I recognized the type and found the individual pleasing. He was a good-looking young fellow of about eight and twenty, with straight, dark hair and a very frank countenance. He looked like a sailor, and the rolling, open collar, which fell back, sailor fashion, revealed a muscular throat, tanned, like his face, to the color of the bricks around us. “I don’t know what to make of you,” he said thoughtfully. “I don’t want to trap you, but you were better off in the art factories. I don’t know what to do with you.” I sprang to my feet, and for an instant I ceased to realize my predicament. “Will you take me to my friends in London?” I asked. In my mind was the memory of a university acquaintance who lived in St. John’s Wood. But then the swift remembrance came back to me, and I hung my head and groaned. “Back to London!” exclaimed the airscout. “But you’ll be put to the leather vats. Doctor Sanson is furious, and the police are searching for you everywhere. You’re crazed! What’s the sense of running away from painting pictures and going back to sweat ten years over the hides?” “Take me to London!” I implored. “I have nowhere to go. Perhaps—I don’t know—”