“We change our money here,” David explained. “Purchases of more than half a hektone are made on the credit system. Our brasses are identification checks. The district clearing-house keeps the complete record of each citizen’s financial status.” I had expected to see all the products of the world spread out within. I found, instead, only a single sample of each kind of merchandise, the goods themselves being stored in warehouses. Seeing an excellent blue overcoat of fine cheviot, I paid thirty ones for it, and David ordered a similar coat to be sent to me at the Strangers’ House. “Watch the street!” he said, as we emerged. I perceived the passengers scrambling off the moving portion of the roadway. A moment later the track began to travel in the opposite direction. “We reverse our streets according to the stream of travel,” said David. “The mechanism is controlled by solar power, transmitted from the Vosges.” We journeyed for some five and twenty minutes by the new reckoning—what would have been a quarter of an hour. We changed streets frequently, and it seemed to me, although I could not be sure of it, that David purposely selected a roundabout route. At length, we stopped in front of a large building of the uniform height and style. Upon the front was sculptured a man in a laborer’s blouse with a protecting hand laid upon the head of one who cowered before him—presumably the stranger. “I shall take you in by the basement and internal elevator,” said David, “so as to give you a glimpse of our traffic system.” We had passed numbers of subway entrances, with gentle ramps descending into clean, white-walled passages, along which I had seen an endless series of trucks proceeding on single rails. Beneath the Strangers’ House I saw the termination of a branch line; and, as we stood watching, a porter in blue seized a small truck which had detached itself from the rail, and, with a slight push, sent it spinning into a goods elevator. “Gyroscopic action,” explained David. “Above this is the House kitchen, connecting with the district sub-kitchen by means of a two-foot tube.” And every now and then he would stop in the midst of his explanations and cast that searching look at me, as if to inquire whether I could be ignorant of all this. We stepped into an elevator, David pressed a button, and the cage shot up to the top story. Opposite us was a door with a bell at the side, as in the old-fashioned apartment. David rang, and the door opened, revealing a girl about eighteen years of age, who looked at me with parted lips and an expression that was unmistakably fear. “Arnold, this is my daughter Elizabeth,” said David, kissing her. “Arnold is under our special care,” he continued. “He comes from a very distant city outside the Federation, and is waiting to be ascribed. He knows no more about civilization than if he had just awakened after a sleep of a century.”