Yet I fear it is a hopeless search. There is so much of fancy in these little books, so little simple fact. Had but _one_ of those imaginative writers of years ago thought to include in one of his stories that which must have been, to him, a commonplace formula--that for chlorophyll--I could yet do that which Mallory demanded of me. Here we are rich with ores, the soil teems with every element known to man. We have a well-equipped laboratory, we could synthesize _anything_. But we cannot create this "chlorophyll" because we do not know what it is, nor what elements combine to form it. Hope dwindles as I read. There remains but one more slim pile of magazines before me. If the answer is not in one of them, then we must perish. I turn pleading eyes to the past, to the year 1940, before I was born. But there is no one to hear my plea. Unless, in one of these remaining-- (_Here the manuscript ends._) * * * * * POSTSCRIPT Common sense tells me there can be little doubt but that this "manuscript," purported to be written by one Brian O'Shea, a soldier in the Army of the Democracies in the year 1963, A.D., is a deliberate and painstaking hoax. Who is responsible for it, I cannot begin to guess. Somehow I can't bring myself to believe that Dr. Edgar Winslow (whom I have investigated and found to be exactly what he claimed, a fellow in the psychology department of one of our nearby Southern universities) would lend himself to such a fantastic trick. But it is hard to believe, also, that Winslow could and did achieve the perfect telaesthetic rapport evidenced by the foregoing pages. But--there was an earnestness about Winslow that stirred me strangely. He did not have the air of a man perpetrating a fraud. He asked me, you will remember, to "play the game of caution," even if I did not believe that which I found in the manuscript. I should, perhaps, dismiss the whole thing with a shrug; heave the "story" back at Winslow with the advice that if he wants to become a science-fiction writer he should do so honestly, not try to insinuate his way into print on the byline of another. Yet--it is a queer manuscript. It is quiet here in Roanoke today. As I write, I look from my office windows to see the rolling hills, now sweet-breasted with fresh green, misted with the soft white of dogwood. The sky is blue and clear, the sun a warm beneficence. Still, the morning papers tell of the desperate plight of the Allies. Again they have lost ground to a grim, mechanized Totalitarian army. Finland, Norway, Belgium, Holland,--the list grows. Mussolini has sent his restless legions to battle; Japan makes overt gestures toward the Indies. Russia, the patient bear, crouches in the north, watches ... and waits.... I don't know. I honestly don't know. The manuscript is probably a hoax. And yet ... and yet....