"If you saw yourself as a boy of ten, suddenly, without warning, would you recognize yourself? Maybe some men would. If you looked at yourself a lot in a mirror when you were growing up--or kept photographs of yourself, carefully preserved in an old album, you might not have any trouble. Right off you might hear yourself muttering, 'Why, that's _me_!' "But I had trouble. The kid's face was just enough like my own to give me a start. But I couldn't really place it--couldn't remember where I had seen it before. "Then the kid spoke. 'I--I thought you were Pops! But you're not! He's older! Where am I? How did I get here?' * * * * * "The voice did something to me. You get a chance to hear yourself talking a lot when you're knee-high to a grasshopper. And I had no kids of my own! But my own father had looked enough like me to be my twin brother, and if this kid thought I was his dad-- "It hit me between the eyes--and like a voice screaming at me through a blur of spinning suns! "I was staring at myself as I had been long ago--and no tracks made by a dead man in a bog could have been more nerve-shattering. "He wasn't even a poor little kid in a desperate plight, because you can't feel paternal about yourself! He was a tormented ghost out of the past, and for an instant I had an impulse to blame him and rail at him for returning to torture me. "But I'm not a cruel man, deep down, and that crazy impulse passed quickly. He was a poor little lost cuss, even if he _was_ myself, and all my sympathy went out to him. "I even forgot for a moment how insane the whole thing was. He was gasping for breath, so I put the helmet back on, and gave the oxygen tube a double twist to straighten it out. But an instant before the helmet descended over his mouth he managed to stammer, 'I was up in the attic playing--' "Playing 'Pirate's den!' I had spent the happiest years of my boyhood in the attic, pretending I was Captain Kidd, or climbing out on the tree that arched over our house when the December snows weighed it down, and making myself out to be in the crow's nest of an arctic windjammer! "As I swayed there beside myself my mind followed crazy-paved paths in all directions. Great chunks of the past seemed to float before me--like icebergs nine-tenths submerged. "But all the while the sanest part of my mind was seeking an explanation that would one-tenth explain it! I gripped my own boy-self by the shoulder to make sure he'd stay solid until the man he'd become could get a mental toe-hold on the problem. "If you can persuade a man to mount a stepladder and plant himself firmly on the air you've taken your first brave step into the unknown. The poor devil may or may not fall. But at least you've made a start in the right direction.