THE MAN WHO AWOKE

by Laurence Manning

It was in all the newspapers for the entire month of September. Reports came in from such out-of-the-way places as Venezuela and Monte Carlo: “MISSING BANKER FOUND.” But such reports always proved false. The disappearance of Norman Winters was at last given up as one of those mysteries that can only be solved by the great detectives Time and Chance. His description was broadcast from one end of the civilized world to the other: Five feet eleven inches tall; brown hair; grayish dark eyes; aquiline nose; fair complexion; age forty-six; hobbies: history and biology; distinguishing marks: a small mole set at the corner of the right nostril.

His son could spare little time for search, for just a month before his disappearance Winters had practically retired from active affairs and left their direction to his son’s capable hands. There was no clue as to motive, for he had absolutely no enemies and possessed a great deal of money with which to indulge his dilettante scientific hobbies.

By October only the highly paid detective bureau that his son employed gave the vanished man any further thought. Snow came early that year in the Westchester suburb where the Winters estate lay and it covered the ground with a blanket of white. In the hills across the Hudson the bears had hibernated and lay sleeping under their earthen and icy blanket.

In the pond on the estate the frogs had vanished from sight and lay hidden in the mud at the bottom—a very miracle in suspended animation for biologists to puzzle over. The world went on about its winter business and gave up the vanished banker for lost. The frogs might have given them a clue—or the bears.

But even stranger than these was the real hiding place of Norman Winters. Fifty feet beneath the frozen earth he lay in a hollow chamber a dozen feet across. He was curled up on soft eiderdown piled five feet deep and his eyes were shut in the darkness of absolute night and in utter quiet. During October his heart beat slowly and gently and his breast, had there been light to see by, might have been observed to rise and fall very slightly. By November these signs of life no longer existed in the motionless figure.

The weeks sped by and the snow melted. The bears came hungrily out of winter quarters and set about restoring their wasted tissues. The frogs made the first warm nights of spring melodious to nature-lovers and hideous to light sleepers.

But Norman Winters did not rise from his sleep with these vernal harbingers. Still—deathly still—lay his body and the features were waxy white. There was no decay and the flesh was clean and fresh. No frost penetrated to this great depth; but the chamber was much warmer than this mere statement would indicate. Definite warmth came from a closed box in one corner and had come from it all the winter. From the top of the chamber wall a heavy leaden pipe came through the wall from the living rock beyond and led down to this closed box. Another similar pipe led out from it and down through the floor. Above the box was a dial like a clockface in appearance. Figures on it read in thousands from one to one hundred and a hand pointed to slightly below the two thousand mark.

Two platinum wires ran from the box over to the still figure on its piled couch and ended in golden bands—one around one wrist and one circling the opposite ankle. By his side stood a cabinet of carved stone—shut and mysterious as anything in that chamber. But no light was here to see by, only darkness; the black of eternal night; the groping stifling darkness of the tomb. Here was no cheering life-giving radiation of any land. The unchanging leaden metal sealed in the air from which the dust had settled completely, as it never does on the surface of our world, and had left it as pure and motionless as crystal—and as lifeless. For without change and motion there can be no life. A faint odor remained in the atmosphere of some disinfectant, as though not even bacteria had been permitted to exist in this place of death.

* * * *

At the end of a month Vincent Winters (the son of the missing man) made a thorough examination of all the facts and possible clues that the detectives had brought to light bearing upon his father’s disappearance. They amounted to very little. On a Friday, September 8th, his father had spent the day on his estate; he had dinner alone, read awhile in the library, had written a letter or two and retired to his bedroom early. The next morning he had failed to put in an appearance for breakfast and Dibbs the butler, after investigating, reported that his bed had not been slept in. The servants had, of course, all been minutely questioned even though their characters were such as almost to preclude suspicion. One only—and he the oldest and most loyal of them all—had acted and spoken in answer to questions in a fashion that aroused the curiosity of Vincent Winters. This man was Carstairs, the gardener—a tall ungainly Englishman with a long sad-looking face. He had been for twelve years in the employ of Mr. Winters.

On Friday night, about midnight, he had been seen entering his cottage with two shovels over his shoulder—itself, perhaps, not an incriminating circumstance, but his explanation lacked credibility: he had, he said, been digging in the garden.

“But why two shovels, Carstairs?” asked Vincent for the hundredth time and received the same unvarying answer: “I’d mislaid one shovel earlier in the day and went and got another. Then I found the first as I started home.”

Vincent rose to his feet restlessly.

“Come,” he said, “show me the place you were digging.”

And Carstairs paled slightly and shook his head.

“What, man! You refuse?”

“I’m sorry, Mr. Vincent. Yes, I must refuse to show you . . . that.”

There were a few moments of silence in the room. Vincent sighed.

“Well, Carstairs, you leave me no choice. You are almost an institution on this place; my boyhood memories of the estate are full of pictures of you. But I shall have to turn you over to the police just the same,” and he stared with hardening eyes at the old servitor.

The man started visibly and opened his mouth as if to speak, but closed it again with true British obstinacy. Not until Vincent had turned and picked up the telephone did he speak.

“Stop, Mr. Vincent.”

Vincent turned in his chair to look at him, the receiver in his hand.

“I cannot show you the place I was digging, for Mr. Winters ordered me not to show it to anyone.”

“You surely don’t expect me to believe that!”

“You will still insist?”

“Most assuredly!”

“Then I have no choice. In case it were absolutely necessary to do so, I was to tell you these words. ‘Steubenaur on Metabolism.’”

“What on earth does that mean?”

“I was not informed, sir.”

“You mean my father told you to say that if you were suspected of his ... er ... of being connected with his disappearance?”

The gardener nodded without speaking.

* * * *

“H’m . . . sounds like the name of a book . . .” and Vincent went into the library and consulted the neatly arranged card catalog. There was the book, right enough, an old brown leather volume in the biological section. As Vincent opened it wonderingly an envelope fell out and onto the floor.

He pounced upon this and found it addressed to himself in his father’s handwriting. With trembling anxious fingers he opened and read:

“My dear son:

“It would be better, perhaps, if you were never to read this. But it is a necessary precaution. Carstairs may in some unforseen way be connected with my disappearance. I anticipate this possibility because it is true. He has in very fact helped me disappear and at my own orders. He obeyed these orders with tears and expostulation and was to the very end just what he has always been—a good and devoted servant. Please see that he is never in want.

“The discovery and investigation of the so-called ‘cosmic’ rays was of the greatest interest to us biologists, my son. Life is a chemical reaction consisting fundamentally in the constant, tireless breaking up of organic molecules and their continual replacement by fresh structures formed from the substance of the food we eat. Lifeless matter is comparatively changeless. A diamond crystal, for instance, is composed of molecules which do not break up readily. There is no change—no life—going on in it. Organic molecules and cells are termed ‘unstable,’ but why they should be so was neither properly understood nor explained until cosmic rays were discovered. Then we suspected the truth: The bombardment of living tissue by these minute high-speed particles caused that constant changing of detail which we term ‘life.’

“Can you guess now the nature of my experiment? For three years I worked on my idea. Herkimer of Johns Hopkins helped me with the drug I shall use and Mortimer of Harvard worked out my ray-screen requirements. But neither one knew what my purpose might be in the investigations. Radiation cannot penetrate six feet of lead buried far beneath the ground. During the past year I have constructed, with Carstairs’ help, just such a shielded chamber on my estate. Tonight I shall descend into it and Carstairs shall fill in the earth over the tunnel entrance and plant sod over the earth so that it can never be found.

“Down in my lead-walled room I shall drink my special drug and fall into a coma which would on the surface of the earth last (at most) a few hours. But down there, shielded from all change, I shall never wake until I am again subjected to radiation. A powerful X-ray bulb is connected and set in the wall and upon the elapse of my alloted time this will light, operated by the power generated from a subterranean stream I have piped through my chamber.

“The X-ray radiation will, I hope, awaken me from my long sleep and I shall arise and climb up through the tunnel to the world above. And I shall see with these two eyes the glory of the world that is to be when Mankind has risen on the steppingstones of science to its great destiny.

“Do not try to find me! You will marry and forget me in your new interests. As you know, I have turned over to you my entire wealth. You wondered why at the time. Now you know. By all means marry. Have healthy children. I shall see your descendants in the future, I hope, although I travel very far in time: One hundred and twenty generations will have lived and died when I awaken and the Winters blood will have had time to spread throughout the entire world.

“Oh my son, I can hardly wait! It is nine o’clock now and I must get started upon my adventure! The call is stronger than the ties of blood. When I awaken you will have been dead three thousand years, Vincent. I shall never see you again. Farewell, my son! Farewell!”

* * * *

And so the disappearance of Norman Winters passed into minor history. The detective agency made its final report and received its last check with regret. Vincent Winters married the next year and took up his residence upon his father’s estate. Carstairs aged rapidly and was provided with strong young assistants to carry on the work of the place. He approached Vincent one day, years later, and made the request that he might be buried on the estate at the foot of the mound covered with hemlock and rhododendrons. Vincent laughed at the suggestion and assured him that he would live many a year yet, but the old gardener was dead within a year and Vincent had the tomb dug rather deeper than is usual, peering often over the shoulder of the laborer into the depth of the grave. But he saw nothing there except earth and stones. He erected a heavy flat slab of reinforced concrete on the spot.

“Most peculiar, if you ask me,” said old Dibbs to the housekeeper. “It’s almost as if Mr. Vincent wanted Carstairs’ stone to last a thousand years. Why, they cut the letters six inches deep in it!”

In due time Vincent Winters himself died and was buried beside the gardener at his earnest request. There remained no one on the earth who remembered Norman Winters.

* * * *

CHAPTER II

Awakening—in What Year?

It was night and great blue sheets of flame lit the sky with a ghastly glare. Suddenly a blinding flash enveloped him—he felt a million shooting pains in every limb—he was lying on the ground helpless and suffering —he fell into a brief unconsciousness.

A dozen times he awakened and each time he shrieked with the pain in his whole body and opened his eyes upon a small room lit by a penetrating blue electric bulb. Numberless times he tried to move his right hand to shield his eyes but found he could not force his muscles to obey his will. Days must have passed, as he lay there, with sweat dotting his brow with the effort, and finally one day his hand moved up slowly. He lay a full minute recovering. He did not know where he was. Then from the depths of infinity a little memory came into his dulled brain; a memory with a nameless joy in it. And slowly his surroundings struck new meaning and a vast thrill coursed through him. He was awake! Had he succeeded? Was he really alive in the distant future?

He lay quiet a moment letting the great fact of his awakening sink in. His eyes turned to the stone cabinet beside his couch. Slowly his hand reached out and pulled softly at the handle and a compartment on the level of his face revealed two bottles of yellowish liquor. With gasping effort he reached one and dragged it over to him, succeeding in spilling a little of its contents but also in getting a mouthful which he swallowed. Then he lay quietly a full half hour, eyes purposefully shut and lips tightly pressed together in the agony of awakened animation, while the medicine he had taken coursed through his veins like fire and set nerves a-tingling in arms and legs and (finally) in very fingertips and toes.

When he again opened his eyes he was weak but otherwise normal. The stone cabinet now yielded concentrated meat lozenges from a metal box and he partook very sparingly from the second bottle of liquid. Then he swung his legs down from the eiderdown couch, now tight-compressed from its original five feet to a bare two feet of depth by his age-long weight, and crossed the chamber to the clock.

“Five thousand!” he read breathlessly, clasping his thin hands together in delight. But could it be true? He must get outside! He reached down to a valve in the leaden piping and filled a glass tumbler with cold water which he drank greedily and refilled and drank again. He looked about curiously to note the changes time had produced on his chamber, but he had planned well and little or nothing had deteriorated.

The lead pipe was coated with a few tiny cracks in its surface and particles of white dust lay in them, where the cold water had gathered the moisture of the air by condensation. But this could not have been helped, for the stream of water through this pipe was all that kept the tiny generator turning—that made possible the heated chamber and the final blaze of the specially constructed X-ray lamp that now filled his whole being with its life-restoring radiations.

Winters removed the cover from the power box and examined the motor and generator with great care. The chromium metal parts and the jewelled bearings showed no slightest sign of wear. Did that mean that only a few years had elapsed? He doubted his clock’s accuracy. He replaced the covering and brushed off his hands, for everything was coated with dusty sediment. Next, Winters examined the heat elements and placed a glass container of water upon them to heat. With more of his meat concentrate he made a hot soup and drank it thankfully.

Now he went eagerly to the door in the lead wall and pulled at the locking lever. It resisted and he pulled harder, finally exerting all the strength he had in the effort. It was useless. The door was immovable! He leaned against it a moment, panting, then stooped and scrutinized the door-jamb. With a chill of dread he observed that the leaden chamberwall had become coated at the crack with a fine white dust. It had rusted the door into place! Had he awakened only to die here like a rat in a trap?

In his weakened condition he felt despair creep over his body and mind helplessly. He again sank back on his couch and stared desperately at the door. It was hours before the simple solution to his difficulties occurred to him. The locking lever—of course! It was of stainless steel and held to the door only by one bolt. A matter of a dozen turns loosened the nut on this bolt and the lever came away freely in his hands.

With this bar of stout metal as a crowbar he easily pried into the soft lead wall beside the door-jamb and, obtaining a fulcrum, put his frail weight on the end of the lever. The door gave inward an inch! In a few minutes his efforts were rewarded. The door groaned protestingly as it swung open and Winters looked up the ancient stone steps, half-lit by the room’s illumination. But in the open doorway a chill draft blew on his ragged and time-tattered garments and he went back to the chamber and commenced unscrewing a circular cover set into the wall.

It came away heavily with a hiss of air, for it had enclosed a near-vacuum, and Winters pulled out clothes neatly folded. He was relieved to find a leather jacket still strong and perfect. It had been well oiled and was as supple as new. Some woolen things had not fared so well, but stout corduroy breeches of linen fibre seemed well preserved and he put these on. A tightly covered crock of glass filled with oil yielded up a pistol designed to shoot lead bullets under compressed air and a neat roll of simple tools: a small saw, a file, a knife and a hand-axe. These he thrust into the waist-band of his breeches, which had been slit around the belt to accommodate them.

Now with a last look around, Norman Winters started up the steps, guided only by the light from the chamber behind. He stumbled over fallen stones and drifted earth as he climbed and at the top came to a mat of tree-roots sealing him in. And now the axe was wielded delicately by those enfeebled arms and many minutes passed in severing one small piece at a time. The cap-stone which had originally covered the tunnel had been split and pressed to one side by the force of the growing tree and after the third large root had been severed a small cascade of earth and pebbles let down on him a blazing flood of sunlight.

He paused and forced himself to return to his chamber; filled a glass bottle with water and slung it to his belt; put a handful of concentrated food in his pocket, and left the chamber for good, closing the door behind him and turning off the light.

It took a few minutes only to squeeze his head and shoulders through the opening between the roots and he looked about him with pounding heart.

But what was this? He was in the middle of a forest!

* * * *

Upon all sides stretched the trees—great sky-thrusting boles with here and there a clump of lesser growth, but set so evenly and spaced so regularly as to betray human oversight. The ground was softly deep in dead leaves and over them trailed a motley of vine-like plants. Winters recognized a cranberry vine and the bright wintergreen berries among many others he did not know. A pleasant sort of forest, he decided, and he set off rather hesitantly through the trees to see what he could find, his mind full of speculations as to how long it must have taken these trees to grow. To judge from the warmth it must be about noon of a midsummer’s day but what year? Certainly many of the trees were over 100 years old!

He had not progressed more than a hundred yards before he came upon a clearing ahead and, passing beyond a fringe of shrubs he came into full view of a great highway. North and south it stretched and he stamped his feet upon the strange hard surface of green glass-like material. It was smooth in texture and extraordinarily straight and level. For miles he could look in both directions but, gaze as he might, no slightest sign of buildings could he detect.

Here was a poser indeed, where had the suburbs of New York gone? Had even New York itself joined the lost legion in limbo? Winters stood in indecision and finally started tramping northward along the road. About a mile further along had once been the town of White Plains. It was nearby and, even if no longer in existence, would make as good a starting point as any. His pace was slow, but the fresh air and bright sunshine set the blood coursing through his veins and he went faster as he felt his strength returning with each step. He had gone half an hour and seen no sign of human habitation when a man came out upon the glass roadway a hundred yards ahead of him. He was dressed in red and russet and held one hand over his eyes, peering at Winters, who hesitated and then continued to approach with a wild thrill surging through his veins.

The man seemed in some vague way different. His skin was dark and tanned; features full and rounded; and eyes (Winters observed as he got nearer) a soft brown. The supple body seemed alert and exuded the very breath of health, yet it was indefinably sensuous and indolent—graceful in movement. He could not for the life of him decide even what race this man of the future represented; perhaps he was a mixture of many. Then the man made a curious gesture with his left hand—a sort of circle waved in the air. Winters was puzzled, but believing it was meant for greeting imitated it awkwardly.

“Wassum! You have chosen a slow way to travel!”

“I am in no hurry,” replied Winters, determined to learn all he could before saying anything himself. He had to repress his natural emotions of excitement and joy. He felt an urge to shout aloud and hug this stranger in his arms.

“Have you come far?”

“I have been travelling for years.”

“Come with me and I will take you to our orig. No doubt you will want food and drink and walling.” The words were drawled and his walk was slow: so much so that Winters felt a slight impatience. He was to feel this constantly among these people of the future.

The surprising thing, when he came to think about it, was that the man’s speech was plain English, for which he was thankful. There were new words, of course, and the accent was strange in his ears—a tang of European broad As and positively continental Rs. He was wondering if radio and recorded speech had been the causes of this persistence of the old tongue when they came to a pleasant clearing lined with two-story houses of shiny brown. The walls were smooth as if welded whole from some composition plastic. But when he entered a house behind his guide he perceived that the entire wall admitted light translucently from outside and tiny windows were placed here and there purely for observation and air. He had little time to look around, for a huge dark man was eyeing him beneath bushy gray eyebrows.

“A stranger who came on foot,” said his guide and (to Winters) “Our chief Forester.” Then he turned abruptly and left them together, without the slightest indication of curiosity.

“Wassum, stranger! Where is your orig?” asked the Forester.

“My orig? I don’t understand.”

“Why, your village of course!”

“I have none.”

“What! A trogling?”

“I don’t understand.”

“A wild man—a herman—don’t you understand human speech?”

“Where I come from there were several forms of human speech, sir.”

“What is this? Since the dawn of civilization two thousand years ago there has been one common speech throughout the world!”

Winters made an excited mental note of the date. Two thousand years then, at the least, had elapsed since he entered his sleeping chamber!

“I have come to learn, sir. I should like to spend several days in your village observing your life in ... er ... an elementary sort of way. For instance, how do you obtain your food here in the middle of a forest. I saw no farms or fields nearby.”

“You are wassum to the walling, but farms—what are they? And fields! You will travel many a mile before you find a field near here, thanks to our ancestors! We are well planted in fine forests.”

“But your food?”

The Forester raised his eyebrows. “Food—I have just said we have fine forests, a hundred square kilos of them—food and to spare! Did you walk with your eyes shut?”

“Where I come from we were not used to finding food in forests, exactly. What sort of food do you get from them—remember I said I wanted elementary information, sir.”

“Elementary indeed! Our chestnut flour for baking, naturally, our dessert nuts and our vegetables, like the locust bean, the Keawe, the Catalpea and a dozen others—all the food a man could desire. Then the felled logs bear their crops of mushrooms—we have a famous strain of beefsteak mushroom in this orig. And of course the mast-fattened swine for bacon and winter-fats and the pitch pines for engine oils—the usual forest crops. How can it be that you are ignorant of the everyday things which even schoolboys know?”

“Mine is a strange story, sir,” replied Winters. “Tell me what I ask and I will tell you later anything you want to know about myself. Tell me things as though I were—oh, from another planet, or from the distant past,” and Winters forced a laugh.

“This is a strange request!”

“And my story, when I tell it to you, will be stranger still—depend upon it!”

“Ha! Ha! It should prove amusing—this game! Well then, this afternoon I will spend showing you about and answering questions. After our meal tonight you shall tell me your story—but I warn you! Make it a good one —good enough to repay me for my time!”

* * * *

They went out into the sunlight together. The village proved to be a gathering of about fifty large houses stretching for half a mile around a long narrow clearing. The background consisted of the huge trunks, gnarled branches and dark green of the forest. The Forester himself was a rather brisk old fellow, but the villagers seemed to strike again that vague chord of strangeness—of indolence—which he had noticed in his first acquaintance. Groups lay gracefully stretched out here and there under trees and such occasional figures as were in motion seemed to move with dragging feet, to Winters’ business-like mind. It came upon him that these people were downright lazy—and this he afterwards observed to be almost invariably true. They accomplished the work of the village in an hour or two a day—and this time was actually begrudged and every effort was being made to reduce it. The chief effort of world-wide science was devoted to this end, in fact.

The people were dressed in bright colors and the green grass and the rich brown of the buildings made a background to the colorful picture. Everywhere he saw the same racial characteristics of dark, swarthy faces and soft, liquid, brown eyes. There was something strange about the eyes —almost as if they were not set straight in the face, but a trifle aslant. Very little attention was paid Winters, except for occasional glances of idle curiosity aroused by his unusual attire. He thought the women unusually attractive, but the men seemed somehow effeminate and too soft; not but that they were fine specimens of humanity physically speaking, but that their faces were too smooth and their bodies too graceful to suit his twentieth-century ideas of what vigorous manhood should look like. Their bodies suggested the feline—cat-like grace and lethargy combined with supple strength.

Winters was told that a thousand people usually formed an “orig.” Just now there were several hundred extra inhabitants and a “colorig” had been prepared fifty miles to the north and trees had been growing for half a century there, making ready for the new colony.

“But why should you not simply make your village large enough to keep the extra people right here?”

“The forest supports just so many in comfort—we are having trouble now as it is.”

“But are there no larger villages where manufacturing is done?”

“Of course. There are factory origs near the Great Falls in the north. Our airwheel goes there twice a week—a two-hours’ flight. But there are only a few people there; just enough to tend the machines.”

The people of the village seemed happy and very much contented with life, but most of the younger men and women seemed to Winters too serious. Their dark faces hardly ever showed a smile. He entered several of the houses: among others that of the guild of cloth-makers. He was greatly interested, as if seeing an old friend, to observe wood-pulp fed through a pipe into the thread-making tubes to be hardened in an acid bath. He recognized, of course, the rayon process—new in his youth, but here considered ancient beyond history.

“How many hours a day do you work here?” he asked of the elderly attendant.

“I have worked three hours every day for the past week getting cloth ready for the new colonists,” he replied grumblingly. “Perhaps we shall have some peace in this orig when the youngsters are gone! At least there will be plenty of everything to go around once again!”

As he spoke, a young man, evidently his son, entered the thread room and stared at his father and the Forester with cold, supercilious eyes. “Wassum!” said the attendant, but the youth merely scowled in reply. He examined Winters silently and with distrust and went out again without speaking.

“Your son is a solemn chap!”

“Yes. So is his generation—they take life too seriously.”

“But do they never enjoy themselves?”

“Oh yes! There is the hunting moon in fall. The young men track the deer on foot and race him—sometimes for days on end—then throw him with their bare hands. My son is a famous deer-chaser. He practises all year long for the Autumn season.”

“But are there no . . . er . . . lighter pastimes?”

“There are the festivals. The next one is the festival of autumn leaves. At the time of the equinox the young people dress in russets and reds and gold and dance in a clearing in the woods which has been chosen for its outstanding autumn beauty of color. The young women compete in designing costumes.”

“But the younger ones—the children?”

“They are at school until they are twenty years of age. School is the time of hard work and study. They are not permitted games or pastimes except such exercise as is needed to keep them in health. When they finish school, then they enter upon the rights and pleasures of their generation —a prospect which makes them work the harder to finish their schooling as soon as may be.”

* * * *

As they went out into the sunlight once more Winters observed a small airship settling down in the village campus. It was the airwheel, the Forester said, and would not leave again until dusk.

“I have never been in one,” said Winters.

“You are a trogling,” exclaimed the Forester. “Suppose we go up for a short flight, then?” and Winters eagerly agreed. They walked over to the machine which Winters examined curiously. Here, at least, three thousand years of improvements were amply noticeable. The enclosed cabin would seat about twenty persons. There were no wings at all, but three horizontal wheels (two in front and one in the rear) above the level of the cabin. A propeller projected from the nose and this was still idling when they arrived. The Forester explained his wishes to the pilot who asked which direction they should prefer to take.

“South to the water and back!” put in Winters, with visions of the thriving New York metropolitan area of his day running through his memory. They took their places and the airwheel rose gently and with only a faintly audible hum—it was practically silent flight and made at enormous speed.

In ten minutes the sea was in sight and Winters gazed breathless through the crystal windows upon several islands of varying sizes— clothed in the green blanket of dense forest. Slowly he pieced out the puzzle: there was Long Island, evidently, and over there showed Staten Island. Beneath him then lay the narrow strip of Manhattan and the forest towered over everything alike.

“There are ruins beneath the trees,” said the Forester, noting his interest. “I have been there several times. Our historians believe the people of ancient times who lived here must have been afraid of the open air, for they either lived beneath the ground or raised stone buildings which could be entered without going out-of-doors: There are tunnels, which they used for roadways, running all beneath the ground in every direction.”

* * * *

CHAPTER III

“He Has an Appendix!”

And now the airship turned about and as it did so Winters caught sight of one gray pile of masonry—a tower-tip—showing above the forest. Surely it must have taken thousands of years to accomplish this oblivion of New York! And yet, he thought to himself, even one century makes buildings old.

He scarcely looked out of the window on the way back, but sat engrossed in sad thoughts and mournful memories. They landed once more in the village clearing and he continued his tour under the Forester’s guidance, but a recounting of this would be tedious. When the afternoon was over he had gathered a confusing mass of general information about life in the new age. Metals were carefully conserved and when a new colony was started its supply of metal utensils and tools was the final great gift of the parent villages. Farming was entirely unknown, and grain— which the Forester did not know except as “plant-seed”—was not used for food, although primitive races had once so used it, he said. Everything came from trees now, food, houses, clothing—even the fuel for their airships, which was wood alcohol.

The life of a villager was leisurely and pleasant, Winters decided. Hours of labor were short and the greater part of the day was devoted to social pleasures and scientific or artistic hobbies. There were artists in the village, mostly of some new faddist school whose work Winters could not in the least understand. (They painted trees and attempted to express emotions thereby.) But many beautiful pieces of sculpture were set about in some of the houses. Electric power was received through the air from the Great Falls, where it was generated, and each socket received its current without wiring of any sort. The village produced its own food and made its own clothes and building materials, paper, wood alcohol, turpentine and oils. And as this village lived, so apparently, did the rest of the world.

As Winters pictured this civilization, it consisted of a great number of isolated villages, each practically self-sufficient, except for metals. By taking the airwheel from one village to the next and there changing for another ship, a man could make a quick trip across the continents and oceans of the globe. But science and art were pursued by isolated individuals, the exchange of ideas being rendered easy by the marvellously realistic television and radio instruments.

* * * *

At dusk they returned to the Chief Forester’s house for dinner.

“I must apologize to you for the food,” said he. “We are on slightly curtailed supplies, due to our population having grown faster than our new plantings. Oh, you will have a good meal—I do not mean to starve you, —but merely that you will be expected not to ask for a second service of anything and excuse the absence of luxuries from my table.” His great body dropped into an upholstered chair.

“Is there no way to arrange things except by rationing yourselves while you wait for the new forests to bear crops?”

The Forester laughed a trifle bitterly. “Of course—but at a price. We could easily fell some trees for mushroom growing (they grow on dead logs) and also we could cut into the crop of edible pith-trees a little before maturity—and so all along the line. It would set us back in our plans a few years at the most, but there is no use talking about it. The Council of Youth has claimed the Rights of its Generation. The future is theirs, of course, and they object to our spending any of their resources now. We older people are a little more liberal in our views—not selfishly, but on a principle of common-sense. There have been some bitter words, I’m afraid, and the matter is by no means settled yet—for their attitude is almost fanatical and lacks all reason. But there is no need to bother you with our local affairs,” and he turned the conversation into other channels.

He was forever using the expression “thanks to our ancestors,” a point which Winters noted with surprise. So far one thing had eluded Winters completely: that was the history of the past ages during which all these drastic changes had come about. When the time came that he was bade tell his story, at the conclusion of the meal, he thought a moment as to how he might best obtain this information.

“I have travelled far,” he said, “but in time—not in distance.”

The Forester held a forkful of food poised in the air, eyebrows raised.

“What nonsense is this?” he demanded.

“No nonsense . . . your mushrooms are delicious ... I have succeeded in controlling the duration of a state of suspended animation. I went to sleep many years ago; woke up this morning.”

The Forester was incredulous.

“How long do you pretend to have slept?”

“I don’t know for sure,” replied Winters. “My instruments showed a certain figure, but to be at all certain I should prefer that you tell me the history of the world. No need of anything but the rough outlines.”

“Ha, ha! You promised me a story and you are most ingenious in fulfilling your promise, stranger!”

“I am, on the contrary, absolutely serious!”

“I cannot believe it—but it may be an amusing game. Let me see . . . Last year the first breadfruit trees bore in the lower temperate zones of the earth (that is a piece of it in your plate). It has greatly changed our mode of life and it may soon be unnecessary to grind chestnut flour for baking.”

“Interesting,” replied Winters. “But go back a thousand years more.”

The Forester’s eyes opened wide. Then he laughed delightedly. “Good! It is no lowly boaster, eh! A thousand years . . . That would be about the time of the great aluminum process. As you know, prior to that time the world was badly in need of metals. When Koenig perfected his method for producing aluminum from clay the economics of the world was turned topsy-turvy and . . . what! Farther back than a thousand years!”

“I think you might try two thousand.”

* * * *

The Forester exploded with laughter and then sobered at a sudden thought. He glanced shrewdly at his companion a moment, and a slight coldness appeared in his eyes.

“You are not by any slightest chance serious?” he asked.

“I am.”

“It is absurd! In those days the human body still had an appendix—that was just after the Great Revolution when the Wasters were finally overthrown and True Economics lifted her torch to guide the world on its upward path. Two thousand years ago! Thence dates all civilized history! Such archaic customs as organized superstitions, money and ownership by private people of land and a division of humanity into groups speaking different languages—all ended at that time. That was a stirring period!”

“Well then, go back another five hundred years.”

“The height of the false civilization of Waste! Fossil plants were ruthlessly burned in furnaces to provide heat, petroleum was consumed by the million barrels, cheap metal cars were built and thrown away to rust after a few years’ use, men crowded into ill-ventilated villages of a million inhabitants—some historians say several million. That was the age of race-fights where whole countrysides raised mobs and gave them explosives and poisons and sent them to destroy other mobs. Do you pretend to come from that shameful scene?”

“That is precisely the sort of thing we used to do,” replied Winters, “although we did not call it by the same set of names.” He could barely repress his elation. There could no longer be the slightest doubt of it—he was alive in the year 5000! His clock had been accurate!

The Forester’s face was growing red. “Timberfall! You have been amusing long enough—now tell me the truth: Where is your orig?”

“I don’t understand. I have told you the truth.”

“Stupid nonsense, I tell you! What can you possibly hope to gain from telling such a story? Even if people were such fools as to believe you, you could hardly expect to be very popular!”

“Why,” said Winters in surprise, “I thought you were so thankful for all your ancestors had done for you? I am one of your ancestors!”

The Forester stared in astonishment. “You act well,” he remarked drily. “But you are, I am sure, perfectly aware that those ancestors whom we thank were the planners for our forests and the very enemies of Waste. But for what should we thank the humans of three thousand years ago? For exhausting the coal supplies of the world? For leaving us no petroleum for our chemical factories? For destroying the forests on whole mountain ranges and letting the soil erode into the valleys? Shall we thank them, perhaps, for the Sahara or the Gobi deserts?”

“But the Sahara and the Gobi were deserts five thousand years before my time.”

“I do not know what you mean by ‘your’ time. But if so, all the more reason you should have learned a lesson from such deserts. But come! You have made me angry with your nonsense. I must have some pleasant sort of revenge! Do you still claim to be a living human from the Age of Waste?”

Winters’ caution bade him be silent. The Forester laughed mischievously: “Never mind! You have already claimed to be that! Well then, the matter is readily proved. You would in that case have an appendix and . . . yes . . . hair on your chest! These two characteristics have not appeared in the last two thousand years. You will be examined and, should you prove to have lied to me, a fitting punishment will be devised! I shall try to think of a reward as amusing as your wild lies have proved.”

His eyes twinkled as he pressed a button hidden in his chair arm and a minute later two young men entered. Winters was in no physical condition to resist and was soon stripped of his clothing. He was not particularly hairy of chest, as men of his age went, but hair there was unquestionably and the Forester stepped forward with an incredulous exclamation. Then he hurriedly seized the discarded clothing and felt the material carefully —examining the linen closely in the light of the electric lamp concealed in the wall.

“To the health room with him!” he cried.

Poor Winters was carried helplessly down a corridor and into a room lined with smooth white glass and set about with apparatus of an evident surgical nature. The place was odiferous with germicide. He was held against a black screen and the Forester snapped on an X-ray tube and peered at his nude body through a mask of bluish glass. After a minute he left the room and returned again almost instantly with a book in his hands. He opened to a page of photographs and studied them carefully, once more peering at Winters through the mask. Finally he grunted in stupefaction and with close-pressed lips and puzzled eyes turned to the two attendants.

“He has an appendix—there can be no doubt of it! This is the most amazing thing I have ever imagined! The stranger you see before you claims to have survived from the ancient days—from the age of waste! And he has an appendix, young comrades! I must talk to the biologists all over the country—the historians as well! The whole world will be interested. Take him along with you and see that he is provided with walling for the night.”

He turned to the door and Winters heard him in the next room talking excitedly over the radio-telephone. The two young attendants led him along the hall and as he passed he could observe that the Forester was speaking to a fat red-headed, red-faced man, whose features showed in the televisor—and who evidently was proving difficult to convince. Winters stared a minute for this was the first man he had seen whose face was anything except swarthy and slender.

Winters was led down the hall and permitted to resume his clothing. He was in an exalted mood. So his arrival in this new world was creating a stir after all! In the morning the airwheel would perhaps bring dozens of scientists to examine into his case. He was beginning to feel weak and fatigued after his exciting day, but this latest thrill gave a last flip to his nerves and gave him strength just long enough to prove his own undoing.

One of the attendants hurried out of sight as they left the house. The other guided him along the edge of the village.

“We young members of the village have a gathering tonight, sir. It is called the Council of Youth and at it we discuss matters of importance to our generation. Would it be too much to ask that you address our meeting and tell us something of your experiences?”

His vanity was stirred and he weakly agreed, tired and sleepy though he was. The meeting place was just a little distance away, explained his guide.

In the meantime the youth who had hastened on ahead had entered a small room off the assembly hall. The room contained only three persons and they looked up as the newcomer entered.

“It is as we thought, comrades, the Oldsters have brought him here for some purpose of their own. He pretends to have slept for three thousand years and to be a human relic of the Age of Waste!”

The others laughed. “What will they try on us next?” drawled one lazily.

“Stronghold is bringing him here,” continued the latest arrival, “and will persuade him to speak to us in the meeting, if he can. You understand the intent?”

There was a wise nodding of heads. “Does he know the law of the Council?”

“Probably, but even so it is worth the attempt—you know I’m not certain myself but that he may be from the old days—at least he is a startling good imitation. The man has hair on his body!”

There was a chorus of shocked disbelief, finally silenced by a sober and emphatic assurance. Then a moment of silence.

“Comrades, it is some trick of the Oldsters, depend upon it! Let the man speak to the Council. If he makes a slip, even a slight one, we may be able to work on the meeting and arouse it to a sense of our danger. Any means is fair if we can only prevent our inheritance being spent! I hear that the order to fell the half-matured pith-trees will go out tomorrow unless we can stop it. We must see what we can do tonight—make every effort.”

* * * *

When Winters arrived at the hall the three young men stood on the platform to welcome him. The room was low-raftered and about fifty feet square. It was filled with swarthy young men and women. The thing that most impressed Winters was the luxury of the seating arrangements. Each person sat in a roomy upholstered arm-chair! He thought of the contrast that a similar meeting-hall in his own times would have afforded—with its small stiff seats uncomfortably crowded together and its stuffy hot atmosphere.

The lighting was by electricity concealed in the walls and gave at the moment a rosy tint to the room, though this color changed continually to others—now red or purple or blue—and was strangely soothing. There was a lull in the general conversation. One of the young leaders stepped forward.

“Comrades! This stranger is of another generation than ours. He is come especially to tell us of conditions in the ancient days—he speaks from personal experience of the Age of Waste, comrades, from which times he has survived in artificial sleep! The Forester of our orig, who is old enough to know the truth, has so informed us!” Winters missed the sarcasm. He was tired now and regretting that he had consented to come.

There was a stir of astonishment in the audience and a low growling laughter which should have been a warning, but Winters, full of fatigue, was thinking only of what he should say to these young people. He cleared his throat.

“I am not sure that I have anything to say that would interest you: Historians or doctors would make me a better audience. Still, you might wish to know how the changes of three thousand years impress me. Your life is an altogether simpler thing than in my day. Men starved then for lack of food and youth had no assurance of even a bare living—but had to fight for it.” (Here there were a few angry cheers, much to Winters’ puzzlement.) “This comfortable assurance that you will never lack food or clothing is, to my mind, the most striking change the years have brought.”

He paused a moment uncertainly and one of the young leaders asked him something about “if we were perhaps trying to accomplish this assurance too quickly.”

“I am not sure that I know what you mean. Your Chief Forester mentioned something today of a question of economics. I am not familiar with the facts. However, I understand you have a very poor opinion of my own times, due to its possibly unwise consumption of natural resources. We had even then men who warned us against our course of action, but we acted upon the belief that when oil and coal were gone mankind would produce some new fuel to take their place. I observe that in this we were correct, for you now use wood alcohol—an excellent substitute.”

A young man leaped to his feet excitedly. “For that reason, comrades,” he said in a loud voice, “this stranger of course believes his age was justified in using up all the oil and fuel in the world!”

There was a slow growling which ended in a few full-throated cries and an uneasy stirring about in the audience. Winters was growing dazed with his need for rest and could not understand what was going on here.

“What you say interests us very much,” said another of the men on the platform beside him. “Was it very common to burn coal for its mere heat?”

“Yes. It burned in every man’s house—in my house as well.”

There was an ugly moving about in audience, as though the audience was being transformed into a mob. The mob, like some slow lumbering beast, was becoming finally aroused by these continual pin-pricks from the sharp tongues of its leaders.

“And did you also use petroleum for fuel?”

“Of course. We all used it in our automobiles.”

“And was it usual to cut down trees just for the sake of having the ground clear of them?”

“Well . . . yes. On my own land I planted trees, but I must say I had a large stretch of open lawn as well.”

Here Winters felt faint and giddy. He spoke quietly to the young man who had brought him. “I must lie down, I’m afraid. I feel ill.”

“Just one more question will be all,” was the whispered reply. Then aloud: “Do you think we of the Youth Council should permit our inheritance to be used up—even in part—for the sake of present comfort?”

“If it is not done to excess I can see nothing wrong in principle—you can always plant more trees . . . but I must say good night for I am. . . .”

* * * *

CHAPTER IV

Revolt of the Youth

He never finished his sentence. A very fury of sound arose from the hall of the Council. One of the leaders shouted for silence.

“You have heard, comrades! You observe what sort of man has been sent to address us! We of Youth have a lesson to learn from the Age of Waste, it appears! At least the Oldsters think so! The crisis that has arisen is a small matter, but if we should once give in when will the thing stop? What must they think of our intelligence if they expect us to believe this three thousand-year sleep story? To send him here was sheer effrontery! And to send him here with that piece of advice passes beyond all bounds of toleration. Timberfall! There can be only one answer.” (here he turned to glare at poor dazed Winters, stupefied by the effect of his long emaciation). “We must make such an example of this person as shall forever stamp our principles deep in the minds of the whole world!”

There were loud shouts and several young people rushed up on the platform and seized Winters.

“He has confessed to breaking the very basic laws of Economics!” shouted the leader. “What is the punishment?”

There were cries of “Kill him! Exile! Send him to the plains for life!” and over and over one group was chanting savagely “Kill him! Kill him!”

“I hear the sentence of death proposed by many of you,” cried the leader. “It is true that to kill is to waste a life—but what could be more fitting for one who has wasted things all his life?” (Loud cries of furious approval) “To your houses, every one of you! We will confine this creature who claims to be three thousand years old in the cellar of this hall. In the morning we will gather here again and give these Oldsters our public answer! And comrades! A piece of news for your ears alone—Comrade Stronghold has heard that in the morning the Oldsters will issue a felling order on the immature pith-trees!”

And now was such a scene of rage and violence that the walls shook and Winters was dragged away with dizzy brain and failing feet and thrust upon a couch in a stone-walled room beneath the hall. He fell instantly in utter exhaustion and did not hear the tramp of departing feet overhead. His horror and fright had combined with his fatigue to render him incapable of further emotion. He lay unconscious, rather than asleep.

Above in the small room off the now empty hall three young men congratulated each other, their soft brown eyes shining exultantly, and chatted a few minutes in great joy that they had protected the rights of their generation, regardless of the means which had been used to this desirable end. They parted for the night with that peculiar circling movement of the hand that seemed to have taken the place of the ancient hand-shaking.

But while they talked (so swift does Treason run) a young man crouched in the shadows back of the Forester’s house and fumbled with the latch of a small door on the forest side. As the young men were bidding each other good night, a voice was whispering swiftly in the ear of the Chief Forester, whose rugged face and bristling eyebrows betrayed in turn astonishment, indignation, anger and fierce determination.

Winters woke to watch a shaft of dawn-light lying upon the stone floor. His body was bruised from the rough handling he had received and his wasted muscles felt dull and deadened. But his brain was clear once again and he recalled the events of the meeting. What a fool he had been! How he had been led on to his own undoing! His eyes followed the shaft of light up to a grating set in the stone wall above his couch and he could see a little piece of sky softly blue there with a plump little cloud sailing in it, like a duck in a pond. There came upon him a wave of nostalgia. Oh to see a friendly face—or one homely thing, even a torn piece of newspaper lying on the cellar floor! But there was no use in such wishes. Thirty centuries lay between those things and himself—lay like an ocean between a shipwrecked sailor and his homeland.

And then came other thoughts, his natural fund of curiosity arising in him once again. After all, this age was a reaction against his own. There had been two extremes, that was all history would say of it. Truth lay in neither, but in some middle gentler path. Mankind would find the road in time—say another thousand years or more. But what difference to him now? In a few more hours he would be dead. Presently the young men would come for him and he would be their sacrifice for some fancied wrong. In his weakened condition the whole thing struck him as unutterably pathetic and tears welled into his eyes until they were brushed away as the bitter bracing humor of the situation dawned upon his mind. As he mused he was startled to notice a shadow pass across the window grating and he thought he heard low voices.

Now in an instant he was full of lively fears. He would not be taken to his death so tamely as this! He turned over on the couch to get upon his feet and felt a hard object beneath him. He felt and brought forth his revolver which he fell at once to examining—ears and senses attuned to hints of danger, though nothing further came. The weapon was an air-pistol firing .22 calibre lead slugs. It was deadly only at very close ranges —thirty feet or less, perhaps—and the extending lever compressed enough air for ten shots. It was something, at all events. Hastily he worked the lever, loaded and pulled the trigger to hear a satisfying “smack” of the lead against the stone wall.

Now his mind was working full tilt and he brought the file from his belt and turned to the grating above his couch. If he could sever the bars he could manage to squeeze through the window! To his amazement these bars proved to be of wood—and his heart lifted in hope. The saw was out of his belt and he was at work in an instant. By dint of much arm-ache he severed four of the bars in as many minutes. Day was now dawning apace and a panic of haste seized him; he brought the hand-axe into play and with three blows had smashed the remaining wood in the window. As he did so a shadow approached and a face was thrust forward, blocking out the light. Winters crouched below with pistol pointed, finger on trigger.

“Here he is!” said the face in shadow and Winters recognized the voice of the Chief Forester and held his fire.

“Take my hand, stranger, and climb up out of there. We have been looking for you half an hour. Oh, have no fear, we will not permit you to come to harm!”

But Winters was cautious. “Who will protect me?”

“Hurry, stranger! You have fallen afoul of our young hot-heads in the orig—I blame myself for not taking greater thought—but there are a hundred Oldsters here with me. You will be safe with us.”

And now Winters permitted himself to be helped through the window and up into the full light of morning. He was surrounded by men who gazed at him with interest and respect. Their attitude calmed his last suspicions.

“We must hurry,” said the Forester. “The younger men will resist us, I am afraid. Let us reach my own house as soon as possible.”

The party started across the clearing and two young men appeared almost at once in the doorway of a building near by. At sight of Winters in the midst of the Oldsters they turned and raced off in separate directions, shouting some indistinguishable cry as they ran.

“We must go faster than this!”

A short fat man with a red face and reddish hair put his arms beneath Winters’ shoulders and half carried him along. His face was familiar and Winters remembered the man he had seen in the televisor the day before. His strength was enormous and his energy indefatigable—a tie that drew Winters to him in this age of indolence. “I am Stalvyn of History at the next orig,” he boomed at Winters as they hurried along. “You are so valuable to me that I hope you do not mind if I take a personal interest in your protection!”

* * * *

They had a quarter of a mile to go and had half accomplished the distance when a mob of shouting youths burst from behind a house just ahead of them. There was a pause as though their natural disinclination to physical exertion might even yet prevent the clash. But their leaders were evidently urging them on and suddenly they charged down amid a shower of stones and waving of clubs. In an instant the shock was felt and a furious melee commenced—a primitive angry fight without science or direction.

Here two youths beat an elderly man senseless with clubs and sprang in unison upon the next victim. There some mature, full-muscled bull of a man ran berserk among striplings, crushing them in his great arms or flailing fist like hams at their onrushing faces. As they fought, they kept moving toward their objective and had gone almost another hundred yards before the youths retreated. The superior numbers of the older ones had swung the balance.

Fifty men, however, were all that remained around the Chief Forester. The others had either deserted the fight or been injured—perhaps killed, thought Winters, looking back at a score of still figures lying on the earth. The youths had retired only a hundred feet and still kept pace with the fugitives. Fresh bands of young men were hurrying from every direction and it would be a matter of minutes before the attack would recommence with the odds on the other side this time.

Winters and Stalvyn, his self-appointed bodyguard, had not taken part in the struggle, for they had been in the center of the rescue party. Now they worked to the front of the party where the Forester strode along determinedly. Winters showed his pistol. “With this thing I can kill them as they run there. Shall I use it, sir?”

The Forester grunted. “Kill them, then. They are coming now to kill you!”

As he spoke the mob of youths rushed upon them in a murderous fury. The elder men closed together in a compact mass and Winters shot into the front rank of the attackers, to see three of them topple over and thereby lessen the shock of the charge, for those who followed tripped over the fallen. And now Stalvyn and the Forester stepped forward, and around these immovable figures the fight raged. Winters crouched behind them, swiftly pulled back his lever, loaded bullets and pulled the trigger like an automaton in a nightmare. Cries of passion and pain mingled with the thud of blows and the panting gasps of the fighters. It was a savage scene, the more shocking because of the unfitness of these quiet people for such work.

Suddenly the attackers withdrew sullenly, bearing injured with them. Two dozen remaining Oldsters looked dazedly around—free now to proceed to shelter. Fifty or more figures lay about on the ground and the Forester called out to the watchers in the windows to come and give first aid to friend and foe alike. This work was commenced at once, but with characteristic slowness, and he led his little band to the door of his house and inside.

“Give the stranger some food and drink, Stalvyn,” drawled a tall thin man with ungainly limbs, who proved to be the biologist from an orig nearly a thousand miles away. “If I know our Youth they would never have wasted sustenance on a man who was so soon to die!” and he smiled a lazy sardonic smile at Winters as he placed in his hands a tumbler full of brown liquid. “Drink it without fear. It will both stimulate and nourish.”

Winters was in a state of collapse now and Stalvyn had to help him drink and then carried him over to a couch. The biologist spent a few minutes examining him. “He must rest,” he announced. “There will be no questions asked him today. I will prepare some medicine for him.” Whereupon everyone left the room and Winters swallowed more drink and dropped fathoms deep in slumber. A man was set to guard the door of his room and the biologist tended him day and night. For a full week he was not permitted to wake. He had vague impressions as he slept of being rolled over, bathed, fed, massaged and watched over—impressions that were as dreams in an ordinary sleep. Under such expert ministration the thin cheeks filled out and the wasted flesh became plump and smooth.

When Winters awoke it was late afternoon. His blood pulsed strongly through his body and he was wide awake the instant his eyes opened. There on a stool were set out his clothes, and he got to his feet and dressed. His belt still contained the pistol and hatchet as well as the smaller tools. Feeling like a new man he strode to the door and opened it, to be surrounded presently in another room by a swarthy group of a dozen of the greatest scientists in the world—for the news had by this time spread everywhere and there had been time for travel from the most distant points. And now there followed a long period of questions and examinations. Stalvyn and the historians plied him with posers as to the life and habits of his world; the biologists demanded the secret of his sleeping potion and control of the period of suspended animation; he was put before the fluoroscope and his appendix photographed; his measurements were taken and plaster moulds of his hand, foot and head were cast for a permanent record.

Through it all Winters had a feeling of consummation—this was one of the things he had planned when he set off on his voyage into the future. Here was sane intelligence taking advantage of his work and respecting him for his exploit. But one thing was lacking completely. He had no sense of belonging to these people. He had hoped to find gods in human form living in Utopia. Instead, here were men with everyday human passions and weaknesses. True, they had progressed since his day—but his insatiable curiosity itched to learn what the future might produce.

After an evening meal which all partook together, Winters retired to his room with the Chief Forester, the biologist and Stalvyn, and the four men sat talking lazily.

“What do you plan to do now?” drawled the biologist.

Winters sighed. “I don’t know exactly.”

“I would ask you to settle down in my orig here,” remarked the Forester, “but most of our young people and many of the Oldsters who should know better hold you to blame for the recent troubles. I am helpless before them.”

“Hold me to blame!” exclaimed Winters bitterly. “What had I to do with it?”

“Nothing, perhaps. But the principle of the rights of the new Generation is still unsettled. The Council of Youth is obstinate and must be brought to see the sensible side of the matter. Their leaders pretend you, in some way, have been brought here to persuade them to cut down trees right and left at the whim of the nearest Oldster. Where it will end, I cannot say.”

* * * *

Stalvyn laid a friendly hand on his shoulder. “Human nature is seldom reasonable. Of course there is no logic in their attitude. Forget it! We will get you quietly into an airship and you shall come away from here and live with me. Together we will review and rewrite the history of your times as it has never been done!”

“Stop a moment! Do you mean that I shall have to escape secretly from this village?”

The others looked sheepish and the Forester nodded his head. “I am helpless in the matter. I could get perhaps twenty or thirty men to do my bidding—but you see, most of the villagers will not concern themselves with your fate. It is too much trouble to bother about it at all.”

“Are they afraid of the youngsters?”

“No, of course not! They greatly outnumber the youths. They merely are not willing to work beyond the village figure of one hour and fifty minutes a day so they say. I’m afraid you will not find any men to take your side except the four of us and a handful of my oldest men. That’s the way the world is made, you know!” and he shrugged his shoulders expressively.

“It is a simple matter to escape from this house,” suggested the biologist. “Why not tour quietly around the globe and see our world entire before you decide upon your future plans?”

Winters shook his head wearily. “I thank you for your kindness, gentlemen. I would never find a place for myself in this age. I gave up my own age for the sake of an ideal. I am searching for the secret of happiness. I tried to find it here, but you do not know it any more than we did three thousand years ago. Therefore I shall say goodbye and—go on to some future period. In perhaps five thousand years I shall awaken in a time more to my liking.”

“Can your body support another long period of emaciation?” drawled the biologist. “To judge from your appearance you have hardly aged at all during your last sleep—but. . . five thousand years!”

“I feel as if I were a little older than when I left my own times—perhaps a year or two. Thanks to your attention I am again in excellent health. Yes, I should be able to survive the ordeal once again.”

“Man! Oh man!” groaned the red-headed Stalvyn. “I would give my right hand to take a place with you! But I have my duty to my own times.”

“Is your hiding-place near here?” asked the Forester.

“Yes. But I prefer to tell no one where it is—not even you three. It is well hidden and you cannot help me.”

“I can!” put in the biologist. “I studied your metabolism as you lay unconscious all this week and I have prepared a formula. From it I shall make a drink for you to take with you. When—or if—you wake from your long sleep you must swallow it. It will restore your vitality enormously in a few hours.”

“Thank you,” said Winters. “That might make all the difference between success and failure.”

“How are you going to reach your hiding place? Suppose some youth sees you and follows—remembering old grudges as youth can?”

“I must leave here secretly just before dawn,” said Winters thoughtfully. “I know in a general way where to go. By daylight I shall be close by and shall have hidden myself forever long before anyone in the village is awake.”

“Well—let us hope so! When will you start?”

“Tomorrow morning!”

They parted for the night with many a last word of caution and advice. Winters lay down to sleep and it seemed only a few seconds before the Forester stood over him shaking him awake. He arose and made sure of such things as he was to take with him. Stalvyn and the biologist were on hand in the darkness (they did not dare show a light) and Winters took a light breakfast and said his goodbyes. The three friends watched his body show shadowy against the trees and vanish into the dark night.

Winters walked with great care along the hard-surfaced roadway for almost an hour. He was sure he had made no slightest sound. He felt he must be almost at the right spot and left the road for the woods where he waited impatiently for the graying east to brighten. He spent half an hour in the shrubbery beside the road before he could see clearly enough to proceed. Just before he turned away he glanced from his leafy hiding back along the stretch of highway. In the distance, to his horror, he observed two figures hurrying toward him!

With panting fear he slipped back into the woods and cruised over the ground looking for his one particular tree-trunk out of all those thousands. Seconds seemed like hours and his ears were strained back for some sign of his pursuers. Sweating, panting, heart pounding, he ran back and forwards in an agony of directionless movement.

Then he became frantic and hurried faster and faster until his foot caught over some piece of stone and sent him sprawling. He rose to his knees and stopped there, frozen, for he heard voices! They were still distant, but he dared not rise. His eyes fell upon the stone over which he had stumbled. It was flat and thick and rather square in outline. Some marks appeared on the top—badly worn by weather. He brushed aside a few dead leaves listlessly, hopelessly and before his startled eyes there leaped the following:

“Carstairs, a gardener lies here—faithful servant to the end—he was buried at this spot upon his own request.”

Buried here at his own request—poor old Carstairs! Could it be? If this grave were directly above his underground chamber then there, only fifty feet to the south, must lie the entrance! He crawled with desperate hope over the soft ground and there, sure enough, was a familiar tree and a leaf-filled depression at its base! The voices were approaching now and he slithered desperately into the hole, pushing the drifted leaves before him with his feet. Then he gathered a great armful of leaves scraped from each side and sank out of sight, holding his screen in place with one hand. With the other hand he reached for some pieces of cut roots and commenced to weave a support for the leaves. He was half done when his heart stood still at the sound of voices close by. He could not make out the words and waited breathlessly second after second. Then he heard the voices again—receding!

Winter came and the frogs found their sleeping places beneath the mud of the little pond that lay where once was the lake. And with the next spring the great tree had commenced spreading a new mat of roots to choke forever the entrance to that lead-lined chamber where, in utter blackness, a still figure lay on a couch. The sleepers last hazy thoughts had taken him back in his dreams to his own youth and the wax-white face wore a faint smile, as if Winters had at last found the secret of human happiness.