"You're speaking Anglish!" the young man exclaimed. "Good! Maybe I can get some help here. What year is this?"
"1955, by most systems."
The young man turned a little paler.
"I've just left 1955," he said unhappily. "Four times, in fact. Four different 1955's. And each one's a bit worse. Now the machine won't work."
"Your theory's wrong," Corrigan said calmly. "Hasn't it occurred to you yet that time travel might be impossible?"
The young man made a choked sound. He began to climb down from his perch, keeping his eyes fixed suspiciously on Corrigan as he did so. He saw Corrigan as a small brown man, dressed in loose blue trousers, barefooted, and with a puff of white hair that seemed never to have been properly cut. The lawns and grassy roads, the bright and impermanent-looking buildings, and Corrigan himself, all added up to one thing in the young man's mind.
"You're wrong," Corrigan said. "I'm not a lunatic, and this isn't an asylum. We don't have them."
The young man, on the ground now, stared at Corrigan in evident horror.
"Mind reading?"
"More or less," Corrigan said. "It saves time. For instance, you're Darwin Lenner, and you'd like very much to get back to wherever you started from. In fact, you have to, or something unpleasant might happen to you, by your standards."