"I do not have the answers to those questions. But I have a theory concerning you and the elapsed years."
"Tell me!"
John Pride spoke firmly but with obvious awe. "I think you were brought here as an infant for some reason known only to the one who called himself C. D. Bram."
"Or Portox."
"Perhaps. I think you were placed in that bed and left there for one hundred years."
"But—"
"Consider. That door has never been opened. There is certainly no other exit to this cavern."
"And I have no recollection of ever having lived before," the young man said slowly.
"Yet you can converse with me. You obviously have been given an education."
"But how?"