"Guess you better not go into business here," said the Very Young Man with a grin at the Doctor.
"There is practically no illness worthy of the name," went on the Chemist. "The people live out their lives and, barring accident, die peacefully of old age."
"How old do they live to be?" asked the Big Business Man.
"About the same as with you," answered the Chemist. "Only of course as we measure time."
"Say how about that?" the Very Young Man asked. "My watch is still going—is it ticking out the old time or the new time down here?"
"I should say probably—certainly—it was giving time of your own world, just as it always did," the Chemist replied.
"Well, there's no way of telling, is there?" said the Big Business Man.
"What is the exact difference in time?" the Doctor asked.
"That is something I have had no means of determining. It was rather a curious thing; when I left that letter for you," the Chemist turned to the Doctor—"it never occurred to me that although I had told you to start down here on a certain day, I would be quite at a loss to calculate when that day had arrived. It was my estimation after my first trip here that time in this world passed at a rate about two and two-fifth times faster than it does in your world. That is as near as I ever came to it. We can calculate it more closely now, since we have only the interval of your journey down as an indeterminate quantity."
"How near right did you hit it? When did you expect us?" asked the Doctor.