"What year is this?"
Swarts' steely eyes locked with his. "You know what the date is," he stated.
"No, I don't. Not since yesterday."
"Come on," Swarts said patiently, "let's get going. We have a lot to get through this morning."
"I know this isn't 1950. It's probably not even the 20th Century. Venus was a morning star before you brought me here. Now it's an evening star."
"Never mind that. Come."
Wordlessly, Maitland climbed to his feet, preceded Swarts to the laboratory, lay down and allowed him to fasten the straps and attach the instruments, making no resistance at all. When Swarts started saying a list of words—doubtlessly some sort of semantic reaction test—Maitland began the job of integrating "csc3x dx" in his head. It was a calculation which required great concentration and frequent tracing back of steps. After several minutes, he noticed that Swarts had stopped calling words. He opened his eyes to find the other man standing over him, looking somewhat exasperated and a little baffled.
"What year is this?" Maitland asked in a conversational tone.
"We'll try another series of tests."
It took Swarts nearly twenty minutes to set up the new apparatus. He lowered a bulky affair with two cylindrical tubes like the twin stacks of a binocular microscope over Maitland's head, so that the lenses at the ends of the tubes were about half an inch from the engineer's eyes. He attached tiny clamps to Maitland's eyelashes.