Leaning his head out the open window of his prowl car, Officer Tinbane yelled, "We'll be getting you out any time now, lady. Just try to be patient."

"What year is this?" the elderly voice called back. "How much time has passed? Is it still 1974? I have to know; please tell me, sir."

Tinbane said, "It's 1998."

"Oh dear." Dismay. "Well, I suppose I must get used to it."

"I guess," Tinbane said, "you'll have to." He picked a cigaret butt from the car's ashtray, lit it and pondered. Then, once again, he pressed his mike button. "I'd like permission to contact a private vitarium."

"Permission denied," his radio said. "Too late at night."

"But," he said, "one might happen along anyhow. Several of the bigger ones keep their scout-ambulances heading back and forth all through the night." He had one vitarium in particular in mind, a small one, old-fashioned. Decent in its sales methods.

"So late at night it's unlikely--"

"This man can use the business." Tinbane picked up the vidphone receiver mounted on the car's dashboard. "I want to talk to a Mr. Sebastian Hermes," he told the operator. "You find him; I'll wait. First of all try his place of business, the Flask of Hermes Vitarium; he probably has an all-night relay to his residence." If the poor guy can currently afford it, Tinbane thought. "Call me back as soon as you've located him." He hung up, then, and sat smoking his cigaret.

The Flask of Hermes Vitarium consisted primarily of Sebastian Hermes himself, with the help of a meager assortment of five employees. No one got hired at the establishment and no one got fired. As far as Sebastian was concerned these people constituted his family. He had no other, being old, heavy set, and not very likable. They, another, earlier vitarium, had dug him up only ten years ago, and he still felt on him, in the dreary part of the night, the coldness of the grave. Perhaps it was that which made him sympathetic to the plight of the old-born.