Barnes laid the folder back on the table and walked over to the window to stand beside Daniels.

'I agree with you, he said. 'It makes little sense. The odds keep working for the man. Even after he was found, someone could have broken open the capsule. They knew there was a man in there. The capsule was transparent; they could see him. Someone could have got the wild idea of trying to thaw him out and resuscitating him. It could have been worth their while. Who knows, he might have some information that it would be worth their having.

'Fat lot of good it would have done, said Daniels. 'That's another thing. Blake's mind was blank except for a general human background — the kind of general background a man could have got only on the Earth. He had the language and the human outlook and the sort of basic information that a man who lived two hundred years ago would have stored away. But that was all. No slightest memory of what might have happened to him or who he was or where he might have come from.

'There is no question that he originally came from Earth? Not from one of the stellar colonies?

'There doesn't seem to be. He knew where and what Washington was once we had revived him. But to him it was still the capital of the United States. And there were a lot of other things, as well, that only an Earthman would have known. As you can well imagine, we ran him through quite a bunch of tests.

'How is he getting along?

'Apparently all right. I haven't heard from him. He's in a little community west of here. Out in the mountains. He thought, and I thought, he should get some resting time. Time just to take it easy. That might give him a chance to do some thinking, do some probing back. By now he may be beginning to recall who and what he was. I didn't suggest it — I didn't want to put any burden on him. But I'd think it would be natural that he might. He was a bit upset about it all.