'Just what date is it?' he asked, as calmly as possible.

Professor and Matron exchanged glances. Again Poole felt that cold wind on his neck.

'I must tell you, Mr Poole, that Bowman did not rescue you. He believed – and we cannot blame him – that you were irrevocably dead. Also, he was facing a desperately serious crisis that threatened his own survival...'

'So you drifted on into space, passed through the Jupiter system, and headed out towards the stars. Fortunately, you were so far below freezing point that there was no metabolism – but it's a near-miracle that you were ever found at all. You are one of the luckiest men alive. No – ever to have lived!'

Am I? Poole asked himself bleakly. Five years, indeed! It could be a century – or even more.

'Let me have it,' he demanded.

Professor and Matron seemed to be consulting an invisible monitor: when they looked at each other and nodded agreement, Poole guessed that they were all plugged into the hospital information circuit, linked to the headband he was wearing.

'Frank,' said Professor Anderson, making a smooth switch to the role of long-time family physician, 'this will be a great shock to you, but you're capable of accepting it – and the sooner you know, the better.'

'We're near the beginning of the Fourth Millennium. Believe me – you left Earth almost a thousand years ago.'

'I believe you,' Poole answered calmly. Then, to his great annoyance, the room started to spin around him, and he knew nothing more.

When he regained consciousness, he found that he was no longer in a bleak hospital room but in a luxurious suite with attractive – and steadily changing – images on the walls. Some of these were famous and familiar paintings, others showed land and sea-scapes that might have been from his own time. There was nothing alien or upsetting: that, he guessed, would come later.