At sight of me, they surrounded me, and one of them commenced to fire words at me in a language that might have been a Japanese broadcast combined with a symphony concert.

"Am I dead?" I asked.

They looked at one another; and then they spoke to me again; but I couldn't understand a syllable, much less a word, of what they said. Finally one of them came up and toold me by the arm; and the others surrounded us, and they started to lead me away. Then it was that I saw the most amazing thing I have ever seen in my life: Out of that vast garden rose buildings! They came up swiftly all around us– buildings of all sizes and shapes, but all trim and streamlined, and extremely beautiful in their simplicity; and on top of them they carried the trees and the shrubbery beneath which they had been concealed.

"Where am I?" I demanded. "Can't any of you speak English, or French, or German, or Spanish, or Italian?"

They looked at me blankly, and spoke to one another in that language that did not sound like a language at all. They took me into one of the buildings that had risen out of the garden. It was full of people, both men and women; and they were all dressed in skin-tight clothing. "Out of that vast garden rose buildings." They looked at me in amazement and amusement and disgust; and some of the women tittered and covered their eyes with their hands; at last one of my escort found a robe and covered me, and I felt very much better. You have no idea what it does to one's ego to find oneself in the nude among a multitude of people; and as I realized my predicament, I commenced to laugh. My captors looked at me in astonishment; they didn't know that I had suddenly realized that I was the victim of a bad dream: I had not flown over Germany ; I had not been shot down; I had never been in a garden with a strange girl… I was just dreaming.

"Run along," I said. "You are just a bad dream. Beat it!" And then I said "Boo!" at them, thinking that that would wake me up; but it didn't. It only made a couple of them seize me by either arm and hustle me along to a room where there was an elderly man seated at a desk. He wore a skin-tight suit of black spangles, with white boots.