He also had a new will drawn up-the old one retailored to Indiana law. He then told Frank he didn't expect ever to be back.

It was easy to leave Indiana again. The only things he took with him were the knife given him by the Ozian shaman, Arbel, along with several silver teklota and a couple of gold imperials. He'd left them in a dresser drawer when he'd gone to Oregon in '33, and it seemed to him he should have them when he returned to Yuulith.

It was a Saturday when Macurdy got off the train in Columbia, Missouri. Charles Hauser was there to meet him. They gripped hands, then to Macurdy's surprise, Hauser threw his arms around him and hugged him.

"God but it's good to see you, Macurdy!" he said. He stood back with his hands on the larger man's arms, grinning at him. "You don't know how good! And you're hard! Hugging you is like hugging an oak!" He stepped back half a step. "And young-looking! It's those ylvin genes, sure as heck. It was never real to me before that you wouldn't age, but you look as if you'd skipped those seventeen years."

Curtis shook his head. "They weren't skipped."

Hauser waited for him to elaborate, and when he didn't, spoke to fill the vacuum. "I didn't realize, till you phoned, how much I needed someone to talk with about the years in Yuulith. It was like an itch with no one to help scratch. An itch I'd gotten used to, but I still feel it from time to time."

Hauser had long since given up on ever hearing from Macurdy. They'd said good-bye on a showery spring day in 1933, at the Greyhound depot in St. Louis. Macurdy had Hauser's family's address, and had promised to write when he got settled, but never had. Then, three days past, Hauser had gotten a phone call. Macurdy had found him through Hauser's brother, on the farm in Adair County.

"Have you eaten lunch?" Hauser asked.

"No, I haven't."

"Good. I know a place." He laughed. "Chinese. The food's not great, but the help doesn't understand much English, so we can talk freely. There are things you need to know before you meet my wife. Our stories need to gibe."

They sat over lunch for an hour and a half, getting refills on the tea. Macurdy said little, mostly monosyllables. It was Hauser who talked, his story beginning with their return from Yuulith. Before he could go back to the university and complete his graduate work, he'd realized, he'd have to account for the years he'd been gone. He and Professor Talbott. And if he'd told the real truth, the university would have dismissed him promptly as insane.

So before returning home to Adair County, he'd lived for several weeks in a flophouse in St. Louis. His days and evenings he'd spent in the downtown library, doing research for a fictional explanation that might be believed. The result was a story almost as bizarre as the truth, but far more acceptable.

The '30s were a period when stories by Melville, Stevenson, London, Conrad, Maugham-and films based on them-had made the little known reaches of Oceania seem both real and romantic to millions. Hauser laughed. "Before the war put it in a different light, and changed all that.

"I had more than ten years to account for, in a way that explained Talbott's absence, and why I hadn't notified anyone. What I came up with explained other disappearances around Injun Knob, as well.

"A number of banks had been robbed in the mid-South, in the years after the First World War. My story was that several bank robbers had holed up on an old farm near Neeley's Corners, and Talbott and I ran into them by accident. They didn't know how much we knew, so they tied us up. What they were doing, actually, was financing a gun-running operation for would-be rebels in Peru, the APRA."

Hauser had shifted into a delivery sounding like personal history instead of fiction. "From there they took us with them as captives and flunkies, on an auxiliary schooner headed for Peru. We went through the Panama Canal bound hand and foot in a storage locker. Once in the Pacific, the schooner's crew murdered the bank robbers and headed west for the Orient. Apparently the captain knew about the money, and decided he had better uses for it than to finance rebellion.

"And they took Talbott and me along, still as flunkies. We knew only that we were headed west. Neither of us spoke Spanish, but both of us heard the name Manila repeatedly. After a few weeks, we ran into a bad storm. The schooner lost her masts, the diesel broke down, and she was half-filled with water. Our captors abandoned her in the lifeboat, leaving us behind.

"That night the storm died down, and we were still afloat. The next day we got lucky-another small sailing ship picked us up. We had no idea what language they spoke to each other. To us they spoke pidgin, but no more than they needed for giving orders. We were still flunkies."

Hauser grunted musingly, as if remembering those times. "Eventually we got to some godforsaken islands, their home. And Talbott's grave. I don't know what he died of. He seemed to just wear out. I was still pretty much a slave, not treated badly, but worked hard.

"Most of the people were fishermen and subsistence farmers, but some of their men were in interisland trade, hauling goods on their homemade sailing ships. And some I suspect were pirates. I still don't know where I was. The Malay Archipelago probably, or the Moluccas. Like the crew, the people spoke pidgin to me. Later I was taken as crew on another sailing vessel, and ended up on still another island, where I was put to work husking coconuts."

He made it sound as if it had really happened. "From there," Hauser continued, "I worked my way on different boats, figuring that sooner or later I'd get somewhere civilized. Eventually I wound up at Batangas, in the Philippines. It felt literally like a dream, seeing stores, carremetos, even motor vehicles-and actually being answered in English! You can't imagine what it was like. Except, of course, you can."

He grinned at Macurdy. "We can account for you as an orphaned kid I took under my wing, on a tramp steamer from Manila. You were eight years old."

Concocting the story had been the easy part, he went on. Learning enough to make it real and convincing had taken most of his time. Finally he'd left St. Louis, and hitchhiked to his family's farm, where he'd spent the summer working for his older brother. In September he went back to the university. After rehabbing and updating his science, he'd been hired as a teaching assistant, and completed his master's studies. Then he'd been hired as an instructor, and later promoted to assistant professor.

"It's been a good life, Macurdy," he finished. Serious now. "The bad times-the years of slavery in Oz-don't seem as bad in retrospect. 'Time heals' can be more than a cliche' He paused, then added: "If you let it."

He looked at his watch. "It's time to take you home with me. Grace will wonder if something's happened to us. Later we'll go somewhere and talk some more. And I'll nag you till you open up to me."

Hauser's home was a pleasant bungalow near the campus. His amiable, middle-aged wife made Macurdy welcome, and did not ask intrusive questions. They sat around and talked idly about current affairs-political, international, the approaching baseball season…

After supper, Hauser excused himself and Macurdy, and they "went for a long walk." The evening was mild for early March, but coats were welcome. Briefly they walked around the campus, talking idly again, Hauser nudging Curtis verbally, trying still unsuccessfully to draw him out. Then they went to Hauser's office in the Physics Building, hung up their coats and sat down.