physical laws, leaped from the ground beside the bench and flew into the girl's outstretched hand. It unfolded as her hand opened, and she held it out, smiling sadly all the while.

"It is true then," the note said. "You have forgotten. I am Leyloon."

Leyloon? Leyloon? Her name, of course. Darrel strained to remember a Leyloon. There was no such name in his memory tract. He looked hard at the girl, at Leyloon. She was ethereal. He would like to have memories of her. He didn't though.

But he was supposed to remember her. Leyloon, Leyloon. No ... his brain held no recollections of this girl except that yesterday she came up to the ship and ... but yesterday, the first note had said, he had understood perfectly.

He scratched his head furiously.

Yesterday he had been more completely at a loss than he was today! He hadn't known of this city, where everything went in reverse, he hadn't known the girl's name ... he hadn't known anything!

The girl erased the note with reverse writing strokes of the pen. She smiled strangely, said, "Noolyel," and nodded.

Driven by inexplicable impulse, Darrel drew a pad from his shirt pocket and wrote on it, "Who are you?" and showed it to the girl, Leyloon. It was ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous! Asking a question after it had been answered. But the inner compulsion had been irresistible.

He was silent for a long time. An hour ... two hours. Leyloon chatted gaily, even affectionately, in her strange tongue. She wrote incomprehensible things on pieces of paper that flew up from where they lay on the ground and from the waste receptacle beside the bench. She bewildered him, and yet.... Her every action was in reverse, but, despite the weirdness of the effect, hers were graceful and lovely actions.

Finally she left, rising to her feet and setting off down the parkway—walking backwards. She waved near a bend of the walk, then backed rapidly around it and out of sight.

Darrel returned to the ship. He weaved his way slowly and drunkenly through the crowds of this crazy world going in reverse.

The ship was a lifesaver. It sat there as solidly as a rock. He rubbed his hand over the smooth metal hull and began to regain his sense of reality.

Over twenty-four hours 

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