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me.”
    “Hmmmmmmmmmm.” The shrink circled the desk again, sat down, wrote on a piece of paper. Then he looked up again. “Well, now. What shall we do with you?”
    The consultant smiled. “He needs music. This man is Theodore Rockman, C.P.A.—a solid citizen according to records. He must be drunk. Perhaps his ears got clogged up and he didn’t hear the music and got confused.”
    “Hmmmmm. That is exactly my diagnosis, Consultant. Let us take him to the music room. Give him some easy listening for a night.”
    That didn’t sound so awful a sentence, Rock thought. The consultant told him to stand, and, waving his long red-tipped rod in a menacing way, directed the Doomsday Warrior back upstairs.
    The man took him to a large bare-walled room with shower stalls at one end and a set of small barred cells at its other end. There were two Rookies there, visors up, smoking. They quickly doused their cigarettes and saluted when the consultant came in with him.
    The consultant turned him over to the two, directing them to have Rockson “listen to the music.” Then the blue-blazered man left. The rookies took out another couple of cigarettes and lit up. They eyed Rockson with some amusement as he stood there. Rockson thought about grabbing for their guns—until he saw the cameras at both ends of the room swing and lock onto him. Someone else was watching—he’d have no chance of escape. The door only opened with a buzz from some other location anyway—there was no doorknob.
    He was told to strip and shower—which he was eager to do anyway. While he was toweling dry, the rookies started jabbering.
    “Do you believe this outfit?” exclaimed the heavy-set rookie, picking up Rockson’s tattered sealskin parka with a pair of tongs and throwing it into a bin. “Give him some prisoner’s coveralls, Johnson.”
    As soon as Rockson slipped the coveralls on and zipped them, he was then unceremoniously thrown into a jail cell.
    Rockson sat down on the small cot, the only object in the nine-by-twelve room except for the toilet and a small sink. The walls were cinder-block, unpainted gray. The ceiling was low and had several strainerlike speakers that music—the dreadful music that seemed to permeate the city—sifted down from. Within a few minutes, a little dinner in a three-compartment aluminum hot tray and a cup of coffee were shoved through a slot in the door. He fell on it like a ravenous wolf.
    Things could be worse, he thought as he sipped the last dregs of his coffee. He was clean, wearing comfortable clothes, and he wasn’t hungry or thirsty anymore. But he was in jail. They had just laughed when he’d told them he was Ted Rockson, the Doomsday Warrior. Laughed when he asked which way to Colorado. Why?
    He had to think, organize what he had seen and heard in this weird city, and draw some conclusions. First, this had to be an American city. He hadn’t seen a single Soviet around. Second, it was awfully primitive—reciprocating engine vehicles, high-rise buildings—and that luncheonette! Straight out of history books!
    That was it. The whole place, the name of the city even, was straight out of a history book. The storm! The storm had lifted him up and— Why, it must have thrown him back in time. It was impossible, and yet what other conclusion could he draw? He had once passed the area that once held the ancient Salt Lake City . . .
    He had been on a mission back in 2089, in this very same area. And there hadn’t been a trace of the vast city. It didn’t exist in the twenty-first century. It had been nuked, along with most other cities. And yet here he was, sitting in a cell in the heart of Salt Lake City.
    Time travel! No wonder they thought he’d been babbling. They didn’t know of Freefighters, nor of the Soviet occupation of America; nor about the Doomsday Warrior or Century City. Because it hadn’t happened yet.
    Assuming he was right, what year was it? How would he find out? Ask!
    He banged on the