3. SHOCK

WHEN GREGG LOOKED up from his book to see the man crawling through the wall of his apartment, he thought briefly that he was crazy. Such things don't happen to a middle-aged physicist who has arranged his life into an ordered pattern. Nevertheless, there was now a hole in the wall, and a half-naked person with macrocephalia was wedging himself through it.

'Who the hell are you?' Gregg demanded, recovering the use of his tongue.

The man spoke an odd sort of English, slurred and with an extraordinary tonal range, but recognizable. 'I'm a mug-wump,' he announced, balancing on his middle. 'My mug's in ... eh? ... in 1953 and my wump's in ... wA!" He gave a convulsive wriggle and burst through, sprawling on the carpet and breathing hard. 'That was a nardly squeeze. The valve isn't quite big enough yet. Forthever.'

It made sense, but not much. Manning Gregg's heavy, leonine features darkened. He reached out, seized a heavy book end, and rose.

'I am Halison,' the newcomer announced, adjusting his toga. "This should be 1953. Norvunder soverless.'

'What?'

'Semantic difficulty," Halison told him. 'I am from about . . .' well, several thousand years in the future. Your future.'

Gregg's gaze went in the hole in the wall. 'You're talking English.'

'Learned it in 1970. This isn't my first trip into past. Many of them. Looking for something. Important—skandarly important. I use mental power to warp space-time pharron, so valve opens. Lend me clothes, if you please?'

Still holding the book end, Gregg walked to the wall and looked through the circular gap, just large enough to admit a small man's body. All he could see was a blue, bare wall apparently a few feet away. The adjoining apartment? Improbable.

Valve will open wider later,' Halison said. 'Open at night, closed by day. I must be back before Thursday. Ranil-Mens visits me on Thursdays. But now may I beg clothes? There is something I must find—— I have been searching in time for a long carvishtime. Please?'

He was still squatting on the floor. Gregg stared down at his extraordinary visitor. Halison was certainly not Homo sapiens

1953. He had a pinched, bright-pink face, with very large bright eyes, and his cranium was abnormally developed and totally bald. He had six fingers and his toes had fused. And he kept up a continual nervous trembling, as though his metabolism had gone haywire.

'Good Lord!' Gregg said, suddenly understanding. "This isn't a gag. Is it?' His voice rose.

'Gag, gag, gag. Nevishly holander sprae? Was mugwump wrong? Hard to know what to say in new time-world. You have no conception of our advanced culture, sorry. Hard to get down to same plane with you. Civilization moved fast, fast, after your century. There is not much time. Talk later, but important now that you lend me clothes.'

There was a cold, hard knot just under Gregg's backbone. 'Yes, but—wait. If this isn't some———'

'Forgive me,' Halison remarked. 'I am looking for something; great hurry. I will return soon. By Thursday anyway to see Ranil-Mens. I get much wisdom from him. Now, forgive reedishly.' He touched Gregg's forehead.

The physicist said, 'Talk a bit slower, pi———'

Halison was gone.

Gregg whirled, searching the room with his gaze. Nothing. Except that the hole in the wall had doubled in diameter. What the hell.

He looked at the clock. It was just past eight. It should have been about seven. An hour had passed, it seemed, since Halison had reached out to touch his forehead.

As a sample of hypnotism, it was damned impressive.

Gregg carefully found a cigarette and lit it. Drawing smoke into his lungs, he looked at the valve from across the room and considered. A visitor from the future, eh? Well——

Struck by an obvious thought, he went into the bedroom and discovered that a suit of clothes, a brown Harris tweed, had been confiscated. A shirt was missing, a tie, and a pair of shoes. But the hole in the wall eliminated the chance that this was merely a clever theft. For one thing, Gregg's wallet was still in his trousers pocket.

He looked through the valve again, but still could see nothing but the blue wall. It obviously wasn't in the next-door apartment of Tommy MacPherson, the aging playboy who had given up night-clubbing for more peaceful pursuits, at his doctor's suggestion. Nevertheless, Gregg went into the hall and rang the buzzer beside MacPherson's door.

' 'Lo, Mac,' he said when a round, pale face, topped by carefully dyed chestnut hair, appeared to blink sleepily at him. 'Busy? I'd like to come in a minute."

MacPherson enviously eyed Gregg's cigarette. 'Sure. Make yourself at home. I've been going over some incunabula my

Philadelphia man sent me, and wishing for a drink, Highball?'

'If you'll join me."

'Wish I could,' MacPherson groaned. 'But I'm too young to die. What's up?' He followed Gregg into the kitchen and watched the other man carefully examining the wall. 'Ants?'

'There's a hole in my wall,' Gregg said. 'It doesn't come through, though.' Which proved that the valve was definitely off .the beam. It had to open either into MacPherson's kitchen or else—some other place.	<

'Hole in your wall? How come?'

'I'll show you.'

'I'm not that curious,' MacPherson remarked. 'Phone the landlord. He may be interested.'

Gregg scowled. 'I mean it, Mac. I want you to take a look. It's—funny. And I'd rather like confirmation.'

'It's either a hole or it isn't,' MacPherson said simply. 'Is that razor-edged brain of yours poisoned by alcohol? I wish mine was.' He looked wistfully at the portable bar.

'You're no help,' Gregg said. 'But you're better than nobody. Come on!' He lugged the protesting MacPherson into his apartment and pointed to the valve. Mac went over, muttering something about a mirror, and peered into die gap. He whistled softly. Then he put his arm through, stretching it as far as possible, and tried to touch the blue wall. He couldn't quite make it.

'The hole's got bigger,' Gregg said quietly, 'even since a few, minutes ago. You see it too, eh?'

MacPherson found a chair. 'Let's have a drink,' he grunted. 'I need it. Anyhow it's an excuse. Make it short, though,' he added with a flash of last-minute caution.

Gregg mixed two highballs and gave MacPherson one. As they drank, he told die other'what had happened. Mac was unhelpful.

'Out of die future? Glad it didn't happen to me. I'd have gone off my crock.'

'It's perfectly logical,' Gregg argued, partly widi himself. 'The guy—Halison—certainly wasn't a 1953 product.'

'He must have looked like a combination of Pogo and Karloff.'

'Well, you don't look like a Neanderthaler or a Piltdown man,-do you? That skull of his—Halison must have a tremendous brain. His I.Q.—well!'

'What good's all diat if he wouldn't talk to you?' MacPherspn asked cogently.

For some reason Gregg felt a slow flush creeping warmly up his neck. 'I must have seemed like an ape to him,' he said flatly. T could scarcely understand him—and no wonder. But he'll be back.'

'By Thursday? Who's diis Ranilpants?'

Hanil-Mens,' Gregg said. 'A friend, I suppose. A ... a teacher. Halison said he got wisdom from him. Perhaps Ranil-Mens is a professor at some future university. I can't quite think straight. You don't realize the implications of all this, Mac, do you?'

'I don't want to,' MacPherson said, tasting his drink. 'I'm a bit scared.'

'Rationalize it away,' Gregg advised. 'I'm going to.' He looked again at the wall. 'That hole's getting pretty big. Wonder if I could step through it?' He walked close to the valve. The blue wall was still there, and a blue floor at a slightly lower level than his own gray carpet. A pungent, pleasant breatii of air floated in from die unknown, oddly reassuring.

'Better not,' MacPherson said. 'It might close up on you.'

For answer Gregg vanished into die kitchen and returned with a length of thin clothesline. He made a loop around his waist, handed the other end to MacPherson, and crushed out his cigarette in a convenient tray.

'It won't close till Halison gets back. Or anyway it won't close too fast. I hope. Sing out if you see it starting to shut, though, Mac. I'll come diving back headfirst.'

'Crazy fool,' MacPherson said.

Gregg, rather pale around the lips, stepped into the future. The valve was more tiian four feet in diameter by now, its lower edge two feet from the carpet. Gregg had to duck. He straightened up, remembering to breathe, and looked back through the hole into MacPherson's white face.

'It's O.K.,' he said.

'What's over there?'

Gregg flattened himself against the blue wall. The floor felt soft under his feet. The four-foot circle was like a cut-out disk, an easel set up in empty air, a film process shot. He could see MacPherson there, and his own room.

But he was in another room now, large, lit with a cool radiant glow, and utterly different from anything he had ever seen before.

The windows drew his attention first, oval, tall openings in two of the blue walls, transparent in the center and fading around the edges to translucence and then azure opaqueness. Through them he glimpsed lights, colored lights dial moved. He took a step forward and hesitated, looking back to where MacPherson waited.

'What's it like?'

Til see,' Gregg said, and circled the valve. It was invisible from the other side. Perhaps light rays were bent around it. He couldn't tell. A little frightened, he returned briefly to glimpse MacPherson again, and, relieved, continued his explorations.

The room was about diirty feet square, with a high-domed room, and the lighting source was at first difficult to discover. Everydiing in die room had a slight glow. Absorption of sun-

light, Gregg thought, like luminous paint. It seemed effective.

There wasn't much to see. There were low couches, functional-looking padded chairs, comfortable and pastel-tinted, and a few rubbery tables. A square glassy block as large as a small overnight bag, rubber in texture, was on the blue floor. Gregg could not make out its purpose. When he picked it up gingerly, colors played phosphorescently for a few moments within it.

There was a book on one of the tables, and he pouched this for future reference. MacPherson hailed him.

'Manning? O.K. in there?'

'Yeah. Just a minute.'

Where were the doors? Gregg grinned wryly. He was slightly handicapped by lacking even the basic technological "knowledge for this unknown world. The doors might be activated by pressure, light, or sound. Or even odor, for all he knew. A brief inspection could tell him nothing. But he was worried about the valve. If it closed———

Well, no great harm would be done, Gregg supposed., This future world was peopled by humans sufficiently similar to himself. And they'd have enough intelligence to return him to his own time-sector—Malison's appearance proved that. Nevertheless, Gregg preferred to have an open exit.

He went to the nearest window and looked out. The constellations in the purple sky had changed slightly, not much, in a few thousand years. The rainbow lights darted here and there. Aircraft. Beneath him, the dark masses of buildings were dimly visible in the shadow. There was no moon. A few towers rose to his own height, and he could make out the rounded silhouettes of their summits.

One of the lights swept toward him. Before Gregg could draw back he glimpsed a small ship—antigravity, he thought—with a boy and a girl in the open cockpit. There was neither propeller nor wing structure. The pair resembled Halison in their large craniums and pinched faces, though both had hair on their heads. They, too, wore togalike garments.

And they did not seem strange, somehow. There was no— alienage. The girl was laughing, and, despite her bulging forehead and meager features, Gregg thought her strangely attractive. Certainly there was no harm in these people. The vague fears of a coldly, ruthlessly inhuman superrace went glimmering.

They glided past, not twenty feet away, looking straight at Gregg—and did not see him. Astonished, the physicist reached out to touch the smooth, slightly warmish surface of the pane. Odd!

But there were no lights in the other buildings. The windows must be one-way only, to insure privacy. You could see out, but not in.

'Manning!'

Gregg turned hurriedly, re-coiling the rope as he returned to the valve. MacPherson's worried frown greeted him.

T wish you'd come back. I'm getting jittery.'

'All right,' Gregg said amiably, and crawled through the hole. 'But there's no danger. I bagged a book. Here's some very post-incunabula for you!' He drew the volume from his pocket.

MacPherson took it but didn't open it immediately. His pale eyes were on Gregg's.

'What did you find?'

Gregg went into detail. 'Quite remarkable in its suggestions you know. A tiny slice out of the future. It didn't seem so strange when I was in there, but now it seems funny. My drink's warm. Another?'

'No. Oh, well—yes. Short.'

MacPherson examined the book while Gregg went into the kitchen. Once he glanced up at the valve. It was a little larger, he thought. Not much. Perhaps it had nearly reached its maximum.

Gregg came back. 'Can you read it? No? Well, I expected that. Halison said he had to learn our language. I wonder what he's looking for—in his past?'

'I wonder who Ranil-Mens is.'

'I'd like to meet him. Thank God I've got training. If I can get Halison—or somebody—to explain things to me, I ought to be able to grasp the rudiments of future technology. What a chance, Mac!'

'If he's willing.'

'You didn't meet him,' Gregg said. 'He was friendly, even though he did hypnotize me. What's that?' He seized the book to examine a picture.

'Octopus,' MacPherson suggested.

'Chart. I wonder. It looks almost like an atomic structure, but it's no compound I've ever run into. I wish I could read these infernal wiggles. They look like a combination of Burmese and Pitman. Even the numerical system's different from the Arabic. A whole treasure chest out here, and no key!'

'Hm-m-m. Could be. It still looks a bit dangerous to me.'

Gregg eyed MacPherson. 'I don't think so. There's no reason at all for anticipating trouble. Dime-novel stuff.'

'What is life but a dime novel?' MacPherson asked moodily, rather bottle-dizzy from the unaccustomed liquor.

'That's your way of looking at it. And the way you live it.' Gregg's tone was unpleasant, chiefly because he was allergic to MacPherson's casually hopeless philosophy. 'Try being logical for a change. The race is advancing, in spite of dictators and professional reformers. The industrial revolution started speeding up social mutations. Natural mutations tie in with that. It's progressive. In the next five hundred years we'll have covered as

much ground as we did in the last ten thousand. A snowball rolling downhill.'

'So what?1

'So the ultimate result is logic,' Gregg said, 'and that doesn't mean a cold-blooded inhuman logic, either. Not when it's human logic. It takes emotions and psychology into account. It will, that is. There won't be Great Brains waiting to conquer universes, or enslaving the remnants of humans. We've seen that. Halison—he was willing to talk, but in too much of a hurry just then. He said he'd explain later.'

'All I know is that there's a hole in the wall,' MacPherson said. 'It's one of those things that doesn't happen. Now it's happened. Sorry I've got my wind up.'

'That's the way you're keeping your emotional balance,' Gregg told him. 'I prefer to do it along the lines of mathematics. Working out the equation, from what factors we've got. Induction won't tell us much, but it shows what a tremendous thing the whole must be. A perfect world——'

'How d'you know?'

Gregg was stumped. 'Well, it seemed that way. In a few thousand years civilization will have time to apply technology and use the nuances. Physically and mentally. The best part of it is that they won't be snooty about it. They can't. Anyhow, Halison wasn't.'

'That hole isn't getting any bigger,' MacPherson said. 'I've been watching a spot on the wallpaper.'

'Well,' Gregg said inconclusively, 'it's not getting smaller, either. Wish I knew how to open the doors in there. So damn much I can't understand by myself!'

'Have another drink. That may help.'

It didn't, much. Gregg didn't quite dare go through the valve again, for fear it might close suddenly, and he sat with MacPherson, smoking, drinking, and talking, while the night moved slowly on. From time to time they re-examined the book. That told them nothing.

Halison remained absent. At three A.M. the valve began closing. Gregg remembered what the man from the future had said; that the gap would open at night and remain closed by day. Presumably it would open again. If it didn't, then the chance of a hundred lifetimes had been muffed!

In half an hour the valve had shut completely, leaving no trace on the wallpaper. MacPherson, glassy about die eyes, returned to his own apartment. Gregg locked the book in a desk drawer and went to bed to snatch a few hours' sleep before the alarm roused him.

Later, dressing, Gregg phoned Haverhill Research to say he would not be in that day. In case Halison showed up, he wanted to be on hand. But Halison did not arrive. Gregg spent the

morning crushing out cigarettes and thumbing through the book. In the afternoon he sent it by messenger to Courtney, at the university, with a brief note asking for information. Courtney. whose forte was languages, telephoned to say he was baffled.

Naturally he was curious. Gregg spent an awkward five minutes putting him off, and decided to be more wary next time. He was not anxious to release his secret to the world. Even MacPherson—well, that couldn't be helped now. But this was Manning Gregg's discovery, and it was only fair that he should have first rights.

Gregg's selfishness was completely unmercenary. Had he analyzed his motives, he would have realized dial he was greedy for intellectual intoxication—that was the only suitable term. Gregg did have a really fine, keen-edged brain, and took an intense delight in using it. He could get positively drunk on the working out of technical problems, die same pleasure an engineer feels at sight of a beautifully executed blueprint, or a pianist confronted by an intricate composition. He was a perfectionist. And to be given a key to the perfect world of the future——

He was not certain of its perfection, of course, but later he felt more certain. Especially after the valve slowly began opening at six thirty that evening.

This time Gregg went through as soon as the hole was large enough to admit him. He had plenty of time. His search for a door proved fruitless, but he did make' another discovery—the blue walls were in reality the doors of immense cupboards, full of extraordinary objects. Books, of course—though he could read none of them. Some of the charts were tantalizingly on the edge of translation into his own focus of understanding, but not quite. Pictures, three-dimensional and tinted, proved fascinating in their dim glimpses of the life of the future. It was, he suspected, a happy sort of life.

The cupboards——

They held the damnedest things. No doubt they were all perfectly familiar to Halison, but what, for example, could Gregg make of a two-foot doll, modeled after a future human, that recited what seemed to be poetry in an unknown tongue? The rhyme scheme was remarkable, from what Gregg could understand of it—an intricate, bizarre counterpoint diat had a definite emotional effect, even in the alien language.

And then there were more of the rubbery, glassy blocks, with moving lights inside;' and metallic frameworks—one of which Gregg recognized as a model of a solar system; and a hydroponic garden with chameleon qualities; and plastics of possibly mythical animals that could be merged to produce other animals that were crosses or sports—an incredible demonstration of pure genetics, this; and more, and more, and morel Gregg got dizzy. He had to go to the windows to recuperate.

The rainbow lights still flashed through the dark. Far below he could make out intermittent blazes of radiance, as though star shells were bursting. For a shocked instant he thought of war. Another glow, fountaining up, relieved him; by craning his neck, he could see tiny figures posturing and dancing in mid-air in a tumultuous sea of color, perhaps a ballet without gravity. No, this was the perfect world.

He was, suddenly, overcome by an intense desire to emerge from this silent room into that blazing, joyous tumult outside. But he could find no way of opening the windows. And the springs that controlled the doors still eluded him. It had not been easy to discover the concealed buttons that operated the cupboards, Gregg remembered.

He thought, with grim amusement, of old Duffey at the Haver-hill, and how the man would react to sight of all this. Well, the devil with Duffey. Later, the world could drink, but he wanted— and deserved—the first ecstatic sip from this bottle of vintage wine.

He hoped someone would come into Halison's apartment, perhaps Ranil-Mens. There might be some semantic difficulties at first, unless the visitor had troubled to learn archaic English— which wasn't likely—but these wouldn't be insurmountable. If only Ranil-Mens would appear, to point out how the gadgets in the cupboards worked! A fine spot for a physicist!

Nobody appeared, however, and, bearing booty, Gregg returned to his own time-sector, finding MacPherson sprawled in a chair drinking highballs and eying the valve skeptically.

'How"d you get in?' Gregg demanded.

'Walked in,' MacPherson said. 'The door was open. Halison was standing inside, so I stopped to see what was up. He's real, all right.' Ice cubes clinked.

'Halison here? Mac, what ———'

'Take it easy. I came in and asked him who he was. "Halison," he said. "I just dropped in for a minute"—or words to the effect. "Gregg wants see you," I said. "Haven't time yet," he says. "I'm looking for something. I'll be back by Thursday to see Ranil-Mens. I'll tell Gregg anything he wants to know then. I can tell him plenty, too—I'm labeled as a genius." All this was in a sort of double talk, but I managed to understand it. After that he went out. I ran after him. "Where's Gregg?" I yelled. He waved back toward the . . . the valve, and scooted off downstairs. I stuck my head through the hole in the wall, saw you, and started to feel funny. So I fixed a highball and sat down to wait. That guy gives me the creeps."

Gregg dropped his burden on a couch. 'Damn! So I missed him. Well, he'll be back, that's one consolation. Why the devil does he give you the creeps?'

'He's different,' MacPherson said simply.

'Nothing human is alien. Don't tell me he's not human.'

'Oh, he's human, all right, but it isn't our sort of humanity. Even his eyes. He looks right through you, as though he's seeing into the fourth dimension.'

'Maybe he does,' Gregg speculated. 'I wish . . . mph. He'll tell me anything I want to know, eh? I'll have a drink on that. What a chance! And he's a genius, even for his age. I suppose it'd take a genius to work out that space-time business.'

MacPherson said quietly, 'It's his world, Manning, not yours. If I were you, I'd stay out of it.'	, -,

Gregg laughed, his eyes very bright. 'Under other circumstances, I'd agree. But I know something about that world now. The pictures in the books, for example. It is a perfect world. Only just now it's a world beyond my comprehension. Those people have gone far beyond us in everything, Mac. I doubt if we're capable of understanding everytiiing there. Still, I'm not exactly a moron. I'll learn. My training will help. I'm a technician and a physicist.'

'All right. Suit yourself. I'm drunk now because I've been sitting looking at that hole in the wall and wondering if it'd snap shut forever.'

'Nuts,' Gregg said.

MacPherson got up, weaving on his feet. 'I'm going to bed. Call me if you need me for anything. G'night."

'Night, Mac. Oh, say. You haven't mentioned this to anyone, have you?'

'No. I won't. And Halison's eyes scared me, even though they had a friendly look in them. Man and superman. Urp!' MacPherson floated away in a haze of Scotch mist. Gregg chuckled and closed the door carefully.

Whatever else he might be, Halison was no superman. He hadn't evolved to that extreme, or, perhaps, there could have been no meeting ground between the two—Homo sapiens and Homo superior. There was much that was mysterious about the 'man from the future—his enigmatic quest through time, for example—but by Thursday, Gregg hoped, he'd know at least some of the answers. If he could only curb his impatience till then.

He didn't go to work the next day, either. That was Wednesday. He spent his time pondering over the gadgets he had brought back from the future, finding a cold sort of comfort in that.

.He waited till hunger pangs could no longer be ignored, and then decided to step around the corner for a sandwich. On second thought, he changed his mind and ate across the street, at a fly-blown quick-lunch joint, where he could keep his eye on the apartment house.

He saw Halison go in.

Choking on a mouthful, Gregg flung a handful of change at the waiter and dashed out. On the steps he nearly stumbled and caught himself by clutching wildly at the surprised doorman. The elevator——

Gregg cursed its slowness. His apartment door was open. Halison was emerging.

'Tawnishly hello,' Halison said. 'I returned for a clean shirt.'

'Wait,' Gregg said desperately. 'I want to talk to you.'

'No time yet.. I'm still searching marj entar—haven't found———'

'Halison! When will you talk to me?'

'Wednesday night. Tomorrow. I must be back then to see Ranil-Mens Thursday. Who is wiser than I, by the way.'

'The valve won't shut permanently?"

'Sar no. Not till the mental power runs down. That will not be for zanentho nearly two weeks yet.'

'I was afraid I might be caught on the other side———'

'The serving robots bring food by day; you would not go hungry. You could return the next night when the valve opened maronail again. No danger. None in my world harms another. To help and heal for commonweal—a bad translation. Your language—stinks sarkoment.'

'But———'

Halison flicked away like a phantom and was gone down the stairs. Gregg started after him, but was easily outdistanced. Glumly he returned to his apartment. Tomorrow night, however——

Tomorrow night!

Well, he could afford the time for a genuine dinner now, at any rate. Comforted by the thought, Gregg went to his favorite restaurant and ate veal scallopini. After that, he foregathered with MacPherson and relayed his conversation with Halison. MacPherson was not cheerful.

'None in his world harms another,' Gregg quoted.

'All the same—I don't know. I'm still scared.'

'I'm going through again and see what I can pick up.'

He did. He didn't wait till the valve was large enough, and went through headfirst, crashing back from the wall and thumping his head against a table. Since it was satisfactorily resilient, that didn't matter. The future has its conveniences.

That night was a repetition of the preceding one. Gregg's curiosity rose to burning pitch. All about him lay the secrets of a culture far beyond his own—and the key was just beyond his finger tips. It was difficult to wait now.

But he had to wait. He still hadn't fathomed the secret of the door, and he'd forgotten to ask Halison about it. If a telephone or televisor existed, it was hidden in some secret nook he couldn't locate. Oh, well.

Wednesday Gregg went to work, but was home early, chafing. MacPherson  dropped  in  briefly.  Gregg  discouraged  him.  He wanted no three-way conversation. He began outlining on paper the questions he meant to ask Halison. At six forty-five the valve began to open. At midnight Gregg was biting his nails.

At two he woke MacPherson and begged the man to have a drink with him.

'He's forgotten,' Gregg said tonelessly, lighting a cigarette and crushing it out. 'Or something. Damn!'

'There's plenty of time,' MacPherson grunted. 'Take it easy. I only hope he doesn't show up.'

They waited a long time. The valve began to close slowly. Gregg cursed in a heartfelt monotone. The telephone rang.

Gregg answered, talked briefly, and cradled the receiver. His face was strained as he turned to MacPherson.

'Halison's been killed. A truck hit him. They found one of my cards in the pocket of his suit.' 'How d'you know it's Halison?'

'They described him. Mac, what a chance! And that so-and-so has to go and walk in front of a truck. Blast him to———'

'Ways of Providence,' MacPherson said, sotto voce, but Gregg heard him.

'There's still Ranil-Mens.' 'Whoever he is.'

'Some friend of Halison, of course!' Gregg's tone was knife-edged. 'He'll visit Halison's apartment tomorrow—Thursday. The first possible contact with that world, Mac. I've only been there at night. And I couldn't get out of the room—couldn't locate the doors. But if I'm there tomorrow when Ranil-Mens comes——' 'What if the valve doesn't open again?'

'Halison said it would. That's logical enough. Mental energy, like any other, has to drain away gradually unless it's cut off. And Halison's death certainly didn't cut it off." Gregg nodded toward the slowly closing valve.

'In the words of the prophet,' MacPherson said, 'don't.' He went out and made himself a drink. Most of that drink was straight Scotch. A cold, sick fear was crawling up MacPherson's spine.

They talked inconclusively for a while. In the end, Gregg went through. His face showed through the hole like a portrait in a circular frame.

'So far, so good,' he announced. 'I'll see you tomorrow, Mac. And I'll have plenty to tell you.'

MacPherson's nails dug into his palms. 'Want to change your mind? I wish———'

Gregg grinned. 'No chance. I'm the boy that's going to get

the answers this time. Get it through your thick skull, Mac, there's no danger.'

'O.K.'

'Hand me a drink. There's no liquor on this side . . . thanks. Luck!'

'Luck,' MacPherson said. He sat waiting. The valve shrank.

'It'll be too late in a minute, Manning.'

'It's too late now. See you later, son. Six thirty tomorrow. And maybe I'll bring Ranil-Mens with me.'

Gregg lifted the glass. The valve slowly shrank to dime-size. And vanished.

MacPherson didn't move. He sat there, waiting. He was afraid, coldly and definitely and unarguably, though, of course, illogically.

And then, without turning, he sensed the presence of someone in the room.	'

Halison walked into his range of vision. 'Too savishly late,' he said. 'Well, tomorrow night will do. Though I am sorry to have missed Ranil-Mens.'

The fumes of alcohol seemed to whirlwind in MacPherson's skull. 'The truck,' he said. "The truck. The accident———'

Halison shrugged. 'My metabolism is different. Catalepsy is frequent to me. The nervous shock threw me into that septol state. I woke in the ... what? . . . morgue, explained a little of what had happened, came here. But too late. I have not yet found what I have been searching for.'

'Just what have you been searching for?" MacPherson asked.

'I am looking for Halison,' Halison said, 'because he has been lost in the past, and Halison will not be whole again till I find him. A genius must be whole. I worked hard, hard, and one day Halison slipped away and was gone in the past. So I must search."

MacPherson turned into ice, realizing what the look in Hali-son's eyes meant.

'Ranil-Mens,' he said. 'Then . . . oh, my God!'

Halison put out a groping, six-fingered hand. 'Mordishly. You know.what they said. But they were wrong. I was isolated, to heal. That was wrong, too, but it gave me time to open the door to the past and look for Halison where Halison is lost. The robot servants gave me food and I had quiet, which I zeverti needed. But the toys they placed in my room I did not need and did not use often.'

Toys——'

'San, san, san. Farlingly oculltar—but the words change. Even for a genius the way is hard. I am not what they said. Ranil-Mens understood. Ranil-Mens is a robot. All our physicians are robots, trained to do their tasks perfectly. But it was hard at first. The treatment—san, san, san, dantro. It took a strong brain to

withstand the healing that Ranil-Mens gave me weekly. Even for me, a genius, it was—san, san, san, and they go far into whirling down forever by token———'

MacPherson said, 'What was it? What was it, damn you?'

'No,' Halison said, crouching suddenly on the carpet and covering his face with his hands. 'Fintharingly and no, no———'

MacPherson leaned forward, the glass slipping from his sweating hand. 'What———'

Halison lifted a blind bright stare. 'The shock treatment for insanity,' he said. 'The new, the terrible, the long and long and eternal long healing that Ranil-Mens brings me once a week, but I do not mind it now, and I like it, and Ranil-Mens will give it to Gregg instead of to me, san, san, san and whirling——'

The pattern had fallen into place. The padded furniture, the lack of doors, the windows that did not open, the toys.

A cell in a madhouse.

To help and heal.

Shock treatment.

Halison got up and went to the open door. 'Halison——' he said.

His footsteps died away along the hall. His voice came back gently.

'Halison is in the past. San, san, san, and I must find Halison so Halison will be whole again, Halison, san, san, san——'

The first rays of Thursday's sun struck through the windows.