ncidentally, isn't Tanganyika a colony governed by the
Federal Union Congress?"

"Yes, it is," replied Sutter. "I don't understand this at all. There's
no _Empire_ of Tanganyika."

* * * * *

Next morning after breakfast Sutter announced that he was driving into
the country to visit a friend. There was no reason why he should not
have told his roommate the truth--that he was going to look up the man
who had sold him the TV set. No reason except for the odd fact that
Travail had made no mention of the alien shells, and Sutter kept
thinking that a shell collector would have been immediately aware of the
rareness of them.

Once again Sutter drove out across state and down the highway where he
had seen the roadside stand. But when he reached the spot there was no
sign of the stand. The big oak tree which had shaded it and the rail
fence on the adjoining property were there. But no stand. As Sutter
stared with perplexed eyes at the spot he saw something he had not
noticed before.

At the edge of the highway was a large granite boulder with a bronze
plate fastened to its slanting surface. Sutter got out of the car,
approached it and read:

_This property has been preserved as a State Park to commemorate the
first successful trial explosion of the Hydrogen Bomb which took
place on this site and marked the beginning of an era._

It seemed to Sutter as he stood there that the surrounding silence grew
more intense. Then he passed through a wide gateway and began to stride
across an evenly clipped lawn toward a grove of trees beyond. Halfway he
paused and glanced absently at his watch. It was exactly twelve o'clock
noon.

And abruptly the scene before him slipped out of plumb. The sky and the
lawn seemed to alter positions, to rotate madly as in a vortex. The
whirling ceased and the next instant Sutter stood on the shore of a
lonely sea with a tawny width of sand stretching out before him and the
waves washing up almost at his feet. Then he saw the shells....

It was the beach of the alien shells! There they lay, scattered about
the sand, hundreds, thousands of them, alien and delicate and lovely,
exoskeletons the like of which he had never seen before. Their pastel
colors blended with one another to form a horizontal rainbow extending
into the measureless distance.

And somehow, as Sutter walked among them, picking his way with care, the
years of his life seemed to slip away