ter saw that he had reached the outer limit of the shell.
The edges of the wall before him were cut off, jagged and rough, where
his saw had done its work.

He was looking out upon the normal world that was his living room.

He stiffened as the door to the room opened and Lucien Travail entered.
He sat down before the center table and carefully, systematically began
going through the contents of the table drawer. Startled, Sutter
watched from his strange vantage point. Travail had not noticed that the
television set was turned on, and the high-backed davenport apparently
hid the cone of blue light from his view.

He took a sheet of paper from the drawer, began reading it. With a start
Sutter recognized his letter from the Federal Arts Museum.

And as a wave of wrath swept over him, Sutter saw that the beach scene
on the television set was slowly fading away. Fear and a realization of
his strange position struck him. He turned and ran madly back across the
amphitheater, down the ramp and along the long hallway to the point
where he had entered the shell. Even as he approached it the cone of
blue light dimmed, wavered and was replaced by a wall of partial
blackness.

Sutter sent his hands clawing desperately at that wall as it flickered
twice and momentarily became translucent again. He forced his body
between folds of palpable darkness, slid into the vanishing blue cone.
Instantly he found himself in his normal world, standing in the center
of the sitting room. Travail looked up, startled.

"Hullo. Where did you come from?" he said finally.

Sutter said, "What are you doing in my drawer?"

"I was looking for my tobacco pouch," Travail replied easily. "I'm sure
I left it here on the table last night. I thought the maid might have
put it in the drawer."

In his bedroom Sutter wrapped each of the alien shells in a sheet of
newspaper and restored them to the basket. He placed the basket on the
top shelf of the closet, concealing it with a couple of old hats.

He didn't sleep well that night. His mind reviewed over and over his
strange experience. Toward morning he fell into a deep sleep and dreamed
a wild dream of walking down a broad highway, flanked on one side by an
endless line of television sets and on the other by man-high hills of
alien shells.

He had his breakfast at the little coffee shop around the corner. But
halfway back to his apartment he suddenly thought of Travail alone in
the house with his she