d heaved. The
wall didn't move. Holding his breath, he propped one foot against the
adjoining wall, dug his hands as far into the breach as possible, and
hurled himself backward. The big door jolted an inch, hung, then slid
back a couple of feet. He swung around and jammed himself through the
aperture and the wall moved silently back into place; this time the
dowel was not there, and when the wall stopped, there was no crack at
the corner. Summersby must have kicked the dowel aside when he slid
through. Watkins was inside, asleep.

He breathed deeply, and the effects of the sleep gas died, so that he
was wide awake and felt very excited and eager. To analyze the reasons
for his eagerness would have killed it, and besides he was in a hurry.
He ran to the great door of the playroom, whose lintel towered twenty
feet from the floor. Hastily he tossed apparatus, boxes, toy blocks,
until he had made a pile five feet high.

Scrambling up this, the things sliding under his feet, he waved an arm
above his head in the place where he believed the electric eye beam to
be. Then the pile collapsed, and he fell into it, giving one knee a
terrific crack and skinning his knuckles. The door glided open.

The next room was deserted, and the soft bluish light was dimmer here
than in the nursery. This place was far less cluttered, containing no
more than a big yellow machine, a gigantic table, and two six-legged
chairs. There was a picture on the wall, the size of a barn's side,
which he did not stop to look at.

The opposite door was open. The third room was a dining hall, with two
tables and a number of chairs, these of metal with eight legs each.
Luckily, there was no one in it.

In the next room--all four were in a straight line, and he thought,
Either it's a long narrow house, or else it's as big as Rockefeller
Center--there were a number of gadgets, colorful and complex like the
children's toys, but of different construction. He glanced at them but
did not pause until he came to the next door.

It was closed. He presumed its opener beam would be in the same place as
that of the playroom, and looked around for something to stand on.

There seemed to be nothing small enough to move. He shoved at a couple
of things, but they wouldn't budge. The only slim possibility was a big
square brown box, set twelve feet off the floor on one of their mammoth
tables. It was of a size to accommodate half a dozen cows, but looked as
though it m