his room you obviously do.
What I'd like to know is why?"

Kramer hesitated. "Let me ask you this, Quinlan," he said, choosing
his words carefully. "Based solely on this man's costume and speech,
would you say he is an impostor?"

"No," I told him promptly. "Frontiersmen dressed exactly that way, the
long gun is authentic and his pronunciation, phrases and idiom comes
straight out of pre-Revolutionary times. But I still fail to see why
you give a second thought to his story."

"You don't think it true?"

"My God, man, how can it be? Unless you're trying to tell me that this
character was brought here by a time machine!"

"One moment, Mr. Quinlan." Secretary of War McClave was back in the
picture. "Let me tell you why we do not regard Mr. Wetzel as a mental
case. Shortly after one o'clock this afternoon, Rocky Mountain Time, a
section of Washington County, Colorado, roughly thirty miles in
circumference was suddenly cut off from the rest of the country--cut
off as completely as though it never existed. Telephone lines ceased
to function, a radio station in the same area went off the air in the
middle of a soap commercial. All traffic, vehicular and foot, ceased
to come out of it. The Governor of Colorado sent in a detachment of
the National Guard; nothing has been heard from it since. Air
observers report all cars and trains appear to have stalled. Two
planes trying a bit of hedge-hopping apparently conked out and were
forced to land. No radio contact with them."

I said, "I heard some of this on a news broadcast shortly before
midnight tonight. According to the announcer the area involved was
larger than thirty miles."

McClave nodded soberly. "The affected area is expanding steadily. It
now reaches as far west as Strasburg, Colorado, and as far east as
the Nebraska state line. The north and south limits seem to be
somewhat narrower."

I looked at him and at the other men around the table. Their faces
held a quiet tautness, and General Ohlmsted's hand, holding a cigar,
was shaking a little. "And," I said, "you feel that this spaceship
holds the answer. Is that it?"

"It's all we have to go on," the President said softly.

"One more question," I said. "Where do I fit into this?"

There was a moment's awkward silence, broken by the creak of the chair
holding the man who had been introduced to me as a Mr. Proudfit. His
round face smiled at me almost jovially.

"I expect I'm the one to explain that, Mr. Quin