shell and the ato-glass and went to the
front room, hoping that Travail was not there.

To his relief he found the sitting room deserted. The television set
stood silent in a corner and as he passed it Sutter switched it on, then
crossed to the four-position lamp and turned it up full. For a second
time he peered through the ato-glass long and intently.

The bisected shell appeared to be a spinal univalve, resembling the
familiar cephalopoda, _nautilus_, with thin septa dividing the many
chambers.

Behind him the Tanganyika TV swelled on, the screen presenting that same
scene of the beach of shells. As it did so Sutter uttered a startled
exclamation.

Under the magnifying glass the chambers in the bisected shell suddenly
became more than outgrowths of marine organism. _They were rooms!_
Tessellated ceilings, microscopically mosaic inlaid floors, long
sweeping staircases with graceful slender balustrades and tall almost
Ionic columns....

Heart pounding, Sutter looked again.

He saw that it was actually the light from the television set that was
illuminating the interior of the shell, lighting it with a strange
radiance that seemed to extend outward from the shell in a steadily
widening cone. His hand touched this cone, and it possessed a curious
solidity.

He hadn't been mistaken. _There were rooms in that shell!_ Narrow
corridors with arched doorways opened off alcoves and galleries. One
vaulted chamber had a kind of dais in the center of it. The entire inner
structure was fashioned of pastel-tinted walls which caught the light of
the TV and radiated it to every corner in a soft glow of effulgence.

A magnetic lure swept over Sutter. He felt an overwhelming desire to
step into that cone of light....

Whether the exoskeleton expanded to admit his entrance or whether his
own figure magically dwindled he could not tell, but the next instant he
found himself in a fairy palace with all about him a world of silence.

A long broad hallway stretched before him. At the far end a ramp angled
upward to a higher level. Sutter walked forward slowly, aware in a vague
way that he had entered another plane that was at once a microcosm and a
macrocosm. On the second level the way ahead divided. After a moment's
hesitation he chose the left-hand passage, passing through a
keyhole-shaped archway into a broad amphitheater, empty of furnishings,
with a kind of terrace or gallery at the far end. Emerging upon that
gallery, Sut