tor heavily. "It's all over. We might as well go
up. We'll have to walk. All power will be off. Twenty stories!"

* * * * *

The lobby of the Hotel Atchison, on the roof of which the penthouse
apartment was located, was empty now except for a few clerks and
bellboys. These sat with bowed heads before their grills or on their
benches as if they had merely succumbed to the unpardonable sin of
sleeping on duty. But they did not breathe.

June clung to her father's arm as they crossed noiselessly over the
heavy carpet.

"The city will be a charnel house when these bodies start to
decompose." Baron hesitated. "Shouldn't we get out of town while there
is a chance?"

Manthis shook his head. "No. I'm convinced these people aren't dead.
They're simply outside of time. Change cannot affect them. If I'm not
mistaken they will remain just the same indefinitely."

"But there will be fires throughout the city."

"Not many. The electricity is off. The day is warm so no furnaces are
going. Not even a rat is left to nibble matches, for the animals must
be affected in the same way that humans are. The world is asleep."

* * * * *

After mounting interminable stairs they regained the apartment and
went out on the balcony. It was full daylight now but not a
smoke-plume trailed from tall chimneys. Not a bird was on the wing.
Elevated trains stood on their tracks, passengers and guards asleep
inside.

"I still don't understand," muttered Baron. "The sun comes up. The
wind blows. How can that be if there is no time? Might this not be
some plague?"

"In a way you are right, boy. It is a plague which has paralyzed man's
sense of time. You have become involved by not remembering Kant's
axiom that time is purely subjective. It exists in the mind only. It
and space are the only ideas inherently in our brains. They allow us
to conduct ourselves among a vast collection of things-in-themselves
which time does not affect."

"But--"

"Wait a moment. Granting that time is in the mind rather than in the
outside world, what will happen if the time-sense is paralyzed? Won't
the effect be similar to hypnosis whereby a man is reduced to a
cataleptic state? The thought chain which usually passes ceaselessly
through the brain is halted."

Seeing that the engineer still looked puzzled, June interposed:

"It's something like enchantment," she explained. "The old legends are
full o