. I was a bad mother, and a poor mistress. And I had
a swell husband, who could lie like a trooper. I wasn't any good, I was
ugly, I was greasy. I cried. "Mabel," I choked.

It took her a while to get it out of me, and then her blue eyes flashed.
"I told you!" she cried. "From another dimension!" In her broken-down
green wedgies she clattered toward the door. I heard her fighting it.
She couldn't get it open. Then she tried a window. It opened, but she
couldn't stick her hand out. She flung herself around.

"Stella," she said, with a quiver of that good-looking short upper lip
of hers, "we're trapped in. We're in the middle of some kind of fantasy.
It's a crazy world we're living in, Stella. A-bombs and H-bombs and
flying saucers and space-flight--it's all the fiction stuff coming true.
Now we're lost in some other dimension, and I have to get dinner in the
oven."

"Please," I mumbled. "Let's don't get desperate about the wrong things."
I tried all the doors and windows in the house, and it was true. We were
trapped in. There was some barrier surrounding the house. There wasn't
anything to see outside except a kind of grey steam.

We went back to check on baby. He was still playing with the monster. I
bent over the crib and held a fluffy, fifty-cent toy bear out. The baby
monster took it invisibly out of my hand. He shoved it at baby. Baby
squealed so darned happily. And I began to get some perspective.

"Suspicion is wrong," I told Mabel. "All the time. That's what that
article we read a couple months ago in _Your World_ said. Remember you
and I decided we'd never be suspicious. Maybe that's the reason we're
happy--if dirty. We don't suspect anybody of anything if we can help
it--and now's no time to start. The monster is baby's friend."

* * * * *

Mabel shuddered. "Okay," she said. "But I'm still worried about getting
dinner in the oven. Bill's liable to--"

"Hah, now you're being suspicious," I said, lousy with virtue. "Quit
worrying. I'm going to call Harry again." This time I was a lot calmer.
I decided to trust the universe a little more. I dialed Harry's number
again. A scratchy male voice answered:

"Sorry, dis dimension is in use. Would ya please get off da line?"

I dug a few trenches and established a line of fire.

"Listen," I said. "I'm in trouble."

"A dame," he said wonderingly.

"Yeah, a dame," I cried. "What's so unusual about a dame? Why does every
male in