nited States. He remembered the whispers he had
heard, the words of the men at the drugstore corner, the
buildings disappearing. Something scientists could not explain.
But those were merely scraps of information. He did not know the
whole story ... he could not know. He never listened to the
radio, never read a newspaper.

But abruptly the whole thing fitted together in his brain like
the missing piece of a puzzle into its slot. The significance of
it all gripped him with damning clarity.

There were not sufficient minds in existence to retain the
material world in its mundane form. Some other power from another
dimension was fighting to supersede man's control _and take his
universe into its own plane!_

Abruptly Mr. Chambers closed the book, shoved it back in the case
and picked up his hat and coat.

He had to know more. He had to find someone who could tell him.

He moved through the hall to the door, emerged into the street.
On the walk he looked skyward, trying to make out the sun. But
there wasn't any sun ... only an all pervading grayness that
shrouded everything ... not a gray fog, but a gray emptiness that
seemed devoid of life, of any movement.

The walk led to his gate and there it ended, but as he moved
forward the sidewalk came into view and the house ahead loomed
out of the gray, but a house with differences.

He moved forward rapidly. Visibility extended only a few feet and as
he approached them the houses materialized like two dimensional
pictures without perspective, like twisted cardboard soldiers lining
up for review on a misty morning.

Once he stopped and looked back and saw that the grayness had
closed in behind him. The houses were wiped out, the sidewalk
faded into nothing.

He shouted, hoping to attract attention. But his voice frightened
him. It seemed to ricochet up and into the higher levels of the
sky, as if a giant door had been opened to a mighty room high
above him.

He went on until he came to the corner of Lexington. There, on
the curb, he stopped and stared. The gray wall was thicker there
but he did not realize how close it was until he glanced down at
his feet and saw there was nothing, nothing at all beyond the
curbstone. No dull gleam of wet asphalt, no sign of a street. It
was as if all eternity ended here at the corner of Maple and
Lexington.

With a wild cry, Mr. Chambers turned and ran. Back down the
street he raced, coat streaming after him in the wind, bowle