it."

Jory laughed. "Don't get cynical, Ernie. It's a sign of old age. No. Marsetti was really out of his head. He kept going through the last round ... you know, in his mind. He did it perfect, thirty or forty times, just up to the knockout." Then he stopped and went through the whole round again.

"The doctors that examined him said that it happened because he ran into something he couldn't face."

Ernie said sourly, "Yeah. Rico's left fist."

"Maybe. But it gave me an idea."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. The idea is this: Could the world get knocked out that way? Suppose it did. Suppose everybody ran into something they couldn't take. Would they just run in a closed circle? Would they take a single day, like Marsetti took the sixth round, and just repeat it over and over again?"

Ernie scowled and stopped. They were outside the plant door. "Boy," he said, "you are a bug, ain't you? What are you trying to give me?"

"Just an idea, Ernie."

The suspicion that Jory was needling him came back. "Well, I don't like it," Ernie said scornfully. "In fact, I think it's nuts." He paused to think of something else to say, then shrugged and turned. "I'll see you later. I got to get in to work."

And now here he was, Ernie thought, sitting in his own room with Jory's face looking at him out of the blue screen.

The whole day has been nuts, Ernie told himself.

"Hello, Ernie," Jory's voice repeated tiredly. "Hello, Ernie.... Hello, Ernie—"

Ernie threw his beer can on the floor. Foam spewed out and soaked the rug. "All right," Ernie bellowed, "All right—Hello!"

Jory stopped. He put his hand to his head and looked excited. He was wearing earphones, Ernie saw.

"Ernie!" Jory said. "Do you see me?" He looked blindly out of the screen.

In his rage, Ernie nearly kicked in the face of the set. "Yes, I see you! What are you trying to pull?"

Jory turned excitedly to someone beside him, but off the screen. "I've got him," he said quickly. "He's awake." He turned and faced Ernie.

"Look, Ernie, I can't see you but we've got a microphone in your room. I can hear every word you say. Now sit down for a minute and let me explain."

"You'd better," Ernie said ominously.

"Are you sitting?"

"Yeah, I'm sitting. Get on with it."

"I've been on your screen every night for the past week, Ernie. We took over the station. And we've been broadcasting to you on all channels for the past week."

Ernie shook his head. "You're nuts," he mumbled.

"It's true, Ernie."

"But—" A thought struck him. "Hey, are other people getting this on their sets?"

"Everyone in the city, Ernie. But they aren't seeing it. As far as we can tell they think they're watching their usual programs. Everyone is in a trance, Ernie. They just go through the same motions over and over. It was the same with the engineers here. We just pushed them aside. They're tied up now. We're keeping them under drugs. We had to do that. When they were loose they just tried to get back at the controls. But that was all, they never really saw us."

Ernie shook his head again. "Wait a minute. Let me get my head clear—O.K., now you say everybody is in some kind of trance. Why?"

"I tried to make you see it today. The world is stuck. It's stuck in this God-forsaken one day! We don't know why. Some of us—just a few—have known it all along. But even we can't remember what caused it."

"You mean it's happening everywhere?"

"Yes. Or not happening, I guess you'd say. We're not getting reports from overseas ... not any that are any different from the first Wednesday. So it must be the same over there. It's the whole world, Ernie."

"Wait a minute. Let me think." After a moment, he got up, went into the kitchen and got another beer.

"O.K., I'm ready," he said as he came back. "Now, why did you guys pick me? How many of you are there?"

"Just a handful ... no more than twenty. We're