calendar, but in their rooms they are actually centuries apart. How do you like those apples?

It's all quite neat and economical, what with the cost per front foot of this beach area zoned for business, and you'll find a dandy profit on the books, but start worrying, fellow! Things are beginning to happen. The maintenance engineer, who, incidentally, is quitting, too, says that the equipment in the shafts is wearing out, and the fields are pulsating or decaying or some damned thing. And we can't contact Dr. Bradford, who took the service manual with him.

Maybe you are more experienced in this hotel business than I am, but I couldn't stand the gaff. One more mess like I barely managed to clean up this week and someone's going to the pokey. It won't be me.

Good luck, if you insist on staying, but I warned you.

(signed) Thornton K. Patterson

P.S. The fire-marshall is on our necks because the windows are all sealed, but for God's sake, DON'T UNSEAL THEM!

Sextus tossed the fantastic communication aside in disgust, but his mind began to unreel a picture of the confusion he had witnessed down in the service quarters: Bellboys and room-service waiters fighting for service elevators; chambermaids trundling their little carts on the dead run; the overworked laundry staff, laboring in a veritable sweatshop of steamy chaos, swamped in a billowing backlog of sheets and towels. It all pointed to a large hotel operation.

If so, where were the rooms? Refusing to argue further with himself, he got undressed. Hyperspace or not, the people apparently were there, and it was his job to serve them. He got a bucket of ice from room-service, mixed an ice and whiskey highball and retreated into his private little world between crisp sheets and the pages of a twenty-five-cent mystery novel.

Arising early, he was girded for the summons from Miss Genevieve Hafner in room H-408. He went to her room. Fully dressed and in the daylight she was still a hollow-eyed mess. The only visible improvement was in the bleached bird's-nest, now a prim, rolled circle on her unlovely pate.

"What amends," she demanded, "do you intend to make for my terrible experience last night? Is that horrid creature in jail?"

"Experience? Jail?" Sextus asked innocent-eyed. He asked that she tell him about it. Exasperated, she went over the details. When she finished he patted her hand and pointed to the sleeping pills. "You should see your doctor."

"But my doctor prescribed those pills," she whimpered, looking down shyly at the hand which Sextus held gingerly. "They never made me dream—before."

He bent and kissed the revolting hand. "You are much too lovely a lady to have escaped from such a predicament as you describe without suffering—shall we say, a more romantic—fate?"

Miss Hafner blushed at the thought and wavered between outrage and ecstasy for a dangerous moment. With time-tested genius, Sextus withdrew quietly and left her to her thoughts.

He must get in touch with Dr. Bradford, atom business or not. This place could blow sky-high any minute.

He slipped the key into his own door and entered his suite. He took two brisk strides into his bedroom, tripped over a lady's overnight case and sprawled into his unmade bed. Even as he landed he realized it had an occupant, a gorgeous, strangely familiar blonde creature, touselled and asleep hugging her pillow with a creamy arm. A crash from the bathroom brought his head bouncing off the silken coverlet even as the girl awakened with a scream and tangled them both with the bed clothes.

Gary Gable charged from the bathroom, face dripping and a tuft of lather under each ear. "What in the Goddam hell—" He leaped for Sextus with his internationally famous shoulders knotted into bunches of muscular menace.

"I'm the hotel manager," Sextus blurted loudly. For once his self-assurance wavered under fire. Even to himself his words explained nothing.

Meanwhile,