in his chair stiff as a knife. But he was peacefully typing out his call so after all everything was all right. I did notice one other thing then but not until later did it become significant: his face, as much of its expression as I could get from a side view, had a look of—I know now what it was although then I couldn't get it—amazement; stark, bewildered amazement.

Restless as I could be while waiting for my next call, I walked to a position just behind Ross to see what it was that had so excited him that his foot was on the floor and his elbows in the air.

I bent down close to see what he had typewritten and then blinked my eyes. The stuff he was taking down was not English any way you looked at it. It was a mess of consonants and s's that sent chills up my spine.

"Listen here," I shouted when I got my wits back, "listen, Ross! What in Heaven's name are you doing? What in thunder is that stuff?"

But Ross kept right on typing as if his life depended on it. Only in one way did he show that he had heard me. He tossed his head sharply once in an unmistakable gesture for me to let him alone.

From this point on my blood pressure rose and my heart pounded—my heart has been pounding ever since then even when I forget for a moment about all this.

I automatically looked at the clock and saw that my next call was due. I calmed down somewhat as I pecked down the routine news. But I felt a growing fear in my heart as time and again I looked over to my friend to see him typing like a robot, his foot on the floor, elbows in the air. Then my friend, my only real pal, was going crazy—how that thought tortured me. I knew perfectly well that he didn't know any other language than English. Why in the wide world should he be clacking down something he didn't understand?

It was just three thirty that suddenly Ross ripped the head-phones off and dropped them to the floor. He stood a moment looking at the paper in his hand and I noticed then that his skin was deadly white.

I couldn't stand it anymore. I jerked off my own phones and ran to him. Call or no call, I couldn't stand by while my pal was in danger of losing his mind or something else as bad.

"Norm!" I cried, "for God's sake! Tell me what it is! What—"

But I didn't finish. With an explosion of curses, Ross crumpled the paper in his hand and began to walk up and down the room. He was so unconscious of everything else that he bumped squarely into me, reeled a moment, and then went on racing up and down feverishly.

I tried to stop him—grabbed his arm and jerked it—but Ross was a much bigger and stronger fellow than I am, and he went on without noticing me. He didn't shake me off, you understand, but just tore on as if he hadn't even felt my hand. I didn't say anything because I had lost my voice looking at the terrible picture of his face twisted in some agony of his mind.

Then he began to speak, throwing his hands about hopelessly, and swinging his head like a maniac. While I—I just stood there, out of the path of his walk, panting like I had run ten miles, and listened.

"Great God in Heaven," he cried in a voice that I hope never to hear again in reality, although I hear it every night in my tortured dreams.

"It can't be ... it's impossible ... I'm going mad ... I am mad!... what did I ever do to deserve this?... how can it be? oh! how can it be?"

For a while he just repeated those things until I wanted to scream out in frenzy. But I didn't do a thing. I could see he was beyond my reach—beyond anybody's reach.

Then his voice changed, it became low, full of intense energy, ominously quiet. "What did he say? He said the weather had become frigidly cold ... that it would not be long ... that soon the Ice would cover the whole earth...."

Then he stopped a moment, his eyes burned maniacally. "But ... I know something about geology ... that was over fifty thousand years ago ... do you hear me?"—he wasn't talking to me, he was talking to himself—"do you get that?... fifty thousand years ago!"

His voice became low and intense again so that my blood turned to water: "What did he say?... he said to his friend that the land was being flooded with creatures—maddened men and frenzied animals—that were retreating before the Ice ... retreating before the Ice ... the ice ... but good God! I tell you that was fifty thousand years ago!"

Then his voice became high-pitched and sobbing: "Oh! Dear Mary and Our One God! release me from this mad dream ... save me from the destruction that will overwhelm me ... how can it be?... it's impossible ... how can it be?"

He repeated that dozens of times while he rumpled his hair and ground his teeth.

I mustered up courage and grabbed him by the shoulders. Next moment I was spinning backward and hit the wall with a thump. I fell down and stayed there, looking up at Ross with an expression that I sometimes wonder could be. I know my eyes became salty with tears of mental agony—maybe it was blood that I sweated out that night.

Then I heard him again, head to one side, staggering like a drunken man: "The radio was only invented twenty-five years ago ... this was fifty thousand years ago ... what did he say?... he said to his friend that this would probably be his last broadcast as the heat coils were running out ... goodbye ... he said ... goodbye, my friend ... civilization is doomed ... the Ice will cover all ... but I know something about geology, I tell you!... that was over fifty thousand years ago!... do you see what that means?"

He paused as if expecting an answer, but I knew—my chilled brain told me—that he wasn't talking to me, didn't know I was there. He was still arguing with himself.

"You see?... it means that I have received a message broadcast fifty thousand years ago just before the Ice came! ... that's what it means ... do you hear me?"

Then he fell into a senseless jargon that I knew meant the coming of the end of his mind's fortitude. It would collapse soon.

"And then," came his voice to me, a bloodcurdling knife of a voice, "and then, how can you explain that I understood that voice?... tell me that ... I never heard that language before ... it was just a jumble at first ... and then ... and then ... in a flash ... I understood it ... just as if I had lived there ... lived there fifty thousand years ago."

His voice became a wild shriek, a voice that a ghost might have: "Ah! Saviour! God! How can it be?... how can it be?"

That was all. I sprang to my feet joyfully—as joyfully as I could after passing through that—and ran to him. The light of madness had died out of his eyes. He had seen me and recognized me. His shoulders drooped as if he carried the weight of a world on them.

With a babble of sobs and broken cries I threw my arms around him and thanked the Lord he had been saved.

He gently disengaged me.

"O.K. Bob," he said weakly. "I'm over it now."

"Darn right you are!" I said more calmly, realizing I must show a braver front than I had. "And what's more, we're going to get out of here!"

I took him to the door of his uncle's house and left him there, satisfied that the crisis was over. Then I went back to the station and finished up my calls. How I had the courage and fortitude to do it, I don't know. Before the day shift came in, before I did a lot of explaining how Ross had been suddenly taken sick in the stomach and had to go home, I picked up a crumpled piece of paper from the floor, tore it into little bits, and threw the confetti in a waste paper basket.

I got the news when I went to my room. Norman Ross had committed suicide at