I spun around. Damned if it wasn't old Benji, coming down the stairs again just as though it wasn't impossible. This time he looked himself, but worse. He had on an old lab smock and a new hangover. He looked awful--but with a hint of satisfaction too, like remembering the time he'd had getting into such lousy shape. "Well, Bull boy," he mumbled, wavering on down the steps, holding the top of his head on with one hand, "come on out in the lab. Maybe we could find a little nip. And I have something to show you." "So you said." "Eh? Oh, yes, so I did. Last night, when I was going out." "It was just now--only you went out all dressed up, and here you are all beat up. What's this all about?" "Come _on_," he said with a flash of temper. "When I get a hair or two of the dog, I'll explain it to you." I followed him into his lab, the dean's old study. It was the only thing Benji could call his own. Vera let him have it on the off-chance that he might find something important enough to give their social and financial position a boost. In the lab, Benji fished an amber-filled flask from the wastebasket under the old rolltop desk and poured himself a double, me a single, in a couple of big test tubes. I only half saw him out of a corner of the eye. What I was really looking at was a damned peculiar rig that filled up about a third of the space along the side wall next to the kitchen. It was--I couldn't figure it. It looked something like one of those jungle gym outfits in the kids' playgrounds. But there were wires running from it to half a dozen wall plugs, and a seat up in the middle with a bunch of dials and things. It was all odd, and oddest was the way it all sort of shimmered and blurred as I watched it. "What in hell is that?" I walked across the lab toward it, reaching out. "Better not touch it, Bull. You might knock something out." Since he put it like that, I raised my hand to grab hold of one of the cross bars by the seat in the center of the thing--and there I was resting comfortably on a small cloud in far outer space, watching a great spiral nebula whirling in infinite majesty through the vast, empty blackness, and I thought about the mystery of the universe. I felt that if I could just reach out, I would have in my grasp the final answer. But then it drifted away and the nebula slowly narrowed and evolved into a great system of suns, planets, moons--and finally into the big, old chandelier in the dean's study. * * * * * When it all seemed to stabilize at that point, I sat up a little shakily. The room, Benji's lab now, was still there. I stood up and felt lousy. My head ached. I looked around. Benji was sitting at the desk slumped over, his head on his folded arms. The flask of whiskey, half gone, was on the desk beside him. I emptied it out a little more, into me, and checked my watch. Six o'clock and the sky showed gray outside. I had been out all night.