* * * * * He took a pair of glasses from his pocket and handed them to me. They seemed like ordinary shell-rimmed glasses, though the lenses were tinted a slight blue. "Put them on," he prompted. "Go ahead." "Where'd you get these?" "Made 'em," he said. "My job is optical research, remember. I was fooling around in the lab with some invisible light experiments. The right combination of lenses and coatings--and whammo! This." He took a drink. "I should have been a lawyer or a plumber or something." He grunted. "Or even a newspaperman!" "What are they supposed to do--see in the dark?" He laughed humorlessly. "That'd be a boon for a reporter, wouldn't it? No, my friend, much worse than that. Try them on. Go ahead." I did. "Well?" "Notice anything peculiar?" "The coating makes everything here seem bluish--maybe even unearthly, if that's what you want--but--" "C'mon outside, then," he said. This time he took my arm and steered me from the bar. I was glad of the opportunity to get him into the night air. "Look at the sky," he directed. "See anything unusual?" He stood waiting, expectant. "I see stars," I said. "Nothing unusual about that, is there?" "Stars! Only stars?" His voice had lost its tinge of sarcasm. His fingers were tight on my arm. "Look, across the sky, see those luminous bands? All across the sky. Like a giant spider web." I looked again. After awhile, I said, "Sorry, Johnny, but there aren't any luminous bands, spider webs or otherwise. I think we'd better get to the room. A good night's rest--" "Wait a minute," he cried suddenly, his face pale. "You think I'm drunk--or worse. I tell you there _is_ something up there. Shining streamers crisscrossing the sky, like--like--" "There's nothing, Johnny. Only stars." I took the glasses off. He made a quick grab for them and somehow they fell to the pavement and shattered. For a moment, Johnny stared at the glittering fragments, his jaws working. "You've broken them," he accused finally, his eyes filled more with sudden despair than hatred. "It took weeks to build them." "It was an accident," I told him. "But it's just as well they are broken. I tell you, Johnny, there's nothing unusual in the sky. Nothing at all. Spider webs! Next you'll be seeing pink elephants." Johnny stood in the cool night and stared at the sky. "They're up there, I tell you. They're up there, and I want to know why. And there's one thing I want to know more than anything else; suppose they're really spider webs--" His face was deathly white. "Are there spiders?" He stared at me insanely in the darkness. "Do you realize what that would mean, Charlie? Giant spiders, invisible, roaming across the Earth!" His fingers were digging into my arm again. "Johnny, come out of it," I snapped, shaking him. "There is no web in the sky, you hear me? And there aren't any spiders, either. It's just some crazy figment of your imagination. That's all."