He read the article through. He thought heavily for a few moments. Then he spoke into the box on his desk. "Get me Sullivan on the phone." * * * * * The bell of an invisible alarm clock was ringing in Lee Garth's mind. He turned over, tried to go back to sleep. Sleep was such a wonderful sensation, especially when you were so tired. He wanted to sleep forever, and forever. There wasn't enough time left for him to get rested. Days and yet more days the driving pressure of screaming energy had run through him. It had burned out his muscles, put a flutter in his heart. His whole body screamed for rest. He had to rest. He tried to go back to sleep. The invisible alarm clock rang again. Abruptly, Garth rolled over and sat up. Yawning, he flexed his arms. Every nerve ending in his body told him to lie down again, called to him to lie down, begged him. He was going to lie down. The alarm bell in his mind rang again. What did it mean, he wondered. Oh, yes, now he knew. It was August 21. Today United Electric began making deliveries. The construction work was already finished, the concrete dry, the forms already off. Suddenly he was wide awake. Suddenly he was out of bed, and dressing frantically. * * * * * Jimmie Blake excused himself from dinner. His dad and mother smiled wistfully as he dashed upstairs. Jimmie whistled as he shaved. Shaving was really not necessary, but he imagined it was, and in consequence it was a ritual not to be neglected. For he was a man now. Next week he was going off to college again. He would be a sophomore this year. No more green caps, no more hazing. The whistle swelled in prideful strength. He looked out of the bathroom window. The sun, already at the edge of the horizon, flung its rays over the suburb of Valley Park. The grass was dry and the leaves were beginning to change color. It was September, September 8, 1940. Jimmie burst into song. One more week and he would be off to college. Over there, perhaps half a mile away, he could see the sunlight shining on fresh concrete. Garth's Folly, they were calling it already. Garth had spent a fortune building a house that would stand to the end of the world. Two million years, that newspaper article had said. Too bad. Garth had gone off the deep end, of course. Just when he was really becoming distinguished, he had cracked. Why didn't they have him in an asylum, Jimmie wondered, staring from the window. Oddly, the landscape shifted. It blurred and twisted, just like it did when you looked through a pane of bad glass. But he wasn't looking through glass. The air was tinged with a deep violet color. From somewhere, from nowhere and from everywhere, came a shrill whining note, a screaming frequency that lifted rapidly up the scale. It went quickly out of hearing.