"But, Dick, it doesn't sound reasonable that all that could _possibly_ have happened to you and Peggy without our even knowing that any time at all had passed!" she expostulated. "We weren't unconscious or anything, were we, Martin? We knew what was going on all the time, didn't we?" "We were at no time unconscious, and we knew at all times what was taking place around us," Crane made surprising but positive answer. He was seated at a visiplate, but had been listening to the story instead of studying the almost-sheer emptiness that was space. "And since it is a truism of Norlaminian psychology that any lapse of consciousness, of however short duration, is impressed upon the consciousness of a mind of even moderate power, I feel safe in saying that for Dorothy and me, at least, no lapse of time did occur or could have occurred." "There!" Dorothy exulted. "You've got to admit that Martin knows his stuff. How are you going to get around that?" "Search me--wish I knew." Seaton frowned in thought. "But Mart chirped it, I think, when he said 'for Dorothy and me, at least,' because for us two time certainly lapsed, and lapsed plenty. However, Mart certainly _does_ know his stuff; the old think tank is full of bubbles all the time. He doesn't make positive statements very often, and when he does you can sink the bank roll on 'em. Therefore, since you were both conscious and time did not lapse--for you--it must have been time itself that was cuckoo instead of you. It must have stretched, or must have been stretched, like the very dickens--for you. "Where does that idea get us? I might think that their time was intrinsically variable, as well as being different from ours, if it was not for the regular alternation of night and day--of light and darkness, at least--that Peg and I saw, and which affected the whole country, as far as we could see. So that's out. "Maybe they treated you two to a dose of suspended animation or something of the kind, since you weren't going anywhere--Nope, that idea doesn't carry the right earmarks, and besides it would have registered as such on Martin's Norlaminianly psychological brain. So that's out, too. In fact, the only thing that could deliver the goods would be a sta--but that'd be a trifle strong, even for a hyperman, I'm afraid." "What would?" demanded Margaret. "Anything that you would call strong ought to be worth listening to." "A stasis of time. Sounds a trifle far-fetched, of course, but--" "But phooey!" Dorothy exclaimed. "Now you _are_ raving, Dick!" "I'm not so sure of that, at all," Seaton argued stubbornly. "They really understand time, I think, and I picked up a couple of pointers. It would take a sixth-order field--That's it, I'm pretty sure, and that gives me an idea. If they can do it in hypertime, why can't we do it in ours?"