_Come, enjoy a Carl Jacobi field day--backed by his vivid, irresistible imagination and his keen sense of fun. Or was it so funny for Martin Sutter? For, unlike him, you'll surely be cautious the next time you turn on your TV set--especially if you notice it was made in Tanganyika. _ made in tanganyika _by . . . Carl Jacobi_ See what happens when two conchologists get caught in a necromantic nightmare of their own. On his fortieth birthday Martin Sutter decided life was too short tocontinue in the rut that had been his existence for more than twentyyears. He withdrew his savings from the Explosion City Third FederalBank, stopped in a display room and informed a somewhat surprised clerkhe was taking the electric runabout with the blue bonnet. Theground-car, complete with extras, retailed for a tidy three thousandcredits. To accustom himself to the car's controls Sutter chose Highway 56 for adriving lesson. He tooled the electric runabout up into the third level, purred out across state at an effortless two hundred, then descended viaa cloverleaf to ground tier and entered a maze of subsidiary roads thatled through the summer countryside. In this manner he drove the major part of the afternoon. Travel waslight, away from the elevated lanes and he enjoyed himself. At four o'clock he began to look for a convenient place to turn around. It was then that he sighted the roadside stand ahead. Above it a freshlypainted sign read: TV SETS. LATEST MODELS. SPECIAL WHOLESALE PRICES! Sutter smiled. Whoever heard of selling television sets on a countryhighway? It was like--why, it was like selling eggs in the lobby of theHotel International! Then it occurred to him that his own TV set had notbeen in good working order for more than a year. The olfactory controlhad jammed last week while he was watching a Sumatran tribal ceremony, inland from Soerabaja, and he had been unable to smell the backdropfrangipani blossoms. It was time he bought a new set. . . . Sutter touched a stud and the electric runabout coasted to a halt. As heclimbed out of the car and walked across the highway toward the stand, he thought for a moment there was something wrong with his contactlenses or perhaps his eyes. The stand and the sign above it appeared to waver uncertainly, to becomedisjointed as though viewed through uneven glass. But the effect passedand Sutter approached the stand and nodded to the individual tilted backin a chair beside it. He was a rawboned man with a thatch of thick black hair and small wateryeyes. He was dressed, oddly enough, in a pair of tight-fitting trousersof white lawn, a flaming red tunic and a yellow cummerbund. "Yes, sir, " he said. "Can I show you something in a new TV?" "Where are they?" asked Sutter, surveying the empty stand. "Out back, " replied the man. "Just a minute and I'll show you. " He rose lazily from his chair and led the way around to the rear of thestand. Sutter could have sworn he had seen an apple orchard behind thestructure as he rode up, but he must have been mistaken for now he saw alow-roofed, aluminum-walled building there, huge doors open on one side. It looked, he thought, somewhat like a hangar. . . . Two hours later Sutter arrived back at his home in town. He parked thecar, went around to the rear compartment, lifted out a large packingcase and carried it to his sitting room. There, with the aid of hammerand crowbar, he stripped away the protective boards and then trundledthe cabinet to an unoccupied corner. It was certainly a unique TV set. A very new model, the salesman hadsaid. The cabinet was shaped like a delta with a cube surmounted on thepointed end of the triangle. The cube held the screen, the triangle, thecontrols. Finished in a subdued ochre color, the set captured the lightof the dying day that filtered through the bay window and gleamed with asoft radiance. Sutter looked at the control panel and his smile of satisfaction fadedsomewhat. It looked a little complicated. . . . Instead of the usual knobs there were five small spoked wheels, eachclosely calibrated in lavender with resilient studs that seemed to bemade of plush. Below this was a small dial with the legend _Element ofProbability_ lettered on it. Sutter was about to switch on the set when the door buzzer sounded. Hecrossed to the door and pulled it open. A tall gangly man stood there. Swarthy, face partially covered by aneatly trimmed beard, he looked the conventional picture of a story-bookvillain. He wore a broad-brimmed hat and an under-slung pipe was clampedin his teeth. He said in a deep booming voice, "Are you Mr. MartinSutter?" "Yes, I am. What can I do for you?" The man said his name was Lucien Travail. He explained that he had beenlooking for a room and that Mrs. Conworth, the landlady, had informedhim she had no vacancies but suggested that her roomer, Mr. Sutter, might be interested in a roommate. "Of course I realize you don't know me but I believe our strangenesswill be offset by our mutual hobby. " Sutter was silent, waiting for him to continue. "I collect shells, " Travail said. For thirty years Sutter had pursued a hobby which had begun in hisboyhood days during summer vacations at the seashore--the collecting ofexoskeletons of mollusks and crustaceans. Long ago his assortment ofcowries, spiny combs and yellow dragon-castles had outgrown their glasscabinet and overflowed into three carefully catalogued packing cases. To Sutter, anyone who liked shells was a person above suspicion. Thus itwas that two days later, after a casual checking of the bearded man'sreferences, he invited Travail to move in with him. During those two days Sutter tried unsuccessfully to put his newtelevision set into operation. But the set refused to work. Turn thequeer dials as he would, all he could get on the elliptical screen was ablur of blinding colors. On the evening of the third day Travail looked up from his newspaper, said, "It says here that the president of the Federal Union Congress isgoing to make a speech in New Paris. Will you tune him in?" Sutter frowned. "I would, " he said, "but my set is out of order. Ishould call a repair man, but I had hoped to get it regulated myself. " Travail laid down his pipe. "Out of order, eh?" he said. "I'm sort ofhandy with gadgets. Let me take a look at it. " He walked across to the cabinet, turned it around and stood peering atthe complicated chassis. A small brass nameplate caught his eye:_Manufactured by the Tanganyika Company, Dodoma, Empire of Tanganyika, East Africa. Under charter of the Atomic Commercial EnterpriseCommission. Warning: Permit only an accredited employee of this companyto touch wiring. _ Travail snorted. "Accredited employee, my foot! I know as much aboutthese things as they do. " He went into the kitchen and returned with a screwdriver. While Sutterlooked on with apprehensive eyes, he began to tinker with the wiring. Suddenly there was a dull report and a flash of flame. Travail jerkedhis arm back as a thin streamer of smoke and the smell of burninginsulation entered the room. "You've broken it, " said Sutter accusingly. But his voice died abruptly as the screen flared into light and a lowhum sounded behind the panel. An instant later the light became subduedand a streak of tawny yellow took form. The yellow slowly coalesced intoa sandy stretch of beach with long rolling swells washing up on it, torecede in a smother of foam. Through the amplifier came the muted roarof the breakers and the low soughing of the wind. "Well, we got something at any rate, " Travail said. "I wonder what itis. " Sutter stared, fascinated. The view of the beach seemed to come intosharper focus as he watched, and he saw now that it was an incrediblylonely scene, with the sea stretching away to a vanishing point and astand of stunted spruce flanking the width of sand. But what caught hiseye and held him almost in a trance was the array of objects litteringthe sand at the water's edge. They were shells. Not the prosaic commonplace shells usually found on aNew England shore nor even the brighter colored, more intricately formedshells of tropic seas. These were shells he had never seen before, evenin library collections. Alien and soft-hued and lovely shells thatcaused his collector's heart to jump wildly. He saw a delicatestar-shaped thing that might have been fashioned of porcelain andenameled with the brush of the Mings. He saw spiral coverings fromuncatalogued cephalopods, many chambered and many hued. He saw shells ofa thousand shapes and designs, all incredibly beautiful. . . . Sutter forgot everything else as he sat there staring at thatcollector's paradise. "I'll see if I can get something else, " said Travail. "No!" said Sutter quickly. "Don't touch it!" He continued to stare hungrily at the alien shells until suddenly thescene before him grew dim, then faded completely away. Travail laughed shortly. "Somebody sold you a fluke. This set must be anoff brand. Incidentally, isn't Tanganyika a colony governed by theFederal Union Congress?" "Yes, it is, " replied Sutter. "I don't understand this at all. There'sno _Empire_ of Tanganyika. " * * * * * Next morning after breakfast Sutter announced that he was driving intothe country to visit a friend. There was no reason why he should nothave told his roommate the truth--that he was going to look up the manwho had sold him the TV set. No reason except for the odd fact thatTravail had made no mention of the alien shells, and Sutter keptthinking that a shell collector would have been immediately aware of therareness of them. Once again Sutter drove out across state and down the highway where hehad seen the roadside stand. But when he reached the spot there was nosign of the stand. The big oak tree which had shaded it and the railfence on the adjoining property were there. But no stand. As Sutterstared with perplexed eyes at the spot he saw something he had notnoticed before. At the edge of the highway was a large granite boulder with a bronzeplate fastened to its slanting surface. Sutter got out of the car, approached it and read: _This property has been preserved as a State Park to commemorate the first successful trial explosion of the Hydrogen Bomb which took place on this site and marked the beginning of an era. _ It seemed to Sutter as he stood there that the surrounding silence grewmore intense. Then he passed through a wide gateway and began to strideacross an evenly clipped lawn toward a grove of trees beyond. Halfway hepaused and glanced absently at his watch. It was exactly twelve o'clocknoon. And abruptly the scene before him slipped out of plumb. The sky and thelawn seemed to alter positions, to rotate madly as in a vortex. Thewhirling ceased and the next instant Sutter stood on the shore of alonely sea with a tawny width of sand stretching out before him and thewaves washing up almost at his feet. Then he saw the shells. . . . It was the beach of the alien shells! There they lay, scattered aboutthe sand, hundreds, thousands of them, alien and delicate and lovely, exoskeletons the like of which he had never seen before. Their pastelcolors blended with one another to form a horizontal rainbow extendinginto the measureless distance. And somehow, as Sutter walked among them, picking his way with care, theyears of his life seemed to slip away and he was a small boy at theseashore again, entranced with his first shell discovery. He could evenhear his mother's voice calling "Be careful, Martin! Don't go too far!" He walked on and on, slowly, uncertainly, until the beach and the seabegan to waver like a heat mirage. And suddenly the shells and the watervanished and he was on the green grass again with the grove of treesjust ahead. He turned, saw a white highway with his car parked on theshoulder. Dazedly, Sutter walked back to the car. . . . All next morning he ruminated over his strange experience. Toward noonthe pieces of the puzzle began to fit slowly together in his mind. Butthe partial answer at which he arrived seemed too fantastic for belief. Could it be possible that when he had stopped at the roadside stand hehad blundered, in some inexplicable way, into another dimension? Sutter had a layman's knowledge of Einsteinian physics, and he knew thatexperiments in Time were being made every day. Only last week he hadread in the paper of an army officer who had reportedly Time-traveledsome twenty-two minutes. And a year ago the Belgian scientist, Delgar, claimed to have entered a secondary world which he declared impinged onour own. Assuming all this to be true, then it could be that the Tanganyikatelevision set was a product manufactured in Future Time by a companythat, by Sutter's Time standards, didn't yet exist. The following day saw Sutter begin an experiment of which he was ratherproud. Travail had said that he had tried to tune in the noon newsbroadcast yesterday on the TV and had turned the set on from twelveo'clock until five minutes after. At a nearby appliance store Sutterpurchased a clock control which would turn his television set on and offat any chosen time. He set the control for two o'clock, then managed tolure Travail out of the house for the afternoon by giving him aninvitation he'd received for a lecture on marine life at a local club. Next, he drove again to the H-bomb site and stood waiting in thegrass-like park, watch in hand. At precisely two o'clock there came that queer staggering of earth andsky. The trees gave way to the stretch of sand; the waves, leaden-colored and cheerless, dotted with white caps rolled up on thelonely shore. As before Sutter felt that same exhilaration, that samereversal to the spirit of his youth. But despite his mental excitementhe maintained an awareness of the situation and a remembrance of why hehad come here. When he walked among the shells this time he carried a large basket withhim and he picked up shells and dropped them into the basket, selectingthose that were the most alien. In due time the basket was filled to overflowing and Sutter stood still, waiting. Once more the surrounding landscape underwent its change. Afterthe whirling had ceased and the initial feeling of vertigo had passedSutter carried the full basket back to the car and began the long drivehome. As he drove he mused over what Travail would say when he saw theseshells. Then on second thought, he decided not to show them to him. Travail was getting on his nerves. He had obviously lied about hisinterest in shells. On discussing the subject with him Sutter found hedid not know the first thing about them. In fact, he regretted takinghim in as a roommate. He was convinced that Travail's friendly good-fellowship attitude wasjust a pose, cloaking a so far mysterious motive. But it could be thatTravail knew of the value of Sutter's shell collection. Yesterday aletter had come from the Federal Arts Museum offering five thousandcredits for the lot, and while he had made no mention of the amount, Sutter had been foolish enough to tell Travail there had been an offer. "Are you going to sell?" Travail had asked. "Certainly not. They're worth five times the price they offered. " "Are they really?" said Travail. "That makes my own collection seemworthless by comparison. " Oh, Travail could be clever all right! Why else had he made no commentabout the alien shells they both had seen on the television set, if hedid know something of the value of shells? Arriving home, Sutter entered by the rear door and carried the basket ofshells to his bedroom. There he took them out and one by one spread themon the table. He drew a goose-necked lamp down close and from the tabledrawer took out a powerful ato-magnifying glass. Then he selected one ofthe larger shells and began to examine it. * * * * * After a while he took a small keyhole saw which he kept for suchpurposes, and very carefully began to cut the shell into two equalportions. Once again he moved the ato-glass and began to study one ofthe sections. But the lamp was not very powerful, and insufficient forthe tiny details. Sutter abruptly remembered the four-position lamp inthe sitting room. He took the shell and the ato-glass and went to thefront room, hoping that Travail was not there. To his relief he found the sitting room deserted. The television setstood silent in a corner and as he passed it Sutter switched it on, thencrossed to the four-position lamp and turned it up full. For a secondtime he peered through the ato-glass long and intently. The bisected shell appeared to be a spinal univalve, resembling thefamiliar cephalopoda, _nautilus_, with thin septa dividing the manychambers. Behind him the Tanganyika TV swelled on, the screen presenting that samescene of the beach of shells. As it did so Sutter uttered a startledexclamation. Under the magnifying glass the chambers in the bisected shell suddenlybecame more than outgrowths of marine organism. _They were rooms!_Tessellated ceilings, microscopically mosaic inlaid floors, longsweeping staircases with graceful slender balustrades and tall almostIonic columns. . . . Heart pounding, Sutter looked again. He saw that it was actually the light from the television set that wasilluminating the interior of the shell, lighting it with a strangeradiance that seemed to extend outward from the shell in a steadilywidening cone. His hand touched this cone, and it possessed a curioussolidity. He hadn't been mistaken. _There were rooms in that shell!_ Narrowcorridors with arched doorways opened off alcoves and galleries. Onevaulted chamber had a kind of dais in the center of it. The entire innerstructure was fashioned of pastel-tinted walls which caught the light ofthe TV and radiated it to every corner in a soft glow of effulgence. A magnetic lure swept over Sutter. He felt an overwhelming desire tostep into that cone of light. . . . Whether the exoskeleton expanded to admit his entrance or whether hisown figure magically dwindled he could not tell, but the next instant hefound himself in a fairy palace with all about him a world of silence. A long broad hallway stretched before him. At the far end a ramp angledupward to a higher level. Sutter walked forward slowly, aware in a vagueway that he had entered another plane that was at once a microcosm and amacrocosm. On the second level the way ahead divided. After a moment'shesitation he chose the left-hand passage, passing through akeyhole-shaped archway into a broad amphitheater, empty of furnishings, with a kind of terrace or gallery at the far end. Emerging upon thatgallery, Sutter saw that he had reached the outer limit of the shell. The edges of the wall before him were cut off, jagged and rough, wherehis saw had done its work. He was looking out upon the normal world that was his living room. He stiffened as the door to the room opened and Lucien Travail entered. He sat down before the center table and carefully, systematically begangoing through the contents of the table drawer. Startled, Sutterwatched from his strange vantage point. Travail had not noticed that thetelevision set was turned on, and the high-backed davenport apparentlyhid the cone of blue light from his view. He took a sheet of paper from the drawer, began reading it. With a startSutter recognized his letter from the Federal Arts Museum. And as a wave of wrath swept over him, Sutter saw that the beach sceneon the television set was slowly fading away. Fear and a realization ofhis strange position struck him. He turned and ran madly back across theamphitheater, down the ramp and along the long hallway to the pointwhere he had entered the shell. Even as he approached it the cone ofblue light dimmed, wavered and was replaced by a wall of partialblackness. Sutter sent his hands clawing desperately at that wall as it flickeredtwice and momentarily became translucent again. He forced his bodybetween folds of palpable darkness, slid into the vanishing blue cone. Instantly he found himself in his normal world, standing in the centerof the sitting room. Travail looked up, startled. "Hullo. Where did you come from?" he said finally. Sutter said, "What are you doing in my drawer?" "I was looking for my tobacco pouch, " Travail replied easily. "I'm sureI left it here on the table last night. I thought the maid might haveput it in the drawer. " In his bedroom Sutter wrapped each of the alien shells in a sheet ofnewspaper and restored them to the basket. He placed the basket on thetop shelf of the closet, concealing it with a couple of old hats. He didn't sleep well that night. His mind reviewed over and over hisstrange experience. Toward morning he fell into a deep sleep and dreameda wild dream of walking down a broad highway, flanked on one side by anendless line of television sets and on the other by man-high hills ofalien shells. He had his breakfast at the little coffee shop around the corner. Buthalfway back to his apartment he suddenly thought of Travail alone inthe house with his shells. He broke into a run and he was panting forbreath when he reached his door. The basket of shells was still on the shelf, but the newspaper wrappingswere loosened, and the bisected shell was entirely free of covering. Andhe had not left them that way last evening. Had atomic transmigration attempted to draw the shells back into theTime sphere to which they really belonged? Sutter was a logical man, andeven as this thought came his mind rejected it. It must be Travail. Hehad taken a sample shell from the basket and even now perhaps wasdickering with the officials of the Federal Arts Museum on a price. Sutter picked up the bisected shell and went into the sitting room. Hecarefully placed the shell upon the table so that the light from thetelevision set would fall directly upon it. Then he sat down to wait. As he waited he mentally viewed the material prospects of his discovery. If the Federal Arts Museum had offered five thousand credits for his oldcollection, they would surely double their price on these rarities. Hesaw himself the recipient of a fat check, his name and picture in thepapers, television interviews, lecture assignments, world fame . . . And to think that Travail had the brazen nerve to believe he could cashin on his good fortune! "Damned bearded coot!" Sutter mumbled to himself. "He must take me foran utter fool!" Footsteps sounded and his bearded roommate entered the room. Was itfancy or did Sutter see in those grey eyes a gleam of mingled avariceand satisfaction? "Have a cigar?" said Travail casually. Sutter shook his head. "You know I don't smoke. " He crossed the room, adjusted the controls of the television set and watched the familiarbeach scene come into sharper focus. As the sound of the washing wavesboomed from the speaker, the cone of bluish light took form before thebisected shell. Sutter moved the shell slightly so that it lay atdirectly right angles to the panel of the TV set. Travail, drawing onhis cigar, watched him curiously. "What are you doing?" he asked at length. "Little experiment. Stand over here and I'll show you. Here, in front ofthis cone of light. " Travail took the place indicated. His face was emotionless as he lookedbeyond the light into the bisected shell. "Now walk forward, " commanded Sutter. "I'll do nothing of the sort, " said Travail, starting to back away. "What are you up to anyway?" Sutter had no plan in mind beyond an overwhelming desire to put a badfright into his roommate in payment for what he considered a monstrousact of duplicity. It would serve Travail right if, once he entered thesecondary plane of the shell, he would be forced to stay there a while. A good scare would cause him to leave, maybe. Sutter moved up behind the bearded man and gave him a violent shoveforward. "In you go!" he cried hysterically. Travail pitched head foremost. But, spinning, he clutched at Sutter'sarm, gripping it with the desperation of a drowning man. Half inside, half outside the cone of blue light he seemed propelled into the depthsof the bisected shell by an irresistible force. In vain did Sutter fightto release the hold upon his arm. His squirming legs fastened themselvesabout the legs of a heavy Windsor chair, kicked frantically. The chair spun from between his feet and lurched heavily across the roomwhere it fell hard upon the television set, shattering the glowingscreen into a thousand fragments. Simultaneously, Sutter slid forwardinto the bisected shell as the cone of light vanished after him. . . . Mrs. Conworth, the landlady, reported the disappearance of her tworoomers on August first, a week after she last saw them. First, however, to the disgust of the police, she cleaned their apartment, giving to thetrash man all valueless and inconsequential articles, including a box ofold sea shells which she found in the closet. It was a curious fact thatneither Sutter nor Travail possessed relatives or friends to makeinquiry as to their whereabouts and thus without incentive the officialsearch died into nothing. Mrs. Conworth rather regretted the loss of her bachelor roomers and, asshe said to her neighbor across the street, she kept one memento ofthem--a thing that looked like a shell but wasn't a shell. She thoughtit must be one of them optical illusion things. "When you look at it in a certain way, " said Mrs. Conworth, "it seems asif there are two tiny men inside it, fighting to get out. " Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from _Fantastic Universe_ May 1954. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U. S. Copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.