—And He Built a Crooked House

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The return was as dispiriting as the Retreat from Moscow. Mr. and Mrs. Bailey sat up in front with the driver while Teal bumped along in the body of the truck, and tried to protect his head from the sun. Bailey subsidized the friendly rancher to detour to the tesseract house, not because they wanted to see it again, but in order to pick up their car.

At last the rancher turned the corner that brought them back to where they had started. But the house was no longer there.

There was not even the ground floor room. It had vanished. The Baileys, interested in spite of themselves, poked around the foundations with Teal.

“Got any answers for this one, Teal?” asked Bailey.

“It must be that on that last shock it simply fell through into another section of space. I can see now that I should have anchored it at the foundations.”

“That’s not all you should have done.”

“Well, I don’t see that there is anything to get down-hearted about. The house was insured, and we’ve learned an amazing lot. There are possibilities, man, possibilities! Why, right now I’ve got a great new revolutionary idea for a house—”

Teal ducked in time. He was always a man of action.