Dick Purcell

“ Nothing but hard earth under their feet and a high blue sky above.
"Why we're out—out in the country!" Peggy Wilson babbled.
"I agree," Fleming Carter said. "But let's not get panicky. We are still alive and unhurt."
"But I don't understand it," Walter Maltby said, plaintively. "I just don't understand it."
Fleming Carter regarded the little man with pity. No Jenny around to reassure the little man with her domineering bulk. Carter knew as a matter of course that Jenny would be both bulky and domineering.
Carter looked about him. They were out in open country—that was obvious. ”

“ Peggy Wilson moaned.
Carter laid a hand upon her shoulder. "Consider, my dear. All your life you have needed a mother. Now you will have the equivalent of one." He turned to Walter Maltby. "And you. You have learned to function only as a result of a dominating wife's promptings. Our jailer will fill that role for you."
Lastly he regarded Wilmer Payton. "You, young man will be directed and guided. You will not have need of the brain power with which you are not equipped. ”

“ Walter Maltby asked a trifle plaintively.
"No. There were other things."
At this point Peggy Wilson, coming out of her shock, began to cry hysterically. "My God! What's to become of us? We'll all be killed—murdered!"
"I don't think so," Carter said. ”

“ The operator became aware that only silence answered him. Had they been scared dumb? "You—hey you—down there—"
More silence. The operator frowned and crawled down into the shaft. He looked through the trap. Empty. "Well I'll be damned!" he said. And because an obvious situation was covered by an obvious answer, added, "All four of them crawled out and went home. Funny they couldn't stick around a few minutes."
He did not ponder the difficulties involved in such an escape. The only direction they could have gone was up and out on the seventh floor. He thus accepted the obvious. ”

“ The operator waited for a few minutes, then spoke in a carefully casual voice, "The blessed engineer is out to supper. Now ain't that the way things always happen? When the blessed engineer goes out to supper the blessed elevator does a blessed sit-down between two floors."
"What—what are we going to do?" This from the very pretty female passenger named Peggy Wilson who was afraid of almost everything and was going to a psychiatrist who was trying to root a dominating mother out of the poor girl's subconscious and put the old lady back in her grave where she belonged. ”

“ It is believed by some that people can be moved, under certain conditions from one plane of existence to another—that there are many of these so-called planes of existence where many and varied peoples live and breathe upon them. ”

“ Walter Maltby had troubles of his own. He now voiced them: "Jenny will be furious if we don't get out of here pretty quick. I'm always home for Television Theater and if I don't make it—"
He got no further because at that moment the foundations of the world seemed to give way and the four of them were hurled into a heap on the floor.
Or were they?
This question was in Fleming Carter's mind as Peggy Wilson screamed, Walter Maltby whimpered, and Wilmer Payton bellowed in terror. Had the lift fallen—the building collapsed—an atom bomb exploded? His instincts told him no. ”