"Where do you suppose the room went?"
"I dunno. It just wasn't there."
"And--uh--where were you?"
"That's the funniest part of it. I didn't seem to be in a room at all.
I seemed to be in a large, open space and, Doc, _there was sand under
my feet_!"
Her particular hallucination began to take coherent--um--shape in my
mind, now.
"You say there was sand under your feet--and you were out-of-doors?"
"Like in some sort of desert, Doc. And Doc--_there was someone coming
toward me_!"
"I see. A--man, doubtless."
"Yeah, yeah! And when he saw me standing there, he came rushing at me.
Well, I remembered I didn't have much on, so I lowered my skirt."
"I see. And this man. He--chased you?"
"Well--no. When I lowered my skirt, he stopped."
"He--stopped."
"Yeah. Well, I figures here's a man, and I got my new routine, let's
try it out. So I raised my skirt again, watching his face, and went on
from there."
"On. From there. I see."
"And Doc," she became intensely excited, and I must confess I found it
fairly difficult to preserve my own calm, "when I went through that
hip-sway, his face became dim, and then sort of cloudy, and then, in
a flash, there I was back in my room again just as if it never had
happened."
* * * * *
I said, "Miss LaTour, tell me, when you were a child, were you always
imagining that men would turn around to look at you: that is, that they
were always looking at you?"
"They _were_," she stated flatly. "Hey--you think I'm imagining I was
somewhere else? Well, you're wrong, Doc. I was on a desert, I tell
you--and what's more, when I got back in my room, there was sand on
the bottom of my slippers!"
"Of course," I soothed her. "I'm not arguing with you at all."
"Look--" She became vehement. "I'll do my routine right here, in front
of you, and you'll see--"
I pleaded with her that this was entirely unnecessary, but she began to
walk enticingly about the room, humming some tune.
I was shocked at first, but in spite of myself, the eternal attraction
of the feminine form asserted itself, and I watched the rest of the
proceedings with, I must admit, keen interest. Miss LaTour was indeed
a--um--skillful young woman, and generously equipped to prove her
points.
"You see now?" She was standing before me, holding her skirt over her
head, scantily clothed otherwise. "Just about now, I go into my new
hip-sway, like this, and--"
And then she was gone.
She had begun an enticing--indeed, fascinating wiggle of as excellently
rounded a pair of hips as I had ever seen, and then, without warning of
any sort, she had vanished.
Well, you can imagine how perturbed I was. I searched the entire
apartment thoroughly. For a moment I was inclined to believe it was
merely an hallucination of my own. But there was the evidence of the
clothing she had already--um--shed, lying on the floor, to prove my own
sanity.
Then I thought of the drinking cabinet I--ah--keep here for my
patients, and I turned to it with shaking hands. As I was pouring
myself a Uranian Delight, I heard her voice suddenly, and the glass
crashed from my hands.
"I'm back, Doc."
Indeed, there she was, standing as she had before, her skirt raised
about her head with one hand, and in the other what looked like _some
sort of human hand_!
"Guess where I was this time."
I confess I was shaking violently, but she laughed, and approached me
coquettishly, showing me what appeared on closer examination to be an
artifact of some sort, rather like a metal glove. As I peered at it she
sighed deeply.
"What a knight!"
"Extraordinary, but I fancied I heard you say, 'What a night'!"
"That's what I said, Doc."
"But you've only been gone about five minutes. How can you say--?"
"Search me. All I know is, I just spent the last three hours with a
knight."
"A night, in a few hours! How--?"
"I said 'knight'. The kind that rides a horse--you know."
I stared at her, but she was coyly putting on her clothes, a half-smile
on her lovely face.
"He was so sweet, Doc. Talked a kind of funny French, but I could
understand enough to intuition the rest--Anyhow, after awhile I
remembered you'd be worried about me, so I sneaked out of his castle,
and went through my routine up to the point where I wiggle my hips--and
here I am."
"But--where _were_ you?"
"Search me. He said his name was Launcelot."
"What?"
"Launcelot. That's what he said his name was. That's a pretty name."
She giggled, "I wonder what Luigi would say."
* * * * *
I was shocked, but then the full significance of this young lady's
strange powers flooded over me. I regarded her seriously.
"Miss LaTour, do you realize what you've accomplished by a mere wiggle
of your hips?"
She paused in fastening the garter to her filmy stocking. "I built up
quite a reputation. I know that."
I fired her with my glance. "At first I thought perhaps you were
suffering from--well, no matter. Now, either we're both mad, or you've
penetrated the fourth dimension and bridged space and time."
She appeared highly uninterested. "That's fine, Doc. Uh--my seams
straight? Thanks. Now if you kin figure out some way to get that--what
did you call it? Oh, yeah, penetration--out of my act, everything'll be
O.K. After all, I got my cash customers to consider."
"Oh, your act is unimportant now," I said excitedly. "Consider what
this means to science! With that little--ah--wiggle of your hips you've
found a warp in space that's projected you into another time sphere,
proportionately co-existent with our own!"
"That's great, Doc. Now that you know how I do it, how about helping
me to get rid of it? Although--" She hesitated. "I _would_ like to see
Launce again. I wonder if he's married?"
"Perhaps," I mused, "this phenomenon manifested itself here on Venus
and not when you were on Earth because of the peculiar orbit of the
Venusian--" And then I realized she was waiting for me to answer her.
"Launcelot? I--uh--think he's been carrying on an affair with a lady
named--um--Guinevere."
"A two-timer, huh?"
I avoided this trend in the conversation. "Miss LaTour, apparently
it depends where you do your--um--contortions. Apparently in your
dressing-room you emerged onto a desert. While in my apartment, it
brought you straight into an ancient age--"
"Hot asteroids, so that's it!" Her lovely face was suffused with an
unmistakable eagerness. "Look, Doc, supposin' I come up here again some
time, so I can see him again?"
I was properly outraged. "Hardly! Come to my apartment so that you can
carry on an affair with a man dead for thousands of years? Certainly
not!"