Page:Stirring Science Stories, February 1941.djvu/57

 again and told the driver to go right on into the city to the "Federation Building."

ONGREVE smiled to himself; now, he fancied, he'd be recognized and given his due reception.

They drove on for half an hour, finally passing the city border and entering Brooklyn. Mitchell stared quite thoughtfully at the streets as they passed. Somehow or other he couldn't quite place what part of the borough they were in; it did look like Brooklyn. But this street should be Flatbush Avenue; instead, the signs read Prince Edward Boulevard.

They came to the bridge. Mitchell, who knew New York as well as the palm of his hand, seemed a bit puzzled that they had arrived at the bridge this way. He knew that it should lie several blocks over. As they crossed, Congreve gasped and jerked his friend's arm. "Look at that skyline!"

The short man looked, and fell back against the seat limply. For a moment his brain refused to think. The skyline was changed! In the few weeks they had been away New York had undergone a startling, incredible metamorphosis.

At first glance, it might seem (to one who was not intimate with the city) quite the same, the tall skyscrapers jutting up into the clouds from downtown Manhattan, several huge buildings towering over the others. But the Americans could recognize none. Where the Empire State Building should have been was only a moderately high affair—some blocks away, where nothing of importance had been in the skyline, a colossus towered up, different in contour from any of the skyscrapers they knew. Nor could they find the Chrysler Building or even the once-mighty Woolworth Building. There were others, equally as imposing in other places, but all were strange—the designs different.

"It's all wrong," Mitchell groaned, burying his head in his arms. "Something has happened to us—I think we've gone mad."

As for Congreve, he was not a New Yorker and was unaware of the amazing degree of difference. He only knew that something was wrong.

The car stopped and they emerged. The Federation Building was a massive many-storied structure in the downtown district. Neither of the two men had ever seen it before. Above its wide entrance appeared the same crown and shield that was on their escorting officers. A flag flew from a staff jutting out three stories above the entrance.

At first glimpse, Congreve thought it was the American flag. He had spotted the familiar red and white stripes and blue field of Old Glory. But something odd about it made him look again. It was hanging on its staff and he couldn't make out what it was.

The officers flanked them and took them in through the doorway. As they passed into the entrance, the man from Utah cast a glance upward at the flag. A gust of wind had caught it, flinging its colors out to the breeze. And Congreve felt another shock.

Thirteen red and white stripes there were. Yet, up in the corner where the forty-eight white stars should have been in their blue field, there appeared another design. A British Union Jack!

The two Americans stopped thinking. They merely walked stolidly beside the two policemen through the corridors and into an elevator. The bustling crowd of business people