Sphere of the Never-Dead

The Three Brains of Taval had spoken! Kenley must die! The cheerful youth from an earlier time-strata must enter Death-in-Life. Nothing less than a cosmic revolt could postpone his decreed fate.
The warm, night air whipped Bob Winslow's face as he crossed the open space before Kerla Research, Inc., to the car where Jim Kenley, his roommate and lifelong friend was waiting. A storm was roaring in from the west, revealing the city's skyline at frequent intervals silhouetted against a background of sheet lightning. Bob should have been elated to the point of near explosion, over the news he could give Jim. Bob was to be promoted for his achievements in polarization of the newly discovered Decka light stream, and for his development of the electronoscope that had given astronomy a new universe to explore.
Instead, Bob had a sixth sense of actual fear, as if something invisible—invincible, was trailing him. Recently this feeling had come, sometimes at night, arousing him abruptly, as if actually touched. All today, and now tonight, the feeling grew that a Presence was at hand. Small matter if he was to be director of Kerla Research, Inc., at the age of twenty-six. Bob wondered if his nerves were shot. Maybe, but he felt steady enough.
The car was at the curb and Jim, as far removed from a world of scientific research as one could imagine, swung open the door. Mean storm coming, he called. Must be hail in it. Let's scram for home. We can listen in to that night ball game.
Water splashed Bob's face. He was thinking, as he crossed the pavement, that Jim lived as much in the world of sports as he in the field of scientific investigation. Jim Kenley worked hard as an auditor in the daytime. Off duty, it might be football, horse racing, tennis or baseball. He liked all of them, and could hardly wait for the score, or result of a standout event. Perhaps that was why Bob liked Jim so well.
Bob was at the car as the first wave of rain and wind, broken into needle point mist, obscured lights and broke over them. He saw that, and then more. He saw Jim catapulted from the car as if pushed by invisible hands. Then Bob felt himself gripped, and felt, not chill rain, but absolute zero. It surely took no more time than the fraction of a second, before he plunged into a white world—a world without motion, without sound. But in that flicker of time fading so swiftly, Bob saw men in strange raiment, at first opaque, then solidifying. He saw, too, an elongated, golden red craft without wheels; and from it emerged a tall man with a silver skull cap. After that—absolute zero. It couldn't have been a point above. That was Bob's last thought—absolute zero.