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"A Subway Named Mobius" is a 5000-word short story by A. J. Deutsch, about a subway car that mysteriously disappears. The story was first published in the December, 1950 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.

Spoiler Warning: Plot details and/or information about the ending follow. If you wish to enjoy the work first, stop reading here and return at another time.

Plot

After the completion of a new addition to a subway system, making the system completely closed, one of the subways disappears, with more than 300 passengers on board. A mathematician named Tupelo says that because the system is closed and interconnected, the subway must still be there, but in the 4th dimension. An investigation turns up nothing. Months later, Tupelo boards a subway car, and doesn’t notice for several minutes that the newspapers the passengers are reading are months old. Car 86, the one that had been missing, has returned, and the passengers have no idea that any extra time has elapsed.

Additional Notes

This story has been reprinted in, among other places, Isaac Asimov Presents The Great SF Stories 12 (1950). The author of this story was a professor of Mathematics at Harvard, and Asimov believes that this may have been his only science fiction story.