"The thing is," said Tommy feverishly, "that we've got to find a way
to get them back. Whether it duplicates Denham's results or not. How
far away are they?"
"A few hundred yards, perhaps," said Von Holtz wearily, "or ten
million miles. It is the same thing. They are in a place where the
fifth dimension is the dominant coordinate."
Tommy was pacing up and down the laboratory. He stopped and looked
through the eyepiece of the extraordinary vision apparatus. He tore
himself away from it again.
"How does this thing work?" he demanded.
Von Holtz began to unscrew two wing-nuts which kept the top of the
aluminum casting in place.
"It is the first piece of apparatus which Professor Denham made," he
said precisely. "I know the theory, but I cannot duplicate it. Every
dimension is at right angles to all other dimensions, of course. The
Herr Professor has a note, here--"
He stopped his unscrewing to run over a heap of papers on the
work-bench--papers over which he seemed to have been poring
desperately at the time of Tommy's arrival. He handed a sheet to
Tommy, who read:
"If a creature who was aware of only two dimensions made two
right-angled objects and so placed them that all the angles formed by
the combination were right angles, he would contrive a figure
represented by the corner of a box; he would discover a third
dimension. Similarly, if a three-dimensioned man took three right
angles and placed them so that all the angles formed were right
angles, he would discover a fourth dimension. This, however, would
probably be the time dimension, and to travel in time would instantly
be fatal. But with four right angles he could discover a fifth
dimension, and with five right angles he could discover a sixth...."
* * * * *
Tommy Reames put down the paper impatiently.
"Of course" he said brusquely. "I know all that stuff. But up to the
present time nobody has been able to put together even three right
angles, in practise."
Von Holtz had returned to the unscrewing of the wing-nuts. He lifted
off the cover of the dimensoscope.
"It is the thing the Herr Professor did not confide to me," he said
bitterly. "The secret. The one secret! Look in here."
Tommy looked. The objective-glass at the end of the telescope faced a
mirror, which was inclined to its face at an angle of forty-five
degrees. A beam of light from the objective would be reflected to a
second mirror, twisted in a fashion curiously askew. Then the light
would go to a third mirror....
Tommy looked at that third mirror, and instantly his eyes ached. He
closed them and opened them again. Again they stung horribly. It was
exactly the sort of eye-strain which comes of looking through a lens
which does not focus exactly, or through a strange pair of eyeglasses.
He could see the third mirror, but his eyes hurt the instant they
looked upon it, as if that third mirror were distorted in an
impossible fashion. He was forced to draw them away. He could see,
though, that somehow that third mirror would reflect his imaginary
beam of light into a fourth mirror of which he could see only the
edge. He moved his head--and still saw only the edge of a mirror. He
was sure of what he saw, because he could look into the wavy, bluish
translucency all glass shows upon its edge. He could even see the thin
layer of silver backing. But he could not put himself into a position
in which more than the edge of that mirror was visible.
"Good Lord!" said Tommy Reames feverishly. "That mirror--"
"A mirror at forty-five degrees," said Von Holtz precisely, "reflects
light at a right angle. There are four mirrors, and each bends a ray
of light through a right angle which is also a right angle to all the
others. The result is that the dimensoscope looks into what is a fifth
dimension, into which no man ever looked before. But I cannot move
other mirrors into the positions they have in this instrument. I do
not know how."
* * * * *
Tommy shook his head impatiently, staring at the so-simple, yet
incredible device whose theory had been mathematically proven
numberless times, but never put into practice before.
"Having made this device," said Von Holtz, "the Herr Professor
constructed what he termed a catapult. It was a coil of wire, like the
large machine there. It jerked a steel ball first vertically, then
horizontally, then laterally, then in a fourth-dimensional direction,
and finally projected it violently off in a fifth-dimensional path. He
made small hollow steel balls and sent a butterfly, a small sparrow,
and finally a cat into that other world. The steel balls opened of
themselves and freed those creatures. They seemed to suffer no
distress. Therefore he concluded that it would be safe for him to go,
himself. His daughter refused to permit him to go alone, and he was so
sure of his safety that he allowed her to enter the globe with him.
She did. I worked the catapult which flung the globe in the fifth
dimension, and his device for returning failed to operate. Hence he is
marooned."
"But the big catapult--"
"Can you not see that the big catapult is broken?" demanded Von Holtz
bitterly. "A special metal is required for the missing parts. That, I
know how to make. Yes. I can supply that. But I cannot shape it! I
cannot design the gears which will move it as it should be moved! I
cannot make another dimensoscope. I cannot, Herr Reames, calculate any
method of causing four right angles to be all at right angles to each
other. It is my impossibility! It is for that that I have appealed to
you. You see it has been done. I see that it is done. I can make the
metal which alone can be moved in the necessary direction. But I
cannot calculate any method of moving it in that direction! If you can
do so, Herr Reames, we can perhaps save the Herr Professor Denham. If
you cannot--Gott! The death he will die is horrible to think of!"
"And his daughter," said Tommy grimly. "His daughter, also."
* * * * *
He paced up and down the laboratory again. Von Holtz moved to the
work-bench from which he had taken Denham's note. There was a pile of
such memoranda, thumbed over and over. And there were papers in the
angular, precise handwriting which was Von Holtz's own, and
calculations and speculations and the remains of frantic efforts to
work out, somehow, the secret which as one manifestation had placed
one mirror so that it hurt the eyes to look at it, and one other
mirror so that from every angle of a normal existence, one could see
only the edge.
"I have worked, Herr Reames," said Von Holtz drearily. "Gott! How I
have worked! But the Herr Professor kept some things secret, and that
so-essential thing is one of them."
Presently he said tiredly:
"The dimension-traveling globe was built in this laboratory. It rested
here." He pointed. "The Herr Professor was laughing and excited at the
moment of departure. His daughter smiled at me through the window of
the globe. There was an under-carriage with wheels upon it. You cannot
see those wheels through the dimensoscope. They got into the globe and
closed the door. The Herr Professor nodded to me through the glass
window. The dynamo was running at its fullest speed. The laboratory
smelled of hot oil, and of ozone from the sparks. I lifted my hand,
and the Herr Professor nodded again, and I threw the switch. This
switch, Herr Reames! It sparked as I closed it, and the flash partly
blinded me. But I saw the globe rush toward the giant catapult yonder.
It leaped upward into the huge coil, which whirled madly. Dazed, I saw
the globe hanging suspended in mid-air, two feet from the floor. It
shook! Once! Twice! With violence! Suddenly its outline became hazy
and distorted. My eyes ached with looking at it. And then it was
gone!"
* * * * *
Von Holtz's arms waved melodramatically.
"I rushed to the dimensoscope and gazed through it into the fifth
dimension. I saw the globe floating onward through the air, toward
that bank of glossy ferns. I saw it settle and turn over, and then
slowly right itself as it came to rest. The Herr Professor got out of
it. I saw him through the instrument which could look into the
dimension into which he had gone. He waved his hand to me. His
daughter joined him, surveying the strange cosmos in which they were.
The Herr Professor plucked some of the glossy ferns, took photographs,
then got back into the globe.
"I awaited its return to our own world. I saw it rock slightly as he
worked upon the apparatus within. I knew that when it vanished from
the dimensoscope it would have returned to our own universe. But it
remained as before. It did not move. After three hours of anguished
waiting, the Herr Professor came out and made signals to me of
despair. By gestures, because no sound could come through the
dimensoscope itself, he begged me to assist him. And I was helpless!
Made helpless by the Herr Professor's own secrecy! For four days and
nights I have toiled, hoping desperately to discover what the Herr
Professor had hidden from me. At last I thought of you. I telegraphed
to you. If you can assist me...."
"I'm going to try it, of course," said Tommy shortly.
He paced back and forth. He stopped and looked through the brass-tubed
telescope. Giant tree-ferns, unbelievable but real. The steel globe
resting partly overturned upon a bank of glossy ferns. Breast-high,
incredible foliage between the point of vision and that extraordinary
vehicle.
* * * * *
While Tommy had been talking and listening, while he had been away
from the eyepiece, one or other of the occupants of the globe had
emerged from it. The door was open. But now the girl came bounding
suddenly through the ferns. She called, though it seemed to Tommy that
there was a curious air of caution even in her calling. She was
excited, hopefully excited.
Denham came out of the globe with a clumsy club in his hand. But
Evelyn caught his arm and pointed up into the sky. Denham stared, and
then began to make wild and desperate gestures as if trying to attract
attention to himself.
Tommy watched for minutes, and then swung the dimensoscope around. It
was extraordinary, to be sitting in the perfectly normal brick-walled
laboratory, looking into a slender brass tube, and seeing another
universe entirely, another wild and unbelievable landscape.
The tree-fern forest drew back and the vast and steaming morass was
again in view. There were distant bright golden gleams from the city.
But Tommy was searching the sky, looking in the sky of a world in the
fifth dimension for a thing which would make a man gesticulate
hopefully.
He found it. It was an aircraft, startlingly close through the
telescope. A single figure was seated at its controls, motionless as
if bored, with exactly the air of a weary truck driver piloting a
vehicle along a roadway he does not really see. And Tommy, being near
enough to see the pilot's pose, could see the aircraft clearly. It was
totally unlike a terrestrial airplane. A single huge and thick wing
supported it. But the wing was angular and clumsy-seeming, and its
form was devoid of the grace of an earthly aircraft wing, and there
was no tail whatever to give it the appearance of a living thing.
There was merely a long, rectangular wing with a framework beneath it,
and a shimmering thing which was certainly not a screw propeller, but
which seemed to draw it.
* * * * *
It moved on steadily and swiftly, dwindling in the distance, with its
motionless pilot seated before a mass of corded bundles. It looked as
if this were a freight plane of some sort, and therefore made in a
strictly utilitarian fashion.
It vanished in the haze above the monster swamp, going in a straight
line for the golden city at the world's edge.
Tommy stared at it, long after it had ceased to be visible. Then he
saw a queer movement on the earth near the edge of the morass. Figures
were moving. Human figures. He saw four of them, shaking clenched
fists and capering insanely, seeming to bellow insults after the
oblivious and now invisible flying thing. He could see that they were
nearly naked, and that one of them carried a spear. But the
indubitable glint of metal was reflected from one of them for an
instant, when some metal accoutrement about him glittered in the
sunlight.
They moved from sight behind thick, feathery foliage, and Tommy swung
back the brass tube to see the globe again. Denham and his daughter
were staring in the direction in which Tommy had seen those human
figures. Denham clutched his clumsy club grimly. His face was drawn
and his figure tensed. And suddenly Evelyn spoke quietly, and the two
of then dived into the fern forest and disappeared. Minutes later they
returned, dragging masses of tree-fern fronds with which they masked
the globe from view. They worked hastily, desperately, concealing the
steel vehicle from sight. And then Denham stared tensely all about,
shading his eyes with his hand. He and the girl withdrew cautiously
into the forest.
* * * * *
It was minutes later that Tommy was roused by Von Holtz's hand on his
shoulder.
"What has happened, Herr Reames?" he asked uneasily. "The--Ragged
Men?"
"I saw men," said Tommy briefly, "shaking clenched fists at an
aircraft flying overhead. And Denham and his daughter have hidden the
globe behind a screen of foliage."
Von Holtz licked his lips fascinatedly.
"The Ragged Men," he said in a hushed voice. "The Herr Professor
called them that, because they cannot be of the people who live in the
Golden City. They hate the people of the Golden City. I think that
they are bandits; renegades, perhaps. They live in the tree-fern
forests and scream curses at the airships which fly overhead. And they
are afraid of those airships."
"How long did Denham use this thing to look through, before he built
his globe?"
Von Holtz considered.
"Immediately it worked," he said at last, "he began work on a small
catapult. It took him one week to devise exactly how to make that. He
experimented with it for some days and began to make the large globe.
That took nearly two months--the globe and the large catapult
together. And also the dimensoscope was at hand. His daughter looked
through it more than he did, or myself."
"He should have known what he was up against," said Tommy, frowning.
"He ought to have taken guns, at least. Is he armed?"
Von Holtz shook his head.
"He expected to return at once," he said desperately. "Do you see,
Herr Reames, the position it puts me in? I may be suspected of murder!
I am the Herr Professor's assistant. He disappears. Will I not be
accused of having put him out of the way?"
"No," said Tommy thoughtfully. "You won't." He glanced through the
brass tube and paced up and down the room. "You telephone for someone
to repair my car," he said suddenly and abruptly. "I am going to stay
here and work this thing out. I've got just the glimmering of an idea.
But I'll need my car in running order, in case we have to go out and
get materials in a hurry."
* * * * *
Von Holtz bowed stiffly and went out of the laboratory. Tommy looked
after him. Even moved to make sure he was gone. And then Tommy Reames
went quickly to the work bench on which were the littered notes and
calculations Von Holtz had been using and which were now at his
disposal. But Tommy did not leaf through them. He reached under the
blotter beneath the whole pile. He had seen Von Holtz furtively push
something out of sight, and he had disliked and distrusted Von Holtz
from the beginning. Moreover, it was pretty thoroughly clear that
Denham had not trusted him too much. A trusted assistant should be
able to understand, at least, any experiment performed in a
laboratory.
A folded sheet of paper came out. Tommy glanced at it.
"You messed things up right! Denham marooned and you got
nothing. No plans or figures either. When you get them, you
get your money. If you don't you are out of luck. If this
Reames guy can't fix up what you want it'll be just too bad
for you."
There was no salutation nor any signature beyond a scrawled and
sprawling "J."
Tommy Reames' jaw set grimly. He folded the scrap of paper and thrust
it back out of sight again.
"Pretty!" he said harshly. "So a gentleman named 'J' is going to pay
Von Holtz for plans or calculations it is hoped I'll provide! Which
suggests--many things! But at least I'll have Von Holtz's help until
he thinks my plans or calculations are complete. So that's all
right...."
Tommy could not be expected, of course, to guess that the note he had
read was quite astounding proof of the interest taken in non-Euclidean
geometry by a vice king of Chicago, or that the ranking beer baron of
that metropolis was the man who was so absorbed in abstruse theoretic
physics.
* * * * *
Tommy moved toward the great solenoid which lay askew upon its wrecked
support. It had drawn the steel globe toward it, had made that globe
vibrate madly, twice, and then go hazy and vanish. It had jerked the
globe in each of five directions, each at right angles to all the
others, and had released it when started in the fifth dimension. The
huge coil was quite nine feet across and would take the steel globe
easily. It was pivoted in concentric rings which made up a set of
gymbals far more elaborate than were ever used to suspend a mariner's
compass aboard ship.
There were three rings, one inside the other. And two rings will take
care of any motion in three dimensions. These rings were pivoted, too,
so that an unbelievably intricate series of motions could be given to
the solenoid within them all. But the device was broken, now. A pivot
had given away, and shaft and socket alike had vanished. Tommy became
absorbed. Some oddity bothered him....
He pieced the thing together mentally. And he exclaimed suddenly.
There had been four rings of metal! One was gone! He comprehended,
very suddenly. The third mirror in the dimensoscope was the one so
strangely distorted by its position, which was at half of a right
angle to all the dimensions of human experience. It was the third ring
in the solenoid's supports which had vanished. And Tommy, staring at
the gigantic apparatus and summoning all his theoretic knowledge and
all his brain to work, saw the connection between the two things.
"The time dimension and the world-line," he said sharply, excited in
spite of himself. "Revolving in the time dimension means telescoping
in the world-line.... It would be a strain no matter could endure...."
* * * * *
The mirror in the dimensoscope was not pointing in a fourth dimension.
It did not need to. It was reflecting light at a right angle, and
hence needed to be only at half of a right angle to the two courses of
the beam it reflected. But to whirl the steel globe into a fifth
dimension, the solenoid's support had for one instant to revolve in
time! For the fraction of a second it would have literally to pass
through its own substance. It would be required to undergo precisely
the sort of strain involved in turning a hollow seamless metal globe,
inside out! No metal could stand such a strain. No form of matter
known to man could endure it.
"It would explode!" said Tommy excitedly to himself, alone in the
great bare laboratory. "Steel itself would vaporize! It would wreck
the place!"
And then he looked blank. Because the place had very obviously not
been wrecked. And yet a metal ring had vanished, leaving no trace....
Von Holtz came back. He looked frightened.
"A--a repairman, Herr Reames," he said, stammering, "is on the way.
And--Herr Reames...."
Tommy barely heard him. For a moment, Tommy was all scientist,
confronted with the inexplicable, yet groping with a blind certainty
toward a conclusion he very vaguely foresaw. He waved his hand
impatiently....
"The Herr Jacaro is on the way here," stammered Von Holtz.
* * * * *
Tommy blinked, remembering that Von Holtz had told him he could make a
certain metal, the only metal which could be moved in the fourth
dimension.
"Jacaro?" he said blankly.
"The--friend of the Herr Professor Denham. He advanced the money for
the Herr Professor's experiments."
Tommy heard him with only half his brain, though that half instantly
decided that Von Holtz was lying. The only Jacaro Tommy knew of was a
prominent gangster from Chicago, who had recently cemented his
position in Chicago's underworld by engineering the amalgamation of
two once-rival gangs. Tommy knew, in a vague fashion, that Von Holtz
was frightened. That he was terrified in some way. And that he was
inordinately suspicious of someone, and filled with a queer
desperation.
"Well?" said Tommy abstractedly. The thought he needed was coming. A
metal which would have full tensile strength up to a certain instant,
and then disrupt itself without violence into a gas, a vapor.... It
would be an alloy, perhaps. It would be....
He struck at his own head with his clenched fist, angrily demanding
that his brain bring forth the thought that was forming slowly. The
metal that could be revolved in time without producing a disastrous
explosion and without requiring an impossible amount of power....
* * * * *
He did not see Von Holtz looking in the eyepiece of the dimensoscope.
He stared at nothing, thinking concentratedly, putting every bit of
energy into sheer thought. And suddenly, like the explosion he sought
a way to avoid, the answer came, blindingly clear.
He surveyed that answer warily. A tremendous excitement filled him.
"I've got it!" he said softly to himself. "By God, I know how he did
the thing!"
And as if through a mist the figure of Von Holtz became clear before
his eyes. Von Holtz was looking into the dimensoscope tube. He was
staring into that other, extraordinary world in which Denham and his
daughter were marooned. And Von Holtz's face was utterly, deathly
white, and he was making frantic, repressed gestures, and whispering
little whimpering phrases to himself. They were unintelligible, but
the deathly pallor of his cheeks, and the fascinated, dribbling
fullness of his lips brought Tommy Reames suddenly down to earth.
"What's happening?" demanded Tommy sharply.
Von Holtz did not answer. He made disjointed, moaning little
exclamations to himself. He was twitching horribly as he looked
through the telescope into that other world....
Tommy flung him aside and clapped his own eye to the eyepiece. And
then he groaned.
* * * * *
The telescope was pointed at the steel globe upon that ferny bank, no
more than a few hundred yards away but two dimensions removed from
Earth. The screening mass of tree-fronds had been torn away. A swarm
of ragged, half-naked men was gathered about the globe. They were
armed with spears and clubs, in the main, but there were other weapons
of intricate design whose uses Tommy could not even guess at. He did
not try. He was watching the men as they swarmed about and over the
steel sphere. Their faces were brutal and savage, and now they were
distorted with an insane hate. It was the same awful, gibbering hatred
he had sensed in the caperings of the four he had seen bellowing
vituperation at an airplane.
They were not savages. Somehow he could not envision them as
primitive. Their features were hard-bitten, seamed with hatred and
with vice unspeakable. And they were white. The instant impression any
man would have received was that here were broken men; fugitives,
bandits, assassins. Here were renegades or worse from some higher,
civilized race.
They battered hysterically upon the steel globe. It was not the attack
of savages upon a strange thing. It was the assault of desperate,
broken men upon a thing they hated. A glass pane splintered and
crashed. Spears were thrust into the opening, while mouths opened as
if in screams of insane fury. And then, suddenly, the door of the
globe flew wide.
The Ragged Men did not wait for anyone to come out. They fought each
other to get into the opening, their eyes glaring madly, filled with
the lust to kill.