XII.

They had stopped beside a metal grill, in front of which was poised

another hyperman, his propeller tail idling slowly. He had thought

that he was to be Seaton's jailer, and as he swung the barred gate

open he engaged the Terrestrial's escort in optical conversation--a

conversation which gave Seaton the mere instant of time for which he

had been waiting.

"So these are the visitors from outer space, whose bodies are so much

denser than solid metal?" he asked curiously. "Have they given you much

trouble?"

"None at all. I touched that one only once, and this one, that you are

to keep here, wilted at only the third step of force. The orders are

to keep them under control every minute, however. They are stupid,

senseless brutes, as is of course to be expected from their mass and

general make-up. They have not given a single sign of intelligence of

even the lowest order, but their strength is apparently enormous, and

they might do a great deal of damage if allowed to break away from the

trident."

"All right; I'll hold him constantly until I am relieved," and the

jailer, lowering his own trident, extended a long, tentacular arm

toward the grooved and knobbed shaft of the one whose teeth were

already imbedded in Seaton's tissues.

Seaton had neither perceived nor sensed anything of this conversation,

but he was tense and alert; tight-strung to take advantage of even

the slightest slackening of the grip of the grappling fingers of the

controller. Thus in the bare instant of the transfer of control from

one weird being to the other he acted--instantaneously and highly

effectively.

With a twisting leap he whirled about, wrenching himself free from the

punishing teeth of the grapple. Lightning hands seized the shaft and

swung the weapon in a flashing arc. Then, with all the quickness of his

highly trained muscles and with all the power of his brawny right arm,

Seaton brought the controller down full upon the grotesque head of the

hyperman.

He had given no thought to the material character of weapon or

of objective; he had simply wrenched himself free and struck

instinctively, lethally, knowing that freedom had to be won then or

never. But he was not wielding an Earthly club or an Osnomian bar;

nor was the flesh opposing him the solid substance of a human and

three-dimensional enemy.

At impact the fiercely driven implement flew into a thousand pieces,

but such was the power behind it that each piece continued on, driving

its relentless way through the tenuous body substance of the erstwhile

guard. That body subsided instantly upon the floor, a shapeless and

mangled mass of oozing, dripping flesh. Weaponless now, holding

only the shattered butt of the ex-guard's trident, Seaton turned to

confront the other guard who, still holding Margaret helpless, was

advancing upon him, wide-open trident to the fore.

He hurled the broken stump; then, as the guard nimbly dodged the flying

missile, he leaped to the barred door of the cell. He seized it and

jerked mightily; and as the anchor bolts of the hinges tore out of the

masonry he swung the entire gate in a full-sweeping circle. Through

the soft body the interlaced bars tore, cutting it into ghastly,

grisly dice, and on, across the hall, tearing into and demolishing the

opposite wall.

"All right, Peg, or did he shock you?" Seaton demanded.

"All right, I guess--he didn't have time, to do much of anything."

"Fine, let's snap it up, then. Or wait a minute, I'd better get us a

couple of shields. We've got to keep them from getting those stingarees

into us again--as long as we can keep them away from us we can do about

as we please around here, but if they ever get hold of us again it'll

be just too bad."

While Seaton was speaking he had broken away and torn out two great

plates or doors of solid metal, and, handing one of them to his

companion, he went on: "Here, carry this in front of you and we'll go

places and do things."

But in that time, short as it was, the alarm had been given, and up

the corridor down which they must go was advancing a corps of heavily

armed beings. Seaton took one quick step forward, then, realizing

the impossibility of forcing his way through such a horde without

impalement, he leaped backward to the damaged wall and wrenched out

a huge chunk of masonry. Then, while the upper wall and the now

unsupported ceiling collapsed upon him, their fragments touching his

hard body lightly and bouncing off like so many soft pillows, he hurled

that chunk of material down the hall and into the thickest ranks of

the attackers.

Through the close-packed phalanx it tore as would a plunging tank

through massed infantry, nor was it alone. Mass after mass of rock was

hurled as fast as the Earthman could bend and straighten his mighty

back, and the hypermen broke ranks and fled in wild disorder.

For to them Seaton was not a man of flesh and blood, lightly tossing

pillows of eiderdown along a corridor, through an assemblage of

wraithlike creatures. He was to them a monstrous being, constructed

of something harder, denser, and tougher than any imaginable metal.

A being driven by engines of unthinkable power, who stood unharmed

and untouched while masses of stone, brickwork, and structural steel

crashed down upon his bare head. A being who caught those falling

masses of granite and concrete and hurled them irresistibly through

rank after rank of flesh-and-blood men.

"Let's go, Peg!" Seaton gritted. "The way's clear now, I guess--we'll

show those horse-faced hippocampuses that what it takes to do things,

we've got!"

* * * * *

Through the revolting, reeking shambles of the corpse-littered corridor

they gingerly made their way. Past the scene of the battle, past

intersection after intersection they retraced their course, warily and

suspiciously at first. But no ambush had been laid--the hypermen were

apparently only too glad to let them go in peace--and soon they were

hurrying along as fast as Margaret could walk.

They were soon to learn, however, that the denizens of this city of

four-dimensional space had not yet given up the chase. Suddenly the

yielding floor dropped away beneath their feet and they fell, or,

rather, floated, easily and slowly downward. Margaret shrieked in

alarm, but the man remained unmoved and calm.

"'Sall right, Peg," he assured her. "We want to go clear down to the

bottom of this dump, anyway, and this'll save us the time and trouble

of walking down. All right; that is, if we don't sink into the floor

so deep when we hit that we won't be able to get ourselves out of it.

Better spread out that shield so you'll fall on it--it won't hurt you,

and it may help a lot."

So slowly were they falling that they had ample time in which to

prepare for the landing; and, since both Seaton and Margaret were

thoroughly accustomed to weightless maneuvering in free space, their

metal shields were flat beneath them when they struck the lowermost

floor of the citadel. Those shields were crushed, broken, warped and

twisted as they were forced into the pavement by the force of the

falling bodies--as would be the steel doors of a bank vault upon being

driven broadside on, deep into a floor of solid concrete.

But they served their purpose; they kept the bodies of the Terrestrials

from sinking beyond their depth into the floor of the hyperdungeon.

As they struggled to their feet, unhurt, and saw that they were in a

large, cavernous room, six searchlightlike projectors came into play,

enveloping them in a flood of soft, pinkish-white light.

Seaton stared about him, uncomprehending, until he saw that one of

the hypermen, caught accidentally in the beam, shriveled horribly and

instantly into a few floating wisps of luminous substance which in a

few seconds disappeared entirely.

"Huh! Death rays!" he exclaimed then. "'Sa good thing for us we're

essentially three-dimensional yet, or we'd probably never have known

what struck us. Now let's see--where's our river? Oh, yes; over this

way. Wonder if we'd better take these shields along? Guess not, they're

pretty well shot--we'll pick us up a couple of good ones on the way,

and I'll get you a grill like this one as a good club, too."

"But there's no door on that side!" Margaret protested.

"We should fret a lot about that--we'll roll our own as we go along."

His heavy boot crashed against the wall before them, and a section

of it fell outward. Two more kicks and they were through, hurrying

along passages which Seaton knew led toward the buried river, breaking

irresistibly through solid walls whenever the corridor along which they

were moving angled away from his chosen direction.

Their progress was not impeded. The hyperbeings were willing--yes,

anxious--for their unmanageable prisoners to depart and made no further

attempts to bar their path. Thus the river was soon reached.

The airship in which they had been brought to the hypercity was nowhere

to be seen, and Seaton did not waste time looking for it. He had been

unable to understand the four-dimensional controls even while watching

them in operation, and he realized that even if he could find the

vessel the chance of capturing it and of escaping in it was slight

indeed. Therefore, throwing an arm around his companion, he leaped

without ado into the speeding current.

"But, Dick, we'll drown!" Margaret protested. "This stuff must be

altogether too thin for us to swim in--we'll sink like rocks!"

"Sure we will, but what of it?" he returned. "How many times have you

actually breathed since we left three-dimensional space?"

"Why, thousands of times, I suppose--or, now that you mention it, I

don't really know whether I'm breathing at all or not--but we've been

gone so long--Oh, I don't believe that I really know _anything_!"

"You aren't breathing at all," he informed her then. "We have been

expending energy, though, in spite of that fact, and the only way I

can explain it is that there must be fourth-dimensional oxygen or we

would have suffocated long ago. Being three-dimensional, of course we

wouldn't have to breathe it in for the cells to get the benefit of

it--they can grab it direct. Incidentally, that probably accounts for

the fact that I'm hungry as a wolf, but that'll have to wait until we

get back into our own space again."

True to Seaton's prediction, they suffered no inconvenience as they

strode along upon the metaled pavement of the river's bottom, Seaton

still carrying the bent and battered grating with which he had wrought

such havoc in the corridor so far above.

Almost at the end of the tunnel, a sharklike creature darted upon

them, dreadful jaws agape. With his left arm Seaton threw Margaret

behind him, while with his right he swung the four-dimensional grating

upon the monster of the deeps. Under the fierce power of the blow the

creature became a pulpy mass, drifting inertly away upon the current,

and Seaton stared after it ruefully.

"That particular killing was entirely unnecessary, and I'm sorry I did

it," he remarked.

"Unnecessary? Why, it was going to bite me!" she cried.

"Yeah, it _thought_ it was, but it would have been just like one of

our own real sharks trying to bite the chilled-steel prow off of a

battleship," he replied. "Here comes another one. I'm going to let him

gnaw on my arm, and see how he likes it."

On the monster came with a savage rush, until the dreadful, outthrust

snout almost touched the man's bare, extended arm. Then the creature

stopped, dead still in mid-rush, touched the arm tentatively, and

darted away with a quick flirt of its powerful tail.

"See, Peg, he knows we ain't good to eat. None of these hyperanimals

will bother us--it's only these men with their meat hooks that we have

to fight shy of. Here's the jump-off. Better we hit it easylike--I

wouldn't wonder if that sandy bottom would be pretty tough going. I

think maybe we'd better take to the beach as soon as we can."

* * * * *

From the metaled pavement of the brilliantly lighted aqueduct they

stepped out upon the natural sand bottom of the open river. Above them

was only the somberly sullen intensity of velvety darkness; a darkness

only slightly relieved by the bluely luminous vegetation upon the

river's either bank. In spite of their care they sank waist-deep into

that sand, and it was only with great difficulty that they fought their

way up to the much firmer footing of the nearer shore.

Out upon the margin at last, they found that they could make good

time, and they set out downstream at a fast but effortless pace. Mile

after mile they traveled, until, suddenly, as though some universal

switch had been opened, the ghostly radiance of all the vegetation of

the countryside disappeared in an instant, and utter and unimaginable

darkness descended as a pall. It was not the ordinary darkness of an

Earthly night, nor yet the darkness of even an Earthly dark room; it

was indescribably, completely, perfect darkness of the total absence of

every ray of light, unknown upon Earth and unknowable to Earthly eyes.

"Dick!" shrieked Margaret. "Where are you?"

"Right here, Peg--take it easy," he advised, and groping fingers

touched and clung. "They'll probably light up again. Maybe this is

their way of having night. We can't do much, anyway, until it gets

light again. We couldn't possibly find the _Skylark_ in this darkness;

and even if we could feel our way downriver we'd miss the island that

marks our turning-off point. Here, I feel a nice soft rock. I'll sit

down with my back against it and you can lie down, with my lap for a

pillow, and we'll take us a nap. Wasn't it Porthos, or some other one

of Dumas' characters that said, 'He who sleeps, eats'?"

"Dick, you're a perfect peach to take things the way you do."

Margaret's voice was broken. "I know what you're thinking of, too. Oh,

I _do_ hope that nothing has become of them!" For she well knew that,

true and loyal friend though Seaton was, yet his every thought was for

his beloved Dorothy, presumably still in _Skylark Two_--just as Martin

Crane came first with her in everything.

"Sure they're all right, Peg." An instantly suppressed tremor shook

his giant frame. "They're figuring on keeping them in the _Lark_ until

they raise her, I imagine. If I had known as much then as I know now

they'd never have got away with any of this stuff--but it can't be

helped now. I wish I could do something, because if we don't get back

to _Two_ pretty quick it seems as though we may snap back into our own

three dimensions and land in empty space. Or would we, necessarily? The

time coördinates would change, too, of course, and that change might

very well make it obligatory for us to be back in our exact original

locations in the _Lark_ at the instant of transfer, no matter where we

happen to be in this hyperspace-hypertime continuum. Too deep for me--I

can't figure it. Wish Mart was here, maybe he could see through it."

"You don't wish so half as much as I do!" Margaret exclaimed feelingly.

"Well, anyway, we'll pretend that _Two_ can't run off and leave us

here. That certainly is a possibility, and it's a cheerful thought to

dwell on while we can't do anything else."

They fell silent. Now and again Margaret dozed, only to start awake

at the coughing grunt of some near-by prowling hyperdenizen of that

unknown jungle, but Seaton did not sleep. He did not even half believe

in his own hypothesis of their automatic return to their space ship;

and his vivid imagination insisted upon dwelling lingeringly upon every

hideous possibility of their return to three-dimensional space outside

their vessel's sheltering walls. And that same imagination continually

conjured up visions of what might be happening to Dorothy--to the

beloved bride who, since their marriage upon far distant Osnome, had

never before been separated from him for so long a time. He had to

struggle against an insane urge to do something, anything; even to

dash madly about in the absolute blackness of hyperspace in a mad

attempt--doomed to certain failure before it was begun--to reach

_Skylark Two_ before she should vanish from four-dimensional space.

Thus, while Seaton grew more and more tense momently, more and ever

more desperately frustrate, the abysmally oppressive hypernight wore

illimitably on. Creeping--plodding--d-r-a-g-g-i-n-g endlessly along;

extending itself fantastically into the infinite reaches of all

eternity.