* * * * *
_Sunday night_
The kids are gone!
I've been waiting an hour for them. I know they wouldn't stay away so
long if they could get back. There must be something they've run into.
Bright as they are, they're still only children.
I have some clues. They promised me they wouldn't go out of this
present time. With all her mischievousness, Star has never broken a
promise to me--as her typically feminine mind interprets it, that is.
So I know they are in our own time.
On several occasions Star has brought it up, wondering where the Old
Ones, the Bright Ones, have gone--how they got off the Moebius Strip.
That's the clue. How can I get off the Moebius Strip and remain in the
present?
A cube won't do it. There we have a mere journey along the single
surface. We have a line, we have a plane, we have a cube. And then
we have a supercube--a tesseract. That is the logical progression of
mathematics. The Bright Ones must have pursued that line of reasoning.
Now I've got to do the same, but without the advantage of being a
Bright. Still, it's not the same as expecting a normally intelligent
person to produce a work of genius. (Genius by our standards, of
course, which I suppose Robert and Star would classify as Tween.)
Anyone with a pretty fair I.Q. and proper education and training can
follow a genius's logic, provided the steps are there and especially
if it has a practical application. What he can't do is initiate and
complete that structure of logic. I don't have to, either--that was
done for me by a pair of Brights and I "simply" have to apply their
findings.
Now let's see if I can.
By reducing the present-past-future of man to a Moebius Strip, we have
sheared away a dimension. It is a two-dimensional strip, because it has
no depth. (Naturally, it would be impossible for a Moebius Strip to
have depth; it has only one surface.)
Reducing it to two dimensions makes it possible to travel anywhere
you want to go on it via the third dimension. And you're in the third
dimension when you enfold yourself in the twisted cube.
Let's go a step higher, into one more dimension. In short, the
tesseract. To get the equivalent of a Moebius Strip with depth,
you have to go into the fourth dimension, which, it seems to me,
is the only way the Bright Ones could get off this closed cycle of
past-present-future-past. They must have reasoned that one more notch
up the dimensions was all they needed. It is equally obvious that Star
and Robert have followed the same line of reasoning; they wouldn't
break their promise not to leave the present--and getting off the
Moebius Strip into _another_ present would, in a sort of devious way,
be keeping that promise.
I'm putting all this speculation down for you, Jim Pietre, knowing
first that you're a Tween like myself, and second that you're sure to
have been doing a lot of thinking about what happened after I sent you
the coin Star dropped. I'm hoping you can explain all this to Bill and
Ruth Howell--or enough, in any case, to let them understand the truth
about their son Robert and my daughter Star, and where the children may
have gone.
I'm leaving these notes where you will find them, when you and Bill and
Ruth search the house and grounds for us. If you read this, it will be
because I have failed in my search for the youngsters. There is also
the possibility that I'll find them and that we won't be able to get
back onto this Moebius Strip. Perhaps time has a different value there,
or doesn't exist at all. What it's like off the Strip is anybody's
guess.
Bill and Ruth: I wish I might give you hope that I will bring Robert
back to you. But all I can do is wish. It may be no more than wishing
upon a star--my Star.
I'm trying now to take six cubes and fold them in on one another so
that every angle is a right angle.
It's not easy, but I can do it, using every bit of concentration I've
learned from the kids. All right, I have the six cubes and I have every
angle a right angle.
Now if, in the folding, I ESP the tesseract a half twist around myself
and--