file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20E-books/The.Fifth-Dimension.Catapult.txt

The Fifth-Dimension Catapult
BY MURRAY LEINSTER


FOREWORD

THIS STORY has no normal starting place, because there are too many places where it might be said
to begin. One might commence when Professor Denham, Ph.D., MA., etc., isolated a metal that
scientists have been talking about for many years without ever being able to smelt. Or it might
start with his first experimental use of that metal
with entirely impossible results. Or it might very plausibly begin with an interview between a
celebrated leader of gangsters in the city of Chicago and a spectacled young laboratory assistant
who had turned over to him a peculiar heavy object of solid gold and very nervously explained, and
finally managed to prove, where it came from. With also impossible results, because it turned
ãKingä Jacaro, lord of vice-
resorts and rum-runners, into a passionate enthusiast in nonEuclidean geometry. The whole story
might be said to begin with the moment of that interview.
        But that leaves out Smithers, and especially it leaves out Tommy Reames. So, on the whole,
it is best to take up the narrative at the moment of Tommyâs first entrance into the course of
events.


CHAPTER I

        He came to a stop in a cloud of dust that swirled up to and all about the big roadster and
surveyed the gate of the private road. The gate was rather impressive. At its top was a sign,
ãKeep Out!ä Halfway down was another sign, ãPrivate Property. Trespassers Will Be Prosecuted.ä On
one gate-post was another notice, ãLive Wires Within,ä and on the other a defiant placard, ãSavage
Dogs At Large Within This Fence.ä
        The fence itself was all of seven feet high and made of the heaviest of woven-wire
construction. It was topped with barbed wire, and went all the way down both sides of a narrow
right of way until it vanished in the distance.
        Tommy got out of the car and opened the gate. This fitted the description of his
destination, as given him by a brawny, red-headed filling-station attendant in the village some
two miles back. He drove the roadster through the gate, got out and closed it piously, got back in
the car and shot it ahead.
        He went humming down the narrow private road at forty-five miles an hour. That was Tommy
Reamesâs way. He looked totally unlike the conventional description of a scientist of any sort÷as
much unlike a scientist as his sport roadster looked unlike a scientistâs customary means of
transit÷and ordinarily he acted quite unlike one. As a matter of fact, most of the people Tommy
associated with hadnât the faintest inkling of his taste for science as an avocation. There was
Peter Daizell, for instance, who would have held up his hands in holy horror at the idea of Tommy
Reamesâs being the author of that article in the Philosophical Journal, ãOn the Mass and Inertia
of the Tesseract,ä which had caused such a controversy.
        And there was one Mildred Holmes÷of no importance in the matter of the Fifth-Dimension
Catapult÷who would have lifted beautifully arched eyebrows in bored unbelief if anybody had
suggested
that Tommy Reames was that Thomas Reames whose ãAdditions to Herglotzâs Mechanics of Continuaä
produced such diversities of opinion in scientific circles. She intended to make Towmy propose to
her some day, and thought she knew all about him. And everybody, everywhere, would have been
incredulous of his present errand.
        Gliding down the narrow, fenced-in road, Tommy was a trifle dubious about this errand
himself. A yellow telegraph-form in his pocket read rather like a hoax, but was just plausible
enough to have brought him away from a rather important tennis match. The telegram read:

PROFESSOR DENHAM IN EXTREME DANGER THROUGH EXPERIMENT

BASED ON YOUR ARTICLE ON DOMINANT COORDINATES YOU ALONE CAN

HELP HIM IN THE NAME OF HUMANITY COME AT ONCE.

A.        VON HOLTZ.



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        The fence went on past the car. A mile, a mile and a half of narrow lane, fenced in and
made as nearly intruder-proof as possible.
        ãWonder what Iâd do,ä said Tommy Reames, ãif another car came along from the other end?ä
        He deliberately tried not to think about the telegram any more. He didnât believe it. He
couldnât believe it. But he couldnât ignore it, either. Nobody could; few scientists, and no human
being with a normal amount of curiosity. Because the article on dominant coordinates had appeared
in the Journal of Physics and had dealt with a state of things in which the normal coordinates of
everyday existence were assumed to have changed their functions; when the coordinates of time, the
vertical, the horizontal and the lateral changed places and a man went east to go up and west to
go down and ran his street numbers in a fourth dimension. It was mathematical foolery, from one
standpoint, but it lead to some fascinating if abstruse conclusions.
        But his brain would not remain away from the subject of the telegram, even though a
chicken appeared in the fenced-in lane ahead of him and went flapping wildly on before the car. It
rose in midair, the car overtook it as it rose above the level of the hood, and there was a
rolling, squawking bundle of shedding feathers tumbling over and over along the hood until it
reached the slanting windshield. There it spun wildly upward, left a cloud of feathers fluttering
about Tommyâs head, and fell still squawking into the road behind. By the back-view
mirror, Tommy could see it picking itself up and staggering dizzily back to the side of the road.
        ãMy point was,ä said Tommy vexedly to himself, speaking of the article the telegram
referred to, ãthat a man can only recognize three dimensions of space and one of time. So that if
he got shot out of this cosmos altogether he wouldnât know the difference. Heâd still seem to be
in a three-dimensioned universe. And what is there in that stuff to get Denham in trouble?ä
        A house appeared ahead. A low, rambling sort of bungalow with a huge brick barn behind it.
The house of Professor Denham, very certainly, and that barn was the laboratory in which he made
his experiments.
        Instinctively, Tommy stepped on the gas. The car leaped ahead. And then he was breaking
frantically. A pipe-framed gate with thinner, unpainted wire mesh filling its surface loomed
before him, much too late for him to stop. There was a minor shock, a crashing and squeaking, and
then a crash and shattering of glass. Tommy bent low as the top bar of the gate hit his
windshield. The double glass cracked and crumpled and bent, but did not fly to bits. And the car
came to a halt with its wheels intricately entangled in torn-away fence wire. The gate had been
torn from its hinges and was draped rakishly over the roadster. A tire went flat with a loud
hissing noise, and Tommy Reames swore softly under his breath and got out to inspect the damage.
        He was deciding that nothing irreparable was wrong when a man came bursting out of the
brick building behind the house. A tall, lean, youngish man who waved his arms emphatically and
approached shouting, ãYou had no right to come in here! You must go away at once! You have damaged
property! I will tell the Professor! You must pay for the damage! You must֊
        ãDamn!ä said Tommy Reames. He had just seen that his radiator was punctured. A spout of
ruddy, rusty water was pouring out on the grass.
        The youngish man came up furiously. A pale young man, Tommy noticed. A young man with
bristling, close-cropped hair and hornrimmed spectacles before weak-looking eyes. His mouth was
very full and very red, in marked contrast to the pallor of his cheeks.
        ãDid you not see the sign upon the gate?ä he demanded angrily, in curiously stilted
English. ãDid you not see that trespassers are forbid-
den? You must go away at once! You will be prosecuted! You will be imprisoned! You֊
        Tommy said irritably, ãAre you Von Holtz? My name is Reames. You telegraphed me.ä
        The waving, lanky arms stopped in the middle of an excited gesture. The weak-looking eyes
behind the lenses widened. A pink tongue licked the too-full, too-red lips.
        ãReames? The Herr Reames?ä Von Holtz stammered. Then he said suspiciously, ãBut you are
not÷you cannot be the Herr Reames of the article on dominant coordinates!ä
        ãI donât know why not,ä said Tommy annoyedly. ãIâm also the Herr Reames of several other
articles, such as on the mechanics of continua and the mass and inertia of the tesseract. And I
believe the current Philosophical Journal֊
        He surveyed the spouting red stream from the radiator and shrugged ruefully.
        ãI wish youâd telephone the village to have somebody come out and fix my car,ä he said
shortly, ãand then tell me if this telegram is a joke or not.ä
        He pulled out a yellow form and offered it. He had taken an instinctive dislike to the
lean figure before him, but suppressed the feeling.
        Von Holtz took the telegram and read it, and smoothed it out, and said agitatedly, ãBut I


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thought the Herr Reames would be÷would be a venerable gentleman! I thought÷ä
        ãYou sent that wire,ä said Tommy. ãIt puzzled me just enough to make me rush out here. And
I feel like a fool for having done it. Whatâs the matter? Is it a joke?ä
        Von Holtz shook his head violently, even as he bit his lips.
        ãNo! No!ä he protested. ãThe Herr Professor Denham is in the most terrible, most deadly
danger! I÷I have been very nearly mad, Herr Reames. The Ragged Men may seize him! . . . I
telegraphed to you. I have not slept for four nights. I have worked! I have racked my brains! I
have gone nearly insane, trying to resuce the Herr Professor! And I֊
        Tommy stared. ãFour days?ä he said. ãThe thing, whatever it is, has been going on for four
days?ä
        ãFive,ä said Von Holtz nervously. ãIt was only today that I thought of you, Herr Reames.
The Herr Professor Denham had
praised your articles highly. He said that you were the only man who would be able to understand
his work. Five days ago֊
        Tommy grunted. ãIf heâs been in danger for five days,ä he said skeptically, ãheâs not in
such a bad fix or itâd have been over. Will you phone for a repairman? Then weâll see what itâs
all about.ä
        The lean arms began to wave again as Von Holtz said desperately, ãBut Herr Reames, it is
urgent! The Herr Professor is in deadly danger!ä
        ãWhatâs the matter with him?ä
        ãHe is marooned,ä said Von Holtz. Again he licked his lips. ãHe is marooned, Herr Reames,
and you alone֊
        ãMarooned?ä said Tommy more skeptically still. ãIn the middle of New York State? And I
alone can help him? You sound more and more as if you were playing a rather elaborate and not very
funny practical joke. Iâve driven sixty miles to get here. What is the joke, anyhow?ä
        Von Holtz said despairingly, ãBut it is true, Herr Reames! He is marooned. He has changed
hix coordinates. It was an experiment. He is marooned in the fifth dimension!ä
        There was dead silence. Tommy Reames stared blankly. Then his gorge rose. He had taken an
instinctive dislike to this lean young man, anyhow. So he stared at him, and grew very angry, and
would undoubtedly have gotten into his car and turned it about and driven it away again if it had
been in any shape to run. But it wasnât. One tire was flat, and the last ruddy drops from the
radiator were dripping slowly on the grass. So he pulled out a cigarette case and lighted a
cigarette and said sardonically, ãThe fifth dimension? That seems rather extreme. Most of us get
along very well with three dimensions. Four seems luxurious. Why pick on the fifth?ä
        Von Holtz grew pale with anger in his turn. He waved his arms, stopped, and said with
stiff formality, ãIf the Herr Reames will follow me into the laboratory I will show him Professor
Denham and convince him of the Herr Professorâs extreme danger.ä
        Tommy had a sudden~startling conviction that Von Holtz was in earnest. He might be mad,
but he was in earnest. And there was undoubtedly a Professor Denham, and this was undoubtedly his
home and laboratory.
        ãIâll look, anyway,ä said Tommy less skeptically. ãBut it is rather incredible, you know.ä
        ãIt is impossible,ä said Von Holtz stiffly. ãYou are right, Herr Reames. It is quite
impossible. But it is a fact.ä
        He turned and stalked toward the big brick barn behind the house. Tommy went with him,
wholly unbelieving and yet beginning to wonder if, just possibly, there was actually an emergency
of a more normal and ghastly nature in being. Von Holtz might be a madman. He might.
        Gruesome, grisly thoughts ran through Tommyâs head. A madman dabbling in science might do
incredible things, horrible things, and then demand assistance to undo an unimaginable murder.
        Tommy was tense and alert as Von Holtz opened the door of the barnlike laboratory. He
waved the lean young man on ahead.
        ãAfter you,ä he said curtly.
        He felt almost a shiver as he entered. But the interior of the laboratory displayed no
gruesome scene. It was a huge, high-ceilinged room with a concrete floor. A monster dynamo stood
in one corner, coupled to a matter-of-fact four-cylinder crude-oil engine, to which was also
coupled by a clutch an inexplicable windlass-drum with several hundred feet of chain wrapped
around it. There were ammeters and voltmeters on a control panel, and one of the most delicate of
dynamometers on its own stand, and there were work benches and a motor-driven lathe and very
complete equipment for the working of metals. And there was an electric furnace, with splashes of
solidified metal on the floor beside it, and there was a miniature casting-floor, and at the far
end of the monster room was a gigantic solenoid which evidently had once swung upon gymbals and
just as evidently was now broken, because it lay toppled askew upon its supports.


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        The only totally unidentifiable piece of apparatus in the place was one queer contrivance
at one side. It looked partly like a machine gun because of a long brass barrel projecting from
it. But the brass tube came out of a bulging casing of cast aluminum, and there was no opening
through which shells could be fed.
        Von Holtz moved to that contrivance, removed a cap from the end of the brass tube, looked
carefully into the opening, and waved stiffly for Tommy to look in.
        Again Tommy was suspicious, watching until Von Holtz was some distance away. But the
instant he put his eye to the end of the brass tube he forgot all caution, all suspicion, all his
doubts. He forgot everything in his amazement.
        There was a lens in the end of the brass tube. It was, in fact, noth
ing more or less than a telescope, apparently looking at something in a closed box. But Tommy was
not able to believe that he looked at an illuminated miniature for even the fraction of a second.
He looked into the telescope, and he was seeing out-of-doors. Through the aluminum casting that
enclosed the end of the tube. Through the thick brick walls of the laboratory. He was gazing upon
a landscape such as should not÷such as could not÷exist upon the earth.
        There were monstrous, feathery tree-ferns waving languid fronds in a breeze that came from
beyond them. The telescope seemed to be pointing at a gentle slope, and those tree-ferns cut off a
farther view, but there was an impenetrable tangle of breast-high foliage between the instrument
and that slope, and halfway up the incline there rested a huge steel globe.
        Tommyâs eyes fixed themselves upon the globe. It was man-made, of course. He could see
where it had been bolted together. There were glassed-in windows in its sides, and there was a
door.
        As Tommy looked, that door opened partway, stopped as if someone within had hesitated, and
then opened fully. A man came out. And Tommy said dazedly, ãMy God!ä
        Because the man was a perfectly commonplace sort of individual, dressed in a perfectly
commonplace fashion, and he carried a perfectly commonplace briar pipe in his hand. Moreover,
Tommy recognized him. He had seen pictures of him often enough, and he was Professor Edward
Denham, entitled to put practically all the letters of the alphabet after his name, the author of
ãPolymerization of the Pseudo-Metallic Nitridesä and the proper owner of this building and its
contents. But Tommy saw him against a background of tree-ferns such as should have been extinct
upon this earth since the Carboniferous Period, some millions of years ago.
        He was looking hungrily at his briar pipe. Presently he began to hunt carefully about on
the ground. He picked together half a handful of brownish things which had to be dried leaves. He
stuffed them into the pipe, struck a match, and lighted it. He puffed away gloomily, surrounded by
wholly monstrous vegetation. A butterfly fluttered over the top of the steel globe. Its wings were
fully a yard across. It flittered lightly to a plant and seemed to wait, and abruptly a vivid
carmine blossom opened wide; wide enough to admit it.
        Denham watched curiously enough, smoking the rank and plainly unsatisfying dried leaves.
He turned his head and spoke over his shoulder. The door opened again. Again Tommy Reames was
dazed.
Because a girl came out of the huge steel sphere÷and she was a girl of the most modern and most
normal sort. A trim sport frock, slim silken legs, bobbed hair. . .
        Tommy did not see her face until she turned, smiling, to make some comment to Denham. Then
he saw that she was breathtakingly pretty. He swore softly under his breath.
        The butterfly backed clumsily out of the gigantic flower. It flew lightly away, its many-
colored wings brilliant in the sunshine. And the huge crimson blossom closed slowly.
        Denham watched the butterfly go away. His eyes returned to the girl, who was smiling at
the flying thing, now out of the field of vision of the telescope. And there was utter
discouragement visible in every line of Denhamâs figure. Tommy saw the girl suddenly reach out her
hand and put it on Denhamâs shoulder. She patted it, speaking in an evident attempt to encourage
him. She smiled, and talked coaxingly, and presently Denham made a queer, arrested gesture and
went heavily back into the steel globe. She followed him, though she looked wearily all about
before the door closed behind her, and when Denham could not see her face, her expression was
tired and anxious indeed.
        Tommy had forgotten Von Holtz, had~iorgotten the laboratory, had forgotten absolutely
everything. If his original suspicions of Von Holtz had been justified, he could have been killed
half a dozen times over. He was oblivious to everything but the sight before his eyes.
        Now he felt a touch on his shoulder and drew his head away with a jerk. Von Holtz was
looking down at him, very pale, with his weaklooking eyes anxious.
        ãThey are still all right?ä he demanded.
        ãYes,ä said Tommy dazedly. ãSurely. Who is that girl?ä


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        ãThat is the Herr Professorâs daughter, Evelyn,ä said Von Holtz uneasily. ãI suggest, Herr
Reames, that you swing the dimensoscope about.ä
        ãThe÷what?ä asked Tommy, still dazed by what he had seen.
        ãThe dimensoscope. This.ä Von Holtz shifted the brass tube. The whole thing was mounted so
that it could be swung in any direction. The mounting was exactly like that of a normal telescope.
Tommy instantly put his eye to the eyepiece again.
        He saw more tree-ferns, practically the duplicates of the background beyond the globe.
Nothing moved save small, fugitive creatures among their fronds. He swung the telescope still
farther. The
landscape swept by before his eyes. The tree-fern forest drew back. He saw the beginning of a vast
and noisome morass, over which lay a thick haze as of a stream raised by the sun. He saw something
move in that morass; something huge and horrible with a long and snakelike neck and the tiniest of
heads at the end of it. But he could not see the thing clearly.
        He swung the telescope yet again. And he looked over miles and miles of level, haze-
blanketed marsh. Here and there were clumps of taller vegetation. Here and there were steaming,
desolate pools. And three or four times he saw monstrous objects moving about clumsily in the
marsh-land.
        But then a glitter at the skyline caught his eye. He tilted the telescope to see more
clearly, and suddenly he caught his breath. There, far away at the very horizon, was a city. It
was tall and gleaming and very strange. No earthly city ever flung its towers so splendidly high
and soaring. No city ever built by man gave off the fiery gleam of gold from all its walls and
pinnacles. It looked like an artistâs dream, hammered out in precious metal, with its outlines
softened by the haze of distance.
        And something was moving in the air near the city. Staring, tense, again incredulous,
Tommy Reames strained his eyes and saw that it was a machine. An aircraft; a flying machine of a
type wholly unlike anything ever built on the planet Earth. It swept steadily and swiftly toward
the city, dwindling as it went. It swooped downward toward one of the mighty spires of the city of
golden gleams, and vanished.
        It was with a sense of shock, of almost physical shock, that Tommy came back to
realization of his surroundings to feel Von Holtzâs hand upon his shoulder and to hear the lean
young man saying harshly, ãWell, Herr Reames? Are you convinced that I did not lie to you? Are you
convinced that the Herr Professor Denham is in need of help?ä
        Tommy blinked dazedly as he looked around the laboratory again. Brick walls, an oil-
spattered crude-oil engine in one corner, a concrete floor and an electric furnace and a casting-
box. .
        ãWhy÷yes . . . ,ã said Tommy dazedly. ãYes. Of course!ä Clarity came to his brain with a
jerk. He did not understand at all, but he believed what he had seen. Denham and his daughter were
somewhere in some other dimension, yet within range of the extraordinary device he had looked
through. And they were in trouble. So much was evident from their poses and their manner. ãOf
course,ä he
repeated. ãTheyâre÷there, wherever it is, and they canât get back. They donât seem to be in any
imminent danger. . .
        Von Holtz licked his lips. ãThe Ragged Men have not found them yet,ä he said in a hushed,
harsh voice. ãBefore they went into the globe we saw the Ragged Men. We watched them. If they do
find the Herr Professor and his daughter, they will kill them very slowly, so that they will take
days of screaming agony to die. It is that that I am afraid of, Herr Reames. The Ragged Men roam
the tree-fern forests. If they find the Herr Professor, they will trace each nerve to its root of
agony until he dies. And we will be able only to watch. . .


CHAPTER II

        ãThe thing is,ä said Tommy feverishly, ãthat weâve got to find a way to get them back.
Whether it duplicates Denhamâs results or not. How far away are they?ä
        ãA few hundred yards, perhaps,ä said Von Holtz wearily, ãor ten million miles. It is the
same thing. They a~ in a place where the fifth dimension is the dominant coordinate.ä
        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.
        ãHow does this thing work?ä he demanded.
        Von Holtz began to unscrew two wing-nuts which kept the top of the aluminum casting in
place.


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        ãIt is the first piece of apparatus which Professor Denham made,ä he said precisely. ãI
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 Tommyâs arrival. He handed a sheet to
Tommy, who read:
        ãIf 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.
        ãOf course!ä he said brusquely. ãI know all that stuff. But up to the present time nobody
has been able to put together even three right angles, in practice.ä
        Von Holtz had returned to the unscrewing of the wing-nuts. He lifted off the cover of the
dimensoscope.
        ãIt is the thing the Herr Professor did not confide to me,ä he said bitterly. ãThe secret.
The one secret! Look in here.ä
        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 eyestrain 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.
        ãGood Lord!ä said Tommy Reames feverishly. ãThat mirror÷ä
        ãA mirror at forty-five degrees,ä said Von Holtz precisely. ãreflects 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.] do not know how.ä
        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.
        ãHaving made this device,ä said Von Holtz, ãthe 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, but his device for returning failed to
operate. Hence he is marooned.ä
        ãBut the big catapult÷ä
        ãCan you not see that the big catapult is broltun?ä demanded Von Holtz bitterly. ãA
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 one another. 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


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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!ä
        ãAnd his daughter,ä said Tommy grimly. ãHis daughter, also.ä
        He paced up and down the laboratory again. Von Holtz moved to the work bench from which he
had taken Denhamâs note. There was a pile of such memoranda, thumbed over and over. And there were
papers in the angular, precise handwriting which was Von Holtzâs 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.
        ãI have worked, Herr Reames,ä said Von Holtz drearily. ãGott!
How I have worked! But the Herr Professor kept some things secret, and that so-essential thing is
one of them.ä
        Presently he said tiredly, ãThe dimension-traveling globe was built in this laboratory. It
rested here.ä He pointed. ãThe 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 undercarriage 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 midair, 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!ä
        Von Holtzâs arms waved melodramatically. ãI 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.
        ãI 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 Professorâs 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. .
        ãIâm going to try it, of course,ä 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
pilotâs pose, could see the aircraft clearly. It was totally unlike a terrestrial airplane. A


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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 worldâs 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 accouterment 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 them 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 Holtzâs hand on his shoulder.
        ãWhat has happened, Herr Reames?ä he asked uneasily. ãThe÷ Ragged Men?ä
        ãI saw men,ä said Tommy briefly, ãshaking clenched fists at an aircraft flying overhead.
And Denham and his daughter have hidden the globe behind a screen of foliage.ä
        Von Holtz licked his lips fascinatedly.
        ãThe Ragged Men,ä he said in a hushed voice. ãThe 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.ä
        ãHow long did Denham use this thing to look through, before he built his globe?ä
        Von Holtz considered. ãImmediately it worked,ä he said at last, ãhe 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.ä
        ãHe should have known what he was up against,ä said Tommy, frowning. ãHe ought to have
taken guns, at least. Is he armed?ä
        Von Holtz shook his head. ãHe expected to return at once,ä he said desperately. ãDo you
see, Herr Reames, the position it puts me in? I may be suspected of murder! I am the Herr
Professorâs assistant. He disappears. Will I not be accused of having put him out of the way?ä
        ãNo,ä said Tommy thoughtfully. ãYou wonât.ä He glanced through the brass tube and paced up
and down the room. ãYou telephone for someone to repair my car,ä he said suddenly and abruptly. ãI
am going to stay here and wo~rk this thing out. Iâve got just the glimmering of an idea. But Iâll
need my car in running order, in case we have to go out and get materials in a hurry.ä
        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 donât you are out of luck. If this Reames
guy canât fix up what you want itâll be just too bad for you.


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         There was no salutation nor any signature beyond a scrawled and sprawling ãJ.ä
         Tommy Reamesâs jaw set grimly. He folded the scrap of paper and thrust it back out of
sight again.
         ãPretty!ä he said harshly. ãSo a gentleman named ÎJâ is going to
pay Von Holtz for plans or calculations it is hoped Iâll provide! Which suggests÷many things! But
at least Iâll have Von Holtzâs help until he thinks my plans or calculations are complete. So
thatâs all right. . . .ã
         Tommy could not be expected, of course, to guess that the note he had read was quite
astounding proof of the interest taken in nonEudidean 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 gimbals far more elaborate than were ever used to suspend a marinerâs compass aboard ship.
         There were three rings, one inside the other. And two rings wifi 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 solenoidâs 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.
         ãThe time dimension and the world-line,ä he said sharply, excited in spite of himself.
ãRevolving in the time dimension means telescoping in the world-line. . . . It would be a strain
no matter could endure. . . .ã
         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
solenoidâs 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.
         ãIt would explode!ä said Tommy excitedly to himself, alone in the great bare laboratory.
ãSteel itself would vaporize! It would wreck the place!ä
         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.
         ãA÷a repairman, Herr Reames,ä he said, stammering, ãis on the way. And÷Herr Reames. . .ã
         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. .
         ãThe Herr Jacaro is on the way here,ä 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.
         ãJacaro?ä he said blankly.
         ãThe÷friend of the Herr Professor Denham. He advanced the money for the Herr Professorâs
experiments.ä
         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 Chicagoâs 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.


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        ãWell?ä 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.
        ãIâve got it!ä he said softly to himself. ãBy God, I know how he did the thing!ä
        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 Holtzâs 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.
        ãWhatâs happening?ä 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 opene4 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.


CHAPTER III

        A battered and antiquated flivver came chugging down the wirefenced lane to the
laboratory, an hour later. It made a prodigious din, and Tommy Reames went out to meet it. He was
still a little pale. He had watched the steel globe turned practically inside out by the Ragged
Men. He had seen them bringing out cameras, cushions, and even the padding of the walls, to be
torn to bits in a truly maniacal fury. But he had not seen one sign of a human being killed.
Denham and his daughter had not been in the globe when it was found and ransacked. So far, then,
they were probably safe. Tommy had seen them vanish into the tree-fern forest. They had been
afraid, and with good reason. What dangers they might encounter in the fern forest he could not
guess. How long they would escape the search of the Ragged Men, he could not know. How he could
ever hope to find them if he succeeded in duplicating Denhamâs dimension-traveling apparatus he
could not even think of, just now. But the Ragged Men were not searching the fern forest. So much
was sure. They were encamped by the steel sphere, and a scurvy-looking lot they were.
        Coming out of the brick laboratory, Tommy saw a brawny figure getting out of the
antiquated flivver whose arrival had been so thunderous. That brawny figure nodded to him and
grinned. Tommy recognized him. The red-headed, broad-shouldered filling-station attendant in the
last village, who had given him specific directions for reaching this place.


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        ãYou hit that gate a lick, didnât you?ä asked the erstwhile filling-
station attendant amiably. ãMr. Von Holtz said you had a flat and a busted radiator. That right?ä
        Tommy nodded. The red-headed man walked around the car, scratched his chin, and drew out
certain assorted tools. He put them on the grass with great precision, pumped a gasoline blow-
torch to pressure, and touched a match to its priming-basin, and while the gasoline flamed smokily
he made a half-dozen casual movements with a file, and the broken radiator tube was exposed for
repair.
        He went back to the torch and observed placidly, ãThe Professor ainât around, is he?ä
        Tommy shook his head.
        ãThought not,ä said the red-headed one. ãHe genârally comes out and talks awhile. I helped
him build some of them dinkuses in the barn yonder.ä
        Tommy said eagerly, ãSay, which of those things did you help him build? That big thing
with the solenoid÷the coil?ä
        ãYeah. Howâd it work?ä The red-headed one set a soldering iron in place and began to jack
up the rear wheel to get at the tire. ãCrazy idea, if you ask me. I told Miss Evelyn so. She
laughed and said sheâd be in the ball when it was tried. Did it work?ä
        ãToo damn well,ä said Tommy briefly. ãIâve got to repair that solenoid. How about a job
helping?ä
        The red-headed man unfastened the lugs of the rim, kicked the tire speculatively, and
said, ãGone to hell.ä He put on the spare tire with ease and dispatch.
        ãUm,ä he said. ãHow about that Mr. Von Holtz? Is he goinâ to boss the job?ä
        ãHe is not,ä said Tommy, with a shade of grimness in his tone.
        The red-headed man nodded and took the soldering iron in hand. He unwound a strip of wire
solder, mended the radiator tube with placid ease, and seemed to bang the cooling-flanges with a
total lack of care. They went magically back into place, and it took close inspection to see that
the radiator had been damaged.
        ãSheâs all right,ä he observed. He regarded Tommy impersonally. ãSuppose you tell me how
come you horn in on this,ä he suggested, ãanâ maybe Iâll play. That guy Von Holtz is a crook, if
you ask me about him.ä
        Tommy ran his hand across his forehead, and told him.
        ãUrn,ä said the red-headed man calmly. ãI think Iâll go break Mr. Von Holtzâs neck. I got
me a hunch.ä
÷÷      Î~÷~÷÷-


        He took two deliberate steps forward. But Tommy said, ãI saw Denham not an hour ago. So
far, heâs all right. How long heâll be all right is a question. But Iâm going after him.ä
        The red-headed man scrutinized him exhaustively.
        ãUrn. I might try that myself. I kinda like the Professor. Anâ Miss Evelyn. My nameâs
Smithers. Letâs go look through the dinkus the Professor made.ä
        They went together into the laboratory. Von Holtz was looking through the dimensoscope. He
started back as they entered, and looked acutely uneasy when he saw the red-headed man.
        ãHow do you do,ä he said nervously. ãThey÷the Ragged Men÷ have just brought in a dead man.
But it is not the Herr Professor.ä
        Without a word, Tommy took the brass tube in his hand. Von Holtz moved away, biting his
lips. Tommy stared into that strange other world.
        The steel sphere lay as before, slightly askew upon a bank of glossy ferns. But its glass
windows were shattered, and fragments of everything it had contained were scattered about. The
Ragged Men had made a camp and built a fire. Some of them were roasting meat÷ the huge limb of a
monstrous animal with a scaly, reptilian hide. Others were engaged in vehement argument over the
body of one of their number, lying sprawled out upon the ground.
        Tommy spoke without moving his eyes from the eyepiece. ãI saw Denham with a club just now.
This man was killed by a club.ä
        The Ragged Men in the other world debated acrimoniously. One of them pointed to the dead
manâs belt, and spread out his hands. Something was missing from the body. Tommy saw, now, three
or four other men with objects that looked rather like policemenâs truncheons, save that they were
made of glittering metal. They were plainly weapons. Denham, then, was armed÷if he could
understand how the weapon was used.
        The Ragged Men debated, and presently their dispute attracted the attention of a man with
a huge black beard. He rose from where he sat gnawing at a piece of meat and moved grandly toward
the disputatious group. They parted at his approach, but a single member continued the debate


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against even the bearded giant. The bearded one plucked the glittering truncheon from his belt.
The disputatious one gasped in fear and flung himself desperately forward. But the bearded man
kept the truncheon pointed steadily. . . . The man who assailed him staggered, reached close
enough to strike a single blow, and
collapsed. The bearded man pointed the metal truncheon at him as he lay upon the ground. He heaved
convulsively, and was still.
        The bearded man went back to his seat and picked up the gnawed bit of meat again. The
dispute had ceased. The chattering group of men dispersed.
        Tommy was about to leave the eyepiece of the instrument when a movement nearby caught his
eye. A head peered cautiously toward the encampment. A second rose beside it. Denham and his
daughter Evelyn. They were apparently no more than thirty feet from the dimensoscope. Tommy could
see them talking cautiously, saw Denham lift and examine a metal truncheon like the bearded manâs,
and force his daughter to accept it. He clutched a club, himself, with a grim satisfaction.
        Moments later they vanished quietly in the thick fern foliage, and though Tommy swung the
dimensoscope around in every direction, he could see nothing of their retreat.
        He rose from that instrument with something approaching hopefulness. Heâd seen Evelyn very
near and very closely. She did not look happy, but she did look alert rather than worn. And Denham
was displaying a form of competence in the face of danger which was really more than would have
been expected in a Ph.D., an M.A., and other academic distinctions running to most of the letters
of the alphabet.
        ãIâve just seen Denham and Evelyn again,ä said Tommy crisply. ãTheyâre safe so far. And
Iâve seen one of the weapons of the Ragged Men in use. If we can get a couple of automatics and
some cartridges to Denham, heâll be safe until we can repair the big solenoid.ä
        ãThere was the small catapult,ä said Von Holtz bitterly, ãbut it was dismantled. The Herr
Professor saw me examining it, and he dismantled it. So that I did not learn how to calculate the
way of changing the position֊

        Tommyâs eyes rested queerly on Von Holtz for a moment. ãYou know how to make the metal
required,ä he said suddenly. ãYouâd better get busy making it. Plenty of it. Weâll need it.ä
        Von Holtz stared at him, his weak eyes almost frightened. ãYou know? You know how to
combine the right angles?ä
        ãI think so,ä said Tommy. ãIâve got to find out if Iâm right. Will you make the metal?ä
        Von Holtz bit at his too-red lips. ãBut Herr Reames!ä he said
stridently, ãI wish to know the equation! Tell me the method of pointing a body in a fourth or a
fifth direction. it is only fair֊
        ãDenham didnât tell you,ä said Tommy.
        Von Holtzâs arms jerked wildly.
        ãBut I will not make the metal! I insist upon being told the equation! I insist upon it! I
will not make the metal if you do not tell me!ä
        Smithers was in the laboratory, of course. He had been surveying the big solenoid-catapult
and scratching his chin reflectively. Now he turned.
        But Tommy took Von Holtz by the shoulders. And Tommyâs hands were the firm and sinewy
hands of a sportsman, if his brain did happen to be the brain of a scientist. Von Holtz writhed in
his grip.
        ãThere is only one substance which could be the metal I need, Von Holtz,ä he said gently.
ãOnly one substance is nearly threedimensional. Metallic ammonium! Itâs known to exist, because it
makes a mercury amalgam, but nobody has been able to isolate it because nobody has been able to
give it a fourth dimension÷duration in time. Denham did it. You can do it. And I need it, and
youâd better set to work at the job. Youâll be very sorry if you donât, Von Holtz!ä
        Smithers said with a vast calmness, ãI got me a hunch. So if yâwant his neck broke . .
        Tommy released Von Holtz, and the lean young man gasped and sputtered and gesticulated
wildly in a frenzy of rage.
        ãHeâll make it,ä said Tommy coldly. ãBecause he doesnât dare not to!ä
        Von Holtz went out of the laboratory, his weak-looking eyes staring and wild, and his
mouth working.
        ãHeâll be back,ä said Tommy briefly. ãYouâve got to make a small model of that big
catapult, Smithers. Can you do it?ä
        ãSure,ä said Smithers. ãThe ringâ!! be copper tubing, with pinbearings. Wind a coil on the
lathe. Itâll be kinda rough, but itâll do. But gears, now . .
        ãIâll attend to them. You know how to work that metallic ammonium?ä
        ãIf thatâs what it was,ä agreed Smithers. ãI worked it for the Professor.ä


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        Tommy leaned close and whispered, ãYou never made any gears of that. But did you make some
springs?ä
        ãUh-huh!ä
        Tommy grinned joyously.
        ãThen weâre set and Iâm right! Von Holtz wants a mathematical formula, and no one on earth
could write one, but we donât need it!ä
        Smithers rummaged around the laboratory with a casual air, acquired this and that and the
other thing, and set to work with an astounding absence of waste motions. From time to time he
inspected the great catapult thoughtfully, verified some impression, and went about the
construction of another part.
        And when Von Holtz did not return, Tommy hunted for him. He suddenly remembered hearing
his car motor start. He found his car missing. He swore, then, and grimly began to hunt for a
telephone in the house. But before he had raised central he heard the deep-toned purring of the
motor again. His car was coming swiftly back to the house. And he saw, through a window, that Von
Holtz was driving it.
        The lean young man got out of it, his face white with passion. He started for the
laboratory. Tommy intercepted him.
        ãI÷went to get materials for making the metal,ä said Von Holtz hoarsely, repressing his
rage with a great effort. ãI shall begin at once, Herr Reames.ä
        Tommy said nothing whatever. Von Holtz was lying. Of course. He carried nothing in the way
of materials. But he had gone away from the house, and Tommy knew as definitely as if Von Holtz
had told him, that Von Holtz had gone off to communicate in safety with someone who signed his
correspondence with a J.
        Von Holtz went into the laboratory. The four-cylinder motor began to throb at once. The
whine of the dynamo arose almost immediately after. Von Holtz came out of the laboratory and dived
into a shed that adjoined the brick building. He remained in there.
        Tommy looked at the trip register on his speedometer. Like most people with methodical
minds, he had noted the reading on arriving at a new destination. Now he knew how far Von Holtz
had gone. He had been to the village and back.
        ãMeaning,ä said Tommy grimly to himself, ãthat the J who wants plans and calculations is
either in the village or at the end of a longdistance wire. And Von Holtz said he was on the way.
Heâll probably turn up and try to bribe me.ä
        He went back into the laboratory and put his eye to the eyepiece of the dimensoscope.
Smithers had his blowtorch going and was busily accumulating an apparently unrelated series of
discordant bits of queerly shaped metal. Tommy looked through at the strange, mad world he could
see through the eyepiece.
        The tree-fern forest was still. The encampment of the Ragged Men was nearly quiet. Sunset
seemed to be approaching in this other world, though it was still bright outside the laboratory.
The hours of day and night were obviously not the same in the two worlds, so close together that a
man could be flung from one to the other by a mechanical contrivance.
        The sun seemed larger, too, than the orb which lights our normal earth. When Tommy swung
the vision instrument about to search for it, he found a great red ball quite four times the
diameter of our own sun, neatly bisected by the horizon. Tommy watched, waiting for it to sink.
But it did not sink straight downward as the sun seems to do in all temperate latitudes. It
descended, yes, but it moved along the horizon as it sank. Instead of a direct and forthright dip
downward, the sun seemed to progress along the horizon, dipping more deeply as it swam. And Tommy
watched it blankly.
        ãItâs not our sun. . . . But itâs not our world. Yet it revolves, and there are men on it.
And a sun that size would bake the earth. .
And itâs sinking at an angle that would only come at a latitude of÷ä
        That was the clue. He understood at once. The instrument through which he regarded the
strange world looked out upon the polar regions of that world. Here, where the sun descended
slantwise, were the high latitudes, the coldest spaces upon all the whole planet. And if here
there were the gigantic growths of a carboniferous era, the tropic regions of this planet must be
literal infernos.
        And then he saw that in its gradual descent the monster sun was going along behind the
Golden City, and the outlines of its buildings, the magnificence of its spires, were limned
clearly for him against the dully glowing disk.
        Nowhere upon earth had such a city ever been dreamed of. No man had ever envisioned such a
place, where far-flung arches interconnected soaring, towering columns, where curves of perfect
grace were united in forms of utterly perfect proportion. .


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         The sunlight died, and dusk began and deepened, and vividly brilliant stars began to come
out overhead, and Tommy suddenly searched the heavens eagerly for familiar constellations. And
found not one. All the stars were strange. These stars seemed larger and much more near than the
tiny pinpoints that blink down upon our earth.
         And then he swung the instrument again and saw great fires roaring and the Ragged Men
crouched about them. Within them, rather,
because they had built fires about themselves as if to make a wall of flame. And once Tommy saw
twin, monstrous eyes gazing from the blackness of the tree-fern forest. They were huge eyes, and
they were far apart, so that the head of the creature who used them must have been enormous. And
they were all of fifteen feet above the ground when they speculatively looked over the ring of
fires and the ragged, degraded men within them. Then that creature, whatever it was, turned away
and vanished.
         But Tommy felt a curious shivering horror of the thing. It had moved soundlessly, without
a doubt, because not one of the Ragged Men had noted its presence. It had been kept away by the
fires. But Denham and Evelyn were somewhere in the tree-fern forest, and they would not dare to
make fires. .
         Tommy drew away from the dimensoscope, shivering. He had been looking only, but the place
into which he looked was real, and the dangers that lay hidden there were very genuine, and there
was a man and a girl of his own race and time struggling desperately, without arms or hope, to
survive.
         Smithers was casually fitting together an intricate array of little rings made of copper
tubing. There were three of them, and each was fitted into the next largest by pins which enabled
them to spin noiselessly and swiftly at the touch of Smithersâs finger. He had them spinning now,
each in a separate direction, and the effect was bewildering.
         As Tommy watched, Smithers stopped them, oiled the pins carefully, and painstakingly
inserted a fourth ring. Only this ring was of a
white metal that looked somehow more pallid than silver. It had a
whiteness like that of ivory beneath its metallic gleam.
         Tommy blinked. ãDid Von Holtz give you that metal?ä he asked suddenly.
         Smithers looked up and puffed at a short brown pipe. ãNope. There was some splashes of it
by the castinâ box. I melted Îem together anâ run a ring. Pressed it to shape; yâ canât hammer
this stuff. It goes to water and dries up quickerân lightning÷anâ you hold yânose anâ run. I used
it before for the Professor.ä
         Tommy went over to him excitedly. He picked up the little contrivance of many concentric
rings. The big motor was throbbing rhythmically, and the generator was humming at the back of the
laboratory. Von Holtz was out of sight.
÷        .



        With painstaking care Tommy went over the little device. He looked up.
        ãA coil?ä
        ãI wound one,ä said Smithers calmly. ãOn the lathe. Not so hot, but itâll do, I guess. But
I canât fix these rings like the Professor did.ä
        ãI think I can,ä said Tommy crisply. ãDid you make some wire for springs?ä
        ãYeah!ä
        Tommy fingered the wire. Stout, stiff, and surprisingly springy wire of the same peculiar
metal. It was that metallic ammonium which chemists have deduced must exist because of the
chemical behavior of the compound NH but which Denham alone had managed to procure. Tommy deduced
that it was an allotropic modification of the substance which forms an amalgam with mercury, as
metallic tin is an allotrope of the amorphous gray powder which is tin in its normal, stable
state.
        He set to work with feverish excitement. For one hour, for two, he worked. At the end of
that time he was explaining the matter curtly to Smithers, so intent on his work that he wholly
failed to hear a motor car outside or to realize that it had also grown dark in this world of
ours.
        ãYou see, Smithers, if a two-dimensioned creature wanted to adjust two right angles at
right angles to each other, heâd have them laid flat, of course. And if he put a spring at the far
ends of those right angles÷theyâd look like a T, put together÷so that the cross-bar of that T was
under tension, heâd have the equivalent of what Iâm doing. To make a three-dimensioned figure,
that imaginary man would have to bend one side of the cross-bar up. As if the two ends of it were


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under tension by a spring, and the spring would only be relieved of tension when that cross-bar
was bent. But the vertical would be his time dimension, so heâd have to have something thin, or it
couldnât be bent. Heâd need something Îthin in time.â
        ãWe have the same problem. But metallic ammonium is Îthin in time.â Itâs so fugitive a
substance that Denham is the only man ever to secure it. So we use these rings and adjust these
springs to them so theyâre under tension which will only be released when theyâre all at right
angles to each other. In our three dimensions thatâs impossible, but we have a metal that can
revolve in a fourth, and we reinforce their tendency to adjust themselves by starting them off
with a jerk.
Weâve got Îem flat. Theyâll make a good stiff jerk when they try to adjust themselves. And the
solenoidâs a bit eccentric÷ä
        ãShut up!ä snapped Smithers suddenly.
        He was facing the door, bristling. Von Holtz was in the act of coming in, with a beefy,
broad-shouldered man with blue jowls. Tommy straightened up, thought swiftly, and then smiled
grimly.
        ãHullo, Von Holtz,ä he said pleasantly. ãWeâve just completed a model catapult. Weâre all
set to try it out. Watch!ä
        He set a little tin can beneath the peculiar device of copper-tubing rings. The can was
wholly ordinary, made of thin sheet-iron plated with tin as are all the tin cans of commerce.
        ãYou have the catapult remade?ä gasped Von Holtz. ãWait! Wait! Let me look at it!ä
        For one instant, and one instant only, Tommy let him see. The massed set of concentric
rings, each one of them parallel to all the others. It looked rather like a flat coil of tubing;
certainly like no particularly obscure form of projector. But as Von Holtzâs weak eyes fastened
avidly upon it, Tommy pressed the improvised electric switch. At once that would energize the
solenoid and release all the tensed springs from their greater tension, for an attempt to reach a
permanent equilibrium.
        As Von Holtz and the blue-jowled man stared, the little tin can leaped upward into the
tiny coil. The small copper rings twinkled one within the other as the springs operated. The tin
can was wrenched this way and that, then for the fraction of a second hurt the eyes that gazed
upon it÷and it was gone! And then the little coil came spinning down to the work bench top from
its broken bearings and the remaining copper rings spun aimlessly for a moment. But the third ring
of whitish metal had vanished utterly, and so had the coiled-wire springs which Von Holtz had been
unable to distinguish. And there was an overpowering smell of ammonia in the room.
        Von Holtz flung himself upon the still-moving little instrument. He inspected it savagely,
desperately. His full red lips drew back in a snarl.
        ãHow did you do it?ä he cried shrilly. ãYou must tell me! I÷I÷I will kill you if you do
not tell me!ä
        The blue-jowled man was watching Von Holtz. Now his lips twisted disgustedly. He turned to
Tommy and narrowed his eyes.
        ãLook here,ä he rumbled. ãThis foolâs no good! I want the secret of that trick you did.
Whatâs your price?ä
        ãIâm not for sale,ä said Tommy, smiling faintly.
        The blue-jowled man regarded him with level eyes.
        ãMy nameâs Jacaro,ä he said after an instant. ãMaybe youâve heard of me. Iâm from
Chicago.ä
        Tommy smiled more widely. ãTo be sure,ä he admitted. ãYou were the man who introduced
machine guns into gang warfare, werenât you? Your gunmen lined up half a dozen of the Buddy Haines
gang against a wall and wiped them out, I believe. What do you want this secret for?ä
        The level eyes narrowed. They looked suddenly deadly.
        ãThatâs my business,ä said Jacaro briefly. ãYou know who I am. And I want that trick
yâdid. I got my own reasons. Iâll pay for it. Plenty. You know I got plenty to pay, too. Or else÷ä
        ãWhat?ä
        ãSomethingâll happen to you,ä said Jacaro briefly. ãI ainât sayinâ what. But itâs damn
likely youâll tell what I want to know before itâs finished. Name your price anâ be damn quick!ä
        Tommy took his hand out of his pocket. He had a gun in it.
        ãThe only possible answer to that,ä he said suavely, ãis to tell you to go to hell. Get
out! But Von Holtz stays here. Heâd better!ä


CHAPTER IV



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        Within half an hour after Jacaroâs leaving, Smithers was in the village, laying in a stock
of supplies and sending telegrams that Tommy had written out for transmission. Tommy sat facing an
ashen Von Holtz and told him pleasantly what would be done to him if he failed to make the
metallic ammonium needed to repair the big solenoid. In an hour Smithers was back, reporting that
Jacaro was also sending telegrams but that he, Smithers, had stood over the telegraph operator
until his own messages were transmitted. He brought back weapons, too÷highly illegal things to
have in New York State, where a citizen is only law-abiding when defenseless. And then four days
of hectic, sleepless labor began.
        On the first day one of Tommyâs friends drove in in answer to a telegram. It was Peter
Dalzell, with men in uniform apparently festooned about his car. He announced that a placard,
warning passersby of smallpox within, had been added to the decorative signs upon the gate, and
stared incredulously at the interior of the big brick
barn. Tommy grinned at him and gave him plans and specifications of a light steel globe in which
two men might be transported into the fifth dimension by a suitably operating device. Tommy had
sat up all night drawing those plans. He told Dalzell just enough of what he was up against to
enlist Dalzellâs enthusiastic cooperation without permitting him to doubt Tommyâs sanity. Daizell
had known Tommy as an amateur tennis player, but not as a scientist.
        He marveled, refused to believe his eyes when he looked through the dimensoscope, and
agreed that the whole thing had to be kept secret or the rescue expedition would be prevented from
starting by the incarceration of both Tommy and Smithers in comfortable insane asylums. He feigned
to admire Von Holtz, deathly white and nearly frantic with a corroding rage, and complimented
Tommy on his taste for illegality. He even asked Von Holtz if he wanted to leave, and Von Holtz
snarled insults at him. Von Holtz was beginning to work at the manufacture of metallic ammonium.
        It was an electrolytic process, of course. Ordinarily, when÷say÷ ammonium chloride is
broken down by an electric current, ammonium is deposited at the cathode and instantly becomes a
gas which dissolves in the water or bubbles up to the surface. With a mercury cathode, it is
dissolved and becomes a metallic amalgam, which also breaks down into gas with much bubbling of
the mercury. But Denham had worked out a way of delaying the breaking-down, which left him with a
curiously white, spongy mass of metal which could be carefully melted down and cast, but not under
any circumstances violently struck or strained.
        Von Holtz was working at that. On the second day he delivered, snarling, a small ingot of
the white metal. He was imprisoned in the lean-to shed in which the electrolysis went on. But
Tommy had more than a suspicion that he was in communication with Jacaro.
        ãOf course,ä he said dryly to Smithers, who had expressed his doubts, ãJacaro had somebody
sneak up and talk to him through the walls, or maybe through a bored hole. While thereâs a hope of
finding out what he wants to know through Von Holtz, Jacaro wonât try anything. Not anything
rough, anyhow. We mustnât be bumped off while what we are doing is in our heads alone. Weâre safe
enough÷for a while.ä
        Smithers grumbled.
        ãWe need that ammonium,ä said Tommy, ãand I donât know how to make it. I bluffed that I
could, and in time I might, but it would
need time and meanwhile Denham needs us. Dalzell is going to send a plane over today, with word of
when we can expect our own globe. Weâll try to have the big catapult ready when it comes. And the
plane will drop some extra supplies. Iâve ordered a submachine gun. Handy when we get over there
in the tree-fern forests. Right now, though, we need to be watching. . . .ã
        Because they were taking turns looking through the dimensoscope. For signs of Denham and
Evelyn. And Tommy was finding himself thinking wholly unscientific thoughts about Evelyn, since a
pretty girl in difficulties is, of all possible things, the one most likely to make a man
romantic.
        In the four days of their hardest working, he saw her three times. The globe was wrecked
and ruined. Its glass was broken out and its interior ripped apart. It had been pillaged so
exhaustively that there was no hope that whatever device had been included in its design, for its
return, remained even repairably intact. That device had not worked, to be sure, but Tommy puzzled
sometimes over the fact that he had seen no mechanical device of any sort in the plunder that had
been brought out to be demolished. But he did not think of those things when he saw Evelyn.
        The Ragged Menâs encampment was gone, but she and her father lingered furtively, still
near the pillaged globe. The first day Tommy saw her, she was still blooming and alert. The second
day she was paler. Her clothing was ripped and torn, as if by thorns. Denham had a great raw wound
upon his forehead, and his coat was gone and half his shirt was in ribbons. Before Tommyâs eyes
they killed a nameless small animal with the truncheonlike weapon Evelyn carried. And Denham
carted it triumphantly off into the shelter of the tree-fern forest. But to Tommy that shelter


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began to appear extremely dubious.
        That same afternoon some of the Ragged Men came suspiciously to the globe and inspected
it, and then vented a gibbering rage upon it with blows and curses. They seemed half-mad, these
men. But then, all the Ragged Men seemed a shade less than sane. Their hatred for the Golden City
seemed the dominant emotion of their existence.
        And when they had gone, Tommy saw Denham peering cautiously from behind a screening mass
of fern. And Denham looked sick at heart. His eyes lifted suddenly to the heavens, and he stared
off into the distance again, and then he regarded the heavens again with an
expression that was at once of the utmost wistfulness and the uttermost of despair.
        Tommy swung the dimensoscope about and searched the skies of that other world. He saw the
flying machine, and it was a swallowwinged device that moved swiftly, and now soared and swooped
in abrupt short circles almost overhead. Tommy could see its pilot, leaning out to gaze downward.
He was no more than a hundred feet up, almost at the height of the tree-fern tops. And the pilot
was moving too swiftly for Tommy to be able to focus accurately upon his face, but he could see
him as a man, an indubitable man in no fashion distinguishable from the other men of this earth.
He was scrutinizing the globe as well as he could without alighting.
        He soared upward, suddenly, and his plane dwindled as it went toward the Golden City.
        And then, inevitably, Tommy searched for the four Ragged Men who had inspected the globe a
little while since. He saw them, capering horribly behind a screening of verdure. They did not
shake their clenched fists at the flying machine. Instead, they seemed filled with a ghastly
mirth. And suddenly they began to run frantically for the far distance, as if bearing news of
infinite importance.
        And when he looked back at Denham, it seemed to Tommy that he wrung his hands before he
disappeared.
        But that was the second day of the work upon our own world, and just before sunset there
was a droning in the earthly sky above the laboratory, and Tommy ran out, and somebody shot at him
from a patch of woodland a quarter of a mile away from the brick building. Isolated as Denhamâs
place was, the shot would go unnoticed. The bullet passed within a few feet of Tommy, but he paid
no attention. It was one of Jacaroâs watchers, no doubt, but Jacaro did not want Tommy killed. So
Tommy waited until the plane swooped low÷ almost to the level of the laboratory roof÷and a thickly
padded package thudded to the ground. He picked it up and darted back into the laboratory as other
bullets came from the patch of woodland.
        ãFunny,ä he said dryly to Smithers, inside the laboratory again; ãthey donât dare kill
me÷yet÷and Von Holtz doesnât dare leave or refuse to do what I tell him to do; and yet they expect
to lick us.ä
        Smithers growled. Tommy was unpacking the wrapped package. A grim, blued-steel thing came
out of much padding. Boxes tumbled after it.
        ãSubmachine gun,ä said Tommy, ãand ammunition. Jacaro and
his little pals will try to get in here when they think weâve got the big solenoid ready for use.
Theyâll try to get it before we can use it. This will attend to them.ä
        ãAnâ get us in jail,ä said Smithers calmly, ãfor forty-âleven years.ä
        ãNo,ä said Tommy, and grinned. ãWeâll be in the fifth dimension. Our job is to fling
through the catapult all the stuff weâll need to make another catapult to fling us back again.ä
        ãIt canât be done,ä said Smithers flatly.
        ãMaybe not,ä agreed Tommy, ãespecially since we ruin all our springs and one gimbal ring
every time we use the thing. But Iâve got an idea. Iâll want five coils with hollow iron cores,
and the whole works shaped like this, with two holes bored so. . .
        He sketched. He had been working on the idea for several days, and the sketch was ready in
his mind to be transferred to paper.
        ãWhat you goinâ to do?ä
        ãSomething crazy,ä said Tommy. ãA mirror isnât the only thing that changes angles to right
ones.ä
        ãYouâre the doctor,ä said the imperturbable Smithers.
        He set to work. He puzzled Tommy sometimes, Smithers did. So far he hadnât asked how much
his pay was going to be. Heâd worked unintermittently. He had displayed a colossal, a tremendous
calmness. But no man could work as hard as Smithers did without some powerful driving-force. It
was on the fourth day that Tommy learned what it was.
        The five coils had been made, and Tommy was assembling them with an extraordinary
painstaking care behind a screen, to hide what he was doing. Heâd discovered a peep-hole bored
through the brick wall from the lean-to where Von Holtz worked. He was no longer locked in there.
Tommy abandoned the pretense of imprisonment after finding an automatic pistol and a duplicate key


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to the lock in Von Holtzâs possession. Heâd had neither when he was theoretically locked up, and
Tommy laughed.
        ãItâs a farce, Von Holtz,ä he said dryly, ãthis pretending youâll run away. Youâre here
spying now, for Jacaro. Of course. And you donât dare harm either of us until you find out from me
what you canât work out for yourself, and know I have done. How much is Jacaro going to pay you
for the secret of the catapult, Von Holtz?ä
        Von Holtz snarled. Smithers moved toward him, his hands closing and unclosing. Von Holtz
went gray with terror.
        ãTalk!ä said Smithers.
        ãA÷a million dollars,ä said Von Holtz, cringing away from the brawny red-headed man.
        ãIt would be interesting to know what use it would be to him,ä said Tommy dryly. ãBut to
earn that million you have to learn what we know. And to learn that, you have to help us do it
again, on the scale we want. You wonât run away. So I shanât bother to lock you up hereafter.
Jacaroâs men come and talk to you at night, donât they?ä
        Von Holtz cringed again. It was an admission.
        ãI donât want to have to kill any of them,ä said Tommy pleasantly,
ãand weâll all be classed as mad if this thing gets Out. So you go and talk to them in the lane
when you want to, Von Holtz. But if any of them come near the laboratory, Smithers and I will kill
them, and if Smithers is hurt Iâll kill you; and I donât imagine Jacaro wants that, because he
expects you to build another catapult for him. But I warn you, if I find another gun on you Iâll
thrash you.ä
        Von Holtzâs pallor changed subtly from the pallor of fear to the awful lividness of rage.
        ãYou÷Gott! You dare threaten÷ä He choked upon his own fury.
        ãI do,ä said Tommy. ãAnd Iâll carry out the threat.ä
        Smithers moved forward once more.
        ãMr. Von Holtz,ä he said in a very terrible steadiness, ãI aim to kill you some time. I
ainât done it yet because Mr. Reames says he needs you a while. But I know you got Miss Evelyn
marooned off in them fern-woods on purpose! And÷God knows she wouldnât ever look at me, but÷I aim
to kill you some time!ä
        His eyes were flames. His hands closed and unclosed horribly. Von Holtz gaped at him,
shocked out of his fury into fear again. He went unsteadily back to his lean-to. And Smithers went
back to the dimensoscope. It was his turn to watch that other world for signs of Denham and
Evelyn, and for any sign of danger to them.

        Tommy adjusted the screen before the~ bench on which he was working, so Von Holtz could
not see his task, and went back to work. It was a rather intricate task he had undertaken, and
before the events of the past few days he would have said it was insane. But now he was taking it
quite casually.
        Presently he said, ãSmithers.ä
        Smithers did not look away from the brass tube.
        ãYeah?ä
        ãYouâre thinking more about Miss Denham than her father.ä
        Smithers did not reply for a moment. Then he said, ãWell? What if I am?ä
        ãI am, too,ä said Tommy quietly. ãIâve never spoken to her, and I daresay sheâs never even
heard of me, and she certainly has never seen me, but֊
        Smithers said with a vast calmness, ãSheâll never look at me, Mr. Reames. I know it. She
talks to me, anâ laughs with me, but sheâs never sure-ânough looked at me. Anâ she never will. But
I got the right to love her.ä
        Tommy nodded very gravely.
        ãYes. You have. So have I. And so, when that globe comes, we both get into it with what
arms and ammunition we can pack in, and go where she is, to help her. I intended to have you work
the switch and send me off. But you can come, too.ä
        Smithers was silent. But he took his eyes from the dimensoscope eyepiece and regarded
Tommy soberly. Then he nodded and turned back. And it was a compact between the two men that they
should serve Evelyn, without any rivalry at all.
        Tommy went on with his work. The essential defect in the catapult Denham had designed was
the fact that it practically had to be rebuilt after each use. And, moreover, the metallic
ammonium was so fugitive a substance that it was hard to keep. Once it had been strained by
working, it gradually adverted to a gaseous state and was lost. And while he still tried to keep
the little catapult in a condition for use, he was at no time sure that he could send a pair of
automatics and ammunition through in a steel box at any moment that Denham came close enough to


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notice a burning smoke-fuse attached.
        But he was working on another form of catapult entirely, now. In this case he was using
hollow magnets placed at known angles to each other. And they were so designed that each one
tended to adjust its own hollow bore at right angles to the preceding one, and each one would take
any moving, magnetic object and swing it through four successive right angles into the fifth
dimension.
        He fitted the first magnet on twin rods of malleable copper, which also would carry the
current which energized the coil. He threaded the second upon the same twin supports. When the
current was passed through the two of them, the magnetic field itself twisted the magnets, bending
the copper supports and placing the magnets in their proper relative positions. A third magnet on
the same pair of
rods, and a repetition of the experiment, proved the accuracy of the idea. And since this device,
like the dimensoscope, required only a forty-five-degree angle to our known dimensions, instead of
a right angle as the other catapult did, Tommy was able to work with ordinary and durable
materials. He fitted on the last two coils and turned on the current for his final experiment. And
as he watched, the twin three-eighths-inch rods twisted and writhed in the grip of the intangible
magnetic force. They bent, and quivered, and twisted. . . . And suddenly there seemed to be a sort
of inaudible snap, and one of the magnets hurt the eyes that looked at it, and only the edge of
the last of the series was visible.
        Tommy drew in his breath sharply.
        ãNow we try it,ä he said tensely. ãI was trying to work this as the mirrors of the
dimensoscope were fitted. Letâs see.ä
        He took a long piece of soft-iron wire and fed it into the hollow of the first magnet. He
saw it come out and bend stiffly to enter the hollow of the second. It required force to thrust it
through. It went still more stiffly into the third magnet. It required nearly all his strength to
thrust it on, and on. . . . The end of it vanished. He pushed two feet or more of it beyond the
last place where it was visible. It went into the magnet that hurt oneâs eyes. After that it could
not be seen.
        Tommyâs voice was strained. ãSwing the dimensoscope, Smithers,ä he ordered. ãSee if you
can see the wire. The end of it should be in the other world.ä
        It seemed an age, an eon, that Smithers searched. Then, ãMove it,ä he said.
        Tommy obeyed.
        ãItâs there,ä said Smithers evenly. ãTwo or three feet of it.ä
        Tommy drew a deep, swift breath of relief.
        ãAll right!ä he said crisply. ãNow we can fling anything we need through there, when our
globe arrives. We can build up a dump of supplies, all sent through just before we slide through
in the globe.ä
        ãYeah,ä said Smithers. ãUh÷Mr. Reames. Thereâs a bunch of Ragged Men in sight, hauling
something heavy behind them. I donât know what itâs all about.ä
        Tommy went to the brass tube and stared through it. The tree-fern forest, drawing away in
the distance. The vast and steaming morass. The glittering city, far, far in the distance.
        And then a mob of the Ragged Men, hauling at some heavy thing. They were a long way off.
Some of them came capering on ahead,
and Tommy swung the dimensoscope about to see Denham and Evelyn dart for cover and vanish amid the
tree-ferns. Denham was as ragged as the Ragged Men, by now, and Evelynâs case was little better.
        Frightened for them, Tommy swung the instrument about again. But they had not been seen.
The leaders who ran gleefully on ahead were merely in haste. And they were followed more slowly by
burly men and lean ones, whole men and limping men, who hauled frantically on long ropes of hide,
dragging some heavy thing behind them. Tommy saw it only indistinctly as the filthy, nearly naked
bodies moved. But it was an intricate device of a golden-colored metal, and it rested upon the
crudest of possible carts. The wheels were sections of tree trunks, pierced for wooden axles. The
cart itself was made of the most roughly hewed of timbers. And there were fifty or more of the
Ragged Men who dragged it.
        The men in advance now attacked the underbrush at the edge of the forest. They worked with
a maniacal energy, clearing away the long fern fronds while they capered and danced and babbled
excitedly.
        Irrelevantly, Tommy thought of escaped galley slaves. Just such hard-bitten, vice-ridden
men as these, and filled with just such a mad, gibbering hatred of the free men they had escaped
from. Certainly these men had been civilized once. As the golden-metal device came nearer, its
intricacy was the more apparent. No savages could utilize a device like this one. And there was a
queer deadliness in the very grace of its outlines. It was a weapon of some sort, but whose nature


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Tommy could not even guess.
        And then he caught the gleam of metal also in the fern-forest. On the ground. In glimpses
and in fragments of glimpses between the swarming naked bodies of the Ragged Men, he pieced
together a wholly incredible impression. There was a roadway skirting the edge of the forest. It
was not wide; not more than fifteen feet at most. But it was a solid roadbed of metal! The dull
silver-white of aluminum gleamed from the ground. Two or more inches thick and fifteen feet wide,
there was a seamless ribbon of aluminum that vanished behind the tree-ferns on either side.
        The intricate device of golden metal was set up, now, and a shaggy, savage-seeming man
mounted beside it grinning. He manipulated its levers and wheels with an expertâs assurance. And
Tommy saw repairs upon it. Crude repairs, with crude materials, but expertly
done. Done by the Ragged Men, past doubt, and so demolishing any idea that they came of a savage
race.
        ãWatch here, Smithers,ä said Tommy grimly.
        He set to work upon .the little catapult after Denhamâs design. His own had seemed to
work, but the other was more sure. This would be an ambush the Ragged Men were preparing, and of
course they would be preparing it for men of the Golden City. The plane had sighted Denhamâs steel
globe. It had hovered overhead, and carried news of what it had seen to the Golden City. And here
was a roadway that must have been made by the folk of the Golden City at some time or another. Its
existence explained why Denham remained nearby. He had been hoping that along its length would
travel some vehicle containing civilized people to whom he could signal and ultimately explain his
plight. And, being near the steel globe, his narrative would have its proofs at hand.
        And now it was clear that the Ragged Men expected some ground vehicle, too. They were
preparing for it. They were setting a splendid ambush, with a highly treasured weapon they
ordinarily kept hidden. Their triumphant hatred could apply to nothing else than an expectation of
inflicting injury on men of the Golden City.
        So Tommy worked swiftly on the catapult. A new little ring of metallic ammonium was ready,
and so were the necessary springs. The Ragged Men would lay their ambush. The men of the Golden
City might enter it. They might. But the aviator who had spotted the globe would have seen the
shredded contents of the sphere about. He would have known the Ragged Men had found it. And the
men who came in a ground vehicle from the Golden City should be expecting just such an ambush as
was being laid.
        There would be a fight, and Tommy, somehow, had no doubt that the men of the Golden City
would win. And when they had cleared the field he would fling a smoking missile through the
catapult. The victors should see it and should examine it. And though writing would serve little
purpose, they should at least recognize it as written communication in a language other than their
own. And mathematical diagrams would certainly be lucid, and proof of a civilized man sending the
missile, and photographs. . .
        The catapult was ready, and Tommy prepared his message-carrying
projectile. He found snapshots and included them. He tore out a
photograph of Evelyn and her father, which had been framed above a
work bench in the laboratory. He labored, racking his brain for a
means of conveying the information that the globe was of any other world. . . . And suddenly he
had an idea. A cord attached to his missile would lead to nothingness from either )vorld, yet one
end would be in that other world, and the other end in this. A wire would be better. Tugs upon it
would convey the idea of living beings nearby but invisible. The photograph would identify Denham
and his daughter as associated with the phenomenon and competent to explain
it.     .

        Tommy worked frantically to get the thing ready. He almost prayed that the men of the
Golden City would be victors, would find his little missile when the fray was over, and would try
to comprehend it. .
        All he could do was try.
        Then Smithers said, from the dimensoscope, ãTheyâre all set, Mr. Reames. Yâbetter look.ä
        Tommy stared through the eyepiece. Strangely, the golden weapon had vanished. All seemed
to be exactly as before. The cleared-away underbrush was replaced. Nothing was in any way changed
from the normal in that space upon a mad world. But there was a tiny movement and Tommy saw a
Ragged Man. He was lying prone upon the earth. He seemed either to hear or see something, because
his lips moved as he spoke to another invisible man beside him, and his expression of malevolent
joy was horrible.
        Tommy swung the tube about. Nothing. . . . But suddenly he saw swiftly moving winkings of
sunlight from the edge of the tree-fern forest. Something was moving in there, moving with


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lightning swiftness along the fifteen-foot roadway of solid aluminum. It drew nearer, and more
near. .
        The carefully camouflaged ambuscade was fully focused and Tommy was watching tensely when
the thing happened.
        He saw glitterings through the tree fronds come to a smoothly decelerated stop. There was
a pause; and suddenly the underbrush fell flat. As if a single hand had smitten it, it wavered,
drooped, and lay prone. The golden weapon was exposed, with its brawny and horribly grinning
attendant. For one-half a split-second Tommy saw the wheeled thing in which half a dozen men of
the Golden City were riding. It was graceful and streamlined and glittering. There was a platform
on which the steel sphere would have been mounted for carrying away.
        But then there was a sudden intolerable light as the men of the
Golden City reached swiftly for peculiar weapons beside them. The light came from the crudely
mounted weapon of the Ragged Men, and it was an unbearable actinic glare. For half a second,
perhaps, it persisted, and died away to a red flame which leaped upward and was not.
        Then the vehicle from the Golden City was a smoking, twisted ruin. Four of the six men in
it were blasted, blackened crisps. Another staggered to his feet, struggled to reach a weapon and
could not lift it, and twitched a dagger from his belt and fell forward; and Tommy could see that
his suicide was deliberate.
        The last man, alone, was comparatively unharmed by the blast of light. He swept a pistol-
like contrivance into sight. It bore swiftly upon the now surging, yelling horde of Ragged Men.
And one÷two÷ three of them seemed to scream convulsively before they were trampled under by the
rest.
        But suddenly there were a myriad little specks of red all over the body of the man at bay.
The pistol-like thing dropped from his grasp as his whole hand became encrimsoned. And then he was
buried beneath the hating, blood-lusting mob of the forest men.


CHAPTER V

        An hour later, Tommy took his eyes away from the dimensoscope eyepiece. He could not bear
to look any longer.
        ãWhy donât they kill him?ä he demanded sickly, ifiled with a horrible, a monstrous rage.
ãOh, why donât they kill him?ä
        He felt maddeningly impotent. In another world entirely, a mob of half-naked renegades had
made a prisoner. He was not dead, that solely surviving man from the Golden City. He was bound,
and the Ragged Men guarded him closely, and his guards were diverting themselves unspeakably by
small tortures, minor tortures, horribly painful but not weakening. And they capered and howled
with glee when the bound man writhed.
        The prisoner was a brave man, though. Helpless as he was, he presently flung back his head
and set his teeth. Sweat stood out in great droplets upon his body and upon his forehead. And he
stilled his writhings and looked at his captors with a grim and desperate defiance.
        The guards made gestures which were all too clear, all too luridly
descriptive of the manner of death which awaited him. And the man of the Golden City was ashen and
hopeless and utterly despairing÷ and yet defiant.
        Smithers took Tommyâs place at the eyepiece of the instrument. His nostrils quivered at
what he saw. The vehicle from the Golden City was being plundered, of course. Weapons from the
dead men were being squabbled over, even fought over. And the Ragged Men fought as madly among
themselves as if in combat with their enemies. The big golden weapon on its cart was already being
dragged away to its former hiding place. And somehow, it was clear that those who dragged it away
expected and demanded that the solitary prisoner not be killed until their return.
        It was that prisoner, in the agony which was only the beginning of his death, who made
Smithersâs teeth set tightly.
        ãI donât see the Professor or Miss Evelyn,ä said Smithers in a vast calmness. ãI hope to
Gawd they÷donât see this.ä
        Tommy swung on his heel, staring and ashen.
        ãThey were near,ä he said stridently. ãI saw them! They saw what happened in the ambush!
Theyâll÷theyâll see that man tortured!ä
        Smithersâs hand closed and unclosed.
        ãMaybe the Professorâll have sense enough to take Miss Evelyn÷ uh÷where she÷canât hear,ä
he said slowly, his voice level. ãI hope so.,,
        Tommy flung out his hands desperately.


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        ãI want to help that man!ä he cried savagely. ãI want to do something! I saw what they
promised to do to him. I want to÷to kill him, even! It would be mercy!ä
        Smithers said, with a queer, stilly shock in his voice, ãI see the Professor now. Heâs got
that gun-thing in his hand. . . . Miss Evelynâs urging him to try to do something. . . . Heâs
looking at the sky. - . . Itâll be a long time before itâs dark. . . . Heâs gone back out of
sight. . .
        ãIf we had some dynamite!ä said Tommy desperately, ãwe could take a chance on blowing
ourselves to bits and try to fling it through and into the middle of those devils. - .
        He was pacing up and down the laboratory, harrowed by the fate of that gray-faced man who
awaited death by torture; filled with a wild terror that Evelyn and her father would try to rescue
him and be caught to share his fate; racked by his utter impotence to do more than watch. . .
Then Smithers said thickly, ãGod!ä
        He stumbled away from the eyepiece. Tommy took his place, drythroated with terror. He saw
the Ragged Men laughing uproariously. The bearded man who .was their leader was breaking the arms
and legs of the prisoner so that he would be helpless when released from the stake to which he was
bound. And if ever human beings looked like devils out of hell, it was at that moment. The method
of breaking the bones was excruciating. The prisoner screamed. The Ragged Men rolled upon the
ground in their maniacal mirth.
        And then a man dropped, heaving convulsively, and then another, and still another. . . .
The grim, gaunt figure of Denham came out of the tree-fern forest, the queer small golden-metal
truncheon in his hand. A fourth man dropped before the Ragged Men quite realized what had
happened. The fourth man himself was armed÷and a flashing slender body came plunging from the
forest and Evelyn flung herself upon the still-heaving body and plucked away that weapon.
        Tommy groaned, in the laboratory in another world. He could not look away, and yet it
seemed that the heart would be torn from his body by that sight. Because the Ragged Men had turned
upon Denham with a concentrated ferocity, somehow knowing instantly that he was more nearly akin
to the men of the Golden City than to them. But at sight of Evelyn, her garments rent by the
thorns of the forest, her white body gleaming through the largest tears, they seemed to go mad.
And Tommyâs eyes, glazing, saw the look on Denhamâs face as he realized that Evelyn had not fled,
but had followed him in his desperate and wholly hopeless effort.
        Then the swarming mass of Ragged Men surged over the two of them. Buried them under
reaching, hating, lusting fiends who fought even among themselves to be first to seize them.
Then there was only madness, and Denham was bound beside the man of the Golden City, and Evelyn
was the center of a fighting group which was suddenly flung aside by the bearded giant, and the
encampment of the Ragged Men was bedlam. And somehow Tommy knew with a terrible clarity that a man
of the Golden City to torture was bliss unimaginable to these half-mad enemies of that city. But a
woman÷ He turned from the instrument, three-quarters out of his head. He
literally did not see Von Holtz gazing furtively in the doorway. His eyes were fixed and staring.
It seemed that his brain would burst.
Then he heard his own voice saying with an altogether unbe
lievable steadiness, ãSmithers! Theyâve got Evelyn. Get the submachine gun.ä
        Smithers cried out hoarsely. His face was not quite human, for an instant. But Tommy was
bringing the work bench on which he had installed his magnetic catapult, close over by the
dimensoscope.
        ãThis cannot work,ä he said in the same incredible calmness. ãNot possibly. It should not
work. It will not work. But it has to work!ä
        He was clamping the catapult to a piece of heavy timber.
        ãPut the gun so it shoots into the first magnet,ä he said steadily.
ãThe magnet windings shouldnât stand the current weâve got to put into them. Theyâve got to.ä
        Smithersâs fingers were trembling and unsteady. Tommy helped him, not looking through the
dimensoscope at all.
        ãStart the dynamo,ä he said evenly÷and marveled foolishly at the voice that did not seem
to belong to him at all, talking so steadily and so quietly. ãGive me all the juice youâve got.
Weâll cut out this rheostat.ä
        He was tightening a vise which would hold the deadly little weapon in place while Smithers
got the crude-oil engine going and accelerated it recklessly to its highest speed. Tommy flung the
switch. Rubber insulation steamed and stank. He pulled the trigger of the little gun for a single
shot. The bullet flew into the first hollow magnet, just as he had beforehand thrust an iron wire.
It vanished. The series of magnets seemed unharmed.
        With a peculiar, dreamlike steadiness, Tommy put his hand where an undeflected bullet
would go through it. He pressed the trigger again. He felt a tiny breeze upon his hand. But the


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bullet had been unable to elude the compound-wound magnets, each of which now had quite four times
the designed voltage impressed upon its coils.
        Tommy flung off the switch.
        ãWork the gun,ä he ordered harshly. ãWhen I say fire, send a burst of shots through it.
Keep the switch off except when youâre actually firing, so÷God willing÷the coils donât burn out.
Fire!ä
        He was gazing through the dimensoscope. Evelyn was struggling helplessly while two Ragged
Men held her arms, grinning as only devils could have grinned, and others squabbled and watched
with a fascinated attention some cryptic process which could only be the drawing of lots. . .
        Tommy saw, and paid no attention. The machine gun beside him
rasped suddenly. He saw a tree-fern frond shudder. He saw a gaping, irregular hole where a fresh
frond was uncurling. Tommy put out his hand to the gun.
        ãLet me move it, bench and all,ä he said steadily. ãNow try it again. Just a burst.ä
        Again the gun rasped. And the earth was kicked up suddenly where the bullets struck in
that other world. The little steel-jacketed missiles were deflected by the terribly overstrained
magnets of the catapult, but their energy was not destroyed. It was merely altered in direction.
Fired within the laboratory upon our own and normal world, the bullets came out into the world of
tree-ferns and monstrous things. They came out, as it happened, sidewise instead of point first,
which was due to some queer effect of dimension change upon an object moving at high velocity.
Because of that, they ricocheted much more readily, and where they struck they made a much more
ghastly wound. But the first two bursts caused no effect at all. They were not even noticed by the
Ragged Men. The noise of the little gun was thunderous and snarling in the laboratory, but in the
world of the fifth dimension there was no sound at all.
        ãLike this,ä said Tommy steadily. ãJust like this. . . . Now fire!ä
        He had tilted the muzzle upward. And then with a horrible grim intensity he traversed the
gun as it roared.
        And it was butchery. Three Ragged Men were cut literally to bits before the storm of
bullets began to do real damage. The squabbling group, casting lots for Evelyn, had a swath of
dead men in its midst before snarls begun had been completed.
        ãAgain,ä said Tommy coldly. ãAgain, Smithers, again!ä
        And again the little gun roared. The burly bearded man clutched at his throat÷and it was a
gory horror. A Thing began to run insanely. It did not even look human any longer. It stumbled
over the leader of the Ragged Men and died as he had done. The bullets came tumbling over
themselves erratically. They swooped and curved and dispersed themselves crazily. Spinning as they
were, at right angles to their line of flight, their trajectories were incalculable and their
impacts were grisly.
        The little gun fired ten several bursts, aimed in a desperate coldbloodedness, before the
smell of burnt rubber became suddenly overpowering and the rasping sound of an electric arc broke
through the rumbling of the crude-oil engine in the back.
        Smithers sobbed.
        ãBurnt out!ä
        But Tommy waved his hand.
        ãI think,ä he said savagely, ãthat maybe a dqzen of them got away. Evelynâs staggering
toward her father. Sheâll turn him loose. That prisonerâs dead, though. Didnât mean to shoot him,
but those bullets flew wild.ä
        He gave Smithers the eyepiece. Sweat was rolling down his forehead in great drops. His
hands were trembling uncontrollably.
        He paced shakenly up and down the laboratory, trying to shut out of his own sight the
things he had seen when the bullets of his own aiming literally splashed into the living flesh of
men. He had seen Ragged Men disemboweled by those spinning, knifelike projectiles. He had turned a
part of the mad world of that other dimension into a shambles, and he did not regret it because he
had saved Evelyn, but he wanted to shut out the horror of seeing what he had done.
        ãBut now,ä he said uncertainly to himself, ãtheyâre no better off, except theyâve got
weapons. . . . If that man from the Golden City hadnât been killed. . . .ã
        He was looking at the magnetic catapult, burned out and useless. His eyes swung suddenly
to the other one. Just a little while since he had made ready a missile to be thrown through into
the other world by that. It contained snapshots, and diagrams, and it was an attempt to
communicate with the men of the Golden City without any knowledge of their language.
        ãBut÷I can communicate with Denham!ä
        He began to write feverishly. If he had looked out of the laboratory window, he would have
seen Von Holtz running like a deer, waving his arms jerkily, and÷when out of earshot of the


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laboratory÷ shouting loudly. And Von Holtz was carrying a small black box which Tommy would have
identified instantly as a motion picture camera, built for amateurs but capable of taking pictures
indoors and with a surprisingly small amount of light. And if Tommy had listened, he might
possibly have heard the beginnings of those shoutings to men hidden in a patch of woodland about a
quarter of a mile away. The men, of course, were Jacaroâs, waiting either until Von Holtz had
secured the information that was wanted, or until an assault in force upon the laboratory would
net them a catapult ready for use
÷to be examined, photographed, and duplicated at leisure.
        But Tommy neither looked nor listened. He wrote feverishly, saying to Smithers at the
dimensoscope, ãDenhamâll be looking around
to see what killed those men. When he does, we want to be ready to shoot a smoke-bomb through to
him, with a message attached.ä
        Smithers made a gesture of no especial meaning save that he had heard. And Tommy went on
writing swiftly, saying who he was and what he had done, and that another globe was being built so
that he and Smithers could come with supplies and arms to help. .
        ãHeâs lookinâ around now, Mr. Reames,ä said Smithers quietly. ãHeâs picked up a ricocheted
bullet anâ is staring at it.ä
        The crude-oil engine was running at a thunderous rate. Tommy fastened his note in the
little missile he had made ready. He placed it under the solenoid of the catapult after Denhamâs
design, with the springs and rings of metallic ammonium. He turned to Smithers.
        ãIâll watch for him,ä said Tommy unsteadily. ãYou know, watch for the right moment to
fling it through. Slow up the generator a little. Itâll rack itself to pieces.ä
        He put his eye to the eyepiece. He winced as he saw again what the bullets of his aiming
had done. But he saw Denham almost at once. And Denham was scratched and bruised and looked very
far indeed from the ideal of a professor of theoretic physics, with hardly more than a few shreds
of clothing left upon him, and a ten-daysâ beard upon his face. He limped as he walked. But he had
stopped in the task of gathering up weapons to show Evelyn excitedly what it was that he had
found. A spent and battered bullet, but indubitably a bullet from the world of his own ken. He
began to stare about him, hopeful yet incredulous.
        Tommy took his eye from the dimensoscope just long enough to light the fuse of the smoke-
bomb.
        ãHere it goes, Smithers!ä
        He flung the switch. The missile with its thickly smoking fuse leaped upward as the
concentric rings flickered and whirled bewilderingly. The missile hurt the eyes that watched it.
It vanished. The solenoid dropped to the floor from the broken small contrivance.
        Then Tommyâs heart stood still as he gazed through the eyepiece again. He could see
nothing but an opaque milkiness. But it drifted away, and he realized that it was smoke. More,
Denham was staring at it. More yet, he was moving cautiously toward its source, one of the strange
golden weapons held ready. . .
        Denham was investigating.
        The generator at the back of the laboratory slowed down. Smithers was obeying orders.
Tommy hung close by the vision instrument, his
hands moving vaguely and helplessly, as one makes gestures without volition when anxious for
someone else to duplicate the movements for which he sets the example.
        He saw Denham, very near, inspecting the smoking thing on the ground suspiciously. The
smoke-fuse ceased to burn. Denham stared. After an age-long delay, he picked up the missile Tommy
had prepared. And Tommy saw that there was a cord attached to it. He had fastened that cord when
planning to try to communicate with the men of the Golden City, when he had expected them to be
victorious.
        But he saw Denhamâs face light up with pathetic hope. He called to Evelyn. He hobbled
excitedly to her, babbling. .
        Tommy watched, and his heart pounded suddenly as Evelyn turned and smiled in the direction
in which she knew the dimensoscope must be. A huge butterfly, its wings a full yard across,
fluttered past her head. Denham talked excitedly to her. A clumsy batlike thing swooped by
overhead. Its shadow blanketed her face for an instant. A running animal, small and long, ran
swiftly in full view from one side of the dimensoscopeâs field of vision to the other. Then a
snake, curiously horned, went writhing past. .
        Denham talked excitedly. He turned and made gestures as of writing, toward the spot where
he had picked up Tommyâs message. He began to search for a charred stick where the Ragged Men had
built a fire some days now past. A fleeing furry thing sped across his feet, running. .
        Denham looked up. And Evelyn was staring now. She was staring in the direction of the


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Golden City. And now what was almost a wave of animals, all wild and all fleeing, swept across the
field of vision of the dimensoscope. There were gazelles, it seemed÷slenderlimbed, graceful
animals, at any rate÷and there were tiny hoofed things which might have been echippi, and then a
monstrous armadillo clanked and rattled past. .
        Tommy swung the dimensoscope. He gasped. All the animal world was in flight. The insects
had taken to wing. Flying creatures were soaring upward and streaking through the clear blue sky,
and all in the one direction. And then out of the morass came monstrous shapes; misshapen,
unbelievable reptilian shapes, which fled bellowing thunderously for the tree-fern forest. They
were gigantic, those things from the morass. They were hideous. They were things out of
nightmares, made into flabby flesh. There were lizards and what might have been gigantic frogs,
save that frogs possess no tails. And
there were long and snaky necks terminating in infinitesimal heads, and vast palpitating bodies
following those impossible small braincases, and long tapering tails that thrashed mightily as the
ghastly things fled bellowing
        And the cause of the mad panic was a slowly moving white curtain of mist. It was flowing
over the marsh, moving with apparent deliberation, but, as Tommy saw, actually very swiftly. It
shimmered and quivered and moved onward steadily. Its upper surface gleamed with elusive prismatic
colors. It had blotted out the horizon and the Golden City, and it came onward. .
        Denham made frantic, despairing gestures toward the dimensoscope. The thing was coming too
fast. There was no time to write. Denham held high the cord that trailed from the message-bearing
missile. He gesticulated frantically, and raced to the gutted steel globe and heaved mightily upon
it and swung it about so that Tommy saw a great steel ring set in its side, which had been hidden
before. He made more gestures, urgently, and motioned Evelyn inside.
        Tommy struck at his forehead.
        ãItâs poison gas,ä he muttered. ãRevenge for the smashed-up vehicle. . . . They knew it by
an automatic radio signal, maybe. This is their way of wiping out the Ragged Men. . . . Poison
gas. . . . Itâll kill Denham and Evelyn. . . - He wants me to do something. . . .ã
        He drew back, staring, straining every nerve to think. . . . And somehow his eyes were
drawn to the back of the laboratory, and he saw Smithers teetering on his feet, with his hands
clasped queerly to his body, and a strange man standing in the door of the laboratory with an
automatic pistol in his hand. The automatic had a silencer on it, and its clicking had been
drowned out, anyhow, by the roaring of the crude-oil engine.
        The man was small and dark and natty. His lips were drawn back in a peculiar mirthless
grin as Smithers teetered stupidly back and forth and then fell. .
        The explosion of Tommyâs own revolver astounded him as much as it did Jacaroâs gunman. He
did not even remember drawing it or aiming. The natty little gunman was blotted out by a spouting
mass of white smoke÷and suddenly Tommy knew what it was that Denham wanted him to do.
        There was rope in a loose and untidy coil beneath a work bench. Tommy sprang to it in a
queer, nightmarish activity. He knew what was happening, of course. Von Holtz had seen the
magnetic catapult
at work. That couldnât be destroyed or its workings hidden like the ring catapult of Denhamâs
design. Heâd gone out to call in Jacaroâs men. And theyâd shot down Smithers as a cold-blooded
preliminary to the seizure of the instrument JacarO wanted.
        It was necessary to defend the laboratory. But Tommy could not spare the time. That white
mist was moving upon Evelyn and her f ather, in that other world. It was death, as the terror of
the wild things demonstrated. They had to be helped. .
        He knotted the rope to the end of the cord that vanished curiously somewhere among the
useless mass of rings. He tugged at the cord÷ and it was tugged in return. Denham, in another
world, had felt his signal and had replied to it. .
        A window smashed suddenly and a bullet missed Tommyâs neck by inches. He fired at that
window, and absorbedly guided the knot of the rope past its vanishing point. The knot ceased to
exist and the rope crept onward÷and suddenly moved more and more swiftly to a place where abruptly
it was not. For the length of half an inch, the rope hurt the eyes that looked at it. Beyond that
it was not possible to see it at all.
        Tommy leaped up. He plunged ahead of two separate spurts of shots from two separate
windows. The shots pierced the place where he had been. He was racing for the crude-oil engihe.
There was a chain wound upon a drum, there, and a clutch attached the drum to the engine.
        He stopped and seized the repeating shotgun Smithers had brought as his own weapon against
Jacaroâs gangsters. He sent four loads of buckshot at the windows of the laboratory. A man yelled.
        And Tommy dropped the gun to knot the rope to the chain, desperately, fiercely, in a
terrible haste.


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        The chain began to pay out to that peculiar vanishing point which was here an entryway to
another world÷perhaps another universe.
        A bullet nicked his ribs. He picked up the gun and fired it nearly at random. He saw
Smithers moving feebly, and Tommy had a vast compassion for Smithers, but÷ He shuddered suddenly.
Something had struck him a heavy blow in the shoulder. And something else battered at his leg.
There was no sound that could be heard above the thunder of the crude-oil motor, but Tommy was
queerly aware of buzzing things flying about him, and of something very warm flowing down his body
and down his leg. And he felt very dizzy and weak and extremely tired. . . . He could not see
clearly, either.
        But he had to wait until Denham had the chain fast to the globe. That was the way he had
intended to come back, of course. The ring was in the globe, and this chain was in the laboratory
to haul the globe back from wherever it had been sent. And Von Holtz had disconnected it before
sending away the globe with Denham in it. If the chain remained unbroken, of course it could be
hauled in, as it would turn all necessary angles and force the globe to follow those angles,
whatever they might be. .
        Tommy was on his hands and knees, and men were saying savagely, ãWhereâs that thing, hey?
Whereâs thâ thing Jacaro wants?ä
        He wanted to tell them that they should say whether the chain had stopped moving to a
place where it ceased to exist, so that he could throw a clutch and bring Denham and his daughter
back from the place where Von Holtz had marooned them when he wanted to steal Denhamâs secret.
Tommy wanted to explain that. But the floor struck him in the face, and something said to him,
ãTheyâve shot you.ä
        But it did not seem to matter, somehow, and he lay very still until he felt himself
strangling, and he was breathing in strong ammonia which made his eyes smart and his tired lungs
gasp.
        Then he saw flames, and heard a motor car roaring away from close by the laboratory.
        ãTheyâve stolen the catapult and set fire to the place,ä he remembered dizzily, ãand now
theyâre skipping out. . . .ã
        Even that did not seem to matter. But then he heard the chain clank, next to him on the
floor. The white mist! Denham and Evelyn waiting for the white mist to reach them, and Denham
jerking desperately on the chain to signal that he was ready. .
        The flames had released ammonia from the metal Von Holtz had made. That had roused Tommy.
But it did not give him strength. It is impossible to say where Tommyâs strength came from, when
somehow he crawled to the clutch lever, with the engine roaring steadily above him, and got one
hand on the lever, and edged himself up, and up, and up, until he could swing his whole weight on
that lever. That instant of dangling hurt excruciatingly, too, and Tommy saw only that the drum
began to revolve swiftly, winding the chain upon it, before his grip gave way.
        And the chain came winding in and in from nowhere, and the tall laboratory filled more and
more thickly with smoke, and lurid flames appeared somewhere, and a rushing sound began to be
audible as the
fire roared upward to the inflammable roof, and the engine ran thunderously. .
        Then, suddenly, there was a shape in the middle, of the laboratory floor. A huge globular
shape which it hurt the eyes to look upon. It became visible out of nowhere as if evoked by magic
amid the flames of hell. But it came, and was solid and substantial, and it slid along the floor
upon small wheels until it wound up with a crash against the winding drum, and the chain shrieked
as it tightened unbearably÷and the engine choked and died.
        Then a door opened in the monstrous globe. Two figures leaped out, aghast. Two ragged,
tattered, strangely armed figures, who cried out to each other and started for the door. But the
girl stumbled over Tommy and called, choking, to her father. Groping toward her, he found
Smithers. And then Tommy smiled drowsily to himself as soft arms tugged bravely at him, and a
slender, glorious figure staggered with him to fresh air.
        ãItâs Von Holtz,ä snapped Denham, and coughed as he fought his way to the open. ãIâll
blast him to hell with these things we brought back. . .
        That was the last thing Tommy knew until he woke up in bed with a feeling of many bandages
and an impression that his lungs hurt.
        Denham seemed to have heard him move. He looked in the door.
        ãHullo, Reames. Youâre all right now.ä
        Tommy regarded him curiously until he realized. Denham was shaved and fully clothed. That
was the strangeness about him. Tommy had been watching him for many days as his clothing swiftly
deteriorated and his beard grew.
        ãYou are, too, I see,ä he said weakly. ãIâm damned glad.ä Then he felt foolish, and


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querulous, and as if he should make some apology, and instead said, ãBut five dimensions does seem
extreme. Three is enough for ordinary use, and four is luxurious. Five seems to be going a bit too
far.ä
        Denham blinked, and then grinned suddenly. Tommy had admired the man who could face so
extraordinary a situation with such dogged courage, and now he found, suddenly, that he liked
Denham.
        ãNot too far,ä said Denham grimly. ãLook!ä He held up one of the weapons Tommy had seen in
that other world, one of the goldencolored truncheons. ãI brought this back. The same metal they
built that wagon of theirs with. All their weapons. Most of their tools÷as I know. Itâs gold, man!
They use gold in that world as we use steel
here. Thatâs why Jacaro was ready to kill to get the secret of getting there. Von Holtz enlisted
him.ä
        ãHow did you know÷ä began Tommy weakly.
        ãSmithers,ä said Denham. ãWe dragged both of you out before the lab went up in smoke. Heâs
going to be all right, too. Evelynâs nursing both of you. She wants to talk to you, but I want to
say this first:
You did a damned fine thing, Reames! The only man who could have saved us, and you just about
killed yourself doing it. Smithers saw you swing that clutch lever with three bullets in your
body. And youâre a scientist, too. Youâre my partner, Reames, in what we do in the fifth
dimension.ä
        Tommy blinked. ãBut five dimensions does seem extreme. . . .ã
        ãWe are the Interdimensional Trading Company,ä said Denham, smiling. ãSomehow, I think
weâll find something in this world we can trade for the gold in that. And weâve got to get there,
Reames, because Jacaro will surely try to make use of that catapult principle you worked out.
Heâll raise the devil; and I think the people of that Golden City would be worth knowing. No,
weâre partners. Sooner or later, youâll know how I feel about what youâve done. Iâm going to bring
Evelyn in here now.ä
        He vanished. An instant later Tommy heard a voice÷a girlâs voice. His heart began to
pound. Denham came back into the room and with him was Evelyn. She smiled warmly upon Tommy,
though as his eyes fell blankly upon the smart sport clothes she was again wearing, she flushed.
        ãMy daughter Evelyn,ä said Denham. ãShe wants to thank you.ä
        And Tommy felt a warm soft hand pressing his, and he looked deep into the eyes of the girl
he had never before spoken to, but for whom he had risked his life, and whom he knew he would love
forever. There were a thousand things crowding to his lips for utterance. He had watched Evelyn,
and he loved her÷ ãH-how do you do?ä said Tommy, lamely. ãIâm÷awfully glad to meet you.ä
        But before he was well he learned to talk more sensibly.




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