They looked into the dome of bubbles. Some great metropolis of Earth lay before them. And with the deceptive perspective of this strange realm, they seemed to be within the city. On every side, panic-stricken mobs fled before driving masses of semi-solid pink monstrosities. No longer did the majority of attackers drift through the air; attaining solidity, most of them travelled in long, flying leaps.
But this scene differed from the others they had viewed. There was panic in the ranks of the drivers now, as well as among those driven. The Draks had come!
The watchers saw their powerful forms, far more solid than the Condemned, suddenly appearing among them, with demoralizing effect. Each Drak seized a Radical and clung with heavy legs, their thick tentacles wrapping about the slender bodies with crushing force. Struggles took place on the ground, in midair—everywhere, the Draks fighting their weaker opponents with the stolid confidence of assured victory. Above each group of battling Hesplonians hovered an Intellectual, supervising the execution.
Suddenly Rita gasped: “Hal—they’re disappearing!” Hal stared. It was so. Invaders struggled in the clutch of Draks, resistance steadily weakening—until abruptly all motion ceased—they were shadows—and they vanished! A moment Hal puzzled; then he exclaimed:
“Why, of course! When they die they go back to their original shadowy form. They lose the semi-solidity, which isn’t theirs anyway, and disappear.” Hal whistled silently for an instant. “I wonder . . . Hmmm. I wish I could make this bird understand me. I’d like to look in on your home.”
“Why, Hal—what do you—” Rita paused. Hal had caught the attention of the Hesplonian. He gestured toward the keyboard, pressing imaginary keys.
“If he moves it often enough,” he remarked, “we may hit the right combination.”
IN RESPONSE, Vinst sent his tentacles over the keys. Eagerly Hal and Rita watched the shifting scene; then Hal snorted impatiently.
“Now he’s cut off the view entirely. Space again!”
They were looking into the Void with its points of light. Hal turned to Vinst, shaking his head vehemently. Then Rita’s hand closed on his arm with sudden pressure. “One of those tessarcts—went out!”
Hal spun around. His eyes fixed themselves rigidly on a section of space. Moments—and a light blinked out! What could it mean?
Minutes passed—and another tessarct disappeared. Something was closing the doorways into space! There was a sound behind them, an excited, unintelligible whisper. Hal looked at Vinst. The strange face of the Hesplonian was a study in mingled emotions—fear, wrath, indecision and excitement. Whispers came steadily from his great mouth, and he hopped about in obvious impatience.
More minutes—and another tessaract was gone.
“Rita—I’ll bet it’s Ersa, wrecking the tessaracts to keep the Draks and Intellectuals on Earth! Who else could be doing it? The scientists who built them, maybe—but I’ll bet all of them are unconscious. It must be Ersa, and he’ll have to be stopped!”
Rita nodded anxiously. “If he closes them all, how will we get back? We’d be stranded here! Can’t we do something?”
“Yes—and we’re getting out of here right now!” He faced Vinst, and with rapid pantomime indicated what he wanted to do. In answer came a gesture of eager affirmation. The Hesplonian dared not leave his post; and he too knew that Ersa had to be stopped.
Hal’s arm gripped Rita in a strong embrace; their lips met; then arm in arm they flung themselves into the clutch of the revolving spheres. Torture of tremendous pressure—and they were flashing across space.
Only eleven tessaracts remained, distant now that they were no longer gazing through the telescopic dome, almost invisible points of light, like stars. One of these, Hal thought, was the great pile in Rand’s laboratory; and his strange fourth dimensional sense told him which it was. As they sped toward it through the vast gulf, they became aware of the awful quiet of the place. There was nothing, only a great, ugly quiet, as though the life of this realm had ebbed out—as it had. It was a vast tomb from which seemed to emanate a terrible, impersonal sense of isolation.
Almost upon the white triangle, Hal saw something moving.
“There he is!”
A lighter figure in the gloom, Ersa’s shadowy form was suddenly silhouetted against the brightness of the tessaract—and he vanished into it!
“Rita—he’ll smash things to stop it forever—unless he knows some other way. Anyway, he must stop the motor and get back here before its action ceases—as I did—only we won’t let him!”
Down they flashed together, into the tessaract. Flaming torture licked at them; whips of madness scourged their minds; swirling chaos flung them about—and they were stumbling out of the opening into the laboratory of Dr. Lucius Rand.
With a mighty effort of will, Hal checked his reeling senses. Instinctively he crouched, glaring at a figure leaning over the huge motor, a squat figure with a slender pink body. Ersa! The grotesque face of the monster looked at Hal, and he cringed. There was no mistaking the look of revulsion and implacable determination on the man’s face. And twice before the Hesplonian had felt Hal’s strength. He shrank back. Hal followed.
SUDDENLY the creature darted past, narrowly avoiding a swinging arm, and sprang toward the tessaract. Rita blocked him; with a sucking gasp of hate he swept her aside; leaped wildly. Too slow—with a swift movement Hal reached him and flung him furiously across the room. The creature recoiled with a sharp, whistling sob. Hal followed, clenching his teeth with rage. The thing had dared to touch Rita! Out of the corner of his eye he saw her stagger erect; then he was on Ersa like an avalanche.
The fingers of one crooked hand tore into the thin body just below the gaping mouth. The other, tightly knotted, smashed fiercely into a mass of writhing tentacles. Again he struck, a third time—then with both hands he seized the quivering body and squeezed.
Whipping tentacles lashed him, coiled about his throat, his face, his arms. But he ignored them. And his finger tips ground steadily deeper.
The face so close to Hal’s grew purple, and the queer eyes of the creature seemed about to burst from their sockets. The sound of his broken breathing was a horrible thing, a series of dry, whistling whispers. They weakened steadily—then ceased. And Hal fell back with a faint cry.
His hands were empty!
Hal thought he saw a faint shadow drifting into the tessaract, like a wisp of fog in a breeze, but he couldn’t be sure. He turned to Rita, grinning wryly.
“That was a queer sensation—though I should have expected it. By now he’s a ghost—a shadow of a shadow. Anyway, he’s done for.”
Rita swayed toward him, a figure of pathetic weariness. “We’re back, Hal—and I’m so tired.” Hal caught her and held her close. She looked up at him, suddenly apprehensive. “Do you think father—”
She got no further. A voice came from the floor below. “Rita! Rita! Where are you? By calculus—if anything has happened to her, there’ll be the devil to pay! Hmmm—she should be in the laboratory. Rita—d’you hear me?” The voice was somewhat uncertain, and very weary, but it was the voice of a man completely sane.
“Daddy!” Joyously she flung herself from Hal’s grasp and raced toward the doorway. “Daddy—here I am!”
Hal followed more slowly, a warm smile on his lips. He was relieved, and glad—glad that Rand had recovered, though the reason for that recovery might seem incredible. He couldn’t prove it, but he was certain that, with the death of Ersa, the life he had stolen from others had returned to its original dwelling place. Else how account for the monster’s disappearance?
At the foot of the stairs stood father and daughter, the girl’s head resting on the man’s rotund chest. The scientist’s pudgy hand stroked her dark curls. When he saw
Hal, the Professor waved; and Rita drew away.
“Well, Hal—seems as though plenty has happened around here!” The scientist tried to make his voice sound light and cheerful, but Hal detected the undertone
of nervous strain.
“Yes, there was quite a little excitement for a while, but things have settled themselves, I believe. Sometime I’ll tell you what actually took place.”
“You won’t have to,” Rand said soberly. “I saw it all—through Ersa’s eyes. I’m beginning to remember things.”
Startled, Hal’s lips parted—but he closed them without speaking. Through an opened window in a nearby room drifted a silent procession of ethereal figures—an Intellectual and a company of Draks. They floated into the hallway and approached the three. A few feet away they paused, and Hal recognized the Aalik. A faint whisper came from the Intellectual.
“The Condemned are no more. The Draks everywhere are returning to their own world. And the Door between the dimensions will be closed—forever.”
They were in motion again, drifting along the hallway, up the stairs, and disappearing into the laboratory. Another voice came to the ears of the motionless three—the voice of Dr. Carew.
“It’s only a temporary derangement. Phillips. I’ve given her a sedative, and by the time she awakens she should be back to normalcy. Give her one of these every two hours—” The voice trailed off into silence.
Hal looked down at Rita. She smiled to him through a blurred mist.
He said: “The rainbow after the storm.” She nodded. Their arms went around each other. Dr. Lucius Rand coughed, and moved toward his laboratory. “By calculus,” he murmured, “I think I’ll have to get in touch with Dracha and Welker and Horton. I’ll have plenty to open their eyes.” Pudgy fingers stroked a bald spot on the back of his head as he climbed the stairs. “Plenty—by calculus!”
[*] N.A. Oumoff: “The Characteristic Traits and Problems of Contemporary Natural Scientific Thought.” (Address before the second Mendeleeff convention in 1911.)
1941
THE HYPER SENSE
What’s the World’s Biggest Headache? Professor Dinwiddie Finds Out!
THEY are after me, sir, they are after me! Lock that door—lock it, I say! Ah! For the moment, at least, I am safe.
Tell me, my good man—where may I wash this blood from my hands? It—it distresses me, indeed it does. Oh, I am all in a flutter! I am glad, glad that my pupils cannot see me now—bereft of coat and hat, shorn of my strength with my beard and hair like Samson of old. But now, at least, they could not call me fossilized, antiquated, dry-as-dust! . . . oh, my poor head . . .
I beg your pardon? Oh, no, I do not need a doctor—at least, not immediately. I could better use a bodyguard, but that, like the physician, may wait. 4 At the moment I require the service of an attorney. You are an attorney, are you not? J.J. Higgsby, attorney at law?
No, no, I was not in an accident; I had a glimpse of a future war this isn’t my blood! Ah, there’s the wash-bowl. Do you know, Attorney Higgsby, blood becomes quite—shall we say, adhesive as its moisture evaporates . . .
My pursuers? The police, of course! You see, last night I made my escape from the State Hospital for the Insane, and the blood-hounds of the law, as they have been called with little justification, are on my trail. That is why I need an attorney . . .
Of course, I am sane! Don’t be absurd! I sir, am none other than Cyrus Bidwell Dinwiddie, Ph.D., until recently Professor in the Mathematics Department of Bluegill Academy. I must admit, however, that there have been times during the past six months when I doubted my sanity—but now all that is past, and I know I am perfectly sane.
I, sir, am a victim of circumstances—and of one of my colleagues, a Doctor Prebble, a rather cheap fellow, very similar in appearance to you, my dear Higgsby. The same type of squat rotundity, though perhaps in a lesser degree, the same pendulous jowls, baldness of the same—shall we say, spotty nature.
In all justice to Prebble, however, his forehead reveals at least rudimentary intelligence—I beg pardon?
OH, I thought you said something that sounded like “nuts”—though with this infernal headache it is quite remarkable if I hear anything correctly.
As I was about to say when you interupted, the student body somewhat facetiously referred to Prebble and me as “the long and the short of it,” doubtless because I am rather tall, and my frame is inclined toward leanness.
But to continue, friend Higgsby, I am a martyr to the cause of science! I took the rap, as Nick Rozelli would say—a term in gangster argot with which you may or may not be familiar, but which means briefly that I bore the burden of another’s guilt. Not I, but Prebble, deserved confinement in that institution. That is why I have come to you, an attorney. I seek justice in the courts of law.
The blood? Oh, that is of minor importance, especially now that I have washed it away. You’ll hear of it in good time, but there are other, more interesting incidents which must first be told.
The affair began with a headache. There was nothing unusual about that—merely the ordinary dull throbbing at the temples which even you have doubtless experienced upon occasion. It was not until it had persisted for four consecutive days and nights that I became somewhat perturbed, and decided to consult Professor Prebble—Marcus Aurelius Prebble, instructor in the Science Department at Bluegill.
Prebble welcomed me in his laboratory adjoining my classroom with—I know not how else to express it—a gloating smile.
“Well, Widdie,” he said after I had explained the nature of my dilemma, “you’ve consulted the right man. Strangely enough, I’ve been experimenting with a new treatment for headaches, and I believe I’ve discovered a permanent cure. It’s simply a matter of a restricted diet for a short period, and the application of the emanations of a new radioactive compound which I have discovered.”
I had had enough experience with Prebble’s continual experimentation to feel a vague sense of misgiving, but I refused to take warning. I gave a momentary thought to the timeliness of his discovery, wondering at it, but then I dismissed it from my mind. After all, I merely had a headache.
But after two weeks of Prebble’s treatment that execrable thudding in my cranium continued with no indication of abating. Day and night that maddening throb, throb, throb hammered against my skull—and then the dreams began!
You’ve doubtless had dreams, my dear Higgsby. They are, shall we say, the adventures of the subconscious mind. I, too, have had dreams prior to this, but none approaching these in stark reality, in their kaleidoscopic clarity of detail. It was as though I lived my dream experiences—as though conscious and subconscious mind merged into one indissoluble whole. I remember that first dream in all its ramifications.
I was in the heart of a tangled wilderness of twisted metal, shattered stone, and splintered wood. It towered all around me, over me, with the moonlight filtering through in threads of silver. Endlessly, I struggled through the ruins, wishing, I recall, that the bombers had been less thorough. Finally I crawled, like a mole, under a shattered pillar and peered through a jagged rift in the wall of the ruin.
GRAY-CLAD men rushed to and fro, some almost close enough to touch. A hundred yards away a row of hooded lights revealed a flying field on which lay countless war helicopters of most unusual design, awaiting, I knew, the call to service. To the north, jutting dimly in the gloom, towered what appeared to be a tremendous reflector, all of five hundred feet in height—a sheet of polished copper curved in a great, half-circle.
Suddenly a vast sheet of electrical flame leaped from the reflector and, with an ear-splitting crackle, hurtled into the sky toward the south—the battle zone.
I looked southward, visualizing a scene I knew too well. The horizon was a welter of chaotic light, beams of radiance crossing like darting swords high above flaming cities. The shattering roar of bursting gas bombs; great clouds of sluggish vapor falling, carrying death into every minute crevice.
A second bolt of lightning leaped from the reflector; and as I faced north again, I saw two men in gray charging toward me—and, mercifully, I awakened.
I lay interminably, trying to free my mind of a persistent thought that wha
t I had seen existed somewhere, sometime. As though I had had a glimpse of a future war, in fact, had engaged in that war!
It was most disconcerting, my dear Higgsby, particularly so, when the dreams continued night after night. There was no apparent pattern or system to my visions. My perception seemed to journey indiscriminately through all periods of both past and future, so that, one night I might be stalking a saber-toothed tiger with a group of shaggy-haired cave dwellers, and the next, might be toiling in a Jovian prison pit. And each scene was so incredibly vivid that at times, so great was my confusion, I had difficulty in convincing myself that my waking hours were not dreams, and the dreams, reality. It became so troublesome that finally I slept as little as possible. And through all that period the headache persisted.
At last there came the first waking vision—and that, sir, was the pay-off, as Rozelli would say . . .
Rozelli? Oh, he was a mobster I met in the asylum—a most interesting chap, and a man of sterling worth. I shall tell you of him in due course.
But to return to my tale—and, really, Higgsby, I wish you wouldn’t interrupt. Frankly, I don’t like it! If you insist on being so rude, I shall be compelled to seek legal advice elsewhere . . .
Very well, then. I was speaking of my first waking vision. It occurred, of all places, in the classroom! I was explaining a problem in geometry—a simple affair, purely elementary, and I suppose my mind was wandering—when suddenly I seemed to be transported to ancient Rome. I stood before a vast multitude, delivering an oration. My pupils afterward informed me that they heard a sonorous flow of classic Latin rolling from my lips. I must have spoken for all of ten minutes before I regained control of my mind. Then, in some confusion, I referred to a passing illness and dismissed the class.
IMMEDIATELY I sought out Prebble, a vague suspicion in my mind. I found him in his laboratory working with a few special students. When he saw me, he must have anticipated something unusual, for he hastily excused them. His act crystalized my suspicions.
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