The Project Gutenberg EBook of The 4-D Doodler, by Graph Waldeyer
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Title: The 4-D Doodler
Author: Graph Waldeyer
Release Date: August 3, 2007 [EBook #22227]
Language: English
*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE 4-D DOODLER ***
Produced by Greg Weeks, Sankar Viswanathan, and the Online
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Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from Comet, July 1941. Extensive research did
not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication
was renewed.
[Illustration: _The Professor's head, suspended above the body,
glared about. The mouth moved rapidly_--]
The 4-D DOODLER
by GRAPH WALDEYER
* * * * *
"Do you believe, Professor Gault, that this four dimensional
plane contains life--intelligent life?"
At the question, Gault laughed shortly. "You have been reading
pseudo-science, Dr. Pillbot," he twitted. "I realize that as a
psychiatrist, you are interested in minds, in living beings,
rather than in dimensional planes. But I fear you will find no
minds to study in the fourth dimension. There aren't any there!"
Professor Gault paused, peered from beneath bushy white brows out
over the laboratory. To his near sighted eyes the blurred figure
of Harper, his young assistant, seemed busily at work over his
mathematical charts. Gault hoped sourly that the young man was
actually working and not just drawing more of his absurd,
senseless designs amidst the mathematical computations....
"Your proof," Dr. Pillbot broke into his thoughts insistently,
"is purely negative, Professor! How can you know there are no
beings in the fourth dimension, unless you actually enter this
realm, to see for yourself?"
Professor Gault stared at the fat, puffy face of his visitor, and
snorted loudly.
"I am afraid, Pillbot, you do not comprehend the impossibility of
such a passage. We can not possibly break from the confines of
our three dimensional world. Here, let me explain by a simple
illustration."
Gault took up a book, held it so that a shadow fell onto the
surface of the desk.
"That shadow," he said, "is two dimensional, has length and
breadth, but no thickness. Now in order to enter the third
dimension, our plane, the shadow would have to bulge out in some
way, into the dimension of thickness an obvious impossibility.
Similarly, we can not enter the fourth dimension. Do you see?"
"No!" retorted Pillbot with some heat. "In the first place, we
are not two dimensional shadows, and--why, what is the matter?"
Professor Gault's lanky form had stiffened, his near sighted eyes
glaring out over the laboratory to the rear of Pillbot. The
psychiatrist wheeled around, followed his host's gaze.
It was Harper. That young man's antics drew an amazed grunt from
Pillbot. He was describing peculiar motions in the air with his
pencil. Circles, whorls, angles, abrupt jabs forward. He bent
over the paper on the desk, made a few sweeps of the pencil, then
the pencil rose again into the air to describe more erratic
motions. Harper himself seemed in a trance.
Suddenly Pillbot gave a stifled gasp. It seemed to him that
Harper's arm vanished at the elbow as it stabbed forward, then
reappeared. Once again the phenomenon happened.
Pillbot blinked rapidly, rubbed his eyes. It must have been
illusion, he decided. It was too ... unlikely....
"Harper!" Gault's voice was like the snapping of a steel trap.
Startled, Harper came to with a jerk. Seeing he was being
watched, he flushed redly, then bent over his charts again. An
apologetic murmur floated from his desk.
"What was he doing?" Pillbot asked puzzledly.
"Doodling!" Gault spat out the word disgustedly.
"Doodling?" echoed the psychiatrist. "Why that is a slang term we
use in psychiatry, to describe the absent-minded scrawls and
designs people make while their attention is elsewhere occupied.
An overflow of the unconscious mind, we call it. Many famous
people are 'doodlers.' Their doodles often are a sign of special
ability--"
"Exactly!" snapped Gault. "It shows a special ability to waste
time. And Harper has become worse since I hired him to do some of
my mathematical work. Some influence in this laboratory--I blush
to confess--seems to bring it on. 'Four dimensional doodling' we
call it, because, as you saw, he doesn't confine it to the
surface of the paper!"
Pillbot looked startled. "By jove," he cried. "I believe you've
hit on something new to psychiatry. This young man may have some
unknown faculty of mind--an instinctive perception of the fourth
dimension. Just as some people have an unerring sense of
direction, so perhaps Harper has a sense of--of a fourth
direction--the fourth dimension! I should like to examine some of
his 'doodles'."
Harper looked up in alarm as his crusty tempered employer
appeared, followed by the stout figure of Pillbot. He rose and
stood aside unassumingly, as Pillbot bent over the scrawls on his
charts, clucking interestedly.
Harper flickered a worried glance over to the corner. He hoped
they wouldn't notice his stress-analyzing clay model standing
there. It looked like a futurist's nightmare, with angles, curves
and knobs stuck out at all angles. Professor Gault might not
understand....
* * * * *
For one of his retiring temperament, Harper was aiming high.
There was a standing award of $50,000 for the lucky mathematician
who would solve the mystery of the "stress-barrier" encountered
by skyscrapers as they were built up toward the 150 story mark.
At this height, they encountered stress and strains which
mathematical computations and engineering designs had been unable
to solve. Harper believed the "stress-barrier" was due to an
undetected space-bending close to the earth's surface, a bending
of space greater than ever provided for in the prediction of
Einstein. And if he was right, and could win that award, then
there might be wedding bells, and a little bungalow with
Judith....
Harper's greatest fear was that he would do something to annoy
Gault into firing him, thus depriving him of the privilege of
using the mathematical charts and computing machines available in
the laboratory. Right now, he hoped Gault wouldn't notice that
statue in the corner--
"What's _that_!"
Harper's heart leaped. The Professor was glaring at the statue,
as though it were something the cat brought in.
Pillbot looked up from examination of the "doodles" and followed
Gault over to the futuristic statuary.
As Gault made strangled noises, Pillbot stared interestedly.
"Why--its like some of the designs in his doodling," he
exclaimed.
"And made with some of my best modeling clay for reproducing
geometric solids!" rasped Gault. He wheeled upon Harper.
"Get that thing out of here! I won't stand for such rot in this
laboratory. Throw it into the hall for the janitor!"
"Ye-yessir," said Harper, gulping. He took hold of the statue,
pulled at it.
"It--it won't budge," he exclaimed amazedly.
"Eh? Won't move? It's not heavy, is it?" demanded the Professor.
"No--about thirty pounds, but it wont move!"
Gault took hold of one of the angles of the thing, jerked at it
savagely. He gave it up with an oath, returned to Harper's desk
muttering.
Harper suddenly noticed the top portion of the statue. It didn't
seem to be all there! He was positive there had been another
section on top, shooting off at an angle, representing a problem
in tangential stress. What had happened to that top section?
He would figure that out later, when the occasion was more
propitious. Right now, he realized that only the presence of
Dr. Pillbot prevented Gault from firing him. He cast an apprehensive
glance toward his employer.
With trepidation, he saw Gault reach for something projecting
from behind a bench. Gault pulled it out, held it dangling before
him. A strangled exclamation of wrath came from him. His long
nose pointed accusingly toward Harper, like a finger pointing out
a criminal.
"I was afraid of that!" he grated. "Cutting paper dolls!" Gault
was holding up a large paper cutout of a human figure--a long,
rangy man.
"This is the last straw," Gault went on, his voice rising. "I
have stood enough--"
"It--it wasn't me, sir," Harper cried quickly, with visions of
his job and $50,000 vanishing. "It was your ten year old nephew,
Rudolph, when he was here yesterday. He cut it out, said it
looked like--like his uncle--"
Harper stopped as Gault seemed about to explode. Then the
mathematician subsided, a malicious expression crept over his
face.
"H-m-m," he said. "Might be just what I need to explain things to
Dr. Pillbot."
"I shall take this matter before the Psychiatric Society,"
Pillbot was saying excitedly. "Undoubtedly you have some strange
faculty--an instinctive perception of four dimensional laws ...
what was that, Professor?"
"I said if you will step over to this desk I will explain to you
in elementary terms--very elementary and easy to understand--why
you will never be able to study four dimensional beings--_if_ any
exist!" Gault's voice was tinged with sarcasm.
Pillbot came over, followed by Harper, who was interested in any
explanations about the fourth dimension--even elementary ones....
Gault, with a glint in his eye, pressed the paper figure flatly
on the surface of Harper's desk.
"This paper man, we will say, represents a two dimensional
creature. We lay him flatly against the desk, which represents
his world--Flatland, we mathematicians call it. Mr. Flatlander
can't see into our world. He can see only along the flat plane of
his own world. To see us, for instance, he would have to look
_up_, which is the third dimension, a direction inconceivable to
him. Now, Doctor, are you beginning to understand why we can
never see four dimensional beings?"
Pillbot frowned thoughtfully, then looked up. "And what about the
viewpoint of the four dimensioners themselves--_what would
prevent them from seeing us_?"
Harper hardly heard the Professor's snort of disgust. This two
dimensional cutout in "Flatland" fascinated him. An idea occurred
to him. Now, just supposing the....
* * * * *
As Gault and Pillbot argued, Harper grasped the paper cutout, and
bent it, "jacknifed" it, creasing it firmly in the middle. Then
he raised the upper half so that it rose vertically from the
desk, while the lower half was still pressed flatly against the
desk surface.
"Now," he murmured to himself, "the Flatlander would appear to
his fellows to have vanished from the waist up, because from the
waist up he is bent into the third dimension ... so far as they
are concerned...."
"E-e-e-e-e!"
At the wavering scream, Harper looked up quickly. Pillbot was
staring frozenly in front of him, toward the floor. Harper
followed his glance--and saw it.
Professor Gault had vanished from the waist up.
His lower body still stood before Pillbot, swaying slightly, but
the upper body was unconditionally missing. From the large feet
planted solidly on the floor, long legs rose majestically,
terminating in slim, angular hips--and from thence vanished
abruptly into nothingness. It was as though the upper body had
been sheared away, neatly and precisely, at the waist.
Pillbot stared from the visible portion of Gault to slack-jawed
Harper and back again, sweat splashing from his puffy face.
"Why, why really my dear fellow," he quavered, addressing the
half-figure. "This--this is a bit rude of you, vanishing in the
midst of my sentence. I--I trust you will--ah, return at once!"
Then, as the full import of the phenomenon penetrated to his
understanding, his eyes became glazed and he backed away.
The portion of Professor Gault addressed failed to give any
indication it had heard the remonstrance. Slowly, the legs began
to feel their way, like a blind man, about the floor.
Harper stared wildly, white showing around his pale blue irises.
"No!" he bleated. "The Professor didn't do it himself--I caused
it to happen. I bent the paper cutout, and--and Something saw me
do it, and imitated me by bending the Professor into the fourth
dimension!" Harper moaned faintly, wringing his hands.
Pillbot at the moment got little satisfaction from this
demonstration of his point about four dimensional life. He
glanced fearfully at the half-figure.
"You--you mean to say," he quailed, "that we are under scrutiny
by some Being of the fourth dimension?"
"That's it," replied Harper with a whinny. "I--I know it, I can
feel it. It became aware of our three dimensional life in some
way, and its attention is now concentrated on the laboratory!" He
wrung his hands. "I just know something else terrible is going to
happen!" He backed away quickly as the occupied pair of pants
moved toward him.
His retreat was halted by his desk, upon which reposed two large
California oranges, an inevitable accompaniment to Harper's
lunch. To him, orange juice was a potent, revivifying drink. Now
he automatically reached for one of the oranges, as a more hardy
individual might reach for a whisky and soda in a moment of
mental shock.
His eyes wide on the shuffling approach of Gault's underpinnings,
Harper nervously dug sharp fingernails into the orange, tore off
large chunks of skin.
A sudden blur seen from the corner of his eyes pulled his gaze
back to the desk. The other orange had vanished.
_Phwup_!
It dropped to the floor before Harper, but now it was a squashy
mess, the insides standing out like petals, the juice running
from it.
The other orange slipped from Harper's nerveless fingers, rolled
along the desk top. Harper pounced on the squashy thing on the
floor, feverishly pushed back the projecting insides, closely
examined it. He looked up wide-eyed at Pillbot.
"Turned inside out," he gasped hoarsely, "without breaking its
skin!"
Pillbot's expression indicated that the scientific attitude was
slowly replacing his former fright. He snapped his fingers.
"Imitation again!" he said, half to himself. He looked at Harper.
"When you bent the paper figure this--this fourth dimensional
entity imitated your action by bending the Professor. Now, as you
started to peel the orange, your action was again imitated--in a
four dimensional manner--by this entity turning the other orange
inside out."
His voice dropped, as he muttered, "Imitativeness--the mark of a
mind of low evolutionary order, or of ..." his words faded off,
his expression thoughtful.
More white showed around Harper's eyes. "You--you mean I am being
specially watched by this Being--that He--It--imitates everything
I do...?"
"That's it," clipped Pillbot. "Because you possess this strange
perception of Its realm the Being has been especially attracted
to you, imitates whatever you do, but in a four dimensional
manner. A Being of inexplicable powers and prerogatives, with
weird power over matter, but with a mentality that is either very
primitive, or--"
Harper leaped into the air with a yell, as Professor Gault's
abbreviated body sidled up to him from behind. As he leaped, the
inside out orange flew out of his grasp.
"I just know," he quavered, "that Professor Gault wants me to do
something, is probably barking orders at me from that other
dimension--oh dear, I've dropped the orange on the Professor's--where
his stomach should be!"
The squashy orange had landed on the area of Gault that was the line
of demarkation between his visible and invisible portions--the area
that his stomach would occupy normally. It rested there in plain
sight of the two startled men.
"I--I'd better remove it," said Harper weakly. He moved with a
dreadful compulsion toward the swaying half-figure, one slender
hand extended tremblingly toward the inverted orange.
Abruptly, the orange vanished. Harper halted like he'd run into a
brick wall. Staring blankly ahead, he put his hands to his
stomach, moaning faintly.
"What's the matter?" cried Pillbot.
"The orange--it's in my--stomach!"
"See, what did I tell you," exulted Pillbot. "Another act of
imitativeness. It saw you drop the orange on Gault's--where his
stomach should be, and imitated by putting the orange in your
stomach. It proves I'm right about the Being--glug!" With a loud
belch, Pillbot broke off. He stared blankly at Harper, then his
hands slowly came up to clutch at his stomach.
Harper looked quickly at the desk top.
"The other orange," he gasped. "It's gone!"
"Into--my--stomach!" groaned Pillbot. "Be--be careful what you
do! My God, don't do anything. Don't even think. This--this four
dimensional creature will surely imitate whatever you do in some
weird manner."
Rubbing his stomach, Pillbot glanced about at the various
articles of furniture. He blanched. "I wouldn't want any of that
stuff inside of me," he yammered.
Harper flicked a despairing glance at the half-body, now gliding
along in the vicinity of the paper cutout.
"We--we must do something to get the Professor back," he said
worriedly.
* * * * *
He thought incongruously of a restaurant where he used to order
lemon pie--and invariably get apple. Finally he found that he
could get lemon by ordering peach. Now the problem was, what did
he have to "order" to get his employer extricated from being
stuck between dimensions, like a pig under a fence? Anything he
did would be imitated in a manner that might prove tragic.
The upright portion of the cutout was leaning over backward, the
head drooping down like a wilted flower, as the tension at the
crease slowly lessened.
Gathering together what resolution he could, Harper determined to
take the bull by the horns. He would get the Professor returned
by pressing the upper portion of the cutout flatly onto the desk
surface. With trembling hands, he pressed down on it--then sprang
back with a muffled yell.
Three feet above the half-body, the Professor's head had flashed
into visibility.
"You only pressed the head onto the desk," said Pillbot
disgustedly, "so the Being only impressed Galt's head back into
the laboratory. Now press down the rest of the body."
The Professor's head, suspended above the body, glared about,
affixed Harper with a smouldering glance. The mouth moved
rapidly, but no words came.
"Professor, I can't hear you," whimpered Harper. "Your lungs and
vocal cords are in the other dimension. Here, I'll have you
completely returned." He reached a hand toward the cutout, the
torso of which still bulged upward from the desk.
Gault's head wagged in vigorous negation of Harper's contemplated
act. His mouth moved in what, if audible, would have been
clipped, burning accents.
Harper drew back his hand as if he had touched a red hot poker.
"The Professor doesn't want me to touch the cutout," he said
helplessly.
Gault's head hovered over the cutout like a gaunt moon. It
swooped down toward the paper figure, seemed to be studying its
position on the desk closely. Pillbot watched him for a sign of
his intentions or wishes.
Harper wandered distractedly over toward the high wall bench. He
had it! He would distract the attention of the Entity from Gault
by making another cutout. He would then experiment with that
second one, without endangering Gault. He'd be careful not to
make this one thin and tall, so as not to resemble the Professor
in outline. Perhaps with it, he could trick the Entity into
releasing the missing part of Gault's body....
He scraped in the bench drawer for the scissors, and started to
sheer through a large stiff piece of paper.
A moment later he looked up as Pillbot walked over.
"Gault has some reason for not wanting his silhouette touched,"
he said. "Can't quite make out his lip movements, but he seems
afraid some permanent mark may be left on him by his return. He
wants time to figure out--why, what are you doing?"
"I've made another cutout for experiment," explained Harper. "And
this one doesn't look like the Professor, isn't tall and thin.
See--?" He lifted the second cutout from the flat surface of the
bench, held it suspended before him.
"This one is short and fat--" Harper halted abruptly, the breath
whooshing from his lungs.
There was no use talking to thin air. Pillbot had been whisked
into nothingness. Where the portly figure of the eminent
psychiatrist had stood was now nothing, not even a half man.
Too late, Harper realized that when he had lifted the paper
figure from the surface of the bench, the Entity had imitated him
by "lifting" Pillbot into the fourth dimension. Belatedly, he
knew that the cutout which he held dangling, resembled Pillbot in
outline.
Harper dashed back and forth in little rushes, carrying the paper
figure. He dared not put it down, for fear of seeing some segment
of Pillbot flash back. He did not know what to do with it.
Finally he compromised by suspending it to a low hanging
chandelier, where it dangled swaying in the slight air currents.
* * * * *
Gault was watching his assistant's antics with a bleak expression
that changed to sardonic satisfaction as he realized Pillbot was
in a predicament like his--only more so. Abruptly he frowned,
staring ahead, and Harper guessed that Pillbot had located
Gault's torso in the other realm, was nudging him to indicate the
fact.
Suddenly Harper knew that he himself must enter this fourth
dimensional realm. That strange instinct told him the solution to
everything was there--somewhat as a woman's intuition impels her
to act in a certain way, without knowing why.
How to get there? Another paper cutout? He glanced toward the
Professor--the occupied trousers, and swimming above it, the
man's head. The head was watching him, the expression savage.
No, there must be no more cutouts, Harper decided. While the four
dimensional entity distinguished between the outlines of a thin
silhouette and a fat one, something in between, like Harper's
form, would be testing It too far.
He, Harper would take the place of his own cutout!
Gault's head reared up, glared fixedly at his assistant as the
young man swung his legs onto the desk, then lay down flat. A
moment he lay there, in "Flatland"--then leaped to his feet.
It was as though he had leaped into a different world. He was no
longer in the laboratory. He wasn't on any, floor at all, as far
as he could make out. His feet rested on nothing--and yet there
was some sort of tension under him--like the surface tension of
water.
He was--he suddenly knew it--standing on a segment of warped
space! There was a spacial strain here that acted as a solid
beneath him!
Harper looked "up"--that is, overhead. There was nothing there
but vast stretches of emptiness--at first. Then he saw that this
emptiness was lined and laced with filmy striations, like
cellophane. They bore a strange resemblance to his "doodlings,"
as though that strange faculty of his enabled him to somehow
perceive this place of the fourth dimension. And instinctively
Harper knew that these lacings were the boundaries of a vast
enclosure--a four dimensional enclosure, the "walls" of which
consisted of joined and meshed space-warps.
Abruptly he became aware of movement. He became aware of solidity
there above him. And the solidity was in motion.
Harper knew he was gazing upon a being of the fourth
dimension--doubtless the Entity that had caused the phenomena in
the laboratory, which had snatched him into the fourth dimension,
and was even now observing him with its four dimensional sight!
There was a shape above him that strained his eyes, gave hint of
Form just beyond his comprehension.
Harper hardly noticed that Pillbot was beside him, shaking him.
He had suddenly grasped a fundamental law of spacial stresses,
and he whipped out a pad and pencil, began scribbling down the
mathematical formula of these laws. He began to see now why
skyscrapers encountered the "stress-barrier" at a certain height.
He understood it just as a person of innate musical ability,
hearing music for the first time, would understand the laws of
that music.
"Look out, It's moving, descending!" Pillbot was yelling into his
ear. "It is about to act. Became active the moment you got here.
How did you induce it to bring you here?"
"Huh?" Harper looked up from his scribbling. "Oh." Harper
explained quickly how he had induced the Being to act on himself.
"That's it!" cried Pillbot hoarsely. "You switched the pattern of
imitation on It--tricked It into bringing you here. That's what
made it angry--"
"Angry?" Harper almost dropped his pad, clutched at Pillbot as
there was a sudden upheaval of the invisible tension-surface on
which they stood. A violent shake sprawled them on the "ground"
and now Harper saw the torso of Gault, a few feet away,
apparently hovering above the surface.
"Yes, angry!" Pillbot was pale. "As long as you merely gave it
something to imitate it was pacified. But now it recognizes
opposition, an effort to outwit it due to your switching the
pattern of imitation. Its condition is dangerous--it's bound to
react violently. We have to get out of here. You must know some
way--"
Harper again scribbled some figures on his pad. "As soon as I've
worked out this formula--"
Pillbot shook him frantically. "Can't you understand! This
Creature is a mental patient of a violent type. We are in a
_fourth dimensional insane asylum_!" Pillbot gazed upward
fearfully at a descending mass. "The pattern of its action fits
perfectly," he went on. "Some violent type of insanity, combined
with delusions of grandeur. Any slightest opposition will cause a
spasm of fury. It recognizes such opposition in the way you
tricked it into bringing you here. At first I thought it was a
primitive mentality, but now I know it is a highly evolved, but
insane creature, thinks it's Napoleon, wants to conquer the three
dimensional plane which its attention has been attracted to in
some way--"
Harper looked up in surprise. "Does it know about Napoleon?"
"Of course not, you fool!" screamed Pillbot. "It has the
Napoleonic complex, identifies itself with some great conqueror
of its own realm. And now it's on the rampage. We have to get
out of here--" He clutched at Harper as another upheaval of the
surface threw them down.
* * * * *
Rising, Harper put away his pad. His calculations were complete.
He could now show engineers how to build high buildings, taking
advantage of space stress instead of trying to fight the stress.
For the first time, the danger of their position seemed to
penetrate to his consciousness. He looked about--and his eyes
rested on a strange familiar projection rising from the invisible
floor a few feet away. It was the section of his clay statue that
had vanished--vanished because its peculiar shape had somehow
caused it to be warped into the fourth dimension!
Why hadn't he been able to move it--Professor Gault moved about
freely.
He and Pillbot went over to it, tried to move it. A slight filmy
webwork around the projection caught Harper's eye. Now he
knew--the Being had somehow affixed it to the spot as a landmark,
so It could locate the laboratory. It must have been this
projection that had first attracted the Being's attention to the
three dimensional world, since, ordinarily, It would never have
noticed the presence of three dimensional life, any more than
humans would notice the presence of two dimensional life if such
existed!
Harper looked up at a bleat from Pillbot. Above them was a sudden
furious play of lights and shades. Vast masses seemed shifting in
crazy juxtapositions, now descending rapidly toward them.
"Quick," Harper, now fully aroused, gasped to Pillbot. "Climb
down this projection!"
"Climb down it--?"
"Yes, there is a fluid condition of space where it penetrates
between the two planes. By hugging its contours you will emerge
into the laboratory--I hope!"
Pillbot glanced overhead nervously, then experimentally slid a
font down the projection. The foot vanished. With a cry of
relief, Pillbot lowered himself until only head and shoulders
were visible. Then that too vanished.
Harper looked up. Some monstrous suggestion of Form was almost
upon him. He grasped the projection and just as his head sank out
of sight the Form seemed to smash down on him.
Pillbot helped Harper to his feet, from where he had sprawled at
the base of the statue, on the laboratory floor.
"Quick," he gasped. "The Creature will be infuriated now, by our
escape from Its realm. A maniacal spasm is sure to follow. We
must get Gault back in some way, then leave the laboratory."
Even as they dashed over toward the abbreviated form of Gault,
the laboratory shook. Invisible strains seemed to be bulging the
walls inward.
Harper rushed to the desk upon which still reposed the cutout, the
section between neck and waist still arched off the surface. As Harper
reached toward the cutout to press it flat, Gault's eyes widened, his
mouth opened in a soundless shout of opposition. Harper hesitated.
"Never mind him," yammered Pillbot. "Press the figure flat!"
Harper pressed it flat.
For an instant the laboratory stopped its ominous vibration. Then
the figure of Gault flew through the air, came up against a
wall--but it was his complete figure.
"More signs of violence," cried Pillbot. "But that action won't
appease It--we must get out of here--"
Even as he spoke there was a thunderous crackling and roaring.
Harper felt himself flying about, and for an instant of awful
vertigo he did not know up from down. Forces seemed to be tearing
at him. He felt as though he were a piece of iron being attracted
simultaneously in several directions by powerful electro magnets.
There was a flare of colored lights, a deafening detonation--and
he felt himself knocked breathless against a wall.
He picked himself up, looked around.
* * * * *
On one side of him was the familiar south wall of the laboratory.
To the north, east and west was--open air. He was standing on a
section of laboratory flooring that jutted out over empty space
from the wall. His desk was a few feet away, right at the edge of
the jutting floor. Gault and Pillbot were picking themselves up
to one side of the desk.
The pair looked over the edge of the floor, then recoiled,
frenziedly hugging the flooring under them.
Harper crawled over, looked over the edge, quickly backed away.
Several hundred feet below, the traffic of the city roared!
Gault went over to the door in the one wall, opened it, then
stepped back quickly, his face pale.
"The laboratory has been turned inside out!" he shouted. "We are
on the outside!"
"We must get away from here," squalled Pillbot. "Another spasm of
the creature will precipitate us into the street!"
Gault forgot his apprehensions long enough to freeze Harper with
a glance. "This is all your doing," he bawled. "You with your
absurd doodling, which attracted the attention of some Being of
the fourth dimension!" In his anger, he overlooked the fact that
he was contradicting his formerly held opinion.
"The laboratory wrecked," he continued, "and that isn't all!" He
stalked up to the cringing Harper, thrust his face toward him.
"Do you know," he yelled, "why I didn't want to be returned
hastily--why I didn't want you to bring me back by flattening out
the paper cutout? You dolt, did you ever try to get a crease out
of a piece of paper?"
"I--I don't understand," murmured Harper.
"That paper doll was creased, wasn't it?" shouted Gault.
"Once a piece of paper is creased," he resumed heatedly, "it
can't be perfectly flattened out again. At the crease a thin
cross-section continues to bulge--into the third dimension in the
case of that paper cutout. Into the fourth dimension in my case!
_I'm creased too_, at the line where I was bent into the fourth
dimension! Surely you aren't blind?"
Harper staggered back as he saw it--a thin, horizontal line of
light shining through Gault's body--across his waistline, through
clothes and all.
"I shall have to go through life this way," Gault snarled, "due
to your imbecilic 'doodling', your meddling with what you don't
understand. Go about constantly with a slit of daylight showing
through me. _You're fired!_"
"Gentlemen," cried Pillbot. "The entity--we must get away.
Another spasm will surely follow--"
Harper didn't think so. A few feet away he had noticed
something--his statue lying on its side. It was all there,
including the portion that had been in the fourth dimension. The
Entity's "landmark" was gone. Harper didn't believe It would
locate this particular area of the third dimension again.
The scream of a fire siren rose up to them. As a ladder scraped
over the projecting floor, Harper fondly felt the pad in his
pocket with the formula on it. He wasn't worried now about having
been fired. He was seeing visions of a small cottage with
Judith....
Of course, he would have to be careful in the future with his
"doodling"! He could not again risk attracting the attention of
some four dimensional Being--not with Judith to think about!
* * * * *
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