The Captured Cross-Section

Roy Glashan's Library
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MILES J. BREUER

THE CAPTURED CROSS-SECTION

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First published in Amazing Stories, February 1929

Reprinted in Avon Fantasy Reader 12, 1950
This e-book edition: Roy Glashan's Library, 2025
Version Date: 2025-08-20

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Amazing Stories, February 1929, with "The Captured Cross-Section"

Our well-known author again has taken the Fourth Dimension as the basis of another of his interesting tales, but this time he takes us to a world of wonders by an entirely different route. The story certainly is highly absorbing and will be found to give abundant food for thought. It contains a great many original points which we believe have never been touched on before in a Fourth Dimensional story.

THE head of Jules Heagey, Instructor in Mathematics, was bent low over the sheets of figures; and becomingly close to it, leaned the curly-haired one of his fiancée, Sheila Mathers, daughter of the Head of the Mathematics Department. Sheila was no mean mathematician herself, and had published some original papers.

"Are you trying to tell me that this stuff makes any sense?" she laughed, shaking her head over the stack of papers.

"Your father couldn't follow it either," Heagey answered. "He used abusive language at me when I showed it to him."

"Now don't be mean to my father. Some day you'll learn that under his blustering exterior he has a heart of gold. But what do these things mean, and what did you bring me in here for?"

"You have followed through Einstein's equation for the transformation of coordinates, have you not?" Heagey explained. "Well, this is Einstein's stuff, only I've carried it farther than he did."

"That is because I am using four coordinates. The most complicated existing equations, with the three coordinates x, y, and z, and involving three equations each with the variables:

require that you keep in mind nine equations at a time. That is a heavy burden and relatively few men are able to do it. Here I have four coordinates, w, x, y, and z, and the variables:

and requiring that I carry in my mind sixteen equations at one time. That may seem impossible, but I've drilled myself at it for two years, and gradually I was able to go farther and farther...."

"But there are other quantities here," Sheila interrupted, studying the paper intently, "that do not belong in equations for the rotation of coordinates. They look like the integrals in electromagnetic equations,"

"Good for you!" Heagey cried enthusiastically. "That pretty little head has something on the inside, too. That is just exactly what they are: electromagnetic integrals. You see, the rotation of coordinates looks very pretty in theory, but when you hook it up with a little practical dynamics—don't you understand yet?"

"Sheila, jewel, you're just irresistible that way. I can't help it." He gathered her in his arms and kissed her face in a dozen places. She pushed him away.

"No more until you tell me what this is about. I mean it!" She stamped her foot, but a merry smile contradicted her stern frown.

"You're just like your father when you're like that," he said, taking up the papers again. "Very simple little conception," he continued. "Why be satisfied with rotating coordinates on paper? Here's a way to rotate them in concrete, physical reality.

"Listen now. When you rotate two coordinates through ninety degrees, you have an ordinate where there previously was an abscissa. If you rotate three coordinates through ninety degrees, you can make a vertical plane occupy a horizontal position. Now—suppose you rotate four coordinates through forty-five degrees: you can then make a portion of space occupy a new position, outside of what we know as space. And we can bring into this space of ours, a portion of the unknown space along the fourth coordinate—"

"There it is on paper. But we're going to do it in reality. There—" pointing across the room— "are the coils by means of which we can rotate some real space. I want you to see the preliminary trial. As I do not know just exactly what may happen, I am going to rotate only a small portion to begin with."

"Not for the very first trial. I want you to see that alone. After we know what it will do—"

"You think it might injure the furniture or damage the building? For the preliminary trial I shall rotate it only for an instant and turn it back instantly."

She clung to his arm nervously while he grasped the black handle of the switch and threw it down, waited a few seconds, and pulled it out again.

THEY saw nothing. There was a crash, instantaneously loud, and fading almost instantly to a distant, muffled rumble, and ceasing suddenly. There was a heavy thud and a pounding on the floor. Sheila gave a little scream.

There in front of them was a rapidly moving object; it bounced up and down off the floor to a height of three feet about once a second. It did not have the harmonic motion of a bouncing body, however; it stopped abruptly up in the air and shot downward at high speed, hit the floor, stopped a moment and shot back upward. Then it stopped suddenly and hung in the air. It was about the size of a large watermelon, and looked for all the world like human skin; smooth, uniform, unbroken all around.

The two stared at it amazed. Heagey walked up and touched it with the tip of a finger. It grew smaller. And suddenly it decreased to about one-half its former size, retaining its surface smoothness and uniformity unchanged.

Now it was increasing in size again, while they stared gasping, speechless, at it. When it stopped growing suddenly, it was the size of a big barrel, with rounded ends. There was a bulging ridge around the middle, on each side of which was a dark-brown strap of something like leather. The rest of it was just naked skin.

Sheila and Heagey stood rooted to the spot, staring at it and at each other. What was the thing? Where had it come from ?

The Thing began thumping up and down off the floor again, with great, thudding shocks. After a while it desisted and lay still. It was a most uncouth, hideous looking thing: a great lump of naked flesh with two straps around it. It looked for all the world like some huge tumor in a medical museum, or like some monstrosity of birth. Could it be alive?

Both of them approached it cautiously. Heagey pricked it with a pin. The skin was tough and he jabbed hard. A drop of blood appeared.

Then there was a terrible commotion. The object decreased in size to a small sphere like a baseball. In fact, there were several baseball-sized lumps of flesh all around; just naked flesh. They moved rapidly, and two of them were between him and Sheila. Two or three were on the far side of her. He counted ten of them altogether. Five of them closed swiftly around her. Then she was gone!

Her scream, cut suddenly short, still rang in his ears. And she was gone! Suddenly vanished from in front of him! He groped about, feeling for her in the empty air, but there was nothing anywhere. There lay the watermelon-like lump of flesh that he had first seen. It was on the floor and lay quite still. And she was gone! He held his head distractedly.

"Think you understand!" the professor shouted. "What have you done to my daughter? She doesn't scream for nothing."

He caught sight of the ovoid lump of flesh. He turned pale and stopped as if frozen. Some terrible thought crossed his mind, connecting it with his daughter; had some nefarious experiment turned her into that thing?

"Something's got to be done," Heagey said, chiefly to himself. "We've got to bring her back here. I'm afraid to manipulate the thing too many times; the Lord only knows what else it may dip up."

"Wait till I shut that thing up," Heagey said, getting a hold on himself; "and I'll explain all I know about this. I was getting ready to try to rotate a dog out of space, and so I have a new, strong dog-cage here."

He set the dog-cage down beside the lump of flesh; very gently, very slowly, he pushed it in. His touch recoiled at the warm, soft feel of it; but he got it into the cage and locked the door. Then he set out a chair for the professor, but his hand shook, for his mind was on Sheila.

He sat down facing the professor, his back to the cage. Suddenly the professor's face fell, and his eyes stared ahead with a look of utter blankness. Heagey whirled around and looked at his "specimen." It was out of the cage!

There hadn't been a sound. His eyes had not been off it for ten seconds. The cage was still locked. There, it lay, three feet away from the cage, only it wasn't the same. There were two pieces of it now, long, cylindrical, rounded at the ends. Like a couple of legs without knees or feet. Heagey got up and unlocked the cage, noting that it required fifteen seconds. He felt around inside the cage with his hands, but found nothing.

THE professor stared at him, now thoroughly convinced that he was crazy. Heagey explained about his sixteen equations and how readily they interlocked with the electromagnetic integrals, and of how the very simple application of any form of electromagnetic energy would rotate four coordinates.

"I wanted her to see the preliminary experiment. I used but little power on a small field. Just opened a little trap-door into space, so to speak. There is only one explanation for what has happened here, I rotated a portion of a fourth dimension, and left a hole in hyperspace for an instant. Just as if you rotate up a portion of this floor, there will be a hole left. As chance would have it, just at that moment some inhabitant of hyperspace came along and stumbled into it. and I swung back on him and caught him.

"Here he is, stuck. What we see and feel is a cross-section of him, a solid cross-section of that part of him that is cut by our three-dimensional space. See! If I stick my finger through this sheet of paper, the two-dimensional inhabitants on its surface will perceive only a circle. At first the nail occupies a portion of its circumference; as I push my finger on through, the nail is gone, and folds and ridges appear and disappear. If my whole hand goes through, the circle increases greatly in size. If they draw a circle around my finger and try to imprison it, I can withdraw it and stick it through somewhere else, and they cannot understand how it was done—"

Heagey's face dropped. He had been full of interest and exultation in his problem. The reminder of her was an icy shock.

"There is only one possible conclusion," he went on in a dead voice. "The struggles of the fourth-dimensional creature swept her out into hyperspace."

The professor sprang up and walked rapidly out of the room. There was something determined in his stride. He slammed the door. Heagey sat down and thought. Somehow he must rescue Sheila.

How could it be done? Should he try the rotation again? He had all the figures and could repeat it accurately. But, that would not be at, all certain to get her back. The captured fourth-dimensional creature might get away. Heagey didn't want to lose him. Not only that he wanted to study him, but somehow he felt that he must hang on to the only link with that world where Sheila was now lost.

The thought of its getting away worried him. How could he make sure that it would not escape? He reasoned back to the plane section of a three-dimensional object. Enclosing it in a circle would do no good. But, if tied tightly with a circle of rope, it might be kept from moving up and down. Analogically, if he could get this thing into some sort of a tight bag, he might feel free to flip his trap-door once more. Ah! then came the brilliant idea!

He got the lump of flesh fastened up tight in a canvas sack and lashed the other end of the stout rope with which he tied it, around a concrete pillar. Then the door opened and two policemen walked in, followed by the professor. He was urging them on. "There he is! Grab him!" he seemed to say in attitude and gesture, though not in words.

A pang of alarm shot through Heagey. He was needed right here to rescue Sheila. What would become of her if they locked him up? His mind as usual worked quickly and logically, in contradistinction to the professor's, who seemed to have been thrown into an unreasoning rage by his daughter's disappearance. He sprang to his switchboard and shouted:

Something in his determined attitude alarmed the policemen; his hand on the ominous-looking apparatus might mean something. They stopped.

"He murdered my daughter. Made away with her. I've got a warrant for his arrest." Nonsensical twaddle about the fourth dimension. Prosecute him to the limit; that's what I'll do. Been hanging around her too much. He's crazy. Throw him in jail. Make him bring her back!"

Heagey laughed a desperate laugh, which made the other three more certain that he was a dangerous maniac.

"Like throwing debtors into jail," Heagey derided acidly. "Fat chance of paying the debt then! Move another step and I'll throw the three of you into unknown hyperspace."

They were all afraid, of they knew not what. Heagey outlined to them that he wanted to go out into hyperspace and search for Sheila. But he would tie himself on a rope fastened at this end. And he wanted someone here at this end, who was friendly to him, to manage things. He telephoned out for a rope and for two of his students. The policemen watched, too puzzled to know what to do. The professor acquiesced, more from fear, like a man at the point of a gun, than because he saw the reason of it.

The rope was delivered and the two students, Adkins and Beemer, arrived. They helped him fix a firm sling around his shoulders, waist, and thighs. The loose rope was coiled up on the floor, several hundred feet of it, and the other end tied to a concrete pillar. There was some amazed staring by the students at the writhing thing in the canvas sack.

"I'll tell you about that later," Heagey said. "All the pointers and dials are set. All you need to do is to throw this switch and jerk it back at once. Adkins, you do that; and Beemer, you watch the rope. When I signal by jerking it six times, Adkins, you throw the switch again the same way."

That was all. Without another word Adkins threw the switch. There was the same crash, instantaneously muffled and almost suddenly fading away as at a distance. There was a momentary sensation of agitation, though nothing really moved.

HEAGEY was gone. The loose end of the rope that had tied him lay on the floor. It was certainly a breathless thing. The professor stared with a sort of vacant expression on his face, as though the solid ground had suddenly dropped from beneath his feet. It dawned upon him that perhaps Sheila had really disappeared that way.

Beemer picked up the end of the rope. It was not an end; it merely looked that way. There was a strong tension on it; in fact it soon began to slip through his hands, and coil after coil was drawn off the pile on the floor, and simply vanished. For a while it stopped and then went on unwinding.

The policemen gazed blankly. They were unable to understand what had happened. The man they were to arrest had suddenly melted from sight. They mumbled astonished monosyllables to each other. But, they were not as astonished as was Professor Mathers. They did not grasp the enormity of what was going on, as he did. It upset his whole mental universe. He sat a while and then paced nervously up and down the vast room. He came and looked at the rope. Then he looked at the canvas sack. The sack lay loose as though the contents had escaped. He felt of it and found that it contained three soft, baseball-sized objects. He jumped back and shrank away from it. The time seemed interminable. He waited and waited.

Besides an occasional mumble between the policemen or a short exclamation from Adkins or Beemer, there was no conversation. Beemer watched the rope closely. There was a tense nervous strain created largely by the professor's distracted movements. Then, after what seemed hours, though in reality less than one hour, there were six short tugs on the rope. Adkins threw his switch, and out of the crash and tremor Heagey tumbled out on the floor, all tangled up in coils of rope.

He was breathless, haggard, wild-eyed. He lay for a moment on the floor, panting. Then he sprang up and gazed fiercely, wildly about. He seemed suddenly to perceive where he was. An expression of relief came over his face; he sighed deeply and sank down to a sitting position. He looked exhausted; his clothes were disarranged and ripped in some places, and were covered with dust.

The five people looked at him in silent amazement. He looked from one to the other of them; it was a long time before he spoke.

"Good to be back here. I can hardly believe I'm really back. Never again for me."

Heagey recoiled as though from some shock. He sank again into a profound depression. At first he had seemed a little happy to get back. Apparently Sheila had been forcibly driven out of his mind for the time.

"Let me tell you about it," he began slowly. He seemed not to know just how to proceed. "That is, if I can. I don't even know how to tell it. I know what it must feel like to go insane.

"I heard the switch go down as I gave Adkins the signal. Then it seemed like an elevator starting, and that was all. Until I looked around.

"I was sitting on something that looked like rock or cement. Not far from me was that barrel-like lump of flesh with the two straps around it, just exactly as I had seen it in the laboratory. And then a row of shapes reaching into the dim, blue distance. The nearer ones seemed to be of concrete or cement. You've heard me jeer at the crazy, cubistic and futuristic designs on book wrappers and wall-paper. Well, those are pleasant and harmonious compared with the dizzy, jagged angles, the irregular, zig-zag shapes with peaks and slants, and everything out of sense and reason except perspective. Perspective was still correct. Just a long, straight row fading into the distance. What in the world it could be, I hadn't the faintest idea. However, I gradually reasoned it out.

"Naturally, since I am a three-dimensional organism, I can only perceive three dimensions. Even out in hyper-space I can only see three dimensions. What I saw must therefore be the spatial cross-section of some sort of buildings. I couldn't see the entire buildings, but merely the cross-section cut by the particular set of coordinates in which I was. Now it occurs to me, that since that barrel-like thing looked exactly the same to me out there as it did in the room here, I must have been in a 'space' or set of coordinates parallel to the ones we are in now.

"IMAGINE a two-dimensional being, whose life had been confined to a sheet of paper and who could only perceive in two dimensions, suddenly turned loose in a room. He could only see one plane at a time. Everything he saw would be cross-sections of things as we know them. Wouldn't he go crazy? I nearly did.

"I first started out to walk along beside the row of rock-like shapes. Suddenly near me there appeared two spheres of flesh, just like this one we have here. They rapidly increased in size, coalesced into a barrel-shaped thing with a metal-web belt around the middle, and then dwindled quickly; there were three or four smaller gobs of stuff and then ten or a dozen little ones; finally an irregular, blotchy, melon-like thing which quickly disappeared. In fifteen seconds it had all materialized and gone.

"I was beginning to understand the stuff now. Merely some inhabitant or creature of hyperspace going by. As he passed through my particular spatial plane, I saw successive cross-sections of him. Just as though my body were passing through a plane, say feet first: first there would be two irregular circles; then a larger oval, the trunk, with two circles, the arms, at the sides and separate from it; and so on until the top of the head vanished as a small spot.

"I followed down the line of buildings, looking around. Bizarre shapes appeared around me, changing size and shape in the wildest, dizziest, most uncouth ways, splitting into a dozen pieces and coming together into large, irregular chunks. Some seemed to be metal or concrete, some human flesh, naked or clothed. In a few minutes my mind became accustomed to interpreting this passage of fourth-dimensional things through my 'plane' and I studied them with interest. Then I slipped and fell down. Down I whizzed for a while, and everything about me disappeared.

"I found myself rolling; and sitting up, I looked around again. There was nothing. I still seemed to be on cement or stone; and in all directions it stretched away endlessly into the distance. It was the most disconcerting thing I had ever seen in my life. I was just a speck in a universe of cement pavement. I began to get panicky, but controlled myself and started to walk, feeling the reassuring pull of the rope behind me. I walked nervously and saw nothing anywhere. Evidently I had slipped off my former 'plane' and gotten into a new one. The rope tightened suddenly; perhaps I had reached the end of it. It jerked me backwards and I swung dizzily, my feet hanging loose.

"I swung among millions of small spherical bodies disposed irregularly in all directions about me, even below. They moved gently back and forth in small arcs; and there were large brown bodies—

"I swung among millions of small spherical bodies disposed ir-
regularly in all directions about me, even below. They moved gently
back and forth in small arcs; and there were large brown bodies—

"Why go through it all? I stumbled from one spatial plane into another. Each seemed a totally different universe. I couldn't get them correlated in my mind into any kind of a consistent whole at all. For a long time I climbed over some huge metal framework; I ran into moving things that grew larger and disappeared; I struggled through a jungle of some soft, green, vegetable stuff. Just all of a sudden I made up my mind that I'd never find Sheila.

"She might be within a foot of me all the time, yet I couldn't get to her, because I couldn't see out of three dimensions. I yelled her name until I was hoarse and my head throbbed, but nothing happened. I grew panicky and decided I wanted to go back. I pulled on the rope and dragged myself toward the direction from which it came; sometimes I slid rapidly toward it; at others I could feel myself dragging my entire weight with my arms. Then I could go no further, pull as I might. It seemed like trying to reach an inch higher than you really can; I couldn't quite stretch that far. So I gave it six short tugs. Very quietly I tumbled out here. I haven't seen Sheila."

"Either you're telling the truth or you're insane as a loon," he said, and his voice was puzzled and sincere. "Perhaps I'm crazy, too. I'm broad-minded enough to admit that is possible. I've got you charged with murder. But I'll give you a chance. What are you going to do about Sheila?"

"You can go to hell with your chance," he roared. "I want Sheila back worse that you do. If anyone can get her back, it is myself. If you interfere, you simply guarantee that she's lost, that's all. If you want to see her again, keep your hands off! See!"

THE professor was a better man than his blustering actions might lead one to think.

"Perhaps you can. I may need more money than I've got. Just now you can help me most by getting out of here and taking everybody with you and letting me think. I've got an idea. I'll phone you when I want something."

"Well, remember you're charged with murder, and there will be a police guard around this place."

Heagey left alone, sat and thought. He jumped up and ran his hands through his hair.

"God! Think of it!" he gasped. "Sheila out there alone! In that mad place! Not even a rope!"

He paced rapidly around the room. Then he seized paper and pencil and began to draw. He drew circles and ellipsoids of different sizes and laid the drawings in a row. The professor came in an hour later and found him at it.

"Shut up!" Heagey snapped, his nerves tautened into disrespect. He swept up the papers with his hand and crumpled them into the waste-basket. "No use. Can't study four-dimensional stuff on a two-dimensional plane. Say!" he shouted roughly at the professor; "get me a hundred pounds o? modeling clay up here. Quick as you can!"

The professor trotted out after it without a word, much less with any understanding of what it was about.

"Do you think you'll do it?" Was his eager attitude one moment, and "if you don't you go on trial for murder," he raved a moment later.

Far into the night Heagey worked with modeling-clay, molding the forms that had appeared in the laboratory and some of those he had seen in hyperspace. He tried to recollect the order in which the various shapes had appeared to him, and laid them in rows in that order. Late into the night he modeled and arranged and stared and studied. Near midnight the professor poked his head in the door.

"She's really gone," he moaned. "She hasn't come home. She's nowhere!" He turned on the haggard Heagey. "The policemen are on the job, so don't try to get away. But I'm offering five thousand dollars to anyone who brings Sheila back."

Heagey snatched a few hours' sleep on the floor. In the morning when the professor opened the door, he was arranging clay balls and clubs into rows and staring at them. As soon as the professor's head appeared, he shouted:

"I've got it! The biggest photographs you can get of Sheila. Head and full-length both. And fast! Hurry!"

He now turned his attention to the object in the canvas sack. He untied the rope from the fourteen-ounce duck, tied the corners of the canvas together, inserted a stout stick (obtained by breaking the leg off a chair), and twisted it, squeezing the small ball of flesh unmercifully. At first sight it was a cruel looking procedure, but there was method in it. The thing began to jump back and forth excitedly. He loosened the bulk of his pressure, but kept up a steady, firm tension. His strength was sufficient to hold it fairly steady. Suddenly he loosened all pressure. The mass of flesh suddenly grew larger and the satisfied expression in Heagey's face showed that was what he was working for. Just as when you push hard against someone and then suddenly let go: he falls toward you.

He persisted steadily along this line. When the cross-section increased in size he held it loosely, patted it gently, and even talked soothingly. As soon as it started to decrease, he screwed up his stick and bore down on it remorselessly. For an hour he wrestled. Then the professor entered with two 16 by 20 photographs taken out of frames.

"Wait!" shouted Heagey peremptorily. "Stand there and hold 'em." He twisted up his stick again, held it, and loosened it; and was rewarded by seeing the barrel-shaped mass appear; then two long, cylindrical bodies beside it, covered with metal-mesh.

"Don't bother me!" Heagey panted irritatedly. "And don't move. I might need you any minute."

Finally the thing decreased in size again; but this time, Heagey seemed satisfied with it. He removed the canvas sack. There was an irregular sphere the size of a bucket. Over its surface were queer patches, glassy places, and iridescent, rainbow-like spots that changed color and looked deep.

Heagey set up the pictures in front of the thing, as if to show them to it. The professor stared at him as he would at a silly child. Heagey suddenly hit himself in the side of the head with his fist.

"What a prize fool! I keep on being a fool!" he shouted. He turned savagely on the professor:

"Get me the two best fellows out of the fine-arts department. Quick! Sculptors!"

If the professor thought Heagey was crazy, nevertheless some glimmer of hope of rescuing Sheila lent him willingness and speed of thinking. He scolded rapidly into the telephone for a few minutes, repeating the word emergency several times. Then he started down the driveway, taking a policeman with him.

HEAGEY was feverishly busy. He seemed to be bringing every object in the room that could be conveniently carried to set before the unearthly specimen he had there. He seemed to be showing it things. He acted for all the world like some ignorant, superstitious savages, bringing things to his god. Books, chairs, hats and coats, mathematical medals, hammers and wrenches, one thing after another; he held them up in front of it for a while and tossed them aside on the growing heap. When the two sculptors arrived, he barked his directions at them, and continued what seemed his silly efforts to entertain the object in front of him by showing it everything he could find. At least it remained quiet and unchanged.

The sculptors, infected with his determination, worked rapidly. First there was a model of a heavy, bulging man, with his foot caught in a hole like a coal-chute, and held fast by a square lid. Then from the pictures a model of Sheila; considering the speed with which it was made, it was a wonderful thing, with her pointed chin and unruly hair all true to life. Then a rough model of Heagey.

Heagey set the models down in front of the iridescent, patchy Thing and played puppets with the models; went through a regular dramatic performance with them. The models of Sheila and himself stood near the man caught in the trap-door. The imprisoned man struggled and knocked Sheila over and she rolled away; she fell down off the surface of the block to a lower level. The imprisoned man continued to struggle, and the model of Heagey searched around, but could not get past the edge of the block.

Then, very impressively motioning toward the Thing, as though he really believed it was looking, Heagey made the model of the imprisoned man lean over and pick up Sheila, and hand her over to the model of himself. The model of himself held on to Sheila, and raised the trap-door that imprisoned the bulging man, who hopped out of the hole and hastened away. That was the little show that Heagey put on with the yard-high clay models.

The patchy sphere changed suddenly. First it shrank and then it swelled: then there were three or four things moving back and forth. And suddenly, there stood Sheila!

Pale and distracted and wan she looked: and she swayed as she looked blankly around. Then her eyes widened and she gave a little scream; but a look of peace and content spread over her features. By the time Heagey was at her side, she fell limply into his arms.

"One moment, dear," he said gently as he laid her down carefully in the arm-chair. The professor was down the floor beside her in a moment, watching her fluttering eyelids.

Heagey stepped quickly to his switches and threw the big one in and out again. Again came the crash cut short, and the sensation of movement. And the Thing was gone. There was nothing left of it at all.

"Do you think you deserve this?" he said testily. He was merely trying to hide his emotion, "You won't get it until you prove it. Explain how you did this!"

"I reasoned from the things I saw Out There that this creature must be intelligent. There were buildings, machines, and leather and metal-webbing. So I made models and tried to deduce its shape. Somewhere on it there must be a head and eyes. You saw how I coaxed it 'through' this 'space' of ours until the head was cut by our 'space' and the eyes could see us. Then I told it what I wanted it to do with models—just as I would explain things to you with paper.

"Now do you believe there are Four dimensions?" Heagey demanded by way of vengeance.

THE END