INTO THE FOURTH DIMENSION By RAY CUMMINGS Are there other worlds existing side by side with ours, yet unseen and unsuspected? Here is the incredible tale of three who went through the wall that bars the way to this shadowy realm and found a strange land, a stranger people, and a fantastic enemy. [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Science Fiction Quarterly Winter 1941-1942. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] IN RESPONSE TO THE MANY REQUESTS WE HAVE RECEIVED, WE ARE REPRINTING THIS FAMOUS NOVEL--ONE OF THE MOST UNUSUAL EVER CONCEIVED BY A SCIENCE FICTION AUTHOR. CHAPTER I THE GHOSTS OF '46 The first of the "ghosts" made its appearance in February of 1946. It was seen just after nightfall near the bank of a little stream known as Otter Creek, a few miles from Rutland, Vermont. There are willows along the creek-bank at this point. Heavy snow was on the ground. A farmer's wife saw the ghost standing beside the trunk of a tree. The evening was rather dark. Clouds obscured the stars and the moon. A shaft of yellow light from the farmhouse windows came out over the snow; but the ghost was in a patch of deep shadow. It seemed to be the figure of a man standing with folded arms, a shoulder against the tree-trunk. It was white and shimmering; it glowed; its outlines were wavy and blurred. The farmer's wife screamed and rushed back into the house. Up to this point the incident was not unusual. It would have merited no more than the briefest and most local newspaper attention; reported perhaps to some organization interested in psychical research to be filed with countless others of its kind. But when the farmer's wife got back to the house and told her husband what she had seen, the farmer went out and saw it also; and with him, his two grown sons and his daughter. There was no doubt about it; they all saw the apparition still standing motionless exactly where the woman had said. There was a telephone in the farmhouse. They telephoned their nearest neighbors. The telephone girl got the news. Soon it had spread to the village of Procter; and then to Rutland itself. The ghost did not move. By ten o'clock that evening the road before the farmer's house was crowded with cars; a hundred or more people were trampling the snow of his corn-field cautiously, from a safe distance regarding that white motionless figure.