Adventure stories; Islands -- Fiction; Journalists -- Fiction; Love stories; Science fiction; South Pacific Ocean -- Fiction
The prince smiled curiously, and his long-fringed lids drooped in
momentary contemplation. The auto turned into that majestic avenue
which terminates in the Eurychôrus before the Palace of the Litany.
St. George's eye eagerly swept the long white way. At its far end
stood Mount Khalak. _She_ must have passed over this very ground.
"There is," the prince's smooth voice broke in upon his dream, "no
such place as Yaque--as you understand 'place.'"
"I beg your pardon, your Highness?" St. George doubted blankly. Good
Heavens. Maybe there had arrived in Yaque no Olivia, as he
understood Olivia.
"You showed some surprise, I remember," continued the prince, "when
I told you, in McDougle Street, that we of Yaque understand the
Fourth Dimension."
McDougle Street. The sound smote the ear of St. George much as would
the clang of the fire patrol in the midst of light opera.
"Yes, yes," he said, his attention now completely chained. Yet even
then it was not that he cared so absorbingly about the Fourth
Dimension. But what if this were all some trick and if, in this
strange land, Olivia had simply been flashed before his eyes by the
aid of mirrors?
"I find," said the prince with deliberation, "that in America you
are familiar with the argument that, if your people understood
only length and breadth and did _not_ understand the Third
Dimension--thickness--you could not then conceive of lifting, say,
a square or a triangle and laying it down upon another square or
triangle. In other words, you would not know anything of _up_ and
_down_."
St. George nodded. This was the familiar talk of college
class-rooms.
"As it is," pursued the prince, "your people do perfectly understand
lifting a square and placing it upon a square, or a triangle upon a
triangle. But you do not know anything about placing a cube upon a
cube, or a pyramid upon a pyramid _so that both occupy the same
space at the same time_. We of Yaque have mastered that principle
also," the prince tranquilly concluded, "and all that of which this
is the alphabet. That is why we are able to keep our island unknown
to the world--not to say 'invisible.'"
For a moment St. George looked at him speechlessly; then, in spite
of himself, a slow smile overspread his face.
"But," he said, "your Highness, there is not a mathematician in the
civilized world who has not considered that problem and cast it
aside, with the word that if fourth-dimensional space does exist it
can not possibly be inhabited."
"Quite so," said the prince, "and yet here we are."
And, if you come to think of it--as St. George did--that is the only
answer to a world of impossibilities already proved possible. But
the vista which all this opened smote him with irresistible humour.
"Ah well now, I suppose, your Highness," he said, "that our ocean
liners sail clean through the island of Yaque, then, and never even
have their smoke pushed sidewise?"
The prince laughed pleasantly.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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