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.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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