Tommy reached the third bend in the Tube. By now he had lost all sense
of orientation. An object may be bent through one right angle only in
two dimensions, and a second perfect right angle--at ninety degrees to
all former paths--only in three dimensions. It follows that a third
perfect right angle requires four dimensions for existence, and four
perfect right angles five. The Tube bent itself through four perfect
right angles, and since no human-being can ever have experience of
more than three dimensions, plus time, it followed that Tommy was
experiencing other dimensions than those of Earth as soon as he passed
the third bend. In short, he was in another cosmos.
There was a moment of awful sickness as he passed the third bend. He
was hideously dizzy when he passed the fourth. For a time he felt as
if he had no weight at all. But then, quite abruptly, he was climbing
vertically upward and the soughing of tree-fern fronds was loud in his
ears, and suddenly the end of the Tube was under his fingers and he
stared out into the world of the Fifth Dimension.
Now a gentle wind blew in his face. Tree-ferns rose to incredible
heights above his head, and now and again by the movements of their
fronds he caught stray glimpses of unfamiliar stars. There were red
stars, and blue ones, and once he caught sight of a clearly
distinguishable double star, of which each component was visible to
the naked eye. And very, very far away he heard the beastly yellings
he knew must be the outlaws, the Ragged Men, feasting horribly on
half-scorched flesh torn from the quivering, yet-living flanks of a
monstrous reptile.
Something moved, whimpered--and fled suddenly. It sounded like a human
being. And Tommy Reames was struck with the utterly impossible
conviction that he had heard just that sound before. It was not
dangerous, in any case, and he watched, and listened, and presently he
slipped from the mouth of the Tube and by the glow of a flashlight
stripped foliage from nearby growths and piled it about the Tube's
mouth. And then, because the purpose of the Tube was not adventure but
science, he went back down into the laboratory.
* * * * *
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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