"Father saw it almost as soon as I did. It was a very curious light; it did not illuminate the room about us. Then we suddenly discovered that it went through the walls of the laboratory. We were looking into a space that seemed to be opening up for miles ahead of us. The walls of the room, the house itself, the city around us, were all blotted out. We were looking into an empty distance." "Empty?" echoed George tensely. "Didn't you see anything?" "Not at first." Loto had relaxed; his earnest gaze passed from one to the other of the intent faces of the men. "We were only conscious of empty distance. It was not darkness nor was it light. It was more a dim phosphorescence. We had forgotten the Crookes tube, the screen, everything but that glowing, empty scene before us. "After a moment, or it may have been much longer, the scene seemed to brighten. It turned to gleaming silver, and then we saw that we were looking out over a snow-covered waste. Miles of it. Snow reaching back to the horizon, and dull gray sky overhead. The ground seemed about sixty feet below us, and we were poised in the air above it." Loto paused a moment, and Rogers added, "You understand, gentlemen, that my laboratory is not on the ground floor of the building, but somewhat above the level of that part of the city." "But--" began the Big Business Man. "Let him go on," growled the Banker. "Go on, boy. Didn't you see anything but snow?" "No, not at once. It was all bleak and desolate. But it kept on brightening, losing its silvery, glowing look until at last we could see it was daylight. It was apparently late afternoon--or perhaps early morning. The sun wasn't showing--it must have been behind a cloud. "We sat staring down at this cold, snowy landscape, and then, almost from below us, something moving came into view. It had passed under us--under the laboratory--and was traveling on away from us." "What was it?" the Banker demanded. "Well, it seemed to be a huge sled, with fur covered figures on it, and pulled by an animal almost as large as a horse. But it wasn't a horse--it was a dog." Loto paused, but no one else spoke. After a moment he resumed: "The sled slackened and stopped about a quarter of a mile north of the laboratory--up toward where Central Park is now. And then we saw that there was a building there, a large, oval-shaped structure. It may have been built of snow, or ice--or perhaps some whitish stone. There seemed to be an enclosed space behind it. The whole thing blended into the landscape so that we had overlooked it before. "The sled stopped. We could see the figures climbing down from it. Then there was sudden darkness. The scene went black. We were sitting facing the side wall of the laboratory." "A wire in our apparatus had burned out," Rogers explained. "And that night I was taken sick. It developed into pneumonia and I was laid up for weeks. Loto was left alone to follow up our discovery."