"It would seem to be almost a certainty that four-dimensional life does in fact exist. Postulating its existence, the possibility of an encounter cannot be denied. Such beings could of course enter this vessel as easily as your fingers entered that tobacco can. The point of these remarks is this--would we not be at a serious disadvantage? Would they not have fourth-dimensional shields or walls about which we three-dimensional intelligences would know nothing?" "Sweet spirits of niter!" Seaton exclaimed. "Never thought of that at all, Mart. Don't see how they could--and yet it does stand to reason that they'd have some way of locking up their horses so they couldn't run away, or so that nobody else could steal them. We'll have to do a job of thinking on that, big fellow, and we'd better start right now. Come on--let's get busy!" Then for what seemed hours the two scientists devoted the power of their combined intellects to the problem of an adequate fourth-dimensional defense, only and endlessly to find themselves butting helplessly against a blank wall. Baffled, they drifted on through the unknowable reaches of hyperspace. All they knew of time was that it was hopelessly distorted; of space that it was hideously unrecognizable; of matter that it obeyed no familiar laws. They drifted, and drifted--futilely, timelessly, aimlessly, endlessly-- IX. When _Skylark Three_ left Norlamin in pursuit of the fleeing vessel of Ravindau, the Fenachrone scientist, the occasion had been made an event of world-wide interest. From their tasks everywhere had come the mental laborers to that stupendous event. To it had come also, practically en masse, the "youngsters" from the Country of Youth; and even those who, their life work done, had betaken themselves to the placid Nirvana of the Country of Age returned briefly to the Country of Study to speed upon its epoch-making way that stupendous messenger of civilization. But in sharp contrast to the throngs of Norlaminians who had witnessed the take-off of _Three_, Rovol alone was present when DuQuesne and Loring wafted themselves into the control room of its gigantic counterpart. DuQuesne had been in a hurry, and in the driving urge of his haste to go to the rescue of his "friend" Seaton he had so completely occupied the mind of Rovol that that aged scientist had had no time to do anything except transfer to the brain of the Terrestrial pirate the knowledge which he would so soon require.