Chapter 2

"Huh?" Harper looked up from his scribbling. "Oh." Harper explained quickly how he had induced the Being to act on himself.

"That's it!" cried Pillbot hoarsely. "You switched the pattern of imitation on It--tricked It into bringing you here. That's what made it angry--"

"Angry?" Harper almost dropped his pad, clutched at Pillbot as there was a sudden upheaval of the invisible tension-surface on which they stood. A violent shake sprawled them on the "ground" and now Harper saw the torso of Gault, a few feet away, apparently hovering above the surface.

"Yes, angry!" Pillbot was pale. "As long as you merely gave it something to imitate it was pacified. But now it recognizes opposition, an effort to outwit it due to your switching the pattern of imitation. Its condition is dangerous--it's bound to react violently. We have to get out of here. You must know some way--"

Harper again scribbled some figures on his pad. "As soon as I've worked out this formula--"

Pillbot shook him frantically. "Can't you understand! This Creature is a mental patient of a violent type. We are in a _fourth dimensional insane asylum_!" Pillbot gazed upward fearfully at a descending mass. "The pattern of its action fits perfectly," he went on. "Some violent type of insanity, combined with delusions of grandeur. Any slightest opposition will cause a spasm of fury. It recognizes such opposition in the way you tricked it into bringing you here. At first I thought it was a primitive mentality, but now I know it is a highly evolved, but insane creature, thinks it's Napoleon, wants to conquer the three dimensional plane which its attention has been attracted to in some way--"

Harper looked up in surprise. "Does it know about Napoleon?"

"Of course not, you fool!" screamed Pillbot. "It has the Napoleonic complex, identifies itself with some great conqueror of its own realm. And now it's on the rampage. We have to get out of here--" He clutched at Harper as another upheaval of the surface threw them down.

* * * * *

Rising, Harper put away his pad. His calculations were complete. He could now show engineers how to build high buildings, taking advantage of space stress instead of trying to fight the stress.

For the first time, the danger of their position seemed to penetrate to his consciousness. He looked about--and his eyes rested on a strange familiar projection rising from the invisible floor a few feet away. It was the section of his clay statue that had vanished--vanished because its peculiar shape had somehow caused it to be warped into the fourth dimension!

Why hadn't he been able to move it--Professor Gault moved about freely.

He and Pillbot went over to it, tried to move it. A slight filmy webwork around the projection caught Harper's eye. Now he knew--the Being had somehow affixed it to the spot as a landmark, so It could locate the laboratory. It must have been this projection that had first attracted the Being's attention to the three dimensional world, since, ordinarily, It would never have noticed the presence of three dimensional life, any more than humans would notice the presence of two dimensional life if such existed!

Harper looked up at a bleat from Pillbot. Above them was a sudden furious play of lights and shades. Vast masses seemed shifting in crazy juxtapositions, now descending rapidly toward them.

"Quick," Harper, now fully aroused, gasped to Pillbot. "Climb down this projection!"

"Climb down it--?"

"Yes, there is a fluid condition of space where it penetrates between the two planes. By hugging its contours you will emerge into the laboratory--I hope!"

Pillbot glanced overhead nervously, then experimentally slid a font down the projection. The foot vanished. With a cry of relief, Pillbot lowered himself until only head and shoulders were visible. Then that too vanished.

Harper looked up. Some monstrous suggestion of Form was almost upon him. He grasped the projection and just as his head sank out of sight the Form seemed to smash down on him.

Pillbot helped Harper to his feet, from where he had sprawled at the base of the statue, on the laboratory floor.

"Quick," he gasped. "The Creature will be infuriated now, by our escape from Its realm. A maniacal spasm is sure to follow. We must get Gault back in some way, then leave the laboratory."

Even as they dashed over toward the abbreviated form of Gault, the laboratory shook. Invisible strains seemed to be bulging the walls inward.

Harper rushed to the desk upon which still reposed the cutout, the section between neck and waist still arched off the surface. As Harper reached toward the cutout to press it flat, Gault's eyes widened, his mouth opened in a soundless shout of opposition. Harper hesitated.

"Never mind him," yammered Pillbot. "Press the figure flat!"

Harper pressed it flat.

For an instant the laboratory stopped its ominous vibration. Then the figure of Gault flew through the air, came up against a wall--but it was his complete figure.

"More signs of violence," cried Pillbot. "But that action won't appease It--we must get out of here--"

Even as he spoke there was a thunderous crackling and roaring. Harper felt himself flying about, and for an instant of awful vertigo he did not know up from down. Forces seemed to be tearing at him. He felt as though he were a piece of iron being attracted simultaneously in several directions by powerful electro magnets.

There was a flare of colored lights, a deafening detonation--and he felt himself knocked breathless against a wall.

He picked himself up, looked around.

* * * * *

On one side of him was the familiar south wall of the laboratory. To the north, east and west was--open air. He was standing on a section of laboratory flooring that jutted out over empty space from the wall. His desk was a few feet away, right at the edge of the jutting floor. Gault and Pillbot were picking themselves up to one side of the desk.

The pair looked over the edge of the floor, then recoiled, frenziedly hugging the flooring under them.

Harper crawled over, looked over the edge, quickly backed away. Several hundred feet below, the traffic of the city roared!

Gault went over to the door in the one wall, opened it, then stepped back quickly, his face pale.

"The laboratory has been turned inside out!" he shouted. "We are on the outside!"

"We must get away from here," squalled Pillbot. "Another spasm of the creature will precipitate us into the street!"

Gault forgot his apprehensions long enough to freeze Harper with a glance. "This is all your doing," he bawled. "You with your absurd doodling, which attracted the attention of some Being of the fourth dimension!" In his anger, he overlooked the fact that he was contradicting his formerly held opinion.

"The laboratory wrecked," he continued, "and that isn't all!" He stalked up to the cringing Harper, thrust his face toward him.

"Do you know," he yelled, "why I didn't want to be returned hastily--why I didn't want you to bring me back by flattening out the paper cutout? You dolt, did you ever try to get a crease out of a piece of paper?"

"I--I don't understand," murmured Harper.

"That paper doll was creased, wasn't it?" shouted Gault.

"Once a piece of paper is creased," he resumed heatedly, "it can't be perfectly flattened out again. At the crease a thin cross-section continues to bulge--into the third dimension in the case of that paper cutout. Into the fourth dimension in my case! _I'm creased too_, at the line where I was bent into the fourth dimension! Surely you aren't blind?"

Harper staggered back as he saw it--a thin, horizontal line of light shining through Gault's body--across his waistline, through clothes and all.

"I shall have to go through life this way," Gault snarled, "due to your imbecilic 'doodling', your meddling with what you don't understand. Go about constantly with a slit of daylight showing through me. _You're fired!_"

"Gentlemen," cried Pillbot. "The entity--we must get away. Another spasm will surely follow--"

Harper didn't think so. A few feet away he had noticed something--his statue lying on its side. It was all there, including the portion that had been in the fourth dimension. The Entity's "landmark" was gone. Harper didn't believe It would locate this particular area of the third dimension again.

The scream of a fire siren rose up to them. As a ladder scraped over the projecting floor, Harper fondly felt the pad in his pocket with the formula on it. He wasn't worried now about having been fired. He was seeing visions of a small cottage with Judith....

Of course, he would have to be careful in the future with his "doodling"! He could not again risk attracting the attention of some four dimensional Being--not with Judith to think about!

* * * * *