half-body, the Professor's head had flashedinto visibility.
"You only pressed the head onto the desk," said Pillbotdisgustedly, "so the Being only impressed Galt's head back intothe laboratory. Now press down the rest of the body."
The Professor's head, suspended above the body, glared about,affixed Harper with a smouldering glance. The mouth movedrapidly, but no words came.
"Professor, I can't hear you," whimpered Harper. "Your lungs andvocal cords are in the other dimension. Here, I'll have youcompletely returned." He reached a hand toward the cutout, thetorso of which still bulged upward from the desk.
Gault's head wagged in vigorous negation of Harper's contemplatedact. His mouth moved in what, if audible, would have beenclipped, burning accents.
Harper drew back his hand as if he had touched a red hot poker."The Professor doesn't want me to touch the cutout," he saidhelplessly.
Gault's head hovered over the cutout like a gaunt moon. Itswooped down toward the paper figure, seemed to be studying itsposition on the desk closely. Pillbot watched him for a sign ofhis intentions or wishes.
Harper wandered distractedly over toward the high wall bench. Hehad it! He would distract the attention of the Entity from Gaultby making another cutout. He would then experiment with thatsecond one, without endangering Gault. He'd be careful not tomake this one thin and tall, so as not to resemble the Professorin outline. Perhaps with it, he could trick the Entity intoreleasing the missing part of Gault's body....
He scraped in the bench drawer for the scissors, and started tosheer through a large stiff piece of paper.
A moment later he looked up as Pillbot walked over.
"Gault has some reason for not wanting his silhouette touched,"he said. "Can't quite make out his lip movements, but he seemsafraid some permanent mark may be left on him by his return. Hewants time to figure out--why, what are you doing?"
"I've made another cutout for experiment," explained Harper. "Andthis one doesn't look like the Professor, isn't tall and thin.See--?" He lifted the second cutout from the flat surface of thebench, held it suspended before him.
"This one is short and fat--" Harper halted abruptly, the breathwhooshing from his lungs.
There was no use talking to thin air. Pillbot had been whiskedinto nothingness. Where the portly figure of the eminentpsychiatrist had stood was now nothing, not even a half man.
Too late, Harper realized that when he had lifted the paperfigure from the surface of the bench, the Entity had imitated himby "lifting" Pillbot into the fourth dimension. Belatedly, heknew that the cutout which he held dangling, resembled Pillbot inoutline.
Harper dashed back and forth in little rushes, carrying the paperfigure. He dared not put it down, for fear of seeing some segmentof Pillbot flash back. He did not know what to do with it.
Finally he compromised by suspending it to a low hangingchandelier, where it dangled swaying in the slight air currents.
* * * * *
Gault was watching his assistant's antics with a bleak expressionthat changed to sardonic satisfaction as he realized Pillbot wasin a predicament like his--only more so. Abruptly he frowned,staring ahead, and Harper guessed that Pillbot had locatedGault's torso in the other realm, was nudging him to indicate thefact.
Suddenly Harper knew that he himself must enter this fourthdimensional realm. That strange instinct told him the solution toeverything was there--somewhat as a woman's intuition impels herto act in a certain way, without knowing why.
How to get there? Another paper cutout? He glanced toward theProfessor--the occupied trousers, and swimming above it, theman's head. The head was watching him, the expression savage.
No, there must be no more cutouts, Harper decided. While the fourdimensional entity distinguished between the outlines of a thinsilhouette and a fat one, something in between, like Harper'sform, 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 theyoung man swung his legs onto the desk, then lay down flat. Amoment he lay there, in "Flatland"--then leaped to his feet.
It was as though he had leaped into a different world. He was nolonger in the laboratory. He wasn't on any, floor at all, as faras he could make out. His feet rested on nothing--and yet therewas some sort of tension under him--like the surface tension ofwater.
He was--he suddenly knew it--standing on a segment of warpedspace! There was a spacial strain here that acted as a solidbeneath him!
Harper looked "up"--that is, overhead. There was nothing therebut vast stretches of emptiness--at first. Then he saw that thisemptiness was lined and laced with filmy striations, likecellophane. They bore a strange resemblance to his "doodlings,"as though that strange faculty of his enabled him to somehowperceive this place of the fourth dimension. And instinctivelyHarper knew that these lacings were the boundaries of a vastenclosure--a four dimensional enclosure, the "walls" of whichconsisted of joined and meshed space-warps.
Abruptly he became aware of movement. He became aware of soliditythere above him. And the solidity was in motion.
Harper knew he was gazing upon a being of the fourthdimension--doubtless the Entity that had caused the phenomena inthe laboratory, which had snatched him into the fourth dimension,and was even now observing him with its four dimensional sight!There was a shape above him that strained his eyes, gave hint ofForm just beyond his comprehension.
Harper hardly noticed that Pillbot was beside him, shaking him.He had suddenly grasped a fundamental law of spacial stresses,and he whipped out a pad and pencil, began scribbling down themathematical formula of these laws. He began to see now whyskyscrapers encountered the "stress-barrier" at a certain height.He understood it just as a person of innate musical ability,hearing music for the first time, would understand the laws ofthat music.
"Look out, It's moving, descending!" Pillbot was yelling into hisear. "It is about to act. Became active the moment you got here.How did you induce it to bring you here?"
"Huh?" Harper looked up from his scribbling. "Oh." Harperexplained quickly how he had induced the Being to act on himself.
"That's it!" cried Pillbot hoarsely. "You switched the pattern ofimitation on It--tricked It into bringing you here. That's whatmade it angry--"
"Angry?" Harper almost dropped his pad, clutched at Pillbot asthere was a sudden upheaval of the invisible tension-surface onwhich 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 itsomething to imitate it was pacified. But now it recognizesopposition, an effort to outwit it due to your switching thepattern of imitation. Its condition is dangerous--it's bound toreact violently. We have to get out of here. You must know someway--"
Harper again scribbled some figures on his pad. "As soon as I'veworked out this formula--"
Pillbot shook him frantically. "Can't you understand! ThisCreature is a mental patient of a violent type. We are in a_fourth dimensional insane asylum_!" Pillbot gazed upwardfearfully at a descending mass. "The pattern of its action fitsperfectly," he went on. "Some violent type of insanity, combinedwith delusions of grandeur. Any slightest opposition will cause aspasm of fury. It recognizes such opposition in the way youtricked it into bringing you here. At first I thought it was aprimitive mentality, but now I know it is a highly evolved, butinsane creature, thinks it's Napoleon, wants to conquer the threedimensional plane which its attention has been attracted to insome way--"
Harper looked up in surprise. "Does it know about Napoleon?"
"Of course not, you fool!" screamed Pillbot. "It has theNapoleonic complex, identifies itself with some great conquerorof its own realm. And now it's on the rampage. We have to getout of here--" He clutched at Harper as another upheaval of thesurface threw them down.
* * * * *
Rising, Harper put away his pad. His calculations were complete.He could now show engineers how to build high buildings, takingadvantage of space stress instead of trying to fight the stress.
For the first time, the danger of their position seemed topenetrate to his consciousness. He looked about--and his eyesrested on a strange familiar projection rising from the invisiblefloor a few feet away. It was the section of his clay statue thathad vanished--vanished because its peculiar shape had somehowcaused it to be warped into the fourth dimension!
Why hadn't he been able to move it--Professor Gault moved aboutfreely.
He and Pillbot went over to it, tried to move it. A slight filmywebwork around the