Astounding Stories of Super-Science January 1931 Part 30

"I saw men," said Tommy briefly, "shaking clenched fists at an aircraft flying overhead. And Denham and his daughter have hidden the globe behind a screen of foliage."

Von Holtz licked his lips fascinatedly.

"The Ragged Men," he said in a hushed voice. "The Herr Professor called them that, because they cannot be of the people who live in the Golden City. They hate the people of the Golden City. I think that they are bandits; renegades, perhaps. They live in the tree-fern forests and scream curses at the airships which fly overhead. And they are afraid of those airships."

"How long did Denham use this thing to look through, before he built his globe?"

Von Holtz considered.

"Immediately it worked," he said at last, "he began work on a small catapult. It took him one week to devise exactly how to make that. He experimented with it for some days and began to make the large globe.

That took nearly two months--the globe and the large catapult together. And also the dimensoscope was at hand. His daughter looked through it more than he did, or myself."

"He should have known what he was up against," said Tommy, frowning.

"He ought to have taken guns, at least. Is he armed?"

Von Holtz shook his head.

"He expected to return at once," he said desperately. "Do you see, Herr Reames, the position it puts me in? I may be suspected of murder!

I am the Herr Professor's a.s.sistant. He disappears. Will I not be accused of having put him out of the way?"

"No," said Tommy thoughtfully. "You won't." He glanced through the bra.s.s tube and paced up and down the room. "You telephone for someone to repair my car," he said suddenly and abruptly. "I am going to stay here and work this thing out. I've got just the glimmering of an idea.

But I'll need my car in running order, in case we have to go out and get materials in a hurry."

Von Holtz bowed stiffly and went out of the laboratory. Tommy looked after him. Even moved to make sure he was gone. And then Tommy Reames went quickly to the work bench on which were the littered notes and calculations Von Holtz had been using and which were now at his disposal. But Tommy did not leaf through them. He reached under the blotter beneath the whole pile. He had seen Von Holtz furtively push something out of sight, and he had disliked and distrusted Von Holtz from the beginning. Moreover, it was pretty thoroughly clear that Denham had not trusted him too much. A trusted a.s.sistant should be able to understand, at least, any experiment performed in a laboratory.

A folded sheet of paper came out. Tommy glanced at it.

"You messed things up right! Denham marooned and you got nothing. No plans or figures either. When you get them, you get your money. If you don't you are out of luck. If this Reames guy can't fix up what you want it'll be just too bad for you."

There was no salutation nor any signature beyond a scrawled and sprawling "J."

Tommy Reames' jaw set grimly. He folded the sc.r.a.p of paper and thrust it back out of sight again.

"Pretty!" he said harshly. "So a gentleman named 'J' is going to pay Von Holtz for plans or calculations it is hoped I'll provide! Which suggests--many things! But at least I'll have Von Holtz's help until he thinks my plans or calculations are complete. So that's all right...."

Tommy could not be expected, of course, to guess that the note he had read was quite astounding proof of the interest taken in non-Euclidean geometry by a vice king of Chicago, or that the ranking beer baron of that metropolis was the man who was so absorbed in abstruse theoretic physics.

Tommy moved toward the great solenoid which lay askew upon its wrecked support. It had drawn the steel globe toward it, had made that globe vibrate madly, twice, and then go hazy and vanish. It had jerked the globe in each of five directions, each at right angles to all the others, and had released it when started in the fifth dimension. The huge coil was quite nine feet across and would take the steel globe easily. It was pivoted in concentric rings which made up a set of gymbals far more elaborate than were ever used to suspend a mariner's compa.s.s aboard ship.

There were three rings, one inside the other. And two rings will take care of any motion in three dimensions. These rings were pivoted, too, so that an unbelievably intricate series of motions could be given to the solenoid within them all. But the device was broken, now. A pivot had given away, and shaft and socket alike had vanished. Tommy became absorbed. Some oddity bothered him....

He pieced the thing together mentally. And he exclaimed suddenly.

There had been four rings of metal! One was gone! He comprehended, very suddenly. The third mirror in the dimensoscope was the one so strangely distorted by its position, which was at half of a right angle to all the dimensions of human experience. It was the third ring in the solenoid's supports which had vanished. And Tommy, staring at the gigantic apparatus and summoning all his theoretic knowledge and all his brain to work, saw the connection between the two things.

"The time dimension and the world-line," he said sharply, excited in spite of himself. "Revolving in the time dimension means telescoping in the world-line.... It would be a strain no matter could endure...."

The mirror in the dimensoscope was not pointing in a fourth dimension.

It did not need to. It was reflecting light at a right angle, and hence needed to be only at half of a right angle to the two courses of the beam it reflected. But to whirl the steel globe into a fifth dimension, the solenoid's support had for one instant to revolve in time! For the fraction of a second it would have literally to pa.s.s through its own substance. It would be required to undergo precisely the sort of strain involved in turning a hollow seamless metal globe, inside out! No metal could stand such a strain. No form of matter known to man could endure it.

"It would explode!" said Tommy excitedly to himself, alone in the great bare laboratory. "Steel itself would vaporize! It would wreck the place!"

And then he looked blank. Because the place had very obviously not been wrecked. And yet a metal ring had vanished, leaving no trace....

Von Holtz came back. He looked frightened.

"A--a repairman, Herr Reames," he said, stammering, "is on the way.

And--Herr Reames...."

Tommy barely heard him. For a moment, Tommy was all scientist, confronted with the inexplicable, yet groping with a blind certainty toward a conclusion he very vaguely foresaw. He waved his hand impatiently....

"The Herr Jacaro is on the way here," stammered Von Holtz.

Tommy blinked, remembering that Von Holtz had told him he could make a certain metal, the only metal which could be moved in the fourth dimension.

"Jacaro?" he said blankly.

"The--friend of the Herr Professor Denham. He advanced the money for the Herr Professor's experiments."

Tommy heard him with only half his brain, though that half instantly decided that Von Holtz was lying. The only Jacaro Tommy knew of was a prominent gangster from Chicago, who had recently cemented his position in Chicago's underworld by engineering the amalgamation of two once-rival gangs. Tommy knew, in a vague fashion, that Von Holtz was frightened. That he was terrified in some way. And that he was inordinately suspicious of someone, and filled with a queer desperation.

"Well?" said Tommy abstractedly. The thought he needed was coming. A metal which would have full tensile strength up to a certain instant, and then disrupt itself without violence into a gas, a vapor.... It would be an alloy, perhaps. It would be....

He struck at his own head with his clenched fist, angrily demanding that his brain bring forth the thought that was forming slowly. The metal that could be revolved in time without producing a disastrous explosion and without requiring an impossible amount of power....

He did not see Von Holtz looking in the eyepiece of the dimensoscope.

He stared at nothing, thinking concentratedly, putting every bit of energy into sheer thought. And suddenly, like the explosion he sought a way to avoid, the answer came, blindingly clear.

He surveyed that answer warily. A tremendous excitement filled him.

"I've got it!" he said softly to himself. "By G.o.d, I know how he did the thing!"

And as if through a mist the figure of Von Holtz became clear before his eyes. Von Holtz was looking into the dimensoscope tube. He was staring into that other, extraordinary world in which Denham and his daughter were marooned. And Von Holtz's face was utterly, deathly white, and he was making frantic, repressed gestures, and whispering little whimpering phrases to himself. They were unintelligible, but the deathly pallor of his cheeks, and the fascinated, dribbling fullness of his lips brought Tommy Reames suddenly down to earth.

"What's happening?" demanded Tommy sharply.

Von Holtz did not answer. He made disjointed, moaning little exclamations to himself. He was twitching horribly as he looked through the telescope into that other world....

Tommy flung him aside and clapped his own eye to the eyepiece. And then he groaned.