Мюррей Лейнстер: The Fifth-Dimension Tube

Tommy's enthusiastic efforts soon became more than merely enthusiastic. The men of the Golden City remained invisible, but there were strange, half–mad outlaws of the jungles who hated the city. Tommy Reames had watched helplessly as they hunted for the occupants of the steel globe. He had worked frenziedly to achieve a rescue. In the course of his labor he discovered the treachery of Von Holtz as well as the secret of the catapult, and with the aid of Smithers—who had helped to build the original catapult—he made a new small device to achieve the original end.

The whole affair came to an end on one mad afternoon when the Ragged Men captured first an inhabitant of the Golden City, and then Denham and Evelyn in a forlorn attempt at rescue. Tommy Reames went mad. He used a tiny sub–machine gun upon the Ragged Men through the model magnetic catapult he had made, and contrived communication with Denham afterward. Instructed by Denham, he brought about the return of father and daughter to Earth just before Ragged Men and Earthling alike would have perished in a vengeful gas cloud from the Golden City. Even then, though, his triumph was incomplete because Von Holtz had gotten word to Jacaro, and nattily–dressed gunmen raided the laboratory and made off with the model catapult, leaving three bullets in Tommy and one in Smithers as souvenirs.

Now, using the principle developed in the catapult, Tommy and Denham had built a large Tube, and as Tommy climbed along its corrugated interior he knew a good part of what he should expect at the other end. A steady current of air blew past him. It was laden with a myriad unfamiliar scents. The Tube was a tunnel from one set of dimensions to another, a permanent way from Earth to a strange, carboniferous–period planet on which a monstrous dull–red sun shone hotly. Tommy should come out into a tree–fern forest whose lush vegetation would hide the sky, and which furnished a lurking place not only for strange reptilian monsters akin to those of the long–dead past of Earth, but for the bands of ragged, half–mad human beings who were outlaws from the civilization of which Denham and Evelyn had seen proofs.

Tommy reached the third bend in the Tube. By now he had lost all sense of orientation. An object may be bent through one right angle only in two dimensions, and a second perfect right angle—at ninety degrees to all former paths—only in three dimensions. It follows that a third perfect right angle requires four dimensions for existence, and four perfect right angles five. The Tube bent itself through four perfect right angles, and since no human–being can ever have experience of more than three dimensions, plus time, it followed that Tommy was experiencing other dimensions than those of Earth as soon as he passed the third bend. In short, he was in another cosmos.

There was a moment of awful sickness as he passed the third bend. He was hideously dizzy when he passed the fourth. For a time he felt as if he had no weight at all. But then, quite abruptly, he was climbing vertically upward and the soughing of tree–fern fronds was loud in his ears, and suddenly the end of the Tube was under his fingers and he stared out into the world of the Fifth Dimension.

Now a gentle wind blew in his face. Tree–ferns rose to incredible heights above his head, and now and again by the movements of their fronds he caught stray glimpses of unfamiliar stars. There were red stars, and blue ones, and once he caught sight of a clearly distinguishable double star, of which each component was visible to the naked eye. And very, very far away he heard the beastly yellings he knew must be the outlaws, the Ragged Men, feasting horribly on half–scorched flesh torn from the quivering, yet–living flanks of a monstrous reptile.

Something moved, whimpered—and fled suddenly. It sounded like a human being. And Tommy Reames was struck with the utterly impossible conviction that he had heard just that sound before. It was not dangerous, in any case, and he watched, and listened, and presently he slipped from the mouth of the Tube and by the glow of a flashlight stripped foliage from nearby growths and piled it about the Tube's mouth. And then, because the purpose of the Tube was not adventure but science, he went back down into the laboratory.

The three men, with Evelyn, worked until dawn at the rest of their preparations for the use of the Tube. All that time the laboratory was filled with the heavy fragrance of a tree–fern jungle upon an unknown planet. The heavy, sickly–sweet scents of closed jungle blossoms filled their nostrils. The reek of feverishly growing green things saturated the air. A steady wind blew down the Tube, and it bore innumerable unfamiliar odors into the laboratory. Once a gigantic moth bumped and blundered into the Tube, and finally crawled heavily out into the light. It was scaled, and terrible because of its monstrous size, but it had broken a wing and could not fly. So it crawled with feverish haste toward a brilliant electric light. Its eyes were especially horrible because they were not compound like the moths of Earth. They were single, like those of a man, and were fixed in an expression of utter, fascinated hypnosis. The thing looked horribly human with those eyes staring from an insect's head, and Smithers killed it in a flash of nerve–racked horror. None of them were able to go on with their work until the thing and its fascinated, staring eyes had been put out of sight. Then they labored on with the smell of the jungles of that unnamed planet thick about them, and noises now and then coming down the Tube. There were roars, and growlings, and once there was a thin high sound which seemed like the far–distant, death–startled scream of a man.

Tommy Reames saw the red sun rise while he was on guard at the mouth of the Tube. The tree–ferns above him came into view as vague gray outlines. The many–colored stars grew pale. And presently a bit of crimson light peeped through the jungle somewhere. It moved along the horizon and very slowly grew higher. For a moment, Tommy saw the huge, dull–red ball that was the sun of this alien planet. Queer mosses took form and color in the daylight, displaying colors never seen on Earth. He saw flying things dart among the tree–fern fronds, and some were scaled and some were not, but none of them were feathered.

Then a tiny buzzing noise. The telephone that now rested below the lip of the Tube was being used from the laboratory.

"Smithers will relieve you," said Denham's voice in the receiver. "Come on down. We're not the only people experimenting with the Fifth Dimension. Jacaro's been working, and all hell's loose!"

Tommy slid down the Tube in an instant. The four right–angled turns made him sick and dizzy again, but he came out with his jaw set grimly. There was good reason for Tommy's interest in Jacaro. Besides sides three bullet wounds, Tommy owed Jacaro something for stealing the first model Tube.

He emerged in the laboratory on his hands and knees as the size of the Tube made necessary. Smithers smiled placidly at him and crawled in to take his place.

"What the devil happened?" demanded Tommy.

Denham was bitter. He held a newspaper before him. Evelyn had brought coffee and the morning paper to the laboratory. She seemed rather pale.

"Jacaro's gotten through too!" snapped Denham. "He's gotten in a pack of trouble. And he's loosed the devil on Earth. Here—look!" He jabbed his finger at one headline. "And here—and here!" He thrust at others. "Here's proof."

The first headline read: "KING JACARO FORFEITS BOND." Smaller headings beneath it read: "Racketeer Missing for Income Tax Trial. $200,000 Bail Forfeited." The second headline was in smaller type: "Monster Lizard Killed! Giant Meat Eater Brought Down by Rifleman. Akin to Ancient Dinosaurs, Say Scientists."