Dr. White rose from his chair and strode across the room to confront the other.
“Young man,” he asked, “do you think it possible the Horror might have come out of a world entirely alien to our own?”
“I don’t know,” replied Henry. “I know that some of the scientists believe they came from some other planet, perhaps even from some other solar system. I know they are like nothing ever known before on Earth. They are always inky black, something like black tar, you know, sort of sticky-looking, a disgusting sight. The weapons of mankind can’t affect them. Explosives are useless and so are projectiles. They wade through poison gas and fiery chemicals and seem to enjoy them. Elaborate electrical barriers have failed. Heat doesn’t make them turn a hair.”
“And you think they came from some other planet, perhaps some other solar system?”
“I don’t know what to think,” said Henry. “If they came out of space they must have come in some conveyance, and that would certainly have been sighted, picked up long before it arrived, by our astronomers. If they came in small conveyances, there must have been many of them. If they came in a single conveyance, it would be too large to escape detection. That is, unless—”
“Unless what?” snapped the scientist.
“Unless it traveled at the speed of light. Then it would have been invisible.”
“Not only invisible,” snorted the old man, “but non-existent.”
A question was on the tip of the newspaperman’s tongue, but before it could be asked the old man was speaking again, asking a question:
“Can you imagine a fourth dimension?”
“No, I can’t,” said Henry.
“Can you imagine a thing of only two dimensions?”
“Vaguely, yes.”
The scientist smote his palms together.
“Now we’re coming to it!” he exclaimed.
Henry Woods regarded the other narrowly. The old man must be turned. What did fourth and second dimensions have to do with the Horror?
“Do you know anything about evolution?” questioned the old man.
“I have a slight understanding of it. It is the process of upward growth, the stairs by which simple organisms climb to become more complex organisms.”
Dr. White grunted and asked still another question:
“Do you know anything about the theory of the exploding universe? Have you ever noted the tendency of the perfectly balanced to run amuck?”
The reporter rose slowly to his feet.
“Dr. White,” he said, “you phoned my paper you had a story for us. I came here to get it, but all you have done is ask me questions. If you can’t tell me what you want us to publish, I will say good-day.”
The doctor put forth a hand that shook slightly.
“Sit down, young man,” he said. “I don’t blame you for being impatient, but I will now come to my point.”
The newspaperman sat down again.
“I have developed a hypothesis,” said Dr. White, “and have conducted several experiments which seem to bear it out. I am staking my reputation upon the supposition that it is correct. Not only that, but I am also staking the lives of several brave men who believe implicitly in me and my theory. After all, I suppose it makes little difference, for if I fail the world is doomed, if I succeed it is saved from complete destruction.
“Have you ever thought that our evolutionists might be wrong, that evolution might be downward instead of upward? The theory of the exploding universe, the belief that all of creation is running down, being thrown off balance by the loss of energy, spurred onward by cosmic accidents which tend to disturb its equilibrium, to a time when it will run wild and space will be filled with swirling dust of disintegrated worlds, would bear out this contention.
“This does not apply to the human race. There is no question that our evolution is upward, that we have arisen from one-celled creatures wallowing in the slime of primal seas. Our case is probably paralleled by thousands of other intelligences on far-flung planets and island universes. These instances, however, running at cross purposes to the general evolutional trend of the entire cosmos, are mere flashes in the eventual course of cosmic evolution, comparing no more to eternity than a split second does to a million years.
“Taking these instances, then, as inconsequential, let us say that the trend of cosmic evolution is downward rather than upward, from complex units to simpler units rather than from simple units to more complex ones.
“Let us say that life and intelligence have degenerated. How would you say such a degeneration would take place? In just what way would it be manifested? What sort of transition would life pass through in passing from one stage to a lower one? Just what would be the nature of these stages?”
The scientist’s eyes glowed brightly as he bent forward in his chair. The newspaperman said simply: “I have no idea.”
“Man,” cried the old man, “can’t you see that it would be a matter of dimensions? From the fourth dimension to the third, from the third to the second, from the second to the first, from the first to a questionable existence or plane which is beyond our understanding or perhaps to oblivion and the end of life. Might not the fourth have evolved from a fifth, the fifth from a sixth, the sixth from a seventh, and so on to no one knows what multidimension?”
Dr. White paused to allow the other man to grasp the importance of his statements. Woods failed lamentably to do so.
“But what has this to do with the Horror?” he asked.
“Have you absolutely no imagination?” shouted the old man.
“Why, I suppose I have, but I seem to fail to understand.”
“We are facing an invasion of fourth-dimensional creatures,” the old man whispered, almost as if fearful to speak the words aloud. “We are being attacked by life which is one dimension above us in evolution. We are fighting, I tell you, a tribe of hellhounds out of the cosmos. They are unthinkably above us in the matter of intelligence. There is a chasm of knowledge between us so wide and so deep that it staggers the imagination. They regard us as mere animals, perhaps not even that. So far as they are concerned we are just fodder, something to be eaten as we eat vegetables and cereals or the flesh of domesticated animals. Perhaps they have watched us for years, watching life on the world increase, lapping their monstrous jowls over the fattening of the Earth. They have awaited the proper setting of the banquet table and now they are dining.
“Their thoughts are not our thoughts, their ideals not our ideals. Perhaps they have nothing in common with us except the primal basis of all life, self-preservation, the necessity of feeding.
“Maybe they have come of their own will. I prefer to believe that they have. Perhaps they are merely following the natural course of events, obeying some immutable law legislated by some higher being who watches over the cosmos and dictates what shall be and what shall not be. If this is true it means that there has been a flaw in my reasoning, for I believed that the life of each plane degenerated in company with the degeneration of its plane of existence, which would obey the same evolutional laws which govern the life upon it. I am quite satisfied that this invasion is a well-planned campaign, that some fourth-dimensional race has found a means of breaking through the veil of force which separates its plane from ours.”
“But,” pointed out Henry Woods, “you say they are fourth-dimensional things. I can’t see anything about them to suggest an additional dimension. They are plainly three-dimensional.”
“Of course they are three-dimensional. They would have to be to live in this world of three dimensions. The only two-dimensional objects which we know of in this world are merely illusions, projections of the third dimension, like a shadow. It is impossible for more than one dimension to live on any single plane.
“To attack us they would have to lose one dimension. This they have evidently done. You can see how utterly ridiculous it would be for you to try to attack a two-dimensional thing. So far as you were concerned it would have no mass. The same is true of the other dimensions. Similarly a being of a lesser plane could not harm an inhabitant
