the dust cloud before him, he suddenly realized the source of the other’s renewed strength.
Ouglat was recalling his minions from the third dimension! They were incorporating in his body, returning to their parent body!
They were coming back from the third dimension to the fourth dimension to fight a third-dimensional thing reincarnated in the fourth-dimensional form it had lost millions of eons ago!
This was the end, thought Mal Shaff. But he staggered to his feet to meet the charge of the ancient enemy and a grim song, a death chant immeasurably old, suddenly and dimly remembered from out of the mists of countless millenniums, was on his lips as he swung a pile-driver blow into the suddenly astonished face of the rushing Ouglat….
The milky globe atop the machine in Dr. White’s laboratory glowed softly, and within that glow two figures seemed to struggle.
Before the machine, his hands still on the controls, stood Dr. Silas White. Behind him the room was crowded with newspapermen and photographers.
Hours had passed since the ninety-eight men—ninety-nine, counting Henry Woods—had stepped into the brittle column of light to be shunted back through unguessed time to a different plane of existence. The old scientist, during all those hours, had stood like a graven image before his machine, eyes staring fixedly at the globe.
Through the open windows he had heard the cry of the newsboy as the
Photographers came and flashes popped and cameras clicked. The room was in an uproar. On the rare occasions when the reporters were not using the phone the instrument buzzed shrilly. Authoritative voices demanded Dr. Silas White. George, his eyes on the old man, stated that Dr. Silas White could not be disturbed, that he was busy.
From the street below came the heavy-throated hum of thousands of voices. The street was packed with a jostling crowd of awed humanity, every eye fastened on the house of Dr. Silas White. Lines of police held them back.
“What makes them move so slowly?” asked a reporter, staring at the globe. “They hardly seem to be moving. It looks like a slow motion picture.”
“They are not moving slowly,” replied Dr. White. “There must be a difference in time in the fourth dimension. Maybe what is hours to us is only seconds to them. Time must flow more slowly there. Perhaps it is a bigger place than this third plane. That may account for it. They aren’t moving slowly, they are fighting savagely. It’s a fight to the death! Watch!”
The grotesque arm of one of the figures in the milky globe was moving out slowly, loafing along, aimed at the head of the other. Slowly the other twisted his body aside, but too slowly. The fist finally touched the head, still moving slowly forward, the body following as slowly. The head of the creature twisted, bent backward, and the body toppled back in a leisurely manner.
“What does White say?… Can’t you get a statement of some sort from him? Won’t he talk at all? A hell of a fine reporter you are—can’t even get a man to open his mouth. Ask him about Henry Woods. Get a human-interest slant on Woods walking into the light. Ask him how long this is going to last. Damn it all, man, do something, and don’t bother me again until you have a real story—yes, I said a real story—are you hard of hearing? For God’s sake, do something!”
The editor slammed the receiver on the hook.
“Brooks,” he snapped, “get the War Department at Washington. Ask them if they’re going to back up White. Go on, go on. Get busy…. How will you get them? I don’t know. Just get them, that’s all. Get them!”
Typewriters gibbered like chuckling morons through the roaring tumult of the editorial rooms. Copy boys rushed about, white sheets clutched in their grimy hands. Telephones jangled and strident voices blared through the haze that arose from the pipes and cigarettes of perspiring writers who feverishly transferred to paper the startling events that were rocking the world.
The editor, his necktie off, his shirt open, his sleeves rolled to the elbow, drummed his fingers on the desk. It had been a hectic twenty-four hours and he had stayed at the desk every minute of the time. He was dead tired. When the moment of relaxation came, when the tension snapped, he knew he would fall into an exhausted stupor of sleep, but the excitement was keeping him on his feet. There was work to do. There was news such as the world had never known before. Each new story meant a new front make-up, another extra. Even now the presses were thundering, even now papers with the ink hardly dry upon them were being snatched by the avid public from the hands of screaming newsboys.
A man raced toward the city desk, waving a sheet of paper in his hand. Sensing something unusual the others in the room crowded about as he laid the sheet before the editor.
“Just came in,” the man gasped.
The paper was a wire dispatch. It read:
“Rome—The Black Horror is in full retreat. Although still apparently immune to the weapons being used against it, it is lifting the siege of this city. The cause is unknown.”
The editor ran his eye down the sheet. There was another dateline:
“Madrid—The Black Horror, which has enclosed this city in a ring of dark terror for the last two days, is fleeing, rapidly disappearing….”
The editor pressed a button. There was an answering buzz.
“Composing room,” he shouted, “get ready for a new front! Yes, another extra. This will knock their eyes out!”
A telephone jangled furiously. The editor seized it.
“Yes. What was that?… White says he must have help. I see. Woods and the others are weakening. Being badly beaten, eh?… More men needed to go out to the other plane. Wants reinforcements. Yes. I see. Well, tell him that he’ll have them. If he can wait half an hour we’ll have them walking by thousands into that light. I’ll be damned if we won’t! Just tell White to hang on! We’ll have the whole nation coming to the rescue!”
He jabbed up the receiver.
“Richards,” he said, “write a streamer, ‘Help Needed,’ ‘Reinforcements Called’—something of that sort, you know. Make it scream. Tell the foreman to dig out the biggest type he has. A foot high. If we ever needed big type, we need it now!”
He turned to the telephone.
“Operator,” he said, “get me the Secretary of War at Washington. The secretary in person, you understand. No one else will do.”
He turned again to the reporters who stood about the desk.
“In two hours,” he explained, banging the desk top for emphasis, “we’ll have the United States Army marching into that light Woods walked into!”
The bloody sun was touching the edge of the weird world, seeming to hesitate before taking the final plunge behind the towering black crags that hung above the ink-pot shadows at their base. The purple sky had darkened until it was almost the color of soft, black velvet. Great stars were blazing out.
Ouglat loomed large in the gathering twilight, a horrible misshapen ogre of an outer world. He had grown taller, broader, greater. Mal Shaff’s head now was on a level with the other’s chest; his huge arms seemed toylike in comparison with those of Ouglat, his legs mere pipestems.
Time and time again he had barely escaped as the clutching hands of Ouglat reached out to grasp him. Once within those hands he would be torn apart.
The battle had become a game of hide and seek, a game of cat and mouse, with Mal Shaff the mouse.
Slowly the sun sank and the world became darker. His brain working feverishly, Mal Shaff waited for the
