The 4-D Doodler, Graph Waldeyer [a court of thorns and roses ebook free .txt] 📗

looked up at a bleat from Pillbot. Above them was a sudden furious play of lights and shades. Vast masses seemed shifting in crazy juxtapositions, now descending rapidly toward them.

"Quick," Harper, now fully aroused, gasped to Pillbot. "Climb down this projection!"

"Climb down it—?"

"Yes, there is a fluid condition of space where it penetrates between the two planes. By hugging its contours you will emerge into the laboratory—I hope!"

Pillbot glanced overhead nervously, then experimentally slid a font down the projection. The foot vanished. With a cry of relief, Pillbot lowered himself until only head and shoulders were visible. Then that too vanished.

Harper looked up. Some monstrous suggestion of Form was almost upon him. He grasped the projection and just as his head sank out of sight the Form seemed to smash down on him.

Pillbot helped Harper to his feet, from where he had sprawled at the base of the statue, on the laboratory floor.

"Quick," he gasped. "The Creature will be infuriated now, by our escape from Its realm. A maniacal spasm is sure to follow. We must get Gault back in some way, then leave the laboratory."

Even as they dashed over toward the abbreviated form of Gault, the laboratory shook. Invisible strains seemed to be bulging the walls inward.

Harper rushed to the desk upon which still reposed the cutout, the section between neck and waist still arched off the surface. As Harper reached toward the cutout to press it flat, Gault's eyes widened, his mouth opened in a soundless shout of opposition. Harper hesitated.

"Never mind him," yammered Pillbot. "Press the figure flat!"

Harper pressed it flat.

For an instant the laboratory stopped its ominous vibration. Then the figure of Gault flew through the air, came up against a wall—but it was his complete figure.

"More signs of violence," cried Pillbot. "But that action won't appease It—we must get out of here—"

Even as he spoke there was a thunderous crackling and roaring. Harper felt himself flying about, and for an instant of awful vertigo he did not know up from down. Forces seemed to be tearing at him. He felt as though he were a piece of iron being attracted simultaneously in several directions by powerful electro magnets.

There was a flare of colored lights, a deafening detonation—and he felt himself knocked breathless against a wall.

He picked himself up, looked around.

On one side of him was the familiar south wall of the laboratory. To the north, east and west was—open air. He was standing on a section of laboratory flooring that jutted out over empty space from the wall. His desk was a few feet away, right at the edge of the jutting floor. Gault and Pillbot were picking themselves up to one side of the desk.

The pair looked over the edge of the floor, then recoiled, frenziedly hugging the flooring under them.

Harper crawled over, looked over the edge, quickly backed away. Several hundred feet below, the traffic of the city roared!

Gault went over to the door in the one wall, opened it, then stepped back quickly, his face pale.

"The laboratory has been turned inside out!" he shouted. "We are on the outside!"

"We must get away from here," squalled Pillbot. "Another spasm of the creature will precipitate us into the street!"

Gault forgot his apprehensions long enough to freeze Harper with a glance. "This is all your doing," he bawled. "You with your absurd doodling, which attracted the attention of some Being of the fourth dimension!" In his anger, he overlooked the fact that he was contradicting his formerly held opinion.

"The laboratory wrecked," he continued, "and that isn't all!" He stalked up to the cringing Harper, thrust his face toward him.

"Do you know," he yelled, "why I didn't want to be returned hastily—why I didn't want you to bring me back by flattening out the paper cutout? You dolt, did you ever try to get a crease out of a piece of paper?"

"I—I don't understand," murmured Harper.

"That paper doll was creased, wasn't it?" shouted Gault.

"Once a piece of paper is creased," he resumed heatedly, "it can't be perfectly flattened out again. At the crease a thin cross-section continues to bulge—into the third dimension in the case of that paper cutout. Into the fourth dimension in my case! I'm creased too, at the line where I was bent into the fourth dimension! Surely you aren't blind?"

Harper staggered back as he saw it—a thin, horizontal line of light shining through Gault's body—across his waistline, through clothes and all.

"I shall have to go through life this way," Gault snarled, "due to your imbecilic 'doodling', your meddling with what you don't understand. Go about constantly with a slit of daylight showing through me. You're fired!"

"Gentlemen," cried Pillbot. "The entity—we must get away. Another spasm will surely follow—"

Harper didn't think so. A few feet away he had noticed something—his statue lying on its side. It was all there, including the portion that had been in the fourth dimension. The Entity's "landmark" was gone. Harper didn't believe It would locate this particular area of the third dimension again.

The scream of a fire siren rose up to them. As a ladder scraped over the projecting floor, Harper fondly felt the pad in his pocket with the formula on it. He wasn't worried now about having been fired. He was seeing visions of a small cottage with Judith....

Of course, he would have to be careful in the future with his "doodling"! He could not again risk attracting the attention of some four dimensional Being—not with Judith to think about!

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The 4-D Doodler, by Graph Waldeyer