Hellhounds of the Cosmos, Page 3

transparent substance, ground to a concave surface, through which onecould see an intricate tangle of wire mesh.

  Hanging from the ceiling, directly above the one on the floor, wasanother concave disk, but this one had a far more pronounced curvature.

  Wires connected the two disks and each in turn was connected to therectangular machine.

  "It is a matter of the proper utilization of two forces, electrical andgravitational," proudly explained Dr. White. "Those two forces, properlyused, warp the third-dimensional into the fourth. A reverse process isused to return the object to the third. The principle of the machineis--"

  The old man was about to launch into a lengthy discussion, but Henryinterrupted him. A glance at his watch had shown him press time wasdrawing perilously close.

  "Just a second," he said. "You propose to warp a third-dimensional beinginto a fourth dimension. How can a third-dimensional thing exist there?You said a short time ago that only a specified dimension could exist onone single plane."

  "You have missed my point," snapped Dr. White. "I am not sending athird-dimensional thing to a fourth dimension. I am changing thethird-dimensional being into a fourth-dimensional being. I add adimension, and automatically the being exists on a different plane. I amreversing evolution. This third dimension we now exist on evolved,millions of eons ago, from a fourth dimension. I am sending a lesserentity back over those millions of eons to a plane similar to one uponwhich his ancestors lived inconceivably long ago."

  "But, man, how do you know you can do it?"

  * * * * *

  The doctor's eyes gleamed and his fingers reached out to press a bell.

  A servant appeared almost at once.

  "Bring me a dog," snapped the old man. The servant disappeared.

  "Young man," said Dr. White, "I am going to show you how I know I can doit. I have done it before, now I am going to do it for you. I have sentdogs and cats back to the fourth dimension and returned them safely tothis room. I can do the same with men."

  The servant reappeared, carrying in his arms a small dog. The doctorstepped to the control board of his strange machine.

  "All right, George," he said.

  The servant had evidently worked with the old man enough to know whatwas expected of him. He stepped close to the floor disk and waited. Thedog whined softly, sensing that all was not exactly right.

  The old scientist slowly shoved the lever toward the right, and as hedid so a faint hum filled the room, rising to a stupendous roar as headvanced the lever. From both floor disk and upper disk leaped strangecones of blue light, which met midway to form an hour-glass shape ofbrilliance.

  The light did not waver or sparkle. It did not glow. It seemed hard andbrittle, like straight bars of force. The newspaperman, gazing with aweupon it, felt that terrific force was there. What had the old man said?Warp a third-dimensional being into another dimension! That would takeforce!

  As he watched, petrified by the spectacle, the servant stepped forwardand, with a flip, tossed the little dog into the blue light. The animalcould be discerned for a moment through the light and then itdisappeared.

  "Look in the globe!" shouted the old man; and Henry jerked his eyes fromthe column of light to the half-globe atop the machine.

  He gasped. In the globe, deep within its milky center, glowed a picturethat made his brain reel as he looked upon it. It was a scene such as noman could have imagined unaided. It was a horribly distorted projectionof an eccentric landscape, a landscape hardly analogous to anything onEarth.

  * * * * *

  "That's the fourth dimension, sir," said the servant.

  "That's not the fourth dimension," the old man corrected him. "That's athird-dimensional impression of the fourth dimension. It is no more thefourth dimension than a shadow is three-dimensional. It, like a shadow,is merely a projection. It gives us a glimpse of what the fourth planeis like. It is a shadow of that plane."

  Slowly a dark blotch began to grow in the landscape. Slowly it assumeddefinite form. It puzzled the reporter. It looked familiar. He couldhave sworn he had seen it somewhere before. It was alive, for it hadmoved.

  "That, sir, is the dog," George volunteered.

  "That was the dog," Dr. White again corrected him. "God knows what it isnow."

  He turned to the newspaperman.

  "Have you seen enough?" he demanded.

  Henry nodded.

  The other slowly began to return the lever to its original position.The roaring subsided, the light faded, the projection in the half-globegrew fainter.

  "How are you going to use it?" asked the newspaperman.

  "I have ninety-eight men who have agreed to be projected into the fourthdimension to seek out the entities that are attacking us and attack themin turn. I shall send them out in an hour."

  "Where is there a phone?" asked the newspaperman.

  "In the next room," replied Dr. White.

  As the reporter dashed out of the door, the light faded entirely frombetween the two disks and on the lower one a little dog crouched,quivering, softly whimpering.

  * * * * *

  The old man stepped from the controls and approached the disk. Hescooped the little animal from where it lay into his arms and patted thesilky head.

  "Good dog," he murmured; and the creature snuggled close to him,comforted, already forgetting that horrible place from which it had justreturned.

  "Is everything ready, George?" asked the old man.

  "Yes, sir," replied the servant. "The men are all ready, even anxious togo. If you ask me, sir, they are a tough lot."

  "They are as brave a group of men as ever graced the Earth," replied thescientist gently. "They are adventurers, every one of whom has faceddanger and will not shrink from it. They are born fighters. My oneregret is that I have not been able to secure more like them. A thousandmen such as they should be able to conquer any opponent. It wasimpossible. The others were poor soft fools. They laughed in my face.They thought I was an old fool--I, the man who alone stands between themand utter destruction."

  His voice had risen to almost a scream, but it again sank to a normaltone.

  "I may be sending ninety-eight brave men to instant death. I hope not."

  "You can always jerk them back, sir," suggested George.

  "Maybe I can, maybe not," murmured the old man.

  Henry Woods appeared in the doorway.

  "When do we start?" he asked.

  "We?" exclaimed the scientist.

  "Certainly, you don't believe you're going to leave me out of this. Why,man, it's the greatest story of all time. I'm going as special warcorrespondent."

  "They believed it? They are going to publish it?" cried the old man,clutching at the newspaperman's sleeve.

  "Well, the editor was skeptical at first, but after I swore on all sortsof oaths it was true, he ate it up. Maybe you think that story didn'tstop the presses!"

  "I didn't expect them to. I just took a chance. I thought they, too,would laugh at me."

  "But when do we start?" persisted Henry.

  "You are really in earnest? You really want to go?" asked the old man,unbelievingly.

  "I am going. Try to stop me."

  Dr. White glanced at his watch.

  "We will start in exactly thirty-four minutes," he said.

  * * * * *

  "Ten seconds to go." George, standing with watch in hand, spoke in aprecise manner, the very crispness of his words betraying the excitementunder which he labored.

  The blue light, hissing, drove from disk to disk; the room thunderedwith the roar of the machine, before which stood Dr. White, his hand onthe lever, his eyes glued on the instruments before him.

  In a line stood the men who were to fling themselves into the light tobe warped into another dimension, there to seek out and fight an unknownenemy. The line was headed by a tall man with hands like hams, with aweather-beaten fac
e and a wild mop of hair. Behind him stood abelligerent little cockney. Henry Woods stood fifth in line. They were amotley lot, adventurers every one of them, and some were obviouslyafraid as they stood before that column of light, with only a fewseconds of the third dimension left to them. They had answered a weirdadvertisement, and had but a limited idea of what they were about to do.Grimly, though, they accepted it as a job, a bizarre job, but a job.They faced it as they had faced other equally dangerous, but lessunusual, jobs.

  "Five seconds," snapped George.

  The lever was all the way over now. The half-globe showed, within itsmilky interior, a hideously distorted landscape. The light had taken ona hard, brittle appearance and its hiss had risen to a scream. Themachine thundered steadily with a suggestion of horrible power.

  "Time up!"

  The tall man stepped forward. His foot reached the disk; another stepand he was bathed in the light, a third and he glimmered momentarily,then vanished. Close on his heels followed the little cockney.

  With his nerves at almost a snapping point, Henry moved on behind thefourth man. He was horribly afraid, he wanted to break from the line andrun, it didn't matter where, any place to get away from that steady,steely light in front of him. He had seen three men step into it, glowfor a second, and then disappear. A fourth man had placed his foot onthe disk.

  Cold sweat stood out on his brow. Like an automaton he placed one footon the disk. The fourth man had already disappeared.

  "Snap into it, pal," growled the man behind.

  Henry lifted the other foot, caught his toe on the edge of the disk andstumbled headlong into the column of light.

  He was conscious of intense heat which was instantly followed by equallyintense cold. For a moment his body seemed to be under enormouspressure, then it seemed to be expanding, flying apart, bursting,exploding....

  * * * * *

  He felt solid ground under his feet, and his eyes, snapping open, saw analien land. It was a land of somber color, with great gray moors, andbeetling black cliffs. There was something queer about it, an intangiblequality that baffled him.

  He looked about him, expecting to see his companions. He saw no one. Hewas absolutely alone in that desolate brooding land. Something dreadfulhad happened! Was he the only one to be safely transported from thethird dimension? Had some horrible accident occurred? Was he alone?

  Sudden panic seized him. If something had happened, if the others werenot here, might it not be possible that the machine would not be able tobring him back to his own dimension? Was he doomed to remain maroonedforever in this terrible plane?

  He looked down at his body and gasped in dismay. It was not his body!

  It was a grotesque caricature of a body, a horrible profane mass offlesh, like a phantasmagoric beast snatched from the dreams of alunatic.

  It was real, however. He felt it with his hands, but they were nothands. They were something like hands; they served the same purposethat hands served in the third dimension. He was, he realized, a beingof the fourth dimension, but in his fourth-dimensional brain still clunghard-fighting remnants of that faithful old third-dimensional brain. Hecould not, as yet, see with fourth-dimensional eyes, think purelyfourth-dimensional thoughts. He had not oriented himself as yet to thisnew plane of existence. He was seeing the fourth dimension through theblurred lenses of millions of eons of third-dimensional existence. Hewas seeing it much more clearly than he had seen it in the half-globeatop the machine in Dr. White's laboratory, but he would not see itclearly until every vestige of the third dimension was wiped from him.That, he knew, would come in time.

  He felt his weird body with those things that served as hands, and hefound, beneath his groping, unearthly fingers, great rolling muscles,powerful tendons, and hard, well-conditioned flesh. A sense ofwell-being surged through him and he growled like an animal, like ananimal of that horrible fourth plane.

  But the terrible sounds that came from between his slobbering lips werenot those of his own voice, they were the voices of many men.

  * * * * *

  Then he knew. He was not alone. Here, in this one body were the bodies,the brains, the power, the spirit, of those other ninety-eight men. Inthe fourth dimension, all the millions of third-dimensional things wereone. Perhaps that particular portion of the third dimension called theEarth had sprung from, or degenerated from, one single unit of adissolving, worn-out fourth dimension. The third dimension, warped backto a higher plane, was automatically obeying the mystic laws ofevolution by reforming in the shape of that old ancestor, unimaginablyremoved in time from the race he had begot. He was no longer HenryWoods, newspaperman; he was an entity that had given birth, in the dimages when the Earth was born, to a third dimension. Nor was he alone.This body of his was composed of other sons of that ancient entity.

  He felt himself grow, felt his body grow vaster, assume greaterproportions, felt new vitality flow through him. It was the other men,the men who were flinging themselves into the column of light in thelaboratory to be warped back to this plane, to be incorporated in hisbody.

  It was not his body, however. His brain was not his alone. The pronoun,he realized, represented the sum total of those other men, his fellowadventurers.

  Suddenly a new feeling came, a feeling of completeness, a feeling ofsupreme fitness. He knew that the last of the ninety-eight men hadstepped across the disk, that all were here in this giant body.

  Now he could see more clearly. Things in the landscape, which hadescaped him before, became recognizable. Awful thoughts ran through hisbrain, heavy, ponderous, black thoughts. He began to recognize thelandscape as something familiar, something he had seen before, a thingwith which he was intimate. Phenomena, which his third-dimensionalintelligence would have gasped at, became commonplace. He was finallyseeing through fourth-dimensional eyes, thinking fourth-dimensionalthoughts.

  Memory seeped into his brain and he had fleeting visions, visions ofdark caverns lit by hellish flames, of huge seas that batteredremorselessly with mile-high waves against towering headlands thatreared titanic toward a glowering sky. He remembered a red desertscattered with scarlet boulders, he remembered silver cliffs ofgleaming metallic stone. Through all his thoughts ran something else, ascarlet thread of hate, an all-consuming passion, a fierce lust afterthe life of some other entity.

  He was no longer a composite thing built of third-dimensional beings. Hewas a creature of another plane, a creature with a consuming hate, andsuddenly he knew against whom this hate was directed and why. He knewalso that this creature was near and his great fists closed and thenspread wide as he knew it. How did he know it? Perhaps through somesense which he, as a being of another plane, held, but which was aliento the Earth. Later, he asked himself this question. At the time,however, there was no questioning on his part. He only knew thatsomewhere near was a hated enemy and he did not question the source ofhis knowledge....

  * * * * *

  Mumbling in an idiom incomprehensible to a third-dimensional being,filled with rage that wove redly through his brain, he lumbered down thehill onto the moor, his great strides eating up the distance, hisfootsteps shaking the ground.

  At the foot of the hill he halted and from his throat issued achallenging roar that made the very crags surrounding the moor tremble.The rocks flung back the roar as if in mockery.

  Again he shouted and in the shout he framed a lurid insult to the enemythat lurked there in the cliffs.

  Again the crags flung back the insult, but this time the echoes, boomingover the moor, were drowned by another voice, the voice of the enemy.

  At the far end of the moor appeared a gigantic form, a form thatshambled on grotesque, misshapen feet, growling angrily as he came.

  He came rapidly despite his clumsy gait, and as he came he mouthedterrific threats.

  Close to the other he halted and only then did recognition dawn in hiseyes.

  "_You, Mal Shaff?_" h
e growled in his guttural tongue, and surprise andconsternation were written large upon his ugly face.

  "Yes, it is I, Mal Shaff," boomed the other. "Remember, Ouglat, the dayyou destroyed me and my plane. I have returned to wreak my vengeance. Ihave solved a mystery you have never guessed and I have come back. Youdid not imagine you were attacking me again when you sent your minionsto that other plane to feed upon the beings there. It was I you wereattacking, fool, and I am here to kill you."

  Ouglat leaped and the thing that had been Henry Woods, newspaperman, andninety-eight other men, but was now Mal Shaff of the fourth dimension,leaped to meet him.

  Mal Shaff felt the force of Ouglat, felt the sharp pain of a hammeringfist, and lashed out with those horrible arms of his to smash at theleering face of his antagonist. He felt his fists strike solid flesh,felt the bones creak and tremble beneath his blow.

  His nostrils were filled with the terrible stench of the other's foulbreath and his filthy body. He teetered on his gnarled legs andside-stepped a vicious kick and then stepped in to gouge withstraightened thumb at the other's eye. The thumb went true and Ouglathowled in pain.

  Mal Shaff leaped back as his opponent charged head down, and his knottedfist beat a thunderous tattoo as the misshapen beast closed in. He feltclawing fingers seeking his throat, felt ghastly nails ripping at hisshoulders. In desperation he struck blindly, and Ouglat reeled away.With a quick stride he shortened the distance between them and struckOuglat a hard blow squarely on his slavering mouth. Pressing hard uponthe reeling figure, he swung his fists like sledge-hammers, and Ouglatstumbled, falling in a heap on the sand.

  Mal Shaff leaped upon the fallen foe and kicked him with his talonedfeet, ripping him wickedly. There was no thought of fair play, nofaintest glimmer of mercy. This was a battle to the death: there