here's your answer," said Jim. "Now, what's the alternative?"

"The alternative is, that I have already set the dial to eternity,
Dent," grinned Tode. "Eternity in the fifth dimension. Didn't know I'd
worked that out, did you? A pleasant little surprise. No, don't try to
move. My hand is on the lever. I have only to press it, and we're
there."

* * * * *

Jim stood stock still in horror. Tode's voice rang true. He believed
Tode had the power he claimed.

"Yes, the fifth dimension, and eternity," said Tode, "where time and
space reel into functionlessness. Don't ask me what it's like there.
I've never been there. But my impression of it is that it's a fairly
good representation of the place popularly known as hell.

"You fool, Dent," Tode's voice rang out with vicious, snarling
emphasis, "I gave you your chance to come in with me. Together we'd
have made ourselves masters of Atlantis and brought back her plunder
to our Twentieth Century world. You refused because of a girl--a girl,
Dent, who loved me long before you came upon the scene."

"That's a lie, Lucius," answered Lucille steadily. "And you can do
your worst. There's one factor you haven't reckoned in your
calculations, and that's called God."

"The dark blur on the spectral lines," old Parrish muttered.

Tode laughed uproariously. "Come, make your choice, Dent," he mocked.
"It's merely to press this lever. You'll find yourself--well, we won't
go into that. I don't know where you'll find yourself. You'll
disappear. So shall I. But I'm desperate. I must have Lucille.
Choose!" His voice rang out in maniac tones. "Choose, all of you!"

"Lucille has answered you," Jim retorted.

"And how about you, old man?" called Tode to Parrish.

Parrish leased forward, making a swift movement with his hand. "Go to
your own hell, you dev--"

A blinding light, a frantic oscillation of the Atom Smasher, a sense
of death, awful and indescribable--and stark unconsciousness rushed
over Jim. His last thought was that Lucille's arms were about him, and
that he was holding her. Nothing mattered, therefore, even though they
two were plunged into that awful nothingness of the fifth dimension,
where neither space nor time recognizably exists. Love could exist
there.

CHAPTER XII

_Solid Earth_

"He's coming around, Lucille. Thank God for it!"

Jim opened his eyes. For a few moments he looked about him without
understanding. Then the outlin