e stands between them
and utter destruction."

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

"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 war
correspondent."

"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 sorts
of oaths it was true, he ate it up. Maybe you think that story didn't
stop 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 a
precise manner, the very crispness of his words betraying the excitement
under which he labored.

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

In a line stood the men who were to fling themselves into the light to
be warped into another dimension, there to seek out and fight an unknown
enemy. The line was headed by a tall man with hands like hams, with a
weather-beaten face and a wild mop of hair. Behind him stood a
belligerent little cockney. Henry Woods stood fifth in line. They were a
motley lot, adventurers every one of them, and some were obviously
afraid as they stood before that column of light, with only a few
seconds of the third dimension left to them. They had answered a weird
advertisement, 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 less
unusual, jobs.

"Five seconds," snapped George.

The lever was all the way over now. Th