ose minds and the
entire foundation of matter, robbed of its regenerative power,
will crumple and slip away like a column of sand...._

His eyes followed down the page:

_Yet this would have nothing to do with matter itself ... but
only with matter's form. For while the mind of man through long
ages may have moulded an imagery of that space in which he lives,
mind would have little conceivable influence upon the existence
of that matter. What exists in our known universe shall exist
always and can never be destroyed, only altered or transformed._

_But in modern astrophysics and mathematics we gain an insight
into the possibility ... yes probability ... that there are other
dimensions, other brackets of time and space impinging on the one
we occupy._

_If a pin is thrust into a shadow, would that shadow have any
knowledge of the pin? It would not, for in this case the shadow
is two dimensional, the pin three dimensional. Yet both occupy
the same space._

_Granting then that the power of men's minds alone holds this
universe, or at least this world in its present form, may we not
go farther and envision other minds in some other plane watching
us, waiting, waiting craftily for the time they can take over the
domination of matter? Such a concept is not impossible. It is a
natural conclusion if we accept the double hypothesis: that mind
does control the formation of all matter; and that other worlds
lie in juxtaposition with ours._

_Perhaps we shall come upon a day, far distant, when our plane,
our world will dissolve beneath our feet and before our eyes as
some stronger intelligence reaches out from the dimensional
shadows of the very space we live in and wrests from us the
matter which we know to be our own._

* * * * *

He stood astounded beside the bookcase, his eyes staring unseeing
into the fire upon the hearth.

_He_ had written that. And because of those words he had been
called a heretic, had been compelled to resign his position at
the university, had been forced into this hermit life.

A tumultuous idea hammered at him. Men had died by the millions
all over the world. Where there had been thousands of minds there
now were one or two. A feeble force to hold the form of matter
intact.

* * * * *

The plague had swept Europe and Asia almost clean of life, had
blighted Africa, had reached South America ... might even have
come to the U