es,
_out_, into a strange region. I've never been there. I don't know if
there is food or drink there. I hope so, for you'll never get back
here."

Phil stiffened. He determined to leap and risk a shot. But he was too
late. Tony's hand came down on a switch. There was a sudden,
nauseating jar. The laboratory vanished.

There was only the safe, Ione Bloomsbury and himself, and a small
circle of concrete floor extending to a dim little horizon a dozen
feet away. Beyond that, nothing. Not blue, as the sky is. Not black,
as dark, empty spaces are. It suggested black, because there was no
impression of light or color on the eyes; but it wasn't black. It was
nothingness.

PART IV

_Marooned in Hyperspace_

"I suppose you realize what he has done?" Miss Bloomsbury inquired.

"Couldn't be too sure, but it looks like plenty. What's the equation
for it?" Beneath his jocularity, Phil felt a tremendous sinking within
him. It looked serious, despite the fact that he did not understand it
at all.

"He has swung us out into hyperspace, or into the fourth dimension, as
your newspaper readers might understand it, and has let us hang there.
Remember our slip of paper. Suppose X and Y were swung out of the
plane of the paper and allowed to remain at an angle with it. We are
at an angle with space, out in hyperspace."

There was a period of bewilderment, almost panic, in which they both
felt so physically weak that they had to sit down on the concrete and
stare at each other mutely. But this passed and their natural courage
soon reasserted itself. Their first thought was to take stock of what
information they could get on their situation; and their first step
was to venture as close as possible to the queer little horizon which
lay almost at their very feet. It gave them a frightened feeling, as
though they were standing high up on a precipice or tower.

To their surprise, the horizon receded as they walked toward it,
always remaining about a dozen feet away from them. At first they
walked on concrete and then came to a crumbly edge of it and found
themselves stepping on hard, sandy earth. Later there was rock,
sometimes granite-like, sometimes black and shiny. But what they saw
underfoot was nothing, compared with the glimpses of things they got
out in the surrounding emptiness. First there was a vast space in
which a soft light shone, and in which there were countless spheres of
various sizes, motionlessly suspended. The s