ished
waiting, the Herr Professor came out and made signals to me of
despair. By gestures, because no sound could come through the
dimensoscope itself, he begged me to assist him. And I was helpless!
Made helpless by the Herr Professor's own secrecy! For four days and
nights I have toiled, hoping desperately to discover what the Herr
Professor had hidden from me. At last I thought of you. I telegraphed
to you. If you can assist me...."

"I'm going to try it, of course," said Tommy shortly.

He paced back and forth. He stopped and looked through the brass-tubed
telescope. Giant tree-ferns, unbelievable but real. The steel globe
resting partly overturned upon a bank of glossy ferns. Breast-high,
incredible foliage between the point of vision and that extraordinary
vehicle.

* * * * *

While Tommy had been talking and listening, while he had been away
from the eyepiece, one or other of the occupants of the globe had
emerged from it. The door was open. But now the girl came bounding
suddenly through the ferns. She called, though it seemed to Tommy that
there was a curious air of caution even in her calling. She was
excited, hopefully excited.

Denham came out of the globe with a clumsy club in his hand. But
Evelyn caught his arm and pointed up into the sky. Denham stared, and
then began to make wild and desperate gestures as if trying to attract
attention to himself.

Tommy watched for minutes, and then swung the dimensoscope around. It
was extraordinary, to be sitting in the perfectly normal brick-walled
laboratory, looking into a slender brass tube, and seeing another
universe entirely, another wild and unbelievable landscape.

The tree-fern forest drew back and the vast and steaming morass was
again in view. There were distant bright golden gleams from the city.
But Tommy was searching the sky, looking in the sky of a world in the
fifth dimension for a thing which would make a man gesticulate
hopefully.

He found it. It was an aircraft, startlingly close through the
telescope. A single figure was seated at its controls, motionless as
if bored, with exactly the air of a weary truck driver piloting a
vehicle along a roadway he does not really see. And Tommy, being near
enough to see the pilot's pose, could see the aircraft clearly. It was
totally unlike a terrestrial airplane. A single huge and thick wing
supported it. But the wing was angular and clumsy-seeming, and its
form was