The 4-D Doodler | Page 7

opened in a soundless shout of opposition. Harper hesitated.
"Never mind him," yammered Pillbot. "Press the figure flat!"
Harper pressed it flat.
For an instant the laboratory stopped its ominous vibration. Then the
figure of Gault flew through the air, came up against a wall--but it was
his complete figure.
"More signs of violence," cried Pillbot. "But that action won't appease

It--we must get out of here--"
Even as he spoke there was a thunderous crackling and roaring. Harper
felt himself flying about, and for an instant of awful vertigo he did not
know up from down. Forces seemed to be tearing at him. He felt as
though he were a piece of iron being attracted simultaneously in several
directions by powerful electro magnets.
There was a flare of colored lights, a deafening detonation--and he felt
himself knocked breathless against a wall.
He picked himself up, looked around.
* * * * *
On one side of him was the familiar south wall of the laboratory. To the
north, east and west was--open air. He was standing on a section of
laboratory flooring that jutted out over empty space from the wall. His
desk was a few feet away, right at the edge of the jutting floor. Gault
and Pillbot were picking themselves up to one side of the desk.
The pair looked over the edge of the floor, then recoiled, frenziedly
hugging the flooring under them.
Harper crawled over, looked over the edge, quickly backed away.
Several hundred feet below, the traffic of the city roared!
Gault went over to the door in the one wall, opened it, then stepped
back quickly, his face pale.
"The laboratory has been turned inside out!" he shouted. "We are on
the outside!"
"We must get away from here," squalled Pillbot. "Another spasm of the
creature will precipitate us into the street!"
Gault forgot his apprehensions long enough to freeze Harper with a
glance. "This is all your doing," he bawled. "You with your absurd
doodling, which attracted the attention of some Being of the fourth

dimension!" In his anger, he overlooked the fact that he was
contradicting his formerly held opinion.
"The laboratory wrecked," he continued, "and that isn't all!" He stalked
up to the cringing Harper, thrust his face toward him.
"Do you know," he yelled, "why I didn't want to be returned
hastily--why I didn't want you to bring me back by flattening out the
paper cutout? You dolt, did you ever try to get a crease out of a piece of
paper?"
"I--I don't understand," murmured Harper.
"That paper doll was creased, wasn't it?" shouted Gault.
"Once a piece of paper is creased," he resumed heatedly, "it can't be
perfectly flattened out again. At the crease a thin cross-section
continues to bulge--into the third dimension in the case of that paper
cutout. Into the fourth dimension in my case! I'm creased too, at the
line where I was bent into the fourth dimension! Surely you aren't
blind?"
Harper staggered back as he saw it--a thin, horizontal line of light
shining through Gault's body--across his waistline, through clothes and
all.
"I shall have to go through life this way," Gault snarled, "due to your
imbecilic 'doodling', your meddling with what you don't understand. Go
about constantly with a slit of daylight showing through me. You're
fired!"
"Gentlemen," cried Pillbot. "The entity--we must get away. Another
spasm will surely follow--"
Harper didn't think so. A few feet away he had noticed something--his
statue lying on its side. It was all there, including the portion that had
been in the fourth dimension. The Entity's "landmark" was gone.
Harper didn't believe It would locate this particular area of the third

dimension again.
The scream of a fire siren rose up to them. As a ladder scraped over the
projecting floor, Harper fondly felt the pad in his pocket with the
formula on it. He wasn't worried now about having been fired. He was
seeing visions of a small cottage with Judith....
Of course, he would have to be careful in the future with his "doodling"!
He could not again risk attracting the attention of some four
dimensional Being--not with Judith to think about!
* * * * *

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