Miles J. Breuer

“ The grim ranks closed upon the nearest ones. Swords rose and fell, spears thrust, clubbed rifles were borne down. There was more blood, and the bodies of American citizens littered the ground that they themselves had owned and tried to defend.
John and Celestine, paralyzed by the spectacle, came to with a jerk.
"It's time to move," John said.
He swung the car around just as, with a rattle and a roar, a score of chariots dashed out of the great gates and the horses came galloping down the road. The ranks of the infantry opened to permit pursuit of the retreating skirmishers. ”

“ Ione replied, "part of which is Tony's concrete floor, and part of which comes out of some other dimension. This mass of matter is at one end of a long, bar-like portion of space, the middle of which is pivoted in our world, somewhere in Chicago, and both ends of which are free in hyperspace."
"Then," suggested Phil, "why can't we walk down to the axle on which it is balanced, and step out into Chicago?"
"Because there isn't any matter for us to walk on. We are not able to move about in space, in three dimensions, you know. We can only get around in two dimensions, on the surface of matter." ”

“ He had never been up in a plane before, and the novelty and anxiety of it fought with his tense observation of the sliding landscape below. But there was the galley on the river, and three more following it in the distance. There was an army marching along the top of the bluffs down the river, a countless string of densely packed companies with horsemen and chariots swarming around. There were the huge flat buildings in the walled enclosure where Rosalie had stood. Out of the buildings and out of the enclosures, marched more and more massed troops, all heading toward Omaha. ”

“ John, hardened to gruesome sights in the course of his medical work, came away from it trembling, wondering how Celestine would react.
A huge gate swung wide in the wall, and a massed army of Roman soldiers marched out. Bare thighs and bronze greaves, and strips of armor over their shoulders, plumed helmets, small, heavy shields; one company with short swords, the next with long spears; one solid company after another poured out of the gates and marched forth against their attackers.
The Farmers and Indians and other dispossessed citizens opened fire on the massed troops with deadly effect. ”

“ The timids’ blood to freeze;
I haunt their halls, their ruined walls;
I leer from out the trees.
I live alone behind the stone,
Whose gray top reeks with gore;
Each thing that runs my presence shuns—
Alone forevermore! ”

“ Despair, however, is a luxury. Necessity is a stimulus. With the parchings of thirst and the gnawings of hunger, the two young people ceased swearing and weeping. Phil got up and paced about and sat down again. Ione's tears stopped and dried, and she sat and thought. ”

“ John eventually found himself in his bed at about three o'clock in the morning, and even then too exhausted to sleep. Questions kept running through his mind.
The creature's claim that it was a Martian, made things more mysterious instead of less so. It was not possible to transport these hundreds of thousands of men from Mars. And the buildings and chariots and horses. It would have taken an enormous tonnage of vessels, whose arrival certainly would have been noticed. And to think that Mars was inhabited by Roman soldiers was a most preposterous and childish notion. ”

“ Then it occurred to Phil to time the interval between the nebula and the mountain-range. When the exact halfway point was determined, and after several more swings, they could see dimly the windows and machinery of Tony's laboratory flash by when they passed the middle.
"I don't mean to be a crepe-hanger, but how do you know we will stop at the right point?" Phil asked.
"I don't," replied Ione cheerfully. "But mathematics says so. A freely oscillating segment of space would naturally come to equilibrium in a position parallel to the rest of its own space, would it not?" ”

“ The lieutenant looked like a man on the side-lines of a football game. He flew his plane low and gazed breathlessly at the combat below. For it was an exciting one.
The khaki-clad soldiers wanted prisoners alive. But the Roman soldiers understood nothing of the threat of the gun. Rifles and pistols were leveled, but served in no wise to stop them from making a fierce attack on the Americans with swords and spears. To save their own lives, the latter had to stop and shoot the Romans down.
All but a half a dozen armored men now lay flat on the ground. ”

“ Phil gasped, in amazement.
"I'll bet it has, too," Ione exclaimed. "This is the first time it occurred to me that our recoil from throwing the safe overboard and the oscillation of our space-segment must have created a tremendous electrical field in the tetra-ordinate apparatus. The reaction is reversible, you see. The field swings the space-segment, or the swinging of the space-segment creates the field. And the field was too much for Tony." ”

“ The Roman soldiers quailed as they saw the big car hurtling toward them, but they had no time to retreat. The bumper struck the mass of men with a thud and a crash of metal. Dark spatters appeared on the windshield and things crunched sickeningly. The car swerved and swung, dizzily, and John's forehead bumped against the glass ahead of him, but his hands hung to the wheel. The fenders crumpled and the wheels bumped over soft things. Just as he thought the car would overturn, he found himself flying smoothly down a clear road ”

“ They came to the place with the creepers or vines, and Phil reached out and seized one of them. It was heavy, rubbery, and elastic, stretching readily as he pulled it.
"These little lurches that we feel must be the snapping back of the space-puckers as expressed by tensors," Ione remarked. "Every time matter goes in or out of space, the nature of space is altered." ”

“ The group on the roof started in alarm, but the wizened little Haven regained his composure first.
"Who and what are you?" he exclaimed.
"You ask as though you had a right to demand," the metallic voice droned. "But it pleases me to inform you, earth men, that I am a being of the planet Mars. Tired of the monotony of life in our dull world, I decided to emigrate. I came peacefully."
"Peacefully!" exclaimed the lieutenant, but the metallic voice went on as though he had not spoken:
"I harmed no one until your people attacked my walled enclosure and destroyed my defenders. They have suffered. ”

“ The building manager was an efficient man and knew his building and his tenants. He knew, as thoroughly as he knew his own office, that Mr. Parakeet had a medium-sized A. V. & L. Co.'s safe weighing about three tons, that could not be carried up the elevator when Mr. Parakeet had moved in, and had been hoisted into the window with block and tackle. He knew that it was physically impossible for the safe to go down any of the elevators, and knew that none of the operators would dare move any kind of a safe without his permission. ”

“ The last man in the countryside must have been aroused.
The men climbed out of John's car and repeated their order that he drive to Omaha and tell what he saw.
A ragged skirmish line was closing in rapidly toward the big gray wall, that stretched for a mile from north to south. Along the top of it, after the manner of sentries, paced little dark figures. John and Celestine were amazed to see that they, too, were Roman soldiers. The sunlight glinted from their armor; the plumes on their helmets stood out against the sky ”

“ My father has found that by suddenly removing a portion of matter from out of space, the pucker flattens out. If the matter is heavy enough and its removal sudden enough, there is a violent disturbance of space. By planning all the steps carefully my father has succeeded in swinging a section of space on a pivot through an angle of 180 degrees, and causing two portions of space to change places through hyperspace, or as you might express it popularly, through the fourth dimension. ”

“ The lieutenant said to John.
"Me?" gasped John.
"Don't you want to?" the lieutenant asked. "Men are scarce. I need help. You're the closest. And you've got a level head."
"Just give me a chance," John said eagerly.
The lieutenant spent fifteen minutes in a telephone booth. Then they dashed in a motorcycle to the city landing field where the plane lay. They made the short hop to the Army flying field. This all took time; but when they taxied towards the Army hangars, there stood men ready to load things into the plane. ”

“ Phil admitted with that humility which the police like on the part of newspaper men and seldom meet with. "Do you mind?"
"No objection," grunted the sergeant. "Been watching all the old crooks since these safes have been popping. Nothin' much on any of them, except this slippery wop, Tony Costello. No, we haven't caught him at anything. Seems to be keeping close and minding his own business. Working in his laboratory. Ought to make a good living if he turned honest; clever guy, he seems. But he's been too prosperous lately. Lots of machinery delivered to his place ”

“ There was a crack as of breaking wood, and he fell backward, with a wave of nausea sweeping strongly over him. He gazed in amazement at a heavy wooden stick that he held in his hands. The only thing about it that suggested the ball for which he had reached was its diameter. ”

“ John noted that the voice came from a metal diaphragm among the apparatus on the table, to which the cords led from the creature in the jar.
"I cannot understand it. When I planned to migrate to the Earth, I came here and remained many years, studying many men, their bodies, their language, their methods of fighting—fighting was something new to me, and I enjoyed it; we do not have fighting on Mars. ”

“ I devised a suit in which I could stand in your atmospheric pressure, heat, and moisture; methods of transporting the nuclei of my apparatus to the Earth and growing them into proper bulk when I arrived, so that I might carry only very little with me. I was especially interested in devising methods of growing human beings on suitable culture media. I developed men who were just a little larger and a little stronger than yours ”

“ He has succeeded in proving experimentally the concept of tensors. A tensor is a mathematical expression for the fact that space is smooth and flat, in three dimensions, only at an infinite distance from matter; in the neighborhood of a particle of matter, there is a pucker or a wrinkle in space. ”

“ How simple. You remember the little jolts when you pulled at the vines and when you kicked the funny animal? Tensors. Matter and space are so closely interrelated that you can't move matter in or out of space without causing disturbance, recoils, and tremors in space. Those bits of matter were small, and produced only a slight disturbance. It takes about a hundred pounds of lead to swing this segment—"
"Oho! Got you!" exclaimed Phil. "Not so dumb! The safe!"
"Yes. The safe!" Ione cried. ”

“ It fell on the deck and knocked over several men. The lieutenant was putting height and distance between themselves and the galley as rapidly as possible, and rightly. In another moment there was a burst of flame and black smoke. Blotches of things flew out sidewards from it, and a dull roar came up to them. For a few minutes a mangled mass of wreckage continued the galley's course down the river. ”

“ 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 ”

“ With one arm about her, Phil pried again under the safe, knowing that another trip after vines was out of question. Another animal snapped at their heels. For a while, it was kick backwards, then a shove at the safe. Each time the safe moved. The sight of its movement revived Ione, so that she was able to push also. Gradually it acquired a steady motion, pulled by the contraction of the vines; its progress soon became faster and faster. Phil was about to follow it and give it another push, when Ione drew him back. ”

“ They give me the impression of being feeble-minded."
"Good fighting machines," John remarked.
When he got back to his room, the radio was urging everybody to go to sleep and rest. There were guards detailed for necessary night work, and there was no danger. Freshness and strength would be needed tomorrow. But John was too excited following his strenuous day, and knew that sleep would be impossible. He kept on listening to the news from the radio, which was trying to solve the mystery of these Roman hordes. ”

“ Ione smiled and shook her little head in which she had a goodly store of modern mathematics stored away.
"These must be glimpses of other 'spaces' besides our own space. If we could see in four dimensions we could see them all spread out before us. ”

“ They grow by simultaneous fission of all somatic cells."
"So they are not really human?" Haven seemed much relieved at the idea that the destruction might not have been that of human life.
"That depends on what you mean by human," the dried-up Martian said, by means of his machine. ”

“ Canzoni's is a popular firm that rents a quarter of a floor in a big department store, and does a large volume of moderate-priced business. The receipts are stored in a heavy portable safe in a corner of the silverware section until evening, when they are carried to the large vault of the big store. ”