Ray Cummings

“ I was drifting down, sinking, with only Jane’s hand to steady me.
“Thrust your feet down,” she murmured. “A little fall. We want to land on our feet.”
The imponderable ground of the banana grove was rising. We dropped, as though we were sinking in water. But we gathered speed; we felt a weight coming to our bodies. At last we fell; my feet struck a solid surface with a solid impact. Don and I lost our balance, but Jane steadied us. We were standing upon a dark rock slope, steeply inclined.
“Off with the current!” came Tako’s voice. ”

“ No one could realize how vastly interwoven are a million activities which make life in a great city comfortable and safe until something goes wrong! And one wrong thing so swiftly affects another! As though in a vastly intricate mechanism little cogs were breaking, and the breaks spreading until presently the giant fly-wheels could no longer turn.
If the startled Federal and State officials could have foreseen even the events of the next forty-eight hours they would have wanted New York City deserted of the population. ”

“ Like a projectile we sped level, unswerving. And at last the shadows of the landscape came up again. And occasionally we saw shadowy inhabited domains—enclosing walls around water and vegetation, with a frowning castle and its brood of mound-shaped little houses like baby chicks clustered around the mother hen.
Tako served us with a meal; it was strange food, but our hunger made it palatable. Jane and Tolla remained in their nearby cabin. We did not see them, but occasionally Don or I, ignoring Tako’s frown, called out to Jane, and received her ready answer. ”

“ THERE were two young men in a monoplane which had helplessly circled over mid-Manhattan. They saw the city fall, and noticed the lurking wraiths untouched amid the ruins and in the air overhead. And they saw, when it was over, that one great building very strangely had escaped. The Empire State, rearing its tower high into the serene moonlight above the wreckage and the rising layers of smoke, stood unscathed in the very heart of Manhattan. The lone survivor, standing there with the moonlight shining upon its top, and the smoke gathering black around its spreading base. ”

“ I have always felt that the glittering luxury of a large harem is in truth a very empty measure of man’s greatness. For Tako there will be more manly things. The power of leadership—the power to rule my world. When I got that idea, it occurred to me also that for a man like me there might be some one woman—to stand alone by my side and rule our world. ”

“ The shadow of a frown came upon Tolla’s face; a glint of fire clouded her pale, serene eyes.
“He will be the greatest man of his world,” she said quietly.
THERE was an awkward silence. “The harem, I am told,” Jane said presently, “is one of your customs.” She took a plunge. “And Tako told us why they want our Earth girls. There was one of my friends stolen from Bermuda—”
“And yet you call him very nice,” Tolla interrupted with sudden irony. “Girls are frank in our world. But you are not. ”

“ Bermuda was seething with terror. Every police station was deluged with reports of the ghostly apparitions. The white figures of men—in many instances, several figures together—had been seen during the night in every part of the islands. A little band of wraiths had marched down the deserted main street of Hamilton. It was nearly dawn. A few colored men, three or four roistering visitors, and two policemen had seen them. They had appeared down at the docks and had marched up the slope of the main street.
The stories of eye-witnesses to any strange event always are contradictory. ”

“ He thinks he will make you love him as I love him. As I love him! And what does he know of that! What woman’s love can mean!”
“Tolla! Don’t be foolish. I didn’t—I never had any desire to—”
“What do your desires concern me? He thinks he will win you with tales of his conquests! A great man, this Tako, because he will devastate New York!”
This was the fury of a woman scorned. She was wholly beside herself, her words tumbling, incoherent, beyond her will, beyond her realization of what she was saying.
“A great conquest to make you love him! With his giant projector he will subdue New York! Hah! ”

“ But now came a new realization. “Don! That’s another world down there! Another realm! The fourth dimension—that’s what it is! These things everybody’s calling ghosts—it’s the fourth dimension, Don! People of the fourth dimension coming out to attack us!”
And already the real menace had come! At that moment, half a mile away across the harbor on the slope of the little hill in Paget, an army of the White Invaders suddenly materialized, with dull, phosphorescent-green light-beams flashing around the countryside, melting trees and vegetation and people into nothingness! ”

“ Jane said carefully, “I suppose I was captured with the idea of going into someone’s harem. Was that the idea?”
“I am no judge of men’s motives,” said Tolla curtly.
“Tako said as much as that,” Jane persisted. “But not necessarily into his harem. But if it should be his, why would you care? Your men divide their love—”
“I would care because Tako may give up his harem,” Tolla interrupted vehemently. “He goes into this conquest for power—for wealth—because soon he expects to rule all our world and band it together into a nation. ”

“ We caught with the beam that marching line of apparitions beneath the ground surface—a section of Tako’s army which was advancing upon Westchester. The city streets over them surged upward. And some we caught under the rivers and within the waters of the bay, and the waters heaved and lashed into turmoil.
Then we turned the beam into the air. The apparitions lost contact with their invisible mountain peaks. And with sudden solidity, the gravity of our world pulled at them. They fell. Solid men’s bodies, falling with the moonlight on them. Dark blobs turning end over end ”

“ Tako said. “You will have to explain what weapons will be used against me. Particularly the long-range weapons are interesting. But you have no weapons which could penetrate into the shadows of the borderland, have you?”
“No,” said Don. “But your weapons—” He tried not to seem too intent. “Look here, Tako, I don’t just understand how you intend to conquer New York.”
“Devastate it,” Tako interrupted. “Smash it up, and then we can materialize and take possession of it. My object is to capture a great number of young women—beautiful young women.” ”

“ Beautiful girls were scarce. Raids were made by one lord upon the village and harem of another.
Then had come to Tako the discovery of the great world of our Earth, occupying much of this same space in another state of matter.
“I discovered it,” he said with his gaze upon Jane.
“How?” Don demanded.
“It came,” he said, “out of our scientific method of transportation, which very soon I will show you. We are a scientific people. Hah!” He laughed ironically. “The workers say that we princes are profligate—that we think only of women and music. ”

“ Georges, that this Tako was a ghost. How could one say but that all or most manifestations of the occult were not something like this. The history of our Earth abounds with superstition. Ghosts—things unexplained. How can one tell but that all occultism is merely unknown science? Doubtless it is. I can fancy now that in the centuries of the past many scientists of this realm of the Fourth Dimension ventured forth a little way toward our world. And seeing them, we called them ghosts. ”

“ ANOTHER ten minutes. We were advancing with the utmost caution. The cedar grove was almost black. Then we came to the end of it. There was a winding road and two white houses a hundred feet or so apart. And beyond the houses was a stretch of open field, strangely denuded of vegetation.
“There they are, Bob!” Don sank to the ground with me beside him. We crouched, revolvers in hand, gazing at the strange scene. The field had been a cedar grove, but all the vegetation now was gone, leaving only the thin layer of soil and the outcropping patches of Bermuda’s famous blue-gray rock. ”

“ And last night he had followed us to the Fort Beach. And again to-night in the restaurant he had been watching Jane. These men who had captured Jane now might very well carry her to Paget and hand her over to their leader, this giant Tako.
A frenzy of desperation was upon Don and me at the thought.
“But what shall we do?” I whispered.
“Get away from these soldiers, Bob. We’ve got our revolvers. We’ll ride over there to Paget—just the two of us. It’s our best chance that way. Creep up and see what’s over there. And if Jane is there, we’ve got to get her, Bob—get her some way, somehow.” ”

“ Dorrance sat with a number of the officials, Don, Jane, and I could see across the harbor and to the ridge where the enemy was operating. It was not much over two miles from us. The huge, slightly flattened moon had risen. The bay and the distant little hills were flooded with its light. We could see, off on the ridge-top, the tiny flashing green beams. But there was no sound save the turmoil of the excited little city around us.
“They don’t seem to be moving,” Don murmured. “They’re right where they were first reported.” ”

“ He waved aside the men with imperious commands. “Come, we will join this girl of yours. She is very pretty, is she not? And like you—not cowardly. I have not been able to make her talk at all.”
The dawn of this momentous night was at hand when, with the networks of wires and disks properly adjusted upon us, Tako took Jane, Don and me with him into the Fourth Dimension.
Strange transition! Strange and diabolical plot which now was unfolded to us! Strangely fantastic, weird journey from this Bermuda hilltop through the Unknown to the city of New York! ”

“ Obviously not Don’s voice, but his movement, had stopped it. We left the path and climbed about ten feet up the broken cliff-side. The figure was at our level now, but it was within the rocks. We were close enough now to see other details: a man’s white face, with heavy black brows, heavy features; a stalwart, giant figure, six and a half feet at the least. The white garment could have been of woven metal. I saw black, thread-like wires looped along the arms, over the shoulders, down the sides of the muscular naked legs. There seemed, at the waist, a dial-face, with wires running into it. ”

“ The dead come to life as living wraiths? A ghost could not materialize and kidnap a girl of flesh and blood. Or could it? Hysterical speculation! Or were these invaders from another planet?
Whatever their nature, they were enemies. That much we knew.
Night fell upon the crowded turmoil of the little city of Hamilton. The streets were thronged with excited, frightened people. The public park was jammed. The hotels and the restaurants were crowded. Groups of soldiers and police on bicycles with electric torches fastened to their handlebars were passing at intervals. ”