The 4-D Doodler | Page 3

from seeing us?"
Harper hardly heard the Professor's snort of disgust. This two dimensional cutout in "Flatland" fascinated him. An idea occurred to him. Now, just supposing the....
* * * * *
As Gault and Pillbot argued, Harper grasped the paper cutout, and bent it, "jacknifed" it, creasing it firmly in the middle. Then he raised the upper half so that it rose vertically from the desk, while the lower half was still pressed flatly against the desk surface.
"Now," he murmured to himself, "the Flatlander would appear to his fellows to have vanished from the waist up, because from the waist up he is bent into the third dimension ... so far as they are concerned...."
"E-e-e-e-e!"
At the wavering scream, Harper looked up quickly. Pillbot was staring frozenly in front of him, toward the floor. Harper followed his glance--and saw it.
Professor Gault had vanished from the waist up.
His lower body still stood before Pillbot, swaying slightly, but the upper body was unconditionally missing. From the large feet planted solidly on the floor, long legs rose majestically, terminating in slim, angular hips--and from thence vanished abruptly into nothingness. It was as though the upper body had been sheared away, neatly and precisely, at the waist.
Pillbot stared from the visible portion of Gault to slack-jawed Harper and back again, sweat splashing from his puffy face.
"Why, why really my dear fellow," he quavered, addressing the half-figure. "This--this is a bit rude of you, vanishing in the midst of my sentence. I--I trust you will--ah, return at once!" Then, as the full import of the phenomenon penetrated to his understanding, his eyes became glazed and he backed away.
The portion of Professor Gault addressed failed to give any indication it had heard the remonstrance. Slowly, the legs began to feel their way, like a blind man, about the floor.
Harper stared wildly, white showing around his pale blue irises.
"No!" he bleated. "The Professor didn't do it himself--I caused it to happen. I bent the paper cutout, and--and Something saw me do it, and imitated me by bending the Professor into the fourth dimension!" Harper moaned faintly, wringing his hands.
Pillbot at the moment got little satisfaction from this demonstration of his point about four dimensional life. He glanced fearfully at the half-figure.
"You--you mean to say," he quailed, "that we are under scrutiny by some Being of the fourth dimension?"
"That's it," replied Harper with a whinny. "I--I know it, I can feel it. It became aware of our three dimensional life in some way, and its attention is now concentrated on the laboratory!" He wrung his hands. "I just know something else terrible is going to happen!" He backed away quickly as the occupied pair of pants moved toward him.
His retreat was halted by his desk, upon which reposed two large California oranges, an inevitable accompaniment to Harper's lunch. To him, orange juice was a potent, revivifying drink. Now he automatically reached for one of the oranges, as a more hardy individual might reach for a whisky and soda in a moment of mental shock.
His eyes wide on the shuffling approach of Gault's underpinnings, Harper nervously dug sharp fingernails into the orange, tore off large chunks of skin.
A sudden blur seen from the corner of his eyes pulled his gaze back to the desk. The other orange had vanished.
Phwup!
It dropped to the floor before Harper, but now it was a squashy mess, the insides standing out like petals, the juice running from it.
The other orange slipped from Harper's nerveless fingers, rolled along the desk top. Harper pounced on the squashy thing on the floor, feverishly pushed back the projecting insides, closely examined it. He looked up wide-eyed at Pillbot.
"Turned inside out," he gasped hoarsely, "without breaking its skin!"
Pillbot's expression indicated that the scientific attitude was slowly replacing his former fright. He snapped his fingers.
"Imitation again!" he said, half to himself. He looked at Harper. "When you bent the paper figure this--this fourth dimensional entity imitated your action by bending the Professor. Now, as you started to peel the orange, your action was again imitated--in a four dimensional manner--by this entity turning the other orange inside out."
His voice dropped, as he muttered, "Imitativeness--the mark of a mind of low evolutionary order, or of ..." his words faded off, his expression thoughtful.
More white showed around Harper's eyes. "You--you mean I am being specially watched by this Being--that He--It--imitates everything I do...?"
"That's it," clipped Pillbot. "Because you possess this strange perception of Its realm the Being has been especially attracted to you, imitates whatever you do, but in a four dimensional manner. A Being of inexplicable powers and prerogatives, with weird power over matter, but with a mentality that is either very primitive, or--"
Harper leaped into the air with a yell, as Professor Gault's abbreviated body sidled up to him from behind. As he