The 4-D Doodler | Page 7

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!
* * * * *

End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The 4-D Doodler, by Graph Waldeyer
*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE 4-D DOODLER ***
***** This file should be named 22227.txt or 22227.zip ***** This and all associated files of various formats will be found in: http://www.gutenberg.org/2/2/2/2/22227/
Produced by Greg Weeks, Sankar Viswanathan, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will be renamed.
Creating the works from public domain print editions means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark, and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports, performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given away--you may do practically ANYTHING with public domain eBooks. Redistribution is subject to the trademark license, especially commercial redistribution.

*** START: FULL LICENSE ***
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work (or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project Gutenberg"),