“We are Ato and Wolden,” they said. “Remember us?”
I remembered them from the notes that I had pieced together to tell the story of my old friend, Doctor Jack Odin, and his adventure in the World of Opal. It seemed impolite to tell them that we had never met. So I listened.
“Wolden’s work has succeeded,” the whispering continued. “We have reduced time and space to nothing. You see us as lights, or as we once put it, ‘as flame-winged butterflies,’ but we are neither. We are Ato and Wolden. By adding ourselves to another dimension we are hardly recognizable to you. Actually, we are at our starting point billions of miles away! We are traveling through space toward you at a speed which would make the speed of light look like a glow-worm crawling across the dark ground; and at the same time, we are there in your room. Do you understand?”
I didn’t, but I have learned that a man can live quite comfortably by merely keeping his mouth shut. So I kept still.
My little daughter had been playing in the room before she had unwillingly gone to bed. She had left a red rubber ball upon my desk.
“Look at the ball,” the voices whispered. “We will give you an idea of the time-space in which we live.”
I looked. Suddenly the little ball twitched, vanished and reappeared. I gazed in wonder. It had been red. Now it was white. I picked it up and a white powder rubbed off upon my fingertips.
“See.” The lights whispered. “We have turned it inside out—”
The whispering continued.