Gary nodded. "Yes. You understand the operation of the Jovian machinery?"
"Yes, I press this first button ... the green one ... allow fifteen minutes for the motors to warm and the space warp to develop, then press the red button. Right?"
"Right," said Gary. He looked around at his friends, then bent his head in a swift, decisive nod. "Here we go, folks. High, low, jack and game!"
Warren's finger touched the green button.
Nothing happened.
That is, nothing seemed to happen. The Liberty's hypos were cut. There sounded through the ship not even that dim, familiar, whining undertone which was its usual accompaniment of generating speed. There was no sensation of flight, no hurtling shock of acceleration, no grip of suddenly intensified gravity. No intraspatial weightlessness. Nothing.
For a moment the wayfarers stared at each other with speculative eyes. Could it be the Jovian invention was, after all, a failure. Did they still lie in their cradle on Pangré spaceport.
As if to solve this question, Lark O'Day pressed the stud which opened the vision plate to the outer hull. And what appeared thereon finally dissolved all doubts. It was not what they saw but what they did not see which offered clinching evidence of the fourth dimensional drive's effectiveness.
Because it was no spaceport over which they looked, nor jet space spangled with the colorful burning of a myriad stars. Instead, there reflected on the vision plate before them a blank, gray, writhing nothingness. Just that. The soul of an emptiness beyond space and time, beyond color and form and life.
It was a vista terrible to look upon, awful to consider. Gary Lane drew a short uneven breath. "Well, take a good look, folks," he said. "There it is. The world between the worlds. The universe between the universes. The unfathomable fourth dimension."