I FELT with a shock of surprise that I was no longer seated on the ground. I seemed, for an instant floating, suspended as though perhaps immersed in water. The sweep of the ground level was a vague shadowy line of gray, but my legs had dropped beneath it. 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. “The belt switch—throw it back!”
I found the little lever. The current went off. There had been a moment when the spectral shadows of my own world showed in the air above me. But we passed their visible limits and they faded out of sight.
We were in the realm of the Fourth Dimension. Outdoors, in a region of glowing, phosphorescent night….
“THIS way,” said Tako. “It is not far. We will walk. Just a moment, you three. I would not have you escape me.”
Our revolvers were gone. Being metal, they could not, of actuality, be carried into the transition. We had no light-beam cylinders, nor did we as yet know how to use them. Tako stood before us; he reached to the operating mechanisms under the dial-face at our belts, making some disconnections which we did not understand.
His smile in the semi-darkness showed with its familiar irony. “You might have the urge to try some escaping transition. It would lose you in the Unknown. That would be death! I do not want that.”
I protested, “We are not fools. I told you if you would spare us, return us safely to Bermuda when this is over—”