whose insulated, interlocking teeth were apparently electrodes—conductors of some
hyper-equivalent of our Earthly electricity. With unmoved, expressionless “faces” the two
visitors floated about the control room, while Seaton and Crane sent out wave after wave
of friendly thought and made signs of friendship in all the various pantomimic languages
at their command.
“Look out, Mart, they’re coming this way! I don’t want to start anything hostile, but I don’t
particularly like the looks of those toad-stabbers of theirs, and if they start any funny
business with them maybe we’d better wring their fishy little necks!”
But there was to be no neck-wringing-then. Slight of strength the hypermen were, and of
but little greater density than the thin air through which they floated so easily; but they
had no need of physical strength-then. Indeed, some little time was to elapse before they
were even to suspect the undreamed-of potentialities inherent in the, to them,
incomprehensible Terrestrial physiques.
Four tridents shot out, and in a monstrously obscure fashion reached past clothing, skin,
and ribs; seizing upon and holding firmly, but painlessly and gently, the vital nervous
centers of the human bodies. Seaton tried to leap to the attack, but even his quickness
was of no avail-even before he moved, a wave of intolerable agony surged throughout his
being, ceasing only and completely when he relaxed, relinquishing his pugnacious
attempt. Shiro, leaping from the galley with cleaver upraised, was similarly impaled and
similarly subdued.
Then a hoisting platform appeared, and Seaton and Margaret were forced to board it.
They had no choice; the first tensing of the muscles to resist the will of the hypermen
was quelled instantly by a blast of such intolerable torture that no human body could
possibly defy it for even the slightest perceptible instant of time.
“Take it easy, Dot-Mart,” Seaton spoke rapidly as the hoist started upward. “Do
whatever they say-no use taking much of that stuff-until Peg and I get back. We’ll get
back, too, believe me! They’ll have to take these meat hooks out of us sometime, and
when they do they’ll think a cyclone has broken loose.”
11 HYPER-LAND
Raging but impotent, Seaton stood motionless beside his friend’s wife upon the slowly
rising lift; while Crane, Dorothy, and Shiro remained in the control room of the Skylark. All
were helpless, incapable alike of making a single movement not authorized by their
grotesque captors. Feeble the hypermen were, as has been said; but at the first tensing
of a human muscle in revolt there shot from the insulated teeth of the grappling
hypertrident such a terrific surge of unbearably poignant torture that any thought of
resistance was out of the question.
Even Seaton-fighter by instinct though he was, and reckless as he was and desperate at
the thought of being separated from his beloved Dorothy-had been able to endure only
three such shocks. The unimaginable anguish of the third rebuke, a particularly vicious
and long-continued wrenching and wringing of the most delicate nerve centers of his
being, had left him limp and quivering. He was still furious, still bitterly humiliated. His
spirit was willing, but he was physically unable to drive his fiendishly tortured body to
further acts of rebellion.
Thus it was that the improvised elevator of the hypermen carried two docile captives as it
went past not through the spherical arenak shell of Skylark Two and up the mighty well
which the vessel had driven in its downward plunge. The walls of that pit were glassily
smooth; or, more accurately, were like slag; as though the peculiarly unsubstantial rock
of the hyper planet had been actually melted by the force of the cruiser’s descent, easy
and gradual as the fall had seemed to the senses of the Terrestrials.
It was apparent also that the hypermen were having difficulty in lifting the, to them,
tremendous weight of the two human bodies. The platform would go up a few feet, then
pause. Up and pause, up and pause; again and again. But at last they reached the top of
the well, and, wretched as he was, Seaton had to grin when he perceived that they were
being hoisted by a derrick, whose over-driven engine, attended though it was by a
veritable corps of mechanics, could lift them only a few feet at a time. Coughing and
snorting, it ran slower and slower until, released from the load, it burst again into free
motion to build up sufficient momentum to lift them another foot or so.
And all about the rim of that forty-foot well there were being erected other machines.
Trusses were rising into the air, immense chains were being forged, and additional
motors were being assembled. It was apparent that the Skylark was to be raised; and it
was equally evident that to the hypermen that raising presented an engineering problem
of no small magnitude.
“She’ll be right here when we get back, Peg, as far as those jaspers are concerned,”
Seaton informed his companion. “If they have to slip their clutches to lift the weight of just
us two, they’ll have one sweet job getting the old Skylark back up here. They haven’t got
the slightest idea of what they’re tackling-they can’t begin to pile enough of that kind of
machinery in this whole part of the country to budge her.”
“You speak as though you were quite certain of our returning,” Margaret spoke
somberly. “I wish that I could feel that way.”
“Sure I’m certain of it,” Seaton assured her. “I’ve got it all figured out. Nobody can
maintain one hundred per cent vigilance forever, and as soon as I get back into shape
from that last twisting they gave me, I’ll be fast enough to take advantage of the break
when it comes.”
“Yes, but suppose it doesn’t come?”
“It’s bound to come sometime. The only thing that bothers me is that I can’t even guess
at when we’re due to snap back into our own three-dimensional space. Since we couldn’t
detect any motion in an ether wave, though, I imagine that we’ll have lots of time,
relatively speaking, to get back here before the Skylark leaves. Ah! I wondered if they
were going to make us walk to wherever it is they’re taking us, but I see we ride-there
comes something that must be an airship. Maybe we can make our break now instead of
later.”
But the hyperman did not relax his vigilance for an instant as the vast, vague bulk of the
flier hovered in the air beside their elevator. A port opened, a short gangplank shot out,
and under the urge of the punishing tridents the two human beings stepped aboard. A
silent flurry ensued among the weird crew of the vessel as its huge volume sank
downward under the unheard-of-mass of the two captives, but no opportunity was
afforded for escape-the gripping tridents did not relax, and at last the amazed officers
succeeded in driving their motors sufficiently to lift the prodigious load into the air of the
hyper planet.
“Take a good long look around, Peg, so that you can help find our way back,” Seaton
directed, and pointed out through the peculiarly transparent wall of their conveyance.
“See those three peaks over there, the only hills in sight? Our course is about twelve or
fifteen degrees off the line of the right-hand two-and there’s something that looks like a
river down below us. The bend there is just about on line-see anything to mark it by?”
“Well, there’s a funny-looking island, kind of heart-shaped, with a reddish-colored spire of
rock–see it?”
“Fine-we ought to be able to recognize that. Bend, heart-island, red obelisk on what we’ll
call the upstream end. Now from here, what? Oh, we’re turning-going upstream. Fine
business! Now we’ll have to notice when and where we leave this river, lake, or whatever
it is.”
They did not, however, leave the course of the water. For hundreds of miles, apparently,
it was almost perfectly straight, and for hours the airship of the hypermen bored through
the air only a few hundred feet above its gleaming surface. Faster and faster the
hypership flew onward, until it became a whistling, yelling projectile, tearing its way at a
terrific but constant velocity through the complaining air.
But while that which was beneath them was apparently the fourth dimensional
counterpart of an Earthly canal, neither water nor landscape was in any sense familiar.
No sun was visible, nor moon, nor the tiniest twinkling star. Where the heavens should
have been there was merely a void of utter, absolute black, appalling in its
uncompromising profundity. Indeed, the Terrestrials would have thought themselves blind
were it not for the forbidding, Luciferean vegetation which, self-luminous with a ghastly
bluish-violet pseudo-light, extended outward-flat-in every direction to infinity.
“What’s the matter with it, Dick?” demanded Margaret, shivering. “It’s horrible, awful,
unsettling. Surely anything that is actually seen must be capable of description? Put this .
. .” Her voice died away.
“Ordinarily, three-dimensionally, yes; but this, no,” Seaton assured her. “Remember that