Wish Mart was here, maybe he could see through it.”
“You don’t wish so half as much as I do!” Margaret exclaimed feelingly.
“Well, anyway, we’ll pretend that Two can’t run off and leave us here. That certainly is a
possibility, and it’s a cheerful thought to dwell on while we can’t do anything else. Now
close your eyes and go bye-bye.”
They fell silent. Now and again Margaret dozed, only to start awake at the coughing
grunt of some near-by prowling hyperdenizen of that unknown jungle, but Seaton did not
sleep. He did not even half believe in his own hypothesis of their automatic return to their
space ship; and his vivid imagination insisted upon dwelling lingeringly upon every hideous
possibility of their return to three-dimensional space outside their vessel’s sheltering
walls. And that same imagination continually conjured up visions of what might be
happening to Dorothy-to the beloved bride who, since their marriage upon far distant
Osnome, had never before been separated from him for so long a time. He had to
struggle against an insane urge to do something, anything; even to dash madly about in
the absolute darkness of hyperspace in a mad attempt-doomed to certain failure before
it was begun-to reach Skylark Two before she should vanish from four-dimensional
space.
Thus, while Seaton grew more and more tense momently, more and ever more
desperately frustrated, the abysmally oppressive hypernight wore illimitably on.
Creeping-plodding—d-r-a-g-g-i-n-g endlessly along; extending itself fantastically into the
infinite reaches of all eternity.
12 REUNION
As suddenly as the hyperland had become dark it at last became light. There was no
gradual lightening, no dawning, no warning-in an instant, blindingly to eyes which had for
so long been strained in vain to detect even the faintest ray of visible light in the platinum-
black darkness of the hypervoid, the entire countryside burst into its lividly glowing
luminescence. As the light appeared Seaton leaped to his feet with a yell.
“Yowp! I was never so glad to see a light before in all my life, even if it is blue! Didn’t
sleep much either, did you, Peg?”
“Sleep? I don’t believe that I’ll ever be able to sleep again! It seemed as though I was
lying there for weeks!”
“It did seem long, but time is meaningless to us here, you know.”
The two set out at a rapid pace, down the narrow beach beside the hyperstream. For a
long time nothing was said, then Margaret broke out, half hysterically:
“Dick, this is simply driving me mad! I think probably I am mad, already. We seem to be
walking, yet we aren’t, really; we’re going altogether too fast, and yet we don’t seem to
be getting anywhere. Besides, it’s taking forever and ever . . .”
“Steady, Peg! Keep a stiff upper lip! Of course we really aren’t walking, in a three-
dimensional sense, but we’re getting there, just the same. I’d say that we are traveling
almost half as fast as that airship was, which is a distinctly cheerful thought. And don’t try
to think of anything in detail, because equally of course we can’t understand it. Try not to
think of anything at all, out here, because you can’t get to first base. You can do it,
physically-let it go at that.
“And as for time, forget it. Just remember that, as far as we are concerned, this whole
episode is occupying only a thousandth of a second of our own real time, even if it seems
to last a thousand years. Paste that idea in your hat and stick to it. Think of a thousandth
of a second and snap your fingers at anything that happens. And, above all, get it down
solid that you’re not nutty-it’s just that everything else around here is. It’s like that wild
one Sir Eustace pulled on me that time, remember? ‘I say, Seaton old chap, the chaps
hereabout seem to regard me as a foreigner. Now really, you know, they should realize
that I am simply alone in a nation of foreigners.’ ”
Margaret laughed, recovering a measure of her customary poise at Seaton’s matter-of-
fact explanations and reassurance, and the seemingly endless journey went on. Indeed,
so long did it seem that the high-strung and apprehensive Seaton was every moment
expecting the instantaneous hypernight again to extinguish all illumination long before they
came within sight of the little island, with its unmistakably identifying obelisk of reddish
stone.
“Woof, but that’s a relief!” he exploded at sight of the marker. “We’ll be there in a few
minutes more-here’s hoping it holds off for those few minutes!”
“It will,” Margaret said confidently. “It’ll have to, now that we’re so close. How are you
going to get a line on those three peaks? We cannot possibly see over or through that
jungle.”
“Easy-just like shooting fish down a well. That’s one reason I was so glad to see that tall
obelisk thing over there -it’s big enough to hold my weight and high enough so that I can
see the peaks from its top. I’m going to climb up it and wigwag you onto the line we
want. Then we’ll set a pole on that line and crash through the jungle, setting up back-
sights as we go along. We’ll be able to see the peaks in a mile or so, and once we see
them it’ll be easy to find Two.”
“But climbing Cleopatra’s Needle comes first, and it’s straight up and down,” Margaret
objected practically. “How are you going to do that?”
“With a couple of hypergrab-books—watch me!”
He wrenched off three of the bars of his cell grating and twisted them together, to form a
heavy rod. One end of this rod he bent back upon itself, sharpening the end by squeezing
it in his two hands. It required all of his prodigious strength, but in his grasp the metal
slowly flowed together in a perfect weld and he waved in the air a sharply pointed hook
some seven feet in length. In the same way he made another, and, with a word to the
girl, he shot away through the almost intangible water toward the island.
He soon reached the base of the obelisk, and into its rounded surface he drove one of
his hyperhooks. But he struck too hard. Though the hook was constructed of the most
stubborn metal known to the denizens of that strange world, the obelisk was of
hyperstone and the improvised tool rebounded, bent out of all semblance and useless.
It was quickly reshaped, however, and Seaton went more gently about his task. He soon
learned exactly how much pressure his hooks would stand, and also the best method of
imbedding the sharp metal points in the rock of the monument. Then, both books holding,
he drove the toe of one heavy boot into the stone and began climbing.
Soon, however, his right-band book refused to bite; the stone had so dulled the point of
the implement that it was useless. After a moment’s thought Seaton settled both feet
firmly and, holding the shaft of the left-hand hook under his left elbow, bent the free end
around behind his back. Then, both hands free, be essayed the muscle-tearing task of
squeezing that point again into serviceability.
“Watch out, Dick-you’ll fall!” Margaret called.
“I’ll try not to,” he called back cheerfully. “Took too much work and time to get up this far
to waste it. Wouldn’t hurt me if I did fall-but you might have to come over and pull me out
of the ground.”
He did not fall. The hook was repointed without accident and he continued up the obelisk-
a human fly walking up a vertical column. Four times he had to stop to sharpen his
climbers, but at last he stood atop the lofty shaft. From that eminence he could see not
only the three peaks, but even the scene of confused activity which he knew marked the
mouth of the gigantic well at whose bottom the Skylark lay. Margaret bad broken off a
small tree, and from the obelisk’s top Seaton directed its placing as a transitman directs
the setting of his head flag.
“Left ‘way left!” His arm waved its hook in great circles. “Easy now!” Left arm poised
aloft. “All right for line!” Both arms swept up and down, once. A careful recheck . . .
“Back a hair.” Right arm out, insinuatingly “All right for tack-down she goes!” Both arms
up and down, twice, and the feminine flagman drove the marker deep into the sand.
“You might come over here, Peg!” Seaton shouted, as he began his hasty descent. “I’m
going to climb down until my hooks get too dull to hold, and then fall the rest of the way-
no time to waste sharpening them-and you may have to rally ’round with a helping hand.”
Scarcely a third of the way down, one hook refused to function. A few great plunging