y are concerned we are just fodder, something to be eaten as
we eat vegetables and cereals or the flesh of domesticated animals.
Perhaps they have watched us for years, watching life on the world
increase, lapping their monstrous jowls over the fattening of the Earth.
They have awaited the proper setting of the banquet table and now they
are dining.

"Their thoughts are not our thoughts, their ideals not our ideals.
Perhaps they have nothing in common with us except the primal basis of
all life, self-preservation, the necessity of feeding.

"Maybe they have come of their own will. I prefer to believe that they
have. Perhaps they are merely following the natural course of events,
obeying some immutable law legislated by some higher being who watches
over the cosmos and dictates what shall be and what shall not be. If
this is true it means that there has been a flaw in my reasoning, for I
believed that the life of each plane degenerated in company with the
degeneration of its plane of existence, which would obey the same
evolutional laws which govern the life upon it. I am quite satisfied
that this invasion is a well-planned campaign, that some
fourth-dimensional race has found a means of breaking through the veil
of force which separates its plane from ours."

"But," pointed out Henry Woods, "you say they are fourth-dimensional
things. I can't see anything about them to suggest an additional
dimension. They are plainly three-dimensional."

"Of course they are three-dimensional. They would have to be to live in
this world of three dimensions. The only two-dimensional objects which
we know of in this world are merely illusions, projections of the third
dimension, like a shadow. It is impossible for more than one dimension
to live on any single plane.

"To attack us they would have to lose one dimension. This they have
evidently done. You can see how utterly ridiculous it would be for you
to try to attack a two-dimensional thing. So far as you were concerned
it would have no mass. The same is true of the other dimensions.
Similarly a being of a lesser plane could not harm an inhabitant of a
higher plane. It is apparent that while the Horror has lost one material
dimension, it has retained certain fourth-dimensional properties which
make it invulnerable to the forces at the command of our plane."

The newspaperman was now sitting on the edge of his chair.

"But," he asked breathlessly, "it all sounds so hopeless. What