ich the
pressure is gradually built up. Twenty-one ... twenty-five ...
twenty-six ... _twenty-seven_.

I waited a moment, conscious only of the faint hum of a generator at the
other end of the room, and the quivering hand of the meter. I turned the
dial back an imperceptible degree, and the hand steadied down exactly
upon the numerals "2700." Then I touched the next dial.

This second dial was no more than a thin disk of hard rubber or
bakelite, with a red scratch-mark on one side. On the panel itself, far
to the right of the dial's zero point, was the red scratch-mark that
matched it. When the two coincided--well, something happened.

I was conscious of a faint glow from above as I moved the dial slowly,
so that its red mark approached the stationary one upon the panel. I
glanced up swiftly.

* * * * *

Each of the little blobs of quartz was glowing; each with a light of
different color. One was a rich amber, one a pale green, one a vivid,
electric blue, and one was fiery red. The intensity of the light
increased steadily as I moved the dial.

I could not only see the light; I could feel it. It beat upon my body;
throbbed all around me. I had a feeling that the mingling rays of light
conflicted with each other.

It seemed to me for a moment that I was growing as light as air; that my
feet were drifting off the floor, and then, as the red line of the dial
came closer to the indicated point, the feeling left, and I suddenly
seemed very heavy. I could hardly support my own weight; my legs were
trembling with the burden; sweat broke out over my whole body; the rays
of light beat down upon me fiercely, overpoweringly....

Desperately, I quickly turned the dial until the two red marks
coincided. A great weight, soft and enveloping, seemed to drop upon me.
The senses of sight and hearing and feeling all left me. I could only
think--and my thoughts were horrible.

Then, suddenly, there was a terrific crash of sound, and my senses
returned.

I looked around. It seemed that an instant before I had been standing
there in Vic's laboratory, slowly turning the second of the two dials,
while the four lights beat down upon my body. And now ... and now I was
standing in the open, on another world. A nightmare world that words
seem inadequate to describe.

* * * * *

The sky was an angry, sulphurous green, pressing low upon a country
utterly flat and nearly ba