its
path. Distance dimmed it, dwindled it; and in a moment it was gone
into the night.

"We will start," said Tako abruptly. "Sit where you are. There will
be a little shock, much like the transition coming in from your
world." He called, "Tolla, we start."

A signal-dial was on the room wall near him. He rose and pressed its
lever. There was a moment of silence. Then the current went on. It
permeated every strand of the material of which the vehicle was
constructed. It contacted with our bodies. I felt the tingle of it;
felt it running like fire through my veins. The whole interior was
humming. There was a shock to my senses, swiftly passing, followed
by a sense of weightless freedom. But that lightness was an
illusion, a comparison with externals only, for the seat to which I
clung remained solid, and my body pressed upon it with a feeling of
normal weight.

Outside the window, the dark scene of rocks and vehicles and men was
fading; turning ghostly, shadowy, spectral. But it did not quite
vanish; it held its wraithlike outlines, and in a moment began
sliding silently backward. It seemed that we also passed through a
little butte of rocks. Then we emerged again into the open; and, as
we gathered speed, the vague spectral outlines of a rocky landscape
slid past us in a bewildering panorama.

We were away upon the journey.[5]

[5] What we learned of the science of the invisible realm
was perforce picked piecemeal by us from all that we saw,
experienced, and what several different times Tako was
willing to explain to us. And it was later studied by the
scientists of our world, whose additional theories I can
incorporate into my own knowledge. Yet much of it remains
obscure. And it is so intricate a subject that even if I
understood it fully I could do no more than summarize here
its fundamental principles.

The space-transition of these vehicles, Tako had already
told us, was closely allied to the transition from his world
to ours. And the weapons were of the same principles. The
science of space-transition, limited to travel from one
portion of the realm to another, quite evidently came first.
The weapons, the forcible, abrupt transition of material
objects out of the realm into other dimensions--into the
Unknown--this principle was developed from the traveling.
And from them both Tako himself evolved the safe and
controlled transitio