Straighten your legs under you."

We seemed unchanged; Don and Jane were the same in aspect as before,
save the color of their garments seemed to have faded to a gray. It
was the Bermuda hilltop which to our vision was changing. The grove
was melting, turning from green and brown to a shimmering silver. We
now looked upon ghostly, shadowy trees; fading outlines of the
nearby house; the nearby figures of Tako's men and the group of
captive girls--all shadowy apparitions. The voices were fading; a
silence was falling upon us with only the hum of the mechanism
sounding in my ears.

* * * * *

I felt with a shock of surprise that I was no longer seated on the
ground. I seemed, for an instant floating, suspended as though
perhaps immersed in water. The sweep of the ground level was a vague
shadowy line of gray, but my legs had dropped beneath it. I was
drifting down, sinking, with only Jane's hand to steady me.

"Thrust your feet down," she murmured. "A little fall. We want to
land on our feet."

The imponderable ground of the banana grove was rising. We dropped,
as though we were sinking in water. But we gathered speed; we felt a
weight coming to our bodies. At last we fell; my feet struck a solid
surface with a solid impact. Don and I lost our balance, but Jane
steadied us. We were standing upon a dark rock slope, steeply
inclined.

"Off with the current!" came Tako's voice. "The belt switch--throw
it back!"

I found the little lever. The current went off. There had been a
moment when the spectral shadows of my own world showed in the air
above me. But we passed their visible limits and they faded out of
sight.

We were in the realm of the Fourth Dimension. Outdoors, in a region
of glowing, phosphorescent night....

* * * * *

"This way," said Tako. "It is not far. We will walk. Just a moment,
you three. I would not have you escape me."

Our revolvers were gone. Being metal, they could not, of actuality,
be carried into the transition. We had no light-beam cylinders, nor
did we as yet know how to use them. Tako stood before us; he reached
to the operating mechanisms under the dial-face at our belts, making
some disconnections which we did not understand.

His smile in the semi-darkness showed with its familiar irony. "You
might have the urge to try some escaping transition. It would lose
you in the Unknown. That would be death! I do not want th