dlessly, wretchedly. And the man
was unheeding, impatient with her demonstrations. He shoved her aside
as she attempted to interfere with his manipulations of some elaborate
mechanical contrivance at the side of the bowl.

And then there was a sudden roaring vibration, a flash of light
leaping from the bowl, and the materialization of a spherical vessel
that swallowed up the man and vanished in the shaft of light like a
moth in the flame of a candle.

At Bert's side, the Wanderer was a grim and silent figure, misty and
unreal when compared with those material, emotion-torn beings of the
rooftop. The woman, swooning, had wilted over the rim of the bowl, and
the two boys with their strange amphibious pet splashed out from the
pool and came running to her, wide-eyed and dripping.

The Wanderer touched a lever and again there was the sensation as of a
great page turned across the vastness of the universe. All was hazy
and indistinct outside the sphere that held them, with a rushing blur
of dimly gray light-forms. Beneath them remained only the bright
outline of the bowl, an object distinct and real and fixed in space.

"It was thus I left my loved ones," the Wanderer said hollowly. "In
fanatical devotion to my science, but in blind disregard of those
things which really mattered. Observe, O Man-Called-Bert, that the
bowl is still existent in infra-dimensional space--the gateway I left
open to Urtraria. So it remained while I, fool that I was, explored
those planes of the fifth dimension that were all around us though we
saw and felt them not. Only I had seen, even as your friend Tom has
seen. And, like him, I heeded not the menace of the things I had
witnessed. We go now to the plane of the metal monsters. Behold!"

* * * * *

The sphere shuddered to the increased power of its hidden motors and
another huge page seemed to turn slowly over, lurching sickeningly as
it came to rest in the new and material plane of existence. Here, Bert
understood now, the structure of matter was entirely different. Atoms
were comprised of protons and electrons whirling at different
velocities and in different orbits--possibly some of the electrons in
reverse direction to those of the atomic structure of matter in
Urtraria. And these coexisted with those others in the same relative
position in time and in space. Ages before, the thing had happened,
and he was seeing it now.

They were in the midst of a for