me to think of them as my own, and I found that many of their
scientific workers were experimenting along lines similar to those
which had brought disaster to Urtraria. I swore a mighty oath to spend
my lifetime in warning them, in warding off a repetition of so
terrible a mistake as I had made. On several occasions I have
succeeded.

"And then I found that my lifetime was to be for all eternity. In the
outer realms time stands still, as I have told you, and in the plane
of existence which was now mine--an extra-material plane--I had no
prospect of aging or of death. My vow, therefore, is for so long as
our universe may endure instead of for merely a lifetime. For this I
am duly thankful, for I shall miss nothing until the end of time.

"I visited planes where other monsters, as clever and as vicious as
the metal ones who devastated Urtraria, were bending every effort of
their sciences toward obtaining actual contact with other planes of
the fifth dimension. And I learned that such contact was utterly
impossible of attainment without a gateway in the realm to which they
wished to pass--a gateway such as I had provided for the metal
monsters and such as that which your friend Tom Parker has provided
for the Bardeks, or spider men, as you term them.

"In intra-dimensional space I saw the glow of Tom Parker's force area
and I made my way to your world quickly. But Tom could not get my
warning: he was too stubbornly and deeply engrossed in the work he was
engaged in. The girl Joan was slightly more susceptible, and I believe
she was beginning to sense my telepathic messages when she sent for
you. Still and all, I had begun to give up hope when you came on the
scene. I took you away just as the spider men succeeded in capturing
your friends, and now my hope has revived. I feel sure that my warning
shall not have been in vain."

"But," objected Bert, "you've warned _me_, not the scientist of my
world who is able to prevent the thing--"

"Yes, _you_," the Wanderer broke in. "It is better so. This Tom Parker
is a zealot even as was I--a man of science thinking only of his own
discoveries. I am not sure he would discontinue his experiments even
were he to receive my warning in all its horrible details. But you, O
Man-Called-Bert, through your love of his sister and by your influence
over him, will be able to do what I can not do myself: bring about the
destruction of this apparatus of his; impress upon him the grave
necess