w'd they do it?" Red asked.

"I don't know. We don't know how to do it, but it may be that our
scientific progress wouldn't keep abreast of each other. We might know
more than our minus counterparts in some fields, and they might know
more in others. But their special knowledge enabled them to bridge the
gap briefly--long enough to see us, and watch us--"

"And read our books." Red nodded.

"And perhaps learn our language--remember you got slapped."

"I'll watch it," said Red.

"There's no reason why the gap couldn't be bridged. Science and minds
have done a lot of things that looked impossible."

We went to bed on that and all night long I dreamed of negative
universes, with suns like old Sol except that they shone black in bright
heavens and planets of space floating in vacuums of matter. Red must
have dreamed about it too, because he had a question over the dehydrated
ham and eggs the next morning.

"Does that explain the loss in mass for this asteroid?"

"I think it does. Either the method our minus counterparts have in
bridging the gap, or perhaps some sort of space warp that permits them
to do it. At any rate enough of the minus world has been projected
through to our side of the equation to displace the mass of this
planetoid. Our lab scales being haywire might be the result of a being's
nearness to it, or something."

Red didn't digest it all, but I could see he was thinking. "I wonder
what all this has to do with my whiskers," he mused.

We were busy making some further checks on the planetoid's mass later in
the day when Red got a glimpse of the vision I'd seen. Red didn't take
it quietly. He yelled loud and pointed.

I turned just in time to see her fade away. It was the same woman,
dressed the same. But this time she had been a bit more than a vapor.

Red forgot where he was and made a dive toward her. His body shot like a
bullet across the room, skimming over laboratory equipment, and his head
crashed solidly against the telescope.

Red literally bounced back halfway again. Then a long thin arm seemed to
reach out of nowhere and seize him by the jacket and hold him long
enough to stop him.

Red drifted down to the floor, knocked cold.

* * * * *

It had happened so swiftly that I hadn't had time to move. Now I pulled
myself toward Red. The arm was still there in space, and it had added a
shoulder, a rather pretty shoulder. Next there was a body, clothed in