is eye to the end of the brass tube he
forgot all caution, all suspicion, all his doubts. He forgot
everything in his amazement.

There was a lens in the end of the brass tube. It was, in fact,
nothing more or less than a telescope, apparently looking at something
in a closed box. But Tommy was not able to believe that he looked at
an illuminated miniature for even the fraction of a second. He looked
into the telescope, and he was seeing out-of-doors. Through the
aluminum casting that enclosed the end of the tube. Through the thick
brick walls of the laboratory. He was gazing upon a landscape such as
should not--such as could not--exist upon the earth.

There were monstrous, feathery tree-ferns waving languid fronds in a
breeze that came from beyond them. The telescope seemed to be pointing
at a gentle slope, and those tree-ferns cut off a farther view, but
there was an impenetrable tangle of breast-high foliage between the
instrument and that slope, and halfway up the incline there rested a
huge steel globe.

Tommy's eyes fixed themselves upon the globe. It was man-made, of
course. He could see where it had been bolted together. There were
glassed-in windows in its sides, and there was a door.

* * * * *

As Tommy looked, that door opened partway, stopped as if someone
within had hesitated, and then opened fully. A man came out. And Tommy
said dazedly:

"My God!"

Because the man was a perfectly commonplace sort of individual,
dressed in a perfectly commonplace fashion, and he carried a perfectly
commonplace briar pipe in his hand. Moreover, Tommy recognized him. He
had seen pictures of him often enough, and he was Professor Edward
Denham, entitled to put practically all the letters of the alphabet
after his name, the author of "Polymerization of the Pseudo-Metallic
Nitrides" and the proper owner of this building and its contents. But
Tommy saw him against a background of tree-ferns such as should have
been extinct upon this earth since the Carboniferous Period, some
millions of years ago.

He was looking hungrily at his briar pipe. Presently he began to hunt
carefully about on the ground. He picked together half a handful of
brownish things which had to be dried leaves. He stuffed them into the
pipe, struck a match, and lighted it. He puffed away gloomily,
surrounded by wholly monstrous vegetation. A butterfly fluttered over
the top of the steel globe. Its wings were fully a y