"Murray Leinster - The.Fifth-Dimension.Tube" - читать интересную книгу автора (Leinster Murray)

of that incredible world. Insects, birds, and at last a cat had made the journey unharmed, and he
had built a steel globe in which to attempt the journey in person. His daughter Evelyn had
demanded to accompany him, and he believed it safe. The trip had been made in security, but return
was another matter. A laboratory assistant, Von Holtz, had sent them into the Fifth Dimension,
only to betray them. One King Jacaro, lord of Chicago racketeers, was convinced by him of the
existence of the golden city of that other world, and that it was full of delectable loot. He
offered a bribe past envy for the secret of Denhamâs apparatus. And Von Holtz had removed the
apparatus for Denhamâs return before working the catapult to send him on his strange journey. He
wanted to be free to sell full privileges of rapine and murder to Jacaro.
The result was unexpected. Von Holtz could not unravel the secret of the catapult he
himself had operated. He could not sell the secret for which he had committed a crime. In
desperation he called in Tommy Reames÷rather more than an amateur in mathematical physics÷showed
him Evelyn and her father marooned in a tree-fern jungle, and hypocritically asked for aid.
Tommyâs enthusiastic efforts soon became more than merely enthusiastic. The men of the
Golden City remained invisible, but there were strange, half-mad outlaws of the jungles who hated
the city. Tommy Reames had watched helplessly as they hunted for the occupants of the steel globe.
He had worked frenziedly to achieve a rescue. In the course of his labor he discovered the
treachery of Von Holtz as well as the secret of the catapult, and with the aid of Smithers÷who had
helped to build the original catapult÷he made a new small device to achieve the original end.

THE whole affair came to an end on one mad afternoon when the Ragged Men captured first an
inhabitant of the Golden City, and then Denham and Evelyn in a forlorn attempt at rescue. Tommy
Reames went mad. He used a tiny sub-machine gun upon the Ragged Men through the model magnetic
catapult he had made, and contrived communication with Denham afterward. Instructed by Denham, he
brought about the return of father and daughter to Earth just before Ragged Men and Earthlings
alike would have perished in a vengeful gas cloud from the Golden City. Even then, though, his
triumph was incomplete because Von Holtz had gotten word to Jacaro, and nattily-dressed gunmen
raided the laboratory and made off with the model catapult, leaving three bullets in Tommy and one
in Smithers as souvenirs.
Now, using the principle developed in the catapult, Tommy and Denham had built a large


file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20E-books/The.Fifth-Dimension.Tube.txt (2 of 35) [12/28/2004 4:43:56 PM]
 file:///C|/2590%20Sci-Fi%20and%20Fantasy%20E-books/The.Fifth-Dimension.Tube.txt

Tube, and as Tommy climbed along its corrugated interior he knew a good part of what he should
expect at the other end. A steady current of air blew past him. It was laden with a myriad
unfamiliar scents. The Tube was a tunnel from one set of dimensions to another, a
permanent way from Earth to a strange, carboniferous-period planet on which a monstrous dull-red
sun shone hotly. Tommy should come out into a tree-fern forest whose lush vegetation would hide
the sky, and which furnished a lurking place not only for strange reptilian monsters akin to those
of the longdead past of Earth, but for the bands of ragged, half-mad human beings who were outlaws
from the civilization of which Denham and Evelyn had seen proofs.

TOMMY reached the third bend in the Tube. By now he had lost all sense of orientation. An object
may be bent through one right angle only in two dimensions, and a second perfect right angle÷at
ninety degrees to all former paths÷ only in three dimensions. It follows that a third perfect
right angle requires four dimensions for existence, and four perfect right angles five. The Tube
bent itself through four perfect right angles, and since no human being can ever have experience
of more than three dimensions, plus time, it followed that Tommy was experiencing other dimensions