“Hello,” Binney remarked tentatively.
“Hi,” the girl returned companionably. “You’re just in time. Office closes at noon Saturdays.”
“Swell,” said Binney. “Would you like to—uh—have lunch with me?”
“I’m so sorry, Joe. Tim’s taking me to Coney.” Susan’s face softened at Binney’s crestfallen look. “Why not come along? You can rent a suit.”
“Thanks,” the salesman nodded, and went into the inner office, after a discreet knock. Presently he came out, looking unhappy.
“What’s the matter?” Susan asked sympathetically.
“Oh, nothing. Lost a big order, that’s all. Dennler said I—I—” Binney gulped.
Dennler had, apparently, said plenty, including the plain fool tricks of vanishing salesmen, and the dangers of sudden shock to a man with a weak heart and high blood pressure.
Binney had not dared mention his forthcoming promotion. But the boss had. It was no longer forthcoming.
He tried to forget his grief at Coney. But even there the unpleasant Tim Blake was a thorn in his side. Binney’s rented bathing suit sagged disconsolately on his lean form, while Blake had apparently been poured into his. He bulged with muscles.
Glumly, Binney swam out past the breakers. Swimming was the only thing in which he excelled. As a youth he had won medals for it. His thin body cut through the water with surprising speed and grace.
Susan, however, had a new suit and didn’t care to get it wet. Blake lounged beside her on the sands, grinning fatuously. Binney finally grew resentful enough to challenge Blake to a swim. The latter hesitated, but, after a glance at Susan, agreed.
THERE was method in Binney’s plan. He swam rapidly but not too rapidly, keeping pace with his competitor. Whenever Blake tired, Binney encouraged him. And, at last, the two reached a raft far out to sea. Blake drew himself up, gasping and panting. Thereupon Binney turned around and swam rapidly back to shore, certain of a brief respite before his enemy could muster his strength. Grinning, he disregarded Blake’s furious cries.
But there was little chance to talk quietly to Susan on the beach at Coney. When the girl suggested that they dress, Binney was willing, for he noticed an angry spark in Susan’s eyes as she glanced out to sea where Blake, invisible at the distance, clung to his raft. Later, however, Binney had reason to regret his rashness....
He was strolling along the boardwalk with Susan, toward the station, when a brawny figure in a bathing suit confronted him. Blake’s handsome face was contorted with fury. He expressed his intention of tearing Binney apart and scattering him to the winds.
“Oh, be quiet, you big bully,” Susan said. “Going off and leaving me like that—”
“Sure,” Binney snapped, heartened. “Go chase yourself.”
Thereupon, with a maddened roar, Blake demonstrated the usefulness of kinetic energy by planting his fist on Binney’s lean chest. The latter was hurled back, but scrambled up immediately, glaring. If Susan had not been there, he might have been sensible enough to run. But, instead, Binney ducked under Blake’s roundhouse punch and hit the big man on the nose.
This, as it proved, was unfortunate. Blake bellowed with rage, seized Binney by the throat, and bore him down, kneeling on his victim’s prostrate body. Binney made feeble fluttering motions with his hands. He tried vainly to catch his breath. Meanwhile, Susan had climbed atop Blake and was beating him about the ears in a futile fashion. A crowd gathered.
Humiliation and fury surged up in Binney. He made a frantic, straining effort to throw off his captor, while the blood pulsed and beat in his temples. He felt a momentary blinding shock—
The boardwalk dropped out from under him, and an immense scarlet void engulfed him. He saw Blake’s face, white and terrified, and the wide dark eyes of Susan as the three of them bumped lightly onto a hard surface. Above was a red sky, and a red sun....
The flutter of great wings sounded. Shadows swooped down. A dozen talons gripped the three, and still clinging together, they were lifted.
Reason was blotted out. There was only a mad impulse to hold on—to grip the nearest object. And so the three were carried along, with the wind screaming in their ears.
Only Binney had any idea of what had happened. Those blasted adrenal glands of his — he had grown mad again. And, as the Professor had theorized, his atomic structure had altered so that he was in another dimension. Susan and Blake had come along because human bodies evidently conducted this fantastic power like electricity, just as the Professor had guessed.
FAR down was level ground, hard and white and featureless. They were rising up the side of a great cliff— no, not a cliff, but the wall of a towering building. And Binney recognized the beings who held him. Furry, batwinged, two-headed creatures.
“Nyasta dree urdle,” said one, and Binney moaned feebly. They’d started that again.
The six bat-wings, bearing their human cargo, reached the summit of the building and commenced to swoop across the roof. The featureless flat surface swept past dizzyingly. As yet the three had no time to think or theorize. They simply clung together...
They flew fast, yet it was a long time before the bat-wings hovered above a crescent-shaped wide well in a roof and slowly descended. Looking down, Binney saw a green-paved plaza, with a shimmering pool in the center. He recognized it as the scene of his first arrival in this other world.
They hit the pavement with a thump, Binney underneath. With a moan of stark horror Blake shook free of the talons that gripped him and sprang up. Instantly he vanished.
Just like that. One moment he was there, tall and brawny in the black bathing suit, the next he was quite gone, without a trace. The bat-wings fluttered in confusion.
“Nyasta wurn!” someone said, in an excited tone, and then the talons gripped again. Once more the humans were lifted, only two now instead of three.
Even at that horrific moment, Binney tried to figure it out. The Professor had said human bodies conducted the inter-dimensional power like electricity. To all intents and purposes Binney had within him a live wire. When Blake was in contact with the salesman, Blake, too, got the current. But when contact was broken—
No more current. Blake, no longer in touch with the strange energy that kept him in this red world, had gone back into Earth’s dimension.
But why didn’t that happen to Binney, too? Maybe because of the Professor’s elixir, soaked into- his tissues. Binney could move from one world to another, and remain there, whereas neither Susan nor Blake could. The moment they lost their physical contact with Binney, they returned to Earth.
So Blake was back in New York. And the two others were rising, captives of the bat-winged beings....
The salesman groaned. This crescent-shaped plaza, he felt sure, had been the scene of his advent in the red world. Its pavement was level with the surface of the Holland Tunnel in New York. No doubt Blake was there now.
Susan kept her eyes closed and held tightly to Binney, burrowing her nose into his shoulder. Even at that moment he was thrilled. Then sanity came back, and Binney, looking up at the two-headed things that held him, suddenly wanted to faint.
He didn’t. He felt himself, instead, gently deposited on the roof beside the well that led down to the plaza. For a moment he lay quietly, his arm around Susan, staring at the inhuman red-haired faces, with their huge eyes and pouting mouths. He felt the girl shudder convulsively.
Binney made a faint sound that ended in a gurgle. He tried again, with better luck.
“It’s okay, Susan,” he managed. “Th-they won’t hurt us.”
“Dree,” said a bat-wing, rather cryptically.