Page:Weird Tales Volume 8 Number 1 (1926-07).djvu/115

114 with the modesty, Mr. Shipley. I have come upon a matter of worldwide importance. Possibly you have heard of me. La Rue is my name; Leon La Rue."

Henry Shipley’s eyes grew wide with astonishment.

"Indeed I am honored by the visit of so renowned a scientist," he cried with genuine enthusiasm.

"It is nothing," said La Rue. "I love my work."

"You and John Olmstead," said Shipley, "have given humanity a clearer conception of the universe about us in the past hundred years, than any others have done. Here it is now the year 2026 A. D. and we have established by radio regular communication with Mars, Venus, two of the moons of Jupiter, and recently it has been broadcast that messages are being received from outside our solar system, communications from interstellar space! Is that true?"

"It is," replied La Rue. "During the past six months my worthy colleague Jules Nichol and I have received messages (some of them not very intelligible) from two planets that revolve around one of the nearer suns. These messages have required years to reach us, although they traveled at an inconceivable rate of speed."

"How do you manage to carry on intelligent communication? Surely the languages must be very strange," said the thoroughly interested Shipley.

"We begin all intercourse through the principles of mathematics," replied the Frenchman with a smile, "for by those exact principles God's universe is controlled. Those rules never fail. You know the principles of mathematics were discovered by man, not invented by him. This, then, is the basis of our code, always, and it never fails to bring intelligent responses from other planets whose inhabitants have arrived at an understanding equal to or surpassing that of ourselves. It is not a stretch of imagination to believe that we may some day receive a message from somewhere in space, that was sent out millions of years ago, and likewise we can comprehend the possibility of messages which we are now sending into the all-pervading ether, reaching some remote world eons in the future."

"It is indeed a fascinating subject," mused Henry Shipley, "but mine has an equal attraction. While you reach out among the stars, I delve down amid the protons and electrons. And who, my dear fellow, in this day of scientific advancement, can say that they are not identical except for size? Planets revolve about their suns, electrons around their protons; the infinite, the infinitesimal! What distinguishes them?"

The older man leaned forward, a white hand clutching the cluttered desk.

"What distinguishes them, you ask?" he muttered hoarsely. "This and this alone; time, the fourth dimension!"

The two men gazed at one another in profound silence, then La Rue continued, his voice once more back to normal: "You said a moment ago that my planetary systems and your atoms were identical except for one thing—the fourth dimension. In my supra-world of infinite bigness our sun, one million times as big as this Earth, gigantic Jupiter, and all the other planets in our little system, would seem as small as an atom, a thing invisible in the most powerful microscope. Your infra-world would be like a single atom with electrons revolving around it, compared to our solar system, sun and planets. I believe the invisible atom is another universe with its central sun and revolving planets, and there also exists a supra-universe in which our sun,