The Dangerous Dimension

by L. Ron Hubbard

  Twenty minutes later Lizzie knocked at his door. “Henry, you’re late already!”

  He started guiltily. He had not even taken that slipper off.

  If Lizzie found him in here— She was starting to open the door.

  “I ought to be there this very minute,” thought Henry, envisioning the lecture hall.

  Whup!

  It startled him to see them filing in. He stood nervously on the platform, suddenly aware of his carpet slippers and ink-stained working jacket, the spot on his nose and his almost black hand. Nervously, he tried to edge back.

  The dean was there. “Why . . . why, Dr. Mudge. I didn’t see you come in.” The dean looked him up and down and frowned. “I hardly think that your present attire . . . ”

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  Henry visualized the clothes laid out on his bed and started to cough an apology.

  “I . . . er . . .”

  Whup!

  What’s that, Henry?” said Lizzie. “My heavens, where are you?”

  “In here, Lizzie,” said Henry on the edge of his bed.

  She bustled into the room. “Why, you’re not dressed! Henry Mudge, I don’t know what is happening to your wits. You will keep everybody waiting at the university—”

  “Ohhh,” groaned Henry. But it was too late.

  Whup!

  My dear fellow,” said the dean, startled. “What . . . er. . . what happened to you? I was saying that I scarcely thought it proper—”

  “Please, I—” But that was as far as Henry got.

  Whup!

  I know it’s my eyes,” said Lizzie.

  “Stop!” wailed Henry. “Don’t say anything! Please don’t say anything. Please, please, please don’t say anything!”

  She was suddenly all concern. “Why, you’re pale, Henry.

  Don’t you feel well?”

  “No—I mean yes. I’m all right. But don’t suggest anything.

  I . . .” But how could he state it? He was frightened half to death by the sudden possibilities which presented themselves to him. All he had to do was visualize anything and that scene 9

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  was the scene in which he found himself. All anybody had to do was suggest something and zip! there he was.

  At first it had been a little difficult, but the gigantic beast Thought had risen into full power.

  “You dress,” said Lizzie.

  But he was afraid to start disrobing. What if he thought—

  No, he must learn to control this. Somehow he had missed something. If he could get the entire equation straight and its solution, he would have the full answer. But Thought was drunk with power and would not be denied.

  Henry rushed past Mrs. Doolin and down the steps to his study. He quickly sat in his chair and gripped his pen with determination. There was Equation C. Now if he could solve the rest of it he would be all right. He only had to substitute certain values . . .

  Lizzie had followed him down. “Henry, I think you must be going crazy. Imagine keeping all those men waiting in the lecture hall—”

  Whup!

  Henry groaned and heard the dean say, “It was to be our pleasure this evening that we hear from Dr. Mudge on the subject—”

  Somebody twitched at the dean’s sleeve. “He’s right beside you.”

  The dean looked and there was Henry, tweed jacket, ink stains, carpet slippers and all. Beads of perspiration were standing out on Henry’s bulging forehead.

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  “Go right ahead,” whispered the dean. “I do not approve of your attire, but it is too late now.”

  Henry stood up, fiery red and choked with stage fright.

  He looked down across the amused sea of faces and cleared his throat. The hall quieted slowly.

  “Gentlemen,” said Henry, “I have made a most alarming discovery. Forgive me for so appearing before you, but it could not be helped. Mankind has long expected the existence of a state of mind wherein it might be possible to follow thought.

  However—” His lecture presence broke as he recalled his carpet slippers. Voice nervous and key-jumpy, he rushed on.

  “However, the arrival at actual transposition of person by thought alone was never attained because mankind has been searching forward instead of backward. That is, mankind has been looking for the existence of nothing in the fourth dimension instead of the existence—” He tried to make his mind clear. Stage fright was making him become involved.

  “I mean to say, the negative dimension is not the fourth dimension but no dimension. The existence of nothing as . . .”

  Some of the staid gentlemen in the front row were not so staid. They were trying not to laugh because the rest of the hall was silent.

  “What idiocy is that man babbling?” said the dean to the university president behind his hand.

  Dr. Mudge’s knees were shaking. Somebody tittered openly in the fourth row.

  “I mean,” plunged Mudge, desperately, “that when a man imagines himself elsewhere, his mind seems to really be 11

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  elsewhere for the moment. The yogi takes several means of accomplishing this, evidently long practiced in the negative dimension. Several great thinkers such as Buddha have been able to appear bodily at a distance when they weren’t there but . . .” he swallowed again, “but elsewhere when they were there. The metaphysicist has attributed supernatural qualities to the phenomenon known as an ‘apport,’ in which people and such appear in one room without going through a door when they were in the other room. . . .”

  Dear me, he thought to himself, this is a dreadful muddle.

  He could feel the truth behind his words, but he was too acutely aware of a stained jacket and carpet slippers and he kept propping up his glasses.

  “If a man should wish to be in some other place, it is entirely possible for him to imagine himself in that place, and, diving back through the negative dimension, to emerge out of it in that place with instantaneous rapidity. To imagine oneself—”

  He swallowed hard. An awful thought had hit him, big enough to make him forget his clothes and audience. A man could imagine himself anyplace and then be in that place, zip!

  But how could a man exert enough willpower to keep from imagining himself in a position of imminent destruction? If he thought— Mudge gritted his teeth. He must not think any such thing. He must not! He knew instinctively that there was one place he could not imagine himself without dying instantly before he could recover and retreat. He did not know the name of that place in the instant, would not allow himself to think of it—

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  A ribald young associate professor said hoarsely to a friend, loud enough for Dr. Mudge to hear, “He ought to imagine himself on Mars.”

  Mudge didn’t even hear the laugh which started to greet that sally.

  Whup!

  He examined the sandy wastes which stretched limitlessly to all the clear horizons. Bewildered, he took a few steps and the sand got into his carpet slippers. A cold wind cut through the thin tweed jacket and rustled his tie.

  “Oh, dear,” thought Mudge. “Now I’ve done it!”

  A high, whining sound filled the sky and he glanced up to see a pear-shaped ship streaking flame across the sky. It was gone almost before it had started.

  Dr. Mudge felt very much alone. He had no faith in his mental behavior now. It might fail him. He might never get away. He might imagine himself in an emperor’s palace with sentries—

  Whup!

  The diamond floor was hard on his eyes and lights blazed all around him. A golden throne reared before him and on top of it sat a small man with a very large head, swathed in material which glowed all of itself.

  Mudge couldn’t understand a
word that was being said because no words were being said, and yet they all hit his brain in a bewildering disarray.

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  The diamond floor was hard on his eyes and lights blazed all around him. A golden throne reared before him and on top of it sat a small man with a very large head, swathed in material which glowed all of itself.

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  Instantly he guessed what was happening. As a man’s intention can be telepathed to a dog, these superior beings battered him mentally as he had no brain wave selectivity. He had guessed the human mind would so evolve, and he was pleased for an instant to find he had been right. But not for long.

  He began to feel sick in the midst of this bombardment.

  All eyes were upon him in frozen surprise.

  The emperor shouted and pointed a small wand. Two guards leaped up and fastened themselves upon Mudge. He knew vaguely that they thought he was an inferior being—something like a chimpanzee, or maybe a gorilla, and, indeed, so he was on their scale of evolution.

  The ruler shouted again and the guards breathed hard and looked angrily at Mudge. Another man came sprinting over the diamond floor, a flare-barreled gun gripped in his hand.

  Mudge began to struggle. He knocked the guards aside with surprising ease.

  Wildly he turned about, seeking a way out, too confused by light, thought waves and sound to think clearly and remember.

  The man with the lethal-looking weapon braced his feet and leveled the muzzle at Mudge’s chest. He was going to shoot and Mudge knew that he faced a death-dealing ray. He was getting no more consideration than a mad ape, like that one in the Central Park Zoo. . . . The guard was squeezing the trigger—

  Whup!

  Weakly Dr. Mudge leaned on the railing of the Central Park Zoo in New York. He took out his handkerchief and 15

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  dabbed at his forehead. Dully he gazed up, knowing he would see an orangutan in the cage. It was late, and the beast slumbered in his covered hut. Mudge could only see a tuft of fur.

  “Thanks,” he whispered.

  The night air was soothing. He was exhausted with all the crosscurrents which had battered his poor human mind, and the thin air of Mars.

  He moved slowly along the rail. There was a sign there which said “Gorilla. Brought from the Mountains of the Moon by Martin—”

  Whup!

  Ohhh,” groaned Mudge pitifully as he sank down on a rock in the freezing night. “This can’t keep up. I would no more than start to eat when something would yank me away. I’d starve. And sooner or later I’ll think of a very dangerous place and that will be the end of me before I can escape. There’s one place in particular—

  “NO!” he screamed into the African night.

  The thought had not formed. One place he must never, never think about. NEVER!

  From this high peak, he could see all Africa spread before him. Glowing far off in the brilliant moonlight was Lake Tanganyika.

  Mudge was a little pleased with himself just the same. Back at the lecture—

  Whup!

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  I am sorry and very puzzled,” the dean was saying, watch in hand. “Why Dr. Mudge should see fit to use a magician’s tricks, to appear in such strange attire and generally disport himself—”

  “I can’t help it!” wailed Mudge at his side.

  The dean almost jumped out of his shoes. He was annoyed to be startled out of his dignity and he scowled harshly at Mudge. “Doctor, I advise you strongly that such conduct will no longer be tolerated. If you are trying to prove anything by this, an explanation will be most welcome. The subject is philosophy and not Houdini’s vanishing tricks.”

  “Ohhh,” moaned Mudge, “don’t say anything. Please don’t say anything more. Just keep quiet. I mean,” he said hastily,

  “I mean, don’t say anything else. Please!”

  The young man who had suggested Mars was not quite so sure of himself, but the dean’s handy explanation of magic without paraphernalia restored his buoyancy.

  “I was just . . .” began Mudge. “No, I can’t say where I was or I’ll go back, and I won’t go back. This is very terrifying to me, gentlemen. There is one certain place I must not think about. The mind is an unruly thing. It seems to have no great love for the material body as it willfully, so it seems, insists in this great emergency on playing me tricks—”

  “Dr. Mudge,” said the dean, sternly. “I know not what you mean by all this cheap pretension to impossibilities—”

  “Oh, no,” cried Mudge. “I am pretending nothing. If I could only stop this I would be a very happy man! It is terribly hard on the nerves. Out of Spinoza I wandered into Force equations, and at two today I caught a glimmer of truth in 17

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  the fact that there was a negative dimension—a dimension which had no dimensions. I know for certain that mind is capable of anything.”

  “It certainly is,” said the dean. “Even chicanery.”

  “No, no,” begged Mudge, pushing his glasses high on his forehead and then fishing in his pockets. “In my notes . . .”

  He looked squarely at the dean. “Here! I have proof of where I have been, sir.” He stooped over and took off a carpet slipper.

  He turned it upside down on the lecture table and a peculiar glowing sand streamed out.

  “That is Martian sand,” said Mudge.

  “BOSH!” cried the dean. He turned to the audience.

  “Gentlemen, I wish you to excuse this display. Dr. Mudge has not been well and his mind seems to be unbalanced. A few hour’s rest—”

  “I’ll show you my notes,” said Mudge, pleading. “I’ll show you the equation. I left them home in my study—”

  Whup!

  Lizzie Doolin was muttering to herself as she picked up the papers from the floor and stacked them. The professor was certainly a madman this evening. Poor little man— She was turning and she almost fainted.

  Dr. Mudge was sitting in his chair getting his notes together.

  “Doctor!” cried Lizzie. “What are you doing there? How did you get in the house? The doors are all locked and . . . Ohhhhh, it’s my eyes. Doctor, you know very well that you should be at that lecture—”

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  He barely had time to cram the papers in his pocket.

  Whup!

  The dean was fuming. “Such tricks are known— Oh, there you are! Doctor, I am getting very sick of this. We are too well versed in what can be done by trickery to be at all startled by these comings and goings of yours.”

  “It’s not a trick!” stated Mudge. “Look, I have my notes. I—”

  “And I suppose you’ve brought back some vacuum from the moon this—”

  Whup!

  It was so cold that Mudge was instantly blue all over. He could feel himself starting to blow up as the internal pressure fought for release. His lungs began to collapse, but his mind raced, torn between two thoughts.

  Here he was on the moon. Here he was, the first man ever to be on the moon!

  And all the great volcanoes reared chilly before him, and an empty Sea of Dreams fell away behind him. Barren rock was harsh beneath his feet and his weight was nothing. . . .

  All in an instant he glimpsed it because he knew that he would be dead in another second, exploded like a penny balloon. He visualized the thing best known to him—his study.

  Whup!

  Lizzie was going out the door when she heard the chair creak.

  She forgot about the necessity for aspirin as she faced about.

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  Mudge was in again.

  “Doctor,” stormed Lizzie, an amazon of fury, “if you don’t stop that, I don’t know what will happ
en to me! Here a minute, gone again, here and gone, here and gone! What is the world coming to! It is not my eyes. It can’t be my eyes. I felt over the whole room for you and not so much as a hair of your head was here. What kind of heathen magic have you been stirring up? You’ve sold your soul—”

  “STOP!” screamed Mudge. He sank back, panting. That had been close. But then, that had not been as close as that other THING which he dared not envision. He chopped the thought off and started back on another.

  “Maybe,” said Mudge, thoughtfully, “maybe there isn’t . . . Oh, I’ve got the test right here. Can I throw myself back and forth between life and death?”

  He had said the word.

  “Death,” he said again, more distinctly.

  And still nothing occurred. He breathed easier. He could not go back and forth through time, as he had no disconnection with the time stream. He could whisk himself about the universe at will—or against his will—but he was still carrying on in the same hours and minutes. It had been dark in Africa, almost morning in P—

  “NO!” he yelled.

  Lizzie jumped a foot and stared to see if Mudge was still in his chair.

  “Whatever are you up to?” demanded Lizzie, angrily. “You frighten a body out of her wits!”

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  “Something awful is going on,” said Mudge, darkly. “I tried to tell you before dinner, but you wouldn’t listen. I can imagine I am someplace and then be in that someplace. This very instant I could imagine something and zip! I’d be someplace else without walking through doors or anything.”

  Lizzie almost broke forth anew. But it awed her, a little. She had seen Mudge appear and disappear so often this evening that this was the only explanation which she could fit.

  Mudge looked tired. “But I’m afraid, Lizzie. I’m terribly afraid. If I don’t watch myself, I might imagine I was in some horrible place such as—

  “NO!” shouted Mudge.

  “I might imagine I was someplace where I—

  “NO!” he yelled again.

  Those shouts were like bullets to Lizzie Doolin. But she was still awed—a little.

  Mudge held his head in his hands. “And I’m in trouble. The dean will not believe what is happening to me. He calls me a cheat—