"Whazzat?" said Mike. "Come again?"
The High Priest of Quenna stopped and looked to the scientists.
"They do not understand," he said slowly, each word coming from him as if it had been wrung out in pain. To Mike he spoke as one might to a child, his eyes searching. "Do you understand that you are in another world, traveler?"
"Certainly," Mike beamed. "I should say so. Whazz the sense of drinking the stuff if it don't take you to another world?" He reached into a trousers pocket and withdrew a large brown bottle. "But everybody's gotta bring his own," he said. "I got one chiseler now."
"I think I understand," Murra said presently. "He holds a flask filled with an elixir to which he ascribes this—"
"We are lost!" Pyteles broke in. "Their language is a meaningless jargon, their comprehension is too vague." He rocked in despair.
"Travelers," said the High Priest, "if you understand, give us a sign. You have come to the world of the Fourth Dimension on a mission of the gravest importance. Quenna offers you the fruits of its great civilization, all that its science and history have to offer." He waited for them to speak, and the vast chamber was hushed, the people silent.
Sammy Green rubbed his eyes for the tenth time. Words seemed to be echoing in his mind, fantastic words. He looked at the people who surrounded him and then at the High Priest.
"Okay," he said, quietly. "Keep talking. I know what you're saying, even if I don't believe it."
"But you will believe!" the High Priest burst out eagerly, his eyes blazing. "Listen to my words, for your coming was ordained by the great Tallu, who divined the presence of your world in ancient days, who commanded that the people of Quenna break through the barrier to the world of three dimensions.
"It is our religion," he went on, "a religion of penance. Once Quenna was divided into warring nations, its entire energy and genius spent on the mechanics of destruction. No world has ever seen the horror that stalked through Quenna for generations.
"And then the gods sent Tallu, who united Quenna. It he who made possible this blossoming world, who turned our science to constructive channels, who brought us peace. But for the sins which had stained its history, Tallu ordained that the souls of the people of Quenna would never be free until they had passed on the blessings he brought us. We have labored through ages in obedience to his word."
The High Priest inclined his head in reverence, and everyone followed his example.
"We built a mighty machine with our science," he went on, "but its materials were so rare that only one like it could be made. We knew that it could pass the barrier to your world but twice, and then its own force would destroy it, and we knew that Tallu's word had but one chance of fulfillment. It had to return with living, intelligent beings the first time.
"Moreover," he said, a strain of anxiety in his words, "there would be little time, so little time in which to give to the people of the other world the secrets of our science and our government. It seemed an impossible task had been set us. Had we known your language, we might have prepared volumes with everything written down, but it is only these strange silver bands that enabled us to understand your language, after you had arrived, and even that not too well.
