Authentic Science Fiction Monthly No. 46 — page 123: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

AUTHENTIC SCIENCE FICTION air of one who has proved his case beyond argument. The Physiologist, however, re- mained unsatisfied. “That takes a load off my mind, I must say. You mean those two have only theoretic- ally vanished into a mathema- tical infinity? Perhaps you’d better let down a _ whole string of mathematical equa- tions and see if they can climb back up that. I just don’t know what we'd do without you Physicists.” “There is no need to be offensive,”’ said the Professor. **T shall go down—I mean in— myself, and try the air. You shall tie the scarves round my waist and let me explore, and if I pull on the end of the line you can haul me in.”’ This proposal was hailed with approval, a number of those present expressing a wish to go instead, out of curiosity. The end of the rope of scarves was tied to the Professor’s belt, and a chair was brought and placed next to the copper plate. The Professor mounted, held his nose with one hand, and jumped, while the Physiologist and four others held the other end of the rope. It broke at one of the knots. Score—three - nil. 122 *“You know, he was right in a way,” said the Applied Physicist. “In a sense, they — have only theoretically van- ished into a mathematical infinity, because the concept of infinite volume, as applied to that particular region, refers only to the three-dimensional framework we are using at the moment.” “Oh, I see. Fourth-dimen- sional stuff, eh?’ said the — Physiologist. ““You mean they might have plenty of air after ~ all, only in another set of dimensions, a sort of parallel space-time continuum? It’s a thought, I suppose. Is it worth betting on?” “T think so. Look, I'll tell you what we’ll do. We’ll only use one scarf, a long one, and tie one end to a bench. Then, one of us will take hold of it and slide; not jump, into that patch, and the others can follow, holding onto each other all the time, so that we never lose contact with the place we came in. That way, we'll have a very long human chain, and so long as nobody lets go, we'll all be safe, and all of us will see what goes on inside there. Myself, I’m pretty curious about what they found.” So were they all. comichooks.con.