For at least a full minute, we stared at it. Then I stood up and looked in my chair seat, looked around the floor of the room, even got down on my knees and peered under the chair. Farnsworth was watching me, and when I finished and sat down again, he asked, “No others?”
“No other cubes,” I said, “anywhere".
“I was afraid of that.” He pointed an unsteady finger at the one cube in front of us. “I suppose they’re all in there.” Some of his agitation had begun to wear off—you can, I suppose, get used to anything—and after a moment he said thoughtfully, “What was that you said about folding the paper to make a cube?”
I looked at him and managed an apologetic smile. I had been thinking the same thing. “What was that you said about having to go into another dimension to do it?”
He didn’t smile back, but he got up and said, “Well, I doubt if it can bite,” and bent over and picked the cube up, hefting its weight carefully in his hand. “It seems to weigh the same as the—sixty-four did,” he said, quite calmly now. Then he looked at it closely and suddenly became agitated again. “Good heavens! Look at this!” He held it up.
On one side, exactly in the center, was a neat little hole, about a half-inch across. I moved my head closer to the cube and saw that the hole was not really circular. It was like the iris diaphragm of a camera, a polygon made of many overlapping, straight pieces of metal, allowing an opening for light to enter. Nothing was visible through the hole; I could see only an undefined blackness.
“I don’t understand how . . ." I began, and stopped.
“Nor I,” he said. “Let’s see if there’s anything in here.”
HE PUT the cube up to his eye and squinted and peered for a minute. Then he carefully set it on the table, walked to his chair, sat down and folded his hands over his fat little lap.
“George,” he said, “there is something in there.” His voice now was very steady and yet strange.
“What?” I asked. What else do you say?
“A little ball,” he said, “A lit- tie round ball. Quite misted over, but nonetheless a ball.”
“Well!” I said.
“George, I’ll get the gin.”
He was back from the side-board in what seemed an incredibly short time. He had the sloe gin in highball glasses, with ice and water. It tasted horrible.
When I finished mine, I said, “Delicious. Let’s have another,” and we did. After I drank that one, I felt a good deal more rational.
I set my glass down. “Farnsworth, it just occurred to me. Isn’t the fourth dimension supposed to be time, according to Einstein?”
He had finished his second sloe gin highball, unmulled, by then.
“Supposed to be, yes, according to Einstein. I call it ifth—or oofth—take your pick.” He held up the cube again, much more confidently now, I noticed. “And what about the fifth dimension?” “Beats me,” I said, looking at the cube, which was beginning to seem vaguely sinister to me. “Beats the hell out of me.”
“Beats me, too, George,” he said almost gaily—an astonishing mood for old Farnsworth. He turned the cube around with his small, fat fingers. “This is probably all wrapped up in time in some strange way. Not to mention the very peculiar kind of space it appears to be involved with. Extraordinary, don’t you think?”
“Extraordinary,” I nodded.
“George, I think I’ll take another look.” And he put the cube back to his eye again. “Well,” he said, after a moment of squinting, “same little ball.”
“What’s it doing?” I wanted to know.
“Nothing. Or perhaps spinning a bit. I'm not sure. Its quite fuzzy, you see, and misty. Dark in there, too.”
“Let me see,” I said, realizing that, after all, if Farnsworth could see the thing in there, so could I.
“In a minute. I wonder what sort of time I’m looking into—past or future, or what?”
“And what sort of space . . .” I was saying when, suddenly, little Farnsworth let out a fantastic shriek, dropped the cube as if it had suddenly turned into a snake, and threw his hands over his eyes.
He sank back into his chair and cried, “My God! My God!”
Illustrated by GAUGHAN
I WAS apprehensive when the cube hit the floor, but nothing happened to it. It did not fold up into no cube at all, nor proliferate back into sixty-four of itself.
“What happened?” I asked, rushing over to Farnsworth, who was squirming about in his arm-chair, his face still hidden by his hands.
“My eye!” he moaned, almost sobbing. “It stabbed my eye! Quick, George, call me an ambulance!”
I hurried to the telephone and fumbled with the book, looking for the right number, until Farnsworth said, “Quick, George!” again and, in desperation, I dialed the operator and told her to send us an ambulance.
When I got back to Farnsworth, he had taken his hand from the unhurt eye and I could see that a trickle of blood was beginning to run down the other wrist. He had almost stopped squirming, but from his face it was obvious that the pain was still quite intense.
He stood up. “I need another drink,” he said, and began heading unsteadily for the sideboard, when he stepped on the cube, which was still lying in front of his chair, and was barely able to keep himself from falling head-long, tripping on it. The cube skidded a few feet, stopping, hole-side up, near the fire.
He said to the cube, enraged, “Drat you, I’ll show you . . . !” and he reached down and swooped up the poker from the hearth. It had been lying there for mulling drinks, its end resting on the coals, and by now it was a brilliant cherry red. He took the handle with both hands and plunged the red-hot tip into the hole of the cube, pushing it down against the floor.
“I’ll show you!” he yelled again, and I watched understandingly as he shoved with all his weight, pushing and twisting, forcing the poker down with angry energy. There was a faint hissing sound and little wisps of dark smoke came from the hole, around the edges of the poker.
Then there was a strange, sucking noise and the poker began to sink into the cube. It must have gone in at least eight or ten inches — completely impossible, of course, since it was a one-inch cube — and even Farnsworth became so alarmed at this that he abruptly yanked the poker out of the hole.
As he did, black smoke arose in a little column for a moment and then there was a popping sound and the cube fell apart, scattering itself into hundreds of little squares of plastic and aluminum.
Oddly enough, there were no burn marks on the aluminum and none of the plastic seemed to have melted. There was no sign of a little, misty ball.
Farnsworth returned his right hand to his now puffy and quite bloody eye. He stood staring at the profusion of little squares with his good eye. His free hand was trembling.
Then there was the sound of a siren, becoming louder. He turned and looked at me balefully. “That must be the ambulance. I suppose I’d better get my tooth-brush.”