The Dangerous Dimension Read online

  The Dangerous

  Dimension

  S E L E C T E D F I C T I O N W O R K S B Y

  L . R O N H U B B A R D

  F A N T A S Y

  The Case of the Friendly Corpse

  Death’s Deputy

  Fear

  The Ghoul

  The Indigestible Triton

  Slaves of Sleep & The Masters of Sleep Typewriter in the Sky

  The Ultimate Adventure

  S C I E N C E F I C T I O N

  Battlefield Earth

  The Conquest of Space

  The End Is Not Yet

  Final Blackout

  The Kilkenny Cats

  The Kingslayer

  The Mission Earth Dekalogy*

  Ole Doc Methuselah

  To the Stars

  A D V E N T U R E

  The Hell Job series

  WE S T E R N

  Buckskin Brigades

  Empty Saddles

  Guns of Mark Jardine

  Hot Lead Payoff

  A full list of L. Ron Hubbard’s

  novellas and short stories is provided at the back.

  *Dekalogy—a group of ten volumes

  L.RON

  HUBBARD

  THE

  DANGEROUS

  DIMENSION

  Published by

  Galaxy Press, LLC

  7051 Hollywood Boulevard, Suite 200

  Hollywood, CA 90028

  © 2008 L. Ron Hubbard Library. All Rights Reserved.

  Any unauthorized copying, translation, duplication, importation or distribution, in whole or in part, by any means, including electronic copying, storage or transmission, is a violation of applicable laws.

  Mission Earth is a trademark owned by L. Ron Hubbard Library and is used with permission. Battlefield Earth is a trademark owned by Author Services, Inc.

  and is used with permission.

  Ad cover artwork: © 1948 Better Publications, Inc. Reprinted with permission of Hachette Filipacchi Media. Horsemen illustration from Western Story Magazine is ©

  and ™ Condé Nast Publications and is used with their permission. Cover art and story illustrations; Fantasy, Far-Flung Adventure and Science Fiction illustrations; Glossary illustrations and Story Preview cover art: Unknown and Astounding Science Fiction copyright © by Street & Smith Publications, Inc. Reprinted with permission of Penny Publications, LLC.

  ISBN 978-1-59212-855-6 eBook edition

  ISBN 978-1-59212-828-0 ePub edition

  Contents

  FO R E W O R D

  vii

  T H E DA N G E R O U S D I M E N S I O N

  1

  GL O SS A RY

  31

  L . R O N H U B B A R D

  I N T H E G O L D E N A G E

  O F P U L P F I C T I O N

  35

  T H E ST O R I E S F RO M T H E

  GO L D EN AG E

  47

  F O R E W O R D

  Stories from Pulp

  Fiction’s Golden Age

  AND it was a golden age.

  The 1930s and 1940s were a vibrant, seminal time for a gigantic audience of eager readers, probably the largest per capita audience of readers in American history. The magazine racks were chock-full of publications with ragged trims, garish cover art, cheap brown pulp paper, low cover prices—and the most excitement you could hold in your hands.

  “Pulp” magazines, named for their rough-cut, pulpwood paper, were a vehicle for more amazing tales than Scheherazade could have told in a million and one nights. Set apart from higher-class “slick” magazines, printed on fancy glossy paper with quality artwork and superior production values, the pulps were for the “rest of us,” adventure story after adventure story for people who liked to read. Pulp fiction authors were no-holds-barred entertainers—real storytellers. They were more interested in a thrilling plot twist, a horrific villain or a white-knuckle adventure than they were in lavish prose or convoluted metaphors.

  The sheer volume of tales released during this wondrous golden age remains unmatched in any other period of literary history—hundreds of thousands of published stories in over nine hundred di erent magazines. Some titles lasted only an vii

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  issue or two; many magazines succumbed to paper shortages during World War II, while others endured for decades yet. Pulp fiction remains as a treasure trove of stories you can read, stories you can love, stories you can remember.

  The stories were driven by plot and character, with grand heroes, terrible villains, beautiful damsels (often in distress), diabolical plots, amazing places, breathless romances. The readers wanted to be taken beyond the mundane, to live adventures far removed from their ordinary lives—and the pulps rarely failed to deliver.

  In that regard, pulp fiction stands in the tradition of all memorable literature. For as history has shown, good stories are much more than fancy prose. William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Jules Verne, Alexandre Dumas—many of the greatest literary figures wrote their fiction for the readers, not simply literary colleagues and academic admirers. And writers for pulp magazines were no exception. These publications reached an audience that dwarfed the circulations of today’s short story magazines. Issues of the pulps were scooped up and read by over thirty million avid readers each month.

  Because pulp fiction writers were often paid no more than a cent a word, they had to become prolific or starve. They also had to write aggressively. As Richard Kyle, publisher and editor of Argosy, the first and most long-lived of the pulps, so pointedly explained: “The pulp magazine writers, the best of them, worked for markets that did not write for critics or attempt to satisfy timid advertisers. Not having to answer to anyone other than their readers, they wrote about human viii

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  beings on the edges of the unknown, in those new lands the future would explore. They wrote for what we would become, not for what we had already been.”

  Some of the more lasting names that graced the pulps include H. P. Lovecraft, Edgar Rice Burroughs, Robert E.

  Howard, Max Brand, Louis L’Amour, Elmore Leonard, Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, Erle Stanley Gardner, John D. MacDonald, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov, Robert Heinlein—and, of course, L. Ron Hubbard.

  In a word, he was among the most prolific and popular writers of the era. He was also the most enduring—hence this series—and certainly among the most legendary. It all began only months after he first tried his hand at fiction, with L. Ron Hubbard tales appearing in Thrilling Adventures, Argosy, Five-Novels Monthly, Detective Fiction Weekly, Top-Notch, Texas Ranger, War Birds, Western Stories, even Romantic Range. He could write on any subject, in any genre, from jungle explorers to deep-sea divers, from G-men and gangsters, cowboys and flying aces to mountain climbers, hard-boiled detectives and spies. But he really began to shine when he turned his talent to science fiction and fantasy of which he authored nearly fifty novels or novelettes to forever change the shape of those genres.

  Following in the tradition of such famed authors as Herman Melville, Mark Twain, Jack London and Ernest Hemingway, Ron Hubbard actually lived adventures that his own characters would have admired—as an ethnologist among primitive tribes, as prospector and engineer in hostile ix

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  climes, as a captain of vessels on four oceans. He even wrote a series of articles for Argosy, called “Hell Job,” in which he lived and told of the most dangerous professions a man could put his hand to.

  Finally, and just for good measure, he was also an accomplished photographer, artist, filmmaker, musician and educator. But he was first
and foremost a writer, and that’s the L. Ron Hubbard we come to know through the pages of this volume.

  This library of Stories from the Golden Age presents the best of L. Ron Hubbard’s fiction from the heyday of storytelling, the Golden Age of the pulp magazines. In these eighty volumes, readers are treated to a full banquet of 153 stories, a kaleidoscope of tales representing every imaginable genre: science fiction, fantasy, western, mystery, thriller, horror, even romance—action of all kinds and in all places.

  Because the pulps themselves were printed on such inexpensive paper with high acid content, issues were not meant to endure. As the years go by, the original issues of every pulp from Argosy through Zeppelin Stories continue crumbling into brittle, brown dust. This library preserves the L. Ron Hubbard tales from that era, presented with a distinctive look that brings back the nostalgic flavor of those times.

  L. Ron Hubbard’s Stories from the Golden Age has something for every taste, every reader. These tales will return you to a time when fiction was good clean entertainment and x

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  the most fun a kid could have on a rainy afternoon or the best thing an adult could enjoy after a long day at work.

  Pick up a volume, and remember what reading is supposed to be all about. Remember curling up with a great story.

  —Kevin J. Anderson

  KEVIN J. ANDERSON is the author of more than ninety critically acclaimed works of speculative fiction, including The Saga of Seven Suns, the continuation of the Dune Chronicles with Brian Herbert, and his New York Times bestselling novelization of L. Ron Hubbard’s Ai! Pedrito!

  xi

  The Dangerous

  Dimension

  Author’s Note

  For reasons pertinent to the happiness of Mankind, by request from the United States Philosophic Society and the refusal of Dr. Henry Mudge, Ph.D., of Yamouth University, the philosophic equation mentioned herein is presented as only Equation C

  without further expansion.

  —L. Ron Hubbard

  2

  The

  Dangerous

  Dimension

  HE room was neither mean nor dingy. It was only Tcluttered. The great bookcases had gaps in their ranks and the fallen members lay limp-leaved on floor and table.

  The carpet was a snowdrift of wasted paper. The stuffed owl on the mantel was awry because the lined books there had fallen sideways, knocking the owl around and over to peck dismally at China on the globe of the world. The writing desk was heaped with tottering paper towers.

  And still Dr. Mudge worked on.

  His spectacles worried him because they kept falling down in front of his eyes; a spot of ink was on his nose and his right hand was stained blue black.

  The world could have exploded without in the least disturbing Yamouth’s philosophic professor. In his head whirled a maelstrom of philosophy, physics and higher mathematics and, if examined from within, he would have seemed a very brave man.

  Examined from without it was a different matter. For one thing Dr. Mudge was thin, for another he was bald. He was a small man and his head was far too big for his body. His nose was long and his eyes were unusually bright. His thin hands gripped book and pen as every atom of his being was concentrated upon his work.

  3

  ♦ L . R O N H U B B A R D ♦

  Once he glanced up at the clock with a worried scowl. It was six-thirty and he must be done in half an hour. He had to be done in half an hour. That would give him just time enough to rush down to the university and address the United States Philosophic Society.

  He had not counted on this abrupt stab of mental lightning.

  He had thought to deliver a calm address on the subject, “Was Spinoza Right in Turning Down the Professorship of . . .”

  But when he had begun to delve for a key to Spinoza, a truly wonderful idea had struck him and out he had sailed, at two that day, to dwell wholly in thought. He did not even know that he was cramped from sitting so long in one place.

  “Henrrreeee!” came the clarion call.

  Henry failed to hear it.

  “HENrrrry!”

  Again he did not look up.

  “HENRY MUDGE! Are you going to come in here and eat your dinner or not?!”

  He heard that time, but with less than half an ear. He did not come fully back to the world of beefsteak and mashed potatoes until Mrs. Doolin, his housekeeper, stood like a thundercloud in the study door. She was a big woman with what might be described as a forceful personality. She was very righteous, and when she saw the state of that study she drew herself up something on the order of a general about to order an execution.

  “Henry! What have you been doing? And look at you! A smudge on your nose—and an ink spot on your coat! ”

  Henry might fight the universe, but Mrs. Doolin was the 4

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  ♦

  bogeyman of Henry’s life. Ten years before, she had descended upon him and since that time . . .

  “Yes, Lizzie,” said Henry, aware for the first time of his stiffness and suddenly very tired.

  “Are you coming to dinner or aren’t you? I called you a half-hour ago and the beefsteak will be ruined. And you must dress. What on earth’s gotten into you, Henry Mudge?”

  “Yes, Lizzie,” said the doctor placatingly. He came slowly to his feet and his joints cracked loudly.

  “What have you done to this place?”

  Some of the fire of his enthusiasm swept back into Henry.

  “Lizzie, I think I have it!” And that thought swept even Lizzie Doolin out of the room as far as he was concerned. He took a few excited steps around the table, raised his glasses up on his forehead and gleamed. “I think I’ve got it!”

  “What?” demanded Lizzie Doolin.

  “The equation. Oh, this is wonderful. This is marvelous!

  Lizzie, if I am right, there is a condition without dimension.

  A negative dimension, Lizzie. Think of it! And all these years they have been trying to find the fourth positive dimension and now by working backwards . . .”

  “Henry Mudge, what are you talking about?”

  But Henry had dived into the abstract again and the lightning was flashing inside his head. “The negative dimension! Epistemology!”

  “What?”

  He scarcely knew she was there. “Look, think of it! You know what you can do with your mind. Mentally you can think you are in Paris. Zip, your mind has mentally taken you 5

  ♦ L . R O N H U B B A R D ♦

  to Paris! You can imagine yourself swimming in a river and zip! you are mentally swimming in a river. But the body stays where it is. And why, Lizzie? Why? ”

  “Henry Mudge—!”

  “But there is a negative dimension. I am sure there is. I have almost formulated it and if I can succeed—”

  “Henry Mudge, your dinner is getting cold. Stop this nonsense. . . .”

  But he had not heard her. Suddenly he gripped his pen and wrote. And on that blotted piece of paper was set down Equation C.

  He was not even aware of any change in him. But half his brain began to stir like an uneasy beast. And then the other half began to stir and mutter.

  And on the sheet before him was Equation C.

  “Henry Mudge!” said Lizzie with great asperity. “If you don’t come in here and eat your dinner this very minute . . .”

  She advanced upon him as the elephant moves upon the dog.

  Henry knew in that instant that he had gone too far with her. And half his brain recognized the danger in her. For years he had been in deadly terror of her. . . .

  “I wish I was in Paris,” Henry shivered to himself, starting to back up.

  Whup!

  Cognac, m’sieu?” said the waiter.

  “Eh?” gaped Henry, glancing up from the sidewalk table.

  He could not take it in. People were hurrying along the Rue 6

 
♦ T H E D A N G E R O U S D I M E N S I O N

  ♦

  de la Paix, going home as the hour was very late. Some of the cafés were already closed.

  “Cognac o vin blanc, m’sieu?” insisted the waiter.

  “Really,” said Henry, “I don’t drink. I—Is this Paris?”

  “Of a certainty, m’sieu. Perhaps one has already had a sip too much?”

  “No, no! I don’t drink,” said Henry, frightened to be in such a position.

  The waiter began to count the saucers on the table. “Then m’sieu has done well for one who does not drink. Forty francs, m’sieu.”

  Henry guiltily reached into his pocket. But his ink-stained jacket was not his street coat. He had carpet slippers on his feet. His glasses fell down over his eyes. And his searching hands told him that he possessed not a dime.

  “Please,” said Henry, “I am out of funds. If you would let me—”

  “SO!” cried the waiter, suavity vanishing. “Then you will pay just the same! GENDARME! GENDARME! ”

  “Oh,” shivered Henry and imagined himself in the peaceful security of his study.

  Whup!

  Lizzie was gaping at him. “Why . . . why, where . . . where did you go? Oh, it must be my eyes. I know it must be my eyes. Those fainting spells did mean something then. Yes, I am sure of it.” She glanced at the clock. “Look, you haven’t eaten dinner yet! You come right into the dining room this instant!”

  7

  ♦ L . R O N H U B B A R D ♦

  Meekly, but inwardly aghast, Henry tagged her into the dining room. She set a plate before him. He was not very hungry, but he managed to eat. He was greatly perplexed and upset. The negative dimension had been there after all. And there was certainly no difficulty stepping into it and out of it. Mind was everything, then, and body nothing. Or mind could control body. . . . Oh, it was very puzzling.

  “What are you dreaming about?” challenged Lizzie. “Get upstairs and get dressed. It’s seven this very minute!”

  Henry plodded out into the hall and up the stairs. He got to his room and saw that all his things were laid out.

  Oh, it was very puzzling, he told himself as he sat down on the edge of the bed. He started to remove one carpet slipper and then scowled in deep thought at the floor.