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Title: The man who mastered time
Author: Ray Cummings
Release date: July 14, 2025 [eBook #76503]
Language: English
Original publication: New York, NY: Ace Books, 1929
Credits: Greg Weeks, Paul Ereaut, Mary Meehan & the Online Distributed Proofreading Canada Team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE MAN WHO MASTERED TIME ***
THE MAN WHO
MASTERED TIME
RAY CUMMINGS
ACE BOOKS
A Division of A. A. Wyn, Inc.
23 West 47th Street, New York 36, N. Y.
THE MAN WHO MASTERED TIME
Copyright, 1929, by Ray Cummings
An Ace Book, by arrangement with the author.
TO GABRIELLE
Who has given me affectionate
assistance for a long, long time.
Printed in U. S. A.
CHAPTER ONE
"Time," said George, "why I can give you a definition of time. It's what
keeps everything from happening at once."
A ripple of laughter went about the little group of men.
"Quite so," agreed the Chemist. "And, gentlemen, that's not nearly so
funny as it sounds. As a matter of fact, it is really not a bad
scientific definition. Time and space are all that separate one event
from another. Everything happens some_where_ at some_time_."
"You intimated you had something vitally important to tell us," the Big
Business Man suggested. "Something, Rogers, that would amaze us. Some
project you were about to undertake--"
Rogers raised his hand. "In a moment, gentlemen. I want to prepare you
first--to some extent, at least. That's why I have led you into this
discussion. I want you to realize that your preconceived ideas of time
are wrong, inadequate. You must think along entirely different lines, in
terms of, I shall say, the _new science_."
"I will," agreed George, "only tell me how."
"You said that time, space, and matter are not separate, distinct
entities, but are blended together," the Doctor declared. "Just what do
you mean?"
Rogers gazed earnestly about the room. "This, my friends. Those are the
three factors which make up our universe as we know it. I said they were
blended. I mean that the actual reality underlying all the
manifestations we experience is not temporal or spatial or material, but
a blend of all three. It is we who, in our minds, have split up the
original unity into three such supposedly different things as time,
space and matter."
"Take space and time," said the Big Business Man. "Those two seem wholly
different to me. I shouldn't think they had the slightest connection."
"But they have. Between the three planes of space--length, breadth and
thickness--and time, there is no essential distinction. We think of them
differently; we instinctively feel differently about them. But science
is not concerned with our feelings--and science recognizes today that
time is a property of space, just as are length, breadth and thickness."
"That's easy to say," growled the Banker. "Any one can make statements
that can't be proven."
"It has been proven," Rogers declared quietly. "The mathematical
language of science would bore you. Let me give you a popular
illustration--an illustration, by the way, that I saw in print long
before Einstein's theory was made public. For instance, think about
this: A house has length, breadth and thickness. The house is matter,
and it has three dimensions of space. But what else has it?"
A blank silence followed his sudden question.
"Hasn't it duration, gentlemen? Could a house have any real existence if
it did not exist for any time at all?"
"Well," said George, "I guess that's something to think about."
Rogers went on calmly: "You must admit, my friends, that the existence
of matter depends on time equally as on space. They are, as I said,
blended together. A house must have length, breadth, thickness and
duration, or it cannot exist. Matter, in other words, persists in time
and space. Let me give you another illustration of this blending. How
would you define motion?"
Again there was a dubious silence.
"Motion," said George suddenly, "why, that's when something--something
material changes place." He was blushing at his own temerity, and he sat
back in his leather chair, smoking furiously.
"Quite so," smiled Rogers. "That, gentlemen, is about the way we all
conceive motion. Something material, a railroad train, for instance,
changes its position in space." He regarded the men before him, and this
time there was a touch of triumph in his manner. "But, my friends,
that's where our line of reasoning is inadequate. Time is involved
equally with space. The train was there _then_; it is here _now_. That
involves time."
"In other words--" the Doctor began.
"In other words, motion is the simultaneous change of the position of
matter in time and space. You see how impossible it is to speak of one
factor without involving the others? That is the mental attitude into
which I'm trying to get you. I want you to think of time exactly as you
think of length, breadth and thickness--as one of the properties of
space. Isn't that clear?"
The Big Business Man answered him. "I think so. I can understand now
what you mean by a blending of--"
"Oh, his words are clear enough," the Banker interjected testily. "But
what's the argument about? He started in by saying--"
George sat up suddenly. "Mr. Rogers, you said we were to come here for
something vitally important to you. Something about time and space. You
said--"
Rogers interrupted him. "I did indeed. I asked you all to come here to
the club tonight because you are my friends. Mine and Loto's. And the
affair concerns him more directly than it does me."
He glanced across the room. "Come, Loto. You're the one to tell them."
The Chemist's son, a young man of twenty, rose reluctantly from his
obscure seat in a corner of the room. He was tall, and slight of build,
with thick, wavy chestnut hair and blue eyes; his delicate features were
offset by a square firmness of chin. He came forward slowly, flushing as
the eyes of the men were turned on him; a poetic-looking boy, with only
the firm line of his lips and the set of his jaw to mark him for a man.
"My son, gentlemen," Rogers added. "You all know Loto."
"We do," said George enthusiastically. He vacated his own chair, shoving
it forward, and selected another, more retired position for himself.
Loto settled himself in the chair and then hesitated, as though in doubt
how to begin. He was still flushing, and yet his manner was thoroughly
poised. His forehead was wrinkled in thought.
"Father and I were experimenting," he began abruptly, "about two years
ago. We were interested in electrons. We were experimenting with the
fluorescence in a Crookes tube--breaking down the atoms into electrons.
Then we followed the experiments of Lenard and Roentgen. We darkened the
tube and prepared a chemical screen, which grew luminous."
Loto turned to Rogers: "They don't want to hear all this. These
technicalities--"
Rogers smiled. "We hit upon it quite by accident--an accident that we
have never been able to duplicate. We had, that evening, an adaptation
of the familiar Crookes tube. I do not know the exact conditions we
secured; we had no idea we were on the threshold of any discovery and we
kept no record of what we did. Nor am I sure just how I prepared the
screen--what proportions of the chemicals I used--"
"You're worse than Loto," the Banker growled. "If you'll just tell us
what--"
"I will," agreed Rogers good-naturedly. "We were working one night in my
laboratory on Forty-third Street--only a few hundred yards from the
Scientific Club here. The room was dark, and we had set up a small
chemical screen. It grew luminous as the electrons from the tube struck
it, but the glowing was not what we had expected--not what we had
observed before. The difference is unexplainable to you, but we both
noticed it. And then Loto noticed something else, something in the
darkness behind the screen."
Loto was sitting upright on the edge of his chair; his eyes were
snapping with eagerness as he interrupted his father.
"I'll tell them because it was I who saw it first. Behind the screen,
the darkness of the room itself was growing luminous with a glowing
radiance that seemed to spread out into rays that were not parallel, but
divergent. It looked almost as though the screen were a searchlight
sending a spreading beam out behind it.
"Father saw it almost as soon as I did. It was a very curious light; it
did not illuminate the room about us. Then we suddenly discovered that
it went through the walls of the laboratory. We were looking into a
space that seemed to be opening up for miles ahead of us. The walls of
the room, the house itself, the city around us, were all blotted out. We
were looking into an empty distance."
"Empty?" echoed George tensely. "Didn't you see anything?"
"Not at first." Loto had relaxed; his earnest gaze passed from one to
the other of the intent faces of the men. "We were only conscious of
empty distance. It was not darkness nor was it light. It was more a dim
phosphorescence. We had forgotten the Crookes tube, the screen,
everything but that glowing, empty scene before us.
"After a moment, or it may have been much longer, the scene seemed to
brighten. It turned to gleaming silver, and then we saw that we were
looking out over a snow-covered waste. Miles of it. Snow reaching back
to the horizon, and dull gray sky overhead. The ground seemed about
sixty feet below us, and we were poised in the air above it."
Loto paused a moment, and Rogers added, "You understand, gentlemen, that
my laboratory is not on the ground floor of the building, but somewhat
above the level of that part of the city."
"But--" began the Big Business Man.
"Let him go on," growled the Banker. "Go on, boy. Didn't you see
anything but snow?"
"No, not at once. It was all bleak and desolate. But it kept on
brightening, losing its silvery, glowing look until at last we could
see it was daylight. It was apparently late afternoon--or perhaps early
morning. The sun wasn't showing--it must have been behind a cloud.
"We sat staring down at this cold, snowy landscape, and then, almost
from below us, something moving came into view. It had passed under
us--under the laboratory--and was traveling on away from us."
"What was it?" the Banker demanded.
"Well, it seemed to be a huge sled, with fur covered figures on it, and
pulled by an animal almost as large as a horse. But it wasn't a
horse--it was a dog."
Loto paused, but no one else spoke. After a moment he resumed:
"The sled slackened and stopped about a quarter of a mile north of the
laboratory--up toward where Central Park is now. And then we saw that
there was a building there, a large, oval-shaped structure. It may have
been built of snow, or ice--or perhaps some whitish stone. There seemed
to be an enclosed space behind it. The whole thing blended into the
landscape so that we had overlooked it before.
"The sled stopped. We could see the figures climbing down from it. Then
there was sudden darkness. The scene went black. We were sitting facing
the side wall of the laboratory."
"A wire in our apparatus had burned out," Rogers explained. "And that
night I was taken sick. It developed into pneumonia and I was laid up
for weeks. Loto was left alone to follow up our discovery."
"Just a minute," the Banker interjected. "Do I understand you to imply
that you actually saw all this? It was not a vision, or an electrical
picture of some sort that you were reproducing?"
"No, they mean it was an actual scene," the Big Business Man put in.
"They were seeing New York City at some other time. Isn't that so?"
Rogers nodded. "Exactly. And while I was sick, Loto went ahead and--"
"Was it the past?" the Doctor interposed. "Were you looking back into
the past?"
"We were looking across countless centuries into the future," said Loto.
"The future!"
"Yes," declared Rogers. "Must you always think of the future as a
wonderful civilization of marvelous inventions, mammoth buildings and
airplanes like ocean steamships? All that lies ahead of us, no doubt. A
hundred years--two hundred--a thousand--will bring all that. But further
on? What about then, gentlemen? Ten thousand years from now? Or fifty
thousand? Do you anticipate that civilization will always climb steadily
upward? You are wrong. There must be a peak, and then a down grade--the
decadence of mankind."
"Please, let me go on," Loto said eagerly. "I need not tell you all now
exactly how we knew we were looking into the future, and not the past.
We, ourselves, did not know it that first evening. But later, when I
studied the scene more closely, I could tell easily."
"How?" the Banker demanded.
"By the details I saw. The type of building. That animal that looked
like a dog. The sun--I'll tell you about that in a moment. An artificial
light in the house--I saw it once or twice when it was night there. And
the girl. Her manner of dress--"
"There was a girl?" said George quickly. "A girl! Tell us about her,
Loto. Was she pretty? Was she--"
"Go on, boy," growled the Banker. "Tell it from where you left off."
"Yes, she was very pretty," said Loto gravely. "She--" He stopped
suddenly, his gaze drifting off into distance.
"Oh boy!" breathed George, but at the Banker's glare he sat back,
abashed.
Loto went on after a moment: "I won't go into details now. While my
father was sick, I was able to examine the scene many times. I even
think I--well, I sat watching it most of the time for a week at least.
"The house had a sort of stable--or a kennel, if you want to call it
that--behind it. And there was an open space, like a garden, with a wall
around it. There was a little tree in the garden; a tree all covered
with snow. But after a few days the sun came out and melted the snow on
the tree branches.
"The girl was a captive. I guess they were bringing her in on that sled
the night we first saw them. There was another woman about the place,
and an old man. And a younger man--the one who was holding the girl a
prisoner."
"You said the house looked about a quarter of a mile away," the Banker
declared. "How could you see all these details?"
"I had a small telescope, sir."
"The scene actually was there," Rogers put in. "Loto used a telescope
quite as he would have used one through the window to see Central Park.
Go on, Loto."
"The girl..." George prompted.
"She was a small girl. Very slender--about sixteen, I guess. She had
long, golden hair, but it was red when she stood outside with the sun on
it. That's because the sun was red; an enormous glowing red ball, like
the end of a cigar. It tinged the snow with blood, but there didn't seem
to be much heat from it.
"Sometimes I could see the girl through the doorway. There was a door,
but it was transparent--glass, perhaps--and the house was lighted
inside. She would sit on a low seat, with her hair in sort of braids
down over her shoulders. Once she played on some little stringed
instrument. And sang. I could see her so plainly it seemed curious not
to hear her voice.
"They appeared to treat her kindly, even though she was a captive. But
once the man came in and tried to kiss her. She fended him off. Then he
went out and got on his sled and drove away. He was gone several hours.
"The girl cried that night. She cried for a long time. Once she ran
outside, but one of those huge dogs came leaping out of the other
building and drove her back. The dog's baying must have aroused the
place. The old man and the woman appeared, and they locked the girl up
in some other room. I never saw her again.
"A week or two went by and father was better. But the next time I went
to the laboratory, the apparatus wouldn't work. Perhaps the chemicals on
the screen were worn out--We're not really sure. But we've never been
able since to make a screen that would do more than glow. We've never
had another that would affect the time-space behind it."
"You mean," said the Big Business Man softly, "that after those brief
glimpses into the future, it is closed again to you?"
Rogers spoke. "Tell them the rest, Loto."
The younger man was hesitant. "Perhaps you gentlemen wouldn't
understand. We have seen nothing more, but I couldn't forget that girl."
"_I_ understand," George murmured. But Loto went on unheeding:
"It wasn't the scientific part of our discovery that impressed me most.
We kept that secret because we had no proof of what we had done, and we
couldn't seem to get any. It was the girl that bothered me. That girl--a
captive--facing some danger.... You gentlemen will say she isn't living,
that she won't be alive for thousands of years yet. But _I_ say your
conception of it is wrong."
Loto's voice had gained sudden power. He seemed abruptly years
older--forceful, commanding.
"_You_ say that girl _will_ be living in the future. I say she _is_
living in the future. She is living just as you and I are living--right
here in this exact space that we call New York--within a few hundred
yards of this room. She is separated from us, not by space, but only by
time.
"You, gentlemen, perhaps cannot conceive of crossing that time. But if
it were a mile of space, or a thousand miles, you could imagine crossing
it very easily. Yet we know that time is a property of space; not one
iota different from length, breadth and thickness except that we think
of it differently."
Loto's flashing eyes held his little audience. "Gentlemen, suppose
you--with your human intelligence--were trees, rooted to one spot here
in America. And suppose that the accustomed order of things was that
Asia would come slowly and steadily toward you and pass before you. That
is what time does for us. Do you suppose, under those circumstances,
that you could readily conceive of going across space and reaching Asia?
Think about that, gentlemen! It's easy for us to imagine moving through
space, because we've always done it. But a tree with your intelligence
would not feel that way about it. The tree would say: 'Asia will be
here.' And if you said: 'That's true. But Asia exists just the same in a
different part of space from you. If you go there, you will not have to
wait for it to come to you,' the tree--even if it had your present
intelligence in every other way--wouldn't understand that. Simply
because the tree had always conceived space as we are accustomed to
conceiving time. That conception of ours does not fit the real facts,
for--except for the way space and time affect us personally--there is
actually no distinction to be made between them. That is no original
theory of mine; it is modern scientific thought--mathematically proven
and accepted ever since Albert Einstein first made his theory public."
A silence followed Loto's outburst. Rogers broke it:
"We would like to have you gentlemen meet us here two weeks from
tonight. We are not quite ready yet. Will you do that?"
Every one in the room signified assent.
"But what for?" George asked earnestly. "Of course we will, but has Loto
discovered anything? Has he--"
Loto interrupted him. "I have been working and experimenting for two
years." He had fallen back to his quiet manner. "Father has helped me,
of course. And given me money--more than he could afford."
He smiled at Rogers, who returned it with a gaze of affection.
"In two weeks I will be completely ready. Don't you think so, father?"
"Yes," said Rogers, and a sudden cloud of anxiety crossed his face. He
was a scientist, but he was a father as well, and even his scientific
enthusiasm could not allay the fear for his son that was in his heart.
"Yes," he repeated. "I think you will be quite ready, Loto."
"Ready for what?" growled the Banker. He was mopping his forehead with a
huge white handkerchief.
Loto's glance swept across all the men in the room. "I have found a way
to cross time, just as you are able to cross space. And two weeks from
tonight, gentlemen, with, your assistance, I propose to start forward
through the centuries that lie ahead of us. I'm going to find that
girl--if I can--and release her--help her out of whatever danger,
whatever trouble she is in!"
CHAPTER TWO
"Honor to Loto," cried the Big Business Man. "The youngest and greatest
scientist of all time!"
"There's a double meaning in that," laughed the Doctor, amid the
applause. "The greatest scientist of time! He is, indeed."
It was outwardly a gay little gathering, having dinner in a small
private room of the Scientific Club. But underneath the laughter there
was a note of tenseness, and two of the people--a man and a
woman--laughed infrequently with gayety that was forced.
The man was Rogers; the woman, Lylda, his wife, mother of Loto. She was
the only woman in the room. At first glance she would have seemed no
more than thirty-five, though in reality she was several years older--a
small, slender figure in a simple black evening dress that covered her
shoulders, but left her throat bare. Her beauty was of a curious type;
her face was oval, her features delicately molded and of pronounced
Grecian cast. Yet there seemed about her, also, an indefinable touch of
the Orient; her eyes, perhaps, which were slate gray, large and very
slightly upturned at the corners. Her complexion was fair; her hair
thick, wavy and coal-black.
That she was a woman of intellect, culture and refinement was obvious.
There was about her, too, a look of gentle sweetness, the air of a woman
who could be nothing less than charming. Her eyes, as she met those of
her men friends around her, were direct and honest. But when she
regarded Loto this evening, a yearning melancholy sprang into them, with
a mistiness as though the tears were restrained only by an effort.
The laughter about the table died out. A waiter was removing the last of
the dishes; the men were lighting their cigars.
"Well," said the Banker, breaking the silence, "now let us hear it. If
everyone is as curious as I am--"
"More," put in George. "I'm more curious."
"You're right," agreed Rogers. "We must get on."
"First," the Big Business Man interrupted, "I want to know more about
that screen behind which you saw that other time world of the future."
"I know very little myself," Rogers answered. "So little that Loto and I
could never duplicate it. But the theory is understandable. The space
where Central Park now is has a certain time factor allied to its other
properties. The light, the rays, from that screen, whatever may have
been their character, altered the time factor of that space.
"As Loto told you, the modern conception of the reality of things is
that the future exists--but with a different time dimension. We have a
familiar axiom, 'No two masses of matter can occupy the same space _at
the same time_.' That is just another way of saying it. To reason
logically from that, an infinite number of masses of matter can, and
do, occupy the same space _at different times_."
"I'd rather hear about this new experiment," the Banker said. "You made
the statement--"
"So would I," agreed George. "That girl--"
"You shall," said Rogers. His grave, troubled glance went to his wife's
face, but she smiled at him bravely. "You shall have all the facts as
briefly as I can give them to you.
"Loto became obsessed--I can hardly call it anything less--with the idea
that he could alter the time factor of human consciousness. In theory it
was perfectly possible--I had to admit that. And so I let him go ahead.
He has worked feverishly, with an energy I feared would injure his
health, for nearly two years. But, gentlemen, this is all that counts:
he has succeeded. I'm sure of that; we have already made a test. The
apparatus is ready upstairs now, and--"
"Let Loto tell it," grumbled the Banker. "Go on, boy, can't you tell us
how you did it?"
"Yes, sir. I can in principle." Loto hesitated, then added with a
mixture of sarcasm and deference: "I can explain it to you in a general
way, but the details are very technical."
He paused until the waiter had left the room; then he began speaking
slowly, evidently choosing his words with the utmost care.
"Matter, as we know it now, has four dimensions; the three so-called
planes of space, and one of time. But what is matter? The new science
tells us it is molecules, composed of atoms. And atoms? An atom is a
ring of electrons, which are particles of negative, disembodied
electricity, revolving at enormously high speeds around a central
nucleus. Am I clear?"
Loto's gaze rested on the Banker, who nodded somewhat dubiously.
"Then," Loto went on, "we have resolved all matter to one common entity,
that central nucleus of positive electricity which is sometimes called
the proton. All this is now generally known and accepted. But of what
substance, what character, is the proton? For years now, the theory has
been fairly accepted that the proton is merely a vortex, or whirlpool.
And the electron is conceived to be something very similar. Do you grasp
the significance of that? It robs matter of what I, personally, always
instinctively feel is its chief characteristic--substance. We delve into
matter, resolving its complexities to find one basic substance, and we
find not substance but a whirlpool--electrical, doubtless--in space!"
"That makes you rather gasp!" the Big Business Man exclaimed, gazing
about the table.
"It is quite correct," affirmed Rogers. "It transforms our conception of
substance to motion. Of what? Motion of something intangible--the ether,
let us say. Or space itself."
"I can't seem to get a mental grip on it," the Big Business Man
declared. "You--"
"Think of it this way," Rogers went on earnestly. "Motion can easily
change our impression of solidity. This is not an analogous case,
perhaps, but it will give you something to think about. Water is
normally a fluid. You can pass your hand through a stream of water from
a garden hose. But set that water in more rapid motion, and what
physical impression do you get? At Fully, Switzerland, water for a
turbine emerges from a nozzle at a speed of four hundred miles per hour.
What would happen if you tried to pass your hand through that? I have
seen a jet no more than three inches in diameter of such rapidly moving
water, and you cannot cut through it with the blow of a crowbar! There
you have a physical substance--an impression of solidity--derived from
motion."
"But what has all this to do with time?" the Banker objected, after a
moment of silence.
"Everything," said Loto quickly. "Since we are changing the
time-dimension of matter, without altering its space-dimensions, you
must have some conception of what matter really is. When once you
realize the real intangibility of even our own bodies, or this house we
are in, you will be able to understand us better."
The Banker relaxed. "Go on, boy. Let's hear it."
"Yes, sir. Changing the time-dimension of substance amounts merely to a
change in the rate and character of the motion that constitutes the
electrical vortex we call a proton."
Loto looked at Rogers somewhat helplessly, with a faintly quizzical
smile twitching at his lips.
"I seem to be talking very ponderously tonight, father. I wonder if it
wouldn't be easier for us to show them the apparatus?"
Rogers rose from his chair. "By all means. Gentlemen, Loto has completed
his apparatus on the roof of the club. You may have noticed for the past
month that one end is boarded up, and has a canvas roof over it. That is
where Loto has been working. Will you come up with us?"
The building that houses the New York Scientific Club is a full block in
depth and twenty stories high. Its flat roof is surrounded by a parapet
of stone. One end of the roof is a garden, with pergolas, trellised
vines, and beds of flowers with white gravel walks between. At the other
end, on this particular evening, a twenty-foot, rough board wall
enclosed a space about a hundred feet square, with a canvas roof above
it.
The night was calm and moonless, with a purple sky brilliantly studded
with stars. At this height the hum of the great city was stilled. Near
by, many buildings towered still higher, but for the most part the roofs
lay below, with their chimneys and pot-bellied water tanks set upon
spindly legs like huge, grotesque bugs on guard. A block away the roof
garden of a great hotel blazed with red and green lights. Spots of light
crawled through the streets below, with black blobs that were
pedestrians scurrying between them. Occasionally the drone of a plane
overhead broke the stillness.
Rogers led the way across the roof top, and unlocked a tiny door that
led into the temporary board enclosure. Lylda and Loto entered last,
the woman clinging to her son's hand. The turn of a switch flooded the
place with light.
At first glance one would have said it was a modern passenger airplane
that was standing there under the canvas--a huge, glistening dragonfly
of aluminum color with a long, narrow cabin below.
"There," said Rogers, "is the product of Loto's work. What you see from
here is merely an adaptation of the Frazia plane--and the Frazia company
built it for us. The apparatus flies as any other Frazia plane does; it
has the same motors, the same equipment. Its other mechanism--by which
the time-dimension, the basic electrical nature of the whole apparatus,
and everything or everybody within its cabin can be changed at
will--that mechanism Loto constructed and installed himself."
"There you go again," growled the Banker. "Let Loto tell it, won't you?"
Rogers bridled a little. "I'll tell you this, Donald. That is the
apparatus in which Loto is going to cross time into the future. At least
you can understand that--if you keep your mind on it."
There was a general laugh at the Banker's expense. But Lylda did not
laugh. She was leaning against a wooden post, clinging to her son's
hand, and staring at that sleek, shining thing with wide, terrified
eyes.
"Come, Loto," said Rogers. "They want you to show it to them."
The young man disengaged himself from his mother and went forward. In a
moment the men were scattered about, examining the plane.
"You may not understand the Frazia model," Loto was saying. "It was only
put on the market recently. It's slightly larger than the average of the
older types--more stable in the air, but no faster. The 'copter-type,
variable-pitch propellers are powered by a Frazier atomic motor."
The Banker called to them. He was standing on a box, looking into one of
the cabin windows. "You've got different rooms in here."
"Yes, sir," said Loto. "I've divided it into three small compartments
according to my own needs."
"Can we get inside?"
"I think perhaps it would be better not to," said Rogers, coming
forward. "At least, not tonight. Loto wants to get started. There is--"
"You plan to operate this _tonight_?" the Doctor asked.
"Yes," answered Loto. "I am going forward in time, to--"
"To find that girl," George finished eagerly. "To rescue her. Don't you
remember he saw her in that--"
"Be quiet, boy," the Banker commanded. "Loto, what is this other
mechanism your father mentioned?"
"It is not particularly complicated," the young man answered readily.
"In general principle, that is. The Frazia mechanism causes the machine
to travel through space--to change its space-factors at the will of the
operator. That's clear, isn't it?"
"Of course it is," said the Banker impatiently.
"It's clear because you've always been able to travel through space
yourself," interjected the Big Business Man. "Don't be so
self-satisfied, Donald. If you'd been rooted to one spot all your
life--like a tree--you wouldn't have a chance on earth of understanding
an airplane."
"That's exactly what I mean," said Loto quickly. "My other mechanism
changes the time-factor of the entire apparatus. I can explain it best
this way: Every particle of matter in that machine--as well as my own
body--is electrical in its basic nature. My mechanism circulates a
current through every particle of that matter. Not an electrical
current, but something closely allied to it. The nature of this I do not
yet know. But it causes the inherent vibratory movements of the protons
of matter to change their character. The matter changes its state. It
acquires a different time-factor, in other words."
"Is this change instantaneous?" the Doctor asked.
"No, sir. It is progressive. To reach the time-factor of tomorrow night,
take the first few minutes of time as it seems to us to pass. The
time-factor of next week would be reached during the succeeding two or
three minutes."
"In other words, it picks up speed," said the Big Business Man.
"Yes. How long the acceleration will last I do not know. I have a series
of dials for registering the time-movement. By altering the strength,
the intensity of the current, I can vary the speed, or check it
entirely."
"But why have this apparatus in the form of an airplane?" asked the
Banker. "You're going through time, not space."
Rogers answered: "In a hundred years from now this building will not be
here. If we were to stop his time-movement at that point, he would drop
twenty stories through space to the ground."
"Why, of course!" exclaimed the Big Business Man. "But in the air..."
"Exactly," said Loto. "I shall not start the propellers until later;
until I am launched into future time, and need them."
Rogers looked at his watch. "Have you much to do before you start,
Loto?"
"No, sir--nothing. I have food and water, clothing, and everything else
I need. I filled our list very carefully, and checked over everything
this afternoon. I could have started then; I've left nothing to do
tonight."
"Then you might as well get away at once. You'll remember everything
I've told you, Loto? You'll come back here, as quickly as possible? Here
to this rooftop?"
The strain of anxiety under which Rogers was subconsciously laboring
came out suddenly in his voice. "You'll be careful, lad?"
"Yes, sir, of course. I--well, I might as well say good-by now, Father."
They shook hands silently, and Rogers abruptly turned away.
Loto shook hands with the others.
The Banker had withdrawn to the farthest corner of the enclosure, where
he stood regarding the airplane fearfully. Loto walked over to him.
"Good-by, boy." The Banker's voice was gruff and a trifle unsteady.
"Take it easy. Don't be a reckless fool just because you're young."
"I'll be all right, sir." Silently they shook hands.
Loto met his mother a few paces away. He stood head and shoulders above
her, and her arms went around him hungrily as he bent down to kiss her.
"You'll come back to me, little son?" she whispered. "You'll come back
safely?"
"Yes, Mother. Of course."
He met her eyes, with the terror lurking in their gray depths.
"Don't look like that, _mamita_. I'll be all right."
Rogers was calling to them. Loto disengaged himself gently.
"Good-by, _mamita_. I'll be back tomorrow or the next day. Don't
worry--it's nothing."
The last preparations took no more than a moment or two. Loto climbed to
the cabin and disappeared within it.
"Be sure and take off the canvas roof later tonight," he called down to
them. "And leave it off so I can get back."
"Yes," said Rogers, "we will. And one of us, at least, will be here
watching all the time you're away. Good-by, Loto."
"Good-by, Father." The cabin door closed upon him.
At a distance of twenty feet the men stood in a solemn group, watching.
"What will it look like going?" George whispered.
But no one answered him.
Presently a low hum became audible. It grew in intensity, until it
sounded like the droning of a thousand winged insects. The airplane
rocked gently on its foundation. It was straining, trembling in every
fiber.
A moment passed. Then the plane began to glow, seemingly phosphorescent
even in the light of the electric bulbs on the scaffolding beside it.
Another moment. There was a fleeting impression that the thing was
growing translucent--transparent--vapory. For one brief instant the
vision and sound of it persisted--_then it was gone_!
The men stood facing a silent, empty space, where a few loose boards
were lying, with a discarded hammer, a saw, and a keg of nails.
They had forgotten the woman. In an opposite corner of the enclosure
Lylda was seated alone, crying softly and miserably to herself.
* * * * *
George sat alone on a little bench in the roof garden of the Scientific
Club. On the ground beside him, stretched on a broad leather cushion,
Rogers lay asleep. It was well after midnight. There was hardly a breath
of air stirring, and only a few fleecy clouds to hide the stars. In the
east, a flattened moon was rising.
George sat with his chin cupped in his hands, staring out over the
lights and the roofs of the city. The growing moonlight gleamed on his
soft white shirt and white flannel trousers.
Rogers stirred and sat up. "Are you awake, George?"
"Go on to sleep. I'm good for nearly all night."
But Rogers rose, stretching. "What time is it?"
"Quarter of two. Go on to sleep, I tell you."
"I've had enough." The older man sat down on the bench and lighted a
cigar. "You'd better take a turn, George. You'll wear yourself out."
"I can't. I'm too excited. How long has he been gone now?"
Rogers calculated. "About twenty-eight hours."
"Do you think he'll get back tonight?"
"I don't know. Perhaps."
"I wonder what he's doing right now," George persisted after a silence.
Rogers did not answer.
"You don't think anything could have happened to him, do you?"
"No. I--I hope not."
"I hope he brings that girl back with him," George said after another
silence. "I certainly would like to meet her."
Rogers plucked a flower from the trellis beside them, breaking it in his
fingers idly. "He may get back tonight. It was our idea that--"
He stopped abruptly, and simultaneously George gripped him by the arm.
They both saw it; a little blob of radiance in the air just beyond the
flower trellis; a shining spot small as a puff of tobacco smoke gleaming
silvery in the moonlight.
George murmured tensely, "Over there...something."
A transparent radiance. But in a moment it was congealing, turning into
a glistening, solid shape. The faint hum of it sounded as it hung in
mid-air by the trellis.
"Not the plane," George murmured. "Then what is it?"
The humming ceased. They could see the little object clearly now; a
metal cube, each of its faces some twenty inches in diameter. It hung
for another moment, then dropped with a little thump to the rooftop.
Both the men were on their feet. Rogers said, "A message from him. An
emergency..." He picked up the cube.
George stared wonderingly. "You know about this?"
"We arranged it--only for an emergency. If he could not come, or felt
it unwise, he was to send this. We did not want to worry
anyone--particularly his mother--so we didn't mention this
possibility."
* * * * *
In a downstairs club room, the men and Lylda were gathered, all of them
gazing mute and solemn as Rogers opened the cube. Much of its interior
was filled with the intricate time-mechanisms. To one side a sheaf of
manuscript pages was crowded, closely written with Loto's script.
"His message," George murmured. "I do hope he found the girl, and that
they're all right."
"I'll read it to you." Rogers' fingers were trembling as he drew out the
pages. He lighted a cigarette, steadied himself. "The first thing he
says--he's all right--"
"Of course he's all right," the Banker growled. "That boy is
resourceful."
"He wants us to know that he's safe and well. It says...."
CHAPTER THREE
First I want you all to know, I'm quite safe and well. _Mamita_ dear,
please try not to worry about me. Remember, Father we anticipated I
might decide it best to send you a message. I do hope I have calculated
the space-and time-factors correctly, and that I've set the mechanisms
of the cube so that it will come back to you within a day or two after
my departure. I'm assuming that is so.
You will understand, of course, that as I have lived time, it has been
far longer than that. Much has happened to me, and I want to tell you
now what I can of it.
You recall that night when I left you--to me now it seems so long ago. I
remember your solemn faces as I closed the door of the cabin after me. I
was in the forward one of the three compartments--you saw it when you
inspected the plane the night I started.
In this compartment are the controls for the Frazia motors and the
flying controls. The controls of my own mechanism are there also. These
are simple; merely a switch to regulate the proton current, as Father
and I call it, and a series of small dials for recording the
time-change. These dials are geared, with one for days, another for days
in multiples of ten, one for years, and others for years in multiples of
tens, hundreds, and thousands.
I took my seat behind the Frazia controls. I was not going to use them
at once, because there was no immediate need to raise the plane into
the air. But I wanted to be seated; I could not tell what the shock of
starting might be. The dials and switch were on the wall at my right. I
moved the lever of the switch over to the first intensity. There was a
low hum. The floor seemed to rock under me. The humming increased; it
roared in my ears. Everything was vibrating with an infinitely tiny,
trembling quiver that penetrated into my body, into my bones, even
coursed through my blood.
They were swift sensations, I suppose, lasting no more than a few
seconds. I felt, as near as I can explain it, as though some force that
holds my own body together, cell by cell, were being tampered with; as
if, had the struggle continued, I might be shattered into a myriad of
tiny fragments, like a puff of exploded powder.
The humming grew still louder, and I remember trying to stand up. A wild
impulse to throw back the switch and stop the thing came to me, but I
resisted it. Then I was conscious of a sensation of falling headlong; a
dizzy, sickening reeling of the senses, rather than the body.
I lost consciousness--for only a moment or two, I think. I was sitting
in my seat, uninjured. The humming was still in my ears, insistent. But
it was not so loud as I had thought, and after a time I forgot it almost
entirely.
My first impression now was that everything about me was glowing,
radiating a phosphorescent light. I looked down at my knees; my clothes
were glowing. I could no longer distinguish color; my hands and my shoes
were the same--all that same glowing phosphorescence. It gave a sense of
unreality to everything. And then I saw that everything _was_ unreal;
nothing had any substance. I could distinguish the side of the cabin
through my hand, and beyond the cabin wall I could see the solidity of
the board enclosure where the plane was resting. It was as though my
body and the cabin interior were shimmering ghosts. But when I gripped
my knee with my hand, I felt solid enough.
I have given you details of my sensations as I remember them now, but I
do not suppose that more than a minute or two had elapsed since I had
first pulled the switch. I glanced at the dial recording the passage of
days but there was no movement.
I stood up, conscious of a nausea and a strong feeling of
light-headedness. I peered through one of the side windows. Outside,
everything looked at first glance as though I had not yet started. The
walls of the enclosure were clear, solid and as distinct as before. Then
I saw George staring directly at me, and I could tell by the expression
of his face that he was looking, not at the plane, but at an empty space
where the plane had been.
It was all as real outside as though I had been part of it myself--until
I saw the others move across the enclosure. They were walking extremely
fast and their gestures were rapid; two or three times more rapid than
normal.
For what seemed like five or ten minutes I stood there watching you all.
It was like a moving picture being run too fast--and being constantly
accelerated. I saw you roll back the canvas roof, and then you went
scurrying out through the door--the last of you so fast that the figure
blurred in my sight.
I was left alone. For a while I sat there, a little dazed. There is a
small clock on the side wall of the cabin. It might have been completely
radium-painted, by the look of it at that moment, but even though it
glowed as intangible as a ghost, I could make out the hands. I was sure
they would be traveling through space at their accustomed speed and thus
give me the time of the world I had left. I had started at about ten
minutes of ten; the clock now showed about five minutes after ten. I had
been gone fifteen minutes. Above the enclosure, to the east, I saw the
moon. It was about an hour up, I judged. And that gave me a basis to
compute my starting acceleration. The moon an hour up would have made
your time ten minutes of two--four hours after I started. I had passed
through those first four hours in fifteen minutes!
This was with my control at the weakest intensity of the current. There
are twenty subdivisions of power. I pushed the handle around from one
to the other of them quickly, pausing only an instant on each, and
stopping at the tenth. There was no change of sensation, except that the
humming seemed to grow, not louder exactly, but more powerful--more
penetrating. The interior of the cabin and my own body lost visible
density in appearance. You had switched off the electric lights outside,
but in the moonlight I could still see the board walls, not only through
the windows, but through the metallic sides of the cabin.
I was tingling all over, but the sensation, now that I was used to it,
was pleasant rather than the reverse; a feeling of lightness, buoyancy
and strength.
With the power increased tenfold, the acceleration of time-movement was
enormous. The movement of the rising moon became visible; the heavens
were turning over, the stars progressing from point to point with ever
increasing speed.
About ten minutes after ten by the clock, the moon was near the zenith,
and the sun rose an instant later. I was conscious of a flash of
twilight, and the sun's disk shot up from the horizon. The world was
plunged into daylight.
From my position inside the enclosure I could see nothing outside but
the sky and one or two of the tallest buildings near at hand. There was
no visible movement of anything but the sun. You can understand that, of
course. Had any of you come into the enclosure, or had an airplane
passed overhead, I would not have seen either one. The movement would
have been too rapid for my vision.
In perhaps a minute or two the sun was directly overhead, and in another
fraction of a minute it had set. Darkness was upon me. Then the moon
rose again and flashed across the heavens. Clouds formed and disappeared
so quickly I could hardly see them.
I glanced at the dial recording days. Its hand was moving. One day had
passed, and the hand was traveling toward the next.
For ten minutes or so I sat there, while day succeeded night and night
came again, only to be followed almost instantly by the day light. Soon
I could distinguish only thin streaks of light as the sun and moon
crossed above me--streaks that came closer together, merged into one,
and separated again as the month passed. And then the days became so
brief that they blurred with the nights. A grayness settled upon
everything; the mingled twilight of light and darkness.
The hand of the day dial was sweeping around swiftly. I looked at the
dial beside it, which recorded days in multiples of ten. Its pointer was
also moving. Forty odd days were recorded and the movement was
accelerating every instant.
I thought then I had better leave the rooftop. I started the Frazia
'copters, and rose about a thousand feet. Then I slowed them down until
a balance with gravity was maintained, and I hung stationary. You may be
surprised that the flying mechanism was effective while I was sweeping
so swiftly through time. If our atmosphere did not persist in time, the
propellers would have exerted no pressure against it. But the air does
persist, and so does gravity.
There was apparently no wind. The transient winds and storms of a few
hours were all blended. The result, however, must have been a slight
influence to the north, for I found myself drifting very slowly in that
direction. After a few moments my time-velocity had so increased that
even that drift was averaged. I hung motionless.
From this height--a thousand feet above the southern boundary of Central
Park--the scene below me was a strange one. At first glance, I might
have been hanging in a balloon on a dull, soundless day very heavily
overcast. Except that the sky, instead of showing dark clouds, was a
queer, luminous gray blur that distinguished nothing.
The city below me lay clear cut but absolutely shadowless, which gave it
a very extraordinary look of flatness--a vista of buildings painted upon
a huge, concave canvas. Colors were distinguishable, but they were
abnormally grayish and drab. Vague, unreal pencil points of light dotted
the scene--electric lights that were on every night in the same spots,
and off in the daytime--the blended effect of which was visible. There
was no sound. Nor was there motion. It looked like a dead, empty city.
The streets seemed deserted, with not even a blur to mark those millions
of transitory movements of humans and vehicles that I knew were taking
place.
I had been conscious of a brief period of chill, and for a moment or two
the scene had assumed a whiter aspect, especially in the park. I
conceived this as a blending of several heavy, lingering snowfalls of
the winter.
The lowest dial, marking days, now showed only a blur as its pointer
swept around. And the year-dial pointer was visibly moving. I had passed
one year and was well into the second. The clock showed ten thirty. I
had been gone forty minutes!
I said there was no visible movement in the scene beneath me. That was
so, at first, but I soon began to see plenty of movement. The white look
had come and gone again--far briefer this time--when my attention was
caught by a building on Broadway, along in the Fifties somewhere. It was
a broad but low building, no more than eight or ten stories high; the
lowest in its immediate vicinity. It seemed now to be melting before my
eyes! That is the only way I can describe it--melting. Parts of it were
vanishing! It was dismembering, as though piece by piece it was being
taken apart and carried away. Which, of course, is exactly what was
happening.
Can you form a mental picture of that? I hope so, for it was
characteristic of all the movement that now began to assume visibility
throughout the silent city. This building that melted--I come back to
that word because it seems the only one suitable--was gone in a moment
or two. Try to conceive that I did not see actual movement--not the
physical movement we are accustomed to. They were tearing down that
building--doubtless over a period of weeks. But I could not see any
specific thing being done, any part of the building come off and move
away. All such details were too rapid--far too rapid. What I saw,
rather, was the _effect_ of movement; a change of aspect, not the
movement itself. The building progressively looked smaller, until at
last it was not there.
Then another building began rising in its place. It grew steadily. It
was as if I were blinking, and between each blink, with an unseen
movement, it had leaped upward another story. It seemed a skeleton at
first, and then it was clothed. I watched it, ignoring others further
away, until it stood complete--a full block in depth and thirty or forty
stories high.
I began to realize now the tremendous acceleration of time velocity I
was undergoing. The year-dial pointer very soon had moved to ten years;
the pointer of the century-dial was stirring. Again I glanced at the
clock. It was after eleven; I had been gone about an hour and a quarter.
There was nothing that I had to do, and I moved about the cabin, looking
out of each of the windows in turn. The city was rising; not one
building, but hundreds. As my time velocity increased, I could no longer
see them come and go individually. They were there--and then they were
were gone, and others always larger and higher were in their stead.
So I say the city was rising, coming up to meet me as I hung a thousand
feet or more above it. Already one gigantic edifice to the south seemed
to rear its spire far above me. The edges of the island stayed low, a
fringe of the new and old mingled; but down the backbone, roughly
following Broadway, great piles of steel and masonry were coming up.
To the southeast I could make out the bridges over the river. There were
others now, extraordinarily broad and high, dwarfing the older ones that
stood neglected beside them.
It was a period of tremendous activity. And suddenly I discovered that
the southern half of Central Park was obliterated. I had drifted a
little further north and was over it. A building was rising, coming up
toward me so swiftly that its outlines were blurred and shadowy. I was
gazing down through the window in the floor of the cabin, and caught a
vague impression of a network of gigantic steel girders almost
underneath the machine.
I was too low. I ascended perhaps another thousand feet. When I was
again hanging stationary, I found beneath me a tremendous terraced
building--a pyramid with its apex sliced off. To the north and south it
connected with others of its kind; giant structures generally of pyramid
shape, with streets running along their steplike terraces. Innumerable
bridges connected these mammoth buildings, so that north and south, and
for a few blocks east and west of the center, there were continuous
aerial streets, in some places as many as ten or fifteen, one above the
other.
I turned to the window facing the north. There was now nothing but
buildings as far as my line of vision extended; buildings like a ridge
down the center, shading off to the lower areas of the east and west.
There were trees and parks in spots on the top, but the original ground
was covered.
Some of the upper street levels--those alternate sections of terraces
and bridges over courtyards whose ground was merely the rooftops of
lower edifices--were laid with gleaming rails. And rearing itself above
everything, a skeleton structure of monorails stretched north and
south--eight or ten single rails paralleled at widths of some fifty
feet, which I realized must be carrying some system of aerial railroad.
This towering pile was indeed the backbone of the city, extending
roughly north and south like a mountain range that forms the backbone of
a continent. The lower areas adjacent--five hundred feet above the
ground, perhaps--were for the most part buildings with broad, flat
roofs.
In New Jersey, on Long Island, and north of Manhattan as far as I could
see, lesser cities had appeared, with occasional giants among buildings
that were lower. The whole was now welded into one, for the rivers on
each side of me were spanned by a bridge at almost every street; a
network of bridges under which the water flowed almost unnoticed.
My time-velocity was still accelerating. I saw now, increasingly, many
things about the city that were shadowy--structures that were erected
and stood no more than twenty or thirty years, perhaps, which to my
vision now was only a moment. I became aware, not only below me, but
even above me, of occasional vague aerial structures; skeletons that
reared themselves up a few thousand feet and dissipated into nothing
before I could form a conception of their real nature.
There was, indeed, everywhere this shadowy aspect as to detail. Changes
were taking place; things were being done even the effect of which was
too fleeting for my vision to grasp.
I was constantly losing more details, but in general the growth of the
city was outward and upward. Presently there came a pause, as though the
city were resting. Occasional areas were blurred by their changing form;
across the river in Jersey a tremendous tower was rising into the sky
far above me. But as a whole the scene had quieted. My brain was
confused by what I had tried to observe and comprehend. I found myself
hungry and a little faint. I dropped into my seat.
The dials beside me caught my attention. The century-dial pointer had
passed eighteen. Eighteen hundred years, and approaching two thousand
even as I sat staring at it. The clock marked one forty. I had been gone
almost four hours. I said the city was resting. That is true. The growth
of two thousand years had carried it to splendors of mechanical
perfection that I could only guess at. But now it seemed to have reached
its height; the summit of human achievement had been attained.
I waited and watched through another period. There were changes, but
they were minor. I suppose all the buildings and various structures
decayed and were replenished. I do not know. The changes were too
fleeting for me to see, and the general form remained the same.
I was at what seemed the pinnacle of civilization, where mankind was
resting and enjoying the results of its labors. Decadence was bound to
come, as truly as death followed birth.
The clock now recorded two fifty. I had been gone five hours. The
century-dial was beyond thirty-seven hundred years. Two thousand years
of growth upward from our own time-world, and only two thousand more of
resting on the summit before the inevitable decline began. He who stands
still, goes backward. And so it is with mankind as a whole. This
triumphant city went down almost as quickly at it had come up. And
through the windows of that cabin I watched it--neglected a little at
first, then more and more as its softened masters, with nature turned
against them, became unable to cope with it, until at last it broke up
and sank back into ruin, decay and desolation.
CHAPTER FOUR
Occasionally, now, some brave effort seemed to be made to build the city
on a different scale. There were other types of architecture, always
smaller; little sections, newly built, stood heroically, surrounded by
gigantic, moldy ruins. Suddenly I realized that it was a dead city at
which I was staring. There were no longer changes, except those natural
to the passing years. The city was deserted; its inhabitants had died or
had fled--or both.
It was after five o'clock. The dials registered just short of eight
thousand years. I had less to see now, and I could give my attention to
other things. The ruins of a dead city do not remain long in visible
existence. Two thousand years more were recorded. Beneath me the
vegetation seemed untouched by the hand of man; only in a few scattered
places were there any remaining ruins: a tumbledown segment of
building; the broken base of a tower; skeletons of crumbling steel here
and there; headstones on the grave of what once had been a city.
With these changes the contour of the landscape itself was forced to my
attention. The rivers had changed; they were broader. South of Manhattan
Island, and somewhat to the west, I could distinguish a great expanse of
water. All the lowlands there--the "Meadows," as we call them--had sunk.
To the north, the land seemed higher than normal, and an arm of the sea
had crept in up there to lap the foothills.
I have not told you of the temperature I was experiencing. When I
started there was an almost immediate drop--a blending of day and night,
winter and summer. It penetrated into the cabin, making the ship almost
cold after the warm August evening of my departure.
Now, however, at seven o'clock, when I had been gone some nine hours, I
felt that it was growing noticeably colder. And the faintest suggestion
of a vague whiteness began to creep into the scene below me. That is an
odd way for me to phrase it. I was seeing each minute only the _effect_
of the snowfalls of thirty winters, blended with all the other seasons.
The snowfalls were increasing in severity; I became aware of that in the
aspect of the scene, but I cannot describe it.
It was after seven o'clock now. I had been gone about nine and a half
hours. The dials showed eleven thousand four hundred and fifty odd
years. I now faced a new problem: the landscape we had seen in our
experiment had nothing in it of great duration. How could I find it, or
tell when I had reached its time? That house in which the girl was held
captive could stand no more than a hundred years, if that. And it was
the only distinguishing mark in the whole scene. I would pass the
lifetime of that house in a minute or two. I puzzled over this for quite
a while. I had almost decided to stop and verify the actual, momentary
conditions beneath me. And then I realized I still had far to go. There
were trees, plenty of them, beneath me. They were constantly shifting
and changing, but quite distinguishable, nevertheless. And in the
enclosure about that house, Father and I had seen a tree--the only tree
in the landscape. It was a curious looking tree, stunted, and with a
look of the far north about it. These below me, at eleven and twelve
thousand years ahead of our present, were more or less normal looking
trees--or they probably would have been, had I stopped to examine them.
I still had far to travel, so I increased the current from the tenth to
the fifteenth intensity. Again I was conscious of that feeling of
lightness in my head, and the humming and vibration of everything
increased. I had almost forgotten my personal sensations; had quite
forgotten them, in fact, for several hours past.
I passed fifteen thousand years. I could see that the ocean to the north
had come further inland. There was now, from my altitude, no evidence of
mankind visible, nor anything to indicate that man had ever lived on
this earth. The scene was more blurred now and grayer. I could still
make out the bay to the south, with a range of hills on Staten Island
and water behind it and to the west as far as I could see. The rivers
bounding Manhattan were still there, but the Palisades along the Hudson
had broken down.
Directly beneath me was forest. I believed I had not drifted much from
my original position. I was still over where Central Park had been some
twenty thousand years before. The forest--it was more like
woods--covered a narrow rolling country between the two rivers. I knew I
was moving through time much more swiftly now, perhaps twice as fast as
before. The vegetation was blurred, almost distorted. It was changing
constantly and, on the whole, was growing sparser, more stunted. It was
as though I were traveling northward, or ascending a mountain almost to
the timber line. Another interval passed. My time-velocity had so
increased that once I thought I could see a hill rising. But that
probably was imagination.
I had been gone some twelve hours--it was almost ten o'clock--when I
realized I was about exhausted. My head was reeling; my eyes burned and
watered. It was growing much colder--so cold that I switched on the
electrical heating apparatus.
That was when the dials recorded between twenty and thirty thousand
years. I don't remember exactly. I was confused. The scene beneath me
was noticeably whiter, and I was now drifting to the south. I felt
perturbed. I was going too far.
I had reached about forty-five thousand years when abruptly I realized
that there was no vegetation in the scene! Just when it melted away I
had not noticed. It was all a whitish blur, now, that suggested very
snowy winters blended with a shorter summer season. I leaped to the
control, and threw its handle back, pausing an instant at each intensity
of current until I had come to the first. There I left it.
These new sensations of decreasing my time-velocity so abruptly were
almost equally as severe as those when I started. The humming slowed up.
My whole body seemed to be turning to lead--or freezing. I was heavy,
stiff, and cold. I was standing up, and I managed to grip the side of
the cabin for support, and reaching down, I threw off the switch,
cutting off the current completely. There came a tremendous, soundless
clap in my head; I seemed tumbling headlong into an abyss of blackness.
I do not think I lost consciousness. My senses reeled for what seemed an
age, but was doubtlessly only a second or two. I fell into a chair and
the horrible dizziness passed. I raised my head and looked about me.
My first impression was of the extraordinary solidity of the cabin
interior. I had not realized how shadowy it had been before. Two little
electric bulbs were burning overhead. They illuminated the compartment.
The windows were black rectangles; It was night outside.
I was cold; I could see my breath in the chill of the room, even though
one of the electric heaters was in operation. Everything close to me was
oppressively silent; the humming still seemed to persist vaguely, but I
knew it was only the reaction from it roaring in my ears. From the next
compartment came the drone of the Frazia motors.
When I had fairly recovered normality, I went to the nearest window. The
sky was blue-black. There was no moon and the stars seemed a trifle
hazy. Beneath me I could make out a barren expanse of snow. I checked my
compass. Its needle had steadied now, and I saw that my drift was almost
directly south. The ship was moving rapidly, and I was alarmed. I knew
that, even with the compass, I could easily get lost--geographically, so
to speak.
My first action was to ascend. When I was up some six thousand feet I
started back northward, against the wind.
I was hopelessly lost, both in time and in space. I could distinguish
nothing in the starlit, snowy landscape that seemed familiar. Whether or
not I had passed the time world I was seeking, I had no idea. Then I
flew low, skimming the snow no more than one or two hundred feet above
it. There were houses! Huts would be a better word. I think they were
built of snow, but I could not tell. It seemed an Arctic world.
I knew then I had gone too far in time. I decided to stay near here in
space until morning. Fortunately that proved only a short time away.
Within half an hour the stars paled; twilight came and passed, and the
sun rose--a huge, red, glowing ball.
I was circling about, quite high--six or eight thousand feet possibly.
By this reddish light of early morning I could see the bay south of me.
There was no Long Island; the ocean had closed in to the north and east,
and I was near its shore--a cold, snowy beach, with lazy rollers. But
west of me there was a river--the Hudson, I was sure--double the breadth
of one I had known. It seemed to come from a mountainous region in the
northwest, and an arm of it north of Manhattan emptied into the sea.
Everywhere there was snow. The bay was full of floating ice. Across the
river was an area of stunted trees. I was over Manhattan Island, I was
sure. I circled around, searching. It was not the time world I was
seeking--that was obvious. Should I go on, or go back through the
centuries I had passed? I decided on the latter.
I had now been away from you nearly sixteen hours. I was worn out. I
flew across the river, found a level plateau to the north. There was no
sign of human habitation in the vicinity. Shutting off my Frazia motors
completely, I descended and came to rest on the surface of the snow, in
a time world forty-six thousand and eight years beyond our present. I
ate a little and, dropping to the floor of the cabin, fell asleep.
Unwise maybe, but I had to take a chance.
At any rate, I awakened without having been disturbed. It was night
again; I had slept some twelve hours. I flew upward, back over Manhattan
Island, and threw the opposite proton current into its first intensity.
I need not go into further details. My sensations were the same as
before, though they bothered me less as I grew more accustomed to them.
I came back through time. At intervals I stopped and examined the
landscape.
The wind was blowing almost continually from the north during all these
centuries. I flew into it slowly, keeping my approximate position
without great difficulty. I tried to hold myself near the south center
of the island, and look northward. I was right in going back through
time, I soon discovered. From close to the ground where I stopped once,
I could see a rolling hill near by that had a familiar contour. I cannot
describe it to you, but once I saw it from that angle, I knew it was in
the landscape we had seen from the laboratory.
Then I found the tree. There was no house. No snow, either, for I had
chanced then to stop in a summer season. The tree was too small. I chose
a ten years later time world, and watching the dials closely, descended
at a period ten and a half years later. I had struck it exactly; it must
have been within a week or two from the time world Father and I had
observed.
I had occupied some eight hours with this search. The dials had stopped
now at twenty-eight thousand two hundred odd years. I was at that
instant flying at an altitude of no more than a few hundred feet. It
was again early morning, just after sunrise, and there was that
familiar, snowy landscape we had seen from the laboratory.
The house, with its enclosure and outbuildings, lay below me. I circled
over it, staring down through the floor window. The Frazia motors are
greatly muffled, as you know, but, even so, their sound carried down to
the house. A figure came out into the enclosure, and stared upward at
me. It was the girl--in a fur garment, but bareheaded--watching my
plane. Before I could think what to do, three huge dogs, each of them
the size of a pony, came leaping from one of the outbuildings and stood
in a group, snarling at me with such volume and power that they made my
blood run cold.
I was circling slowly over the house, cursing my lack of caution and
still too confused to do anything, when the figure of a man appeared in
the enclosure, clad in furs and bareheaded like the girl. He stood head
and shoulders over her. Evidently the noise of the dogs blotted out the
sound of my motors. He did not look up into the air, but striding
angrily to the girl, struck her in the face with the flat of his hand.
Then he dragged her, cowering, into the house.
I straightened out, and flew south. The howling of the dogs died away.
Without realizing where I was going, I headed down the wind. Soon I was
over the water. I had risen, and in the morning light could see the
landlocked bay into which the main channel of the Hudson emptied. The
bay itself had an entrance to the sea almost at the river's mouth.
It was midwinter, I learned afterward. The river and the bay both seemed
frozen over, with a mantle of snow on their ice. I passed above an
island--Staten Island, no doubt--and mechanically swung to the west.
What was I to do? I had several rifles in the plane, as you know, and
one of the latest Collinger hand guns. My instinct was to land at the
house boldly, overawe its inmates with my weapons, and carry off the
girl. That was a fatuous thought. I very soon realized that for all I
knew they might have the power to strike me dead with some weapon
totally unknown.
I was still flying west. I found myself far out over Jersey, and still I
had decided nothing. There were houses beneath me and even a little
village or two. But I did not heed them, though fortunately I had sense
enough to ascend to a higher altitude where I could escape observation.
The sun was rising above the sea behind me, and at last I swung about to
face it. As it mounted higher--it was moving at about normal speed--some
of the red, glowing look was lost; it assumed more of its familiar
aspects of our own time world. But still an hour above the horizon as it
was now, I could stare at it quite steadily without being blinded.
I was heading east. In another ten minutes I would have been back in
Manhattan. I decided that I would leave the plane secluded somewhere and
approach the house on foot, quietly. If I could only elude the dogs and
not arouse them, I hoped to be able to get into the house and get the
girl out. I realize now it was a foolhardy plan.
I flew very low up the Hudson from its mouth. I was afraid I might be
seen. Then it suddenly occurred to me how easily I could avoid that with
certainty. I threw the switch of the proton current into the first and
then the second intensity, and began a slow time flight forward through
the day simultaneously with my flight up the river.
I found a good hiding place for the plane on the east bank of the
river--a broad, flat sort of gully some two hundred feet wide. I figured
this was about abreast of the house, and I lowered the plane into it. It
was difficult to do because of my southward drift, but I managed it. As
I neared the ground I shut off the proton current and came to rest in
time and space almost at the same moment.
The sun was just setting behind a line of hills across the river. As I
had not eaten for several hours, I sat in the cabin now and ate,
planning exactly what I should do to rescue the girl.
You will not understand it, but as I sat there, alone, with no one to
consult, it did not seem to me so desperate an enterprise. My
Collinger, no bigger than your hand, would silently fire a dozen bullets
in as many seconds, each capable of killing a human, or one of those
dogs.
It was the dogs I was most afraid of. And yet, as I had observed from
the laboratory, they did not run loose about the grounds at night, but
were trained to stay in the kennel, which was some distance from the
dwelling...three or four hundred feet, perhaps.
I decided to start about midnight. My clock gave a totally different
hour, of course, from the correct one of that particular time world. But
I was planning to leave the plane about six hours after sunset.
It was a long evening, but the time finally arrived. I put on my fur
coat and went bareheaded, because I wanted to look as rational to
the girl as possible. At best she would be afraid of me, a
stranger--probably more afraid of me than of her captors. I realized
fully what a difficulty that would be. An outcry from her, or any
resistance on her part, might lose me everything. But my intentions
were the best, though she could not know it.
I left the plane. Besides the Collinger, I had a hand compass and a
small flashlight. It was very cold. I scrambled out through the snow, up
the side of the gulley to the level land above--a climb of sixty or
seventy feet. The snow was deep, with an underlying surface of ice that
would support my weight. Up here on the higher land it was colder than
ever. The north wind hit me full, and I had been walking no more than
five minutes when it began to snow--tremendous flakes, that soon came in
a thick, soft cloud, and blotted out everything around me. In my pocket
I had my fur cap with ear tabs, and I soon found I would have to wear
it.
I was heading across the wind, plowing through the loose snow. I could
see only a few feet ahead of me. It was a pathless waste. And suddenly
the whimsical thought came over me that I was crossing Fifty-ninth
Street, and soon I would be near Columbus Circle. It was the same space,
the same location. Nothing was different but the time--the changes time
had brought.
I took out my compass and, by the light of the flashlight, I consulted
it. I was heading as nearly as I could toward the house. So far as I had
been able to tell before, there was no other habitation on the island. I
suppose I struggled along for nearly an hour. I figured I must be in the
vicinity of the house now, though I could see nothing but the snow
covered ground a few feet ahead of me, the whirling flakes close at
hand, and the blackness overhead. Without warning, through a rift in the
clouds to the east, came moonlight; a gigantic, egg-shaped moon with a
reddish tinge to it that gave the scene a lurid, extremely weird look.
The house was in sight, ahead and to the left, on a slight rise of
ground no more than a quarter of a mile away. I was faced now with the
necessity for a definite course of action. From the laboratory, with my
telescope, I had occasionally seen the girl late at night, sitting in
the central living room of the house. I had seen her through the
windows, and she had always left the living room in a southeast
direction. The house faced south; I felt that her room was in the
southeast end. The enclosure lay mostly behind the house, toward the
north, with the dog kennel in its extreme northern wall.
This was all advantageous to me. I knew I had to keep away from those
dogs. With a wind of from twenty to thirty miles an hour blowing from
them to me, I felt sure that they would not get my scent. My plan was to
get into the house through either a sort of gateway in the southeast
wall of the enclosure, or directly in through a window. I expected to
locate the girl and carry here away--by force, I suppose. I was
confident--absurdly so, I realize now. I think it was the
enthusiasm--the excitement--of being actually engaged in what I had
contemplated for two long years and had worked so hard to attain.
My heart was beating fast as I crept forward, the Collinger in my gloved
hand. It was still snowing hard, and presently the clouds swept back
over the newly risen moon; but I was now so close up that I could see
the dark outlines of the house, and the wall of the enclosure.
The building was only one story, but quite high, with a queer looking
overhanging roof. The wall of the enclosure was some ten feet high. I
circled to the south, and was soon close up to the main doorway of the
house. The whole place was piled with snow. There was not a sound, only
the howling of the wind as it swept in gusts under the low eaves.
The glass door--I suppose it was glass--was a single rectangular pane in
a dark, narrow frame. It was no more than three feet broad, and at least
twelve feet high. Behind it I could see the dimly lighted interior--a
soft, blue-white light. I could not see where it came from.
For quite a while I must have stood there motionless, peering in. A
portion of a large room was in the line of my sight; It seemed
unoccupied. I could see a back wall hung with something dark; a sort of
low couch to one side; queerly shaped, low chairs and a table or two.
And there was a floor covering of some thick, soft textile, and several
furs lying about. A large fur rug covered the couch.
To the right I could see a low archway, hung with a curtain. That was in
the direction of the girl's room. There were two other archways with
curtains, but evidently no interior doors to the house.
I had been pressing against the glass pane; it seemed to give a little.
I pushed. The motion was inward, and greater at the bottom. I knelt down
and shoved it. The lower half swung silently and smoothly inward and
upward, while the upper half came out and down. The whole twelve foot
pane was pivoted at its center. When it paralleled the floor it stopped,
and there was a six foot opening leading into the house.
I took a cautious step, listening intently, peering around me--behind
me--with the sudden feeling that something supernatural might leap forth
and spring at me any instant.
But the Collinger, my finger on the trigger, gave me courage. In my left
hand I held the flashlight, and very slowly I crept toward the
curtained archway behind which I hoped the girl might be. Suddenly I
remembered my cap. I smiled at the absurdity of the detail, but,
nevertheless, I pulled it off and stuffed it in my pocket. Then I went
forward, pushed aside the curtain, and entered the space behind it.
I was in darkness as the curtain dropped. It must have been a sort of
anteroom, or a short hallway, for some twenty feet ahead of me I saw
another curtain with a blue radiance beyond it.
A moment more and I had pushed aside the second curtain and stood
peering into the room beyond. It was more dimly lighted than the living
room. Across it, in a angle of wall, the first thing my gaze caught was
a low couch or divan, bathed in the blue radiance from a brazier beside
it, which left the rest of the room in gloom. The girl lay there asleep.
A soft, pure-white fur was covering her, but her bare arms and shoulders
were above it. One arm was crooked under her head for a pillow; the
other, almost as white as the rug, lay stretched out over the fur. On
her breast, her golden hair lay in waves.
I stood transfixed by the ethereal loveliness of the face, calm in deep
slumber. It was a small oval face of seemingly perfect features, with
soft, curving red lips, smooth, rosy cheeks and long, silken lashes that
lay motionless as she slept.
My emotion at the picture was short lived; other thoughts crowded up me.
What was I to do? I could not awaken the girl and ask her to come with
me. She would not understand the words, and if she did, she would
probably have screamed before I could get them out. Seize her, stifle
her cries and carry her off forcibly? Perhaps that is what I should have
done; taken her to the plane and left explanations until afterward.
But I could not bring myself to do that. Somehow, my whole instinct was
to retreat from the room. I felt myself a gross intruder in a sanctified
place, my very gaze an insult. What I would finally have done, I don't
know. Events took the decision out of my hands. The wind outside roared
with a sudden gust that must have pulled loose something under the
eaves. There came a rattle, a thump, loud in the silence of the house.
Then the wind died again.
I glanced up to the ceiling, startled, with my heart pounding and the
Collinger pointed toward the sound. I could see nothing but the dark
rectangle of a window up there. My gaze fell again to the couch--and met
the opened eyes of the girl. She was sitting up, her hair tumbling over
her shoulders, one hand instinctively gripping the white fur to raise it
more closely about her, the other pressed against her mouth. I think I
could never imagine an expression of more utter terror than that on her
face.
I murmured something intended to be reassuring and made the mistake of
taking a step forward. It was the worst thing I could have done, for her
frightened scream rang out through the house. I guess by then I was
thoroughly confused. I turned back toward the curtain. I would escape
from the house--come back some other time. Or should I pick her up now,
and run with her? She was small, frail. I could carry her easily; escape
almost as quickly with her, perhaps, as by myself. And shoot back at
anyone--anything--that followed.
I found myself back at her couch. She had withdrawn to the further side
of it, huddled against the wall. Her horrified eyes were on my face, but
she did not scream again.
There was a noise behind me, and I swung about. The curtain was parting.
There was a figure there. I could not see it plainly; it was in the
darkness, and I was in the light. I aimed the Collinger, pressed the
trigger. Simultaneously, a tiny pencil-point of light seemed to spring
at me from where the figure was standing. A brief, very tiny but
horribly intense glare flashed in my eyes.
I was in darkness; everything went black. I did not fall, but reeled
sidewise. I heard a mocking laugh and footsteps coming toward me; a hand
struck me across the mouth.
It is terrible to fight in total darkness. I stumbled aimlessly
somewhere, and felt the Collinger twisted from me. But when I lurched
in that direction, my outflung arms met only empty air. Again a hand
struck me across the mouth; again that mocking laugh. My assailant was
playing with me.
I was unhurt, and desperately I rushed to where I thought the room's
exit might be. But strong fingers gripped my shoulder and I was flung
violently sidewise. I must have struck my head against something as I
went down. My senses faded; the last thing I remember was that jeering,
mocking laughter floating out of the darkness.
CHAPTER FIVE
When I came to, I was still lying where I had fallen. Striking my head
had knocked me out momentarily. I heard voices; some one was kneeling
beside me. I opened my eyes, but everything was black. I remember
feeling my head; It was not cut. I was unhurt, and I struggled to a
sitting position. Whoever it was beside me, now stood up and moved away.
The girl's voice came to me out of the darkness. The low words were
unintelligible--yet they were words not wholly unfamiliar in ring.
The darkness was full of little darting red spots. And my eyes pained
me; the backs of my eyeballs were burning. I was blind. I had thought
the light in the room had suddenly been extinguished, and a vague idea
that my antagonist could see in the dark had possessed me. But it wasn't
so. He had blinded me with the tiny flash of light that had struck into
my eyes.
My head was still reeling from the blow it had received when I fell.
They carried me, half conscious, into some other room, and left me
lying on something soft. I closed my eyes, but I could not shut out
those darting red spots. At last, I must have drifted off to sleep.
When I awoke it was morning. The red glow of the sunrise was coming in
through a small aperture up near the ceiling. I could see it; the
blindness had passed. My head was still ringing and my eyes still pained
me, but I was uninjured. I was on a low couch, with a fur rug under me.
My overcoat lay beside me on the floor. The whole thing seemed like a
dream, but finally I got it straightened out in my mind.
I was in a fairly large bedroom. Two windows of heavy transparent
material were up near the ceiling. Opposite the windows was a doorway
with a curtain. I slipped into my overcoat, searching its pockets. My
cap was there, but the compass and the flashlight were gone and my
Collinger had already been taken from me.
The storm outside seemed to have passed. The house was dead silent. I
went to the curtain; beyond it was a small hall, empty, and with another
curtain at its further end. This I pushed aside cautiously. I was
looking into the main living room of the house, and met the direct gaze
of a man who was lounging there.
I dropped the curtain hastily, but he had seen me and sprung to his
feet--a powerful man, taller than myself, with gray, loose-fitting
trousers and naked torso. I retreated back to the bedroom; the fear of
what he might do to me, blind me or worse, made me anything but anxious
to encounter him again.
He followed and was upon me, twisting me by the shoulders to face him.
He was a man of about thirty-five with black hair, long to the base of
his neck; a smooth-shaven, strong, rugged face; keen gray eyes beneath
black, bushy brows; a nose a little like a hawk, and a wide mouth with
thin lips. It was the sort of face that bespoke power and cruelty--a
nature born to dominate its fellows. His gaze was searching, puzzled. I
knew he was trying to make me out--wondering what manner of man I was,
and where I had come from. He spoke to me. I could not understand the
words, but again I got the impression that they were familiar English
words spoken differently. I answered him. I don't remember what I said,
but he frowned and pushed me from him, toward the couch.
I had decided to appear docile. I stumbled to the couch and sat down on
it. He stood in the center of the room, regarding me, and I managed what
I hoped might be an ingratiating smile. This seemed to appeal to him,
for he smiled back. Then he swung about and left the room.
For a while I sat quiet. The girl--where she was I did not know. I would
have escaped without her if I could, but escape did not seem possible;
at least, it was more of a risk than I cared to take. The feeling came
to me that even now as I sat on the couch, I might be observed. How
could I tell whether someone was watching me from behind some hidden
orifice, through which, as I turned my gaze that way, that tiny,
blinding beam of light would spring at me?
It was too big a chance. I would wait, and when I knew better what I had
to contend with, watch for an opportunity to escape.
The room was fairly light now, with that queer, reddish light. I could
see the sky, brilliant with a glorious red sunrise, through the little
windows overhead. I moved the table and climbed on it; outside was snow,
tinged with red. I was at an east end of the house, perhaps next to the
girl's room.
At a corner of the building nearby sat one of the dogs--like a gigantic
shaggy wolf, quiet but alert. His head was fully six feet above the
ground as he sat there, squatting on his haunches. He heard me open the
window, and trotted quietly over to look at me. My fascinated stare met
his eyes squarely--eyes that seemed to hold an almost uncanny human
intelligence. He seemed satisfied with the situation, for he trotted
back to the corner of the house and sat down again. But he was still
watching me.
I dropped to the floor. The incident had left me shuddering. What manner
of brutes were these, with gleaming, tusk-like teeth, dripping jowls and
a power in those tremendous muscles that must have far exceeded the
strongest horse! And eyes that might have been human! At that moment,
escape seemed further away than ever.
For three days they fed me in that room. A woman came mostly. She wore a
loose, shapeless robe of dark cloth. It was dowdy-looking. Her hair was
iron-gray, long to her waist, twisted into a bundle and bound with
strips of dark cloth. Her face was thin, careworn. She brought me my
food; some kinds of cooked meats and starchy vegetables, like potatoes.
She was kind enough, but grim, as though I were an unpleasant task that
her conscience made her discharge punctiliously.
I tried to talk to her, but she couldn't understand me, nor I her.
Afterward, I learned she was the older man's old maid daughter. The old
man himself came in a few times; a smooth-shaven, stalwart man of about
seventy, dressed in wide, flowing trousers and naked above the waist.
Sometimes he wore a short little house jacket. His name was Bool. The
younger man--the master of the house--was named Toroh. He came in and
sat by me a few times, always intent on seeing that I was properly cared
for. But there was no mistaking the fact that he would have killed me
without compunction had I annoyed him; and I could not forget his
sardonic laughter when he had blinded me.
I've been telling you about my first three days in the house. I did not
see the girl except once, just for a moment. I was not held to the room,
although I stayed there almost constantly. And one or the other of those
dogs was outside all the time. After the first day, I grew bold enough
to go into the living room.
Once, when I was sitting alone in the main room, the girl entered. She
stood in the doorway, and for the first time I realized how small and
slight she was. She looked almost Egyptian--I mean her manner of dress.
She was wearing a blue-colored cloth wound wide about her hips, with a
dull red sash hanging knee-length down one side; sandals on her bare
feet; breastplates of metal, and a broad, low-cut collar of cloth with
little coins on it that widened to cover her shoulders. And her golden
hair was parted forward over her shoulders in plaits that ended with
little tassels.
She was standing there staring at me, and this time there was no fear in
her eyes--only curiosity. My heart leaped; it was what I hoped for most.
I could do nothing toward planning to get her out of the house as long
as she continued to be afraid of me.
I smiled at her in as inoffensive and friendly a fashion as I could. Her
eyes fell, then came up and I could see she was wondering at my clothes;
my shoes, trousers, shirt and tie. Abruptly I realized that, except for
my garb, I probably did not look extraordinary or frightening to her.
The thought gave me new courage. I stood up, and spoke. At once she
turned and ran from the room.
We were a strange household, but after a time, except for having my
meals alone, I found I could move about pretty freely. Once Toroh
brought me my electric torch, and, making sure I did not aim it at him,
he made me light it. I knew he believed it a weapon. I thought this a
good chance to convince him I was friendly. I smiled and shined it into
my eyes, to show him it was harmless. He grunted and, taking the
flashlight from me, tossed it across the room, indicating it was of no
use or further interest.
Then he produced my Collinger and made me show him how to operate it.
But he was too clever to let me hold it; he did not let it get out of
his hands. When he had fired it at a mark out the doorway, he grunted
again and laid it on the snow. At a distance of twenty feet he stood
with some object in his hand which he did not show me. Abruptly the
Collinger flew into fragments! All its cartridges had been exploded
simultaneously. The bullets whistled past us, startling Toroh as much as
they did me. Later I learned he had exploded it by something akin to
radio. He picked up the remains and when he got back into the house, he
tossed my broken weapon away disdainfully. It was the attitude a soldier
of today might have toward an Indian warrior and his bow and arrow.
Toroh, I learned later, thought I had come from another planet. He had
seen my plane the morning I hovered over the house. No one from another
planet had been to the earth for centuries. But history told of them,
and he thought I was one of them, come again. He treated me kindly
enough--probably because I did not anger him or cross him in any way.
But I had seen him strike the girl in the face, and one day he struck
the woman. I have never seen such a look of sullen, repressed hatred as
she gave him. She seemed to hate her father, too. Later, I often saw him
cuff her when she annoyed him.
I have so much to tell you. Toroh took two of his dogs and his sled and
went away after about a week. He was gone a month, and during that time
I stayed docilely in the house. I saw many opportunities when I might
have escaped. But now I would not, without taking the girl--whose name,
by the way, is Azeela--and I could not expose her to such danger as
always seemed imminent.
I must have convinced them all that I was harmless. No one paid me great
attention except the woman, Koa. Often I would see her peering furtively
at me from some distant doorway.
Azeela soon became friendly, and since we both had nothing to do, she
devoted herself to learning our language. I tried to learn hers and
failed miserably. But she picked ours up with extraordinary
rapidity--perhaps because her mind was quicker, her memory more
retentive. And I think, also, because she has behind her the inherited
instincts of knowledge through all the centuries from our own time-world
forward.
Anyway, within the month she could speak English freely enough for us to
get along--with a quaint little accent that is wholly indescribable.
I think her language was derived very nearly from the English we speak
today. Ours was, to her, merely archaic; but hers, modern beyond my
time, was too much for me. It was an extraordinary story that Azeela had
to tell me--as extraordinary as mine must have seemed to her. We became
friends, and with friendship came a renewed desire on both our parts to
escape. Her people were many hundred miles away, and, when I told her of
my plane, I very soon persuaded her to let me take her back to her own
country.
Quite evidently my plane had not been discovered. If it had not snowed
so heavily that first night, the dogs would have led Toroh back over my
trail to it. But it was still safe, though I did not know it then; and
the thought that it might have been found bothered me a lot, I can tell
you.
We decided to try and escape. Toroh was expected back any day. We spent
a morning discussing it, planning it in detail. My weapons were gone,
and Azeela did not know where they were. Bool had a cylinder of the
blinding-flash--I call it that because their name for it would mean
nothing to you--but we could not get it; he always kept it about his
person. The woman, Koa, we did not think was armed--though she might
have been.
Toroh had taken two of the dogs. There was one left, and almost
continually it was pacing about the house outside. We realized that even
if we succeeded in getting away from the place, the dog would follow and
overtake us before we could reach the plane.
Bool was in one of the outbuildings nearly all that morning. Koa was
moving about the house. We did not think she was listening to us; but
she was, and evidently she had picked up something of our
language--enough to give her the import of what we were discussing.
She appeared suddenly, and with a furtive glance around, told Azeela she
would help us escape. Azeela translated it to me, and the woman nodded
grimly in confirmation. She was sorry for Azeela, and she hated Toroh
sufficiently to want the girl out of his clutches.
Koa's plan was simple and it sounded eminently practical. She had no
weapons, and did not know where any were, except for her father's, and
that she would not dare try to secure. But late that afternoon Bool
would be in his room dozing. Koa would lock the dog in the kennel. Then
we would be free to depart.
The sun was almost setting that day when Koa informed us that the time
had come. We had restrained our excitement; Bool had apparently not
noticed anything unusual in our outward appearance during the day. He
had retired to his room as customary, and Koa had taken the dog away.
I did not altogether trust Koa, and it made me shudder to think of
taking Azeela outside and perhaps having the dog spring upon us from
somewhere. But we had to chance it, and the woman seemed sincere.
We had searched the house as best we could without arousing Bool, but we
found no weapon of any kind. At last we were ready, I in my fur coat,
Azeela in furs; shoes, trousers and coat all in one piece. She looked
like a slender little Eskimo girl, and I smiled as she pulled up a fur
hood and fitted it close about her face, tucking her hair up under it. I
had been mistaken about headgear; it was just a coincidence that I had
never seen anyone in this time-world wearing a cap.
I put on my own cap and we were ready. As we met in the main room, Koa
nodded sourly for us to be gone. At that instant the dog, outside in the
kennel, gave a long mournful howl. I don't know why; I suppose it was
just fate. Koa, waving us toward the doorway, hastened away to quiet the
dog.
For a moment I hesitated. Should we start? Had the dog gotten loose?
That moment of hesitation was too long. Bool stood in the doorway,
staring at our fur-covered figures. Astonishment, anger, rage swept over
his face. His hand went to his belt; he jerked something loose. I heard
Azeela give a sharp cry of warning. Bool's hand held an object like a
little crescent of glass, with a tiny wire connecting its horns. Sparks
darted from the wire.
I was about to leap forward when suddenly I was stricken. I can only
describe it as paralysis. I stood stock-still; my arms dropped to my
sides. I felt no pain, but I was rooted to the spot, without power to
lift my legs. Azeela, beside me, was evidently within the influence of
the weapon, also. She was standing rigid. Bool's face held a leer of
triumph. His left hand was fumbling at his belt for some other weapon.
I knew that in another moment he would have killed us, and still I could
not move. I tell you, it was a ghastly feeling. There was a numbness
creeping all over me. My hands were turning cold. My feet felt wooden.
My legs were giving way under me, and in a few seconds more I think I
should have fallen.
It all happened very quickly. Behind Bool, Koa had appeared. He did not
hear her, and she darted forward and struck at his wrist. The little
crescent of glass dropped to the floor and was shattered. A wave of heat
swept over me--the blood rushing again to my limbs.
Bool had turned furiously upon Koa, but my strength was coming back
fast. I jumped at them, caught Bool unprepared. My body struck his and
we went down. He fell backward with me on top of him. His hand now held
a metal cylinder; he was trying to get it up to my face.
Azeela came darting across the room, threw herself upon us, and twisted
the weapon from Bool's fingers. I did not know she had done it. Bool was
kicking, squirming, and his left hand had me by the forehead, pushing my
head back to expose my face. Enraged, I flung myself down on him, my
forearm striking his head against the floor. His hold relaxed; he lay
still.
When I got to my feet, Koa was stooping over Bool. She seemed frightened
at what she had done, although I knew well enough that the man had
mistreated her constantly, and that she could bear him no great love.
She waved us away, still with that same stolid grimness.
"Ask her if the dog is locked up, Azeela," I said.
The woman nodded at me vehemently, and I gripped Azeela's hand and we
hurried out. It was just sunset. The sky was like blood; the snowy
ground was all tinted with it.
We ran west, so fast that Azeela could hardly keep on her feet. I
suppose we went a mile or two, then slowed up and walked a little, then
went back to a run. There was nothing but that unbroken expanse of snow,
with the drop that was the river ahead of us.
At last I could make out the break in the plateau surface that marked
the gully. We were running, and were no more than fifty feet from it,
when from behind us we heard the loud baying of the dog--that eager
baying of a dog following a trail and closing in on its quarry. I went
cold all over. I knew what had happened. Bool had recovered, and, in
spite of his daughter, had let the dog loose upon us!
I caught a glimpse of Azeela's white, frightened face as I gripped her
hand and jerked her forward. It was faster than carrying her. She
stumbled, almost fell headlong, but I pulled her up and onward.
We came upon the gully. For one agonized instant I wondered if the
plane would still be there. The dog seemed almost upon us. I could
hear its eager whine as it came leaping along. Then I saw the
plane--snow-covered, but undisturbed.
We flung ourselves down the gully side, sliding, falling to its bottom.
The deep snow there broke our fall. The dog was at the top; I saw its
huge head and bared fangs as it dashed along, selecting a place to
descend.
I jumped to the cabin platform of the plane and shoved open the door.
Then I stooped, grasping Azeela under the armpits and lifting her. The
dog came sliding into the gully, and gathering itself up, it leaped.
But we were inside, and I slid the door closed just as the brute's great
body struck the cabin with an impact that rocked the plane. The dog
fell, but was up again with a snarl, standing on its hind legs, its huge
paws scratching at the cabin wall.
I had flung Azeela to the floor of the compartment. She shouted at me
reassuringly, and I jumped to the Frazia controls.
A moment later the 'copters were raising us out of the gully. The dog's
baffled yelps grew fainter. As we rose into the air I saw Bool, a
quarter of the way from the house, stumbling along through the snow,
following the trail.
I went up a thousand feet, dropped a little, and began horizontal
flight. To the south, perhaps a mile away, Toroh's sled, with its two
dogs, was swinging up toward the house. He saw the plane, and, as we
swept over him at an altitude of some five hundred feet, he turned and
followed us.
It was amazing to see those two gigantic dogs run. They kept the sled
almost under us. We came to the south of the island and they went down a
declivity and out over the frozen, snow-covered water. Toroh was lashing
them with a long whip.
I put on more power, and we gradually drew ahead. When we had crossed
the broad expanse of bay, the sled was no more than a black blob in the
distance. It swung to the right, turned and went back--lost to our sight
in the gathering darkness.
We were alone, headed southward to Azeela's native country.
* * * * *
Azeela and her people live on an island which once was the mainland--the
southeastern corner of the United States, as you know it. It's a narrow,
crescent-shaped island, something like Cuba in outline, but smaller.
It's separated from the mainland by a channel some ten miles at its
greatest width. The climate, now, is vastly different from your
time-world. Climate is the most potent factor of all that influences
mankind. The change throughout ten thousand years was dramatic in its
effects: it hastened decadence, it drove civilization toward the
equator. And then, as though nature were bent upon destruction, disease
sprang up in the only warm regions left--disease that could not be coped
with. Insects, carrying and transmitting deadly bacteria, swarmed over
what we call the torrid zone, making it almost uninhabitable. You must
realize over how long a period this went on.
Even that was thousands of years before Azeela's birth. This island had
formed, and nature had seemed to hold it the one place where humanity
could make its last stand. A volcano stood at each end; beneficent,
treasured because they contained heat. The internal fires of the earth
had broken through here. Hot springs and geysers dotted the land. A
river just below the boiling point rose from subterranean depths, flowed
for a hundred miles, and plunged down again. And a huge range of
mountains running east and west on the mainland to the north offered
shelter from the cold winds that were coming down.
Anglo-Saxons with a strain of Latin had settled on this palm-covered,
tropical island long before the conditions farther north had become so
drastic. They kept to themselves and fought against the pollution of
their blood by others; they were descendents of the highest type of
Earth civilization.
For centuries they were left to themselves, to drift along in their own
fashion. But with the coming of the cold, the mixed races of the north
began moving down--coveting the island. Then these island people
suddenly sprang into activity. Defense of the homeland brought action;
lost arts of war were revived. The Anglese--that is as near the sound of
their word for themselves as I can get--repulsed all comers.
To the north was now a climate that held snow from September to June.
Only three brief months availed for agriculture. The mixed peoples there
did not rise to master such rigors. Centuries of struggle turned them
almost primitive, with arts and sciences and ways to conquer their
environment lost and forgotten. They became barbarians.
Such is the condition as I have found it. I can give you details only of
our northern half of the western hemisphere. Transportation is back
nearly to the primitive; the rest of the world is almost unknown to
Azeela's race.
Toroh, I've learned now, is an Anglese, but they banished him. He was
plotting to overthrow the government. When he was banished, he went
among the barbarians of the north and began organizing them for an
attack on the island. Toroh has scientific knowledge; up there in the
north he has been manufacturing weapons. Then he came back to the island
secretly, and abducted Azeela. She's the daughter of Fahn, the leading
scientist of the Anglese--he's the man who holds the reins of power.
With Azeela as hostage, Toroh planned to make Fahn yield.
But now that I have released Azeela, Toroh's attack will come swiftly.
That is why I send you this message. Toroh is a menace--the greatest
figure of evil in this time-world. There will be war, a struggle in
which the Anglese may go down before the onslaught of Toroh and the
hordes of barbarians with whom he has allied himself. Oh, I can't tell
you all the details...I'm too tired.
I'll stop now, and send this message back to you in the cube. And,
Father, you know what we arranged--that you would come and join me if I
needed you. Well, I do; I need you here now.
As we agreed, I will raise a light-beam signal, which will mark the
exact point in space and the exact moment in time at which I want you to
be here.
For me, that moment _is now_!
So as soon as I dispatch this message off to you, I shall raise the
signal. It will be at the southeastern tip of our island. For you
geographically, it will be about Miami. From that point in space, you
cannot fail to see it, if your time-flight is slow enough. I will hold
it in the sky for as long as I can, so that it will have enough duration
for you not to miss it.
Please tell _Mamita_ not to worry about me, or about you either. We will
both come back to her safely. You may bring one or two of our friends
who wish to make the trip. I think that George will want to come and I
would like to have him. You need bring no weapons; they would be worse
than useless.
_Please hurry, Father. I need you!_
CHAPTER SIX
Roger's slow, solemn voice died away. He rustled the pages of Loto's
message in his hand.
"That's all, gentlemen. All of the message itself. The other pages give
detailed instructions--data based on Loto's flight and memoranda for the
construction of another plane, gathered from previous notes made by Loto
and myself."
There was complete silence when Rogers paused. George decided to speak,
but checked himself and relaxed back in his chair.
"I shall start the Frazia Company on another plane at once," Rogers
added. "And working on Loto's mechanism simultaneously, I should be
ready in ninety days."
He waited, but again no one else spoke. Then he said:
"I am going, of course. It is a great trial for my wife, but I know she
is willing."
George turned and flashed an admiring glance at Lylda; her face was
strained, but she smiled at him gently.
"Do not be hasty, my friends," Rogers went on quickly. "Any two of you
are free to come--or to stay, all of you--as you think best."
"I'm going," said George suddenly. "Loto said I could. And you say so.
I'm going."
He jumped to his feet and grasped Roger's hand. "You can count on me,
Mr. Rogers."
Rogers smiled. "Thank you, George. I knew I could."
George sat down again. Then he got up and crossed to Lylda, shaking her
hand also, and whispering to her. But in another instant he was pacing
the room, smoking violently, and frowning.
Rogers was saying to the others, "I will take one more. I realize it is
a momentous question. Your lives may be at stake."
The Big Business Man was deep in reverie. "I wonder," he murmured. "I
wonder if I _do_ want to go."
"Come on," urged George, stopping suddenly before him. "Take a chance."
He did not wait for an answer, but went back to his pacing.
The Banker said, half apologetically. "You don't really need me, do you,
Rogers?"
"Of course not," Rogers said heartily. "Use your own judgement. But I
knew you'd be offended if I didn't give you the opportunity."
The Banker nodded. "Yes, but you don't need me. I'm an old
man--seventy-three, though I hope you'd never guess it. I think I'd
better stay where I'm used to things."
"Of course," agreed Rogers.
"But if you need money," the Banker added hopefully, "and you will,
naturally--everybody needs money--you'll call on me, won't you? I'm
going to see this thing through."
"I don't believe I'll go," the Business Man declared. He met the
Doctor's glance, and the Doctor seemed relieved. "You don't really need
us, Rogers. I think Frank would prefer to stay also."
The Doctor nodded emphatic agreement.
"Quite so," said Rogers. "I can understand perfectly how you feel."
George stopped his pacing. "Then it's all settled, Mr. Rogers. You and I
go; the others stay on guard here. Now listen, everybody, I've got some
good ideas..."
* * * * *
Two days before Christmas, another plane lay glistening on the roof of
the Scientific Club, walled in from curious eyes by the board enclosure.
Sleek, self-satisfied, its every line denoting latent power, it lay
motionless, awaiting those human masters who soon were to launch it into
another time world.
Occasionally during the afternoon George visited it, anxiously
verifying again and again that all was in readiness.
Evening came. The others arrived, singly and in couples. For two hours a
bustle of final preparations went on--things forgotten, last minute
plans put into execution. But by nine o'clock the moment of departure
was finally at hand.
The Banker was in a fluster of excitement. He had appointed himself the
leader of those who were to be left behind, and he felt the
responsibility keenly.
"Tell me exactly what we've got to do," he insisted. "I don't want
anything to go wrong."
Rogers slapped him on the back. "It's nothing to be alarmed over."
"No. But I want to be sure I've got it straight. Tell me all over
again."
Rogers repressed a smile. "When we have gone you will all wait some ten
minutes to be sure nothing has gone wrong to bring us immediately back.
Then you will lock up the enclosure and leave. I have made arrangements
with the club to have the enclosure left standing."
"That's all?" asked the Banker anxiously. "We leave the roof open?"
"Yes. In coming back we will want it open, and you cannot tell when we
may return."
"But no more than six months," the Banker insisted. "You promise that?"
Rogers nodded.
"Come on," George's voice called. "Let's get started." He had shaken
hands with Lylda and climbed up to the doorway of the cabin. "Come on,
Mr. Rogers. Let's get started."
Lylda stood apart. Her farewell to her husband was brief. The others
turned away, feeling that they should not intrude upon it. When Rogers
joined George on the platform of the plane, the Doctor was with Lylda,
comforting her.
With a final good-by Rogers slid the door closed. The forward
compartment, with its low arch ceiling and its concave walls, was small,
but comfortably equipped. The side windows had upholstered seats running
under them. In front, to the right, were the Frazia controls, a low seat
for the pilot and a small window above the control panel. The time
dials and the proton current switch were on the wall to the right. To
the left of the seat was the main entrance door.
The division wall between the forward compartment and the engine room
behind it held a small doorway with a sliding door.
"Are we ready?" Rogers asked. "I think we should be sitting. The shock
of departure, new to us, may be more severe than we anticipate."
His words were calm enough, but they sent a thrill of excitement through
George. "All ready," he said. "Go ahead!"
Rogers took a last look about. Then without hesitation, he moved the
switch to the first intensity. To George, the humming seemed very
different now than when he had heard it outside the plane. It was no
louder, but it seemed to hum and vibrate inside his body. He was
quivering inside, his head began reeling dizzily; then came that
sickening, horrible sensation of falling headlong--a vertigo that turned
everything to blackness.
"Are you all right? We've started."
It was Rogers's anxious voice. George opened his eyes; everything seemed
glowing, unreal and ghostlike. But he was uninjured, and his head had
steadied.
"I'm all right," he managed to say.
The sickness passed quickly. George stood up, steadying himself. "Gosh,
how light I feel! Queer in the head--don't you? I never imagined--"
He stopped abruptly. Through a side window the fur-coated figure of the
Banker was standing against the wall with the others around him. They
were staring toward the plane with an expression that clearly indicated
they could not see it.
"We've started all right," George added. "Look at them! We're already in
future time to them. They can't see us!"
Suddenly the Banker came forward walking with extraordinary swiftness,
and seemingly with little jerks, like a manikin. George held his
breath, for the Banker popped forward, his head and shoulders piercing
the glowing phosphorescent walls and floor of the cabin. He stood
motionless a brief instant, his face close to George's knees. Then, even
more rapidly than he had advanced, he threw a swift glance around and
retreated.
George recovered himself. "Boy," he said. "Wasn't that weird though? But
we're all right. I feel fine now."
The droning of the Frazia motors sounded very faintly above the humming.
It was a relief, a help toward normality. The plane was slowly raising
into the air.
As it mounted, the roof of the Scientific Club dwindled away below. It
was a dark night, with heavy clouds and a cold wind from the east. The
city, with snow on its rooftops, was sliding eastward beneath them;
vague black shadows, dark buildings dotted with lights, and seemingly
empty streets.
They were still mounting diagonally upward, and carried sidewise by the
wind, when the Hudson River slid into view.
"Rotten weather, Mr. Rogers," George suggested.
"Yes," Rogers agreed, "but that will not bother us for very long. Are
you warm enough?"
"One heater is going," George responded. "I'll switch on another." He
had familiarized himself thoroughly with the various mechanical
appliances of the plane, and he turned a switch that threw current into
another of the small electric radiators.
"Anything else?" he demanded.
"No, I think I shall try the higher intensities of the proton current. I
want our time-progress accelerating as much as possible right from the
beginning."
George selected a seat hastily.
It was not much of an ordeal. The humming seemed to move up a scale to a
higher pitch as Rogers pulled the lever around. The reeling of the
senses came again, but passed almost at once.
"There," said Rogers. "I'm glad that's accomplished."
"We're at the fifteenth intensity--the highest that Loto used."
George was staring down through the floor window. "I can see lights down
here. Are you sure it's the highest speed Loto used? He didn't describe
it this way."
"Our acceleration will pick up over several hours," Rogers replied. "Our
time-progress is still comparatively slow."
The Frazia motors were still droning.
"How high are we, do you suppose?" George demanded after a moment.
"Possibly five thousand feet. We're blowing westward over New Jersey.
And a little to the south, I think. Soon it will be day."
His words were anticipated. The scene lighted swiftly. It was day; a
dull, cold-looking, cloudy morning. Below them lay New Jersey, almost a
network of villages on the fringe of lowlands. A more congested area of
building was almost directly beneath and slid under them as they watched
it.
"Newark!" exclaimed George. "And we're into tomorrow. We're making
it--we'll soon be with Loto."
They were up higher than Rogers realized--ten thousand feet, at least.
And their drift seemed constantly of a more southern trend. It was still
uncomfortably cold in the cabin.
"Perhaps we should stay at this level," Rogers remarked. "We seem to
have caught a wind from the north."
Night came again in a few moments. Lights dotted the landscape below,
but they were vague, flickering lights. Then day, with sunlight. The
wind sudsided. The plane's southern drift was stilled. And then came
night with a moon plunging across the sky, and stars dizzily sweeping
past. Then day again, until presently the daylight and the darkness were
blended into gray. The drift was permanently passed. In a blending of
all the diversified air currents, the plane remained almost stationary.
The white, snowy hills of New Jersey soon turned to green. The cabin air
warmed a little. Then autumn and winter came again--and passed in a
moment or two.
Rogers sighed with relief. "We're fairly started. One year out of
twenty-eight thousand!"
"And we've got eight hundred or a thousand miles of space to travel
also," said George. "We're going to make that simultaneously, aren't
we?"
"Yes," agreed Rogers.
George took a last look through the floor window at the blurring gray
landscape beneath, and stood up to join him. "Let's talk things over,"
he suggested. "I've got a lot of questions--plans and things."
Rogers had taken a sheaf of script from his pocket.
"Loto's notes to guide us," he explained. "I've followed them closely so
far. We have a flight through time of something more than twenty-five
thousand years at the fifteenth intensity, and then we slacken.
Simultaneously, we must fly southward some thousand miles or more
through space, directing our course for the southern tip of Florida.
Loto specifies that we should, under all circumstances, reach the
latitude of north Florida coincident with twenty-five thousand years of
our time-progress. We will then--or perhaps a thousand years further
along--see the island. We cannot miss it, of course. It is so large, and
it must certainly endure over a great period of time."
"How long did Loto take to reach twenty-five thousand years?"
"About twelve hours," Rogers consulted the memoranda. "He computes his
average speed as equivalent to the twelfth intensity. We are using the
fifteenth continuously. Our clocks should register no more than ten
hours for the time-flight.
"Ten hours," he added thoughtfully. "And flying directly south at a
hundred miles an hour we would reach the island in those ten hours."
"But we haven't started south yet," George protested. "We're moving
through time all right, but we're still right over Newark--and look at
it!"
The New Jersey metropolis was spreading west to the Orange Mountains,
and eastward it seemed to be linked solid with Jersey City. Factories
dotted the intervening meadows, which were drained of their stagnant
water.
"You're right," exclaimed Rogers. "We have barely nine hours left; we
must start our horizontal flight."
In a few moments more they were speeding south and slightly west, at an
altitude of some five thousand feet, with their progress through time
steadily accelerating.
An hour, by their clocks, had passed. They were over Delaware Bay. Its
shores, in the more congested areas, were lined almost solid with
buildings. There was a great city on each side of the mouth of the
river, with a gigantic bridge connecting them. The bridge rose into
being under the eyes of the watchers in the flying plane, but they swept
on past and in a moment left it far in the distance behind them.
George was seated on the floor watching the changing landscape; a huge,
concave gray surface, shadowless, stretching out and up to the circular
horizon. Steadily, like a panorama unrolled, it slid sidewise beneath
them. The motion was greatest directly below. To the west, the mountains
seemed, by an optical illusion, to be following, speeding forward with
them.
The sea or its arms constantly occupied a portion of the scene, for they
were still flying south and somewhat west, following the Atlantic coast.
And of everything in sight, the sea alone seemed unchanging.
In time-progressing, that height of civilization Loto had described lay
under them. They were flying lower now.
Rogers, in his seat at the controls, said: "I think we're making it as
we should. That's the four thousand year mark just passed, and we're
flying at a hundred and ten miles an hour."
"Are you sure we'll hit it right?" George asked anxiously.
"I think so. It's about as Loto figured so far. Those buildings--what a
civilization that must be down there. It will fade presently...in
three or four thousand years."
George joined him at the forward window. "Where are we? Are we still
over Virginia?"
"Yes, at least I think we haven't crossed into North Carolina yet. That
was Chesapeake Bay a while ago. Look! That city over there is
melting--going down fast!"
The cabin interior was unlighted and dark, except for that
phosphorescence with which everything glowed. In their absorption in the
scene below, the travelers had forgotten their own curious aspect, until
George suddenly remarked:
"Look at us! Ghosts flying through space! Doesn't it make you feel
queer, Mr. Rogers?"
The dim cabin interior, with its vague, luminous human figures, did
indeed seem unreal. But the unreality was matched now by the scene
beneath; their forward flight through space, combined with a
time-progress now tremendously accelerated, made everything below a
shifting, sliding kaleidoscope of changing effects. Details were
transient things, blurred one into the other.
The broad fundamentals, however, were obvious. The gray, concave land,
ridged with mountains, the indented coast line, the gray, changeless
sea--all were distinguishable. And overhead the sky was luminous with
the mingled light of sun and moon and a myriad starry worlds, all
blended darker by nights of rain and snow and storm.
* * * * *
They were over North Carolina when Rogers, at the Frazia controls, grew
tired. The clock stood at two five. They had been gone some five hours.
"I must rest," said Rogers. "George, can you take my place?"
George hesitated. "I've flown a bit, but never in a Frazia. I think I'd
better not experiment--not on this flight."
"All right," Rogers agreed. "I'll use the automatic 'copters for a
while. Half an hour will rest me up."
In a few moments they were hovering, seemingly motionless, over North
Carolina. Far away to the east, over a bulge in the coast line, they
could just make out Cape Hatteras and the ocean beyond it.
Rogers stretched himself out on one of the leather seats, and lighted a
cigar. George sat beside him.
"I figure we should be at least halfway to the northern coast of the
island," the older man said. "We have flown some four hundred miles in
four hours."
"But Loto will be waiting at the southeastern tip of the island,"
protested George. "That will be easily two or three hundred miles
further, won't it? I wonder how far along we are in time."
"Look at the dials."
George bent over them. "About sixty-five hundred years. Some of the
hands are going too fast to read."
"More than I had thought," commented Rogers.
"Do you figure we're still accelerating?"
"I think we have just about reached our greatest speed," Rogers answered
slowly. "Let us see. We've done an average of thirteen hundred years an
hour. We must be progressing at double that now."
George was figuring on the back of an old envelope. "Twenty-six hundred
an hour. In five more hours at that rate we'll be close to twenty
thousand. We can fly down to the north coast of the island easily by
then."
"Exactly. We're a little ahead in our space flight. I'm glad of it. We
shall have to slow our time-progress to almost nothing at the end. We
must take no chances of missing Loto's light signal."
"Twenty-six hundred years an hour," mused George. "That's what we're
making now. Forty-five years a minute. A century almost every two
minutes!"
The clock had registered thirty minutes more when Rogers declared he was
sufficiently rested. At George's suggestion they ate a light meal; then
they started their flight southward again.
"How about looking at the dials now," George remarked. "They were at
sixty-five hundred, thirty minutes ago."
"Eight thousand," Rogers read. "That's fifteen hundred more. It figures
out to three thousand an hour. That's our peak, I think."
The flight now was passing through constantly changing conditions; every
two minutes the plane was covering some three or four miles of space and
a century of time. They crossed above North Carolina and came to the
coast again. The cities of the civilization beneath them seemed to be
breaking up. Here and there one stood in its glory; others were mere
deserted piles of ruins over which the vegetation crawled, eager to
devour. Still other cities and villages appeared over the southern
horizon, sturdy and whole--and they melted as they slid beneath the
plane, into crumbling piles that passed out of sight to the north.
Soon desolate areas appeared. The scene grew vaguely whiter; the snow
was coming down from the north faster than the plane was flying. Changes
in the coast line became apparent; unfamiliar arms of the sea swept into
view, and were crossed and left behind. A small, unfamiliar island lay
close to the South Carolina coast. But as a whole, the land and sea held
their own, even against the ravages of so many centuries.
"The north wind is with us--the wind Loto described that blew southward
almost all the year. What time is it?"
"By the clock or the dials?"
"The clock. I have the dials here. Eighteen thousand four hundred years
is their reading."
"Quarter of six," announced George.
"We should sight the island shortly," Rogers said. "I'll fly a trifle
slower. We must be nearly down to Georgia by now--to where Georgia used
to be, I should say. I want to sight the island at twenty thousand
years, or thereabouts."
The land was growing white; the vegetation sparser. Small towns and
hamlets that endured for no more than fifty or a hundred years were
springing up everywhere, and melting into nothing in a moment or two.
The vegetation was shifting, changing, but always the scene was growing
whiter. The villages were sparser, smaller and shorter lived--the people
struggling southward against the threatening, unrelenting cold, which
spared nothing but the island of the Anglese.
Rogers was first to notice a radical departure from the normal
conformation of the landscape. They were, by their own calculation, over
Georgia. George, watching the dials closely, had just noted twenty-two
thousand years. Far ahead, over the rim of the southwestern horizon, a
line of mountains was rising.
"Look!" exclaimed Rogers softly. "The mountain chain running east and
west. The new mountains! The island must be just beyond them."
He maneuvered the plane into a climb; the gray land and sea tilted and
began dropping away. The mountains seemed to be following them up,
higher and closer, until at last the plane was over them, barely a
thousand feet above their rocky spires.
It was a scene of wild grandeur that now spread out beneath their eyes:
dark, craggy cliff faces, with snow capped summits, a pure white peak
and a gray blue valley beside it. And the whole mass reared ten thousand
feet above the sea.
The plane swept forward; the jagged, tumbled land slid northward, close
beneath it. Then, abruptly, the crags and peaks dropped away; it was as
though the plane had leaped ten thousand feet into the air. Far below
lay a narrow channel of gray water, stretching east and west. And beyond
that lay another land, its outer coast curving to the south.
"_The island!_" exclaimed Rogers softly. "What a cataclysm was here--a
rift that let the sea in and buckled up the mountains!"
"The island!" echoed George. "And we're at twenty-three thousand five
hundred years! We've some distance yet to fly," he warned. "Hadn't we
better slacken our time progress?"
With their flight through space temporarily checked, the 'copters
holding them motionless, Rogers cut down the proton current to the fifth
intensity. Eagerly they looked below them.
Beyond the channel lay the island, curving up in an arc from the south
and out to the west. They could not see across it, but only to a ridge
of mountains at its center. Huge palms grew everywhere, and the
shoreline formed a broad, curving beach of white sand. An island
paradise--though their time progress still laid a gray cast over the
green, blurred the water into a formless haze along the beach and
shifted the vegetation into a confusion of changing forms.
"We must get started," Rogers said at last. "At twenty-eight thousand
years we must be within sight of the southern tip."
It was a flight almost due south. Lakes occasionally were visible, and
two or three small rivers, one of which changed its course suddenly
under their eyes; and everywhere that tropical verdure, mounting and
melting, always shifting with its rapid growth and decay.
In some three hours more--with another longer rest for Rogers, during
which time the 'copters held them poised motionless--they sighted the
southern tip of the island. It had narrowed here to a point no more than
two miles wide, ending with a curving beach and the broad, empty ocean
beyond; a beach with a palm-covered mountain slope close behind it.
Rogers had made several changes of time progress during the latter part
of the trip, and they were poised over the sea near the tip of the
island for no more than a few moments when the dials recorded
twenty-eight thousand two hundred years.
Rogers consulted Loto's notes. "He landed in this time world at
twenty-eight thousand two hundred and four years. We must stop at the
beginning of that year and watch for his light."
Using the fourth intensity, the daylight and darkness was separated into
two brief, but distinguishable periods. Thus the voyagers sped through
the days and nights, the weeks and months and forward into another year.
At the beginning of the fourth year, Rogers changed to the third
intensity. It was daylight--a yellow-red, swiftly mounting sun; flying
blurs of white clouds close overhead; a blue sea, and a bright green
island.
The sun plunged across the sky and sank blood red, with an instant of
glorious colors suffusing the western sky. Night came, with its deep,
purple mystery. Then day again.
Thus the days of that fourth year went by; each hardly a minute long,
but slow to the two men so anxiously watching. They were tired to the
point of exhaustion, but the excitement and anxiety kept them going.
"He said from the tip of the island," Rogers murmured. "A blue-white,
vertical beam of light shining for a day and a night...we couldn't
miss it. A minute would show it to us plainly."
"I haven't taken my eyes off that island for a second," commented George
from his seat on the floor. "Why doesn't he hurry up? He's down there,
why doesn't he give us the signal?"
Rogers did not answer. The sun dropped below the horizon. The turning
world, with its motion made so visible, was dizzying to one who watched
the sky.
The purple night was momentarily colored with a red moon; it rose and
swiftly plunged into a thick bank of clouds that swept down upon it.
Abruptly, from the tip of the island, a shaft of blue-white light shot
into the sky. It wavered an instant, then stood motionless: _clear_,
_distinct_, _unmistakable_!
CHAPTER SEVEN
The proton current had been entirely cut off. The interior of the cabin
was solid in appearance once more. The Frazia motors were still droning
and the plane hung motionless in a night that was without wind. Below
it, now, lay a scene of complete normality: the sea was rolling up on
the white sand and the moon, almost at its zenith, bathed the green
island in a silvery, red-tinged light. And from the tip of the island,
quite near its southern branch, Loto's narrow beam of blue-white light
was flashing upward into the sky.
They descended, in a gentle glide. The beach was broad and firm; they
landed upon it, swooping along. It was like racing an automobile along
the sand in the moonlight, with the ocean on one side--far out at low
tide now--and a jungle of green, tropical vegetation on the other.
Rogers, at the controls, saw a number of human figures standing on the
beach ahead of him. They scattered hastily, and the plane, rapidly
losing velocity, went past them and stopped a hundred yards farther.
"_We're here!_" George cried. "Let's get out. Was that Loto we passed?
Where's the light? Are we near it?"
The light could be seen no more than a hundred feet away among the
palms. They climbed hastily from the plane. A figure was coming forward
along the beach at a run; a slight figure in wide trousers of white
cloth, and a short, flapping jacket.
"Loto!" shouted George. "That you, Loto?"
From a distance came a faint, "Hello-o... George!" The runner increased
his speed. It was Loto.
"Well," he exclaimed, as he shook their hands. "You got here right away,
didn't you? I've only had that light up two or three hours."
"We're tired out," said Rogers, when the greetings were over. "Do we
stay in the plane or can we leave it?"
A man was standing fearfully at the edge of the green jungle nearby, and
Loto called him forward. He was dressed in wide trousers, like Loto's
except that they were smeared with dirt and sand, and his feet and torso
were bare. He came, timidly, and Loto spoke to him apart. The man nodded
his head, indicating that he understood his orders. Then he trotted
away, joining three or four others of his kind, gesticulating toward the
plane. They all approached it reluctantly.
George plucked at the flaring sleeve of Loto's short jacket, his only
garment above the waist. "How's Azeela, Loto? Is she...is everything
all right?"
"Yes, she's all right. But I needed you and father here. Wait! Not now.
I'll tell you later."
Rogers joined them. "We're about exhausted, Loto. We must have some
sleep."
"Yes, of course. I knew you'd be. I've a house near here--only a hundred
yards or so. They'll guard the plane." His gesture indicated the men who
were now on the sand, moving about the plane, but evidently afraid to
touch it.
"You can trust them?"
"Implicitly."
They followed Loto. George was tired, but so excited that he did not
realize it. The night air was warm and heavy with moisture. It was
oppressive; it reminded him somehow of the steam room of a Turkish bath.
He found himself perspiring.
They left the moonlit beach and, following a tiny, white-sand path,
plunged into the depths of the jungle. Palms of every variety stood
about, their graceful fronds interlacing overhead. There were huge trees
loaded with fruit, bananas, mangoes, grapefruit. Some of the other fruit
trees George dimly remembered having heard of but could not name, and
still others he was sure were entirely new.
It was dark in the jungle here, and very silent. The steamy air was
redolent with perfume--orange blossoms, George thought. The light signal
was nowhere to be seen. George wondered if it had burned out, or if Loto
had ordered those men to extinguish it.
"Here we are," said Loto abruptly.
A house was standing at their right, in an open space with the moonlight
gleaming on it--a large, tropical-looking bungalow. There was a broad
veranda on three sides, with windows opening into the house. The house
itself was raised some four feet off the ground on coconut posts, and a
brown-thatched roof spread over everything like a mound.
It seemed to be a house that would have ten rooms, at least. George
wondered what made it look so peculiar. Then he realized that its board
walls were not vertical, but sloped inward toward the top, so that its
rooms would be smaller at the ceiling than the floor. It looked like a
house of cards.
Loto had turned into another path. A brown picket fence enclosed the
house with perhaps an acre of ground. Inside was a flower garden, abloom
with an extraordinary profusion of flowers.
A short flight of wooden steps led to the veranda. There Loto stopped.
"I think we should retire at once," Rogers said. "We have so much to
talk of--but it will wait."
"Yes," Loto agreed. "Come with me, Father. George, you stay here. I'll
be right out."
George sat down on the veranda, with his back against a round palm trunk
that was supporting its roof. He realized now how tired he was, and this
heavy air made him sleepy, he heard the others moving away, entering the
house. He took off his coat, then his shirt and, using them for a
pillow, stretched himself out at full length on the board flooring of
the veranda.
In a moment, when Loto returned to take him to the room they were to
occupy together, he found George sleeping peacefully.
* * * * *
George awakened with the morning sun streaming through a window. He was
on a broad couch, and in a chair beside him, Loto was reclining
comfortably, smoking his black brier pipe. He smiled.
"Oh, you're awake, are you? You ought to be--it's hours after sunrise."
A vague memory of being taken into the house by Loto the night before
drifted back to George. He remembered being half-asleep and talking to
his friend, but it was all like a dream.
The room was small, queer-looking, with its walls sloping together
toward the ceiling. But it was bright and clean, with brown fibre
matting on the floor.
The air was as moist and heavy as ever, and even warmer. George sat up,
mopping his forehead with his shirt sleeve.
"I've got your clothes," Loto said, indicating a stool with garments
lying on it. "You don't need much in this heat. Get up and try them on."
George was presently arrayed, like Loto, in low, tight slippers of soft
hide--clipped dog-skin, Loto told him--with trousers of white material,
bulging above the knees and tight at the ankles, and a brown and green
cloth jacket, ornamented with little metal coins. The jacket was
square-cut and short; it just covered the waist-band of the trousers in
back. It was lined with something soft, thin and yet absorbent; it felt
smooth and comfortable next to George's skin. But it would not meet in
front; it left his chest and stomach bare. He stood regarding it
ruefully until Loto showed him how to fasten it closed across his
stomach.
"Nice and cool--when you get used to it," George commented, staring down
at his exposed chest. "How do I look? Kind of queer, don't I?" He
twisted himself around, trying to see down over the side bulge of his
trousers.
Roger's voice, calling, interrupted them.
"I've got a million things to talk to you about," George was telling
Loto. "Hurry it up--I'll be out in the garden."
They met, a few minutes later, on the side veranda where they were to
have breakfast. George's self-consciousness vanished immediately; Rogers
was dressed almost exactly as he was, and he flattered himself he looked
at least as well as his companion.
It seemed to the new arrivals, at this first glance, a primitive world
indeed into which they had fallen, the heat, the palms, the thatched
bungalow, and their costumes all might have existed in some
out-of-the-way tropical land of their own time-world.
During the meal George was insistent with questions, but Loto smilingly
refused to talk. Instead, he led his father into a brief description of
their flight forward through time and south through space. When the meal
was over Loto took them out to the front veranda.
"I've a great deal to tell you," he said, "and I know you're as
impatient to hear it as I am to tell you. I've been here on the island
five months--"
"We realize it," George murmured. "Didn't I watch for that light through
every day and night of 'em?"
Loto smiled. "I put the signal up last night because I felt that I
needed you. Before we do anything, I must tell you of our affairs here.
You notice I say 'our affairs.' They are a part of me now. I don't
exactly know why, but the thing here grips me. I want to help these
people... I feel already that I am one of them."
It was no mystery to George.
"Where's Azeela?" he demanded with apparent irrelevancy.
"In Anglese City, the capital and largest center of population on the
island. It's north of here--on the channel. I've been living there; I
came down here merely to meet you. The situation here is drastic,
Father. War has been impending, and now it will not be postponed much
longer. This Toroh--as I told you, he is an Anglese renegade--is
organizing the barbarians of the north, the Noths, as they are called.
They are a people of low intelligence--brutes of men with thick black
hair on their bodies.
"God knows how many Noths there are--hordes of them are scattered about
the northern wastes. Toroh has been organizing them. He has a base up
north where he is manufacturing scientific weapons. There is class
hatred here on the island, but, thank Heaven, in the face of an outside
invasion, the Anglese will stick together."
"You're preparing for war," George interposed. "You--"
"Yes, of course. The Anglese have had no warfare for several
generations; they were totally unprepared, but now they're getting
things in shape."
Loto's tone was optimistic, but the anxiety of his expression belied it.
"I wanted you here, Father--you and George. Without Toroh, we would not
fear the Noths. But Toroh is a scientist, and what weapons he will have
been able to manufacture we do not know. We can only--"
A man came dashing up the garden path; a man in the familiar wide
trousers, torn and dirty. His red-brown, naked torso gleamed with sweat;
a white cloth was tied about his forehead to keep the damp hair from his
eyes.
Loto leaped to his feet, and the man, gazing at the strangers with one
swift, surprised glance, flung himself prostrate on the steps.
"What--" began Rogers.
"Wait! A messenger from Azeela. Something has gone wrong."
Loto raised the man up, and listened to his flood of frightened words
with obvious concern. A sharp question from Loto, a crisp order, and the
messenger was dashing away. Loto's gaze, following him, came back to his
companions on the porch.
"Bad news, Father. We must get up to Anglese City at once. Spies have
appeared in Orleen--a city at the western end of the island--spies from
Toroh, former Anglese, banished like himself. They're being put to death
as fast as they can be caught. But meanwhile they're talking to the
lower class--telling the people that Toroh is for them, and only against
their government. There is class hatred here. The people are listening
to the emissaries. We may be facing a revolution--an internal break--on
the eve of fighting the Noths! We will lose if that happens--_lose to
Toroh inevitably_!"
They were down on the beach in five minutes more. The plane stood there,
undisturbed. Half a dozen figures rose from the sand beside it and stood
respectfully waiting for Loto to approach.
Rogers took his seat beside the Frazia controls. They were presently in
the air, flying northward over the palm-covered island that lay calm,
serene in its false security and peacefulness.
Loto sat close to his father, with George beside them.
"I must tell you briefly the conditions here," Loto said. "Then you will
be able to understand--be able to help with your advice and judgement as
well as actions."
He spoke briskly but carefully, and his manner regained its poise.
George was gazing down through one of the side windows.
"That's Azeela's messenger," Loto commented, "going back to Anglese
City."
They were flying hardly five hundred feet above the palms. A white road
lay beneath them; along it a huge, shaggy dog was running, with the
figure of a man on its back. The dog's neck was stretched forward, its
body low to the ground as it ran with almost incredible speed, the man
lashing its flanks with a leather thong. The plane passed very slowly
and drew away.
"We will not land in the heart of the city," Loto added. "He'll be with
Azeela before we are."
"Go on and tell us about things," George urged. "We've got the time now;
maybe we won't have it later."
Loto nodded. "I will. We have here on the island three social classes.
How they developed throughout the centuries you will have to imagine for
yourself. Ancient, almost prehistoric Egypt was no more than a quarter
as far into the past of our time-world as we are now ahead of it.
Considered in that light, the changes have been rather less radical than
you would anticipate.
"The lowest class--you would call them peons in our old Latin
America--are now termed the Bas. They include more than nine-tenths of
all the inhabitants of the island. Most of them are ignorant,
uneducated; yet they include, also, many intelligent, learned
individuals.
"It is the lowest class which is now plunged into almost intolerable
conditions. They are the workers. Through generations of working in the
sun, their skin has become a reddish brown. The higher class--the
nobility--are the Arans. As the governing class, the Arans live for the
most part in idleness and luxury, while the Bas are held down to almost
universal poverty.
"You haven't seen the Arans yet. We will be in their chief city shortly.
You will find them white-skinned, their women especially, for they
shield themselves carefully from the sun. They are cultured, yet
without great learning. Can you appreciate that condition? They're the
ones who really show the decadence of this time-world."
"Is there a third class?" Rogers prompted.
"Yes. The Scientists--to me the most interesting of all. You will
appreciate that in long past ages, science was supreme. In war it was
everything. The Anglese came to this island and grew apathetic, but the
Scientists, in some measure, clung to their learning. Gradually, their
attitude must have changed to secrecy. They became a sect, holding
knowledge for its own sake, keeping it among themselves.
"The real power lay with them, and they knew it. But curiously enough,
their science seemed all-sufficient. As a body, they never desired
governing power; no individual rose among them with a yearning for
conquest--except Toroh.
"Foreign wars came. The Scientists offered their help, and when the wars
were over, retired with their knowledge to themselves. The sect, as you
will find it today, is on the downgrade. It has dwindled to a thousand
or two individuals who are scattered throughout the island. They call
themselves the League--I should say, a word that means about that. They
have their own officers; a council of a hundred in Anglese City, and a
lifetime president, Fahn, Azeela's father.
"Thus, you understand, the League of Scientists really controls
everything. But its members are content with the prestige their position
gives them. The government itself has for centuries fostered this
secrecy of all that pertains to science. In times of war, the Arans are
helpless, and leave it all to the League. In times of peace they forget
the possibility of war and go back to ruling the Bas in their own
fashion."
Loto glanced out one of the windows. "Look down there."
The island was mountainous; a constant succession of green hills and
valleys. A small lake came into view, with steam rising from it.
Everywhere the scene was dotted with thatched huts and, occasionally, a
more pretentious bungalow like the one in which the visitors had passed
the previous night. As they flew low over the hills, they could see
small brown and white patches of cultivated land scattered everywhere.
"That is the way the Bas live," Loto commented. "Sometimes they bring
their produce to the cities and sell it for ridiculously small sums. If
there's a food shortage, the Arans come out and take it--paying for it
nominally."
"But their factories, their industries?"
"In the cities, Father. Reduced to a minimum, and for the use and
welfare of the Arans and Scientists almost exclusively. Skilled labor is
performed by the higher types of the Bas. They are allowed to live in
the cities, but are paid so little that they must live unpretentiously.
Everything is done for the welfare of the Arans and the League of
Scientists."
"And the government?"
"A monarchy. A king, his council of fifty and his personal cabinet of
five. A hereditary monarch, wholly inefficient, except in forcing his
laws upon the Bas."
"I should think that would be somewhat difficult," Rogers commented.
"There is a large police force made up of swaggering young men of the
Arans. They serve for the joy of it; they're mostly arrogant individuals
who take pleasure in the enforcement of the personal power they hold.
And they abuse it, of course. Their task is easy, for they have the
Scientists behind them. If one of them were killed, or even attacked by
a Bas, it would mean the death of that Bas and all his family.
"I said the Bas were under conditions almost intolerable. And that's
exactly why these spies of Toroh's are dangerous to us just now. The
whole social condition here is wretched, but, I suppose, logical enough
under the circumstances of environment and racial development.
Fundamentally, the difficulty has been a limited land area. The race
cannot expand, hence numerically it must be restrained."
"How?" demanded Rogers. "By birth control?"
"Obligatory birth control--applicable only to the Bas. More Bas are not
desired, hence births are limited. The desire just now--more than to
hold the population even--is to cut it down. Hence, a Bas woman is
allowed only two offspring."
"But suppose she has three?" George suggested.
"The mother and her child--illegitimate in a new sense--are banished
from the island." Loto's voice rose to sudden vehemence. "Can you
understand what that sometimes does? I have seen a mother with her
newborn infant, two or three weeks old, pleading before the King's
Council. She would not murder it at birth, as the Bas women sometimes
do, and I saw her plead for its right to live on the island. And then,
with her plea denied, she took it away into the frozen north. Her
husband did not follow her. That is optional. This one stayed behind,
keeping the other two children, and letting her take the infant alone.
And she went, to save its life--her child, born without a birthright."
There was a silence. Rogers was staring down at a hilltop where, as the
plane swept past, a woman with two naked children at her side stood in
front of a small shack.
"And when you have seen the Arans, living their life of luxury and
immorality," Loto went on, "you will wonder why the Bas have stood it so
long. 'After us--the deluge,' has always been the Aran reasoning."
The plane was climbing to pass over a jagged, volcanic-looking peak.
Behind, nestled in a hollow, with a curving stretch of white sand and
the blue waters of the channel beyond, lay the capital city of the
Arans: reckless, pleasure-loving, secure in its beauty and supremacy,
yet trembling from so many causes upon the brink of disaster.
CHAPTER EIGHT
On the gently undulating floor of a valley, surrounded by three
mountains and with the sea rolling up on its beach to the north, lay the
Aran city. From an altitude of some three thousand feet, the travelers
gazed down upon a scene of extraordinary color and beauty: low, pure,
white buildings with many balconies and patios; gardens of vivid
flowers; white pergolas trellised with scarlet blossoms; sunken pools of
limpid water, with huge date palms curving over them. A grove of royal
palms grew close to the beach, near a huge, rectangular bathing pool and
a marble-white pavilion. A white palace stood on a rise of ground with a
balconied tower, five hundred feet high, beside it. On the top of the
tower was a beautiful flower garden. And everywhere was the romantic
green foliage of the tropics, the blue-red sky, the soft, red-white
clouds, and the azure waters of the channel.
"Where do we land?" George asked.
"To the west a little, Father," Loto directed. "See the cavern
entrance?"
He pointed for George, explaining: "We will not land directly in the
city. I want the plane permanently guarded now, so we will leave it in
the Cavern of Thunderbolts."
"The what?" George demanded.
"That's what the Bas picturesquely call it. You see the cavern mouth?"
Across the city, a yawning black hole gaped in the mountainside near its
base; an opening of irregularly circular shape, some two hundred feet in
diameter. A gentle slope led up to it from the city.
"We can fly directly in," Loto added. "It's the entrance to the
subterranean chambers where the scientists work--and where they store
their apparatus under guard. It's also a museum, where relics of the
past are gathered."
George relapsed into an awed silence, staring down at the city. In the
streets and on the housetops, people were standing, gazing up at the
plane curiously.
The mouth of the cavern grew steadily larger as the plane swooped down
upon it. The yawning hole seemed to have a level floor extending
horizontally back into the mountain. Far back into the darkness, little
blue lights twinkled.
"You'd better take the controls, Loto," Rogers said anxiously. "I don't
like the idea of flying into that."
Loto slipped quietly into the seat. The Frazia motors stopped abruptly.
Silently, with only the sound of the air rushing past, the plane glided
swiftly downward.
Around the cavern mouth was a small platform with a roof over it, built
on an overhanging ledge of rock. The figures of three men seated there
were visible. Abruptly one of the men rose, and from his upflung hand a
tiny flash of blue-white light shot into the clouds overhead. Even in
the daylight it was a plainly visible flash.
"Lightning!" George exclaimed and, as though to confirm him, a little
miniature crack of thunder sounded an instant later.
"They know I'm coming," Loto said.
It was a queer sensation, darting into that blackness. The cave mouth
seemed to open and swallow them. The plane struck the ground with a
bump, lifted, bumped again and rolled forward. Points of light swept
past on either side; a blue-white glare lay ahead.
The plane slackened its speed and came to a stop.
"We're here," said Loto. "Take only what you will need at once. We can
come back here later today or tomorrow."
Quickly, they descended from the plane.
The hum of dynamos sounded from far away in the mountain's depths. The
roof high overhead was dimly visible, and great shadows, flickering
blue-white lights, were everywhere. Near at hand, where the cave
broadened, was a space more brightly lighted. Further along it narrowed
again, forming a dozen branching passages. An incline fifty feet wide
sloped down into blackness, with a faint pencil-point of blue light
shining from far down within its recesses.
"Why, the whole mountain is honeycombed!" Rogers exclaimed.
"Yes, sir. Just stand here a minute and I'll be with you. Don't move
about!"
Figures were approaching, robed in black rubber garments, gloved and
hooded. Loto turned to greet them, and they drew back their hoods,
disclosing their heads and faces. There was a brief conversation, then
Loto turned back to his companions.
"Fahn is at home in the city," he said swiftly, and his tone was
concerned. "We'll go there."
The black-robed figures gazed at them curiously a moment; then went back
to their work. Led by Loto, the three started off toward the mouth of
the cave.
"Is your plane in here, Loto?" Rogers asked.
"No, sir. I left it at Orleen. There's a cavern there similar to this,
but smaller. It's there--in the other cavern."
"You're sure it's safe?"
"Of course."
"Where are we going?" George demanded after a moment.
"To Fahn's home," Loto answered. "He'll be there with Azeela and
Dianne."
"Dianne?" George's voice took on a new note of interest. "Who is she?"
"Azeela's younger sister," Loto explained briefly. He smiled. "I meant
to tell you about her, George. She's a little daredevil--you'll like
her."
George just smiled, and for some time they walked on in silence. The
ground was wet, like muddy clay. There were no lights ahead, but the
daylight from the cave's mouth lighted their way.
They emerged from the cave and came out onto a road of white sand and
clay that led down the mountain slope. Palms lined it thickly. Further
down, at the bottom of the quarter-mile descent, houses began; the
outskirts of the city. The road soon took on the aspect of a street. It
was broad, with narrow pedestrian paths on both sides. Flower gardens,
often with hedges of thick, bayonet-like plants, lined the walks. The
houses were for the most part almost obscured by palms and trellised
vines that were laden with scarlet blossoms. Private, outdoor bathing
pools occasionally showed through the garden foliage.
It was obviously a residential section. As the party advanced,
passers-by grew more numerous. The Bas men were distinguishable by their
clipped, bullet-like heads, covered with broad, circular-brimmed hats of
straw; their sun-tanned bodies naked above the waist, bare feet, and the
wide trousers. The Bas women, also red-brown of skin, were usually
clothed merely with a loin cloth and a white sash bound over the
breasts, their hair twisted in plaits hanging down the back.
The Bas walked always in the road itself. On the pedestrian paths, a few
Arans passed by; men with long hair to the base of the neck, and dressed
somewhat as Loto had garbed his father and friend. Most of them saluted
Loto--a queer, flowing gesture of the left hand--and all of them stared
with frank curiosity at the strangers. Occasionally an Aran woman came
along--white-swathed, mysterious figures; a twinkle of tiny,
black-slippered feet, a flash from alluring eyes veiled by lashes
heavily darkened.
An Aran man riding a dog went slowly down a side street. A dog pulling a
small, three-wheeled cart piled high with merchandise passed in the
opposite direction.
George edged toward Loto. "Those dogs," he whispered. "They're friendly?
Not vicious?"
"Of course not," Loto laughed. "Just like regular dogs. Except...well,
I'll tell you later."
George sighed with relief. "All right. But they're not like any dogs I
ever saw at home--they're nearly as big as a horse. And there's
something else wrong about them--they're too intelligent. You can see
that just by looking at them walk."
Presently they turned into the gateway of a hedge solid with white and
scarlet blossoms.
"Fahn's home," Loto said. "We'll go right in."
They passed through a garden, colorful with its mass of vivid flowers,
and heavy with the languorous scent of magnolia and orange blossoms. The
house stood well back from the road. It was a low, broad building, white
in color, with, a low-hanging room--not thatched, but seemingly of blue
tiling.
Then they were on the veranda. The walls of the house sloped inward at
the top. There was a window nearby--no glass--with a blue-white, silky
curtain shrouding it. The door stood open; inside was a hall, with
another door open to the sunlight of a patio banked with flowers.
A girl came to the doorway. It was Azeela. George recognized her at
once: a slight little creature of blue eyes, golden hair and milk-white
skin; a pale blue sash wound wide about her hips and thighs,
breastplates of metal, with the broad, circular collar above them, and
her hair parted forward over her shoulders in plaits that ended with
little tassels. George decided she was the most beautiful girl he had
ever seen; Loto's description did not half do her justice.
She stood hesitantly in the doorway then, smiling, advanced to Loto and
gave him both hands in a pretty gesture of welcome.
George's decision that Azeela was the prettiest girl he had ever seen
was short lived, for behind Azeela now came another girl, her younger
sister, Dianne. Azeela might have been eighteen or nineteen; Dianne
obviously was no more than sixteen--a black-haired, dark-eyed girl,
dressed like Azeela, except that her sash was a deep red.
"And this is Dianne," Loto was saying. "We call her Dee."
"So will I," George answered promptly. He met the girl's eyes--snapping,
laughing eyes with the spirit of deviltry in them.
"Loto told me about you," she said demurely. Her intonation was that of
a foreigner, but she spoke the ancient English with perfect ease and
fluency. "Loto said he thought I would like you a lot."
"He didn't tell me about _you_," George responded. "Not till ten minutes
ago. But, anyway, he was right. No, what I mean is--"
The rest of George's speech was lost, for they were inside the house and
Fahn was advancing to meet them. The leader of the Scientists was a man
of nearly seventy; a quiet, grave, dominating figure, tall and spare,
but perfectly erect. His face was smooth-shaven, his iron-gray hair long
to the base of the neck. He was dressed in a paneled robe of black, with
a pleated white collar and cuffs.
"I am glad, indeed, to have you with us," he said cordially to Rogers.
He spoke precisely, slowly and carefully, as one speaks a language newly
mastered. "I feel very close to you, now that my daughter Azeela is to
marry Loto. It makes me--"
Rogers stared blankly. "Loto engaged? Why, Loto, you--"
"There was so much else to tell you, Father." Loto was covered with
confusion. "Besides, I wanted to have you meet Azeela first."
Azeela was trying to escape from the room, but Dee captured her and
pushed her back.
George was vigorously congratulating Loto, and Rogers, rising to the
occasion, kissed Azeela heartily.
* * * * *
It was an ominous crisis into which the visitors from a time world
twenty-eight thousand years previous had fallen. They discussed it with
Fahn and his daughters during the remainder of that morning, and at the
light noon meal, served in a shaded corner of the patio formed by the
enclosing wings of the house. Banks of vivid flowers surrounded them;
the quiet, warm air was redolent with perfume. A small fountain splashed
musically. The world was calm, languorous.
Fahn had little to add to what they already knew. Toroh and the Noths
had not been expected to attack for a month or two at least, and the
Anglese scientists were going forward with their own preparations for
the war with utmost haste.
But now these emissaries Toroh had smuggled to the island injected a new
and alarming factor into the situation. They had appeared only in
Orleen, but the Bas there were listening to them, and all over the
island the news was spreading among the Bas that Toroh was a friend, not
an enemy. The Bas might be incited to open revolt.
"Morgruud is alarmed," Fahn said to Loto. He explained to the others
that Mogruud was one of the most intelligent of the Bas in Anglese City,
a leader of his people. Mogruud was not fooled by Toroh's emissaries,
but he feared now that he could not prevent an uprising.
"And the most terrible part is the Bas are right," Fahn added. "I do not
mean in regard to Toroh--he is a scoundrel, of course. But the Bas must
have some relief. Their children--ten mothers and infants were ordered
exiled yesterday."
"Why don't you fix it?" George asked.
The Scientist leader shrugged slightly. "I do not make the laws; I obey
them. I have remonstrated with the king and the council many times." He
paused, then added thoughtfully:
"The time may come when we of the League may be forced to act against
the laws of our king. He is wrong, and we scientists all know it. But to
take the law into our own hands--it is a very drastic thing...."
During the meal, George was far more interested in the two sisters than
in the men's talk. He had opportunity now to study the girls, compare
them. In feature they were much alike; in expression and demeanor,
totally different. Azeela was calm, thoughtful--femininely wise and
patient. Dee was impulsive, vivacious--alternately demure and devilish.
Yet, in spite of the differences in temperament, there seemed a strange
bond between the sisters. Their regard for each other, the love between
them, was obvious. But it was more than that--a bond of mind and spirit.
George puzzled over it. Often when Azeela was about to speak, Dee would
impulsively speak for her, as though interpreting her sister's thoughts.
The afternoon was one of inactivity. A Toroh emissary appeared in
Anglese City, but he was arrested before he had time to harangue the
people.
"I had thought he was one of Toroh's brothers," Fahn remarked, "but it
is not so. I think now they would not dare come back to the island."
He went on to explain that Toroh had two younger brothers, banished like
himself.
"They might come--Toroh himself might come," Loto declared. "He will
dare anything that seems worth the risk."
"If we take any one of them he will die," Fahn commented.
It was at this juncture, in the late afternoon when the whole world was
bathed in the glorious colors of a sunset sky, that Azeela returned from
a short trip across the city.
"The Aran Festival of the Flowers is tonight," she exclaimed excitedly.
"It has not been postponed. The Arans say it is clever to hold it now,
in spite of the news from Orleen. It will show the Bas how little they
care--how secure is the Aran power!"
It seemed to presage evil events--the holding of this festival wherein
all the wanton luxury of the Arans could be flaunted in the faces of
those whom they ruled. And it was with foreboding in their hearts that
Fahn, his daughters and their friends, prepared that evening to go and
witness it. It was midnight when they started. Dee and Azeela were
swathed to the eyes in soft white robes, and the men carried tiny black
masks.
The city streets, even at midnight, bore a holiday aspect. The moon had
risen but, in addition to its light, there were braziers strung above
every street crossing and they cast a soft blue light downward.
Arans were hurrying along, alone and in groups--the women all shrouded
in white; the men, in clothes of gaudy colors, wearing masks, or
dangling them in their hands. Little phaetons drawn by dogs rolled by,
filled with gay figures in fancy dress; women leaned from them, waving
at the pedestrians and tossing out flowers as they swept past.
Loto and Azeela, with George and Dee close behind them, led the way
swiftly in the direction that every one else was moving. Fahn and Rogers
followed behind.
It was a fairy tale city of unreality: gaudy men and white robed women
hastening forward under the blue street lights; silent white houses
flushed with the reddish tinge of the moon; warm, moist air, almost
without a breath, heavy with sensuous perfume.
And in the shadows of the streets, the brown skinned, half naked figure
of a Bas, skulking here and there!
Azeela had, for some time, been walking in silence. She looked up at the
moon and, with a touch upon Loto's arm, indicated it.
"You said the moon was blushing, my Loto--the blush of maiden modesty to
look down upon such a city. But I do not see it so...to me it is
stained with _blood_."
The sweeping gesture of her white arm flashing from under the robe
indicated a garden beside them.
"_Blood--staining everything!_"
The street topped a rise of ground, ahead, down another short slope, lay
the sea. And even there the silver path upon the water was tinged with
red.
CHAPTER NINE
A cordon of police stopped Fahn and his party at the edge of a grove of
palms near the beach. A moment more and they were inside. It was dim
under the palms; the white sand a lace pattern of shadow and moonlight.
Gay figures were moving about, all the men masked now.
The grove covered perhaps a quarter of a mile. To the right lay the
gleaming white beach with the surf rolling up upon it. A tremendous pile
of scarlet and white blossoms stood near by under the palm trees.
Figures rushed to it, gathered up armfuls and darted away, shouting and
laughing.
"We must keep together," Fahn warned. "Come this way."
Half a dozen men had whirled up, pelting Azeela and Dee with flower
blossoms, and, under cover of the laughing attack, tried to separate the
girls from their escorts and carry them off.
They moved slowly forward, George gripping Dee's arm tightly. They
passed a huge, rectangular swimming pool, deserted as yet--glassy,
moonlit water a foot or two below the surface of the ground, reflecting
the dark outlines of the date palms that curved above it.
The whirling crowd constantly became thicker. There must have been
several thousand people within the grove: the white shrouded figure of a
woman flinging flowers against the attack of a man; a woman retreating,
her ammunition exhausted, to the flower pile to replenish, and being
caught in a smothering embrace before she could reach it; a group of
laughing girls, their robes torn from them in the fray, pelting a
defenseless man, flinging him finally into a huge pile of flower petals,
burying him until some other quarry distracted their attention, or a
stronger force of men separated them, sometimes carrying them off
bodily.
And in nooks behind the hedges of flowers, couples stole silent
embraces, alone until marauding bands of men or girls found them out and
drove them from their seclusion.
The white sand was thick with trampled flowers. Music came drifting
through the warm night air; music near at hand, but blurred by the
shouts of the whirling throng. The rich contralto voice of a woman
singing--a snatch cut off by laughter.
A large white pavilion lay ahead, brilliant with flashing colored
lights--a kaleidoscope of shifting color. It seemed crowded with people,
and Fahn now led his little party toward it.
They did not enter the pavilion, but stood in a group on its steps. The
music came from within, music that welled and throbbed, unfamiliar in
character, but with the age-old appeal to the senses--music sensuous,
barbaric. And yet was it barbaric?
Rogers voiced the question in a whisper to Loto, who stood beside him.
Was it not rather supermodern, with the centuries of decadence that had
put into it that fire of the soul abandoned to the body?
The throng on the floor was battling with flowers, drinking wine from
carved bowls of coconut shell, and dancing indiscriminately. The masked
men were robed in black and women shrouded in white, but the swinging
lights of vivid color stained everything, made the scene shift and blur
into fantasy.
At one end of the room a huge circular table was loaded with food and
drink, fruits and confections. The table was slowly revolving; half of
its circumference was behind a partition--a kitchen where it was
constantly being replenished with other dainties.
The visitors found it difficult to keep their place on the pavilion
steps. Masked men attacked the two girls with flowers; a black robed
figure in mock politeness and humility begged one or the other of them
to dance. A trio of girls tore George away, and then, at his resistance,
left him abruptly.
"The king," whispered Loto, with a gesture.
At one end of the pavilion, on a small raised platform, the king sat
smiling down upon the scene. He was robed in paneled cloth of rich,
gaudy colors--a man of middle age whose long, dark hair was shot through
with gray.
The scene, with its confusion of shifting incidents, held too much for
the visitors to see or to understand. Half an hour went by, with the
merrymaking steadily increasing. Abruptly, the music stopped. The throng
stopped in its tracks, waiting expectantly. The swinging colored lights
died out; others took their place--pure blue-white, and motionless. A
solemn bell tolled out over the silence; with almost one motion the
masks and the robes were discarded. A woman's laugh rang out, carrying
in it the very essence of abandonment. Then the music began again and
the throng sprang back into motion.
The riotous color had been supplied by the lights; now with the lights a
blue-white, steady glare, it was the riotous color of the costumes
themselves. Was it the Baghdad of the Ancients--manikins, with turbaned
headdresses, and flowing, vivid draperies with the gleaming white of
limbs beneath them? Or were these slave girls, with their wares
displayed for the bidders in the market? Or these others, were they
desert women, dancing with a pagan lust?
Watching with the others, George's impressions were confused. Yet the
thought came to him that this was modern beyond his time--decadence, not
barbarism.
Again Rogers murmured something, but his words were lost. A score of
figures came leaping from the pavilion, scattering the small group of
onlookers on its steps.
Rogers recovered himself, turning to follow them with his gaze; white
nymphs with flowing hair, and draperies of gauze that bellowed behind
them as they ran for the moonlit beach and the surf.
Loto, pulling at his father's arm, brought his attention back to the
pavilion. Through it, the palm grove on the other side was visible.
The bathing pool was now a turmoil of splashing figures--slim white
shapes dove into it from the palm-lined banks.
But Loto was indicating the pavilion's interior. The crowd was standing
motionless, gazing upward. A small dais was poised in mid-air above the
floor in the center of the room. It floated there, seemingly with
nothing to sustain it. Standing on tiptoe on the dais was a woman,
wrapped to the eyes in scarlet draperies. She was facing the king over a
distance of some twenty feet. The music, which had been stilled for a
moment, murmured softly from its unseen niche.
Fahn whispered to Rogers, "Our workmen of the League equipped that dais
for the king. He begged us--and I feel now that it was a mistake."
Loto added: "It is made from our newly invented war equipment. The dais
is covered with a fabric--electrically charged, and repulsive to the
earth. It's radio controlled, Father. A workman from the cavern is over
there in the corner, behind that drape. We've kept the fabric a secret,
but the king wanted to use it for the dais."
The woman was singing in a throbbing contralto, very soft at first, then
gradually louder. As she sang, slowly she unwound the draperies, letting
them drop from her like quivering flame to a smoldering pile at her
feet. Beneath it were other draperies, flame-colored like the rest, but
her arms and face were bare--full, rounded, milk-white arms--a heavy
face with scarlet lips.
"Helene," Loto whispered. "The Bas call her what means 'Mme. Voluptua.'
It is she who rules the king _and the nation_. Look at her!"
The king was standing up. The music grew louder, fiercer, with a
thrilling minor cadence. The woman's arms were extended; she stood
poised, smiling as she sang to the king. From her outflung arms the
gauze drapery hung like quivering wings, with the white of her body
gleaming beneath it. The black hair piled high on her head held two
spangles of gold trembling at the end of delicate golden wires. She
stood, a great scarlet moth, hovering before flight.
Staring in fascination, the king had left his seat and descended to the
floor. The crowd parted to make way for him as he slowly moved toward
the dais which floated down to meet him. Every eye was on him and on the
woman, who now was extending her arms down in invitation.
The music and the song were at their height. The dais reached the floor;
the king stepped upon it and, as the woman's hand touched his shoulder,
he dropped on one knee before her, his lips at the hem of her scarlet
gauze.
A leer of triumph on the woman's face; a murmur of applause from the
watching throng. Then a black cloak fell from a figure close beside the
dais; a man leaped upon it--the naked figure of a man in loin-cloth. A
knife flashed--blue-white steel in the light from above. The song rose
to a shuddering scream. The scarlet figure wilted and sank among its
draperies at the feet of the kneeling king.
For an instant the colorful throng seemed frozen; then chaos and the
struggling, airless confusion of panic. The murderer had flung the king
and the body of the woman from the dais. The little platform was rising
into the air, carrying him with it. The movement was sidewise; in a
moment it would have been outside the pavilion.
Rogers, standing beside Fahn, heard the Scientist leader mutter an oath.
Fahn's hand came up from his robe; a pencil-point of flame--a tiny
shaft, yellow-red--shot from his weapon. The platform crashed to the
floor of the pavilion; the murderer lay still, his body blackened and
charred.
In the center of the room, the king had climbed to his feet, trembling.
He stood, staring down at the scarlet pile of gauze before him, the
crumbled white body stained red as the draperies in which it lay.
The pavilion was emptying. The music was stilled; shouts of men,
terrified, hysterical cries of women filled the air. The visitors on the
steps were swept back by the crowds from within. Loto, clinging to his
father, struggled to hold them together.
White figures were running from the beach; slim shapes were climbing
from the bathing pool. A woman hastened by, long black hair plastered
wet against her sleek white body. Her face, the allure gone from it, was
a white mask of horror; a scarlet mouth with lips parted to yield
babbling, terrified cries. She swept past, then disappeared into the
confusion of the night.
Loto was still clutching his father; all the rest of their party had
disappeared. The pavilion now was empty of Arans, save for that huddled
scarlet form, deserted by all its kind.
Fahn came hastening up. "That is one of Toroh's brothers." He pointed
to the motionless figure of the man his jet of flame had killed. "The
other brother murdered my operator. They planned to steal the fabric, to
duplicate it and use it against us in the war. I had no idea they would
dare come to the island."
Fahn had found his radio operator lying dead in his place behind the
drape. Toroh's other brother had been there, trying to work the radio
and get the dais out of the pavilion so that in the confusion they might
escape with it. Fahn had caught a glimpse of the man running away as he
approached. They had not known of Fahn's presence at the festival; had
he not been there, the attempt probably would have succeeded.
There was space around the three men now. The fleeing Aran figures were
vanishing through the palms; the confused cries were growing fainter.
But George and the two girls could not be found.
"We must go back," Fahn said. "They must have tried to find us and could
not. They would go home at once."
With a last search around them, the three men started off through the
now almost deserted grove. The cordon of police had disappeared. A few
hastening figures were scattered along the streets.
"Come on," Loto cried anxiously. "We have to hurry."
Keeping close together they hastened along. Aran figures scurried here
and there; lights twinkled in the houses, then were extinguished as
though the concealing darkness might offer protection.
"Curious," murmured Rogers. "The entire city is in terror."
"The guilt that has been within them for generations," Fahn answered.
"Toroh planned this well. The Bas will not know it was an attempt to
steal the fabric. Instead they will think that one of their own people
dared to murder Mme. Voluptua. The Arans think that now. They think the
Bas have risen to rebellion at last. It is not this one murder, but the
meaning of it that they fear--the confidence it will give the Bas."
And as though to confirm his words, the figure of a Bas man stood
motionless on the next street corner. He was partly in shadow, but he
did not move as the three men came along; and as they passed, his body
seemed to straighten, with the consciousness of his own power sweeping
over it.
They hurried across the city. As they went, they passed other Bas--Bas
who no longer skulked in the shadows.
At last they came to the shimmering, moonlit garden of Fahn's home. The
house was dark. They called, but no one answered. A brief search
revealed the truth; Azeela, George and Dee were not to be found. The
place was undisturbed; there seemed no evidence of marauders.
"We must wait," Fahn said. But his tone was anxious. "They have not yet
arrived from the grove. I cannot believe it is anything but that."
For a time they waited, but none of the missing three appeared. A hum
had been growing in the city--a murmur of distant cries that now forced
itself on their attention. The murmur grew, resolving itself into shouts
and the scuffle of running feet. A mob of Bas rounded a nearby street
corner and swept past the house. The crowd might have held a thousand
persons. A giant, half-naked man with a curved sword-blade in his hand
was leading the way; behind him came hordes of brown-skinned men and
women. Most of the men carried curved swords; the women wielded
sticks--the heavy butts of palm-fronds with the green stripped off--and
a variety of agricultural implements.
"The cane-cutters!" Loto exclaimed softly. "The knives with which they
cut the sugar cane. They--"
He broke off, watching the grim mob as it swept by. At every corner it
was strengthened by others who joined it; Bas were springing up
miraculously from the shadows everywhere.
Fahn's hand had gone to his belt; then it dropped to his side. Rogers
met the Scientist's glance with a nod of understanding.
"It is what we of the League have feared for years," Fahn said
anxiously. "I cannot kill my own people. I am armed and they are not,
yet I cannot kill them--cannot look upon them as enemies. And I think,
even in their frenzy, they realize that and play upon it."
The last stragglers had passed; the shouts of the mob were growing
fainter as it dashed across the city. The Aran houses were still dark
and silent, with only an occasional inmate slinking out to gaze
fearfully around. Directly across the street, the white figure of a
woman just returned from the grove showed for an instant in a doorway.
Then it fled inward, into the darkness.
"_The palace!_" Loto explained abruptly. "_They're going to the
palace!_"
The words seemed to bring to Fahn the realization that action by him was
needed. For the moment his anxiety over his daughters became secondary.
"Come!" he cried. "We must protect the king."
He hurried them through the garden and along the street. Almost running,
the three men headed toward where the mob could still be heard, shouting
in the distance.
CHAPTER TEN
George had been standing with his friends beside the pavilion, silently
watching the festival reach its height. The bell tolled; the masks and
cloaks were discarded. A bevy of nymphs draped in flowing gauze came
dashing out. As they passed, one of them caught George by the arm,
pulling him along a few steps; her eyes, half hidden by her tumbling
hair, mocked him provocatively.
He jerked away. A tide of other figures flowed from the pavilion,
following the nymphs to the beach. George fought his way back, seeking
to rejoin his friends; in that crowd they could get lost so easily.
He was looking about, wondering just where they had been standing
before, when he saw Dee. Her white cloak had fallen from her head to her
shoulders. She was standing alone, apparently lost in reverie.
George hastened to her. "Where are--"
But her vehement gesture silenced him; again she seemed lost in thought.
For a moment he stood wondering what was the matter with her. The music
from the pavilion throbbed out into the moonlit grove; gaiety was
surging all around them.
Finally George could stand it no longer. "Dee, what is it? What's the
matter?"
She looked up with an anxious frown. "Something is wrong with Azeela.
She's trying to tell me what's wrong."
"Oh?" George glanced hastily about. "Where is Azeela? She was here a
minute ago. Where are the rest of them? Let's tell them."
What did Dee mean? The girl seemed to have forgotten him again. She was
moving away, like one who walks under a spell.
"Wait. Dee--_wait a minute_!"
She kept on going. Figures were passing between them now. George hated
to leave his place. He'd never find the others--never get back again.
Even now he realized it would be difficult, if not impossible, to find
them in all that crowd of masked figures. If he lost Dee, too... He had
no choice; he darted after Dee.
When he had overtaken her they were some distance from the pavilion. It
was more secluded here. George darted up and caught her by the arm.
"Dee! What's the matter with you?"
Her hand went over her eyes and she shook herself slightly. "It's hard
at first--getting Azeela's thoughts. I have them now." She spoke
swiftly, anxiously. "Toroh was here a moment ago. He seized Azeela and
took her out of the grove--right near here."
Azeela's thoughts! George understood. He started forward, but she held
him.
"Too late! Toroh had two dogs waiting for him--they're mounting them
now. He has tied Azeela. They're starting--the dogs are running."
George stared at her blankly. "Where to? Where is he taking her? Can you
ask her that? Can she tell you?"
The girl was hastening forward now, with George after her. "Yes. She
says to Orleen. I have told her we are coming."
Abruptly, she stopped and faced him. "George, we have two dogs at home.
Shall you and I get them and go after Azeela?"
"Yes," he exclaimed impulsively.
"And I know where father keeps his weapons."
"Good. We can't find Loto and your father in this crowd. Had we better
try, Dee?"
They were hurrying forward again.
"No, we'd lose too much time. Father forbade me touching his weapons,"
she added as an afterthought, "but this is different, isn't it?"
"Of course," he agreed excitedly. "You know how to work them, Dee?"
"Yes, I experimented. He doesn't know it."
They left the grove.
"Dee, where's Azeela now?"
"Crossing the city. West toward Orleen. We won't be far behind them."
George was trembling with the excitement of it. "Is Toroh armed? Ask
Azeela that."
"I did. She doesn't know. She thinks he is."
"Oh!"
"We'll do something. He won't know we're after him--that's our
advantage. Hurry, George!"
There were a few figures in the almost deserted streets, but George and
Dee did not notice them. She was telling him of this branch of science
for which she and her sister were distinguished--this telepathy they had
developed. Bound in a union of thought by an unusual devotion, they had
perfected it until they could know, always vaguely, and, with effort,
quite distinctly, what was in the other's mind.
"We mustn't waste any time getting started, Dee."
They had entered the silent garden of Fahn's home. The city behind them
was humming with confusion now, but they did not hear it, did not know
that a murder had just been committed at the festival.
Inside the house, Dee went at once to her father's room. George waited.
When she returned she held two weapons out for his inspection. One was a
crescent of transparent metal, with a tiny wire connecting its horns and
a black bone handle by which to grasp it. There was a firing mechanism
on the handle. It was the projector of the ray which caused muscular
paralysis--the weapon Bool had used against Loto.
Dee described its operation briefly.
The other weapon was a small black globe the size of a man's fist. It
also had a handle with a trigger; in the globe opposite was a tiny
orifice like the muzzle of a revolver. This was one of the smallest
models of the thunderbolt projectors. With it, a bolt of electrons could
be thrown over a distance of some twenty feet.
The former weapon Dee kept; the little thunderbolt globe she handed to
George.
Dee had discarded her white robe; a blue ribbon around her forehead held
the hair from her eyes. She had another in her hand, and she tied it
around George's head.
"It's hot riding, even at night," she explained. "Your hair gets
moist--gets in your eyes."
They had been delayed only a moment.
"This way," she added.
They ran outside, across the patio, through a dark room and into the
garden behind the house, where a small white outbuilding stood. A new
misgiving overcame George.
"Oh, Dee--these dogs of yours..."
"Can you ride a dog?" she asked over her shoulder. Her expression was
impish.
"I can ride anything," he said stoutly, but his tone was dubious. "If
the dog is--"
She must have understood him, for she laughed.
"Wait! You will find these dogs your friends."
George said nothing more, and in a moment they were within the kennel.
It was dark, very dimly lighted by the moon from outside. A gray-black
shape came toward them; a shaggy dog whose shoulders stood nearly as
high as his own. George's first instinct was to turn and run, but the
dog padded up to Dee, and she put her arms up around it.
"Good, Rotan. Will you run fast for Dee?"
She called it toward George, and patted him to show the dog he was her
friend. George impulsively put his hand up to the great shaggy neck,
felt the dog's warm tongue as it turned to lick his hand. This huge
brute was his friend.
The other dog, Atal was a male, larger than its mate; and standing
beside it, George marveled at the power that its great body must hold.
The dogs knew they were going out. They whined with eagerness, and
leaping across the kennel, they came back to Dee with saddles in their
mouths with which she was to harness them.
Rotan, which Dee was to ride, was saddled with a leather seat and a
pommel with a small stirrup on one side. It was not unlike the
sidesaddle for girls that had been in use just before George's time. On
Atal she strapped a thick leather pad with a stirrup on each side; men
rode astride. There were no bridles.
"You tell Atal which way to go," she explained. "Right or left, slower
or faster. If you want him to run or walk or stop, he will understand.
Since Loto came we have taught them your way of saying it."
It all took no more than a moment or two, for Dee was hurrying, and her
eagerness seemed to communicate itself to the dogs. They had barked at
first--barks of such volume that George was startled. But when Dee
silenced them, they stood trembling with impatience, their heads turned
to follow her as she adjusted the saddles.
George mounted Atal. It was almost like mounting a horse; and yet not
like a horse either, for the dog's huge body under him was springy,
supple. As it moved toward the doorway, George was reminded of the lithe
grace and strength of a tiger. He missed the reins, and in lieu of them,
twisted up two handfuls of hair on the dog's neck and clung.
Dee was ahead of him. "All right, George?"
"Right," he said confidently. "But we might as well take it slow for a
minute or two."
They moved silently through the garden. George leaned forward and down
to the dog's face.
"Nice dog, Atal. You go slow till I tell you different."
In the street, Dee was drawing away, and Atal broke into a run.
George clung desperately. But it was unnecessary. The dog's strides were
even and long; its padded paws made no sound as they hit the ground; its
legs, all its muscles, seemed to give to the shock and absorb it.
They were running faster now; the dog's body seemed to settle closer to
the ground. The wind whistled by George's ears, but he felt curiously
secure. There was no question of the dog stumbling, falling; and its
gait, now at a steady run, was far easier to ride than any horse he had
ever mounted.
Dee was still ahead; the ends of the ribbon band about her head
fluttered out behind her. The white road was a blur; the houses and
gardens of the city were flying past.
An exhilaration--a feeling of triumph and power--came over George. He
was perfectly at home on the dog's back now. This little Dee was a
daredevil, as Loto had said. Well, that was the sort of girl he liked.
They'll overtake Toroh, kill him with a flash from the thunderbolt
globes and rescue Azeela.
George leaned forward over the dog's neck.
"We might as well catch up with Dee," he said into the silky ear.
"Faster, Atal!"
At once the dog increased its pace, overtaking its mate. Side by side,
they swept through the city.
To George the ride soon became a blur: a white moonlit road passing
under him, palm trees flashing by, occasional houses, thatched shacks;
the wind whistling past his ears, and that lithe, powerful body beneath
him, with its rippling muscles.
Dee rode gracefully and easily, leaning slightly forward into the rush
of air. Often she would draw ahead, but a whispered word from George to
the brute beneath him, and again the dogs were running side by side.
Presently Dee stopped them; the dogs stood panting, with tongues lolling
out.
"What is it?" George demanded. "Where are we?"
The girl's face was drawn with anxiety. "Azeela had been trying to find
out from Toroh why he takes her to Orleen."
"Yes?" he prompted. "And I wondered--"
"Toroh has told her now. Loto's old plane is there. He wants the plane!"
"Oh!" George's heart sank with dismay. "But the plane is in the Orleen
Cavern. How can they get to it? Isn't the cavern guarded?"
"Yes. Wait. Toroh says he can get it. He has a spy there--a man whom we
trust. One of the guards."
"Good grief! Dee, where are they now?"
"A few miles west of here. I can't tell how far--Azeela does not know
just where we are, either."
"Does Toroh know we're after him?"
"No."
George tried to think coherently. "Can't we overtake them, Dee? Before
they reach Orleen?"
"I don't know. Azeela says not. Their dogs are very fast--perhaps faster
than ours."
Suddenly George had an inspiration. The other plane--the one he and
Rogers had come in! It was back in the cavern in Anglese City. He and
Dee could get that, and he could operate it--he'd have to, now. Then
they could fly to Orleen, and perhaps by that method get there before
Toroh and Azeela.
He explained this swiftly to Dee. "We're not so far from Anglese City,
are we?"
"No," she agreed. "It's the best thing to do."
They turned the dogs, starting back over the road they had come.
A new thought occurred to George. "Dee, what does Toroh want with that
plane? Is he going to take Azeela north in it?"
The dogs were already at a run, but he caught her answer.
"No. He will take the plane back into time! He wants to get greater
weapons with which to conquer us!"
* * * * *
Fahn, Loto and Rogers hurried through the city streets. The faint
distant cries of the mob ahead drifted back to them. There were no Arans
to be seen, but the Bas men and women were everywhere, most of them
moving in the direction of the palace.
As Fahn and his two companions advanced, the turmoil ahead grew louder.
The palace stood on a rise of ground in the midst of a lavish garden,
with its swimming pool, its trellised pergolas and its graceful palms.
The building was a two story rectangular, with huge white columns from
the ground to the roof. A broad balcony ran the length of the second
story. The roof was flat, with palms growing upon it.
A crowd of Bas was surging up the hill toward the palace; in the
gardens, the armed mob was already massed, shouting, threatening, but
lacking, as yet, the courage to advance upon the building.
Fahn had turned into a side street at the foot of the hill.
"Where are we going?" Rogers demanded.
"We've got to get into the palace unseen, so we'll go through the
tower," Loto explained. "There's a secret way into it that the Bas don't
know."
The tower, which rose like the skeleton of a lighthouse, stood close
beside the main palace building; a covered bridge connecting the two as
the level of the second floor of the palace.
Swiftly Fahn led the two men to the beach that lay behind the bluff on
which the palace and its tower stood. The moonlit strand was deserted.
They came to a thick clump of palmettos in the heavy sand at the foot of
the bluff--a green tangled clump higher than a man's head. Into this
Fahn plunged unhesitatingly, forcing the fronds aside, pushing his way
in with the others after him. Inside the palmetto thicket was a small
tunnel mouth, leading downward.
It seemed an endless journey through a black underground passageway not
much higher than their heads and so narrow that they could always touch
both its walls with their outstretched arms. The air was heavy and
fetid. They went down a slope, across on a level, then up. Once they
arrived at an iron grating barring the way. But Fahn opened it in some
fashion and it swung on a central, horizontal pivot so that they might
crawl under it.
Ahead of them, up the incline, a tiny blue light shone. They reached it,
found a small circular staircase and climbed upward into the tower.
The whole process had taken perhaps fifteen minutes. The mob was still
in the garden; its shouts and mutterings sounded loud and ominous as the
little party ascended the interior of the tower and hastily crossed the
covered bridge.
Fahn was still leading the way. They pushed aside a curtained doorway
and found themselves in a broad, second-floor corridor of the palace,
dimly lighted. A white-bearded old man was crossing it hastily,
disappearing into a room at its further end.
Another room was near at hand, with a latticed grating in its doorway
that now stood open. A soft, blue-white light flooded out through it to
the hall. The castle's interior was evidently in confusion; cries
sounded, mingled with the threatening shouts of the mob outside.
A girl, shaking with fright, stood in the nearer doorway, the light from
behind glowing through her soft draperies. Other girls crowded forward
from the room--a dozen frightened young girls, no more than matured.
They saw Fahn, and ran to him for protection.
"The king's wives," Loto explained to his father.
Fahn's face softened, and as the girls huddled round him, he tried to
comfort them.
"The guilt within them," muttered Rogers. "They think the Bas are coming
to kill them--_only them_."
Fahn caught the words and his eyes flashed. "There is no guilt here, my
friend. They are women born to such as this."
With the girls in a clinging group around him, the scientist proceeded
down the hallway, followed by Loto and his father.
The room at the end of the hall--it seemed a sort of audience room--was
in confusion; most of the occupants of the palace were gathered there.
The king was pacing up and down near the entrance, his frightened
councilors and advisors around him.
On a low divan sat the queen, a woman of forty, regal in a paneled robe,
with her hair dressed high on her head. At her knees two children were
huddled--the little prince and princess of the Arans. The queen was
bending down over them as the strangers entered. When she saw Fahn with
the girl-wives of her king, she frowned, stood up, and with an imperious
gesture ordered the girls from the room. But Fahn, with a stern command,
bade them stay. The queen seemed amazed at the scientist's defiance; the
king looked undecided, but he did not interfere.
With Fahn's arrival, the room quieted; its occupants gained confidence.
The king seemed utterly relieved. He spoke a few placating words to the
queen, but she had withdrawn haughtily to a corner, her eyes flashing at
the frightened girls who were huddled across the room.
The mob outside was shouting, surging about, but still lacking the
courage for a concerted attack. Fahn went to a window, with Rogers and
Loto after him. The moonlight outside showed the crowd plainly. The Bas
were waving their weapons.
"Look!" Loto exclaimed.
A score or more of men were gathering in a group near the center of the
garden. A man mounted the rim of a fountain, inciting the group with his
shouts. His words had effect. The little knot of men waved their
cane-knives and came surging toward the palace entrance. The crowd made
way for them, following behind with shouts of triumph. Missiles were
thrown upward at the palace windows; one or two at first, then a
hailstorm.
Fahn quietly stepped out on a balcony that ran along the entire front of
the building. Loto and his father followed. The moonlight fell full upon
them, and the crowd recognized the Scientists' leader.
A great shout went up--a cry of defiance mingled with fear. The men
rushing at the building wavered and stopped; the crowd near at hand
began pressing backward.
Slowly, Fahn advanced to the waist-high parapet; with his hands upon it
he stood like an orator facing a friendly throng and calmly waited for
silence. A stone whistled past his head, struck the building and
clattered to the stone floor of the balcony, but he did not heed it.
His calmness, the confident power of his demeanor, quieted the mob. In a
little open space on the terrace, a leader of the Bas sprang into
prominence--a giant man who shouted a brief sentence.
"Mogruud," whispered Loto. "He tells them to listen to what Fahn has to
say."
Silence came at last, and then Fahn spoke, quietly, earnestly. He seemed
to be winning them over, when from the palace behind the king suddenly
appeared on the balcony. At the sight of him an angry shout rolled up
from the crowd. A long, thin knife, with a tail of feathers on it, flew
up from below and stuck, quivering, in the window casement beside the
king's head. The king retreated.
Fahn continued speaking, but now the mob would not listen to him. A
woman's shrill laugh of derision floated upward.
At once Fahn's tone changed. He rasped out a stern command, but a
scattering hail of stones was his answer. Then, without warning, his
hand went to his robe. He flung a little ball into the air. It burst
fifty feet from his hand with a shrill whistling scream, and a shower of
sparks scattered downward over the garden. They were harmless, but they
sent a mild electric shock through every individual member of the mob.
The Bas were frightened into silence.
"He does not want to kill even one of them," Loto whispered. "Never
before have the Bas been in open demonstration. It might spread to other
cities--_anything might happen_."
Fahn was now whispering into a tiny mouthpiece, talking to his guards at
the cavern a mile or so away. From the cavern-mountain across the city,
a blue-white shaft of light sprang into the sky. The Bas saw it and
stared. And then suddenly the air seemed to be bursting with
voices--four words, repeated by the audible radio that the cavern was
sending out.
"_Death to disloyal Bas! Death to disloyal Bas!_"
A million aerial voices were proclaiming it everywhere. And then the
words changed.
"_We must win against Toroh! The Bas must help us win against Toroh!_"
The threat and its so swiftly following appeal were irresistible.
Mogruud shouted an enthusiastic answer to Fahn, and the crowd applauded.
The voices in the air were presently stilled; the light over the cavern
disappeared. And, still with his hands quietly on the parapet, Fahn
again addressed the people below him.
"Mogruud says the laws should be changed," Loto whispered swiftly to his
father. "The Bas women should have their children without exile."
Fahn seemed to make a sudden decision. He spoke again into his
mouthpiece. Again the light sprang over the cavern. From the air came
the words:
"_Bas women will not be exiled! Bas children will be free!_"
Surprised, awed, then frantic with joy, the crowd in the palace gardens
took up the cry, and all over the island the radio voices were
proclaiming it:
"_Bas children will be free! The Scientists promise Bas children will be
free!_"
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Still side by side, George and Dee rode back toward Anglese City. It was
further than George had thought; then he realized that the girl had
turned into a different road. He shouted a question at her.
"A shorter way to the cavern," she explained.
The wind whistling past them made conversation difficult. George
understood that they were skirting the city to where the cavern stood on
the other side. They were still in the open country; a road of white
sand, palm lined, with a forest jungle all around, and only an
occasional house.
George's mind was in a turmoil. Toroh taking the other plane into time!
Memory came to him of all those greater civilizations he and Rogers had
seen though the centuries they had passed. Toroh was going back to those
civilizations to secure weapons! The thought turned George cold all
over. With the weapons from former, greater ages, Toroh and his army of
Noths would be invincible.
Words in the wind sweeping by startled George into sudden alertness.
"_Death to disloyal Bas!_"
It seemed as though some tiny voice had whispered it to him.
Dee had checked both the dogs abruptly.
"What's that?" George demanded.
It came again:
"_Death to disloyal Bas! Death to disloyal Bas!_"
The air was whispering it, then calling it; a myriad voices echoed it
everywhere.
"Look there!" cried Dee.
Ahead of them, a mile or so away, a blue light was standing up into the
sky. There was a house near at hand, a Bas shack. From it a woman and
two naked children came running out into the moonlight, panic-stricken
at the dread words with which the air resounded.
And then the words changed:
"_Bas women will not be exiled! Bas children will be free!_"
The woman in front of the shack clutched her children, listening,
rejoicing--almost unbelieving.
Dee had started the dogs forward again. Swiftly she explained to George
what she thought it might mean--a radio proclamation from Fahn. In a few
moments the light over the cavern had vanished; the voices in the air
died away.
George's mind reverted to their own situation; the incident had given
him an idea.
"Dee, where are Azeela and Toroh now?"
She thought an instant; momentarily the mental bond with her sister had
been broken.
"Very near Orleen, she thinks. They have heard the voices. Toroh is very
angry. He had hoped much that the Bas would rebel. It would have helped
him."
"Near Orleen!" George echoed. "Can't we get to the Anglese Cavern
first?"
"I think so." She had started Rotan into a run, but George called her to
stop. Even at the risk of losing more precious time, he questioned her.
"Dee, listen. Are the caverns of Orleen and Anglese City connected by
radio?"
"Yes," she said.
"Then listen. We'll get to Anglese City first and tell them to inform
the guards at Orleen. When Toroh and Azeela arrive they can seize
them--if we warn them ahead."
She nodded with instant comprehension.
"All radio isn't broadcast audibly, is it?" he added.
"No," she said. The dogs were running faster. She called back over her
shoulder. "We'll do that. I'll tell Azeela."
They swept forward, the dogs settling low to the ground as they ran.
A great weight seemed to have lifted from George. It would be simple
enough, after all--merely notify the Orleen Cavern by radio, and Toroh
would be seized when he presented himself with Azeela.
George contemplated the outcome. With Toroh in their hands, the Noth
attack would collapse. There would be no war.
It was a race then; the only thing that could go wrong would be if Toroh
got to the other cavern first. Rotan and Dee were ahead; the girl's
slight figure clinging to the dog showed in the moonlight. George
whispered to Atal, thumped the dog's flank with his hand.
As they caught up with Dee, he shouted, "Where's Azeela now? Will we
make it?"
"Yes," she answered. "I think so."
The mountain that housed the cavern loomed ahead through the palms;
houses lay to the right, the outskirts of Anglese City. Half a mile more
and they would be there.
Atal's upflung head brought George out of another reverie. The dog,
still running at full speed, was sniffing the air. George heard Rotan
growl, and Dee's sharp command for silence.
Another command from the girl, and both dogs stopped; Atal slid on his
haunches, checking himself so abruptly that George was flung to the
sand.
He was unhurt. He picked himself up to find Dee beside him.
"Someone is coming," she said sharply. "Someone the dogs know is not a
friend."
She spoke to the dog, and pulled George to the side of the road where a
cluster of banana trees cast an inky shadow. Together they stood there
in silence. Atal and Rotan had disappeared. The road was a white ribbon
in the moonlight. George listened, but could hear nothing. He tried to
question Dee, but she silenced him.
Presently there came the thud of running feet; from the direction of
Anglese City two running dogs with riders swept into view. The riders
were men, black cloaked and wearing masks. Arans, from the festival,
George thought.
They would have passed without seeing the lurking figures under the
banana trees had not Atal and Rotan, in spite of Dee's command, suddenly
charged them from the shadows across the road.
The two men, shouting in anger and alarm, tumbled from their mounts. The
four dogs tangled in a snarling, biting mass.
Still George and Dee were unseen in the shadows. One of the men in the
road had lost his cloak and mask; the moonlight showed his face.
"One of Toroh's brothers," Dee breathed into George's ear. In the
dimness he could see she was raising the small, crescent-shaped weapon.
Some noise that she or George made must have alarmed the men, who were
no more than ten feet away. They looked sharply across the road, and
then, evidently seeing nothing, they turned back to where the dogs were
still fighting with a deadly fury.
Sparks leaped suddenly from Dee's outstretched hand. The men turned. One
of them cried out in terror, but they both stood stiff and motionless.
"We've got 'em!" George shouted. "Good work, Dee!"
He would have leaped forward, but her free hand gripped him.
"_Quick! The globe!_"
One of the men, supposedly stricken beyond the power to move, was, by
some superhuman effort of will, slowly raising his hand; his fingers
clutched a tiny black globe. It came up very slowly, as his almost
paralyzed muscles struggled with its weight.
But George recovered his wits. He snatched his own globe from his
pocket, pointed it, pulled the trigger.
The night was split by a flash, a tiny, sizzling snap of thunder; the
globe recoiled in George's hand. Across the road the bodies of the two
men lay motionless on the sand.
Dee was leaning against a banana trunk panting. Her face had gone white,
but she smiled as George turned to her.
"They almost got us," she said.
George himself was trembling, but he would not let her see it.
"Almost, Dee. Next time I'll be ready. I didn't realize..."
Among the trees across the road the dogs were still fighting. One of the
Noth dogs lay motionless, torn and bleeding. Atal and Rotan together
were attacking the other--the three rolling and tumbling as they bit and
tore at each other, their huge bodies trampling down the banana trees as
they fought.
"Dee, could I use the thunderbolt on them?"
She shook her head. "Wait."
It lasted only a moment more; the second Noth dog was down, with Atal's
fangs buried in its throat.
The two dogs came leaping back to their mistress, their bodies torn, and
matted with dirt and blood.
Dee patted them affectionately as they stood licking their wounds. "But
you should have minded me," she said.
George had taken one look at the two charred figures lying in the road;
he drew the girl away.
"Come on. I wouldn't look over there. We must hurry, Dee."
They mounted the dogs and started forward, more slowly this time, for
the animals carried them with difficulty.
Again George remembered. Toroh would be at the Orleen Cavern by this
time. They had lost! This delay had been the one unexpected thing that
could defeat them.
"Dee--"
But the girl had anticipated him.
"They are in the plane." She half whispered the words. "Azeela has been
trying to tell me for a long time. Toroh had a spy at the cavern
entrance, a man whom we trust as a Scientist. He let them in--Azeela had
no chance to make an outcry. They are in the plane now. Azeela telling
Toroh she cannot operate it. Wait! Now he's trying the proton switch
himself."
A silence.
"Dee! What is it?" George pleaded.
She shook her head. "Nothing comes. Nothing!"
The connection was broken! Azeela was carried back into time. Had
something stopped her message? Would her thought-bond with her sister
hold across the centuries that now separated them?
George could only ask himself these questions with a sinking heart. If
the bond would not hold, then Azeela was lost to them forever. Lost to
Loto, who loved her. And Toroh would get his weapons and win the
war--_inevitably_.
"Nothing yet, Dee?"
"No."
They rode slowly onward. At last Dee gave a cry of joy.
"It comes again! She is all right, George! _All right!_" Her voice rose
in triumph and thankfulness.
George thumped Atal to urge the dog forward. "Then we must hurry, Dee.
They're going back into time?"
"Yes. Azeela is looking at the dials. Twenty-five years back now. She
tells us to hurry. She will watch the dials and let me know where they
are. Toroh does not suspect anything. He is gloating. He thinks he has
won everything."
At last they were ascending the slope to the mouth of the cavern. The
yawning hole showed black in the face of the cliff. On the small
platform above the mouth, a single light disclosed the figures of three
guards sitting there.
In the moonlight the guards saw them coming. A bolt of lightning flashed
downward across the black hole; a peal of thunder rolled out.
They stopped, and Dee called to the guards. One of them descended from
the platform, down a narrow flight of steps cut in the cliff face. He
came forward in the moonlight, a black robed figure.
Dee spoke with him, and, recognizing a daughter of Fahn, he saluted
respectfully. There followed a brief colloquy, then the guard stood
aside.
A moment later they were in the cavern. The huge tunnel was dark and
dank, but blue-white lights glimmered ahead in the darkness. The place
was silent, seemingly deserted.
Down the length of the main tunnel they hurried. The plane stood there
in the open space, in the glare of blue-white light. They stood before
it.
"Dee, shall we send for your father?"
She hesitated.
"Where is he?" George persisted. "Did you ask the guard?"
"Yes. He and Loto and Loto's father are at the palace. There has been
rebellion and murder--the murder of Helene, Mme. Voluptua."
She recounted succinctly the events of the night in Anglese City as the
guard had told them to her.
George whistled. "They've got their hands full. Dee, are you still in
communication with Azeela?"
"Yes. They are beyond fifty years."
"Going how fast?"
"Azeela says as fast as they can--the twentieth intensity."
George made his decision.
"Dee, we mustn't wait, mustn't stop for anything. You're willing to go?"
"Yes," she declared soberly.
She reached toward the platform. George locked his hands, and she put
her small foot into them. He lifted her--she seemed no heavier than a
child--and she swung herself up gracefully and easily to the platform.
George followed and closed the cabin door after them. "Did you tell the
guard what we were going to do?"
"Yes," she said. "I told him to tell father later tonight when things
were more quiet at the palace."
"Good girl. Dee, have you ever been back into time?"
"No. Azeela has. Just a little way--with Loto. He taught her to operate
the plane."
"How fast are they going, Dee? The twentieth intensity?"
"Yes."
George's hand was on the proton switch. He took a last look around.
"Sit down, Dee. Hold the arms of your chair. Don't be frightened."
The cabin was dark; through its windows the blue-white glare outside
showed the jagged brown walls of the cavern. The twentieth intensity!
_Toroh was going as fast as he possibly could!_
George pulled the switch. There was a soundless clap in his head; a
plunge, headlong into some bottomless abyss, falling for hours--an
eternity.
* * * * *
Fahn's proclamation to the Bas had far-reaching effects. All over the
island that night and the next day there was rejoicing. The radio
proclaimed a national holiday, which the Bas gave over to festivities.
The murder of Mme. Voluptua was forgotten; the rebellion in Anglese City
was a thing of the past. The work of Toroh's spies was completely
undone; everywhere they presented themselves they were seized by the Bas
and delivered to the authorities, until by mid-morning none dared show
himself. They remained in hiding in the mountains, and the following
night fled the island.
Fahn's object had been attained. Everywhere, enthusiasm for the war soon
mounted to a patriotic frenzy.
But it was not all smooth sailing for Fahn. Within an hour after the
first radio proclamation--just before dawn that day--the king called the
Scientist to his audience room and demanded that it be retracted. For
the first time within generations, a Scientist defied his king.
Fahn gravely refused. The king, with his councilors--brave now since the
mob before the palace had dispersed--clustered around him, vigorously
tried to overawe the Scientist. But Fahn was obdurate; respectful to the
majesty of royalty--but obdurate nevertheless.
The king was powerless, and he knew it. He raged, threatened, but to no
avail.
That afternoon the king's council met. The Scientists were declared
outlaws; a call was issued for the Aran police, who were scattered
throughout the island, to come at once to the Anglese City to defend
their sovereign.
It was a monarch struggling against all reason to defend what he
considered his birthright. Royalty outraged!
But the Aran police did not come. Worse than that, those near at hand in
Anglese City prudently vanished.
That same afternoon the Scientists met in Anglese City. Fahn's action
was upheld, and from other cities came similar decisions. The government
was taken over by the Scientists for the period of the war. Laws
ratifying the new status of the Bas women and children were hurriedly
passed, and made permanent.
All that day the radio audibly proclaimed events as they transpired. The
Arans were not to be molested; their relations with the Bas were to
proceed as always, and the royal family was to be treated with the
outward respect to which its birth and position entitled it.
Three days passed--days that for those in Anglese City were full of
activity and anxiety. The Arans kept sullenly to themselves; the king
and his councilors shut themselves in the palace; the Bas went about
their accustomed tasks feverishly, abstractedly, waiting for the call to
war.
The Scientists, trusting nothing to chance, sought out all the Aran
police and disarmed them. All weapons were kept in the caverns, where
the manufacturing and assembling went steadily forward.
Fahn, Loto, and Rogers, during these three days, stayed at Fahn's home.
Nothing had been heard from George and the two girls. They were days
full of anxiety--almost despair--for the three men. The guards at the
two caverns reported what had happened. Fahn cursed his inefficiency in
allowing a Toroh spy to remain unsuspected in the League. The man who
had given Toroh the plane was located and put to death, but that helped
matters little.
In the brief interims of inactivity, the three men discussed what George
and Dee might be doing--what the outcome would be. The discussions were
futile; there was nothing to do but wait.
The character of the two Frazia planes, the identity of the visitors,
had never been made public. Only Fahn, his two companions and a few of
the Scientist leaders were aware of the momentous outcome for which they
were so helplessly waiting.
On the afternoon of the third day, Fahn took Loto and his father through
the cavern. Loto was pale and tight-lipped, but he seldom mentioned
Azeela, and never once had he given vent to his feelings. Rogers was
curious to see the cavern; older, more philosophical than Loto, he could
better withstand his anxiety over George and the girls. Yet he, too, was
more worried than he would have cared to admit, even to himself. The
war--the fate of the Anglese--was one thing; but that plane was all that
could take him back to Lylda, his wife. He could probably never
manufacture another plane in this time world; the materials were not
available. He realized now how wrong he had been not to bring Lylda with
him.
It was late afternoon when they started. Work in the cavern now
proceeded day and night.
To Rogers the place was one of romantic mystery, with a sinister air to
it that he could not shake off.
The darkness of the cavern walls, the shadows, the flickering blue
lights, and the yawning holes with which the interior of the mountain
seemed honeycombed, awed and perturbed him.
Far ahead, down a sharp slope, two blue lights shone. To the left a
passageway glowed dull red.
Fahn turned toward it. They went into the passageway, and from it
emerged upon a narrow ledge with a metal railing. Before them spread a
huge pit, a great pool of lava a thousand feet down--lava that boiled
sluggishly, with tiny flames of burning gases licking upward from its
surface. To one side, overhead, a rift through the mountain showed a
patch of starlit sky.
Visitors to an inferno, they stood clinging to the iron rail. The lurid
red light cast monstrous shadows of their figures upward to the rocky
ceiling. The sulphurous air was intolerably hot; it choked their
breathing. After a moment they all stumbled back into the passageway,
coughing, breathing deep of the purer air.
"Fires of the earth so close!" murmured Rogers.
Fahn was leading them forward again. "Yes, almost every mountain on the
island is like that. The fires are even closer to the surface at Orleen;
we use them in the cavern there."
"And here is a room of medicine and surgery," he added. He had turned
unexpectedly into a side cave, a room furnished and draped, and dimly
lighted by braziers hanging from its low roof. Rows of bottles, cases of
instruments, a long, low table, littered with a variety of strange
objects; the room held a confusion of things, most of which were
incomprehensible.
Something made Rogers shudder. "What is that?" he demanded.
"To create human life," said Fahn. "For thousands of years, science has
tried to do that. We can make a man's body--but his soul and mind still
elude us."
Rogers was staring at a metal framework, where the organs of a man were
hanging, joined together and with a network of blood vessels around
them; the fundamental, simplified mechanism of man, without the body.
And there was movement to the organs; the heart was beating, the lungs
breathing.
It was gruesome; it made Rogers' gorge rise.
"They will function for a little time," Fahn explained. "But our
surgeons have done better than that. They have made the living body--all
but the mind and the soul."
A small case was standing on a pedestal, illuminated by a dim blue light
above it. A lump of living human flesh lay within, roughly fashioned
into human form, with arms and legs that kicked.
Rogers backed away.
It seemed like a dream, this trip through the Scientists' cavern. From
one room to another they wandered. Most of the caves were unoccupied;
occasionally a lone worker or a group would stop their tasks
momentarily to meet their leader and his visitors.
From far away recesses, where the main work was going on, the hum of
dynamos sounded.
"We will not go into the workrooms tonight," Fahn said. "I'll show them
to you later."
They entered another inner cave, which was high-arched and unusually
large. It held relics of bygone ages. Broken mechanisms, that
inhabitants of other planets might have left on earth, had been dug
up and stored here as in a museum. They meant nothing to Rogers, nor
did Fahn offer to explain them. But this room more than any other in
the cavern seemed to carry with it the power of science, the greater
science that to Fahn's time world was in the prehistoric past. It
showed Fahn and his contemporaries in their true light; they were
archaeologists--imitators, reconstructors, not real creators.
At last they reached a circular room equipped with the apparatus for
taking voices and images from the air. Its side walls were paneled with
huge crystals that mirrored distant scenes; and it was filled with
millions of tiny voices.
Fahn stood before one of the crystals: his hand was on a lever; the
fingers of his other hand rested on a tiny row of buttons. Rogers
noticed that there were scores of similar mechanisms dispersed about the
room.
"Let us look and listen, a mile away to the west," Fahn said.
The crystal before them was some six feet square. It was gray and
cloudy. Fahn pressed one of the small black buttons, and moved the lever
over a notch; the crystal flooded with color. It was like looking
through a huge window.
"The viewpoint of our station a mile north of here," Fahn pointed out.
"A thirty foot tower," Loto explained. "The lens on it swings in a
circle. We are looking westward now toward Orleen."
The scene in the crystal showed the red western sky; a white road in the
foreground, disappearing seemingly at Rogers' feet; the green,
palm-dotted island, with twilight shadows creeping upon it, and to the
left, the island mountain range, its peaks rising in serrated ranks,
with giant, snow-clad summits.
"It was near here that day before yesterday they found the charred
bodies of Toroh's brother and his Noth companion," Loto added. "A Bas
woman--see that shack there by the road--she saw a girl and a man
passing the night before. It may have been George and Dee."
The shack at the roadside showed plainly. A Bas woman was sitting at its
doorway, crooning to her infant. Her voice sounded almost as clearly as
though the watchers had been sitting on the small tower where the lens
and radio mechanism were perched.
"We will turn," Fahn said.
A panorama unfolding, the scene moved slowly sidewise: the sea to the
north, with the mountain range beyond it, dim in the gathering darkness;
east, back toward Anglese City, where the cavern-mountain itself showed
behind the palms; to the south past a distant vista of city houses; and
still swinging, it came back to the road and the house and stopped,
again facing the west.
"Another station," Fahn added.
The crystal-face went dark, and then relighted. It was a viewpoint of a
hundred feet in the air this time. Again it swung the points of the
compass.
For half an hour Fahn continued his demonstration. There might have been
a hundred or more towers scattered over the island, and the scene from
any one of them sprang at Fahn's will into the crystal window.
"What are the other crystal mirrors for?" Rogers asked Loto.
"The island can be searched by several operators simultaneously. Any
viewpoint may be thrown into any crystal, and there are receivers for
your ears, so that the sounds you hear will not confuse others in the
room."
The island was growing dark. The crystal showed a viewpoint from the
channel coast halfway to Orleen. It must have been from a very high
tower; the sea stretched several hundred feet beneath.
"Those mountains across the water," Rogers remarked, "can't be over
twenty or thirty miles from our shores. Is that where Toroh's army will
gather?"
"From behind them," said Loto. "To the east, nearer the Atlantic Coast,
we think. We--"
Fahn had given a slight cry. The room was dark, but the reflected light
from the crystal showed the Scientist pointing into the mirrored scene.
"Loto, what is that?"
Above the mountains across the channel, the sky was rose-colored with
the fading daylight. A tiny gray shape showed there, silhouetted against
the clouds. It was moving. They watched it, breathlessly.
"A Frazia plane!" Rogers murmured.
It circled like a giant bird. A patch of lighter sky behind showed it
more plainly after a moment. It _was_ a Frazia plane! It was closer than
they had thought, but it seemed to be flying north, away from them.
"Which one is it?" Loto whispered. "Father, which one is it?"
But that they could not tell. George, or Toroh? One of them had
returned. The plane was flying lower, circling again. The dimness
absorbed it; then it reappeared. It seemed now to be flying crazily.
"_Out of control!_" Loto whispered in horror. "_It's falling!_"
The plane turned over, fluttered down, was swallowed by the shadows of
the distant mountains.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The interior of the plane was glowing. The familiar humming sounded.
George and Dee had started back into time.
"Dee! Dee! You all right?"
Her wan smile reassured him. "Where are we?"
"Going back into time," he said cheerfully. The dials were beside him.
"Nearly forty years from where we started already. You'll feel all right
soon."
"I am all right," she persisted. "I mean, George, are we still in the
cavern?"
The question brought an idea to George that made his heart race. They
_were_ still in the cavern, at a time forty years previous. What was the
cavern like then? Suppose its entrance was closed? How could they get
out?
Through the windows nothing could be seen but blackness. George
hesitated.
"Dee, can your thoughts still reach Azeela?"
"Yes," she said. "She was frightened for me. She knows now we are coming
after her. She and Toroh are past one hundred years."
"Still going?"
"Yes."
"Where are they in space?"
"She says in the air, over the Orleen Cavern. She thought it best to
show Toroh how to fly the plane; she was afraid to remain underground."
"So am I," said George. "We'd better get out."
There were headlights on the plane; their glare showed the tunnel.
George started up the Frazia motors, slowly; they rolled forward,
faster as they left the tunnel-mouth and took to the air.
The scene was that familiar grayness, new to Dee. Beneath them lay the
island with the blurred, gray city to one side.
"Over Orleen," George mused. "We must get there quickly. Further back in
time the city will not be there--we might get lost in space."
At an altitude of perhaps a thousand feet they flew swiftly westward.
Orleen was there when they reached its space; the dials were beyond two
hundred years.
"Azeela is here," Dee announced. "She says the city is dwindling."
"What do her dials say? Will Toroh let her look at them?"
"Yes. She is very careful. He suspects nothing. She says the dials are
nearly two hundred and thirty years."
"We're catching up with them," George exclaimed triumphantly. "We've got
the faster plane. Where are they exactly? In space I mean."
A brief pause.
"Azeela says almost directly over the peak near the east edge of the
city--the cavern peak."
There were twin peaks, not over six hundred feet apart. The cavern peak
was the northern one; through the floor window, George could see the
summit of the other, directly beneath his plane.
"How high is Toroh? They're using the 'copters?"
"Yes."
"How high up?"
"She says about five hundred feet."
It was the altitude at which George and Dee were hovering. George gazed
through the side window. The other peak showed plainly. Above it was the
exact space Toroh and Azeela were occupying. Their plane was invisible,
of course--twenty-five years into the past.
"They've passed three hundred years, George," the girl's voice informed
him. "Three hundred years just now."
"Two hundred and ninety," he read from their own dials. "Only ten years
away! We'll overtake them shortly now."
In the stress through which they had passed, and their excitement,
neither of them had considered what they would do when they overtook
Toroh. Indeed, it was Azeela who brought it to their minds with her
anxious questions to Dee.
They stared at each other in dismay.
"How about my thunderbolt glove?" George suggested.
"We can't use it," she reminded him. "If we destroy the other plane,
Azeela would be killed."
It was obvious. They could not attack the other plane under any
circumstances. But Toroh was going to stop for weapons. They would have
to stay near him, both in space and time, and when he stopped, and
perhaps left the plane, they would rush up and rescue Azeela.
It was all either of them could plan.
"Keep as near them as we can," George decided. "That's the idea. And
watch our chance. Tell Azeela to keep you posted on everything."
They slowed their time-flight a trifle; it would have been foolish to
let Toroh see them--merely put him on his guard. At a distance of about
ten years they followed.
At eight hundred years before the time they had left, the city of Orleen
had disappeared. The island looked almost the same; the peaks were still
there. But now among the palms there were only a few rude shacks--the
earliest Bas settlers.
The time-velocity of both planes was steadily increasing. Azeela's
messages told them that the other plane was still hovering motionless.
There was nothing to do. They waited, anxiously at first, and then,
after an interval, fell into earnest conversation.
"Suppose we can't rescue Azeela," George suggested once. "Toroh will use
her as a hostage against your father, won't he? Offer her life, perhaps,
if your father will help him in the war?"
She nodded soberly.
"That's why he abducted her before, Loto said. Did he make the offer
then?"
"No. But he was going to."
"Why didn't you go after her?" he suggested. "Didn't she send back
messages to you, Dee?"
"Yes. But he took her north into the snow. She did not know where she
was. Father sent out an expedition, but they couldn't find her. The
Noths attacked them and they came back. They were going to start out
again when Loto returned her to us."
"Oh," said George. He thought a moment. "I wonder what your father would
have done--what he would do now if Toroh holds Azeela and offers her
life against the war. Would your father let Toroh kill her?"
She hesitated. "I think he would," she said at last. "It would be a
nation against one life. He would sacrifice himself, I know. And I think
he would even sacrifice Azeela."
George met her earnest dark eyes, so sparkling, usually, but now so
sombre.
"Would you, Dee?"
"No," she said impulsively.
"Neither would I," he declared. "I wouldn't let harm come to Azeela for
all the Anglese,--or harm to--to you, either."
She did not answer. Presently he said:
"I was thinking about that Aran Festival, Dee. You know you oughtn't to
go to affairs like that. _Do_ you know it?"
Her gaze met his again, questioningly. "It is part of life," she said.
"My father thinks Azeela and I should know what life is. In your
time-world was it wrong?"
George felt himself flushing. "Wrong? What, the festival?"
"No. I mean my going there--a girl of the Scientists, who is not like
the Aran women?"
"Yes," George said stoutly. "_I_ didn't want you to be there." His hand
impulsively touched hers. "I didn't like it, Dee. You're too nice a
girl. And I don't think Loto liked Azeela being there, either."
Instead of answering, she gave a sudden cry.
"What is it?" George demanded in alarm.
She had no opportunity to reply. Through the side window the other
plane showed less than a thousand feet away; a shimmering ghost that was
gone as soon as they had seen it!
George leaped to the proton switch, but Dee checked him.
"Wait! Wait till Azeela tells me what happened."
In the absorption of their conversation, Azeela's messages had been
ignored. Toroh had slackened his time-flight; he was preparing to land.
It was an unfortunate occurrence, for Toroh had seen the other plane. He
still did not guess that Azeela herself was guiding the pursuit.
Again, without warning, the other plane appeared. This time it was
flying, coming directly toward them. George held his breath. Toroh's
plane was so close he had no opportunity even to move from his seat. It
was running level with them in time; _it was charging them! Had Toroh
gone mad? He would kill them all!_
It was no more than a second or two. Through the window George caught a
brief glimpse of the shimmering thing rushing at them. Then it swerved
upward.
"_He's going to fire a thunderbolt!_" Dee gasped.
George was aware of a flash; but he had not seen it, only imagined it.
The attacking plane swept overhead and vanished-dissolved into
nothingness!
Toroh had fired a thunderbolt. The rush of electrons traveling at the
speed of light from Toroh's plane to George's had been too slow. The
mark was gone into a different time before the thunderbolt could reach
it!
The incident left George and Dee shuddering; but confident now that, so
long as they kept moving through time, Toroh could not harm them.
George's dials now registered the passage of some sixty-eight hundred
years. He was amazed. Then he realized how long he and his companion had
been talking, and the time-velocity at the twentieth intensity had been
accelerating tremendously. He had forgotten to look beneath him; he did
so now, and the island was not there. The channel was gone; the
mountain range had disappeared. The cataclysm that had formed the island
had been passed.
Azeela's messages told that her plane was now nearly a hundred years
nearer the Anglese time-world. Toroh, finding his attack ineffective,
had given it up. He had started a horizontal flight; he was looking for
a city in which he could land.
George and Dee sat helpless, for Azeela could not describe which way she
was flying.
"Lost!" George exclaimed. "We've lost them! Of course, she can't tell us
which way they're going when there's nothing down there but gray
forests--and blurred gray sky overhead."
It seemed probable that they would never see Toroh's plane again.
Already it was many miles away from them in space, though in what
direction they could not guess.
The two planes swept back through time, invisible to each other, yet no
more than a few hundred years apart. The rescue of Azeela--for the
present at least--was certainly impossible. Toroh was looking for a
civilization, some gigantic city where he might secure weapons. George
decided he must do the same. He discussed it earnestly with Dee, and
again, temporarily, Azeela's thought messages were ignored.
At fifteen thousand years--more than halfway back to the time-world of
the New York City of George's birth--structures began rising out of the
forests. By retrograded changes made visible, at first they seemed
moldering ruins; then, broken, neglected areas of deserted cities; then
the inhabited cities themselves.
At eighteen thousand years George and Dee were poised no more than a few
miles from where Orleen stood so many centuries later. A huge river with
a delta emptied into the open gulf; a broad expanse of lake was near by.
And on both sides of the river and around the lake a gigantic city rose
in terraced buildings of masonry and steel. Dee stared in awe at its
towers, bridges, aerial streets with the monorail structures stretching
above.
"We might land here," George suggested. "Shall we, Dee? You'd think
they'd have _something_ to help your father in the Anglese war."
She nodded, and he prepared to land on an open space a few miles north
of the city outskirts. They came to the ground at the third intensity of
proton current. Everything was gray, soundless.
"All ready, Dee?"
"Yes."
He flung over the switch. When the shock had passed, George stood up;
Dee was already on her feet beside him. It was night outside; lights
were flashing. They rushed to the window. The sky was lurid with
bursting colored bombs; an inferno of noise sounded, an intermittent
pounding that seemed to shake the earth.
From-almost directly overhead a red rocket exploded. Its light
persisted, illuminating the scene for miles around with a vivid red
glare. The giant city buildings were visible. As George stared, a great
flame seemed to leap from the sky. One of the buildings fell.
Nearer at hand a cloud of swarming mechanisms burst out of the air,
swooping down, circling. Beams of light from them and from the city
crossed like swords in the sky. The earth under the plane was rocking.
Beside it, a green flash struck and sent rocks, boulders, and dirt
flying up like a waterspout.
"George! _George!_"
Dee's terrified cry in his ear was almost drowned by the scream of
dynamos; the whistling, bursting, and pounding.
George's trembling fingers found the proton switch; he pulled it. The
inferno of the night melted, slipped away into a gray, soundless blur.
War! They had fallen into the midst of a battle--that giant Earth city
defending itself, perhaps against invaders from another planet.
"We won't try that again," George murmured.
"Azeela," said the girl suddenly. "She tells me that Toroh has secured
weapons! He is returning to our time-world!"
Toroh had landed at another city, in another time, but still in that
same greater civilization. He had chosen a night, bound Azeela, left her
in the plane and stolen weapons.
George listened blankly. "What sort of weapons?"
"Azeela does not know. One large piece of apparatus. He has it in the
plane covered by a black bag. He will not let her touch it. And there
are other things--a pile of disks or something. White--like steel. She
can't see them well--he has covered them also. He is filled with
triumph. His plane is speeding toward Anglese City."
"In space or time?"
"In time. They are hovering in space. Azeela does not know where they
are. Toroh says he will wait, and when the time-world of the island is
reached they will recognize the land. Then Toroh will take Azeela to the
Noths. He says if our father does not yield, he will _kill her_. And
then he and the Noths will conquer the Anglese."
George had lost. But still there seemed nothing that they could do but
try and keep as close to the other plane in time as they could.
Toroh's plane was sweeping forward. He had released Azeela, commanding
her to instruct him in more detail in the handling of the Frazia motors.
Azeela's dials now read some fifty-five hundred years behind the Anglese
time-world. George's read about six thousand.
They came to the cataclysm that formed the island. George had forgotten
it, but he chanced to be gazing down. The gray forests suddenly blurred;
vague chaos passed over the earth, the air, and the sky; then there were
the familiar mountains, the channel, the island! The myriad details of
those hours of upheaval had been compressed, blended into a fraction of
a second. The eye and the mind could not grasp it. The thing was past,
done and away, with only its _effect_ left as evidence that it had
occurred.
George and Dee were above the channel and west of Orleen. No more than a
hundred years now separated the planes.
"What shall we do?" George demanded for the tenth time. And then an
idea came to him. They could not attack Toroh until he reached his
destination. He would be among his own army then, and rescue of Azeela
would be impossible. But if Azeela could separate herself from Toroh
now, he could never find her in time and probably wouldn't try.
George explained it to Dee. Azeela was not bound; could she persuade
Toroh on some pretext to land on the ground--then leap from the plane?
The shock of stopping in time should be no different than when the plane
itself stopped.
Azeela had already thought of it; the idea had been prompted by the fact
that Toroh's plane was running out of fuel. He would have to conserve
it, not use the 'copters, or else he would have none left with which to
get up north.
George was trembling with excitement. "Tell her to suggest that they
land."
Toroh was, at that instant, landing. It was a familiar spot to Azeela;
she described it exactly to Dee, and the younger sister recognized it.
Toroh's plane had entered the second century before Fahn's time-world
when George--some fifty years further back--arrived at the spot in space
Azeela was describing. There was the little rise of ground, with the
channel beyond. The vegetation was different, but the level rock was
there. And Toroh's plane was resting on that level rock.
Dee's voice was shaking so that she could hardly talk. "Will it--kill
her, George?"
He was white faced, tense. "Tell her to read the dials as exactly as she
can."
Azeela read them. George held his watch in his hand; he noted the hour
and minute it gave.
"She has called Toroh's attention to something outside," Dee's voice
translated swiftly. "She opens the cabin door. He is behind her but he
does not suspect."
George kept his eyes on his watch. Two minutes since Azeela gave them
her dial-reading, and he knew the approximate time-velocity of the other
plane.
Three minutes!
"She is on the platform. The blurred rock is only a few feet below her.
Azeela is pretending something is wrong under the plane. Toroh is beside
her--but he does not touch her. He does not suspect she would dare...."
Three minutes and a half.
"She jumps--"
George waited. "Is she all right? Is she all right?"
Silence.
"Can't you get her? Oh, Dee, can't you get her?"
The communication was broken.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
"It fell," Rogers murmured. "Was that Toroh's plane, or George's?"
Loto did not answer; he stared with set face at the crystal mirror,
which was turning purple with the deepening shadows of nightfall. The
mountains into which the plane had fallen were a vague silhouette
against a sky of stars.
"If we could only see over there," Rogers added wistfully. "Is this
tower we're looking from now the nearest to the mountains, Loto?"
It was the nearest. But Fahn was talking swiftly into a small mouthpiece
beside him.
"We may be able to see into the mountains," he said in a moment. "We
must find out which plane it was. Perhaps Toroh fell and was killed."
The anxiety on his face belied the calmness of his tone. His two
daughters were out there; possibly one or both had met death in that
falling plane.
A man entered the cave-room hurriedly, a solitary worker whom Fahn had
summoned from another part of the cavern. A youngish man, he wore dark
glasses, a black robe and gloves.
Fahn questioned him briefly; he brightened, nodded, and hastened away
again.
Loto explained: "He's been working on a new invention, Father. We hoped
to use it in the war, but now we fear the attack may come before it's
ready. There is only one small model constructed--finished today."
The man returned with a small mechanism--a black circular disk, an inch
thick and two feet in diameter. On it was mounted a cone-shaped lens a
foot high. It looked something like a tiny model of the lighthouse lens.
An operating mechanism was fastened behind the lens; it was an open box
with tiny coils of wire inside. And near this was what looked like a
miniature searchlight.
Fahn inspected the apparatus. His assistant made some connections,
adjusting another mechanism on the table. Then, turning the disk over
and holding it in the air above his head, he released it. The thing
floated, motionless, its lens-tower hanging downward. The small
searchlight also pointed downward and from it a beam of blue-white light
struck the cave-floor with a circle of brilliant illumination.
Fahn smiled his approval; the young assistant seemed gratified.
"It's a development of the communication towers, combined with the
levitation dais you saw at the Festival--the apparatus Toroh's brothers
tried to steal," Loto said to his father.
A moment later the young scientist had disappeared with his flying lens,
taking it outside the cavern to release it into the air.
Fahn sat at the table with the newly installed mechanism under his
fingers. In a few moments the assistant was back, empty-handed; he stood
before the now blank crystal mirror with the other men, anxiously
watching for the success of his work.
"This was greatly used a few centuries ago," Fahn said. He sighed. "Our
ancestors knew so much; it is so hard to keep up with them."
The crystal mirror presently became illumined. The scene was the
darkness of night; stars reflected moonlight from a moon just outside
the line of vision. Below--a thousand feet, perhaps--a vague palm-dotted
landscape was sliding into view.
To the watchers, the illusion was like flying through the night, looking
downward.
"I shall light the searchlights," Fahn said.
A broad circle of blue-white illumination fell upon the shifting land.
Across it, the palms of the island were moving backward. The viewpoint
of the whole scene was unsteady. The horizon bobbed up and down, like
the horizon viewed from a plunging ship. The moon showed momentarily,
them swung sidewise out of sight.
Soon the channel appeared; the dark mountains were coming nearer; they
tilted downward, almost out of sight, as the lens mounted an incline to
pass above them.
"Can we find where the plane fell?" Loto asked anxiously.
Fahn did not answer at once. At last he said: "It will be difficult. It
may have fallen behind the mountains, or into them. I do not know."
In the mirror, the shifting viewpoint presently showed the mountains
from above; the searchlight circle was sweeping across a tumbled land of
crags, plateaus and ravines--a white band of snow lying thick on the
higher peaks. The lens was circling now; the turning, swaying viewpoint
made the watchers dizzy.
Finally they saw it--a broken plane lying on its crumbled wing. The
searchlight clung to it; the lens lowered until the image of the plane
seemed more than a hundred feet below.
"_Toroh's plane!_" Rogers exclaimed.
There were figures moving about the plane, men and dogs. The men were
dragging some apparatus from it, loading it onto a sled. One of the men
was Toroh! The viewpoint was close enough now to distinguish
him--_alive!_
But the flying lens had descended too close; the Noths were staring
upward. A flash mounted from below; the crystal mirror turned a blinding
white--then went black.
Toroh's thunderbolt had struck the flying lens and destroyed it.
* * * * *
George and Dee gazed from their hovering plane at the empty surface of
the level rock face below them. Somewhere in time Azeela was lying
there, unconscious, killed perhaps; the thought messages from her were
stilled. Had Toroh gone on? Or had he stopped to try and find her?
They were anxious moments for George and Dee--moments that by George's
watch stretched into an hour or more. They were both at the point of
exhaustion. They had eaten a little--the plane was provisioned--but they
had not slept throughout the trip. George made a close calculation. He
knew the time-speed of Toroh's plane; he could estimate closely what
Toroh's dials must have read at the instant Azeela jumped.
They found her at last, lying on the rock, unconscious. They stopped,
carried her into the plane, and, before they started again, revived her.
There was a heart stimulant among the plane's medicines; she drank it
gratefully. She was not injured, though badly bruised by her fall. She
had been knocked unconscious as she left the plane. The instant her body
parted contact with its vibrations, blackness had come to her; she did
not remember striking the rock.
George was jubilant. Had he been able to rest, he would have wanted to
go on after Toroh. But he did not dare rest.
"We'll go on home," he decided. "You're a brave girl, Azeela." He smiled
down at her as she lay stretched out on the leather seat. "I'll start
slowly; you've had all the shock you can stand."
That same night in which the flying lens had been destroyed found George
piloting his plane into the cavern at Anglese City. Fahn and Rogers
were there to greet them. George handed down the girls, and descended
with a flourish. In the excitement of his triumphant return, he forgot
how tired and sleepy he was.
At the moment Loto was in another part of the cavern. He came running
forward. He did not see Azeela at first.
"George!"
"Hello, Loto! Here we are. Were you worried?"
Then Loto saw Azeela.
"I brought her back to you," George said softly. "There she is, old
man--all safe and sound."
But Loto did not hear him; his arms were around Azeela.
George turned to Dee. "You think he'd sacrifice her for the whole nation
of the Anglese? I should say not!"
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A month went by in days and weeks of activity throughout the island. To
the Scientists it was a time of unparalleled stress and anxiety. The
government was in their hands for the first time in history, and a
war--the first that anyone of that time-world had ever faced--was
impending.
With Toroh's return his attack would not be long postponed. Fahn knew
it. The radio proclaimed it to the Bas everywhere. An army must be
trained at once; the Bas, Arans and Scientists were appealed to for
volunteers.
It was Fahn's plan not to wait for the Noths to land on the island; but
to anticipate the attack and send an army to meet it. The nation
responded to the appeal. Conscription had been considered, but within a
day the Bas had offered themselves in such numbers that it was obvious
any form of conscription would be unnecessary.
The second day after the radio appeal for volunteers, the fact became
evident that the Arans were refusing to go to war. In every village
recruiting stations were listing the names of the young men of the Bas
who presented themselves, but no Arans came. By the audible broadcasting
Fahn called them severely to account; but still they remained in hiding.
They were sought out. Cowardice, sullenness, declaration that their
birthright made it unnecessary--they seemed to have a score of reasons,
but the fact remained they would not willingly serve.
Scenes of violence were reported the next day. A Bas father, giving two
sons to the coming war, had struck down an Aran youth whom he
encountered; a party of Bas, angered into unlawfulness, had entered an
Aran household in Orleen and beaten a group of Arans who were holding
festivities; an Aran woman had been killed.
"Serves them right," George exclaimed indignantly. "I'd kill them all."
Fahn was perturbed, but then he shrugged. "We have far more young men
from the Bas than we can use. I shall tell them to ignore the Arans. And
in warfare such as this, an unwilling fighter is worse than none."
"Damned cowards," George muttered. "We'll save their hides for 'em,
while they stay home and have parties."
The Scientist had caught the words. "Yes, George, because now that is
easiest for us. I want no trouble here on the island. But
afterward--when we have won--_then_ we can deal with the Arans."
"I wouldn't have 'em on the island," George declared. It would have been
an unfortunate Aran youth who encountered George during the days that
followed.
The recruiting, hand in hand with the manufacturing activities of the
cavern, went steadily on. In every principal village the Bas youths were
registered and drilled, as yet without weapons. Officered by older men
of the Bas, they waited for the equipment and orders to come to them
from Anglese City.
The information Fahn had regarding Toroh and his Noth army was vague,
unsatisfactory; its very meagerness seemed to forecast disaster.
Somewhere beyond the mountains the Noths were gathering along the
Atlantic Coast. Hordes of men and fighting dogs were coming southward.
But their scientific weapons were practically unknown. The thunderbolt
globes--of what power Fahn could not say--were all that he was positive
they possessed.
It was Toroh's trip back into time that seemed to hold the greatest
menace. He had secured some apparatus. What was it? Something
invincible, perhaps; something so completely different from anything
with which the Anglese were familiar that they could not hope to cope
with it.
There were no answers to these questions.
The flying lens--the only one the Anglese possessed--had been destroyed.
Others were now being hastily constructed, and with them Fahn intended
to reconnoiter extensively over the Noth territory. The information thus
attained would be immensely valuable.
The principle of this radio-controlled flying platform, as Fahn had
said, was newly invented. It was not yet wholly practical. The dais at
the Festival was the first crude model; the flying lens was the second.
It had been so successful a model for a beginning that Fahn was
encouraged to use it with a broader scope. Larger platforms were now
being built, and thunderbolt projectors were to be mounted on
them--projectors with an effective radius of a thousand feet. A number
of these flying platforms would constitute a mechanical army. Controlled
by radios whose operators stayed safely at home, it could be sent forth
to battle--with the human army to follow behind it.
The perfecting of the electric fabric repulsive to the earth--an
invention revived out of the past and brought to practicability only
within the last few months--was the basis of the equipment for the
Anglese army now being mobilized. It was kept secret until the last
moment.
Two weeks after George's return, the first flying organization was
equipped. Two hundred young men selected from the ranks of the
Scientists began drilling secretly at night in an open space near
Anglese City. Among them were George and Loto. For the men from our
time-world, the experience was the most extraordinary they had ever
undergone. The fabric was like thin black gauze. A loose suit of it
encased each man, bound tightly at his wrists, throat and ankles. About
his waist was strapped a broad, cloth belt with several pockets in which
to carry various weapons. There was some sort of a battery attached to
the belt, from which a current was turned into the gauze suit.
One of Fahns assistants came over to George and adjusted the current to
his normal weight, while George stood eyeing the man fearsomely. He
could feel the current as it was turned on. It was not unpleasant; it
made him tingle all over.
In another moment George was ready. Thin cloth slippers were on his
feet; by the pressure against the soles he felt as though he weighed not
more than five pounds. Involuntarily, he clutched at Loto, who stood
beside him. He felt that a breath of wind would blow him away.
"Let go," Loto grinned. "Make a leap, George."
Obediently George leaped gingerly into the air. He floated upward,
turned over, arms and legs flying, and floated downward, landing gently
on his face in the sand. But after a few trials he could hold his
balance; the air seemed fluid, like water. With wings fastened to his
arms and legs, he could have swum through it.
He suggested that to Loto. "Why, with practice, a man could swim through
the air, darting about like a fish through water."
Loto laughed. "You'd make a fine inventor, George. That probably was the
first crude way it was used. But later they developed a much better way
of propulsion, and we have revived it now."
The motive power consisted of a single metal cylinder to be held in the
left hand--an apparatus which in weight and shape was not unlike an
ordinary flashlight. As George understood its fundamental principle, the
thing altered the density of the air in whatever direction it was
pointed.
Loto tried to explain it with as few technical words as he could. A
spreading, invisible ray from the cylinder penetrated the air for a
distance of some ten feet. It separated the molecules of the air, drove
them apart. Its action was incredibly swift.
"Well?" demanded George.
"The atmosphere exerts a pressure here of some sixteen pounds to the
square inch," Loto said. "The air immediately in advance of this
cylinder mouth is almost instantly thinned out. The ray charges the
molecules of air and makes them slightly repellent. The result is,
George, that immediately in advance of your body the atmospheric
pressure is somewhat lessened. Thus, your body moves forward, pushed by
the air pressure from behind."
The cylinder had a sliding lever by which its ray was turned on or off.
George held it over his head and moved the lever. His body left the
ground and shot straight up at increasing speed. There was no rush of
wind toward him; instead the air from below seemed to be wafting him
upward.
The ground was dropping away. Fifty feet! A hundred feet! Panic struck
George; all he could think of to do was shut off the cylinder power. At
once he floated down, turning over helplessly. He landed quite gently,
several hundred feet from where he had started, with Loto running there
to meet him, laughing at his discomfiture.
You couldn't very well get hurt, that was the beauty of the thing.
George plunged enthusiastically into learning how to handle himself in
the air.
With a week this organization of two hundred Scientist young men were
fairly expert with the new flying apparatus. There were several thousand
Bas youths now registered in different parts of the island; but the
suits and air cylinders for them were not ready. Finally, another
hundred were released, and at Anglese City, Mogruud, the Bas leader, and
a hundred selected Bas young men began learning to use them.
In spite of the indignant protests of Loto and George, both Fahn's
daughters urged that they be allowed to try the apparatus, and Fahn gave
his permission.
"I have no sons to give," he said quietly. "And this warfare is of
skill, not strength or endurance. If my girls can help their country, it
is their duty--and mine--to make the sacrifice."
With this precedent, other Scientist girls--several at Orleen, and
twenty at Anglese City--enthusiastically volunteered. Without exception,
the girls proved superior to the men. The new art demanded a deft
agility, a quickness of thought and movement, which seemed to come to
the girls more naturally.
Within a few days, Azeela and Dee could dart through the air with
incredible dexterity. The cylinder held in the left hand could be
pointed quickly in any direction and the body would be drawn that way.
Dee, especially, became proficient. She could dart upward, turn, come
swooping down head-first or with slow somersaults, graceful as a dancer,
to right herself a few feet above the ground and land on tiptoe.
The result of the girls' proficiency was that they were organized into a
separate squad. There were twenty-eight girls in all; thirteen commanded
by Azeela, and thirteen by Dee.
During all this time, the Arans had remained in seclusion, keeping off
the streets as much as possible. The Bas, drilling without weapons, were
eager to be equipped. The king and his council confined themselves to
the palace at Anglese City.
There were no boats on the island except crude sailing canoes. A few of
the newly equipped flying corps went northward; but Fahn, anticipating
the completion of other flying lenses, ordered them not to cross the
channel. In the cavern, day and night, operators watched the mirrors,
flashing the viewpoints from every coast tower on the island, to guard
against a surprise attack.
A month had passed since George's return in the plane. He had suggested
several times that the plane might be used in the war. But Rogers
refused this. George had exhausted the proton current to the point where
there was barely enough left for a return to Roger's time-world. And the
plane in itself, as a means of flying through space, would have been of
little value in this warfare.
The flying discs, mounted with observing lenses and thunderbolt
projectors, were now ready. They were sent out one night, controlled
from the cavern.
It was the first aggressive act of the war; a mechanical army sweeping
northward to attack the enemy.
In the cavern room, Fahn and his friends sat watching the mirrors, which
showed the scene from the viewpoint of the flying mechanisms.
The discs swept northward, following the coastline. Beyond the
mountains, far ahead, loomed a great encampment close to the shore, dim
and vague in the moonlight. In a few minutes the mechanisms would be
there.
Suddenly, one of the mirrors in operation went black. In the others, the
scene showed that Toroh was sending up some opposing mechanisms. Dots of
silver were mounting from the encampment. They floated slowly upward,
but they seemed to seek out the Anglese flying platforms, pursuing them
as though with human intelligence.
One by one the mirrors were going black, as the flying lenses were being
destroyed. In a moment only one was left. It was almost over Toroh's
encampment--almost in range where it could have discharged its bolt.
In the mirrored scene, a white dot was growing as it came closer to the
lens. Its image grew; it resolved itself from a dot, so what Fahn saw
was a thin, gleaming disc. It looked as though it might be whirling. The
thing turned, pursued the lens, overtook it--the last mirror went dark.
The operators, greatly upset, left their instruments and gathered around
Fahn. Toroh had sent up some unknown mechanisms; the flying thunderbolt
platforms had crashed to the ground before any of them had come within
range of the enemy.
It was during this same night that Toroh first used his audible
broadcasting beams. Fahn's audible voices in the air had constantly been
encouraging his people. Now, abruptly, the air burst forth with other
voices. Somewhere in the mountains across the channel, Toroh had erected
a broadcasting station. He was sending threats through the air to the
Anglese!
It was a surprise, and it disturbed Fahn greatly. Everywhere on the
island aerial voices of the enemy were leering, threatening, boasting of
the coming triumph of the Noths. Would the Bas be intimidated? It might
be disastrous; with the defeat of the flying discs, Fahn was depending
more than ever now upon the Bas army.
All that night and next day, the sender from the cavern sent forth its
cheering messages.
By the following noon information began coming to Anglese City that the
Bas were apparently not alarmed. They were jeering back at Toroh's
aerial voices; but they were demanding vigorously that the Scientists
give them weapons.
"In a week we shall be ready," Fahn told Rogers. "Five thousand
air-pressure cylinders are now in the last process of manufacture. The
other weapons are ready. One week more is all we need."
Amid Toroh's aerial threats that day had come the reiterated, triumphant
statement that in two weeks more his attack would come. Two weeks still!
It was more than Fahn had hoped for.
The statement was Toroh's trickery. Eighteen hours later--the next
morning at dawn--a member of the aerial patrol over the channel returned
hurriedly to Anglese City with the news that Toroh's expedition had
started by water. Huge barges were coming down the coast, pulled by the
giant dogs swimming before them--_barges crowded with men and dogs and
apparatus_.
That morning was one of almost complete chaos. The invaders would enter
the channel near Anglese City. The thunderbolt projectors which had been
distributed thinly about the coast were rushed eastward and
concentrated at the channel-mouth. There was no time now to equip the
main Bas army. The attack would have to be repelled by the coast
defense, and by the small aerial army already formed: one hundred Bas
led by Mogruud; two hundred Scientists with whom Loto and George were to
serve, and the twenty-six Scientist girls, led by Azeela and Dee.
That morning the aerial voices ordered every able-bodied Bas man on the
island to come toward Anglese City with every dog that could be
procured. If the invaders landed, the dogs could best oppose them.
It was at this juncture that the king announced the change of his royal
capital to Orleen. The royal family, the councilors, their
retainers--all fled in their dog carriages from Anglese City. Orleen,
much further down the channel, would be safe. News of the king's action
spread over the island. Arans from everywhere fled after him, huddling
in Orleen.
In the confusion of those hours, the contempt for the Arans passed
almost without comment. Orleen was the safest place, and the Bas
there--men and women both--scornful of remaining among the cowards, came
eastward.
By noon the flying army was fully accoutered and waiting in a field near
Anglese City. Loto, equipped to remain in constant telephonic
communication with Fahn, was virtually the leader. George, with his
several weapons in his belt, stood beside Loto. Mogruud had his hundred
Bas around him. The girls were in two small groups apart.
At a signal from Fahn, the little army rose swiftly into the sunlit sky.
The watching throng was stricken silent with awe. The figures in the air
arranged themselves in a broad arc, with the officers in front, and then
swept forward, over the channel toward the mountains and the distant
sea.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The palm-dotted island fell silently away. Ahead lay the blue channel;
to the right the open sea. To George the flight--the first of any
duration he had taken--was exhilarating. It was soundless; the absence
of any rush of air against him made it totally unlike flying in a plane.
He seemed to be wafting forward as though the air were his native
element.
Loto was just ahead of him. Behind him came the army, maintaining its
arc-like formation. A little in front, and at a slightly lower level,
were the two squads of girls. They were all slim, graceful creatures,
most of them under twenty. The black gauze--loose trousers and
blouse--showed the white of their limbs beneath. Their heads were bound
in deep-red rubber cloth, tight over the forehead and tied in back with
flowing ends. With cylinders extended from the left hand they slid
gracefully forward through the air.
Though George felt no rush of air, he found he could not talk to Loto,
even though no more than twenty feet separated them. The rushing wind
between them tore away the words.
Soon they were over the channel. The girls were drifting much lower now.
Loto darted down a few feet; then as though he had changed his mind, he
came up again. He reached for a mouthpiece that dangled under his chin
and fitted it to his lips. His voice, magnified to a stentorian roar,
rolled out.
"_Azeela! Dee! Come higher! You must not go so low!_"
Obediently the two girls rose to the higher level, their little squads
following them. When they were over the mouth of the channel, George saw
Toroh's barges--tiny dark smudges on the water some miles up the coast
and a mile or so off shore. His heart leaped, began pounding in spite of
his efforts to quiet it.
Following Loto he swept diagonally upward and forward. Presently he
could count six barges. They were tremendous things, crowded with men
and dogs and mechanical apparatus. Spread over each was a huge caging of
flashing silver metal. One barge was some distance in the lead; the
others straggled out irregularly behind it for about a mile. All the
Noth vessels were being drawn slowly through the water by ranks of
harnessed dogs.
Loto momentarily shut off his cylinder; his speed was slackening. George
overtook him, put an arm on his shoulder. The nearest of the barges was
now less than a mile ahead.
An upward flash from the leading barge was followed in a few seconds by
a crack of thunder. The bolt dissipated harmlessly into the air. But
obviously it was powerful, with an effective range of two thousand
feet--twice that of the Anglese defense.
Toroh's plan now became apparent. He would batter the Anglese coast
projectors while still beyond reach of them, and then make his landing.
The cages over the barges were for protection from the smaller
thunderbolts of the attacking aerial army.
George knew the cages were only partially effective. A bolt was
difficult to aim, but it did queer things when it struck. From a short
distance--a hundred feet or less--the barges could be set on fire and
sunk. Their thin metal hulls were not protected. They could be pierced.
The wooden super-structure could be fired; the swimming dogs struck and
killed.
In hurried whispers Loto was constantly talking with Fahn back in the
cavern. The Scientist's orders he repeated with his electrically
magnified voice that could be heard easily by every one of the little
aerial army.
For a time they circled about, above the barges, but keeping well
beyond the two-thousand foot range. Against the blue of the sky their
figures must have shown plainly to the Noths. Occasionally a bolt would
flash up, but they were harmless at that distance. And the barges pushed
steadily forward.
At last Fahn decided the moment for attack had arrived. Loto repeated
the order. George's division and Mogruud's separated from the rest. One
hundred turned seaward, the others toward land. They dropped swiftly;
straight down, like divers, heavily laden with lead, dropping through
water. And then a darting, twisting swarm of insects--from every side at
once they attacked the leading barge.
In the depths of the cavern at Anglese City, Fahn sat in his room of
mirrors. A metal band about his head held a receiver to his ear. A black
mouthpiece hung against his chest and by lowering his head he could
bring his lips to it. Rogers was at his side. The mirrors in every part
of the room were lighted, giving the viewpoints of the coast towers near
the mouth of the channel. In several of the mirrored scenes, over the
distant water and in the air, black specks were visible; the enemy and
Fahn's army above them.
But these were not the vital crystal mirrors. A small one--a foot square
perhaps--stood on the table before Fahn. He and Rogers were gazing into
it intently. The mirror was connected with a tiny lens strapped to
Loto's forehead; it gave Loto's viewpoint of the battle, showed the
scene exactly as Loto saw it.
Fahn was silent; a stern, anxious old man, with all his science around
him, sitting in seclusion to direct this warfare upon which the fate of
his people depended. Occasionally he would murmur something to Rogers,
and the other man would speak into a mouthpiece--an order for the
operator of the broadcasted aerial voices, controlled from another part
of the cavern. Then throughout the island, cheering words to the Bas
would resound, news of the progress of the battle. But Fahn's gaze never
wavered from the little mirror.
George's and Mogruud's divisions descended upon the leading barge. The
barge spat forth its bolts, but it could discharge only one or two
against a hundred of the tiny ones from its attackers. Looking down,
from Loto's viewpoint overhead, the barge was assailed on every side by
the pencils of electrical flame. Figures dropped, inert, into the water;
others, wounded, wavered upward. The wire cage over the barge was
sizzling and crackling; the swimming dogs, a dozen or more of them,
crumpled in the water and were dragged forward in their harness by the
others.
The engagement had lasted no more than a minute when the air about the
barge was suddenly plunged into blackness. Everything down there was
blotted out--a patch of solid ink on the sea. The Noth vessel had
exploded a bomb whose etheric vibration absorbed all light over a radius
of five hundred feet.
Fahn smiled grimly. The darkness there would pass presently. His own
leaders, Loto, George, Mogruud and the two girls, had the same
equipment. Each of them could discharge such a bomb; a puff of darkness,
cloaking everything around them in temporary invisibility.
Fahn heard his own orders roared by Loto. The attacking figures came up.
But there were not two hundred of them now: about twenty lay down there
in the water; a dozen more were wounded; a few were moving slowly
homeward through the air.
The darkness still hung around the attacked Noth vessel. But it was
thinning out; now the vague outlines of the barge could be seen. Within
a minute the dark patch was gone. One end of the barge was blazing, but
the Noths were extinguishing the flames. Other figures were cutting
loose the dead dogs in the water, while new dogs were leaping overboard
to take their places.
The attacked barge presently moved onward; slowly, inexorably, they were
all coming down the coast. They were no more than a mile or two now from
the estuary of the channel-mouth.
Three times more Fahn ordered a division down at the same barge. The
Noth tactics were repeated. The barge discharged a few of its bolts and
then enveloped itself in blackness--an absence of light that even the
thunderbolts could not illumine.
These brief engagements were largely a matter of individual action.
Warfare was new to the Anglese, but they were learning. The huge bolts
from the barge could not parallel the water level for long; inevitably
they turned downward to discharge themselves. Close to the water the
attackers were comparatively safe.
When the Anglese came up after these attacks and reformed themselves in
orderly array, there were only ten more of their number missing. But it
was fifty in all, and a score of wounded.
The attacked barge was blazing end to end. Its crowded deck was a
turmoil of figures. They were plunging overboard--men and dogs--to avoid
the flames. In a moment the barge tilted upward at its stern. Its torn
bow was admitting the water; it slid downward, hissing, and disappeared
beneath the surface. Figures bobbed up from the swirl, inert, charred
figures; others among them, still alive, swam about in aimless
confusion.
One barge! But there were five more. And these others had all pushed
forward until now they were almost down to the channel. Fahn realized
that there were five hundred Noths and as many dogs crowded into each of
them. They could take to the water while they were still beyond range of
his coast projectors and come forward individually, each man mounted
upon his swimming dog. The coast defense could strike down no more than
a few of them if they came in that fashion. Twenty-five hundred men and
their giant brutes, landing on the island.
Azeela and Dee were hovering close to Loto; they were asking their
father's permission to try a new plan. The battle could not be
maintained as it was going; the hand thunderbolt globes held but ten
charges each, and the equipment of each individual was only three
globes. A third of the thunderbolts were already exhausted in sinking
one barge.
Fahn's expression did not change; only the grip of his fingers as he
clenched them and the rising muscles under his thin cheeks betokened his
emotion. His voice was steady, grim as always, when he ordered his
daughters to their desperate venture.
Azeela and Dee, with their twenty-six comrades, selected the barge that
had replaced the leader. In a closely knit group they hovered above it.
Thunderbolts shot up, but could not reach them. The girls aimed a
pure-white beam of light downward--twenty-six tiny rays blending into
one. Rogers, bending over Fahn to gaze into the little mirror, was
amazed. Unlike any beam of light he had ever seen, this one was curved;
It descended in a slightly bent bow, ending at the barge.
Fahn whispered a swift explanation to Rogers. To the Noths, looking
upward along the beam, it would not appear curved, but straight. The
figures of the girls, by an optical illusion, would be seen, not where
they actually were, but to one side.
The girls held their curved ray steady. And plunging down the beam,
following its slightly curved path, were the figures of Azeela and Dee.
The Noths saw them coming; a dozen bolts leaped into the air, one upon
the other, but they flashed harmlessly to one side of their mark.
Within twenty seconds the two girls were close to the barge; yellow-red
spurts of flame leaped from their weapons--flame that could be hurled
thirty feet but no farther. It enveloped the barge with licking,
seething, burning liquid gases that withered everything they touched. A
puff of darkness, which the retreating girls had left behind them,
blotted out the scene. An instant later Azeela and Dee emerged from the
darkness, safe. The shaft of light from the girls above was extinguished
as the two rose to join them.
When light shone again around the barge, it was sinking. Soon the
swirling water held nothing but black, twisted figures.
The maneuver could not be repeated successfully. From the other barges
the Noths would have seen the curved beam, understood it and made
allowances for it. Azeela and Dee, triumphant and flushed with their
success, pleaded to try it again, but Fahn would not let them.
The afternoon was waning; the western sky was red and overhead clouds
were gathering. And then Fahn ordered a general attack on all the
barges.
The sun had set; the twilight deepened into night--a night of flashing
lights, crackling, artificial thunder, spurts of lurid flame and the
hissing of fire against water. At intervals, rockets came up; bursting,
they cast a blue-white glare that for the space of a minute clearly
outlined the menacing, darting figures for the Noths.
The atmospheric disturbance of the past hours suddenly brought forth an
electrical storm. Nature, more powerful than man, shot forth her own
bolts to add to the din. They were, in character, very different from
the harnessed, man-made lightning; forked, jagged, crackling with their
nearness, they leaped downward out of the low-hanging clouds.
The storm was as brief as it was severe. It swept away and the moon
rose, blood-red, casting its lurid light over the water.
Another Noth vessel had been sunk. There were only three barges left
afloat, and they were in distress. Many of their swimming dogs lay dead
in harness. Aboard all three of them, figures were fighting the flames.
They clustered in a group near the center of the channel.
Loto had withdrawn his forces, reduced now to half their original
number. With ammunition almost exhausted, they hovered out of range
above their adversaries. The wounded were still straggling back through
the air; a few of them had already arrived at the cavern.
Again Fahn ordered his army down. It would be the last attempt.
In the cavern room, Fahn had not moved from his seat for hours. Often he
could not see the battle plainly, for Loto, disobeying orders, had many
times cast himself into the thick of it.
But now Loto was aloft; by the moonlight and the glare of the rockets
and bombs, Fahn saw that another Noth vessel had appeared--a very small
barge. It was close to shore, coming swiftly forward and little objects
of gleaming silver were mounting from it. One after the other they came
sailing up.
Fahn rasped an order; Loto's voice roared it out. The men and girls who
were descending to the attack halted, circling about, wondering what had
happened.
The first of the white objects came sailing slowly horizontally across
the channel. It seemed to be a whirling white disc some foot or two in
diameter.
Loto was still some distance away from it when a group of girls passed
between him and the disc. The thing seemed to turn toward them. One of
the girls became confused; it struck her and she fell. The disc, its
rotation halted, fell also. Loto saw then what it was: broad, thin,
crossed blades of steel, inclined to each other like the blades of a
propeller. It had risen up and sustained itself in the air by rotation.
Loto remembered the defeat of the flying thunderbolt platforms which
Fahn had sent northward to Toroh's encampment. These whirling knives
were what had destroyed them!
The newly arrived barge was now sending up, in every direction, a slow
but steady stream of the whirling knives. They seemed so easy to avoid
that the aerial army at first paid them little heed. Loto's warning from
Fahn rang out, but it came almost too late. The knives sought out the
figures in the air. They began falling--cut, mangled by the whirling
blades. There was confusion. The army mounted higher, but other knives
had been sent straight upward and were floating down. Uncannily, they
seemed to single out their victims.
Fahn understood now. This was the weapon Toroh had procured from that
time-world of the past. These whirling knives were strangely, powerfully
magnetized; they followed the human bodies passing near them, seeking
contact.
The Scientist leader had ordered his fighters to the sea level; the
knives, as they came lower, seemed to have spent themselves. They could
be avoided. But nearly forty of the Anglese had met death before the
lesson was learned.
The three larger barges were again advancing toward the Anglese coast.
Without warning, without orders from Fahn, the little remnant of girls
led by Azeela and Dee, darted at them. It was a movement, not foolhardy,
but well and swiftly planned. The girls, holding close to the surface,
got themselves between two of the barges. The Noths could not fire, for
they would have struck each other. A puff of inky darkness spread over
the ships, and out of it, at close range, jets of fire sprang at the
Noths; then the girls came back. One of the Noth vessels was a mass of
flames; the other two wavered--and began retreating.
For a moment there was silence and darkness, lighted only by the moon
and the flickering light from the blazing barge. The whirling blades
were no longer being launched; the Anglese were again poised in the air.
Fahn had ordered that the small barge be attacked when, abruptly, a low
hum sounded from it. George and Loto were hovering together at the
moment; the barge was some five hundred feet below them and slightly off
to one side. There didn't seem to be any dogs on it; only a few men
under its wire cage, and a single large piece of apparatus.
The hum grew louder, more intense, as though some gigantic dynamo had
been set into motion.
"What's that?" George demanded.
But Loto did not know.
Mogruud, with the remains of his division, was in the air half a mile
away. He was on the other side of the small barge; his men, moving in
scattered groups, began passing over it.
The hum was rising in pitch, up the scale until it became a shrill
electrical scream. Mogruud's men wavered--struggled as though to avoid
being pulled downward.
Then Loto realized that it must be the rest of the apparatus Toroh had
secured out of the past--a giant electromagnet of some unknown variety.
It was pulling at every figure in the air, drawing them irresistibly
toward it.
Loto and George could feel the pull; invisible fingers were snatching at
them. The girls near at hand were fighting against it. Mogruud was
moving forward with an effort, like a swimmer struggling with the clutch
of an undertow. Several of his men, closer to the barge, had been drawn
to it, flattened helplessly against its wire caging. Fire was leaping
through their bodies...they were electrocuted.
In the cavern Fahn sat tense, impotent. He could hear, as plainly as
though he were out there over the sea, the scream of that uncanny thing
that was reaching out its invisible electrical fingers to gather in its
victims.
At his side, for the past hour, Rogers had been operating the larger
mirrors, flashing into them scenes from the various towers along the
coast. Now Fahn heard him give a sharp, horrified exclamation.
Rogers was staring at a mirrored scene from a coast tower near Orleen:
moonlight, purple, starry sky and the deep purple of the channel; to one
side, the dim outlines of the Orleen houses. And from the channel off
Orleen, lights were flashing; a bomb burst and its glare shone on
crowded barges close inshore! One of them, already at the beach, was
disgorging its men and brutes!
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Once again, Toroh's trickery was disclosed. To Fahn, the tactics of the
Noths were now understandable. The Noth attack on Anglese City, at which
Fahn had hurled all his armed forces, had been no more than a ruse to
cover up Toroh's main offensive at Orleen.
Toroh's orders, doubtless, had been to prolong the engagement until,
under cover of night, his main forces could effect their landing at the
other end of the island. This small barge with the magnet had probably
been ordered to slip by, hugging the north shore of the channel, and
proceed to Orleen. But its commander had, at what he must have
considered a decisive moment, used it against the remnant of the little
aerial army.
Toroh's landing at Orleen was taking place; the channel expedition had
served its purpose. The two remaining barges off Anglese City were in
full retreat toward the open sea. The smaller barge, with its screaming
magnet, was heading swiftly down the channel toward Orleen. The figures
in the air were struggling against its pull. Some were losing, being
hurled forward with control of themselves lost; others were forcing
their way down to the water-level where the attraction seemed less.
Still others had succeeded in escaping upward beyond its range. They
circled high overhead, seeking some way of helping their unfortunate
comrades.
The double disaster was more than Fahn could cope with, or even watch
closely in the two mirrors. Orleen lay on a peninsula some ten miles
broad, with water on three sides of the city. The Noths were landing,
spreading around the shores; across the land from shore to shore they
were massed, but as yet they had not entered the city. Thousands of
Arans were there--the king and his royal family--penned like rats in a
trap. And there was only the small cavern with its meager garrison of
Scientists to defend them.
George found himself near the outer edge of the magnetic attraction. He
could see the figures in the air nearer the barge struggling to escape
from it. He did not know where Loto was, or Azeela or Dee. He saw
Mogruud, with fifteen or twenty of the Bas about him. They were passing
swiftly below.
George wondered what he should do. The two larger barges were
withdrawing. Some of the aerial figures were following them, and George
started moving that way. The figures were attacking the barges from down
near the surface of the water. Mogruud and his men were there now.
George hastened.
This last attack of the Anglese was one of desperate fury. George could
see the flash of the bolts close to the water. One of the barges must
have fired through its own darkness and struck its mate. As the
blackness cleared, George saw that both the Noth vessels were blazing.
One of them sank a moment later; from the flames on the other, figures
were plunging into the water.
The Anglese--one of them mounting--cast loose a light-bomb. In the
brilliant glare, the aerial figures were darting about over the surface
of the water, seeking out the Noth men and dogs who were swimming toward
the island and striking them with the little thunderbolts, or with
spurts of yellow-red flame at closer range. George arrived to join them.
It was ghastly but necessary work. He used his weapons until they were
exhausted.
The battle was won--all but the giant magnet. In the distance its
blood-curdling scream still sounded.
And then George saw Dee. She had been several thousand feet up, flying
with another girl, when the magnet was first put into operation. They
were not close enough to feel its pull. A whirling knife had approached
them; struck the other girl, killed her. It was spent, but a corner of
it had knocked Dee's motor-cylinder from her hand. She had begun
floating down. Ever since, she had been trying to swim through the air;
with arms and legs kicking, she had fought to sustain herself.
She was almost at the surface when George saw her struggling,
ineffectually, like a swimmer exhausted. He darted to her and gathered
her in his arms. His cylinder drew them both upward.
"Dee," he whispered. "My little Dee You're safe!"
Loto had dropped close to the surface. The magnet was pulling him, but
with his cylinder held against it, he could make headway. By now the
magnet had done most of its work; those in the air had either succumbed
or escaped beyond range.
To one side, Loto could see the attack on the other two barges. Fahn's
voice in his ear told him of the landing at Orleen. The Scientist
ordered them all back. They were needed at Orleen; they must return.
But the magnetic barge was heading down the channel. It would be used at
Orleen. It must be stopped--_destroyed now_. Loto disobeyed Fahn. He
headed for the little barge.
It was a plunge of no more than a few minutes. Soon Loto was well within
the field of magnetism; he could not withdraw now. He tried to think
clearly. Those others of the Anglese who had met this death had lost
control of themselves in the air. They had plunged forward, struggling,
whirling so that they had not been able to use their weapons.
Loto had no thunderbolts left. His only weapon was the flaming liquid
gas which he could project some fifty feet.
Just above the surface, head first, like an arrow, he slid forward
through the air. He did not fight against the magnet; he used his
cylinder only to keep himself from turning sidewise.
He was conscious of the dark outlines of the barge rushing up at him. He
fired his jet of flame; though he did not know it then, he had fired too
soon. The flames fell short. A downward thrust of his cylinder power
forced him upward. He barely missed the wire caging as his body shot
over it, past it.
The magnet's scream was deafening. The Noths on the barge had fired a
small thunderbolt between the wires, but had missed the swiftly passing
mark.
Loto's momentum carried him a hundred feet or more beyond the barge. The
magnet stopped him, drew him swiftly back. He was turning over now; he
had lost control of himself. The sea, the sky, the approaching barge
were mingled in whirling confusion. He knew he could never escape; he
must strike the magnet with his flame, this time or never. A moment more
and he would be electrocuted against the cage.
A tiny bolt cracked past him. He turned over again, righted himself
momentarily, and fired. The electrical scream died into abrupt silence;
the flames had caught the magnet, burned out its coils.
Released suddenly, Loto's body shot upward with the pull of his
cylinder. The cage, with flames spreading under it, dropped away beneath
him.
He righted himself, and at a distance of about three hundred feet, hung
poised in the air. The flames spread over the barge; a few Noth figures
plunged frantically into the water.
Loto mounted upward to join his comrades. Barely seventy-five of the
original three hundred and twenty-eight, were left. Ten of them were
girls. Loto found Azeela safe. George still carried Dee in his arms.
The flames from the burning barges died out; the silent moonlit channel
was strewn with floating bodies. It seemed almost futile to search for
their wounded, but they descended, and for a time moved about near the
surface. They found two still alive--one burned, the other, a girl,
mangled by a flying knife.
Silently, with their burdens, they took their way back through the air
to the cavern.
It was a night of confusion. The Noths were clustered around Orleen,
waiting for the dawn before they entered the city. They were still
coming across the channel on swimming dogs. All night they came. The
puny garrison at the Orleen cavern was powerless to stop them. It
exhausted its bolts and began sending out calls for help.
The Bas around Anglese City were mobilizing with their dogs. Hastily,
Fahn equipped them with weapons--hand thunderbolts and flame projectors.
An hour-and-a-half before dawn, they were ready to start their almost
hopeless attempt to stem the horde of invaders who now held the entire
western end of the island.
The little rag-end of the aerial army that returned from the battle was
exhausted, but in a few hours, it too, was ready to start.
Fahn, with his two daughters, and Rogers, Loto and George, took the
Frazia plane. On its platform Fahn mounted a single projector, the most
powerful he possessed.
They started an hour before dawn--silent as they gazed down at the
island of palms that was passing beneath them. They overtook their Bas
army and left it behind them. In the air, back over Anglese City, tiny
specks showed that the aerial army was starting. Above the hum of the
Frazia motors they hear the aerial voices of Anglese City telling the
Bas peasants who lived between the two cities to come eastward. They
were obeying; little groups of refugees--old men, women and
children--were moving along all the roads. In the sky ahead, occasional
flashes shot up from Orleen.
"The Arans went there to avoid the deluge," Rogers said suddenly, and
his laugh was grim.
No one answered him.
Behind them the eastern sky was brightening. Loto was piloting the
plane, with Rogers beside him. The daylight grew, began reddening.
"Look, Father, there's Orleen!"
* * * * *
The second largest city on the island, Orleen lay in a hollow, with twin
peaks close behind it, the mouth of the channel and the gulf in front
and to the sides. It was an Aran city, more beautiful even than the
capital.
The plane, flying high, was circling. Loto's gaze went to the dawn. The
sun came up a huge, distorted ball of crimson fire, with lines of flame
radiating from it to the zenith. A dark mass of rain cloud, hanging low
above Orleen, lost its blackness as it soaked up the crimson light. The
sky, even to the western horizon, was steeped in blood; the water
reflected it; the air itself seemed to hold it suspended.
"The day of deluge," murmured Loto. "The blood that will be spilled
today--"
As though in answer to his words, the clouds above Orleen began spilling
rain. And as the water fell, it caught the crimson sunlight--myriad
drops of blood falling upon the Aran city.
The storm was transitory the rain cloud swept past, but the blood in the
sky remained.
In the hours that had passed since the plane left Anglese City, the
Noths had occupied Orleen. Its cavern was taken. The Noth men and dogs
stood in solid ranks around the mountain base; the beaches were black
with them. They were still coming across the channel--riders mounted
upon swimming dogs, an occasional barge.
There were no sounds of thunderbolts in the city, no flashes. But as the
plane descended, human sounds were heard--faint screams. And the city
streets were in confusion.
Fahn was staring down into the city through lenses mounted in short
black tubes. He murmured something that his companions did not catch.
His face was white and set; he was struggling to hold his composure.
"Descend, Loto. They are not armed with thunderbolts; those are all with
Toroh and his men in the cavern."
The plane glided down, circling low above the city. The scene of carnage
there became a series of brief, fragmentary pictures. Above the drone of
the Frazia motors, they could hear the snarling of fighting dogs, the
screams of men and women, the shrill treble of children--human screams
of agony as the fangs of the brutes tore at them.
The plane passed low above a city street, following its length to the
blue water that lapped the white sand at its end. The street was full of
dogs. A Noth rider--sinister, animal-like, with his black-bound head and
his naked torso covered with black hair--arrived at a silent white
house, with its white columns, splashing fountain, and vivid trellised
flowers. The Noth dismounted, rushed into the house. He came out
dragging an Aran woman--flung her white body to the eager, snarling
brute. At the beach, hundreds of terrified Arans sprang into the water;
the dogs followed them, pulled them under, released them at last, and
the surf flung their mangled bodies up on the sand.
There was a public square where a hundred or more Arans had gathered.
The dogs charged them, tore at them, flung them into the air--fought
over their broken bodies long after life had gone.
The dogs spread to every corner of the city. A child climbed a
pergola--a little Aran boy, white skinned, with long golden curls and a
plump baby face. The dogs could not reach him; a Noth man climbed up,
pulled him down.
Loto had given the Frazia controls to his father. With a small
thunderbolt globe at his belt he went to the platform outside the cabin.
Presently he found Azeela beside him. Her arm was around him; together
they clung to their insecure footing, watching the scenes below as the
plane made its swift circle over the city.
What could Fahn do? The thunderbolt projector, here on the platform,
could kill a few Noths, a few dogs here and there. But of what avail
would that be among these hordes? The Orleen Cavern? Could they attack
that? Toroh was probably there in the cavern. If they could kill him,
these Noth barbarians, without a leader...
Confused and sick from what he was seeing, Loto tried to force Azeela
into the cabin, but the white lipped girl would not go. The plane
approached a house where an Aran woman crouched on the roof top with two
little girls huddled at her feet. A Noth appeared from below, dashed at
them across the roof. Beneath the eaves a dozen dogs stood with bared,
drippings fangs pointed upward.
The plane was almost over the house. Loto pointed his globe downward,
pressed its lever. There was a flash, a miniature crack of thunder and
the globe recoiled in his hand. On the roof top the Noth man and the
Aran woman and her children lay dead. The woman's white robe was
blackened, the children's bodies were burned, shriveled; a cornice of
the building was ripped off and the woodwork was blazing.
It was so useless! Loto flung the globe from him, loathing it for having
killed that woman and her little girls. He drew Azeela back with him
into the cabin.
The king's palace in Orleen stood near the waterfront, in the midst of
broad, magnificent gardens. A mob of Noths surged around it, into the
lower doors, on the balconies and roof top. As the plane passed
overhead, its occupants caught a fleeting glimpse of the queen and her
children, the girl wives of the king and the king himself--in the face
of death with petty barriers at last broken down--all huddled together
in a corner of the roof. The Noths rushed at them, broad, heavy swords
flashing.
The plane swept past.
The twin peaks of Orleen stood six hundred feet apart, just behind the
city. The one that housed the cavern had a broad, circular base, with a
ragged, volcanic looking cone above. The other peak was considerably
higher; it looked down upon its fellow.
Fahn had directed Rogers to fly the plane to the higher of the peaks.
The Scientist had hardly spoken. He was pale, grim as ever, but his
gaze, when he looked upon his daughters held a curious softness. What
were his plans. What were they going to do? George asked the questions,
but Fahn ignored them.
The little aerial army approaching from Anglese City was now in sight.
Fahn radioed them to move back, descend, and stop the Bas army and its
dogs. All of them were to return to the capital.
The plane landed on a small level rock near the summit of the higher
peak. On top of the cavern, six hundred feet away, a solitary male
figure stood. The blood light of the sunrise fell full upon it. _Toroh!_
He was standing there, regarding the city.
Fahn leaped to the projector, but Toroh had disappeared.
"Hurry!" exclaimed the Scientist. He still would not let them question
him. He unlashed the projector and they helped him lower it to the
ground. He leaped down after it, adjusting it, swinging it to bear down
upon the lower peak.
"We must hurry," he repeated. He was back on the cabin platform. "They
will be out of the cavern, firing upon us."
The Noths down there were gazing up at the plane; others were now
pouring out of the cavern entrance.
Fahn's projector was trained on the crater of the lower mountain. From
this greater height its depths were visible.
In the cabin of the plane the Scientist's arms went around his
daughters. "Good-by, my girls--for a little time," he whispered in their
own tongue.
They were frightened; suddenly Dee was crying. But he pushed them from
him. He would attack the cavern; they must all stay in the plane--rise
high--very high.
Something in the man's look, the command in his voice, struck them all
silent. They obeyed. He climbed down to the rock. The plane mounted
swiftly into the air.
The sun was above the eastern horizon; the sky was an inverted bowl of
blood. Beneath the plane Fahn's figure, standing beside his projector,
showed clear-cut against the black rock under him. At the base of the
cavern mountain Noths had appeared with apparatus. They were adjusting
it hurriedly.
A blue-white flash from Fahn's projector spat downward across the six
hundred feet and into the crater mouth. Thunder rolled out. Another
flash, another--until they became almost continuous. Far down in the
earth within the crater, the slumbering forces began to answer. A
rumbling sounded--a low, ominous muttering, pregnant with infinite
power. Steam hissed upward; a puff of smoke....
The plane had been ascending rapidly; it was thousands of feet up now.
Fahn's thunderbolts persisted, and at last the angered fires of the
earth were unleashed. The mountain seemed to split apart; the report was
deafening; flaming gases, cinders and ashes were hurled upward and
outward.
The main force of the explosion was sidewise toward the city, but even
so the plane barely avoided the torrent of molten rock and blazing gas
that mounted from below.
The city was engulfed in flames over which a heavy smoke hung like a
pall. A tremendous lake of viscous liquid fire lay where the peaks and
the cavern once had been. The earth was rumbling, shaking, splitting
apart. The scene was vague--dulled by a lurid red glare that struggled
with the blackness of the smoke.
A moment, and a rift appeared. The smoke seemed to part, roll aside.
Through the rift, the burning city showed for an instant clear and
distinct--the crowded city in which no single human or beast could have
remained alive.
Still not content, the earth was heaving over the whole western end of
the island. And from the sea a great tidal wave came rolling up over the
sinking land, hissing, quenching the fires, obscuring everything in a
cloud of steam. Like a mist, the steam presently dissipated. The turgid
waters lashed themselves into furious waves that gradually were stilled.
And then it was daylight, sullen red day, with only the wreckage on the
waters--charred fragments of bodies, thousands of them floating for
miles around--mute evidence of what had gone before.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Once again the plane hung like a shimmering ghost above the towering
piles of steel and masonry--New York City at the peak of its
civilization. For Azeela and Dee, it had been a brief trip of awe and
wonder; a trip northward through space and back through time.
After the cataclysm, they had stayed but a week back in Anglese City.
The entire western end of the island had sunk into the gulf, carrying
Toroh and his Noths and the Arans and their King to destruction. In
Anglese City a new government was formed--a democracy of the Bas, with
Mogruud at its head.
Rogers was impatient to return to his wife in New York City. Azeela and
Dee, left orphans, had no wish to stay. Unobtrusively as it had come,
the Frazia plane departed.
In the humming, glowing cabin of the plane the voyagers were waiting for
the dials to reach the time world for which they were headed. On one of
the side benches, the ghostlike figures of Loto and Azeela sat a little
apart from the others; they were talking softly as they gazed down
through the window beside them.
"You think Mogruud will make a good leader?" she asked. "My father would
have been so strong, so stern, but always just and fair...." Her eyes
had filled with tears.
He pressed her hand sympathetically. "I know, Azeela. But you mustn't
grieve. He gave his life for his people."
"Yes. And he said 'Good-by--for a little time.' Oh, Loto--I did not
realize then what he meant."
"He knew--someday--you would be with him again. And you will." His arm
went around her tenderly. "I shall always try to make you happy. I
promise it, Azeela. Always, as long as we live."
"Beloved," she murmured. "Beloved, who always understands."
Rogers had been talking to George and Dee. He left them to attend to the
motors. Dee was watching the scene beneath the plane; as they fled back
through the centuries the great city was melting away.
"Your city that we're going to," she said after a long silence. "George,
is it like this? Are we almost to its time now?"
"No," he laughed. "It's a very little, puny city I have to show you,
Dee. I used to think it was wonderful. But it's only a conceited
child--learning as fast as it can and thinking it knows everything. I
used to be like that myself. But this sort of trip changes one."
She did not answer.
"I'm glad you're coming back with us, Dee."
"Yes," she said abstractedly.
"Dee," he persisted out of another silence, "I wonder if you know how
happy it makes me to have you--here where we're going. I've wanted to
tell you for a long time--maybe you don't know how I feel. I--"
* * * * *
On this return journey, the plane had now reached the height of its time
velocity. The swiftly changing form of the city blurred the scene into a
confusion of shifting details, among which only the broadest
fundamentals were discernible. The northern section of Central Park
presently lay open. Then the great building that covered its southern
end melted into nothingness, and trees and water were in its stead.
George was at the dials. "One hundred years! We're almost into our own
century!"
Through decreasing intensities of the proton current, they slackened
their time velocity. The park, whitened with winter, turned green again
as the previous summer was reached. Soon the days separated from the
nights. The sun came up from the west, plunged swiftly across the sky,
and dropped into the east.
It was spring, but the retrogression soon brought winter again. A
January snowfall lay white beneath the naked trees of the park. But it
was autumn in a moment.
Rogers was watching the dials closely. Summer again; then spring. In one
of the brief periods of night he threw the switch to the first
intensity. The plane began drifting to the south. The dim stars were
swinging eastward in a murky sky. The city lights shone yellow.
The roof of the Scientific Club came into view among the buildings south
of the plane. Rogers threw off the current completely.
"Look, Dee!" cried George. "Look, Azeela! There it is at last! See the
board enclosure?"
* * * * *
An evening in March. In the large living room of the Banker's Park
Avenue apartment, a group of his friends were gathered. Dinner was over;
a butler was serving coffee and the men were lighting their cigars.
A woman and four men--all in evening dress--were sitting in a group;
mingled with their voices came the soft, limpid tones of a piano. It
stood in a secluded alcove--a grand piano of carved mahogany. On a bench
before its keyboard, a young man in a Tuxedo was playing. George. Dee
stood beside him, leaning against the instrument. She was gazing first
at the page of music with a puzzled frown, then at his fingers as they
roamed the keys, and then, in admiration, at his face.
On a high-back davenport before an open fireplace, Loto sat with Azeela.
There was an artificial black flower in her spun-gold hair; the mourning
custom of her time world. Her milk-white throat was bare, and the blue
of her dress was mirrored in her eyes. She was silent, staring into the
flames licking upward from the huge logs.
"That's very pretty music," she said finally. "So big an
instrument--this piano as you call it--you never would think one could
play it."
"Chopin," he answered. "A piece by Chopin. George plays Chopin mighty
well. Azeela, there is so much I have to show you. Just that one little
thing--Chopin, for instance. I want you to hear the music of some of the
great composers and pianists."
"And the opera," she prompted. "And you promised you would take me to a
theater."
"I will, of course. There are so many things for you to see. Why, it
will be just like a new world, a new life that you're just beginning,
Azeela."
"Yes," she murmured. "A new life in a new world. It seems like that
already."
"And wait till you ride in the subways! You'll be surprised how--"
But she shuddered. "I do not believe I want to do that. It would bring
back memory of the cavern...other things."
George and Dee left the piano and walked over to the fireplace. Azeela
moved over on the davenport. Loto stood up, but George shook his head.
"Thanks. Dee and I thought we'd try the window seat."
Across the room the Big Business Man, the Doctor, and the Banker were
demanding additional details from Rogers.
"That Toroh and his Noths were in the cavern at Orleen" the Banker said
gruffly. "Can't you keep the thing straight? I want to hear it
consecutively--not jumped around in this way."
Ensconced in the window seat, George and Dee gazed out at the yellow
lights of the city around them--a city so different from anything Dee
could have even imagined.
There was a soft, rose-shaded light beside the girl. George was not
looking out of the window, but at her. He had seen Dee in many costumes,
but never, he thought, was she so beautiful as right now.
A girl of his own time world. He had not realized that this was the way
he had always wanted her to look. Her dress, dropping to a few inches
above her ankles, was soft and clinging. Her black hair, like Azeela's,
was dressed high on her head. Like Azeela, too, she wore the dark
mourning flower. The soft light beside her cast a flush on her
milk-white throat and cheeks.
Feeling his gaze, she turned.
"You like the way Lylda has clothed me? It feels very strange."
"Yes," he said. "You look beautiful, Dee."
She turned back to the window in confusion. From below, the hum of the
city floated up to them; the raucous sirens of automobiles.
"Yes," he repeated. "I do like it very much, Dee."
Abruptly his arms were around her; he was kissing her.
"George! Some one will see us!"
"No," he protested. "No, they won't. Anyway suppose they do? I don't
care--do you?"
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