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Title: The man who mastered time

Author: Ray Cummings

Illustrator: Ed Valigursky

Release date: July 14, 2025 [eBook #76503]

Language: English

Original publication: New York, NY: Ace Books, 1929

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/76503

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 somewhere at sometime."
"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 swifty 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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