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Title: The time-raider

Author: Edmond Hamilton

Release Date: July 9, 2022 [eBook #68483]

Language: English

Produced by: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE TIME-RAIDER ***

# The TIME-RAIDER

## By EDMOND HAMILTON

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Weird Tales October, November December 1927 and January 1928.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

"He dangled helplessly in the thing's embrace."

CHAPTER 1

THE CANNELL MYSTERY

In beginning this account of our great adventure, it must be understood that I attempt no complete history of the matter. There will be gaps, many gaps, in the continuity of my story, for that story remains, after all, simply a record of my own contacts with the Raider, and with those people whose lives he entered and darkened. So that my tale here is necessarily one of personal experience, except for a few places where I have summarized general knowledge.

Besides this history of what I may term the more human side of our experience, Dr. Lantin has dealt with its scientific aspects in his epochal work on time-displacement and in our joint monograph on electronic acceleration. Although several salient features of the affair have been omitted, for reasons that will figure later, yet the two works mentioned and the present record give a broad outline of the whole matter, from the beginning.

From the beginning! But where was that beginning? Ages back in the past, or ages ahead in the future? To place the true beginning of it all would be to know much about it that we do not know. So I start at the point where the matter definitely entered my own life and world. And that point, that event, is the Cannell Mystery, as it was then termed.

You will find it in the newspapers of the day, the bare facts wrapped in clouds of speculation. Professor Ferdinand Cannell, of New York, disappearing inexplicably in the jungles of Indo-China, vanishing from the world of men as though blotted out.

At that time, Cannell was undoubtedly one of the very greatest of living archeologists. Nominally attached to a great New York museum, he was really a free-lance student and excavator, roaming about the world in search of proof for his numerous and startling theories. His first fame had been established by his researches into the Dravidian remnants in lower India, and he had followed that brilliant achievement by another as great, the monumental Warren Society investigation into the walled ruins of Zimbabwe, in South Africa.

With two such successes behind him, Cannell then boldly proposed to make the subject of his next researches the mighty ruined city of Angkor, in the heart of the Cambodian jungle. Angkor has long been a colossal challenge to modern wisdom, a gigantic, towered metropolis of gray stone, once noisy with the life of swarming millions, but silent and dead now, unutterably dead. A thousand years the huge ruin has lain in the jungle, wrapped in silence, inhabited only by snakes and bats and tigers. Its past, the history of its builders, has been a vast enigma always, which Cannell had determined to solve.

So he sailed for Hongkong, and Dr. Lantin and I were on the dock when his ship cleared. My own acquaintance with Cannell was recent, but Lantin and he had been close friends for years. Their friendship dated back to their university days, and had continued after they diverged into different lines of work, Cannell's taking him to the remnants of past peoples, while Lantin's interest in radio-chemistry had brought him to the great New York laboratories of the Downe Foundation, with myself as his laboratory assistant.

For all their warm friendship, there was a strong contrast between the two men. Cannell was the younger by a few years, a blond giant of thirty-five or thirty-six, with snapping blue eyes and a habit of talking with machine-gun rapidity. Altogether the antithesis of Dr. Lantin, who was dark, medium of stature and quiet of manner, with friendly gray eyes that could take on the glint of steel, at times.

Together we had waved farewell to Cannell and a few weeks later had received a cable from Saigon, in Indo-China, briefly announcing his arrival. He had then proceeded up the Mekong River into the wilderness of the interior, and finally over a network of winding creeks to Angkor itself. The latter stage of the journey was made in canoes, some seven or eight natives poling along Cannell and his outfit, but no other white man was in the party.

No more was heard of the venture until a week later, when the natives of Cannell's party straggled into a little up-river village, without him. They explained, volubly, that on the third night after reaching Angkor, the white man had been seized and carried away by the devils of the ruins. None of them had actually seen this but they had heard his scream, from a distance, and when they conquered their fears enough to search the ruins, had found no trace of him. It was clear that the powerful spirits of the dead city were angered, and had snatched away the white man who dared to disturb them, so the terror-stricken natives had at once fled from the place with all speed.

On hearing this tale, several French planters made their way to Angkor, forcing the unwilling natives to accompany them, but they found no trace of Cannell, who seemed to have vanished completely. His tent and outfit were found, quite undisturbed, which tended to corroborate the natives' story regarding their sudden flight.

So when the little search-party returned, it was advanced as its opinion that Cannell had been seized and carried away by a roving tiger, his scream and disappearance being interpreted by the natives as a visitation of demons, since they were known to be extremely superstitious in regard to the dead city. While this explanation was faulty enough, it seemed the only rational one available, and was accepted by the authorities at Saigon.

And so the matter rested. Cannell's only relatives had been distant connections, and except for Lantin he had had scarcely one intimate friend, so after the first shock of surprize his passing caused little stir. The newspapers speculated briefly, and the archeological journals expressed regrets, referring to his splendid achievements. But that was all. New stars soon rose to fill his place in the scientific firmament. And Cannell was forgotten.

Time drove on. Days ... months ... years....

CHAPTER 2

CANNELL'S STORY

I pass to that June night, over three years after Cannell's disappearance, when my own part in the drama may be said to begin. Lantin and I were working late in our laboratory at the Foundation, when we were interrupted by the telephone bell. We had reached a critical point in our experiment, and as Lantin hurried over to the instrument, I heard him muttering threats to have it removed. I did not catch his first answer, but after a minute's silence he flung out a single word, in a strange voice, that startled me.

"Cannell!"

At once I hastened over to his side, and as I did so, he turned toward me a face eloquent of astonishment, still holding the receiver to his ear. "I'll be there in ten minutes!" he shouted into the instrument, then hung up and turned to face my excited questions.

"Good God, Wheeler," he cried, "it's Cannell!"

"What?" I asked, stupidly, dumfounded by the assertion.

"Cannell," he repeated, "at my apartment. He says to meet him there at once. Where could he have been, these three years?"

But I was already reaching for my hat and a moment later we were on the street outside, hailing a cruising taxi. Lantin's bachelor home was in the west 70's, a little roof-bungalow set on top of a big apartment building, and we sped up the avenue toward it with the highest legal speed.

Lantin did not speak at all, on the way. He was plainly highly excited, but my own agitation was fast calming. After all, I thought, the thing might be a stupid practical joke, though an unforgivable one to perpetrate. Still, if Lantin had recognized the voice—Before I could ask him about that, the cab stopped, and we hastened into the building, to the elevator.

When the cage stopped at its highest point in the building, Lantin was instantly out and striding eagerly across the foyer of his apartment. He flung the door open, then stopped short. Standing behind him, I peered over his shoulder into the room inside. There was a man there, a man who jumped to his feet and came quickly toward us. It was Cannell, I saw at once. Cannell—but changed.

His face was drawn and haggard, and instead of his former impatient, challenging expression, it bore the impress of an unearthly fear. A fear that showed even in the tense, half-crouching position of his body, as he came across the room toward us, searching our faces with his burning eyes. He came closer, gripped Lantin's hands, struggled to speak.

"Thank God you came, Lantin!" he cried, chokingly.

We stood speechless, and with a sudden reaction of feeling he stepped back and sank wearily into a chair, running his hand tiredly over his eyes. Lantin found his voice then for the first time.

"Where have you been, man?" he shouted. "Three years! For God's sake, Cannell, what happened to you? Where were you all that time?"

Cannell gazed up at us, strangely, somberly, a brooding darkness settling on his face. "All that time?" he repeated, musingly. "Three years? Three years to you, perhaps, but not to me. But not to me."

A sudden glance flashed between Lantin and myself. Was the man mad? Did that account for his strange disappearance?

Cannell saw and interpreted that glance. "I know what you're thinking," he told us, "and sometimes I think you're right, that I really am crazy. I would be better off if I were," he concluded, darkly. But before we could comment on his strange words, his mood changed abruptly and he motioned us to chairs beside him, bending toward us in sudden eagerness.

"But you two," he said, "I can tell you what I saw, what happened. I could not tell others—no! They would never have believed, and it may be that even you will not. But it is all truth—truth, I tell you!" And on the last words his voice rose to a high-pitched, ragged scream. Then, mastering his shattered nerves with an effort, he went on.

"You know why I went to Angkor, what I planned to do there. I went up the Mekong by steamer, then hired natives to take me the rest of the way in canoes. Up winding waterways they took me, through narrow creeks and old canals, and out over a great lake, in which a forest lay submerged. Then up another creek and finally by bullock-cart to Angkor itself.

"There is no use trying to describe the place to you. I have seen most of the great ruins of the past and the great buildings of the present, but Angkor towers above them all, the most magnificent thing ever built by the hands of men. It is a vast city of carven gray stone, a city whose lacelike sculptured walls and crenelated battlements have looked down for a thousand years on nothing but the jungle that hems it in, and the silence and death that lie incarnate in itself. Literally acres of ruined buildings, square miles of crumbling stone, and set in the heart of that great mass of remnants, the palace, Angkor Thom, a great ruin whose courts and walls and terraces lie as desolate and broken as the city around them.

"A deep moat surrounds the city, and out over it leads a great causeway, built of huge blocks of stone, a wide, level highway that leads through the jungle for a short distance to the supreme glory of the place, Angkor Wat, the gigantic temple. Unlike the palace and city, the temple has not fallen into ruins but remains nearly the same as it must have been when the city was living and splendid. It towers up to a tremendous height, its dark, frowning walls looming far above the green jungle around it. When I walked into it for the first time, the mighty grandeur of the place was so awesome and compelling that I felt presumptuous—ashamed. The stifling, brooding silence seemed to flow down on me like a tangible wave, humbling me, dwarfing me.

"I spent my first two days in a superficial exploration of the palace and city, wandering through the miles of crumbling streets and fallen buildings. But I pass over that to the third day, when I started my examination of Angkor Wat. All of that day I spent in the temple, alone, for the natives feared to venture into it. Along its marching walls life-sized figures were carved in exquisite relief, warriors, kings and elephants, battles and ceremonies, literally miles of lavished, delicate sculptures. I lingered with them, absorbed, until the sun had set and the swift tropical darkness was descending, then abruptly came to a realization of my surroundings and started for my camp.

"Through the deepening shadows of the temple's halls I went, stumbling here and there against fallen stones, and finally came with a slight sensation of relief to the stone-paved courtyard in front of the edifice, from which the great causeway led back to the city and to my camp. It was quite dark, now, but I stopped for a moment there, since the moon was just rising and the scene was one of perfect beauty—the calm moonlight flooding over the silent ruins, the dark, looming walls behind me, the black shadows that lay across the silver-lit courtyard. For minutes I stood there, fascinated, but finally turned to go.

"I walked across the courtyard, then stopped abruptly and looked up. A strange sound had come to my ears from above, a sound that was like distant, shrill whistling. It hung for a moment, faint and eery, then grew much louder, like a score of men whistling piercingly in different keys, varied, tumultuous. I half expected to see birds passing above, but there were none. The air had been heavy and still for hours, but now a puff of wind smote me, a little, buffeting breeze that changed suddenly to a hard wind and then to a raging gale that whipped the sun-helmet off my head and nearly twisted me from my feet. And with that sudden change, the whistling chorus above had changed also, had waxed to a raging tumult of wind-shrieks, piercing, tempestuous! Abruptly, now, there flashed into being in the air forty feet above me—a thing!

"It was a swirling mass of dense gray vapor, looking in the moonlight much like a drifting cloud of steam. But this smoky mass was alive with motion of its own, spinning and interlacing, and from it came the shrill chorus and the raging winds. And, too, I saw that somewhere inside those shifting mists glowed three little circles of green light, one set above the other two, three tiny, radiant orbs whose brilliance stood out even in the mellow moonlight.

"Abruptly, as I stared up at the thing, those three circles of vivid green luminescence changed to purple, no less brilliant. And at the same instant, there came a change to the spinning mists around them. Those mists seemed to contract, to shrink, to solidify, and then they had vanished and in place of them hung a thing of solid matter, a mass of what seemed to be gray, resilient flesh, and at the center of which hung steadily the little triangle of purple lights. Nor was this solid mass any more unchanging than the misty one had been, for it seemed to have no one form, flashing with incredible speed through a myriad half-glimpsed shapes. It folded and unfolded, contracted, elongated, spun and writhed, a protean changing of shapes that my eyes could scarcely follow. But always the three little orbs of purple hung unchanged at its center.

"Scarcely more than a minute had elapsed since the thing first had appeared above me, and now as I gazed up at it, stupefied, I sensed dimly that the whistling sounds and the winds had died away. Then, before my dazed mind could fully comprehend the strangeness of the creature that hung in the air above me, that creature floated swiftly down beside me, so near that I could have touched it. And out from the changing, inchoate mass of it reached a long, twisting tentacle, straight toward me!

"I staggered weakly back, and screamed. But that arm circled and gripped me, then pulled me in toward the central mass of the thing. It was cold to the touch, an utter, numbing cold, like the chill of something from outer space, utterly alien to our earth and life. That cold shock stabbed through me and paralyzed me, and I dangled helplessly in the thing's grip, while at its center, seen, somehow, through the mass of the thing, the triangle of purple orbs seemed to watch me.

"All this had been enacted in a few moments, and now the inexplicable thing that held me began to rise again, to float up some distance above the ground. It still gripped me tightly, and now the purple orbs changed again to brilliant green, while again the solid, twisting mass of the thing changed, expanding and swirling, until it was again the drifting, spinning mass of vapor which I had first glimpsed. I floated in those mists, gripped as tightly as ever by their unseen holds, and now began again the shrill, piercing whistling, from all around me, while a rising torrent of wind roared around the thing that held me.

"At the same time, glancing up, I saw the moon racing across the sky above with incredible speed, bounding across the zenith like a shooting star and sinking down in the west. Hardly had it disappeared when there was an up-gush of gray light from the eastern horizon, and then the sun leapt up, red and flaming, and hurtled across the sky with even greater speed. I caught a glimpse of Angkor beneath, bathed in tropical sunlight. And a half-minute before it had been deepest night!

"A deadly sickness seized me, and while I strove against it the sun raced down into the west and it was night again, with the shining moon again flashing across the sky with nightmare speed. Again it disappeared and again the sun sprang up and rocketed headlong across the zenith. And for the first time there came to my numbed brain some realization of what was happening.

"This inexplicable thing that held me—this being of changing mists and vapors—was taking me on through time. It was whirling me on into the future, with some undreamed-of power of its own.

"The sun was racing across the sky with comet speed, now, a streak of golden light, and day and night followed each other like the flipped leaves of a book, faster and faster. In a few minutes they had become indistinguishable, had merged into a green twilight in which I could see but dimly the ground below. And even as we thus sped on through time, with ever-increasing speed, the thing that held me began to move through space also, and I caught a glimpse of ruined Angkor sliding away from beneath me.

"The thundering roar of the winds grew even louder as we moved simultaneously through time and space. I caught fragmentary glimpses of land flashing by beneath, with tremendous speed. And all the while I hung there in the grip of the thing, held by the smoky mist-spirals, swinging helplessly around and around the three circles of radiant green light at the thing's center.

"With a sudden surge of desperate courage, I tried to move in the remorseless grip that prisoned me, endeavored to raise my right hand to my belt, putting all my force into the effort. Slowly my hand came up, inch by inch, struggling against the unseen grip of iron that grasped me. It came up, with infinite slowness, until it was high enough to grasp the automatic in my belt-holster. I clasped the pistol's stock and threw off the safety catch, then, with another great effort, swung up the pistol until it pointed directly at the triangle of radiant orbs, and pulled the trigger.

"The report snapped out thinly above the thundering of the winds. And instantly the grip of the unseen, vaporous arms around me relaxed, releasing me utterly, and I plunged down through space.

"Down I fell, all of a hundred feet, and struck water, sinking down and down into it, ever more slowly, then hurtling up to the surface again, gasping for air. It was night, and above was no sign of the thing that had held me, so I judged that it had gone on into time. The water I swam in was salt, and I knew from the long, easy swells that I was in the open sea. There was no shore in sight, nor any sign of one, so I wasted no effort in swimming but strove only to keep afloat.

"For over two hours I floated, treading water easily, and had just decided that it would be best to give over my useless efforts and sink down to rest and peace, when a spark of light showed on the horizon, a spark too low to be a star. It grew larger, coming nearer, until I could make it out as one of the upper lights of a ship. In the course it was following, it would pass me at some distance, so I struck out in a direction that would bring me across its path.

"My hours in the water had told on my strength, though, and my progress was so slow that the ship had nearly passed me when I came within hailing distance of it. There were few lights on its decks, and no answer to my frantic cries. But when it had passed a little beyond me, I heard voices shouting and the rattle of a boat's tackle. I knew then that I was saved.

"The ship proved to be an oil-tanker, bound from Hongkong to Galveston. And as I found out, it had picked me up in the open Pacific, at a spot some three hundred miles east of Manila. The thing that held me had carried me that far, in space.

"I represented myself as the sole survivor of a wrecked tramp-steamer, and was not questioned overmuch. I dared not tell my story to those sailors, lest they prison me as a mad-man. I asked them a few discreet questions, though, and received an answer to one that staggered me. For I was no longer in my own year, the year in which I had been seized there at Angkor. I was in a year three years later! Three years! And it had seemed only a few minutes to me. I had been carried on, that far, into time.

"I took my place as one of the crew, on the voyage to Galveston, and worked my passage, though I was hard put to it to uphold my assertion that I was a seaman. We sailed on, forging across the Pacific and heading toward Panama. A night came when we were only a few hundred miles west of the canal. I was stretched in a forecastle bunk, vainly trying to sleep away the haunting fears that still filled me. The night was quite calm, with only the throb of the engines and the slap of waves on the hull breaking the silence. Then, faint and far, but sounding to me like the thunder of doom, came a distant, eery whistling, a piercing chorus that I knew well.

"It grew, it waxed to a tumult of roaring winds, while I lay crouched in the bunk, trembling. It seemed to swoop down on the deck above, and there rang out a great scream, a shriek of horror that burned into my brain. The roaring winds began to lessen, to draw away. I ran up onto the deck and looked wildly around. To the north, a little above and beyond the ship, was a hazy mass that I glimpsed vaguely in the moonlight, and that suddenly disappeared, still heading straight north. And the whistling chorus of winds died away.

"I sank down on the deck, sick at heart. For I knew what I had seen, knew that half-glimpsed thing to be the thing that had seized me at Angkor, and from which I had freed myself. Two of the watch, the only men on deck at the time, were missing, and all around me the sailors who had poured up onto the deck were speculating as to their disappearance, and the cause of the sudden, roaring winds. But I told them nothing. I knew well that the thing that had snatched me away before had come again to seize me, tracking me down, God knows how, perhaps by some mystic mark or brand that its grip had sealed upon me. I knew that it had come for me, and not finding me, had taken the two men on deck at the time. But I said nothing.

"It was finally agreed by the ship's officers to report the event as the loss of two sailors, swept overboard by a sudden gale. It went down in the ship's log, thus, and we sailed on. But the crew was fearful, whispering....

"The ship came safe to Galveston, though. The wages due me as a seaman were enough to get me to New York. I came at once to your apartment, and the rest you know.

"What is that thing that seized me, that enigmatic Raider through time? God alone knows, if even He is aware of its existence. But I know that it swept down on me through time and seized me, that it flashed with me through those three years in almost as few minutes. And I know that it has marked me for its victim and will come for me again, maybe in pure revenge for that shot of mine that released me.

"Where is there refuge from a thing like that, that can speed through time and space at will? Twice I have escaped it, but I fear I can not escape it again, when it comes to claim me. And sooner or later, it will come!"

CHAPTER 3

THE RAIDER

A silence hung over the room when Cannell ceased to speak. I drew a long breath and turned to Lantin, my brain awhirl, but already he was calmly questioning the archeologist.

"This thing you call the Raider," he began; "I don't understand your description very well, Cannell. Do you mean that it was just misty gas or vapor, able to change into solid form at will, and change back? And, withal, a living, intelligent thing?"

"I mean just that," Cannell told him. "The thing is undoubtedly a sentient, living being of extraordinary intelligence and powers, able to assume either a solid or gaseous form. The phenomenon of the three shining orbs, changing from green to purple and back, is connected with that change in form, I assume. And at the same time I believe that triangle of the three lights to be the center of the thing's consciousness and intelligence, its brain and sense organs.

"Such a thing is not impossible, Lantin," he went on. "You and I, intelligent, living creatures, are composed of solid and liquid elements, but there is no real reason why life and intelligence could not be present in an entirely gaseous creature. And as I believe, this creature only assumes the gaseous form when it is traveling through time. The winds that accompany its passage through time are undoubtedly caused by the fact that as it flashes on into a different time, it leaves in the atmosphere a sudden vacuum, and the surrounding atmosphere rushing in to fill this vacuum causes the gusts of wind."

"But where could the thing come from?" Lantin objected. "Where was it taking you?"

Cannell's face darkened. "I believe that it comes from the far future," he said slowly. "Who can say what manner of creatures will inhabit earth a million years from now? And it may be that this thing, a being of some future age, has discovered a way to travel through time and now sweeps back at will, snatching up luckless humans in every age. The purpose of these raids, who can say? Maybe for victims or slaves or food even. It is all a mystery, even to myself. One thing alone is clear to me, that the thing does come from some future time, since it was speeding back into the future with me when I escaped it."

I found a chance to interject a query. "But how?" I asked. "That's what interests me, the method of traveling through time at will. I've heard theories on that subject, but this actual accomplishment, this power to race into past or future—have you no idea as to how that is done, Cannell?"

He considered before answering. "The transformation into a gaseous form when time-traveling is a significant detail," he said. "I have an inkling of what power the Raider utilizes to speed through time. I was in the thing's grip only for a few minutes, but I noticed some things, even in that short time, that set me thinking, afterward. I formed a rough theory concerning the method of time-traveling, and on the voyage home I jotted down some notes concerning it, intending to investigate the matter later."

Reaching into an inside pocket, he brought forth a little packet of soiled envelopes and folded sheets. "My own idea about it—" he began, then suddenly broke off speaking and sat motionless, listening tensely. Astonished, we listened likewise, but the only sound was the far dim roar of the city below, and the curtains at the open French windows, billowing gently in a soft breeze. From an adjoining room came the faint chime of a clock.

Relief dropped on Cannell's face, and its tense outlines relaxed. "I thought I heard—" he murmured, then abruptly stopped and jumped to his feet, his eyes wild. My heart gave a sudden great throb, for through the open windows came the sound of a high, thin whistling, far and faint and crystal-clear, an eery chorus of piercing knife-blades of sound, that shrilled out louder and louder, swelling to a roaring tumult of wind-sounds. The window-curtains whipped up madly, in a buffeting gale, as through the windows came a breath of icy air.

Abruptly the lights of the room went out, plunging us into darkness. There was a shout from Lantin: "The switch!" and I heard him running toward it. Outside the wind-shrieks had risen to a thundering bellow, and there were cries and running feet, somewhere in the building below us. A dark, erect figure appeared in the open window, silhouetted blackly against the brilliant lights of the distant streets. It poised there a moment, then passed out onto the outside roof, walking stiffly and unhumanly, like a puppet pulled by unseen strings.

"Cannell!" I cried; "get back!" I raced across the room toward the window, and in the darkness collided with Lantin, who was making for the same objective. We staggered, recovered our balance, rushed together to the window, and then recoiled.

Standing at the roof's edge, darkly outlined against the city's splendid brilliance, was Cannell, and down upon him from the upper air was dropping—what? A changing, inchoate shape of gray, at the center of which burned a little triangle of three radiant circles of purple light, one above the other two. In the moment that the thing swept down on Cannell, the roaring winds hushed for an instant, and we saw a writhing, shapeless arm reach out from the central mass, grip Cannell and draw him in. The gray mass hung for a moment, then the purple lights flashed into green, and at the same time the thing had changed into a swirling cloud of dense gray vapor, the three green orbs at its center, and the roaring winds shouting again with renewed power. The thing rose swiftly above the roof, holding Cannell, hung for a moment above us, a tornado of whistling winds, then vanished like a clicked-off cinema scene.

But as it disappeared before our eyes, as its raging, piercing winds died away to a mere whisper, out from the empty air where it had been rang an eery, fading cry, Cannell's voice, coming faintly down through time.

"Lantin! Follow—follow—"

Then the last word, coming dimly to us like a ghostly echo out of space and time, but with a world of fear and horror in it:

"The Raider!"

CHAPTER 4

INTO TIME

"And you really mean to try it?" I asked incredulously.

"I do," Lantin quietly replied. "I am going to find that secret of time-traveling and go after Cannell."

I stared at him doubtfully. A day had passed since we had seen Cannell seized by the misty shape of horror he called the Raider, and now, in the same room in Lantin's apartment, we were discussing what we had seen. After the first hours of dazed terror following the seizure of Cannell, I had fallen to sleep on a couch in that room, and when I woke in late afternoon, the whole thing seemed only a tortured nightmare.

"It seems impossible," I told Lantin. "We saw Cannell taken, yes, and we saw—the Raider. But after all, we have no proof that he was taken into time. That thing, the Raider, may have merely thrown a veil of invisibility around itself, and thus vanished. A crazy idea, I admit, but not as wild as this one of time-traveling."

"You do not believe your own words, Wheeler," answered my friend. "You heard Cannell's story, and in your heart you believe it. I believe it utterly, for it is the only way of accounting for that three-year disappearance. You noticed that Cannell seemed no older, after those three years? And then, as further proof, came the thing he described to us, the Raider itself."

"We saw that," I admitted, "but all argument aside, Lantin, this idea of moving through time at will seems absurd. Of course, I've heard fantastic ideas on the subject, but how could anyone really tamper with time, the most unalterable and remorseless quantity in life?"

Lantin considered me before replying. "Such an achievement is beyond our present science," he conceded, "but it may be quite possible to the science of the future. You see my meaning? Remember, Wheeler, it is only within the last few years that our science has learned anything at all about time. Previously it was considered one of the last mysteries, never to be investigated or explained. But now, with the recent work of Einstein and Lorentz and Minkowski, we are beginning to learn something about this time. We have learned, for instance, that it is only another dimension of space itself, and that the four dimensions of any object are thus length, breadth, thickness, and duration.

"We know now that time is not fixed and unchangeable, but relative and varying, that the time of Venus is not the time of earth, and that the time of Sirius is different from either. And remember, all of this we have learned within the last few years.

"What, then, may not be learned in the next thousand years, the next ten thousand, the next million? Is it not reasonable to suggest that men will advance farther and farther in their knowledge concerning this elusive thing, time, until they finally will advance so far that they will be able to control time, to travel in it at will, and thus sweep back from their own day, back to our present age? Is it not possible that men can do this, in some century to come?"

"That men can do this?" I repeated. "Men, you say, but the thing we saw was no man, Lantin. That thing, the Raider, was very far from human."

"It is so," he admitted, "but that proves nothing. The Raider may be some thing of the far future, either a strange product of ages of change and evolution, or a visitor from another planet, racing through time and snatching up victims in every age and land. You remember that Cannell was seized at Angkor? And a thousand years ago, Angkor was a mighty city, and who knows but the Raider was speeding back to the days of Angkor's life and greatness, when it chanced on Cannell there? It is a strange business, Wheeler; but one thing I am certain of, and that is that the Raider does come from some time far in the future, and that it has taken Cannell back with it to that time."

"But the method," I insisted, "the method of traveling through time? How is that accomplished? Cannell spoke of a theory he had concerning it. And he gave you those notes—"

"I've examined those notes," Lantin said, "and rough and fragmentary as they are, I think that in them lies the secret of time-traveling. Cannell knew something of modern science, Wheeler, and the conclusions he drew concerning the Raider are significant. It was his theory that as time is the fourth dimension of matter, there is no basic reason why we can't move at will along that dimension. We can move as we wish in the other three, up-and-down, right-and-left, and back-and-forward, so why not in the fourth, that is, sooner-or-later?

"And his idea, as expressed in his notes, was that the Raider's movement along the time-dimension was based on electronic acceleration. You know the electronic system as well as I, and realize that the smallest division of matter, the atom, is nothing but a number of electrons, or particles of electricity, revolving around a nucleus. Cannell believed, and I think he was right, that that movement of electrons is the basis of the movement along the time-dimension.

"To make you understand that, let me take an example. Suppose all motion on earth stopped entirely, so that there was not the least bit of visible motion in earth or heavens. Sun, moon, stars, ships, clocks, trains, rivers, people, every form of motion stopping completely, so that the earth was a completely motionless world. Then would it not be a timeless world also? In other words, without change there would be no such thing as time, for time depends on and is measured by change. So that all movement along the fourth or time-dimension is intimately related to movement along the other three or space-dimensions.

"It is exactly the same with a single, isolated object. Take a metal ball, for instance. It moves steadily along the time-dimension, from the past toward the future, only because the electrons that compose it are constantly moving along the space-dimensions, are constantly revolving around their nucleus, at the same unvarying speed. If you stopped that revolving of electrons, the ball of metal would become static, timeless, would cease to move along the time-dimension. But suppose instead of stopping the electronic movement, you accelerated it, speeded it up? Then the ball of metal whose electronic activity was thus accelerated would move on through time faster. Everything around it would still move along the time-dimension at the same rate, but it would be going faster, would speed on into the future, ahead of the things around it. And the more its electronic motion was accelerated, the farther into the future it would go.

"In the same way, if the electronic motion was reversed, the metal ball would go backward along the time-dimension, would speed back into the past. Thus you see how such a principle could be applied practically and enable one to speed into past or future at will, simply by accelerating or reversing the motion of the electrons making up his vehicle, or car."

"It seems reasonable," I admitted, "but the difficulty remains, for how could the movement of electrons be thus accelerated or reversed at will? Why, no man has ever even seen an electron, or ever will, they're so infinitesimally tiny. Then how affect their speeds, their directions?"

"You mention a difficulty," Lantin replied, "but it could be overcome, Wheeler. As you say, no man has ever seen an electron, but for all that, men have done some strange things with electrons. They have shot them through films of water-vapor and have thus been able to record their speeds and courses, without seeing the actual electrons. And just recently, an American scientist was able to change the course of electronic motion entirely, and shoot a stream of electrons in any direction at will, the so-called cathode rays. When that has been done, it doesn't seem altogether impossible to change their motion in another way, by accelerating or reversing it."

"But there's another thing, Lantin," I said; "even though you achieved the impossible and found a way of time-traveling, how would you find Cannell? How could you find him, without knowing what age or what place the Raider has taken him to? It seems like hunting for a needle in a haystack, a thousand times magnified in difficulty."

Without answering, Lantin went to a cabinet and brought forth a big globe, which he placed on the table before me. "I have a theory on that, too," he said. "Note the lines I've drawn on this globe," he added, indicating some long black pencil-lines that had been drawn on the round surface in the region of the Pacific Ocean.

"Cannell was seized at Angkor, as we know, and he was dropped in the open Pacific at a point a few hundred miles east of Manila. I have marked that point with a dot here, for Cannell learned the latitude and longitude of the spot and jotted it down. Now is it not reasonable to suppose that when the Raider dropped Cannell, through the pain or surprize of his shot, it was progressing in a straight line toward its own base, or home, or lair? Of course, it was moving through time also, but in space it was probably heading straight toward its home. So if we draw a straight line from Angkor to this dot, on the globe, and then continue that line straight across the globe, it's reasonable to assume that somewhere along that continued line is the Raider's home.

"Now, you heard Cannell say that when the thing came to the ship and fled away with the two sailors it seized, it was heading due north when it vanished from sight. So from this dot west of Panama, representing the ship's position, I have drawn another line straight north. You see, the same reasoning applies here, for the thing would again head straight toward its lair with its victims. The two lines cross each other, as you see, in southern Illinois. And if my theory is correct, somewhere near that point of crossing is the Raider's home, though in what age I do not know. So if one could find the secret of time-traveling, and speed into the future, hovering near that spot, there is a chance that you would find the Raider—and his victims. It is a long chance, of course, but the only one."

I was silent, pondering the things he had said. But I felt the question in his eyes, and sensed his appeal before he voiced it.

"And you, Wheeler, will you help me? Together we can do this, can find this secret of time-traveling and go after Cannell, follow him as he cried for me to do. I know that he was not your close friend, as he was mine, but I am asking you to help, nevertheless, for you are the only one I can go to for aid. Who would credit the thing we saw, if I told it? But you saw, and you know, you understand. And if we could work on this together—"

Without replying, I stepped to the window and looked out, inwardly struggling for an answer. While we talked, night had fallen, and again the brilliant lights of the city had blossomed, like burgeoning flowers of flame. A day had passed since we had seen Cannell seized, from this same window. Just twenty-four hours!

I must have spoken my thought aloud, for Lantin, who had come up and was standing beside me, repeated it. "Just twenty-four hours—to us, Wheeler. But how long to Cannell, I wonder? Where is he tonight, do you think; what thousands, what tens of thousands of years ahead? And wondering if we will come after him, if we will save him—"

He stopped, but the thought persisted. Where was Cannell, now? Caught in some web of utter evil, far in the future, some unholy lair of that hellish thing, the Raider? I remembered the fear on Cannell's face, the fear in my own heart when the Raider had flashed down on us. Could I venture against such a creature, even though we found the way to cross time? Would I dare to pit myself against a being like that?

There at the window I battled my own fear, and when I finally turned, it was to extend my hand to Lantin.

"I'm with you," I told him shortly; "if we can discover the secret of the Raider's power, we'll follow Cannell—into time!"

CHAPTER 5

THE BUILDING OF THE TIME-CAR

It is not my intention to relate here the details of the work that occupied our attention in the following weeks. It has been dealt with at length in two technical treatises by Lantin and myself. The theoretical side of our work has been very fully discussed in those two books, but the concrete details are purposely slurred over. The most valuable part of our achievement, the time-wave itself, is hardly mentioned in them.

There is a reason for this, and that reason is the firm intention of Dr. Lantin and myself not to impart any information that would enable anyone to duplicate our own experiment. Thus it is of necessity that parts of this present record are vague and indefinite.

I may say, though, unquestionably, that without the notes that were left us by Cannell, we could never have achieved the success we did achieve. Those notes, brief and unsatisfactory as they were, were yet enough to set our feet on the right path, in our quest of the time-traveling secret. To us, then, the problem was one of accelerating electronic activity, and all our experiments were directed toward that goal.

Fortunately, Lantin had virtually a free hand at the Foundation, and we were able to use the matchless resources of its great laboratories to further our quest. Working constantly together and maintaining complete secrecy regarding the object of our experiments, we sought for some force capable of controlling the movement and speed of electrons, at will.

The weeks dragged by, and we seemed no nearer success than ever. And at the Foundation, some curiosity was being evinced regarding our work, which ill-fitted with our desires. We had made trial of every form of vibration, it seemed, and all without success, for none affected the electronic movement in the way we wished. In the end, it was by a combination of electro-magnetic waves and light rays that we finally achieved success.

I say "we," but it was Lantin's triumph. He had the inspiration to combine high-frequency Hertzian vibrations and light-rays, merging the two dissimilar vibrations into a single wave, which we called "the time wave" and which had power to affect the very electronic structure of matter, all electronic movement within its radius being stimulated and accelerated by it. And with it, we proved the correctness of Cannell's theory, for when we turned the wave upon small objects on the laboratory table, they vanished, reappearing a few seconds later, having been driven into the future for those few seconds by the force of the time-wave.

By reversing the action of the wave, the electronic movement was reversed also, and thus the basis of our needs was found and we had a force that could sweep all things in its radius into past or future at will. Then it was that Lantin began to speak of a car, a car containing a time-wave projector powerful enough to convey the car and all its occupants into past or future. It was vitally necessary, he thought, that such a car should be able to move in space, as well as time, and to acquire this power we had recourse to a discovery accidentally made in the course of our experiments.

In our efforts to change the movement of electrons, we had found that when a stream of them was shot out in a concentrated ray, in any one direction, it produced an invisible but powerful repulsion. It was on this fact that Lantin relied to move our car in space, directing electron-streams toward the ground to raise and hold us in space, and directing other rays obliquely down toward earth, to move the car from side to side in any direction.

The work went on. Six weeks after the seizure of Cannell, our car was nearing completion, and a strange-appearing vehicle it was. It was a short, thick cylinder of steel, tapering to a point at each end, its greatest diameter some five feet and with a total length of fifteen, from point to point. Windows of heavy glass were set at regular intervals along its length, and entrance into the car's interior was through a circular door or manhole in its upper surface, the car being quite air-tight when this was closed.

Inside, the cylinder's bottom was flat-decked and covered with upholstery, since the small diameter of the cylinder made it necessary for us to either sit or lie on that floor, when operating the car. The time-wave apparatus, covered by a metal shield, was placed in the fore end of the cylinder, with the mechanism that produced the repulsion ray beside it. A small, square switch-board held the centered controls of both these.

In the back end of the car was an oxygen-producing apparatus, which gave us independence of outside air for some hours, though normally our car was intended to be ventilated from the outside. A small heater held place beside this, and it was our intention to place what equipment we took with us in that end of the car.

Complete, the car weighed several thousand pounds. We had kept to secrecy in the making of it, having the main shell and other parts of it made for us by different firms, and assembling them in a room of Lantin's apartment. The actuating mechanisms we installed ourselves, and finally the car lay complete on the roof of the building, secured from prying eyes or hands by a padlocked cover of heavy wood.

One trial we made of the car's abilities, testing its power to move in space. Waiting until darkness concealed our trial, we entered the car and rose easily some five hundred feet above the city, the heavy car easily upheld and moved by the powerful repulsion rays. Then, circling once or twice, Lantin pointed the car east and opened up the power. A whistling gale rose outside as we rocketed across the Atlantic with tremendous speed, attaining a velocity of almost five hundred miles an hour, speeding through the atmosphere like a pointed bullet. We made no trial of the time-wave apparatus, postponing that until our real start, and returned to the roof of Lantin's apartment building without being sighted.

In a few days after that test flight, we had gathered our outfit and placed it in the car. Besides a complete but very compact camping outfit, we carried compressed foods that would be sufficient for a long period to keep us from starving. Our weapons were two high-power repeating rifles, with ample ammunition. Besides the rifles, we each carried a heavy automatic in a belt-holster.

Our last preparation was to stow away in the car apparatus with which it would be possible to construct a duplicate of the time-wave mechanism of the car. We intended taking no chance of being stranded in some age of the future.

Every detail of the car's working mechanism was given a final test and found satisfactory, a leave of absence from the Foundation was asked for and granted, and so, at last, two months after the seizure of Cannell, our preparations were completed and we stood on the very threshold of our unparalleled adventure.

CHAPTER 6

INTO THE FUTURE

"Zero hour, Wheeler," said Lantin, who stood in the car itself, his head projecting through the round manhole in its upper side. Our strange vehicle lay ready for its flight into the future, on the apartment building's roof, for this was the night we had chosen for our departure.

I paused at the roof's edge to glance for a last time at the ever-new panorama of the metropolis around us. Though moonless, the sky above was brilliant, flecked with blazing stars, but even these were dimmed by the great up-gush of white light from the city's streets. A soft little breeze fanned my face as I looked out. Down in the bay, there was a great hooting of tugs as a big liner went out to sea. And in the river, a battleship's great search-lights stabbed and circled.

I turned away, reluctantly enough, and followed Lantin into the car. Crouched on the padded floor, in a half-sitting, half-lying position, he was already giving the car's machinery a last inspection, and at his command I clanged shut the round metal door that sealed the entrance. I then took up a position on the floor beside him.

His hands were moving over the gleaming controlling switches, searching, pulling, twisting. Abruptly something clicked under his fingers and the car rose smoothly in the air some fifty feet above the roof and hung motionless. There was a curious little humming now, that seemed to come from the floor beneath us, caused, as I knew, by the invisible streams of electronic force that lifted and held us.

Under the pressure of a little wind, the car drifted a short distance sidewise, and now hung directly over the streets. I glanced down through the dead-light in the floor of the car, and saw that from the height we had already attained, autos and pedestrians were but tiny specks moving in the blurred glare of the street-lights.

Without turning, Lantin spoke. "We'd better try the power of the time-wave," he said, "before going any distance in space."

I nodded, and again his hands moved over the car's intricate controls. He turned a large knob, and a rising, purring whine filled the car, while outside there was a growing roar of sudden wind. At the same time there came to me a staggering sensation of falling, and for a moment I seemed to be plunging helplessly down into unfathomable abysses. It lasted but an instant, and when my mind cleared, I heard the winds outside the car shouting with higher and higher intensity, caused, as I knew, by our swift passage through time.

I looked down into the streets below, and for a second could see no obvious changes, then noted that the autos and people seemed to have suddenly vanished. In place of them were misty blurs of undefined motion, and even these vanished as our progress on through time grew greater. The winking electric signs of the city had ceased to flash on and off, and appeared to be steadily illuminated.

I looked up, through one of the glasses in the car's top surface, and then gasped, prepared as I was for what I saw. The whole firmament was moving, its starry hosts moving slowly but visibly toward the west. Steadily it turned, and in hardly more than a minute a gray light began to grow over the eastern horizon, flushing swiftly to rose. Then, from the center of the growing light, sprang up the sun, crimson and mighty, leaping up above the horizon in a single bound, it seemed, and moving swiftly, ever more swiftly, up toward the zenith.

The winds had steadily risen to a cyclonic gale, and now I heard Lantin's voice, striving to make itself heard above them.

"We're going through time all right," he shouted, his voice thin and piping in sound, above the roar of the gale. "We may as well head west now, too."

I did not answer, but saw the buildings and streets below slide away to the east, as the car moved off in the opposite direction. By now the sun had traversed its whole circuit in the sky and was tumbling down behind the western heights. Before we had crossed above the Hudson, darkness had plunged down upon us, and as we rocketed over the Jersey meadows, I saw the stars again wheeling across the sky, but much faster than before. Our time-speed was steadily accelerating, now, as Lantin turned on more and more of the time-wave's power, and I knew that shortly we would be racing through the years with lightning speed.

Again the cycle of darkness and dawn was repeated, with the sun hurtling across the sky faster and faster, while the winds of our double progress through time and space were deafening. Day and night followed each other so rapidly that I could obtain but vague glimpses of the ground below us. We were progressing through space at the rate of a hundred and fifty miles an hour, holding an even altitude of a mile above the earth's surface.

Soon day and night had merged, had given way to a perpetual greenish dusk through which we raced with nightmare speed. I glanced at the dials that recorded our progress and position in time, and noted that already we had gone ahead almost four months into the future, while our progress was now doubling every few minutes. Passing over northern Pennsylvania, I saw the ground below turning to a blotched, patchy gray, the composite impression of weeks of snow and ice, below. The gray soon faded, changed to green, with the coming of spring. The cycle of green and white was repeated, again and again, until we were speeding through the years too swiftly to see it, and white and green had merged into a drab color that hung over all the landscape below.

By the time we passed over western Ohio, our car was racing into the future with a speed of nearly ten years a minute. At this speed, we saw little of human activities below. There were blurred, vague outlines of cities now and then, but these were only hazy, indefinite masses that passed from view as we fled on westward in the car.

Soon, though, Lantin slowed the car's progress through space and began to give close attention to the physical features of the country below us. He consulted maps constantly, now, and finally, after a number of stops and starts, brought the car to rest, in space, above the juncture of two small rivers. Hanging there, we still sped on through time, and above the winds Lantin shouted, "Stop there," pointing to the maps he held and then down toward the ground below. I understood his meaning, and knew that he had reached the spot in Illinois which he had calculated to be the Raider's home.

Intently we scanned the ground beneath the car. Gray and splotchy as it appeared, from alternate summer and winter, yet there were nowhere any buildings or signs of life, nothing but the two little rivers and the rolling fields that extended away to the horizon.

A glance at the dials told me that we had progressed through time some twelve thousand years, since our start. I heard Lantin utter a low exclamation, and looked up to see him gazing intently toward the north, through one of the side windows. Moving over beside him, I looked also, and saw, away on the distant northern horizon, a speck of gleaming white. We were still racing on through time, and as we watched, that white spot spread, expanded, grew to a thick line of dazzling white that lay across all the north horizon.

The white expanse grew still, coming nearer and nearer toward us, rolling slowly south and covering all the country it passed over with a blanket of whiteness. It came nearer toward us, moving with very slow speed, considering the rapidity of our progress in time. Now, above the shrill winds around us, there came the dull, grinding roar of the white blanket's passage. South rolled the gleaming sheet, until it had almost reached the ground directly beneath the car. I recognized, now, the material of that gleaming expanse.

"Ice!" I shouted in Lantin's ear, and he started, glanced down toward it, then nodded. A moment he studied the grinding wave below, then leaned over and shouted a single word in my ear:

"Glacier!"

The word was like a blinding flood of light on my thoughts. A glacier! And that was the meaning of this white tide from the north, this vast, resistless flood of ice that was rolling south over the world as it had rolled ages before. The mightiest force on earth, and the slowest, moving with deliberate, unswerving steadiness, calm and majestic, carving mountains and valleys, changing the very face of the earth. It had swept down over the earth before, had forced primeval man down to the very equator before it receded, and now the thing was re-enacting itself before my eyes. Fascinated, I watched the white masses forging south.

While we hung high above it, the gleaming, solid flood rolled on until it had obscured the last speck of land on the southern horizon, so that as far as we could see stretched nothing but the glistening fields of ice. The air in the car had become suddenly bitter cold, and as frost and rime began to congeal on the windows, I hastened over to the heating apparatus and switched it on. The glasses cleared soon, and we sped on into the future, but the white expanse below us seemed changeless.

I plucked at Lantin's sleeve, and when he turned, shouted to him, "Go back?", pointing to the gleaming frozen masses below.

"No!" he yelled, over the roar of the gale; "I'm going to circle a bit."

With the words, he snapped off the time-wave, and we came to a rest, in time. The dials now registered a little over fifteen thousand years, and with our stopping, the winds outside the car died away and we had a chance to converse in normal tones.

"Nothing but ice here," said Lantin, "and we can't tell how long it will last. I think the best plan would be to sweep around in a great circle, and look for any signs of the Raider's presence. If we see nothing we can go on into time and stop every few hundred years to circle again."

I agreed, and we put the idea into effect at once, rising to a height of nearly two miles and then racing away to the west in a curving course that would eventually bring us back to our starting point. As we sped on, both Lantin and myself were at the observation windows, scanning the landscape in every direction, but only boundless fields of ice met our eyes.

We reached a point some two hundred miles north of our starting position, and had begun to curve back toward that position, when Lantin uttered a sudden exclamation and hastily stopped the car's progress.

"Look!" he cried, excitedly, pointing away to the north.

At first I could see only the glaring ice, when I gazed in that direction, but gradually my eyes made out a distant spot of black against the horizon. Before I could comment on it, Lantin headed the car around and opened up on the power so that we shot north toward that distant spot with full speed.

On we went, until the spot had changed to a thick line, and its color from black to green. And as we neared it, we saw that there the ice ended, and beyond it were green fields and hills and valleys, with patches of gnarled, stunted trees here and there.

On we fled, still north, until the ice-fields had faded from view behind us, and the chilling cold we had felt above them had given way to a summer warmth. And the first dwarfed trees had changed to towering giants of the forest, though mostly the country below us was open fields and ranges of green-clad hills.

"I can't understand it," I told Lantin. "Who ever heard of a warm, semi-tropical country like this existing farther north than fields of glacial ice?"

"It is strange," he admitted, "but it's understandable, at that. You remember the explorer who found that warm, sunken valley in Alaska, somewhere? It was heated by steam, literally, for the interior fires of the earth had in some way bulged up near the surface of the ground, there, and their heat acting on the valley's springs and rivers made it a great steam-heated depression of almost tropical warmth. Probably the same thing has happened here, a shift of the earth's interior forcing up part of its inner molten core, the heat of which would counteract the glacier and keep it from covering this section of the country. Strange things happen under the earth's surface, Wheeler."

"You may be right," I said, "but there's no life here, Lantin. No—" I broke off, suddenly, staring out of the car's western windows. The western sky was glowing, for it was near to sunset, and there, far away, standing out black against the brilliant sky, was a city.

It was a city of enchantment, seen from our car. The jagged, serrated outline of its buildings loomed blackly against the glowing light, like the skyline of New York at the same hour. The buildings were all square and solid in appearance, and at the center of them there rose one building that towered far above the others, to a mighty height, its straight, perpendicular sides and flat roof standing up above the others, frowningly, brutally dominating them.

There was a gasp at my side, and I turned to see that Lantin was also gazing at the outline of the distant city. He had brought the car to rest, and together we looked away toward that metropolis of the future.

"We must go there," I said rapidly. "Spy out the place from a distance, learn what we can about it. Do you think that it is the home of the Raider?"

"It may be," he said, "but we must be careful, Wheeler. It wouldn't do to enter that place blindly, not knowing what manner of people inhabit it. Nor can we risk having the car destroyed or taken from us, as it's our only way to get back to our own time. The best plan would be to hide the car some distance from the city, and then go nearer on foot, learning as much as we can about the place before venturing inside."

And so we decided. Starting the car again, we sped along low over the ground, and finally, some five miles away from the city, came across a little range of rugged hills which appeared quite wild and uninhabited, like all the rest of the country we had traversed so far. On the slope of one of these hills was a little, shelflike clearing, patched with small trees, and we selected this for our hiding place, bringing the car gently down to rest on the ground there.

We stepped out, cramped and stiff from our hours in the car, and then proceeded at once to hide it, breaking off big branches from the trees around us and planting them in the ground in such fashion that any casual passer-by would never have suspected the car's existence. When it was concealed to Lantin's satisfaction, we made a hasty meal from the food brought with us, and then prepared for our trip toward the city.

The rifles we left in the car, as they were too heavy and cumbersome to carry through the thick underbrush that lined the slopes around us, but we looked to the pistols in our belts, which were of almost as heavy a caliber as the rifles. Then, with a last look at the car, we made our way down the slope to the bottom of the little valley which was formed by two low ranges of hills, on one of the slopes of which our car lay hidden.

We followed this valley north for some distance, the hills on each side leveling down to mere dunes as we approached its ends. A thick little wood lay directly across the end of it, and through this we forced our way, as quietly as possible. It gradually grew thinner, and then with a sudden shock we emerged from it into open fields.

Instinctively, we looked first toward the west. The sun was setting, now, and we saw that the city was not of wide extent, not extraordinarily large, but that the buildings that made it up were very large and were closely grouped together. And above them all rose the titanic central pile, an edifice that we judged to be all of two thousand feet in height, and half that in width.

Behind us there was a sudden yelping shout, and we turned quickly and then shrank back. Across the open fields toward us was running a group of men, a score or more in number, men in brazen armor and helmets, who carried spears and swords and who were bearing down on us with their lances outstretched toward us. Their eyes were gleaming, and they uttered wolflike shouts as they came on.

Flight was impossible, so close were they, so I jerked forth the pistol in my belt and fired hastily at the oncoming men. Too hastily, in fact, for the shot went wild and the mechanism of the pistol jammed before I could fire again. Lantin's pistol barked behind me, and one of the men in front staggered and went down, with a neat hole drilled through his armor, but the rest never hesitated, and before Lantin could fire again, they were upon us.

CHAPTER 7

THE CITY OF CYLINDERS

I had a confused vision of bronzed, black-bearded faces leaping toward me, and I know that I struck out with my pistol-butt at these, but the weapon was knocked from my grasp by a blow on the wrist, my hands were seized from behind and pinioned, and I waited for the spear-thrust that I expected.

It did not come. Those who held me turned to one who was evidently their leader, a tall man with armor more rich than that of the others, who carried no spear. They spoke to him, in a tongue strange to my ears, evidently asking questions concerning our disposal. This leader came nearer and inspected me, felt my muscles for a moment, then snapped out a brief order. He made similar inspection of Lantin, gave another order, and then the men behind me pushed me forward, toward the city in the west, a prod from a spear-handle emphasizing their commands. Lantin was similarly treated, walking beside me, but when I attempted to speak to him, another prod from behind warned me that no conversation between us was allowed.

So we marched on toward the city, our captors talking and jesting in their own language. Twilight was descending on the land, now, darkening quickly, and as we drew nearer toward the city, lights flared out here and there on its heights, steady and brilliant lights of red and yellow. And high above all these shone a single flashing beam of vivid purple, which I knew must be placed on the top of the big building we had seen from a distance.

We struck a road, smooth and wide and hard-surfaced, and marched along it. In the broad fields on either side of this road were what appeared to be great machines of some sort, that seemed to be rooting in the ground, with a panting, throbbing sound, but I could see these only dimly in the thickening dusk. And, too, we began to pass other men like those who had captured us, bronzed, bearded men in the same armor, who looked at us curiously and called out jests and greetings to our captors.

Buildings began to line the road, and I saw that all of these were of the same design, all being in the form of an erect cylinder, quite windowless and unbroken of surface, except for a single open entrance in their lower part. They were of white stone, I thought, glimmering faintly in the twilight, and were of many differing sizes, but whatever the size, all that we saw were of the same shape and proportions, that of a thick cylinder, standing erect.

Out of the doorways of these buildings streamed ruddy light, and now and then we passed one from which came shouting or laughter. More and more of the armored men met and passed us. And there were other men, not in armor, men black and brown and white and yellow, who were clad in a single robe of white cloth and who walked stiffly, like automatons. I shuddered as one of them brushed against me in passing, for he had come near enough for me to glimpse his face, and it was utterly repellent in the blankness of its expression. The eyes held no intelligence at all, staring straight ahead or turning mechanically from side to side, while the stiff movements, the rigid carriage of the body and the obliviousness to all around them made these men seem more dead than alive. All, or nearly all, were carrying tools or vessels of some sort, and it was easy to see that they were slaves.

I noticed now, scattered here and there among the buildings, little towers of metal on the top of which were placed globes of a gleaming material like glass. The towers were found at even intervals along the road, and each one could not have been less than thirty feet in height, much like a miniature Eiffel Tower, while the shining globe on top of each must have been five feet in diameter. Awhile I puzzled over their nature and purpose, but forgot even these in the wonder of the city we were now entering.

There was no wall or definite dividing line between the city and the suburbs around it. As we went on, the buildings grew thicker, larger, and the road became a street, a wide street that led directly toward the looming central pile, which I now saw was of the same cylindrical shape as all of the other buildings here. The white cylindrical buildings now were set farther back from the road, or street, and were very much closer to each other.

Overhead, aircraft were buzzing to and fro, flickering swiftly across the sky. They seemed to rise from and alight on the roofs of the cylindrical buildings, so that I could not glimpse their occupants.

There were throngs passing us in the street now, without attention, crowds of the armored guards and the white-robed slaves. The street itself was illuminated by glowing bulbs, set on top of metal pillars along the way, which emitted a ruddy, pulsating light. It was the same ruddy light that streamed out of the entrances of the buildings we passed, but how it was produced I could not conjecture.

My mind swung sharply back to my own predicament, when our captors suddenly halted in the street before a large building that was set some distance back from the street, in a smooth expanse of green lawn. A brief order was given and two of the guards seized me by my shoulders and hustled me toward the building I have spoken of, while the rest marched on down the street toward the gigantic central edifice, taking Lantin with them. I saw him looking back as he went, and would have given much to have been able to call out to him, but my guards gave me no chance to do so, pushing me ahead of them toward the building in front of us.

A high-arched entrance cut into the curving wall of the building, which was one of the largest I had yet noted. Through this open door led a broad flight of low steps, but my guards did not enter that way, taking me some distance around the building's side to a smaller door that was set in the wall close to the ground. Pushed ahead of them, I stumbled inside and found myself in a long, smooth-walled corridor, down which we went.

There were closed doors here and there along the hall's length, and in front of the last one lounged three or four of the guards, who looked up incuriously as we approached. My captors spoke a few words to these, who nodded, and unlocked the door they guarded. A rough shove sent me staggering through the door, and as I pitched forward on my face, I heard it clang shut behind me.

I rose to my feet and looked around. The room itself was quite unremarkable, about twenty feet square, walled with smooth stone, and windowless, being lit by several of the ruddy-glowing bulbs that were set in the ceiling. But the score or more of men who were in the room, and who had started up at my sudden entrance, were of intense interest to me.

Sinking down onto a bench against the wall, I regarded them. They were extraordinary in appearance and expression. All were dressed in ragged and torn costumes of cloth, save for one hulking fellow who wore a tunic of tanned skins. I was surprized to see that all of them carried sword or dagger at their belts, and some big battle-axes. Brown-skinned and white-skinned, with one or two blacks, they were a fierce-faced company, and after scrutinizing me for a second, went on pacing back and forth across the room, for all the world like a den of caged tigers. They spoke little, and glared as they passed one another.

While I stared at them, one of their number came up and seated himself beside me. He was a slender, dark-haired young man, dressed in a ragged coat of bottle-green trimmed in silver, with very tight knee-breeches of the same material. Like the rest, he was hatless, and carried at his belt a long, slender rapier. He caught my glance at his garments, and smiled in so winning a fashion that I smiled back, involuntarily. Then a wave of sudden warmth surged through me, for he spoke in English.

"Burn me," he drawled, in a soft, languid voice, "I don't blame you for eyeing my clothes, but then, y'see, the tailors here are cursed poor."

I leaned toward him, eagerly. "You speak English!" I cried. "Then how did you get here? What is this place, this city? And what are we brought here for?"

At my rush of questions he drew back a little, frowning in a puzzled manner. "What are we brought here for?" he repeated. "Why, man, you know as well as I do, why we're here."

"Not I!" I said, and his frown deepened, as he doubtfully considered me.

"But you're from the pit," he said, "the same as the rest of us," and he waved a hand toward the others in the room.

"The pit!" I repeated, puzzled, and he must have seen from my expression that I did not understand him. An odd, calculating light leaped into his eyes. "You are not of the guards," he said, half-musingly, "and you say you are not of the pit. But if you came from outside—"

"I was captured," I told him, "outside the city, and brought here. But why?"

"You're here to fight," he said, shortly, and I started.

"Fight! With whom?"

"Why, with these," he answered, indicating again the score of men in the room. "This is—"

Before he could finish the sentence, there was a sudden clanging of metal and the door of the room swung open. A guard stepped in and gave brief orders in his own tongue. At once the men around me began to file out of the room, into the corridor. As I passed out, beside my new-found friend, I saw that in the hall a heavy force of the guards awaited us, some fifty men being ranged along its length. We passed together down the corridor's length, but instead of leaving the building by the door I had entered, we turned to the right and proceeded up a long flight of steps, the guards following and preceding us, in two separate companies.

As we went up those steps, I turned to my companion and asked him, "You are English, aren't you?"

He nodded, and made a graceful half-bow. "Viscount Charles Denham, at your service," he said in a low voice, "captain in the armies of his Majesty, King George the Third."

The words were like a thunderclap in my ears. A soldier of King George the Third? A man of a hundred and fifty years before my own time? And here, fifteen thousand years in the future, in this strange city! And these other prisoners, these strange, ragged figures!

But before I could collect my dazed thoughts, our company was marching up the last few steps. Over the shoulders of those in front of me I saw the walls of a great room, and the crimson light of the glowing bulbs that illuminated it. There was a sound of crystal music, and laughter—a high, ringing laughter that was very different from the coarse mirth of the guards. Then we were surmounting the very last steps, marching up and over them....

"Held in its shapeless form were men, who hung helpless in its grasp."

CHAPTER 8

THE PEOPLE OF THE CITY

A harsh order from the guards ahead halted us, and I had time to survey the room in which we stood. It was a circular room, at the edge of which we were grouped. From where we stood, the walls swept away in a great curve on either side, meeting directly opposite us, as it seemed, some ninety feet away. The floor of the room was of smooth, black stone, resembling marble, while the curving walls were of the same white material as the building's exterior. A hundred feet above the floor was a ceiling of white, and I saw at a glance that this one great hall occupied the whole lower half of the cylindrical building's interior, the upper half, no doubt, being divided into smaller apartments. Set in walls and ceiling were many of the glowing bulbs, and from these a cascade of ruddy light poured down on the people in the room.

There must have been nearly a hundred of these people, men and women. They lay on couches along the room's edge, with long, curving tables of green metal before them, like the banquet halls of the ancient Romans. A shock went through me as I looked at the feasters, for they were unlike any of the people I had seen as I entered the city. These people were all tall and perfectly proportioned, and all were golden-haired, men and women alike. They were attired in short robes or tunics of brilliantly colored silks, and some wore circlets of flashing gems.

With a sudden shock it came to me that these were the first women I had seen in all this city, for there had been none among the guards and slaves outside. But before I could ponder this fact, it was swept from my mind by my wonder at the other things in the room.

The feasters, I saw, were engaged in drinking from transparent goblets which held brightly colored liquids. I could see no solid food of any kind on the tables, but there were many urns and flagons and amphoræ filled with the bright fluids. Long lines of the white-robed, stiffly marching slaves passed and repassed behind the couches of the feasters, with metal trays holding other glass and metal vessels, which they placed on the tables.

Two other things I noted before my brief survey of the place was interrupted. One was that among the laughing, shouting people at the tables there was not one face that would not be called beautiful. All seemed youthful, with the beauty of youth, and its high spirits, yet an impression of evil came to me as I watched them. I sensed, beneath their jesting and laughing, a cold, indolent heartlessness.

The other thing I noted was the source of the crystalline music. Across the room from me, in an alcove, were the musicians, slaves who operated an intricate instrument which allowed water to fall on thin plates of metal, in single drops or streamlets, producing a tumultuous chiming like a storm of silver bells, wild and clear and sweet, and for all its tempestuousness, oddly harmonious.

My companions had been surveying the scene, like myself, but it was evident from the expressions on their faces that it was not new to them. I wondered for what purpose we had been brought there, and remembering the Englishman's interrupted explanation, turned to speak to him. But as I did so, came another interruption, and with it my answer.

One of the men at the tables rose and uttered a brief order, and at once a great black slave strode across the room, seized a mace of metal, and with it struck a tremendous blow on a hanging brazen gong. At once the chatter and song at the tables stopped, and all eyes were turned toward ourselves. I felt their gaze sweeping over us, and involuntarily shuddered. Then, beside us, the captain of the guards barked out an order, that sounded across the silence like a whiplash. And at once two of the men who stood beside me strode out to the center of the room, to the wide, clear floor there, and stood facing each other.

There was a rippling whisper through the spectators at the tables, a murmur of pleasurable excitement. Without heeding it, the two men at the room's center inspected each other with fierce eyes.

One of the two was a proud, dark-faced figure, high-nosed and gleaming-eyed, dressed in torn, flowing robe and with a tightly twisted turban on his head. He jerked from his belt a long, curved scimitar and whirled it above his head, giving vent to a ragged, high-pitched yell of defiance. An Arab, I thought, maybe one of the very hordes that had carried the green banner of the Prophet over three continents like a whirlwind. He was a fierce enough spectacle, as he shook his gleaming blade aloft, but his opponent was a fit one, a gigantic Northman in leathern jerkin, whose blue eyes gleamed as he too sprang forward, brandishing aloft a great ax in one hand, and carrying a small, circular shield in the other.

With weapons upraised, the two cautiously neared each other, circling like wary tigers, searching for an opening. I turned away, and saw that the feasters were wholly intent now on the two opponents, and in that moment I understood the meaning of the Englishman in saying that we had been brought here to fight. For it was so, and all in our ragged, fierce group would no doubt be forced to fight and slay one another to amuse the indolent spectators at the tables, as the gladiators of ancient Rome had struck each other down in the great games. And what of myself?

There was a sudden great shout from the tables, and I turned my attention back to the struggle at the center of the floor. The Arab's blade had darted past his opponent's shield and had wounded the latter in the shoulder with a flashing down-stroke. But the leather-clad giant was not beaten. Though blood was streaming down from his shoulder now, he said no word, only lifted his shield higher and circled around the other, with ax still poised ready to strike. The tense silence had been broken by that first shout and now those at the tables were calling out to the two fighters, warnings and advice, I supposed, and were laying wagers on the result of the fight.

Suddenly the Arab again darted in, and again his blade slashed the other's arm, but as he stepped swiftly back, his foot slipped on the blood that smeared the smooth floor, and he staggered for a moment, striving to regain his balance. In an instant the uplifted ax crashed down through his skull and he fell like a dropped weight, his own spouting arteries adding to the red stains on the floor. The other stepped back, panting, and a great shout of applause crashed out from the spectators at the tables. The Northman rejoined our group, slaves rushed out and cleared the floor, and at a command, two more of our number rushed onto the floor and faced each other with drawn swords.

The circling and darting of the former duel was repeated, and in a few minutes one of the two lay dead and the other was limping back to us, bleeding. And another pair took their place.

For the fifth combat, the young Englishman beside me was called onto the floor, with a small Japanese in ancient, quilted armor as his opponent. The Japanese was armed with two short, broad-bladed swords, with which he chopped and slashed at his opponent, while Denham had but his thin, fragile-looking rapier. Yet he evaded all the sweeps and thrusts of his adversary's blades, and with a sudden lightning stab of the needlelike rapier he ended the duel, unscathed. He came back toward us, jauntily, unheedful of the great applause that followed his feat. I gripped his hand warmly, for in the short time I had known him, a sudden sympathy had sprung up between us, born of the fact of our mutual race and language, in this strange city.

There were but few of us left now who had not already fought, and at an order from the leader of the guards, one of these stepped out on the floor, a lithe, snaky Italian, with beady black eyes and an evil smile. The captain of the guard snapped out another order, looking at me, but I could not understand and looked around helplessly. His face flushed dark with anger, and he started wrathfully toward me, but the Englishman intervened, with rapid explanations.

"You are to fight Talerri," he said, indicating the Italian, and a wave of icy cold swept over me for a moment, then receded. "Here, take my sword," he continued, drawing and handing it to me, "and be fearful of foul fighting. Talerri was one of Cæsar Borgia's bravos and is a dangerous swordsman, full of treacherous tricks."

Half dazed, I gripped the rapier's hilt and walked out to face the Italian. "Good luck!" called Denham, behind me, but I did not look back.

As I strode out to where the Italian awaited me, I dimly saw the curving walls, the ruddy lights, and the white faces of those at the tables, turned toward me. The whole scene misted before my eyes, then cleared, and into my vision came the face of Talerri, who was regarding me with a derisive smile. And the realization came to me, coldly and clearly, that unless I killed my opponent, he would kill me.

I raised the blade in my hand. I had been a skilful fencer in my days at the university, but had not handled a foil for years. Yet the long, slender rapier was much like a foil itself, and as I twirled it in my grasp, some little confidence came to me. I glanced back momentarily, and saw Denham smiling encouragingly at me. And now the Italian advanced toward me, the same hateful smile passing over his face as he saw me raise the rapier to meet him.

At the first clash of our blades, I knew myself facing a master of swordsmanship, one who was doubtless in constant practise. So I threw all my efforts into staving off his first lightning rushes, though to this day I wonder that I was able to do so. His point seemed to stab at me simultaneously from a dozen different positions, and I parried more by instinct than by design. As it was, his blade passed twice through my shirt, so close was it. But after that first series of flashing rushes, the Italian drew back for a moment and we circled warily.

Again he came on, with a lightning feint at my heart. As my rapier flashed down to foil the stroke, his own stabbed upward, in a straight thrust intended to pierce through my left eye to the brain. It was a stab that could not be parried, but instinctively I swerved my head aside from that flashing point, and missing the eye, his blade grazed along the left side of my forehead, sending a stream of blood trickling down my cheek. At sight of that red stream, a shout of approval crashed out from the tables.

But now anger was rising in me, and ceasing to stand only on the defensive, I thrust out savagely at my opponent. He gave back a little under my unexpected attack, but suddenly I felt very tired, and knew that the combat must end soon if it was to end in my favor. As I thrust and parried there, the walls and lights and faces around me faded from view, and replacing them came the long, sky-lighted gymnasium where I had learned to fence. I seemed to hear the clicking foils and stamping feet there, and the voice of our trim little instructor explaining the most difficult of all thrusts, the time-thrust. Steadiness and accuracy were the very foundations of that difficult play, I knew, and it would be sheer madness for one as weary and rusty at sword-play as myself to try it, but as we surged back and forth on the smooth floor, I decided that it was my only chance, for the Italian was pressing me ever more closely.

Watching for a favorable opportunity, I dropped my guard for a single instant, leaving my heart exposed. Instantly Talerri's blade darted in like a striking serpent, his whole body behind that straight stab. My own rapier was extended toward him, and in the split-second before his point touched me, my own blade clicked gently against his, deflecting it to one side where it passed harmlessly by me, while the momentum of his leaping rush brought him right onto my outstretched rapier, spitting him. I felt the blade rip through him as through a man of sawdust, the hilt rapping against his ribs. I jerked it forth and he choked, gasped, and fell to the floor dead.

There was a shattering roar of applause from all around, and tired and sickened, I stumbled back to the group of fellow captives at the floor's edge, where Denham greeted me eagerly. While he congratulated me on my victory, the others in the group looked at me with something of respect on their fierce faces.

Weary from the hours on the time-car, and half-nauseated by the bloodshed I had seen and taken part in, I sank down onto a step and watched without interest the remaining two combats. When these were finished, another order was given and we were hurried back down the stairs up which we had come. Conducting us down a different corridor, the guards separated us, thrusting us in pairs into small cells along the corridor.

I had hoped to be placed in the same cell as Denham, for I wanted much to speak further with him, but luck was against me and I was paired off with the blond giant who had killed the Arab in the first combat. A vicious shove sent us reeling into the little room, and behind me I heard the thick metal door clang shut.

CHAPTER 9

PRISONED

For ten days I lay in that little cell, prisoned with the big Northman. At my first inspection of the place, I saw that there was no possibility of escape, for the walls were of smooth stone, and the only opening in them was that of a two-inch pipe that served to ventilate the cell. There was no window, as we think of it, yet the room was light enough in the daytime, for as the sun rose, the side of the cell facing on the building's outer wall became invisible, allowing plenty of light to enter. This explained a fact that had puzzled me, the absence of windows on the exteriors of the cylindrical buildings of the city. Evidently the people of the city treated the outside walls of their buildings in such a manner that in daylight they were invisible from the inside, while perfectly opaque when viewed from without.

I had other evidence of the scientific attainments of these people in the food that was furnished us twice each day. That food was nothing but a clear golden liquid, with a slight oily flavor but otherwise tasteless. Yet I found that it contained all the food-elements necessary for the human body, since in all my time in this strange city I had no other food, and never felt need of any other.

I found my cell-mate a dull enough companion. He was morose and fierce in disposition, and very suspicious of me. I think that he considered me a spy. I found that he knew a little English, a strange, archaic English, but enough for us to carry on a broken conversation. To all my eager questions, though, the fellow replied with a cold stare. By this time I felt convinced that Lantin and I had found in this city the home of the Raider, since the fact of Denham's presence and that of these other men of many times and races admitted of no other explanation. Yet when I asked the Norseman how he had come here, or if he had ever seen the Raider, he kept to a gloomy silence, and I cursed my luck in being confined with such a suspicious companion.

One service, though, he did do for me, and that was to teach me the strange language used by the guards and masters of the city around me. That tongue, I learned, was the Kanlar tongue, while the bright-haired master-race of the city were Kanlars. The language itself was not hard to learn, and in the long hours I lay imprisoned I acquired considerable facility in expressing myself in it.

Sometimes, too, the Norseman would break his silence, and growing excited with his own words, would tell me long, interminable stories of the wild adventures he had taken part in, the shield-ringed ships that he had sailed in, to leave fire and death along peaceful coasts, the long list of men he had slaughtered. His cold eyes burned as he related tales of butchery that appalled me, but when I ventured to interject a single question he would regard me stonily and then relapse into silence again.

The days went by, and through the transparent wall I watched night give way to dawn, dawn to noon, and noon to dusk and night. Much I thought of Lantin in those days. I wondered what fate had been his in the gigantic central building, whether he was alive or dead. Wondered, too, if I would ever find that out, for it was evident that we were being reserved for another gladiatorial battle, and I was not confident of coming through again unscathed.

One thing occurred, in those days of imprisonment, which still makes me shudder, sometimes, at the memory of it. The transparent side of our cell faced a smooth expanse of green lawn, with gardens beyond it, and most of my time I spent lounging against it, looking out. Very few people passed by there, now and then a few slaves, but scarcely ever any of the Kanlar people. So on the eighth day of my confinement, when I saw a slave approaching from a distance, I moved over to the invisible wall and watched him.

He was carrying a tool that looked much like a common garden-hoe, and walked toward me with that stiff, rigid movement that marked the white-robed slaves. He came closer, I glanced at his face, then reeled back against the side of the cell. For it was Talerri!

It was the Italian I had killed eight days before, garbed as a slave and walking with the same inhuman, puppetlike motion that all these strange servants used. He came closer toward me, so that I could see his staring eyes, then, with an angular movement, he turned aside and passed from view along the building's side.

For hours I puzzled over it, rejecting with a certain panic fear the one explanation that came to mind. I knew that I had killed the Italian that night, for my sword had pierced clean through his heart. Yet here he was, working as a slave for the Kanlars. And what of the other slaves, then, these rigid, staring-eyed figures? Were they too—?

For hours I speculated on the thing, but could find no rational explanation for it, nor would the Norseman enlighten me. Finally I gave it up as a mystery beyond me, and strove to banish it from my mind.

Two more days dragged out, days that were like weeks to me. I felt that I must soon go mad, if I were longer imprisoned. And then, sharply ending the monotony of dreary hours, there came a summons, a summons that in the end proved to be a call to an adventure utterly undreamed of by Lantin or myself.

CHAPTER 10

THE TEMPLE OF THE RAIDER

All that day I had sensed a tense activity outside, and many times there was the tramp of feet down the corridor outside our cell, as companies of the guards came and went. As sunset came, I stood beside the transparent wall and watched its brilliant colors fade from the sky.

Overhead, now, the aircraft of the Kanlars were flickering continuously past, all heading toward the giant cylinder that stood at the city's center, and when I scrambled up a little higher against the wall, to get a glimpse of the street, I saw that that street was crowded with masses of the armored guards and the staring-eyed slaves, all pressing on toward the same building.

Darkness came, and the noise of activity outside died away, so that it seemed that all the city around us was deserted, nor was there any sound from the building above us. For all of two hours after the darkness, we sat there, listening, waiting. Once I thought I heard a distant ringing music, but decided that my ears had been deceived. Then, abruptly, there was the stamp of sandals on the floor of the corridor, and we heard the doors of the cells along it being opened.

Our own was flung wide, as we rose, and I saw that a score of the guards waited outside, their leader ordering us to come out, which we were glad enough to do. Once in the corridor, I found Denham and the others of the group I had met before, shackled to each other, wrist to wrist, in a single file. The Northman and myself were fettered to the end of the line, and then we set out, a long file of guards on each side of us, marching us down the corridor and outside the building.

The big street up which I had come before was utterly deserted, as we turned into it. I looked back along its length, lit with the crimson bulbs, a winding serpent of red light that stretched away out into the country beyond the city, out to where our time-car lay hidden in the hills. At the thought of it, so fierce a desire seized me to win back to it, and my own time, that had I not been shackled I would have made a break for freedom down the empty street. But as it was, I had no choice, and followed the others in our fettered line down the wide street toward the gigantic cylindrical building at its end.

That great pile seemed to loom higher and higher as we drew near it. Brilliant, winking lights along its sides outlined it against the gloom of night, a huge, erect cylinder of smooth stone, its flat top all of a thousand feet in width, and nearly a half-mile above the ground. Obscured as the immense edifice was by the darkness, yet the vague glimpses I got of its sky-flung walls staggered me. And we were being marched directly toward it.

A quarter-mile from the building, the flat street we followed ended, changed to a wide, smooth ramp that led up toward the giant edifice in a slight upward slant. We went up that ramp, the guards still on either side, till we stood under the very shadow of the gigantic, perpendicular walls, and now I saw that the ramp led up to and through a wide, high-arched entrance cut in the building's side, much like the entrance of the cylindrical building where I had been prisoned.

We passed up and through that arched entrance, and were in a long tunnel, similarly arched, and cut through solid, seamless stone. It was a hundred feet in length, and as we passed on down its length it came to me that this must be the thickness of the great building's sides. The idea was too prodigious for speculation, even, and I shook it off, peering ahead toward the tunnel's end, where a ruddy light flooding down from above marked that end.

A few moments, and we had reached the tunnel's mouth, and emerged from it into the vast cylinder's interior. I swept one startled glance around that interior, then felt myself staggering, reeling, falling. The immensity of the place was soul-shaking, bearing down on me with a weight that seemed physical, crushing my thoughts down into nothing but dazed awe and terror.

I had imagined the building's interior to be divided, partitioned into apartments, but instead, the whole interior was one titanic room, shaped by the outside walls and roof, its sides looming up, dimly and vaguely, into a hazy darkness that hid their upper parts from view. Along the sides were many of the light-emitting bulbs, but these merely burned red holes in the dimness that surrounded the building's interior, rather than illuminated it.

Starting at the wall, and extending twenty feet out toward the center of the room, the floor was of black stone, a flat, continuous ring of smooth material that circled the whole room. Inside of this ring was the real floor, a single, huge disk of burnished metal, smooth as ice and as seamless, over nine hundred feet in diameter. And except for ourselves, who stood on the black ring near the entrance, there was nothing whatever on black circle or burnished floor, no people, tables, altar, nothing but the immense expanse of smooth metal and the comparatively thin black circle that surrounded it.

I looked up, and saw for the first time the people of the city. Cut in the thickness of the prodigious walls of the building were broad balconies, one above the other, ringing the building's interior as far up as I could see in the haze that hung above, and in these balconies were the dwellers of the city, Kanlars, guards and slaves. The lowest balcony, which was only a few feet above the floor, jutted forth in a smaller square gallery, a little away from where I stood, and in this projecting square sat three of the bright-haired Kanlars, the oldest-appearing men I had yet seen among them, two garbed in long robes of solid crimson while the other's garment was of deepest black. They sat there calmly, looking away across the big floor toward the great hall's other side. This lowest gallery, and the three directly above it, were filled with the Kanlars, while in the unnumbered galleries above these were the armored guards and the slaves. The only entrance to these galleries that I could see was a single narrow, winding stairway, a spiral stairway that began on the black circle of stone near the wall and slanted up from balcony to balcony, circling the building's sides several times as it spiraled up, and evidently leading up to the very roof of the place.

While I surveyed the scene, other ragged groups like our own had entered, escorted by guards, until a considerable number of us had been collected there near the entrance. Now one of the crimson-robed figures who sat in the gallery that jutted out from the lowest balcony, rose and uttered an order. My knowledge of the Kanlar language was too rudimentary for me to understand him, but when he had finished and resumed his seat, a delighted murmur swept over the massed crowds in the balconies.

Before I had time to speculate, the captain of the guards who watched us snapped out brief orders, and immediately eight of our number ran out of the center of the metal floor, where they at once drew their weapons and faced each other, in four individual combats.

In a few minutes, the four duels were over, but only three of the contestants came back from the floor's center. To my surprize, then, instead of being re-shackled to the rest of us, the three were handed armor and weapons like that of the other guards, which they donned at once. I began to understand now the purpose of these combats. Evidently the bravest fighters were weeded out in preliminary duels, such as I had taken part in, and the survivors of these first battles were then pitted against each other, the victors being adjudged worthy to enter the company of the guards. But where were these ragged fighters brought from?

The combats went on, always eight men battling at once, and I saw that our number was growing smaller very rapidly. Neither Denham nor I had yet been called on to fight, but my heart was beating rapidly, for I expected each time to be among the next eight. The blades clashed on, at the floor's center, and group after group went out from us, either to return and don the armor of the guards or to be dragged off the floor by slaves, dead or dying. The Kanlars in the lower balconies laughed and chatted as the ragged fighters on the floor slew each other, the massed guards above shouted their approval at each shrewd blow, and the fighting continued until finally but ten of our number were left, and by a freak of chance, both Denham and I were of that ten.

The fights on the floor ended, one by one, and swiftly the guards unshackled eight of our number and thrust them out onto the floor. I stood appalled. For the two who were left were myself and the Englishman!

While the swords clicked and flashed out on the floor, I stood in a daze, dismayed at the ironical trick which fate had played me. Of all the men in the city, I must fight the one whom alone I knew and liked. In a space of seconds, it seemed, the four fights on the floor had ended, and the fetters on my wrists were loosed. Together, hesitantly, Denham and I walked out onto the floor. Shouts of applause and encouragement came down from the balconies, for ours was the last fight, and the spectators wanted an exciting one.

Standing there at the very center of the huge building, Denham and I faced each other. Simultaneously we grasped the hilts of our rapiers, half drew them, and then, with a common impulse, slammed the blades back down into their sheaths. Without speaking, my companion stepped over and flung an arm across my shoulders, then tilted up his head and favored the spectators in the balconies with an insolent stare.

A howl of rage went up as it became evident that we would not fight each other. A torrent of taunts and execrations poured down on us from above, but we continued to lounge, arm in arm, as nonchalantly as possible.

Out from the black edge of the floor rushed a half-dozen of the guards, who seized us and hurried us off the floor, amid a storm of abuse from above. Instead of returning with us to the entrance, the guards led us toward the bottom of the spiraling stair and there stationed themselves beside us.

The angry cries in the balconies silenced, now, and a strange stillness filled the great hall. Music began, single, thrilling notes, like dropping peals of sound. Swiftly the lights began to dim, the glowing bulbs in the walls waning until all things in the vast room were wrapped in shadowy dusk.

The chiming music ceased, and over all that mighty fane was absolute silence, with no sound from Kanlars, guards or slaves. Then, in the little projecting gallery where he sat, the black-robed oldster rose and spoke.

His deep, heavy voice rolled out over the vast room with awesome effect, breaking as it did the unearthly silence. He was chanting, uttering an invocation or prayer. The words came to my ears, thick and blurred, so that I understood few of them. But the effect was one of utter solemnity—the darkness, the massed, silent crowds above, and that one deep voice speaking on, rising and falling.

For minutes the voice rumbled on, then abruptly ceased. There was another full minute of the strange silence, and a tremendous ringing note sounded. Even after it had died, the echoes of it beat in my ears like ghostly carillons of tiny, elfin chimes. And as it died away, there was a heavy, grating sound and the whole vast metal floor abruptly sank down some six feet into what appeared to be a gigantic smooth-walled shaft, then slid sidewise with another grating jar, vanishing into some aperture prepared for it. And where the floor had been was now a tremendous circular abyss, a straight-sided pit of such titanic depth that, looking down into it, I fell weakly to my knees and was seized with sudden nausea.

I stood on the very edge of the abyss, on the ring of black flooring that was its rim. And down from that rim, the stone sides of the great shaft fell smoothly to an unguessed depth. Far, far below, I seemed to see glimmering lights that winked faintly. And I saw, too, that the spiral staircase which circled the great room's interior from floor to roof continued on down beneath the floor and circled around and around this circular chasm in the same way, winding down into the unguessed depths below.

I felt Denham pulling me back from the edge of the shaft, beside which I lay. Dimly I realized that all in the great building were now chanting, rolling forth the same invocation as the black-robed leader. Far above, now, at the very ceiling or roof of the cylinder, a light burgeoned out, a burning purple beam that clove its light down through the dim haze and shadows around it. A moment it hung there, then there was a faint sigh of wind, a puff of icy air, and down, straight down from the vast hall's roof, there raced like a misty plummet—the Raider!

It flashed down until it hung on a level with myself, in midair, poised at the very center of the circular abyss and floating there effortlessly. It hung there, its gray mass changing, fluxing, interlacing, while at its center hung the three little orbs of purple light, steady and unwinking. From all the massed thousands on the balconies a sigh of worship went up.

The chant rolled out, louder, fiercer, and through it sounded another single ringing note. There was another whistle of wind, and the three purple orbs of the Raider flashed to green, while the solid but fluxing mass of it changed to a spinning cloud of gray vapor, that swirled rapidly around the central lights. Another fierce gust of wind smote me, and abruptly the Raider had vanished.

Up in the balconies the chant went on, repeated again and again. I saw a sea of white faces above, all turned down toward the spot where the Raider had disappeared. Minutes passed. The chanting went on, low, vast and deep-toned.

Came another buffeting breeze, a tempest of shrill wind-sounds, and with startling suddenness the Raider reappeared, flashing back into being at the same spot where it had vanished, above the center of the abyss. Again the green orbs changed to purple, and its cloudy mass contracted to the shifting but solid form it had occupied before. But now, held in its shapeless self, were men, who hung helpless in its grasp. It drifted over to the marble edge of the abyss, and loosed the men it held, then moved back to the pit's center.

The chanting swelled out, exultant, and I saw the men thus loosed struggle to their feet and look around with utter awe and terror. They were five in number, three in short white tunics who looked like men of ancient Greece, the other two wizened little figures with dark skin and long, wispy mustaches, either Huns or Tartars.

Again a ringing note cut through the chanting, and as if in obedience the Raider rose, floated up toward the vast hall's roof, whence it had come. It disappeared there, the purple light burned for a moment and vanished, and the chanting finally ceased.

The bulbs glowed out, at once, and light filled the place. The crowds in the balconies began to leave, streaming down the narrow staircase toward the floor. Before they reached it, however, guards had reached and fettered the five men the Raider had left on the pit's edge, and they now brought them over and shackled them also to Denham and me.

Our little group stood now on the very edge of the abysmal shaft. Some twenty feet below us there was a little landing, from which the stair started, spiraling down and around the shaft, into the darkness below. I wondered momentarily how the landing was reached, but my wonder ceased as a guard touched a lever in the wall, causing a little metal stair to unfold swiftly from the side of the shaft itself, a light little series of steps that connected the black marble ring of flooring with the landing below.

At an order from the guards we stepped onto it, down it to the landing and on down the spiral stair, which was cut in the solid rock of the great shaft's sides. Looking back, I saw the steps down which we had come fold back into the wall, and a moment later the light from above was shut out as the great metal floor of the temple swung back into position above us with a grating clash.

Our only light now was from bulbs set in the smooth wall along the down-winding stair, and these gave hardly enough light to show us the next steps. A low wall about a yard in height, pierced with an ornamental design of openings, was our only protection from the abyss on our left. Yet the guards still marched us on, around and around the great shaft, in a tremendous, falling spiral, down, down....

CHAPTER 11

THE CITY OF THE PIT

Soon a dim pearly light began to show far below us, a light that puzzled me. In the world above, I knew, it must be dawn, but how this was connected with the growing light below, if it was so connected, baffled me.

And now we reached the end of the shaft down whose sides we had come. It ended abruptly, and below on each side lay a great open space, obscured by drifting clouds of mist. But the stair did not end with the shaft. It dropped straight on down, a free, unsupported spiral of gleaming metal, winding down into the obscuring mists that hid its lower length. It was an eery thing to see, that gigantic twisted stairway, like a great corkscrew, vanishing down into the mists, like some pathway of the gods from heaven to earth. And it could hardly have been hung there by less than gods, I thought. No metal or material ever known to me would have been able thus to hold its unsupported weight in the form of this stair, yet there it was, seemingly tossed there in godlike indifference to the laws of mechanics. In its way, it was as great a wonder as the great building above. As that thought came to me, the light around us began to grow, to redden like the sunrise, and the mists cleared, drifted away in masses, vanished. And there, beneath me, lay the pit.

I can only describe that pit by saying that it was like the inside of a round, squat bottle, the neck of the bottle being the shaft down which I had come. This great cavern below me was roughly circular in shape, all of four miles in diameter, and a mile from its level floor to its glowing roof. For that roof was glowing. Looking up at it as we marched on down, I saw that set in it were scores of brilliant globes of glass, from which a flood of growing light, golden light, sunlight, daylight, was pouring down.

I saw now that the spiral stair down which we marched reached down to the pit's floor, and touched it near its center. And I saw, too, that all of the great cavern's floor, from one towering side to another, was covered with mass on mass of white, roofless buildings, of all shapes, covering the floor of the pit and huddling closely beneath the perpendicular walls of smooth rock.

At the center of this great mass of buildings, directly below us, was a great open clearing, or plaza, and it was there that the stairway touched the pit's floor. And from this plaza, clear to the circling walls, nine streets branched out, radiating in every direction like the spokes of a wheel. Along those streets moved great masses of men, and these were the dwellers in the city, the people of the pit.

So it was that I looked first on the city of the pit, the city of the Raider, and its people, over whom his shadow had been cast. And, looking, I wondered if there in the massed crowds below were Lantin and Cannell, and if it were possible to find them, here.

Again our guards ordered us forward, and we marched on. But now only a low wall on each side protected us from the abyss, and there was no wall on the right side against which to cling. But our guards seemed to mind this not at all, and I judged that they had made many trips up and down the stair, to be thus hardened to its dangers.

As we descended, Denham explained to me in a low voice the origin of the lights on the roof. These were merely lenses of a kind, he said, which diffused into the cavern real sunlight brought from above. I had already seen and puzzled at the glass globes set on pedestals through the city of cylinders above, but now saw their purpose. Those globes received the sunlight, transmitted it in some unknown fashion down to the globes on the roof, which gave it forth again. Thus it was that day and night in the pit were the same as in the world above, and the light there waxed and waned in accordance with the rising and setting of the sun which these people never saw.

We drew closer and closer toward the ground, and now I saw that at the stair's end, where it touched and debouched on the pit's floor, it was closed by a high, heavy gate of metal, barred and spiked, and that on our own side of this gate was a force of some fifty of the guards, armed with long spears and also with curious little cylinders of shining metal which they carried in their belts, and which I guessed were weapons of a kind unknown to myself.

As we came down toward them, these guards drew aside and unlocked the big gate. Our own captors unshackled us, and then pushed us through it unceremoniously, so that we stood in the clearing or plaza. And the gate was quickly shut and locked behind us.

Standing there, I forgot all else in the fascination of the scene around me. Across the open plaza, which was smoothly floored with stone, a great multitude of people were coming and going, and it was that shifting throng that held my gaze. For in it were men of every race and land and time, men of the far past and men of my own time, all seized and brought here by the Raider to mix and mingle in one vast, variegated throng. Even that first glance showed me that there must be thousands, tens of thousands of men prisoned in this gigantic under-city, and it showed me, too, that even as among the guards and slaves above, there were no women. All were comparatively young men, few being over middle age, and nearly all had the appearance of warriors.

Men of a thousand different centuries passed and repassed there before my eyes, men who had been flashed through the ages and brought there by the same alien being that had seized Cannell before my eyes, and that had seized, only a few hours before, the five newcomers who had come down the great stair with Denham and me.

For these, these crowds and masses of men that choked the streets and squares and buildings of this city of hell, these were the spoils of the Raider, gathered together for some unholy purpose of his own, and prisoned here in the pit, far beneath the city of the Kanlars. In a living panorama of the past, they streamed by me, a brilliant, barbaric throng.

Many of them were unknown in race to me, but many others I could recognize by their dress or features. There were Egyptians, shaven-headed men in long white robes, strangely aloof and silent in that noisy gathering. They carried short swords and bows, and I noticed that every one of the figures that passed before me wore weapons of some sort. I saw Assyrians, here and there, ravagers of the ancient world, wolf-faced, black-bearded men with burning eyes, clad in strange armor.

Three courtly, spade-bearded Spaniards sauntered by, carrying themselves as proudly as on the day when their galleons ruled the seas. A hulking, shock-headed savage clad in evil-smelling skins shambled by, with a giant gnarled club in his hand, his receding brow and jutting jaw proclaiming him a troglodyte, a man of the world's dawn. And right behind him came two stern-faced men in medieval armor, with the cross of the Crusaders blazoned on their battered shields.

Indians passed, with bow and tomahawk, hawk-faced and alert. Clear-skinned Greeks, laughing at some jest of their own. Chinese, quiet and inscrutable, whose eyes narrowed even further as they caught sight of the two wizened Tartars who had come down the stair with us. A tall frontiersman in suit of buckskin, with bowie knife in his belt, strode past, conversing with a helmed Phoenician sea-captain. And everywhere, clustering always together in little groups, were Romans, legionaries in tunic, breastplate and helmet, with bronze short-swords, who looked contemptuously on all other races in the passing throng.

A hand descended on my shoulder, and I turned, startled, to find that I had completely forgotten the Englishman, Denham, who stood behind me.

"Deuced strange, at first, isn't it?" he asked, smilingly, gesturing toward the moving pageant of the past, around us. Before I could answer, he went on, "You'd best come with me, now."

"Where?" I asked.

"Why, to my own barracks," he answered. "That's what these buildings are for, you know, but as a newcomer, you'd be in trouble here in a minute, without someone to answer for you. And, too, I want you to meet my own friends."

He looked at me more sharply. "I take it that you're no great friend of—" and he stopped, raising his eyes eloquently upward.

"The Raider?" I asked, and when he nodded I said, "Not I! I'm here to find a man—two men."

"Find a single man here?" asked Denham, sweeping his hand around the crowded streets in a hopeless gesture. "It's impossible! And what would you do when you found him? Escape? That, too, is impossible. How would you get up the stair, through the city of the Kanlars? And even if you achieved the impossible and did get through, there would be no place to go, for all around the city above is nothing but wild, uninhabited country where they would easily hunt you down."

"No matter," I told him; "once I got clear of the city above, I could make good my escape."

He looked at me with sudden interest. "So," he murmured; "and perhaps if my friends and I could help you—," but then he checked himself. "I must see them," he said, "before saying more."

I nodded, a new line of thought opening up to me, and then with Denham leading, we went on down one of the branching streets. In that street was a replica of the noisy, motley throng that filled the plaza, and their cries filled the air with a babel of a thousand different tongues. I noted, though, that many spoke in the language of the Kanlars, and guessed that it was that tongue which served more or less as a means of communication between the thousands gathered here, a supposition I later found to be correct.

Most of the buildings along the street seemed to be the barracks Denham had spoken of, housing the city's occupants, though some of them appeared to be wine-shops of a sort, judging from the drunken men who reeled out of them. An inquiry to my companion elicited the information that the only food of the city was the same golden liquid which had been furnished me above, and which I learned was made artificially directly from the soil itself. Thus the cycle of foodstuffs in my own time, where a plant draws its substance from the soil and is then eaten, or where an animal feeds on the plants sprung from the soil, to be eaten by us in turn, was entirely eliminated by the Kanlars, who manufactured their food directly from the soil itself, recasting the chemical composition of it to produce the yellow fluid. This yellow liquid, I learned, was made by slaves in the city above and was piped down to the city below and dispensed to the hordes there in the little buildings which I had assumed to be wine-shops. It seemed that while the stuff was a perfect food when taken in small quantities, yet when an excess was drunk it produced a violent intoxication. And as it was dispensed freely, it was not wonderful that there were great debauches of drunkenness in this under-metropolis.

One result of that we saw, for all along the street there was fighting, deadly battles between men of far-differing times and races. There was no interference in these combats, for there were none of the guards or Kanlars through all the city, the occupants being left to fight their own battles on the principle of the survival of the fittest. An excited ring of spectators was gathered round each combat, shouting at and cheering the opponents, not dispersing until the fighting was over. As we passed the scene of one such duel, I saw the victor dragging away the body of his late enemy.

"Where is he taking it?" I asked of Denham, motioning toward the receding figure.

"To the bottom of the stair," was his answer. "There is an iron rule that in any battle where a man is killed, the victor must carry the body of his opponent to the stair and hand it over to the guards there."

"But why?" I asked. "For burial above?"

Denham smiled grimly. "You saw the slaves in the city above," he said, "but did you notice how strange they were, how glassy-eyed and stiff-moving?"

When I nodded, he said, "Well, the slaves of the city above are men who have been killed here in the under-city."

At my exclamation of horror, he repeated his statement. "Man," he exclaimed, "you do not know the power of the Kanlars. With the wisdom that is theirs, such an accomplishment is child's-play."

"But how done?" I asked.

"Ask them," he answered darkly. "In some way they are able to bring back the breath of life into the dead men, to repair the wounds that killed them. They can make them live again, but not even the Kanlars can bring back their souls. They are just living, walking bodies, whom the Kanlars are able to control and to force to work their will in all things. Dead-alive, and slaves to the Kanlars!"

I shuddered deeply, for the idea was soul-sickening. Yet I knew now that Denham spoke truth, for I remembered how from my cell in the city above I had seen Talerri, garbed as a slave, Talerri, whom I had killed myself. It was an invention that would have aroused pride in the fiends of lowest hell, thus to raise dead men back to life and use them as servants. And I knew that this was but one of the dark evils that lay concealed under the rule of the laughing, bright-haired Kanlars.

While we talked we had been moving along the crowded street toward the distant wall of the pit. Finally, very near that wall, Denham turned in at a low, long building that was of white stone, and roofless, like most others in the city. I followed him inside, and looked around curiously.

The building's interior was a single large room, shaded from the light above by a suspended awning of green cloth. Ranged along the walls was a triple tier of metal bunks, in some of which lay cloth and fur robes. There was a long metal table at the room's center, and lounging in chairs around it, and in the bunks, were a score of men who looked up without interest as we entered.

Denham greeted them, and in reply they grunted lazily, looking at me incuriously. I followed my companion to the farther end of the room, where he seated himself in one of the bunks and motioned me to join him.

"My friends aren't here now," he said, "but they'll return before long."

A sudden curiosity prompted my next question. "How did you get here, Denham?" I asked. "Was it—the Raider?"

"Naturally," he answered. "It was the Raider, as you call it, that brought us all here, curse him. It was in the Colonial rebellion he got me."

"The American rebellion?" I asked, striving to understand his Eighteenth Century allusions.

"Of course," he answered. "We were quartered in Philadelphia, under that old fool, Howe. He liked the city, y'know, the bottle and the ladies. But the rest of us were itching for fight, and since we couldn't fight the rebels, we soon took to fighting one another.

"There was a ball one night, and toward the end of it I began to have a few words with a Hessian attached to our staff. We were both a little scrambled, by then. Curse me if there weren't some fine cellars there! But as to the German, he and I got hotter and hotter, until he finally made the assertion that our commander was a fool. Personally, that was my opinion also, but I couldn't allow the Dutchman to say so, and the upshot of it was that we left the ball together and adjourned to an open field near by to resume the argument, with our swords.

"Before we had made a half-dozen passes, there was a hellish sound of wind, a big, gray cloud with burning green eyes seemed to drop down on us from above, and then the bottom dropped out of the world. When we came to our senses, we were standing up there in the big temple, with a dozen others. Of course, we didn't know then that we had been brought on through time, but we knew it was a damned strange place.

"They brought us down here, down the stair, and as soon as we were turned loose here, we resumed our dispute, borrowing swords from two bystanders. By luck, I pinked him. There was a big crowd around, cheering us on, and it was then that I met D'Alord, who is one of the friends I mentioned."

As Denham finished his story, I began to feel a sudden, utter weariness, for I had not slept for many hours. I yawned and rubbed my eyes, and at once Denham jumped up.

"Why, take the bunk, man," he ordered me. "Go ahead and sleep."

"But what of Lantin," I asked, "my friend? He's somewhere in the city here, I'm sure, and I must find him."

Denham shook his head doubtfully. "What does he look like?" he asked.

When I had described Lantin to him, his face cleared a little, I thought. "An elderly man, you said?" he questioned, and when I nodded, he continued, "That should make it easier to find him, then. There are hardly any but young men here, so your friend would be more conspicuous and easily located. But you go ahead and sleep, and I'll find my friends and look for your companion. If anyone can find him, we can."

I tried to thank him, but he waved my words aside with a smile and walked out of the room. I sank back in the bunk and closed my eyes. As drowsiness overcame me, there came to my ears the dull sound of voices of the men in the room, with now and then a shout or bellow of laughter. And even these faded from hearing as I sank, contentedly enough, down into the green depths of sleep.

CHAPTER 12

PLANS FOR ESCAPE

Golden light again streamed through the windows when I finally woke, and I realized that in my utter weariness I must have slept the clock twice round. I swung out of the bunk and stood up, stretching.

There was only one man in the long room besides myself, a man who sat at the table, some distance away from me. As I looked at him he turned, saw me, and jumped up and hurried over toward me.

"Lantin!" I cried, extending my hands. He gripped them, his eyes sparkling.

"Where have you been?" I asked eagerly. "Were you in the city here all the time?"

"All the time since I left you," he affirmed. "They brought me directly here, Wheeler, and of course when I got here I knew at once that we had found the Raider's lair. Your friend Denham found me, a few hours ago, and told me where you were, but when I came here I saw that you were sleeping and didn't waken you."

"You should have," I told him. "But where is Denham now?"

"He'll be here soon," replied my friend. "He said he would go after his friends, who were helping him to look for me, and bring them here."

"But what of Cannell, Lantin?" I asked. "You have seen nothing of him in your stay here?"

His face clouded. "Nothing," he admitted. "I have searched for him, but how is one to find a single man in this city of thousands? And we do not even know that he is here, Wheeler. For all we know, he may have been killed long ago in some brawl here."

"Don't give up hope," I told him. "With Denham to help us, we have a far better chance to find him."

Lantin shook his head doubtfully, but before he could answer, our conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Denham and his three friends. As they came up to us, I gazed with mounting interest at the trio of strange companions who accompanied the Englishman.

One of them was patently a Roman, a short, sturdy man with swarthy, stern-set features, attired in armor and helmet. The man beside him was brown-skinned and long-haired, with eagle black eyes, dressed in spotted skins, quilted cotton armor, and head-dress of feathers. He carried a curious long sword, or weapon, whose edges were serrated, or saw-toothed, and the weapon gave me the clue to his identity. I had seen swords exactly like it brought out of the Aztec ruins in Mexico.

But it was the third man who caught and held my gaze. He was a figure of romance, a slouch-hatted, wide-booted trooper, long sword rattling at his heels, laughing, dare-devil eyes, and white teeth gleaming behind a fierce black mustache. As I surveyed him, rather rudely I think, he smiled at me and exclaimed, in execrable English: "Mordieu, is this the lad who killed that pig, Talerri?"

When Denham nodded, he thrust forth his hand impulsively, and I was glad to take it. And then Denham made introduction. "The Chevalier Raoul D'Alord," he said, indicating the laughing trooper, who swept me a grand bow. "One time captain in the armies of Henry Quatre, King of Navarre and France, but now a lodger in our pleasant city," and he laughed at the wry face the Frenchman made.

"This is Ixtil, Cacique of Tlacopan," he went on, indicating the wild brown figure in the middle, and I looked at him with renewed interest, now that my surmise had proved correct. An Aztec! One of the fierce hordes who had swept away Maya and Toltec forever, only to be crushed in turn by ruthless, steel-shod Cortez. The chieftain bowed to me, gravely and silently, but did not speak.

Denham turned to the remaining figure. "Fabrius Arminius," he said, "formerly centurion in the legions of Tiberius Cæsar," and the Roman stiffly inclined his head. Then, at Denham's suggestion, we seated ourselves around the end of the long table.

"D'Alord speaks English as well as I do," said Denham, "and between us we taught it to Ixtil and Fabrius, so you can speak freely. I have told my friends that you are, like ourselves, ready for an attempt at escaping. Naturally, though, they would like to hear it from your own lips."

"It is so," I assured them. "Lantin and I came here to find a certain man, and if we can find him, we'll take him out of here in spite of the Raider."

"The Raider?" queried D'Alord, and Denham interjected a brief explanation. "He means—him," he told the Frenchman, jerking a thumb upward.

The trooper laughed. "Sacré, that's a name for the beast! Eh, Fabrius?"

The Roman nodded, silently, and Denham came back to the subject. "For some time," he went on, "we four have considered different plans for escaping, but none has been practical. There are so many obstacles. It will be necessary to get up the stair, avoiding the guards at bottom and top. Once up, it will be necessary to pass through the city of the cylinders, though that should not be too difficult. But once out of the city, what then? How cross the ice?"

"We are talking at cross purposes," I said. "You must remember, Denham, that I know next to nothing about this place. Why have all these men been collected in this under-city? Does anyone know, except the Raider? What is the purpose of it all?"

"You do not know?" asked Denham, in surprize. "I thought you would, by now. These men, these thousands of warriors in the city here around you, have been gathered here by the Raider to act as his armies, his mercenaries, to pour down in hordes upon the cities of the enemies of the Kanlars, and destroy those enemies utterly, which the Kanlars are too few in number to do."

I gasped with astonishment. Denham went on. "You tell him, Fabrius," he said, addressing the Roman. "You have been here longer than any of us."

The centurion spoke, in a slurred, accented English. "Some things I have heard," he said, "but whether true or not, I can not say. There was a man here I knew when first I was brought here, a Persian. Before he was killed (for he was killed in a drunken brawl) he told me that once, in the city above, one of the Kanlars had become drunk and had babbled to him the story of his race.

"As you know, endless fields of ice lie around this land where is the Kanlar's city. Well, the Persian said that these fields of ice were not endless, that far to the south there were other green lands and in them a mighty people and a mighty city, named Kom. He said that long ago the Kanlars lived in this city, and were of its people, but that trouble had risen between them and the other people of Kom, because of the Raider. More than this he did not know, but said that because of this trouble, the Kanlars had fled from the city, with the Raider leading them, and coming north in their air-boats over the ice-fields, had found this green, uninhabited land, set in the ice. Its existence had never been suspected by those in Kom, who thought that the ice extended clear north to the very edge of earth.

"So the Kanlars had settled here and had built the city of cylinders, which lies above us. But still they planned to sweep back on Kom, and annihilate all there. But this they could not do, being too few in number. So the Raider, who is their god and their king, spoke to them and said that he would bring them men from every age of earth's past to be their servants, to fight for them at will. The Raider could travel at will through time—ask me not how!—and he swept back through the centuries and brought men by the thousands to the Kanlars, young warriors to fight their battles for them.

"There was a great cavern far beneath the city of the Kanlars, a great hollow space formed by inside shiftings of the young earth, and in this the Kanlars prisoned the men brought by the Raider, piercing a shaft down to it from their temple above, and placing in that shaft the stairway down which you came, under the direction of the Raider. They chose from among their prisoners some to be guards of the others, and those killed in battle here they brought back to seeming life by their arts of hell, and used as slaves.

"So, steadily, the hordes here in the pit have grown in number, until scarcely more could be contained here. Soon there will be enough to suit the purpose of the Raider and then they will be loosed and hurled south to carry fire and death to the cities beyond the ice, to Kom and the people of Kom, who can have no knowledge whatever of the peril that hangs over them. Up on the great roof of the temple, which is the home of the Raider, there are scores of great flying-platforms which the Kanlars have been constructing. They have made strange weapons, too, and so when their hour strikes, they will open the gates here and allow the hordes to pour up the stair, up to the roof of the temple, where they will crowd into the flying-platforms, under the leadership of the Kanlars, and race south over the ice to rain down death and destruction on Kom. And thus will the Raider and the Kanlars be revenged upon the people who cast them out."

Fabrius stopped, and I looked at Lantin, then back toward the Roman. Was this the true secret of the Raider's activity?

"But will the hordes here do this?" I asked. "Will they follow the Kanlars, and obey them?"

Fabrius laughed shortly, and D'Alord replied for him. "Ha, friend," he said to me, "you are new here, and do not know these men. They are evil, I tell you. They boast always of what they will do when they are loosed on Kom, for they know that soon they are to be thus loosed. Some subtle poison from the Raider's self has entered into them, I think. They are like tigers waiting to be freed upon a helpless prey."

"It is so," said Lantin, "for short a time as I have been here, I have found that this is so. There is no hope from the hordes here in the pit, for they will follow the Raider to a man."

There was a silence after that. Suddenly Denham spoke. "I think it would be possible for some of us, at least, to get out of the pit here," he said, "for I have a plan that would effect that much. But what then? Do you suppose it would be possible to get up to the roof of the temple and steal one of the flying-platforms you speak of? Or steal one of the Kanlars' air-boats? If we could do that, we could fly south over the ice-fields and warn the cities there of their peril, get their aid and come back and crush the Raider and these damned Kanlars."

For the first time, the Aztec spoke, shaking his head. "It can not be done," he said, speaking in precise, queerly clipped English. "I was to the roof of the temple once, and know. The only way to get to that roof is by the narrow stairway that spirals up the inside of the temple. And that stairway leads directly through the lair of the Raider!"

"But what can we do, then?" asked the Englishman. "It would be folly to try to steal one of the Kanlars' air-boats, for they always rise from and alight on the roofs of buildings, and we could never get to them unobserved."

Lantin broke into the silence that ensued. "But suppose there was an air-boat hidden back in the hills, outside the city," he said; "that would make things easier, wouldn't it?"

When they assented, he went on quickly, "Wheeler and I have such a machine hidden," he said, "and it was on it that we came here from our own time."

They looked up eagerly, incredulously. "Do you mean that you came into this age from your own time on a machine?" asked Denham. "That you came yourselves, and were not brought here by the Raider, like all the rest of us?"

Lantin nodded affirmation, and then went on to describe briefly the seizure of Cannell, our pursuit through time, and our subsequent capture outside the city by the guards. They listened, fascinated, and when he had finished, D'Alord asked, with something of awe in his voice, "And you made this machine yourselves? You found the secret of the Raider's time-traveling?"

"It is so," Lantin told them; "we made the time-car and then came after Cannell."

"God!" exclaimed the trooper, "what a chance for freedom! If we could all win free of this pit, escape from the city to your car, we could get back to our own times in it. Back to France!"

"No!" said Denham, decisively. "In the first place not all of us can escape from the pit. I have a plan by which some of us can, but the rest must stay here. And another thing, even if we each got back to our own time, D'Alord, who knows but that the Raider would come back and recapture us, as he did this Cannell they tell of? For all we know, the Raider may have placed on us some sign or mark by means of which he could track us down through the ages again. And until he is destroyed, it will be of no use to return to our own times."

"But what to do, then?" asked the Frenchman.

"This," said Denham. "We four will help Lantin and Wheeler to escape from the pit. Only two can succeed in escaping, by my plan, for more would be noticed in the city above, and we four will be needed to give them their start up the stair, how, I will explain later. And since only one or two can escape, Lantin and Wheeler must be the ones to make the attempt, since they alone know how to operate their machine, and know where it is hidden.

"If they can reach their car, they will speed south across the ice, warn the people of Kom of the plans of the Kanlars, and come back with a force sufficient to crush the Raider and the Kanlars forever, and then they can rescue us four from the pit."

"The plan is good," approved the Roman. "We four must stay while they go. When do you plan to make the attempt?" he asked Denham.

"We must wait until the night will be moonless," he said, "for the darkness will favor the attempt. The eighth night from today would be best."

"But your plan," asked the impatient Frenchman; "how do you plan to get up the stair?"

"In this manner," explained the Englishman; "we must make a grappling-hook of heavy metal, and a long, strong rope. On the night we select for the attempt, we four will assemble at the lower gate of the stair, while Lantin and Wheeler take up a position at the plaza's edge, directly under the lowest curve of the spiral stair. Then, by shouting or fighting, we four shall create a riot around the gate, to draw the attention of the guards inside. When the excitement is at its highest, and when the people around the position of Lantin and Wheeler have run toward the riot, as they always do here, then Wheeler will fling up the grappling-hook toward the curving stair above him. If fortune favors us, the hook will catch, he can ascend the rope and pull up Lantin, and the two can then proceed on up the stair, being above the gate and its guards."

"But the guards above?" D'Alord objected. "How pass them? And what of the metal floor of the temple, which covers the shaft? It will be closed, and how will they get through it?"

"No," said Denham, "for if we start a sufficiently large riot at the gate of the stair, the guards behind it will become alarmed and call for help from above. They have a system of signaling with those above and if they think the hordes here are going to attack the gate, those above will open the shaft by swinging aside the temple floor, and will send guards down to repel the attack on the gates. The shaft being open, and the guards gone, Lantin and Wheeler should have no trouble getting out and through the city, to their car."

"But we will meet the guards coming down the stair!" I cried.

"Not so," Denham assured me, "for when there is a call for aid from their fellows below, the guards above don't descend by the stair, since it would take them too long. They unreel great ropes or cables, drop them over the shaft's edge so that they hang clear to the stair's bottom, and then attach a sort of harness to themselves, join that harness to the cables with special pulleys, and slide down to the stair's bottom in a few minutes. Twice, since I have been here, there have been riots around the gate, and each time the guards above came whizzing down in that way, to repel the riot."

"Whatever else they are," added D'Alord, "there are no cowards among the guards. No one ever called me craven yet, but ventre-de-biche, I'd look twice before sliding down a rope into this hell."

"Yet what if some of the guards did come down the stair?" I asked.

Denham shook his head. "I do not think they will do so," he said.

"Yet if they did?" I insisted.

He shrugged his shoulders. "Why, then you would meet them on the stair."

We looked at each other, a little grimly, I think, and then there was a shattering roar of laughter from D'Alord. "Why borrow trouble?" he cried. "Take your sword with you, lad, and if you meet anyone on the stair, have at him. If you are the stronger, you will kill your enemies, and if your enemies are the stronger, they will kill you. What more is there to it?"

I could not help laughing, ruefully, as did the rest, but Lantin suddenly sobered.

"But Cannell?" he asked. "What of my friend? We came here to rescue him, you know, and can't leave without him."

"There are eight days yet in which to find him," Denham pointed out, "and if you can not find him in that time, we four will try to locate him after you and Wheeler have escaped. If he's here in the pit, we'll have him with us by the time you come back."

Our conversation was abruptly broken off by the entrance of a number of the room's occupants, who regarded our little group with suspicious stares.

"We'd best break up," Denham whispered, "for we don't want it to get abroad that we're planning something."

So, rising, we sauntered out of the room into the street. Outside a hot sunlight was pouring down from the glass globes in the roof, so strongly that one could not look up at that roof directly, any more than one can look directly at the sun. Whatever method the Kanlars had devised to collect and bring so far underground the light and heat of the sun, it was a wonderfully efficient one.

Behind us loomed the gray-rock wall of the pit, and before us, stretching away for miles to the opposite wall, were the masses of white buildings that housed the city's teeming thousands. And at the central plaza, the titanic, gleaming spiral of the metal stairway rose vastly up toward the black, round shaft that pierced the cavern's roof, its winding turn on turn glinting in the light like a huge, upraised serpent of metal.

In the shifting, noisy throng that pressed by us along the street, that swirled aimlessly through streets and buildings, I sensed a quality of expectation, of eager, restless waiting. Even I, new to the city as I was, could feel the unwonted excitement that pulsed from the passing crowds. And I saw that my companions felt it likewise.

A grizzled seaman in stained, shapeless clothes, who might have sailed with Drake or Hawkins, stopped in front of us.

"Ho, comrade!" he cried to Denham; "hast heard the news?"

"News! What news?" asked Denham, his brows drawing together.

"An hour ago," said the other, "the guards sent word through the city to sharpen all swords, to get all weapons ready. I tell thee, lad, it's soon we'll be dropping down on Kom, to loot it from end to end. Split me, they're going to loose us ere long," and with an anticipatory, gloating chuckle, the seaman passed on.

Denham turned to us, his face suddenly white. "You heard?" he asked. "That means that we have little time left for action. We dare not wait now until the moonless nights. We'll have to take our chance on the first night that it's cloudy above, for then it will be darker here. And if we fail in our attempt, it means these hordes of devils here flashing down to make a hell of an unwarned, unprotected city. For the Raider is getting ready to strike!"

CHAPTER 13

IN THE PIT

The hours, the days, that followed, I remember now as one remembers a particularly vivid dream, for even at the time, I seemed to see all in the city around me through the haze of assured impossibility that surrounds a dream. And, although I can well understand how the city in the pit was a very hell on earth to those long confined in it, yet to me during the next few days it was a city of wonder.

There was little to do but wander through it. Each day we waited tensely for night, but always when night came there came with it a flood of soft light that poured down revealingly from the roof, the moonlight of the earth above brought down to us by the glass globes above and in the roof. Had it been cloudy above, it would have been dark enough here in the pit to chance an attempt, but to do so in the brilliant light was out of the question. And we dared take no more chances than necessary, since if discovered, we should doubtless never live to make another attempt.

So in the eight days that followed, while Denham and his friends fretted impatiently at the delay, I spent the time roaming through the city, usually with one or all of the four friends as guide. When possible, we preferred to keep together, since thus we made up a strong little company whose five swords deterred many truculent souls from attacking us.

Even so, we were twice involved in combats, from both of which we managed to emerge victorious, though not unscathed. It was a bloody enough society, there in the city of the pit, a wilder life almost than that of roaming wolves, yet it had a fierce, free charm that stirred me, at times. A product of civilization, myself, I was thrown now into a life where strength and skill with weapons were the measure of a man, and where all disputes were settled with swords. Cooped as we were in the crowded pit, yet we were untrammeled by any form of law or etiquette, and I soon learned to swagger as boldly and scowl as ferociously as any fire-eater in the pit. And, too, in constant practise with my friends, I learned sword-play well.

I came to love my four new-found friends, in those days. Four men, out of four different centuries, and different in temperament as they were, yet strong bonds of friendship sprang up between them and myself, and Lantin also.

From the beginning, I had felt attracted to Denham, for he was more of my own time and way of thinking than the rest. Fastidious, elegant even, in manner, and of an indolent disposition naturally, yet he was terribly quick in battle, his slim rapier flashing out resistlessly even while he yawned in his opponent's face. He was a good bit of a fop, and it was a source of constant mirth to us to watch him cleaning and patching his ragged suit, and anxiously assuring himself of the fit of the torn coat. But at all our jests, he would smile quietly, and go on with his work.

A great deal different was D'Alord, though he attracted me as much. Swearing, laughing, shouting, he was never quiet, never still, and even in the cramped pit lived with a magnificent gusto that was enviable. He was very quick to take offense, and the rest of us had trouble always in keeping him from embroiling us in some senseless quarrel, but he was as quick to forget the cause of offense, and was incapable of holding a grudge. More than the rest of us, he loved fighting for its own sake, and was so much in his element in the pit that he sometimes declared that if it were not for the lack of wine and women, he would be content to stay in the pit forever.

Some few years older than the rest of us was the Roman, who had followed the insignia of his legion over all the distant frontiers of the Empire, from Parthia to Britain. He was never excited, and never unprepared, a calm, fearless veteran, who made me understand something of the greatness of his people, who reared up the greatest empire in history, and stamped their language and their customs on half the world.

Strangest of the four, perhaps, was the Aztec. Quiet, even gentle, when not provoked; yet I have never seen such tigerish fury as he exhibited in battle. He had a great name as a fighter, even in that city of warriors, and was feared by the most fearless. He could handle his saw-toothed sword with wonderful skill and quickness, and I shuddered at the gashing wounds he inflicted with it. As staunch and faithful a friend as I have ever had or seen, yet to those he hated he was a terrible enemy.

Always, while we five roamed through the city, we searched for Cannell, but found him not. I began to think that, after all, Cannell was not in the pit, for though it was possible we had missed him in the swirling hordes, it was equally possible that he had been killed in some combat here or above, and that he now walked dead-alive through the city of the Kanlars as one of the ghastly, white-robed slaves.

But Lantin would not believe that. He searched from dawn to darkness of each day, and was not discouraged when he failed to find his friend. He did not accompany us five in our rambles through the city, preferring to search alone, and though we were fearful for his safety, he was never molested. His obvious elderliness, and the gentleness and inoffensiveness of his nature, served to protect him from the constant bullying and fighting that went on in the pit.

The days dragged past, and working in odd hours when we were not noticed, we managed to make a metal grappling-hook and a long rope. The hook was much like a triple fishing-hook, large enough to catch on the wall of the stair, and was hammered out from pieces wrenched from metal chairs. The rope, a long and very strong one, was braided from long strips of torn cloth, and was knotted to make easier an ascent along its length. Both rope and hook lay concealed beneath the bunk of D'Alord, in a cunningly contrived little hiding place there.

So we came at last to the eighth day, the night of which would be moonless on the earth above, with consequent darkness below. As the day wore on, we grew increasingly nervous, with the exception of Fabrius, who appeared as imperturbable as ever. Finally the light from the roof waned and died, and a thick darkness settled down on the city, a darkness relieved only by one or two of the glowing red bulbs that were set around the gate of the stair, and along the nine streets.

An hour passed, and another, and another. Then Denham rose from his bunk and sauntered leisurely out of the room, followed in a few minutes by D'Alord and the Aztec. By now the bunks were filled with snoring sleepers, but as the two went across the room to the door, none of these stirred, so Lantin, Fabrius and I followed, the Roman carrying the hook and rope concealed under his cloak.

We stepped from the dark room into a street almost equally dark, the ruddy bulbs set sparsely along its length accentuating rather than dispersing the blackness. A few drunken stragglers were wandering along the street, but most of the city's thousands were slumbering in the many buildings, for few were abroad in the pit at night.

Denham, D'Alord and Ixtil were awaiting us outside, and without speaking, our entire little party moved rapidly down the dark street, toward the plaza and the great stair.

CHAPTER 14

UP THE STAIR

When we entered the broad clearing of the plaza, we found it almost entirely deserted. Above us loomed the winding, spiral stair, and where that stair touched the pit's floor, we saw the blaze of ruddy light that illuminated the high, barred gate of the stair. Keeping well within the shadows, we passed toward the farther edge of the plaza, and in the darkness there, Lantin and I took up our position directly beneath the lowest curve of the spiral stairway, which hung in the air some thirty feet above our heads. Even where we stood, we could hear the tramp of feet around the stair's curve, as guards came and went, constantly patrolling the lower part of the airy pathway. And, too, we heard the chatter and broken laughter of the other guards massed inside the gate.

Speaking in whispers, Denham said, "Be ready to make your attempt at any moment now. But be sure that all the guards on the stair have come down to the gateway before you try it."

"If we get out and come back with aid," I said, rapidly, "where will we find you?"

He reflected for a moment, then said, "You know that tall barracks building at the northern edge of the pit, right under the wall?"

"The one that is roofed?" I asked, and he nodded. "Yes, that's the one. Well, we four will spend all our nights on that roof from now on. You could come straight down the shaft, in your flying-car, and pick us up from that roof in the darkness without the knowledge of any here in the pit. But first, go and get aid from the people of Kom, as we planned."

"And Cannell?" said Lantin. "You will look for him?"

"Never fear," answered D'Alord, "we'll find him for you."

The calm voice of Fabrius broke into our speech. "It is time to do our part at the gate," he said to Denham, and the Englishman nodded. "Good-bye," he told us. "I know you'll do your best." A warm hand-clasp from each, and then they had slipped away into the shadows.

For a minute or so, Lantin and I stood silent, listening to the tramp of feet on the stair above us, and then a sudden high-pitched cry broke on our ears from the center of the plaza. It was D'Alord's voice, and he was shouting at the top of his lungs, "Out, comrades, out! We are to be loosed on Kom tonight!"

The cry rang out over the silent city, and then was repeated, but louder, the Frenchman's three friends adding their voices to his. There was an uneasy murmur from the guards at the gate, and one among them called to the Frenchman, whom they could not see in the darkness, to cease his shouting.

He went on with the cry, unheeding, and now, out of the buildings along the branching streets, men were pouring, running toward the plaza. They heard D'Alord's cry and took it up, thinking that his statement was a true one, and repeating it.

"Loose us on Kom tonight!" they bellowed, rushing toward the gate of the stair and pressing against it. Away across the great clearing, we saw a sea of faces around the ruddy lighted gate, pressing against it and against the high wall that balustraded the stair's length for the first few yards. And from all around, from all of the nine branching streets, came others, sword in hand, afire to be led out to loot the city whose riches had been many times described to them.

They beat against the barred gate in one buffeting wave of solid humanity, in eager hope of freedom and pillage. Their cry rose up like that of a single, vast voice, but in a thousand different tongues.

"Loose us tonight! Loose us on Kom tonight!"

There were anxious cries from the guards on the stair as the great mob battered at the gate. Those of the guards who patrolled the stair's upper part ran down swiftly to aid their fellows in holding the gate. It was this that Lantin and I awaited, and at once I grasped the metal grappling-hook, whirled it round my head by the attached rope, and then sent it hurtling through the air toward the edge of the stair above us.

It struck the outside of the stair's low wall with a loud clang that brought my heart to my throat, and that I feared would attract the attention of the guards at the gate, even over the clamor of the crowd. But the hook had not caught and fell down beside me.

Before I could throw it again there was a warning whisper from Lantin, and in a moment a solid group of some fifty men rushed by us, heading toward the riot at the gate, news of which had evidently penetrated to the city's farthest reaches. They raced by, not seeing us in the darkness, and after them came four or five single stragglers who likewise passed us without stopping. Then, the coast again being clear for the moment, I slung up the hook again, with more force than before, and felt a throb of relief when it caught, slid a little along the edge of the stair-wall, and then caught again.

I tried the rope hastily, but it held firm, so I hastily began to climb up it, by means of the thick knots along its length. Scrambling up with panicky swiftness, I reached the rail, pulled myself over, and lay gasping for a moment on the stair. Then, leaning over the rail, I signaled to Lantin, whom I could see but dimly in the darkness. Bracing myself against the wall of the stair, I pulled in the rope until after a seeming eternity my friend's head appeared above the wall. He scrambled over, and then, winding the rope around my body and tossing the hook as far away as possible, I stood for a moment motionless.

Across the plaza, and below us, was the gate, flooded with crimson light and alive with activity. The mobs of the city's dwellers were pressing against the gate, while the guards were repelling them by thrusting through the bars with their long spears. And from all the long streets that stretched away into the darkness there came the sound of many running feet, and the cries of excited men. Certainly the riot which our friends had kindled to aid us was no mean one.

A moment only I watched the scene below, then turned, and with Lantin beside me, began the long climb up the spiral stair.

As we toiled up along the steeply slanting spiral, the clamor at the gates below gradually lessened in volume as we drew away from it. That the riot below had not yet been quelled, though, was evident, for before we had been on the stair ten minutes, a tiny beam of blue light flashed out at the gate, a narrow little shaft of azure light that clove up to the shaft above us, and seemed to stab straight up to the metal cover of that shaft.

I remembered Denham's words concerning the signaling of the guards, and wondered if that was the cause of the little light. In a minute it vanished, but as we raced on up around the great spiral, a faint sound came down to us from far above, a grating clash of metal that we could barely hear.

"The temple floor!" I cried to Lantin. "They've swung it aside! They've uncovered the shaft of the stairway!"

He did not answer, out of breath from the toilsome climb. Before many more minutes had passed, we had progressed half-way from the floor of the cavern to its roof, up the stair. Abruptly something hissed down from above through the circle of the spiral stair. The hissing was repeated, and now I saw that it had been caused by a number of thick ropes that had been dropped from above, and that now swung free at the center of the stairway's spiral.

I grasped Lantin, flung myself flat on the stair, pulling him down with me. And not a moment too soon, for peering cautiously over the low wall, I saw dark shapes flashing down along those swinging cables, in long strings, one after another. When they had passed, we jumped to our feet and sped on.

"The guards from above," I told my companion. "Let's hope that all above have gone down."

On we raced, around and around the spiral, ever upward. The sound of the riot in the pit had faded from our ears by now, and we came to the roof of the cavern, and the shaft that pierced it. On we went, the wall of the shaft on our left side now, and we hugged that wall closely as we sped up the narrow pathway.

I judged that we had traversed two-thirds of the stair's length, when Lantin suddenly halted. When I turned, he held up a warning hand, listening intently.

"Hear it?" he asked, in a low voice.

I listened tensely, and in a moment heard the sound that had halted him. It was a rhythmic, regular thudding, and seemed to come from a point some distance above us, and across the shaft from us.

"The guards!" he whispered. "Some of them are coming down the stair!"

All the blood drove from my heart at the thought, for we were caught on the airy stairway without chance to advance or retreat. And every minute that I stood there in indecision, the tramping feet of the guards were nearing me. Why they were descending by the stair instead of the ropes, I could not guess, though it may have been that they had already started down the stair before the alarm from below. But whatever the reason, they were coming nearer and nearer, until finally they were directly across the shaft, coming around the down-slanting curve of the stairway toward us.

My brain, momentarily stupefied by the oncoming deadly peril, again acted, and with frantic speed I unrolled the rope that was wound round my body. The low wall that protected the stair's right side was pierced at regular intervals with circular, ornamental openings, and swiftly I passed the rope through one of these and tied it securely, then tied its other end into a double loop. At once Lantin saw my purpose, and with a muttered "Good!" he set his foot in one of the loops, while I did the same with the other.

Swiftly the tramping feet were coming around the curve toward us, though in the murky darkness of the shaft we could make out nothing. Feet in the loops at the rope's end, we grasped the low wall of the stair and gently swung ourselves over it. Then, hanging above the abyss, we lowered ourselves until we swung some twenty feet below the stair, floating gently back and forth at the rope's end, with nearly two miles of space below us.

The marching guards came quickly around the stair's curve, and I held my breath as they passed the place where our rope was tied. If one but felt it and slashed carelessly with a knife, we would hurtle down to death on the floor of the pit, far below. But the guards passed on, and I could plainly hear the command of their leader to move faster, as they went by us.

Waiting until they had progressed to the opposite side of the shaft, Lantin and I began to pull ourselves up. Slowly, toilsomely, we fought our way upward until our hands gripped the stair's rail and we were able to scramble over it onto the steps.

As I rolled over the wall onto those steps, the hilt of my rapier struck the metal stairway with a loud jar. Appalled, I lay tense for minutes, but there was no sound to indicate the guards had heard, and we could hear their marching footsteps dying away below.

I rose to my feet, then, breathing hard. "A near shave, that," I told Lantin, who was also struggling to regain his breath. "If those guards had caught us on the stair, it would have been all up with us." Untying the rope from the wall, I again wound it round my body, and stepped up to where Lantin awaited me.

He was looking back the way we had come, peering into the darkness. As I stepped up toward him he cried suddenly, "Look out, Wheeler!" and as I instinctively threw myself flat on the stairway, a heavy knife hurtled out of the air behind me and passed over me, striking the wall. I jumped to my feet and turned, ripping out my sword.

Five steps down the stair from us a guard was standing, a tall, dark-faced fellow whom I could just see in the nightmare blackness of the shaft. In a flash, I knew that the clang of my rapier on the stairway had been heard, by this fellow at least, and that he had come back to investigate and had found us.

The man below me uttered a hoarse cry, and ran straight up toward me, his long spear aimed at my heart. But by now my own rapier was out, and avoiding the spear by a quick sidestep, I thrust with my blade at his throat, where no armor protected him. The stab was a true one, and he sank to the stair with a choking, terrible cry that rang out eerily there in the vast dark shaft. From far below his cry was answered. There was no time to lose, and we pressed on up the stair.

But now there were cries from below, and a bugle peal came up toward us. It was evident that the alarm had been sounded by the cry of the guard I had killed, and that we were being pursued.

I knew that we were very near to the stair's top, by then, but although we knew the metal cover of the shaft was not in place, there was no light from the great opening above us, the great temple being as dark as the shaft below it.

"Pray God there are no guards at the top of the stair," I cried to Lantin, as we sped upward. He did not answer, and from his agonized breathing I knew that he was out of wind from our long, torturing climb. And, away across the shaft now, there was a chorus of shouts as the guards beneath raced after us. Their cries halted for a moment, and by this I knew that they had found the body of the man I had killed. Then, with yelps of rage, they sped on after us.

We staggered drunkenly up the last curve of the stair. Out of the darkness appeared the little collapsible stairway which joined the temple's black ring of flooring with the great spiral on which we stood. There was no sign of the presence of any guards around or above it, so I jerked out the sword at my belt, and clasping it in one hand, strode cautiously up the little stair until I stood on the black flooring that was the rim of the shaft up which we had come.

Dense darkness reigned in the gigantic building, and the complete silence in it showed me that it was deserted. Lantin was beside me now, and the cries of the pursuing guards were ringing up the shaft ever louder, as they neared us. I sprang to the building's wall, clawing frantically along its side.

Abruptly my hands encountered the thick lever I was searching for, and as I jerked it down as far as it would go, I sobbed with relief. There was a loud click, and the little collapsible stair swung up and folded into an aperture in the wall.

"That will hold them on the stair, for a time," I told my friend, who had come up to me and was grasping my arm. As we raced around the wall to the building's entrance and exit, I explained in a few words what I had done. It was well for us, too, that I had remembered how the little stair was folded and unfolded, for as we sped down the tunneled gateway to the outside air, there came a shout of baffled rage from behind us, as the guards on the stair found their progress thus stopped.

Speeding down the arched tunnel through the temple's great wall, we emerged at last into the open air. For a moment, heedless of the clamor in the temple behind us, we stood with swelling hearts, breathing in the free air, expanding, almost, there beneath the limitless sky, after our sojourn in the cramped cavern below.

Darkness reigned over the city of the Kanlars, a darkness intensified by the absence of moon or stars above. From where we stood, the broad street, plashed with ruddy light from the glowing bulbs along its length, stretched away to the east, piercing the mass of winking lights that betokened the city's presence. Even from where we stood, we could see that there were many of the guards in the street, and there was no chance of our passing them unchallenged.

I turned to Lantin, but before I could speak we both shrank back into the temple's entrance. Footsteps were sounding on the ground near us, coming toward us along the outside of the temple's wall!

We crouched against the wall of the tunneled entrance, hearing the footsteps come nearer. From the temple behind us came the faint, raging clamor of the guards on the stair, who were still blocked by my stratagem. Then two figures appeared in the entrance of the tunnel, two ghostly white figures who were advancing through the darkness.

"Slaves!" muttered Lantin, and from the white robes and stiff movements, I saw that he had guessed the identity of the two aright. They walked on toward us, then passed us, at arm's length, walking stiffly, mechanically, past us. Whether or not they saw us, I can not say, though if they had glimpsed us, I doubt whether their soulless natures would have understood the significance of our presence there. At any rate, they passed us by, and proceeded on down the tunnel.

My sword was in my hand, and grasping it by the blade six inches or more beneath the hilt, I stole quickly down the tunnel after the white-robed figures. As quietly as possible, I hastened after them, and in a moment the heavy hilt of my rapier swung down on their skulls in two swift blows, and they slumped to the floor. A low call brought Lantin to my side, and we hastily pulled the long white robes from the two on the floor, and put them on over our own clothing. I shuddered with deep loathing, in the process, for these two men on the floor were icy-cold to the touch. Dead-alive, and slaves to the Kanlars! I hoped, at least, that my blows had released them from their dreadful servitude.

Disguised now by the white garments, we hastened again out of the tunnel and down the broad ramp into the red-lit street. We passed some distance along that street before we came near to any of the guards, and when we did so, we changed our pace, walking stiffly and rigidly, eyes staring straight ahead, striving to give to our faces the blank, deathly expression of the faces of the slaves.

We were unchallenged, the guards passing us without giving us more than a casual glance. And as we passed group after group of the armored men, we began to breathe easier, though we still kept to our unlifelike walk and expression.

As we drew farther toward the city's edge, the street became more deserted. The buildings began to lessen in size and frequency, and we were not far from the spot where the red lights along the street ended and it became a road.

Abruptly, I clutched Lantin's arm. From far behind us, from the temple whence we had fled, there rose a great ringing sound, a vast bell-note that echoed out over all the city clearly. It was repeated, and now, from far behind us also, came a dim, angry clamor, a score or more of raging shouts, through which there cut the clear note of a bugle.

"The guards!" I whispered to Lantin, tensely. "Someone has found them there on the stair! They're after us!"

"Faster," he muttered to me, without turning. "We're almost out of the city."

It was so, in truth, for we were nearing the end of the street's lighted part, while on each side the buildings were becoming fewer. We had met no one on the street for the last few minutes, and as we passed under the last of the glowing bulbs, I turned and cried to my friend, "Out of the city, Lantin!"

He caught his breath, turned to me, his face livid, and whispered, "For God's sake, Wheeler, be still! That guard over there is watching us!"

My heart contracted suddenly, as I looked toward the left of the street and saw the man he referred to, a guard in full armor who stood at the doorway of a small building and regarded us suspiciously. No doubt his attention had been aroused by the spectacle of one slave talking to another, and I cursed my folly in crying out to Lantin.

We passed on, hearts thumping, into the darkness that lay beyond the lane of crimson light. Once safe within it, we swiftly shed the white robes, whose length hampered our movements, and then set out along the road at a rapid trot.

Away back in the city, the disturbed, angry clamor of our pursuers lessened, faded. We were in open country now, and as the road soon ended, we fled on over the long, grassy swells toward the east, toward the hills and the valley where our time-car was hidden.

"Safe!" I exulted, as we stumbled on through the thick darkness. "They'll never even know what direction we took."

"They will if the guard who saw us talking tells them what he saw," replied Lantin, and I sobered.

"Even then—" I began, but broke off suddenly, and looked back. "Lantin!" I shouted. "Lantin!"

Out of the city toward us were streaming a hundred or more men, carrying with them on long poles many of the flashing red light-giving bulbs, whose crimson rays struck down and glinted on the armor and spear-points of the men who carried them. Over a mile behind, yet the gap between us was fast decreasing as they came straight on toward us.

"The grass!" I gasped, as we stumbled on; "they can track us easily by it!"

The grass over which we ran was high and seemingly very dry and brittle, so that at every step we crushed down great masses of it into a trail that a child could have followed. And a great, wolflike shouting came from behind, as our pursuers struck our track.

On we ran, lungs laboring and hearts near to bursting, but steadily the guards behind us drew nearer until they were within a half-mile of us. By that time, we knew that we must be drawing near to the valley where our car was concealed, and then it was that our real race began.

I heard Lantin's breath coming in great sobs, and knew that he was almost winded. The long climb up the stair from the pit and the flight through the city had sapped his strength, and his endurance was near its breaking point.

Through the darkness, a darker mass loomed up, and as we sped toward it, it showed itself to us as the little wood that lay across the valley's mouth. More by blind chance than by design, I think, we had come straight toward our objective, and now we struggled through the thicket with frantic bursts of speed.

We emerged from the wood into the open valley, and as we did so, Lantin sank to the ground.

"Go on, Wheeler," he gasped. "You can get to the car and get away. I can't go farther."

I looked back, and saw that our pursuers were advancing in a broad line through the wood, carrying forward a chain of the ruddy lights so that we might not hide from them in the shadows. There was no grass beneath the trees, and they could not track us in that way, but came on swiftly, for all that, shouting to each other mirthfully.

"I can't leave you here," I told Lantin. "If you stay, I stay."

"Go on!" he ordered. "You can make it, without me. Hurry!"

I glanced back, hesitated a moment, then swiftly stooped and swung an arm under Lantin's shoulders, half lifting him to his feet. Then, half dragging, half carrying him, I toiled up the valley toward our hidden car.

I did not look back, but long rays of red light stabbed past me as our pursuers and their lights emerged from the wood. By that crimson glare they saw me, for a savage cry went up. A few strides and I was at the spot on the valley's bottom, on the slope above which lay the time-car. With fast-waning strength, I started up that slope.

Down the valley toward me bounded a score of men, spears and swords gleaming in the light of the bulb-torches behind them. Dragging Lantin on, blind with sweat and every muscle straining to its utmost power, I toiled up the slope, more like a goaded, maddened beast than a human being, while Lantin still besought me to drop him and save myself.

And up the slope after me raced the shouting guards, a hundred yards behind and gaining every second. I burst through the screen of boughs around our car, and sobbed with relief to see that it was still there, untouched. I spun open the circular door in its top, and dropped Lantin inside. I had just placed my feet inside the opening, when a dozen of the armored guards burst through the screen of branches, their red bulb-torches illuminating the little clearing with crimson light.

They stopped short on seeing me, some fifteen feet away. The three nearest me raised their right arms above their heads, a heavy spear poised in each. Then, like leaping metal serpents, the three heavy, dagger-pointed weapons flashed through the air toward me.

But in that split-second there came the click of a switch from the interior of the car, a gust of sudden wind smote me, and then the guards, torches, and even the three spears in midair had vanished, and the car, Lantin and I were speeding on into time.

CHAPTER 15

OVER THE ICE

We had flashed through two days and nights before Lantin judged it safe to stop our progress in time. By then, we had started the space-movement mechanism, and had sent the car up to a height of a mile above the ground. Once there, we snapped off the time-wave, and hung in midair, motionless in both time and space.

It was early morning now, bright and sunny, and peering down over the car's side to the valley below, I could see no sign of life. In the two days through which we had passed so quickly, it was evident that the guards had given up searching for us and had returned to the city. I wondered how they explained to themselves our sudden disappearance.

I slid down into the car's interior, now, and closed the circular door above me. Sinking down on the padded floor with utter weariness, I tried to express to Lantin my thanks for saving my life, since had he acted a fraction of a second later, I should have been struck down by the flashing spears of our pursuers. But Lantin would not hear me, declaring that alone he would have been unable ever to reach the car, and so, conscious that without the other each of us would have perished, we let the matter rest.

In a few minutes, Lantin returned to the controls, and swinging the car in a great circle, pointed it south, opening up the power gradually until we were racing down toward the southern horizon with our highest speed. Soon, far ahead, the glistening ice came into view, and in a few minutes after that the green land behind us had dwindled to a speck against the ice, and then vanished. High above the ground, we sped across the endless ice, splitting the air like a meteor.

Hour after hour we fled on, across the gleaming fields of whiteness. The cold air had forced us to turn on the heater of the car, and even with it, we were none too warm. Below, from horizon to horizon, billowed the frozen fields, with here and there a white dune or hill to break the monotony of the landscape.

Finally, in midafternoon, a thickening line of black showed against the southern horizon. We reduced our speed, and sinking closer to the ground, sped down toward the black line.

It seemed to grow as we came nearer, loomed larger and larger, until at last we hung above the black mass, gazing down at it in silent awe. And it was a wall.

But what a wall! A gigantic, mountain-high and mountain-thick barrier of solid black metal, extending as far as we could see, from the eastern to the western horizon. A colossal barrier of metal, all of a mile and a half in height, with a thickness at the bottom of nearly a mile and at the top of half that much. A smooth-sided, dully gleaming mass beside which the walls of mighty Babylon would have been toylike, microscopic.

And with that wall, the ice stopped. On the northern side of the barrier, the fields of ice stretched away as far as the eye could reach. But on its southern side there was no ice. Grass of dull green, and small trees, gnarled and twisted by the glacier's cold, lay to the wall's south, a vista of rolling, bleak plains that extended down to the southern horizon.

Hanging above the mighty, flat-topped barrier, we surveyed it, stupefied. All around us was no sign of life. No sound, no movement. Only the white expanse to the north, the green one to the south, and between them, separating and defining them, the titanic wall.

Lantin spoke, excitedly. "You see its purpose, Wheeler? It has been built here as a dam to hold back the glacier, to stem the tides of ice. But how built? To think that men can do things like that!"

I saw now that Lantin spoke aright, and that it was to dam the engulfing, southward-flowing ice that the wall had been built. And I was struck with awe at the achievement. What were the great Chinese wall and Martian canals, to this? Here in the far future, fifteen thousand years ahead of our own time, we were seeing another step in the conquest of nature by man. He had leveled mountains and turned rivers, and here, below us, had thrust forth a hand and halted the resistless glaciers.

An hour we hung above the colossal barrier, fascinated, and then remembered our mission and sped again south.

As we rocketed on, we could see no sign of life below, nothing but the bleak arctic plains with here and there some sparse vegetation.

Again Lantin cried out, and when I looked south, I discerned an odd flicker of light, a seeming hesitating wavering of the air. We sped down toward it, dropping down again to a scant mile above the ground.

Far ahead showed expanses of bright green, and as we drew nearer, I saw that there were small patches of white against the green, oddly regular in shape. As we sped on, these white blotches changed to buildings, and the green to verdant lawns and gardens, in which they were set. Again Lantin stopped the car, while we looked down, puzzled. For in a straight line from east to west, was the boundary, the limit, of the gardens and the buildings. North of that line were the cold, wind-swept plains and stunted, arctic vegetation, while south of the same invisible line, seemingly only a few feet from the bleak tundras, began the luxuriant, tropical gardens, stretching away south as far as the eye could see. And also the elusive flicker of light seemed to begin at the same point, and to be present everywhere south of it. If you have ever seen the flicker of heated air above railway tracks or hot sand, on a warm afternoon, you will understand me. It was like that, an elusive, fleeting wavering in the air, below us.

"I can't understand it," said Lantin, pointing down to the invisible line which separated arctic world from tropic. "Gardens like those, only a few feet away from the cold plain."

"It's beyond me," I told him. "Another thing, Lantin, the car is as cold as ever, even with the heater functioning. Yet down there the country looks tropical."

He shook his head, and starting the car, we sped on south, as cold as we had been above the glacier, while below was a landscape that reminded me of Florida, in my own time. Set in the lawns and gardens, the white buildings became more numerous as we sped on. We could see that they were of varying shapes, some cone-shaped, others cubical, while still others were spherical, like great globes of white stone sunk a little in the earth. The cone-shaped buildings were the most numerous, I saw, though there were many of the other designs. But nowhere was there a building that was cylindrical.

Ever and again our eyes caught that inexplicable flicker in the air below us. We were flying with reduced speed, now, less than a mile above the ground, and beneath us the lawns and gardens had disappeared, giving way to the crowded buildings of a great city. In the broad streets of that city were tiny, moving figures, and many vehicles seemed to flash continually along the wide avenues. But there was no sign of aircraft.

Always the buildings grew larger, and it was plain that we were approaching the city's center. Away ahead of us a great cone began to loom up gigantically, an immense, cone-shaped building that was fully as large as the temple of the Raider, back in the city of the Kanlars. We changed our course, headed down toward the colossal center building. As we drew nearer, we saw that it was smooth and unbroken of side, and at its top it was truncated, flattened, the summit of the cone forming a flat, circular platform a few hundred feet in diameter. We glimpsed this much, and then Lantin sent the car down on a long slant toward the cone's flat summit.

"We'll land there," he said. "This city is Kom, without doubt."

I nodded but did not answer, for my attention was engaged by something else. As we slanted smoothly down toward the cone, with moderate speed, I noticed that the strange flicker of light that had puzzled us seemed to be growing plainer, stronger, nearer. It apparently hung steady above the cone, a few rods over its summit. And as we rushed down toward that summit, the truth struck me, and the nature of the odd flickering was clear to me in a sudden flash of intuition.

"Lantin!" I screamed. "That flicker! It's a roof, a transparent roof! Stop the car!"

His face livid, he reached toward the space-mechanism control, but before ever his hand touched it, there was an ear-splitting crash, I was thrown violently forward in the car, and as my head hit its steel wall with stunning force, something seemed to explode in my brain, and consciousness left me.

CHAPTER 16

BEFORE THE COUNCIL OF KOM

Through a throbbing, pain-racked darkness, light came down to me, stronger and stronger. There was a dull, monotonous sound that seemed to float down to me from great heights. I turned, struggled, opened my eyes.

I was lying on a soft mat, set on a low, narrow platform of metal. Above me was a high, white ceiling, and as I half-raised myself on one arm, I was able to survey the rest of the room in which I lay.

It was a bright, airy room, white-walled and sunny. At one end of it were high, open windows, without glass or shutter, and through them streamed the sunlight and the soft air. Except for the bed on which I lay, and two metal chairs of simple design, the room was quite bare, but it was an austere, clean bareness that was pleasing to the eye.

Now memory rushed back to me, and sudden fear came with it. Where was Lantin? Had he survived the crash? I began to struggle up from my reclining position, but sank back for a moment as a door in one of the walls slid aside, and a man entered the room.

Tall and commanding of appearance, with dark hair and clear youthful face, yet something about the eyes stamped him as a man of middle age, almost elderly. He was dressed in a short white tunic, bordered with three narrow stripes of purple. When he perceived that I was awake and regarding him, he paused for a moment in surprize, then came on toward me.

A friendly smile illumined his face as he spoke to me, in the Kanlar tongue.

"You are awake, Wheelaire? And your friend, too, has just awakened."

"Lantin!" I exclaimed. "He is all right? He was not hurt?"

The other smiled. "No more than yourself. Would you like to see him?"

I assented eagerly, and made to rise, but he pushed me back. "It is not needful," he said, and reaching down to the foot of the metal platform on which I lay, he touched a concealed button. At once, the platform rose gently from its supports until it swung in the air four feet above the floor. When my new-found friend laid his hand on its edge, it moved gently through the air under the impetus of a slight push.

He saw my astonishment, and explained, "The metal is clorium, the same material we once used for our air-boats. It is weightless, under the influence of certain forces." Then, as an afterthought, he added, "My name is Kethra."

Pushing my platform easily through the air before him, he was moving toward the door of the room when I stopped him with a gesture. "Can I look from the window there a moment?" I asked, indicating the high openings. By way of answer, he stepped over to the window in question, his hand on my platform's edge bringing me there also. I raised myself, gazed eagerly out.

I saw at once that I must be near the top of the great cone-shaped building we had been making for when we crashed. Below, and all around, the white buildings extended to the horizons, looking like thousands of huge geometry-models cast down indiscriminately, cones and spheres and cubes. High above them as I was, yet I could discern swift movement in the streets, crowds of pedestrians surging to and fro, flashing vehicles of strange design, that followed the broad thoroughfares, rising in the air here and there to pass over each other. Glancing away down the long, slanting side of the cone near whose summit I stood, I saw at its base other great crowds, who massed and swirled aimlessly around the building. I turned to Kethra.

"And this is Kom?" I said.

He nodded. "It is Kom."

I pointed toward the teeming crowds that eddied around the building's base. "You must count your people here by the millions?" I queried.

His face grew somber as he too looked down at the masses of humanity below. "It is seldom there are crowds like that," he said. "But this is a time of great events, and our people gather around this building, which is the seat of the Council of Kom, that they may learn what decisions have been made."

He turned from the window, face solemn and unsmiling now, and with a slight push sent my platform drifting toward and through the door. Conducting me down a long corridor, he turned in at another room, similar in every detail to the one I had just left. And there, standing up and gazing down through an open window as I had just done, was Lantin.

He turned and saw me, came toward me anxiously. At a touch from Kethra, my platform sank down to the floor, and assisted by my friend, I rose weakly to my feet.

"You're all right, Wheeler?" he asked quickly. I assured him that I was, for the weakness and dizziness I had felt were rapidly leaving me. Lantin laughed ruefully. "What a fool's trick of mine, to smash straight down into that roof!" He pointed upward, toward the blue sky, and walking over to the window beside him, I looked up curiously.

There was the same flicker in the sky that I had noticed from above, an elusive, wavering flash of light that I knew now was caused by the sunlight glinting off the flat, transparent roof.

"The roof," I said to Kethra, "does it cover all the city?"

"All of Kom lies beneath it," he said. "Without it, could we live like this?" He swept an arm around in a wide gesture that included the soft, warm air, the open windows, and the white city below, laced with the greenery of gardens.

"But how is it built?" I asked. "How supported? Is it glass, or what material?"

"It's no material at all," he replied, astoundingly. "It's force."

I looked at him, a little incredulously. "Force? It was solid enough when we crashed into it."

"Yes, it is force," he smiled. "That's the reason it is almost invisible, from above or below. It is a perpetual sheet of electric force, drawn over the city from end to end. It is so designed and projected, from a ring of stations around the city, that it excludes some vibrations of the ether, and allows others to enter. For instance, it excludes the vibrations called matter, such as air, or such as your car. All of the city's air is pumped in through special vents in the force-shield. On the other hand, it allows the vibrations of light and of radiant heat to enter, and so our city is lighted and heated by the sun itself. Without such a shield, we would be living in a city as bleak and cold as the plains that surround it."

"So we crashed into an invisible field of force," I said, and shook my head. "Well, it seemed solid enough when we hit it."

"The most powerful force in the world could not crash through it," said Kethra, "and it is fortunate that you were not going at high speed or you would have been annihilated. As it was, we found you both lying unconscious in your car, up on the force-shield, and as we can neutralize it at will, at given spots, we were able to bring you down to the city."

"But the car!" I cried. "It is not destroyed, is it? It was not completely smashed?"

He shook his head. "It was hardly damaged at all," he assured us. "The point, or prow, was bent back, but that has already been repaired." He paused a moment, then said an astounding thing. "The car does you credit, in its design. It is too bad that, after making it and coming so far into the future, you have been unable to find your friend."

I gasped and looked at Lantin. His face reflected utmost surprize, and he said, "I didn't tell him, Wheeler. I'll swear I didn't."

Kethra smiled. "Neither of you told me," he said. "But you have lain unconscious for a day, and in that time we learned all your story, my friends, and learned how you came here to warn us of the peril beyond the ice, that peril of an evil being, whom you call the Raider."

"But how?" I asked helplessly.

In answer, he touched a button set in the wall, and motioned us to seat ourselves in the chairs beside the window. A green-robed servant entered, in a moment, with a metal cabinet. He handed this to Kethra, and then departed.

The cabinet was an oblong box of black metal, a yard or more in its greatest length. Our companion touched a stud in the floor with his sandaled foot, and a small square section of the floor sprang up on four legs, or supports, forming a little table. Setting the cabinet on this table, our friend opened it.

Inside was a small, gleaming apparatus, consisting of a squat little box on which was set a small horn like that of a radio loud-speaker, but much smaller. From the box a flexible cord led, splitting at its end into three separate cords, each of which was metal-tipped. Setting this on the table, Kethra then drew from the cabinet three or four small, shapeless objects, gray and withered and deeply wrinkled, smaller in size than a baseball, the nature of which I could not guess.

He turned to us, now. "This mechanism," he said, indicating the gleaming apparatus, "is what we call a brain-reader. As you know, the brain preserves in its convolutions an indelible, unchangeable record of every word and action. When we remember a thing, we simply refer to that record, which we call memory, but which is in reality a very tiny change, but a lasting one. And this apparatus, when connected to a human brain by way of the nervous system, reads, from the myriad convolutions of that brain, the record of memory which is stamped on those convolutions."

With a swift movement, he fastened three clamps of metal to his body, one above the forehead, one around the neck, and the other along his spine. "These clamps make direct contact to the nervous system, through the skin," he explained, "and to them I attach the three cords from the brain-reader," suiting the action to the word. This done, he snapped a switch in the little box beneath the horn, and at once a nasal, metallic voice began to speak from that horn, in the Kanlar tongue.

Kethra's own voice came to us above the twanging one from the brain-reader. "It is giving a record of my experiences within the last few hours," he explained, "and will go back farther and farther as it continues, back to my very first memory, if allowed to run. Or I can use it to concentrate on any given period of my own life, and it will read with unvarying accuracy the impressions and sensations of my brain during that period. A mechanical, perfect memory," and he snapped off the switch and removed the clamps from his body.

"Nor does its usefulness stop there," he added, while we stared dumfoundedly at the little mechanism. "Here," he went on, picking up one of the withered gray objects, "is a human brain, the brain of one of the great men of our people, who died five centuries ago. And yet every memory and every thought and sensation in his life, imprinted unchangeably on his brain, is available to us by using the brain-reader."

He rapidly fitted over the withered brain a hollow hemisphere of metal, and attached to it the cords from the apparatus. A snap of the switch, and again the same nasal voice broke the silence, from the horn, speaking in the Kanlar tongue, and reading steadily on from the brain it was connected with, reciting the inmost thoughts and ideas and aspirations of a man dead for five hundred years. I shuddered, involuntarily, and Kethra snapped off the apparatus.

"It seems strange to you," he said, "but you will see the wisdom of such an apparatus. When a great man dies, a man of mental ability above the rest of us, his brain is removed, especially prepared, and then filed and indexed in a building reserved for that purpose. There are thousands of brains preserved there, and every one of them is available at all times, by means of the brain-reader, to aid us with its knowledge, its experience, its memories. Thus when a man dies among us, his intelligence does not die, but remains as a record for us to consult at will, a record of that man's ideas and achievements."

"And while we were unconscious," I broke in, "you used the brain-reader on us? Learned our story, learned why we came here?"

"It is so," he said, and his face darkened. "We sought to know who you might be, the first strangers ever to approach us. And from the brain-reader came your amazing tale, and we know all that you came to tell us, concerning that creature of evil you term the Raider. And it is that knowledge that has brought those crowds below to await the decision of the Council."

"But the Raider?" I cried. "What is it, Kethra? Do you know?"

"I know," he said simply, and a brooding expression dropped on his face. "I know," he repeated, "and all here in Kom know. And that you too may know, who have had dealings with this same Raider, I will relate to you what we do know. Soon the council meets, and you will be questioned further. But now—"

He was silent a moment, then spoke in a voice vibrant and low-toned.

"The history of the Kanlars," he began, "the people of the cylinders, the evil ones whose doom draws near. Know, men of the past, that ages ago, though not so far back as your own time, our people dwelt in four mighty cities, each of which was nearly as large as Kom itself. There was no ice-flood from the north, then, and the country around those cities was green and fair, yet none lived in that country, all preferring the gayer life of the vast towns. Long ago, the people had learned to make their food from the soil direct, as we do today, and so there was no need of tilling the land, or living on it. And so, into the four great cities had drifted all the people in this land.

"In each city, the buildings were constructed of a different design. Here in Kom, all of the buildings were cone-shaped, and thus this became known as Kom, the city of cones, and we, the dwellers in it, as the people of the cones. Another city was the city of cubes, another the city of spheres, and still another the city of cylinders.

"Each of these four cities was free and independent, each ruled by a council selected by its inhabitants. And being thus independent, there arose rivalry between the cities, and fierce jealousy. Each strove to outdo the others, in their scientific achievements, and each strove to keep its blood from intermixing with the others. Thus in the city of cylinders, the Kanlars, or people of the cylinders, gradually evolved into a bright-haired race, while in Kom, the Khluns, or people of the cones, were a dark-haired race. And the other two cities differed likewise from each other and the rest.

"Ages passed, and then down from the north rolled a mighty tide of ice, sweeping over the whole land and submerging all under its frozen flood. It rolled down toward the four cities, and finally had forged south until it was at the gates of the city of cubes. In desperation, the people of the cubes appealed to those in Kom for shelter, and it was granted them. They came down to Kom, every one, and the ice rolled over and hid the city of cubes. Next it engulfed the city of spheres, and its people likewise found refuge in Kom, which was the most southern of all the four cities. And finally, the ice-tide swept over the city of cylinders, and its people, the Kanlars, were forced to seek refuge in Kom also, though they liked it not.

"But the ice did not stop. It came on, ever south, until it threatened to cover Kom also, and leave our people homeless and shelterless. So, taking counsel among themselves, the people of Kom set out to stop the progress of the glacial sheet.

"They kindled great uprisings far beneath the earth's surface, until the tortured earth heaved up in a great wall across the ice-flood's path. And then, that this wall of earth might not be swept away, the scientists of Kom showed them a way by which every kind of material could be transmuted at will into other elements, by a recasting of its electronic structure. And, using this power, the people of Kom smoothed the gigantic barrier they had created, and then, using the instruments their scientists had devised for them, they turned on the great wall a ray that changed it to metal by its power of element-transmutation. It was finished, and when the ice rolled down to this smooth mountain-range of metal, it was checked, halted. Far away, on either side, it rolled on and engulfed the country, but the wall so dammed it that it could not progress farther toward the city.

"Yet the cold of the glacier was not halted by the wall, and to combat that cold, the great shield of force was devised that stretches over all Kom, and into which you crashed in your car. It admitted the sun's light and heat, but excluded the cold winds from the glacier. And thus, having thwarted nature itself, the troubles of the people of Kom were seemingly at an end.

"The people of the other three cities settled down contentedly enough in Kom, and each people built their own type of dwelling, cube or sphere or cylinder. And all mixed, intermarried, and mingled in race, with the exception of the Kanlars, the people of the cylinders. These still held apart, though unobtrusively.

"And as the years went by, the scientists of Kom came to more and more wisdom. They found ways to strengthen their own bodies, so that they lived for great stretches of time, as we do yet. They sent their explorers out to other planets, they cast their vision out to the farthest stars. They learned to create life, and they learned to conquer death, almost. The flight of the soul from the body they could not control, for there is a wisdom above man's, but the body itself they could retain as moving and lifelike as in life itself, though soulless.

"It seemed, indeed, that no other steps of wisdom remained up which to climb. And then, without the knowledge of the other people, the Kanlar scientists set themselves to conquer the secret of time. Unable to find a way of controlling time themselves, of moving in it at will, they created a monstrous, undreamed-of thing, a thing of shapeless, inchoate body, which was yet living, and which could transform itself, at will, into mists and vapors, and in that gaseous form could travel at will through time. And this thing the Kanlars made, setting in it three orbs of light that were its organs of sense and its seat of intelligence, and this thing is the same that you now call the Raider.

"This, indeed, happened in my own lifetime, a scant score of years ago. And when the Kanlars brought their creation before the supreme council of Kom, I was a member of that council.

"They explained the power of their creation, they showed its life, its intelligence. And they proposed to the council a plan which possession of the Raider made possible.

"They pointed out that since the Raider could travel at will through time, it could whirl back into the past, or into the future, and seize people from every age, bringing them back to our own time to be our slaves. Always there had been none but free people in our cities, nor were slaves needed, since nearly all of our work was done by machinery, yet such was the evil plan of the Kanlars.

"The council rejected the plan in horror. And it also warned the Kanlars that unless they destroyed the thing they had made, the council would hunt it out and destroy it itself. The Kanlars left in rage, and took with them the Raider, but later they promised to destroy it within a certain period of time, saying that they desired to study it further before doing so.

"So for a time they kept the Raider, and it grew swiftly in power and intelligence, until it became a deity to the Kanlars, a being whose every word to them was law. Again the council warned them to destroy their creation, and again they agreed to do so. But in secret, on a night soon after, every one of the Kanlars assembled on their air-boats and fled from the city, taking with them the Raider.

"We could not know where they had gone, but sent out many scouts to search for them. And when all our scouts had returned without finding trace of them, we decided that they had fled with their evil god to another planet, and so the matter rested. We had always thought that the ice-fields in the north extended clear to the pole, and could not know of the land there where the Kanlars had gone.

"But now, with the knowledge the brain-reader gleaned from you while you were unconscious, all the people in Kom know the peril that hangs over them, know that the Raider and the Kanlars have gathered thousands of fierce warriors from all ages, and that they plan to sweep down and loot our city and kill its people. So the council meets, now, to decide what course of action we will take."

Kethra finished, and I silently pondered his amazing story, but Lantin broke in with a query. "Two things puzzle me," he said; "how is it that you speak the same tongue as the Kanlars, and why are there no cylindrical buildings in the city below? You spoke of each people building its own design of dwellings here, but there are no cylinders."

"When the Kanlars fled," Kethra explained, "the cylinders were demolished, for none of the other peoples would then live in them. As to our language, it was always the same, for all the four cities. You call it the Kanlar tongue because you heard it first from them, but it is equally the language of the people of Kom."

Before we could ask more questions, a single bell-note sounded from a corner of the room. "The council," murmured Kethra; "you are summoned before it."

He motioned us out of the room and led us down the corridor outside, toward a small elevator that was curiously familiar in appearance, there in that building of the future. A lever was touched and we flashed silently down a long shaft, past level after level of the great cone's interior. The car stopped, and we stepped out of it into a small antechamber. Following Kethra across it, we strode through a high, arched entrance, into a great amphitheater, a semicircular room with bank on bank of rising tiers of seats. In each seat was a man attired like Kethra, and the gaze of all was instantly focused on us as we entered. On a dais at the semicircle's center sat four men, older than the others, and there was another chair beside the four, which was empty. A servant swiftly placed two collapsible seats on the dais, on which Lantin and I seated ourselves. Then Kethra strode to the front of the dais and began to address the assemblage.

He spoke in an even, unraised voice, but from the expressions on the faces of the council members it was easy to see that his words were of intense interest to them. He reviewed the history of Kom, which he had already briefly recounted to us, and then pointed out the peril that threatened the city. He concluded with a strong plea that the people of Kom should take the offensive and strike at the Kanlars and the Raider in their own city, rather than let the battle come to Kom.

When he had finished, there were many questions as to the means to be employed for the battle. It seemed that air-boats had not been used greatly of late in Kom, because of the difficulty of flying beneath the great roof of force, and thus it would be hard to transport a force over the ice-fields in any short space of time.

But Kethra waved aside these objections. A great fleet of air-boats could be made in a few days, he declared, if the people of Kom turned their energies toward it. As to weapons, the scientists of Kom could design these, and they would also be made in great numbers, as effective as possible.

A solidly built, white-haired man in a lower row stood up and exclaimed, "But what of the Raider?" (I give our own equivalent of the unpronounceable term used by the people of Kom for that being). "Remember he is powerful, how powerful we can not even guess. And, if hard-pressed, he can flee into time and bide his time to strike at us again, with or without the Kanlars."

"Not so," replied Kethra. "When we build our air-boats, we will equip each with the time-traveling apparatus invented by these two men, which is installed in their own car. Thus equipped, our air-boats will be able to pursue the Raider into time and destroy him, should he flee there."

There were other objections, other questions, but Kethra overrode them all. It was plain that he was intent on following his plan of striking at the Kanlars unexpectedly, instead, of awaiting their attack, and he finally won the council over to his side. We were called on twice to furnish information on pertinent points, and finally, after hours of debate, the council voted by a large majority to build with all speed a great fleet of air-boats, equipped for time-traveling, like our own car. As soon as completed, and provided with weapons by the scientists, the entire force was to speed north under the leadership of Kethra, drop unexpectedly upon the city of the cylinders, and crush the Kanlars and the Raider forever.

CHAPTER 17

THE BATTLE—AND AFTER

Six days after that momentous meeting of the council, a mighty fleet of air-boats rose and circled above the city. The character of the invisible force-shield above the city had been altered to allow the passage of any air-boat through it, and now no less than five hundred of the air-boats hovered over Kom. In design they were much like the ones I had vaguely glimpsed in the city of cylinders, long and flat and narrow, pointed at either end and with a low wall around their sides for the protection of their occupants.

The people of Kom had worked wonders in those six days, thus to construct half a thousand of the flying cars, and to equip them with a time-wave apparatus like our own. Every car was thus equipped, the apparatus on each being a direct copy of that in our own car. Lantin and I still clung to our own car, however, which had been overhauled for us by the scientists of Kom after our crash, and which was unhurt by the collision. And most of our time, during that period, had been engaged in directing the manufacture of the time-traveling apparatus, and teaching a selected few the operation of it. These few, in turn, taught many others, and by the time we were ready for our start, there was at least one man on each air-boat who understood the time-wave mechanism.

The plans of our expedition were simple enough. We were to drop down on the city of cylinders, destroy it utterly, and annihilate both the Kanlars and the Raider, if possible. I think that in reality none of the members of our expedition had any real desire to meet the Raider, but I knew that in spite of the fear they had of him, they would obey the orders of Kethra without faltering.

I knew but little of the weapons which the scientists of Kom had furnished to the occupants of the air-boats. Kethra had spoken to us of a sound-ray, an intense beam of sound-vibrations which, directed on some object, could be changed in frequency until it matched that object's frequency of vibration, which would result in the destruction of the thing so focused on. It was the principle of two tuning-forks, which will cause each other to vibrate across a great distance, if of the same period of vibration. I had heard mention of other weapons, also, designed to combat the Raider, but had seen none of these.

Now, as the great fleet hovered and circled above the white city of Kom, with our own time-car poised above the fleet, a single large air-boat drove up through the mass of the others and hung beside us. It was the car of Kethra, a long, black one, and near its pointed prow stood the white-robed leader himself.

He bent, spoke an order into a mouthpiece, and then his car slanted up and northward, with swiftly increasing speed, while the great fleet below did likewise, his order being communicated by a form of radio to every air-boat. Still hanging beside the car of Kethra, our own time-car raced along, since we were to guide the fleet toward the city of cylinders.

By the time Kom had disappeared behind us, the fleet was flying almost two miles high, in wedge-shaped formation, with our time-car and the air-boat of Kethra at the wedge's apex.

It was late morning when we flashed high over the colossal metal wall that held back the ice-flood. It soon vanished behind us, and we were again flashing north across the ice-fields.

The sun's rays slanting down almost vertically on the ice far below set up a dazzling glare that was almost blinding. Looking back, I saw an air-boat behind and below us crash into the one ahead of it, and both plunged down to destruction on the ice. Some half-dozen cars spiraled down toward the wreckage, but the main body of the fleet swept on, unheeding of such accidents.

All of that day the fleet raced on, while, in the time-car, Lantin slowed our pace to keep beside them. Sunset came, an arctic sunset, with a crimson globe of fire falling down behind the boundless steppes of ice, suffusing the sky with a glare like blood. Abruptly Lantin uttered a low exclamation, seized binoculars and gazed north through the window beside him.

I sprang to his side, and when he handed me the glasses I saw, far ahead, a little cluster of black dots that stood out jet-black against the crimson sunset. But already Kethra too had seen them, and a score of cars leaped forward from the main body of the fleet, in pursuit, our own time-car among them.

We flashed up toward them, and they grew in size, resolved themselves into air-boats much like those around us. As we neared them, they turned and fled north. Two of them, much swifter than the others, were out of sight almost in a second, safely beyond our pursuit, but the others, seven in number, saw that escape was impossible, so they turned to fight.

For a moment, the fight was on their side, for they turned quite unexpectedly and raced straight toward us, in a solid mass. Lantin's hands flashed over the controls and our car slanted up above the onrushing seven with the speed of lightning, but as it did so a blue flash leapt from the foremost of them and barely missed us.

The air-boats behind us were not so fortunate, for as the streaks of blue light from the enemy touched them, four plunged down to the ice, in flames. The seven attackers, unscathed thus far, passed under them in a swooping dip, turned, and came racing back for another blow.

But now the surprize of our forces was gone, and they struck back. A sudden sound smote our ears, even in the time-car, a low thrumming sound that rose in pitch higher and higher. I could see the men on our air-boats pointing blunt-nosed metal objects toward the oncoming cars of the enemy, and abruptly the significance of it struck me, and I understood that they were using the sound-ray Kethra had mentioned.

The seven air-boats rushed on toward our own, and I had a flashing glimpse of their decks, crowded with armored guards and with a few of the brilliant-robed Kanlars directing them. Blue flashes leapt again from the seven, and two more of the air-boats of Kom cometed down in bursts of fire, but now, as the seven dipped again under the air-boats of the Khluns, the thrumming, high-pitched sound increased sharply in intensity, and I saw five of the seven Kanlar cars literally break up into small pieces and fall, tumbling down toward the ice-fields below them in a shower of men and small pieces of metal. It was the power of sound, which causes a steam-whistle to shake a house to its foundations, a thousand times amplified by the apparatus devised by the men of Kom.

The remaining two air-boats of the Kanlars attempted to flee, but in a moment they too broke up and fell, as the men of Kom altered the vibration-frequency of their apparatus to affect the two remaining cars.

Behind us, now, the great main fleet of our air-boats was coming up, and there was a short halt in midair. Kethra's air-boat swept up beside us, and I opened the door in the top of our time-car, and stood up to hear him.

"Those were scouts," he cried to us, "a patrol of the Kanlars' air-boats. And two got away! They'll warn the Kanlars of our coming."

"But what do you intend to do?" I asked. "You'll not give up the attack?"

"No!" he shouted. "We'll go on, and meet them if they come out. But there will be no surprize now."

"But what of our friends?" I asked. "We were to rescue them from the pit."

"We'll send an air-boat for them," he said. "It can speed up to the city of cylinders, and since the Kanlars will come down to meet us now, it can sink down into the shaft you spoke of without interference, and get your friends. I will need you with me, to guide us to the city of Kanlars, in case their fleet doesn't come out to meet us."

And so we swiftly decided. At an order from Kethra, an air-boat slanted up toward us and hung beside us. We gave the pilot of it, and his two assistants, precise information that would enable them to reach the temple and get down to the pit, where they could rescue our comrades from the roof-top where they would be awaiting us. The pilot was instructed to race up toward the city of cylinders in a wide circle, to avoid meeting any of the Kanlars' air-boats, and when the city was deserted by guards and Kanlars, as we were confident it would be, he could easily penetrate to the temple and the pit. He promised to carry out our instructions faithfully, and sped away into the gathering dusk toward the northwest.

Night was falling now, and with an order from Kethra, the fleet again began to move, speeding toward the north, but going warily now, with a fringe of swift scouts flying above and far ahead, and with Kethra's car and our own soaring at the point of the fleet's triangular formation.

On we sped, into the darkness, showing no lights and progressing entirely by compass. Midnight came and passed, while we raced north over the limitless ice-fields, and it began to seem that the Kanlars had no stomach for fighting, now that we had come to attack them. I relieved Lantin at the controls of our car, an hour after midnight, and while he caught a little sleep on the car's floor, we soared smoothly on.

The soundless, mighty fleet of air-boats moving steadily along behind me, the monotonous, endless ice below, and the hour after hour that passed without any attack materializing, all of these smoothed down the fears in my mind and lulled me into a temporary lassitude. Half drowsing at the controls of the car, I kept beside the air-boat of Kethra, speeding on into the thick darkness. A glance at a dial told me that we were within a hundred miles of the ice-field's end, and the thought pulled me up somehow from the sudden weariness that had gripped me. Then, a half-mile ahead of me, there was a blinding glare of azure light, a crash that came loudly to my ears even from that distance, and then silence.

Through the mighty fleet behind me pulsed a sudden murmuring sound, a whisper of excitement, of expectancy. Lantin, aroused by the crash, jumped up and was at my side.

"One of the scouts," I cried to him; "the Kanlars are attacking them, and one was destroyed."

Even as I spoke, two more blue flashes jetted out of the darkness ahead, and two air-boats that were racing back to us went down in flames. And then, rushing toward us out of the darkness, came the Kanlar fleet.

In the very van of our own fleet, I had a twisted, misty vision of myriad dark shapes that rushed toward us; then, instinctively, I slanted our time-car up and sped up above the battle. We were weaponless, for the sound-rays could not have been used through the walls of our closed car, and so to remain in the very center of the conflict was to invite purposeless destruction.

For a moment, the world was filled with crashing sounds, as the two oncoming fleets met, their air-boats crashing here and there into air-boats of the opposing fleet. Then the battle resolved itself with sudden decision into myriad individual combats.

Stretching far away into the night, all around us, lay the two fleets, inextricably mixed and mingled with each other, and incapable of acting in two single units. Flashes of blue lightning burned from the air-boats of the Kanlars, and car after car of the Khluns was going down to death on the ice two miles below. By the light of the flashes, and the ensuing flames, the scene below us was ghastly, the air-boats, filled with brazen-armored guards and bright-robed Kanlars, or with the white-clad Khluns, grappling there in midair, plunging down to destruction, or swooping giddily upon one another. There was a chorus of humming sounds that rose even above the roar of the battle, and here and there the air-boats of the Kanlars were disintegrating and falling, spilling forth their occupants in midair. It was well that the Khluns had constructed their own air-boats of a material immune to their own sound-rays, since mixed as the battle was, many of their cars would have been downed by their own allies' weapons.

The battle had met and joined in less than a minute, while we hung above it. So far the fighting had been even, but now a thing occurred that tipped the scale in the Kanlars' favor.

Without warning, every air-boat of the Khluns suddenly glowed with misty light. Shouts of surprize and rage came up to us. The cars of the Kanlars were as dark as ever, and now, swooping out of the darkness upon the shining air-boats of the men of Kom, they sent them reeling down in flames by the dozens.

"Look!" cried Lantin, pointing up through the window in the car's top.

Far above, high over even our own car, were some twenty round, glowing circles of light, a light that was identical with the misty light that glowed from the cars of the Khluns.

"The Kanlars!" Lantin shouted. "There are air-boats up there, with apparatus that makes the Khluns' cars shine, while their own remain dark! They must be destroyed, or it is all over with our forces!"

I looked around for Kethra, but he was lost to view in the battle that raged below. Nor was there any of our allies' cars around us, so I turned our own time-car and sent it racing up toward those glowing circles above.

Straight toward them we sped, with the power opened wide, and I braced myself for the shock. Our car struck the first glowing circle with a staggering shock, and ripped through the air-boat above it as if it were paper. We slanted on up, and looking down, I saw the car we had struck reeling down toward the battle below, broken and afire. I turned our car, hovered like a poised hawk for a second, and then flashed down again on the line of air-boats.

A dozen flashes of blue flame burned up toward me, but the tremendous swiftness of our car carried us out of line before they reached us. Flashing down on a long slant, I pointed the car's steel prow toward the center of the line of cars, and this time we plowed across two of them in our resistless, ramming swoop.

As we sped away into the darkness, I heard other crashes behind me, and when I again turned the car, it was to see the last of the Kanlar air-boats carrying those glowing circles go tumbling down to destruction. For below us the Khluns had seen and guessed the meaning of our attack, and had sped up to finish off those who had escaped us. And with the destruction of that score of hovering Kanlar cars, the strange glowing light that emanated from each of the Khlun cars ceased. What that light was, we never knew. Undoubtedly the Kanlars had devised some method of causing our own air-boats to become light-emitting, while theirs remained dark. Possibly a ray like the fluorescent "black light" of the World War, from which they had guarded their own cars by special means. Whatever the nature of it, the light was a deadly weapon in such a night battle, causing the Khluns' air-boats to stand out as shining marks for the blue flashes, while the cars of the Kanlars hovered invisibly about them in the darkness. But now, with the disappearance of that light, the battle tipped in favor of the men of Kom. Their deadly sound-rays filled the air with thrumming, and in groups, in masses, the air-boats of the enemy disintegrated, broke up, poured down to earth in a mixed shower of men and metal. Finally but a scant thirty cars remained of the Kanlar fleet, while around them circled almost two hundred of the Khlun air-boats, striking at them with the deadly sound-ray.

As we hovered above the battle, a single air-boat drove up toward us, and I saw that in it was Kethra. He stopped his car beside our own, and I opened the door of our car, while Lantin leaned out and shouted to him.

"You've won!" cried Lantin, pointing down to the night below us, where the thrumming of sound-rays and jetting flashes of blue showed the dwindling conflict.

"We've won," he replied, "but where is the Raider?"

"Lurking in the temple," replied Lantin, "and it is there we must go now, to rescue our friends and destroy the Raider."

"We'll do that," replied Kethra, "but first—" Abruptly he stopped speaking, and seemed to be listening tensely. I, too, was listening, and over the crash of air-boats and the humming sound-rays a sound came to my ears that beat in them like the drums of doom.

A little whisper of wind, a whisper that grew swiftly louder, that shrieked, that roared, that bellowed. Up from beneath came a gust of wind of such force that our car heeled around under it, and with it came a piercing whistling to our ears, an eery chorus of wind-shrieks that changed to a thundering gale. Then, a hundred feet below us, there flashed into being—the Raider!

A moment he hung below us, a thing of whirling mists, the three orbs of green glowing radiantly through the darkness. Then he had dropped down onto the battle, expanded, extended his own misty form until it held within it the score of air-boats in which were the survivors of the Kanlars' forces.

A second it continued thus, its vaporous form enveloping the remaining cars of the Kanlars, and then, out from the green, radiant triangle of orbs there burst flash on flash of green light, aimed at the surrounding cars of the Khluns. The cars touched by that green light vanished, simply disappeared from view, leaving a little cloud of radiant sparks which dimmed and vanished likewise.

There was a great shout from behind us, and down toward the Raider, from the car of Kethra, there dropped a thing like a black, enveloping net, queerly tenuous-seeming in the one glimpse of it I had. It was like a net of black force, dropping down on the Raider, but before it reached its objective, the Raider and the cars it held within it had abruptly vanished.

"The Raider!" cried Kethra. "He's gone on into time, with the surviving Kanlars! Follow, follow, follow!"

From the scores of air-boats below us came a savage yell, and there was a second's pause, a second's silence, and then our car was struck by a gale that nearly overturned it, and we hung alone in space. Kethra and his air-boats had followed the Raider on into time, with the time-wave apparatus we had showed them how to use. I knew, too, that at that moment half the air-boats were speeding into the past and half into the future, in search of the Raider, for that had been our plan in case we had need to pursue the Raider into time.

"Shut the car-door!" I cried to Lantin. "We'll follow, too."

"Wait!" he shouted, his head out of the circular door, peering away to the north.

The gray light of dawn was welling up in the east, and by it I saw, away to the north, a black speck that rushed down toward us. It raced on, and now I saw that it was a Khlun air-boat. It sped on toward us, and now I recognized it as the one we had dispatched to rescue our four friends from the pit.

The car sped on toward us, and I saw that on it were the pilot and his two aides, but not our friends. Even before the pilot shouted to us a premonition of disaster filled me.

"The pit!" cried the pilot, bringing his car up beside us.

"What of the pit?" I shouted. "What of our friends?"

"They're safe, for the time," he answered, "but the hordes are coming out of the pit!"

"What?" I yelled.

"They're coming out," he repeated. "I went straight to the Kanlar city, as you had instructed, and found that the Kanlar fleet had sped south to meet you. The city was in confusion, with all of the Kanlars and the guards gone with the fleet, and only the slaves and the women still there. I took my car straight into the temple, and found the shaft open that leads down to the pit. I went down that shaft, and picked your four friends up from the roof you designated, and they told me that after all the guards on the stair had left, with the fleet, the hordes in the pit began battering at the gate of the stair. I saw them doing that, hovering above them in the darkness. They are mad, thirsty for loot and blood and battle. They cry among themselves that they will seize the flying-platforms on top of the temple and go south to loot Kom."

I gasped. The merciless hordes of the pit, sweeping down on unprotected Kom! I knew that there were men in the pit capable of operating the flying-platforms, if they reached them. They would sweep down upon the city beyond the ice in an avalanche of death and destruction. And Kethra and all his men were somewhere in time, pursuing and battling the Raider!

"Where did you leave our friends?" cried Lantin.

"At the pit's edge, in the temple," answered the other, and we exchanged swift glances, the same thought coming to us at the same time.

"They asked to be left there," added the pilot.

Lantin spoke swiftly to him. "Go after Kethra!" he told him. "You have the time-wave apparatus on your air-boat?" And when the other nodded, he said, "Then go on into time and bring back Kethra and his forces! If the hordes get to the temple's top and seize the flying-platforms, it is the end for all at Kom!"

The pilot hesitated. "And you?"

"Wheeler and I are for the temple," Lantin told him; "with our friends, we'll try to hold the hordes in the pit until you come back with Kethra and his forces. Go, man!"

The pilot cried assent, clicked a switch, and his car had disappeared, speeding into time after Kethra and his men. And now, under my control, our own car sped north toward the city of cylinders.

I think that of all our trips in the car, we attained our highest speed then. Rocketing low above the ground, the landscape beneath us, the endless billows of ice, seemed to pass beneath us in a white blur. We shot across the sky like a comet, and in a few minutes the green land of the Kanlars' country replaced the ice, and then there hove into view the gleaming white city of cylinders.

I swept down toward the great cylinder that was the temple, and brought the car to earth in the shelter of a little clump of trees outside the great building. We sprang out, raced up the ramp, and down the tunneled entrance into the temple's interior.

The metal floor was not in place, and before us yawned the abyss that was the shaft leading down to the pit. Away across the temple, standing on the ring of black flooring that was the shaft's rim, was a group of men, seemingly tiny, toylike figures there in the empty temple's immensity. We ran around the black rim toward them.

It was Denham and his three companions, and they ran forward to meet us, gripped our hands warmly.

"Where are your forces?" asked Denham. "Where are the people of Kom? The hordes are getting ready to come up from the pit, man! Listen," he commanded, and I walked to the shaft's edge and looked down.

From far below, muffled by the great distance, yet coming with force to my ears, there rose a dim roar, the savage shout of thousands of mad warriors. And above that dull roaring there was the clangor of metal smiting on metal.

"They're beating down the gate," Denham said, "and in a few minutes they'll be pouring up that stair. But where is the aid you were to bring?"

In a few words I explained the battle we had taken part in, and the pursuit of the Raider into time by Kethra and his men. "We must hold them in the pit, somehow," I told them, "until Kethra and his forces come back. If those hordes once get to the temple's roof and seize the flying-platforms, it means hideous death for all at Kom!"

"Couldn't you close the metal floor of the temple?" suggested Lantin. "Swing it back in place and close the shaft?"

"But how?" asked Denham. "We've searched but can't find the secret of the floor, or how it is moved."

"But the collapsible stair!" I put in; "you can fold that back! Lantin and I did, the night we escaped!"

"Look!" ordered Denham, pointing toward the spot where the little folding stair had been. I looked, and despair rushed over me. For the stair had been removed, and instead of it, steps had been cut into the side of the shaft itself, leading from the spiral stairway in the shaft to the ring of black flooring on which we stood.

"The guards must have cut those steps after you escaped," said Denham, "probably because they would not allow anyone to play on them again the trick you did. We heard of your exploit, in the pit."

Up from the shaft was coming now an increasing clamor, and the battering on the gate far below had increased in fierceness.

"But how, then, are we to hold them in the pit?" I asked, despairingly. "A messenger has gone into time after Kethra and his forces, and if we could only check these hordes until he comes—"

Abruptly the Aztec spoke, calmly, gravely. "We are five," he said, "five strong swords. And the stair is narrow."

There was a moment of silence, for the idea he broached was stunning in its audacity. Then D'Alord laughed in sheer delight. "Good!" he cried. "Why, 'twill be easy! Ixtil is right. We are five blades here, and the stair is narrow. We'll show them sword-play, eh?"

A sudden reckless excitement burned through me like fire. "Good enough!" I cried. The Roman broke in on us. "Down the stair, then, at once! We'll meet them at the very bottom, if possible, and then when they do force us back up, it will give us a long enough delay for the aid you speak of to get here."

We ran toward the steps cut in the shaft, but Denham halted us by an exclamation. "Look!" he cried, pointing some distance along the wall of the temple. "There are suits of the guards' armor, hanging up. We'll need them, before we are through today!"

We saw the wisdom of his suggestion, and hastily acted on it, donning suits of the brazen armor and helmets to match. The Roman alone, who was already attired very similarly, did not join us.

And now we rushed toward the steps in the shaft's side, and down them to the beginning of the spiral stair. Down the stair we ran, recklessly throwing ourselves around the curves of that airy, high-flung pathway. Looking down, I saw that the light in the pit was growing, as the dawn began to flame in the world above, and I glimpsed vaguely through the rising mists a great horde that eddied and swirled about the bottom of the stairway. Up to our ears, stronger and stronger, came the clanging of heavy metal objects striking the barred gate, while there rose at the same time a savage roar from the pit's blood-thirsty hordes.

We raced on, down and down until I was near to dropping with exhaustion. And still the Roman sternly spurred us forward, with the cheering assurance that the farther down we went, the farther up the hordes would need to press us back. Finally we reached the fourth curve of the spiral stair above the ground, a height of perhaps two thousand feet above the pit's floor. And there the Roman halted us.

"We'll make our stand here," he said. The clangor and the roaring below were deafening, now, and for a few minutes we lay upon the steps exhausted, then rose to our feet, one by one. Fabrius stood a step below the rest of us, his heavy shortsword in his hand, calmly looking down toward the pit. I drew my own rapier, my heart thumping wildly, but I strove to appear as calm as the Roman. Denham, with elaborate unmindfulness of the roaring mobs below, drew forth a snuff-box containing a few grains of the brown powder, and offered us each in turn a pinch, which we refused, then daintily took some himself.

"Ha, Ixtil," cried D'Alord, slapping the Aztec on the back gleefully, "this should be a better fight even than those in the pit, eh?" The chieftain smiled darkly, shifting his saw-toothed sword from hand to hand, but made no other answer, and the Frenchman turned to me.

"What of him?" he demanded, pointing to Lantin. "He has no sword."

I turned in dismay, for I had forgotten my friend, almost. "You'd best go back up to the temple's top," I told him. "Wait for the coming of Kethra, and guide him down to us. You can be no good here, you know, so don't risk yourself."

The others seconded my suggestion, warmly urging Lantin to return to the temple's top and await the aid from Kethra, but he refused. "I have this," he said, showing us an automatic which he had snatched up when we sprang from the time-car. Finally we compromised by placing him on the stair some distance behind and above us, where he could use the few but precious shots in his weapon when it was most necessary to do so.

Now we turned from him, for with a sudden mighty clang the great gate below went down. There was a tremendous shout, a savage roar of triumph, and then the tramping of thousands of feet as the hordes in the pit flooded toward the overturned gate and raced up the stair.

Looking down, we saw them ascending toward us, coming in such close-packed order that many were crowded from the low-walled stair and dashed down to death below. But still they came on, a bellowing, blood-thirsty mob, until they were winding around the stair just across the spiral from us.

Denham drew his sword, now, and we stepped down so that we stood in a single line across the stair, the Roman at the center, with D'Alord and Ixtil on his left side and Denham and me on the other.

And now the hordes surged around the bend of the stair, racing up toward us. A sudden cry went up from them as they glimpsed us, and momentarily the human wave sucked back, and the close-packed mob halted. A moment there was silence, while they stared up at us. I stole a glance at my companions. The face of Fabrius was stern but unperturbed, and he gripped his sword firmly, eyeing the mob below with eagle gaze. D'Alord's face was darkly flushed, his eyes gleaming. Ixtil leaned forward in a tense, tigerish crouch, while Denham, beside me, lounged negligently, leaning on his rapier and regarding the crowd below us with a mocking, contemptuous smile.

Only a moment that silence lasted, while the hordes gazed up at us. Then, as they saw that we were but five, a beastlike roar went up and they raced up toward us, vying for the honor of slaying us.

Up, up they came, a sea of ragged figures, a storm of flashing weapons. A catlike Egyptian and a giant Chinaman were first of that mob, with behind them the massed weight of the hordes in the pit, pushing up from far below, to win up to the flying-platforms that would carry them to the loot of Kom.

As though in a dream, I saw the fierce faces coming up toward us, and then there was a clash of steel on steel that brought me to my senses. D'Alord and Fabrius had each leapt forward a step and with two strokes that were like darting flashes of lightning had struck down the Egyptian and the Chinaman. Over their bodies came the others, and for an instant the air seemed thick with darting sword-blades, at which I whirled and thrust and parried.

A brutal-faced man in medieval chain-armor was my nearest opponent, and as I realized the fact, he swung up his heavy sword for a crashing stroke. But while he raised the cumbrous weapon, I darted out my rapier and he fell with a spreading red stain at his throat. A white-robed, sallow man thrust at me with a long spear, over his body, but the sword of the Roman flashed down and cut the head from the spear, then flashed again and the man went down. A dozen blades glinted off my armor and helmet, and I thrust out savagely and blindly, felt the blade pierce through flesh and blood, once, twice. And now, shaken by our first fierce resistance, the mob fell back a little, while we stood panting, surveying the scene of that first clash.

At our feet lay a dozen or more men, dead or dying. As yet none of us had been wounded, with the exception of D'Alord, who was bleeding from a cut on the back of his wrist. The narrowness of the stairway had been our salvation, since only a few men at a time could come at us, and these were hampered by the press of those behind them.

But I saw that the battle had only begun. The mob was again surging up toward us, more fiercely than before. I glanced back up the stair, but there was no sign of Kethra's forces. Then I turned my attention back to the oncoming hordes, for already our blades were clashing with theirs.

A succession of savage faces appeared before me, confused and changing, and I thrust until my wrist was tired to numbness. I heard, even above the clash of blades and shouts of our opponents, the voice of D'Alord, who was mocking his opponents in rapid French, disparaging their skill and crying out when he beat down their guard. And, soaring high over all the other sounds of the battle, rose a weird, piercing cry, the battle-cry of the Aztec.

"Alalala!" he shouted. "Alalala! Alalala!"

The stairs at our feet became slippery with blood, choked with bodies, and we gave back a few steps. This gave us further advantage, for we stood on firm, dry footing, while those who came at us slipped and fell on the smooth metal of the steps below us, smeared as it was with the life-blood of their fellows. Yet they came on, ever on, forced us around and around the spiral, up, up, ever up the stair.

We were forced up until we had entered the shaft and the wall on our right gave us added support. In the semi-darkness of the shaft, too, it was harder for those coming at us to see us, while they were more plainly visible to us against the light of the pit below.

A ragged, squint-eyed little man crept under the legs of those battling us, and jabbed at me with a javelin. In the confusion of battle we had shifted in position until I was now next to the low wall that kept us from the abyss. Now, as the javelin stabbed up at me, I stooped swiftly beside the low barrier, and with a flashing stroke across his neck, finished my squint-eyed opponent. But as I started to rise again, a great figure loomed above me, a giant black who swung up above his head a heavy, horn-hafted ax. He was standing on the low wall itself, balancing himself for a crashing down-stroke of the ax, which I could not resist.

He uttered a fierce cry, whirled the ax about over his head, and swung it down toward me, but as his arm started that downward motion there was a sharp crack from the stair above, and he toppled down into the abyss. In the very nick of time, Lantin's shot had saved me.

But on came the hordes, pushing us up and up by sheer weight of numbers, until it seemed madness that five men should thus stand against thousands. Around and around the up-spiraling stair they forced us, so that sometimes we fought on one side of the shaft and sometimes on another. Now and then, sated with fighting, they would draw back for a few moments, and this gave us precious intervals of rest, but always they came on again, always they pushed us up. Man after man of them hurtled down to death in the pit, for as the hordes came on they threw their own dead and dying over the rail into the abyss, so that the stair might be unencumbered.

We were very near to the temple floor by now, and I was bleeding from a dozen flesh-wounds, nor were the rest of us in better case. Ixtil had a great cut in one cheek, and Fabrius had been wounded in the leg by a thrown spear. D'Alord, too, was a bloody figure, and had ceased to jeer at his adversaries, fighting now in grim silence. Alone among us, Denham remained virtually unscathed, and he fought on unchanged. His slender, needlelike rapier flashed here and there with wonderful speed and precision, always stabbing at the exact right spot, with the exact force needed. And he still smiled scornfully as his blade dealt death.

A half-dozen times Lantin's pistol had saved one of us from death, barking out a grim message when we were pressed too close. But now we were becoming ever more weary, were being pressed ever more swiftly up by fresh opponents, with the weight of the hordes behind them. All down the great spiral, clear to the floor of the pit, the stair was crowded with the hordes, pressing us ever upward, their own weight and numbers hampering with deadly effect those who were nearest us, and who were pushed forward with no chance for choosing their thrusts.

At last we reached the stair's end, and stood on the black ring of flooring around the abyss. When we could no longer hold them from emerging onto that flooring, we suddenly turned and ran toward the other spiral stair which circled the interior of the cylindrical temple, winding from balcony to balcony up to the building's roof.

And there our fight began anew, for when the hordes emerged into the temple they did not stream outside into the city, as I had hoped, but continued to press us up toward the roof, where were the flying-platforms that would carry them to the rich loot of mighty Kom. They could have had freedom, but it was not enough. They were thirsty for the riches awaiting them at Kom. So not a man of them left the temple, all combining to force us up the narrow stair that spiraled up the temple's interior, a replica of the one in the shaft, though much smaller, and the only road to the building's roof.

They were pressing us closely, now, and we could hardly keep to our feet. Then, a hundred feet from the ceiling of the great building, a shout of triumph went up from the hordes, for D'Alord went down, stunned by a blow on the head from a great mace. Fabrius rushed forward to drag him back, and was himself struck down by a blow from the same club. It seemed that our fight was over, then and there, when there came a sharp rattle of shots from behind and some six or seven of our opponents went down, felled by the last shots of Lantin's pistol.

Involuntarily the mob fell back for a few steps, and we seized the opportunity to drag D'Alord and the Roman to their feet. Fabrius was unhurt and D'Alord had only been stunned, quickly reviving. And now, as the mob below hung for a moment hesitant, not knowing how many more shots Lantin had at his disposal, two men sprang out of their number and faced us.

One was a lithe, brown-skinned Malay, who waved a gleaming kris aloft and called to the rest to resume the attack. But the other it was who held my gaze, a blond giant with long, waving hair, who shouted fiercely and waved a battle-ax aloft, calling to his companions to follow him to the attack.

It was Cannell!

Cannell, for whom we had come across the centuries! Cannell, whom we had seen seized by the Raider and taken, whom we had searched for in vain in the city of the pit. There was a great, half-healed wound on his temple, and his eyes were alight with blood-lust, so that I could see that he knew us not.

I was brushed aside, and someone sped by me from above. It was Lantin, and before we could stop him he had passed us and had raced down the intervening steps toward Cannell, his face alight at seeing the friend we had come through time to rescue.

"Cannell!" he cried, rushing toward him with hands outstretched. We looked in that instant to see him slain, but no blow was struck, the mob seeming paralyzed by astonishment. I saw Lantin reach out to Cannell, saw the blood-lust leave him; his eyes cleared as he looked at Lantin, the past coming back to him over his time in the bloody pit.

He dropped his ax and took a step toward Lantin, his face alight with recognition. Then we uttered a helpless groan, for the Malay, who stood at the low rail behind Lantin, had recovered from his surprize and now swept up his curved blade over Lantin's head.

I shouted, and started down toward Lantin, but knew myself too late to ward off that blow. Cannell looked, saw the upflung, menacing blade, and uttered a great shout. He had no weapon in his hand, but with one great bound he leapt up toward the Malay, gripped him in his arms, and then the two swayed, toppled, fell, hurtled down into the abyss, twisting and turning, locked in a death-grip, down through the temple's interior, down into the darkness of the vast shaft below, down to the pit-floor far beneath.

I was down to Lantin now, grasped him and dragged him back, and before the massed hordes recovered from their astonishment, he was behind us. They turned now, saw, and howled their rage, racing up toward our waiting swords.

A torrent of raging swords, they pushed us up until we stood at the stair's end. Behind us was a high, vaulted room, and at its other side the stair continued, leading still up. We turned, ran across that room, the triumphant horde behind us, and when we reached the stair at the room's other side, turned again and faced them.

Up through a half-dozen such rooms they forced us, through dim, great halls with patterns of fire on their walls, with unguessed, looming mysteries lurking in their shadows, vaguely glimpsed by me as we ran through them. The lair of the Raider, those dim halls, I knew. And, at last, the narrow stair from one of them emerged onto the roof itself, and we stood at the point where that stair opened onto the great, flat roof, barring the way of the hordes in our final stand.

Behind us, on the great expanse of the roof, were low-walled, oval platforms of metal, great of size, stacked one upon another. Enough flying-platforms, I knew, to carry all the hordes below us down to the loot of Kom. And the foremost of our opponents saw them also, and yelled with savage triumph.

If we had fought fiercely before, we battled like supermen now, in a last spurt of energy. Our swords clicked and flashed like swift shuttles, weaving strands of death from enemy to enemy, as we used all the mad strength of despair to hold back the hordes for a last moment.

"Mordieu!" shouted D'Alord. "This is the end, comrades!"

I turned to answer him, then halted. From above, from the sun-flooded air of early morning, had sounded a long, rising shriek of wind, a piercing whistle of a rising gale. A fierce burst of wind struck us, and cold, ice-cold, flooded through my heart. There was a thundering of wind-sounds above, another buffeting gust of cold air, and then appeared abruptly, a hundred feet above us, the Raider!

"God!" muttered Lantin, behind me. The blades of our enemies and ourselves had ceased to clash, and with a common impulse we gazed up. The Raider's swirling mists contracted suddenly, his three orbs of green changed to purple, and he drifted gently, tauntingly, down toward us.

A howl of triumph went up from the hordes on the stair. Away down and around the spiraling stairway it went, down all their packed masses, down into the shaft to the pit itself, all taking up and passing on that savage, exultant shout.

For we had lost. Kethra had lost. The Raider had somehow eluded him, in time, and had come back to destroy us and to loose his hordes on the flying-platforms, to send them down to Kom in a rain of death, while Kethra vainly searched time for the Raider. We had lost.

Slowly, slowly, the Raider came down toward us, while the hordes below us watched with delighted expectancy. Spinning, twisting, it sank down until it hung a scant twenty feet above us, and we waited, helpless, for the destroying flashes from the central orbs.

Suddenly D'Alord stepped forward, and uttering a yell of defiance, he picked a sword from the floor, whirled it around his head and sent it hurtling spear-wise up toward the Raider.

It fell back, missed by yards. And now the gray, shapeless mass of the Raider spun and laced with inconceivable rapidity, while down upon us darted flash on flash of purple, destroying fire, from the central orbs.

The flashes fell short! Between us and the Raider was hanging a veil of transparent black, a tenuous black net that was suspended in midair above us, and against which the purple flashes splashed and stopped. I turned swiftly, and a little behind and above me was hovering the air-boat of Kethra. It moved toward us, and we stepped on it. And in that same instant, there appeared in the air all around us, above and around the temple and the Raider, score on score of the air-boats, crowded with the men of Kom.

From them darted a hundred black nets like the one that hung before us. The black veils closed upon the Raider, contracted, and while he spun and changed and twisted with mad speed, the veils contracted still until they were a black ball five feet across, in which he was prisoned. Then, from Kethra's air-boat and from all around us, there darted flash on flash of orange flame, which struck the black ball, burned fiercely for a moment, and then vanished. In the air there drifted only a shining mist, and then that too was swept away!

Now, from all the hovering air-boats came the thrumming of the sound-rays, directed at the temple and the city, from all the scores of cars that hung above that city. The ground beneath pitched, heaved up torturedly, and then the city collapsed, sank down with a thundering, ear-splitting roar into the great pit that lay beneath, the earth over the cavern being shattered by the disintegrating vibrations of the sound-rays.

All the city, with the great temple below us, crashed down, and vanished in a mighty cloud of dust. The dust hung, cleared, disappeared. And beneath lay nothing but a great depression in the earth, a vast, raw bowl in the earth's surface, with here and there a white fragment showing in the brown earth. Under that huge sunken bowl, I well knew, lay the city of the cylinders, with its Kanlars and soulless slaves, and under it, too, lay the city of the pit, and the people of the pit, the thousands of fierce warriors who had pressed us up the stair so savagely, seeking to carry destruction and death down to a peaceful city.

Standing there on Kethra's car, we surveyed the scene in silence. And there was silence all around us, for from all the massed cars came no word or shout, the men on them gazing down into the torn depression below as though loth to believe that their victory was won at last, the evil menace of the Raider crushed forever. So we looked, there in the hushed silence.

In the east, the sun was rising higher ... higher....

CHAPTER 18

EIGHT MINUTES!

It was hours later, toward the end of the hot, brilliant afternoon, that we parted at last from Kethra and his men. On the green earth around that brown pit where once had stood the city of cylinders, the Khlun air-boats were resting, ready for their long flight homeward across the ice. Our own time-car lay behind us, for in that tense moment before the city had collapsed under the sound-rays' vibrations, a hovering air-boat had spied our car in the little glade where we had left it, and had managed to raise it from the ground before the crash. And now, with our four friends, we stood beside it, bidding Kethra farewell.

We had heard from him the story, as amazing as our own, of what had befallen his forces when they pursued the Raider into the future, how they had chased him almost to the world's end, indeed, pursuing him into time so far that the sun grew old and small, and the world a world of death and twilight; of how they had forced the Raider to desert the Kanlar cars it held, which they had destroyed; and of how it had eluded them in time and come racing back to confront us on the temple's roof. He told, too, of how the messenger sent through time by Lantin and me had finally found him and brought him back in the nick of time to destroy Raider, hordes and city.

Kethra, and all his men, had pressed us to return with them to Kom, but we refused. An intolerable nostalgia, a longing for our own time, filled us, and our four friends were as eager to return to their own centuries as we were. And so, standing with them beside our time-car, we bade our friends of Kom farewell.

"You do wisely, men of the past," said Kethra. "It is not good that a man should leave his own time and venture into others. The secret of time-traveling is an evil secret. And when our fleet has returned to Kom, every car in it will be stripped of the time-wave apparatus, and all those time-wave mechanisms will be destroyed by us. For now that our end has been accomplished, and the Raider destroyed, none of us will ever again venture into past or future."

"You speak truth," said Lantin, sadly; "for though we came on through the ages ourselves, we could not save our friend. And when we have returned our four friends here to their own ages, and reached ours again, we too will destroy this car. And the secret of time-traveling will remain with us, a secret."

We each grasped Kethra's hand, waved farewell to the hundreds in the air-boats on the ground around us, and then entered our own car. With our four friends, its interior was crowded, but there was enough room for Lantin to manipulate the controls, and so the car rose swiftly, circled for a moment above the air-boats on the ground, then fled swiftly toward the southwest.

Behind us the green, warm land of the Kanlars faded to a speck against the ice, and as we sped on, we moved through time also, passing swiftly into the past.

Three hours later we hung above a vast highland country, having penetrated into the past to the year 1520, four hundred years before our own time. And below us hung the white city of Tenochtitlan, metropolis of the Aztec people.

We slanted down toward it, through the darkness, for we had come to it at night. Toward the city's edge was the glimmer of a broad lake, and from great pyramids flashed burning fires of crimson. In its dark streets was a stir of movement, and up to us came the roar of a fierce battle, with cries of wounded, and twang of bows, and here and there the roar of an arquebus or cannon.

Ixtil leaned toward the window, gazed down with tense interest. "It is my people," he said, turning to us, "my city, my time."

And so, swooping down upon the city through the concealing darkness, we halted the car on a flat, white roof, and Ixtil stepped out. He turned, and with more emotion than I had ever yet seen upon his fierce face, bade us farewell.

D'Alord, Denham, Fabrius, each wrung his hand silently, and then the Aztec turned to me. He drew the saw-edged sword from his belt, and handed it to me, hilt-foremost.

"Take it," he told me. "I can give you nothing else, and it may remind you of our fight on the stair, comrade, when you have reached your own time."

I took the weapon, stammered my thanks, and he inclined his head gravely, then turned and sped from the roof, down through the building to the battle in the street below, racing toward it with fierce haste.

D'Alord broke the silence that followed. "What a fighter!" he exclaimed. "And now he is gone. Well, on, friends!"

So we rose again from the roof, above the body-choked streets, where we knew the conquistadors of Cortez strove with the city's people. The car rose high, and then raced east with the power opened to the last notch.

In the hours that followed, as we rocketed over the gray Atlantic at a speed of nearly ten miles a minute, we were again speeding into the past, back still farther, so that when the green, leg-shaped peninsula of Italy lay beneath us, we had gone back to the First Century of the Christian era, as nearly as possible to the year which Fabrius claimed as his own.

We left him there, on a bare, grassy hilltop outside the city of Rome. Before parting, he too unbuckled his heavy shortsword and handed it to me. "Ixtil gave you his sword," he said, "and when it is your car that has brought me back to my own world, I can do no less." He stepped back and said simply, "Vale!" and then we had sped on into time and left him.

We turned, now, in time, sped on to the first year of the Seventeenth Century, and in space fled north till we hung over southern France. And with D'Alord guiding our course from the window, exclaiming at every familiar landmark on the ground below, we came finally to the little village where he desired to be left.

"'Twas there I was stationed when the Raider seized me, curse him!" he told us; "so set me down outside it."

Again the car came down to the ground, in a field beyond the village, just at sunrise. D'Alord opened the car's door, then hesitated.

"Sacré!" he exclaimed. "When I was in the pit I was afire to get back to my own time, but now I half wish that we could have stayed together, comrades. But Kethra was right. Every man to his own time."

He drew and regarded his long, heavy sword. "It's for you, comrade," he told me. "Like Ixtil and Fabrius, it's all I can give you. Though I don't think you'll need it to make you remember our fight on the stair, eh?" His laugh rang out. "Dieu, what a fight was that!"

He grasped the hands of Denham and of Lantin and me, and with forced gayety slapped us on the back, then sprang quickly out of the car, and stood beside it. I closed the door, and our car rose swiftly above the field. And looking down, I saw the receding figure of D'Alord, still standing where we had left him, waving his hat toward us in a final gesture of farewell, the wind of dawn blowing through his hair.

And so we left him, and raising the car high above the earth, sped back again across the broad Atlantic. And too, we came on farther into time until when we came into view of the New Jersey coasts, we had come on into time a space of almost two hundred years, for the dials registered the fact that our car had reached the year 1777, when Denham had been seized by the Raider.

We had offered to land him in England, but he had refused. "I'm a soldier," he told us, "and it would be desertion. Let me down at Philadelphia, or near it." So the car planed down through the darkness to a field beyond Camden, and there came to rest in deep snow, for we had stopped our time-progress in the dead of winter, and at night.

Denham stepped out of the car, and we followed him. There was no moon, but the stars above were brilliant, the sheen of their light reflected from the glistening, silent fields around us. It was bitterly cold, and we shivered, standing there.

"And so the last of us part," said Denham. "Curse me if I like it, either. Think of it, Wheeler: Ixtil and Fabrius and D'Alord are already dead and dust, have been for centuries."

"They're not, Denham," I said. "They're only separated from us by time, as well as space. At least we have learned one thing, that time is largely a delusion, after all, and that the men of one age are not much different from those of another."

"It's so," he said. "And I never had better friends than Ixtil and D'Alord and Fabrius, and Lantin and you. We've seen some things together, since we met in the city of cylinders, Wheeler. Well, we shan't meet again. And so—good-bye."

He shook my hand, and Lantin's, and then, like the other three, drew and handed to me his slender rapier.

"You have four swords now, Wheeler. And each from a different time. It may be that they'll remind you of all we went through together, in the city of cylinders and in the pit below it. I am only sorry that we could not find your friend Cannell in time to save him. But it was fate."

"It was fate," Lantin repeated, "and he died nobly. So, in a measure, I am content."

Lantin and I stepped back into our car, now. Outside, as we rose above the ground, Denham called to us again.

"Good-bye, Wheeler! Good-bye, Lantin!"

I answered, waving to him at the car's window, and thus we left him, a dark, dwindling figure against the starlit fields of snow. We raced north, now, and sped on toward our own time, back to the year, the month, the day, when we had started. We swept down upon pinnacled Manhattan, through the warm darkness of the summer night, and after hovering for a time above the perplexing maze of buildings, sank gently down upon the roof from which we had started.

The car stopped, and we stepped out on the roof, looking around us strangely. The scene was the same as when we had left, the panorama of the city's lights around us, the brilliant stars above, and the stabbing search-lights of the anchored battleship.

Lantin stepped across the roof into his apartment. He snapped on the lights, then called to me. When I entered the room and stood beside him, he pointed mutely toward a clock above the fireplace. I looked, and a strange feeling swept over me.

We had made our momentous start from the roof at 10 o'clock exactly, when we had first ventured into time. And now it was but eight minutes past 10, but eight minutes later in that same night.

Eight minutes!

We had gone on into the future fifteen thousand years, had lain for days imprisoned, in the city of the cylinders and the city of the pit. We had met our friends of the pit, had planned and executed our daring escape, had fled madly to our car, pursued by the guards, and had then flashed south across countless leagues of ice. We had stayed for days at Kom, amid the wonders of Kom, had raced back north with the great fleet of Kethra, had met and battled the Kanlars, and had held the ravening thousands of the pit in check upon the great stair, with our friends. We had seen the Raider destroyed, had sped back in time to hang above the wonder-city of the Aztecs, while Aztec and Spaniard battled in the streets below us. Had sped across the world to Rome, in the days of its imperial glory, back through time to Seventeenth Century France, and so on to our own land, to stop once and part with the last of our friends and then speed down to the very roof from which we had made our start. From the far past to the far future, we had ranged through time, from the Rome of the Cæsars to the mighty city of the Khluns.

Eight minutes!

EPILOGUE

So our great adventure ended, and so this record of it comes to a close. We destroyed the time-car, and burned all of our written records of the experiments connected with it. For never again, through the knowledge that we gathered, shall men venture into time.

Yet because we felt that some part of what we had learned belonged to the world of science, Lantin and I, in this history and in our two technical works, have striven to record part of what we saw and did. Reading, men will not be able to build time-cars for themselves, but they may gain suggestions and do work that will make better our own life, our own world.

Lantin and I live quietly enough, now, sharing a small Long Island cottage. Yet for all our work at the Foundation, and our contacts with our friends there, I do not think that either of us takes much interest in the world around us, or in our fellow-men. I think that the day's best hours, for each of us, are those of evening, when we can sit quietly together, recalling to mind the things we saw and did in that far time which the world will not see for fifteen thousand years to come.

We speak often of that strange being of alien terror which we called the Raider. Speak, too, of the Kanlars and their city of cylinders, of the barbaric city of the pit, and the Babel-like hordes that filled it, of Kom and the men of Kom. And sometimes, gazing musingly into our fireplace in the length of the winter evenings, Lantin will speak of Cannell, whom we crossed a hundred centuries to rescue, and who plunged down to a voluntary death to save his friend.

Always, though, sooner or later, there comes a halt to our speech and we look up with a common impulse to a spot where a sheaf of four swords is fastened to the wall. Four strange weapons, from four different ages.

One is a thick shortsword of bronze, its edges scarred and dented. Another is a saw-toothed weapon, the like of which you may see in more than one museum, but which I saw flashing in deadly action. The third blade is a long one, a silver fleur-de-lys inlaid upon its heavy hilt. And the last is a slender, flexible rapier, which took toll of half a hundred lives in our last mad battle.

Where are they now, our four friends, who stood with us on the great stair when six men held back thousands, who planned and fought and bled with us until together we brought about the destruction of the Kanlars and the Raider? Shall we ever see them again?

I do not know. But one thing I do know, that was known even to the supreme wisdom of Kethra and the men of Kom. And that is that there is a power above man's, a wisdom above his, secrets that will never be his. So if, on the other side of death, there lies a timeless world, we'll yet foregather there with our four friends, strike hands in friendship once again, and range that world together, as once we ranged through time.

THE END

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