"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, butventre-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. Buthowbuilt? 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. "Whatis 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.