Chapter III: Part 3

"Having benefitted by some knowledge of modern technology on the part of their original ancestors, this race soon attained a degree of civilization equivalent to our own, though with fewer numbers. Their science enabled them to detect the unbalanced nature of the ionosphere, so they knew they had to get off the planet in order to survive. By some means unknown to us, they were able to make observations through the ionosphere and detect livable conditions on Venus, after all. In other words, after a billion years beyond our time, Venus must have had sufficient time to build up an atmosphere containing a life-sustaining percentage of oxygen. This discovery spurred the building of their space ark, which was to take a representative number of their kind to the new world.

"Now in the meantime let's go back to the second group that was lost--Emily, the WAACs and the Texans. They, too, went through the time machine and built up a civilization contemporaneous with that of New Bretania. Hence the origin of the country, Texania. These latter people were trying to get the ark of space from the New Bretanians.

"Don't you see how it all fits in? When those two groups went through the time machine, we found ourselves in an alternate time, a world changed by their effects on two or three thousand years of the immediate past."

"Then how did everything get back to where it was originally?" asked Uncle Andy. "What got rid of that alternate time so abruptly?"

"The alien," Henry replied. "I think we arrived here, in the first place, by accident and without his knowledge. As a time-traveler, he was no doubt gone from this world for long stretches of time. Perhaps a gap of several thousands of years means nothing to him. But somewhere along that alternate time he returned. He probably proceeded at once to trace down the sources of New Bretania and Texania. This could have led him not only back to Lady Dewitt and the Texans but forward, again, to this present time, to the moment when they were about to go into the time machine in the first place. Taking them prisoner thus prevented that alternate time from occurring. So it was all a lost interlude and Weston went right on talking at the meeting as though nothing had happened. Yet all the while the alien was now aware of our presence, and so he came to take us into custody."

"That is the most astounding tale I have ever listened to," said Uncle Andy. "Now tell me, Henry, why is it that only you and Martia remember that alternate time experience and we do not?"

Again--that strange, knowing look between Henry and Martia.

"Look!" cried Peggy, pointing toward the beach.

When they all turned and looked they saw the same, eternal sea as before, its lazy surf glistening in the forever light of the sky. But there was one, subtle difference. Weston lay there no longer. The whole beach was a scene of desolation--deceivingly peaceful, ominously deserted.

"Cone on!" said Uncle Andy, with sudden sternness. "We can talk about all this later. Just now we'd better try to keep one step ahead of Weston."

They took _all_ of the available weapons with them....

* * * * *

The trail of the captives led them gradually upward toward the summit of the low range of hills. They soon discovered that the nature of the jungle near the seashore was much less spectacular than the aspect of it inland. It began to appear as though Nature had dumped all her experiments into one bottle and mixed them together.

They passed through "groves" of trees that were mostly roots, all intertwined like some giant vine. Their bark was like shaggy hair and their fine, web-like branches sprouted foliage that looked like feathers. Among these feathered branches crawled brilliant orange and red land crabs, some of them as much as two feet in diameter.

In a swampier region just at the base of the hills they observed flat, leathery looking discs oozing along over the swamp mud, some of them reaching three feet in diameter. They could not imagine what they were until they saw one of them uncover a six foot, scaly worm. The latter fought ferociously, but the leathery disc wrapped itself around its body and the worm's mouth very much like that of a snapping turtle, was incapable of penetrating that leathery hide.

"Those are gigantic leeches," observed Uncle Andy.

And so they went on, following the trail upward, beyond the swamp. They discovered carnivorous plants, huge insects, gigantic birds, but always any mammalian species they saw was small and in the minority.

Finally, they came to an abrupt halt, because the trail ended. There were no more footprints, no more tell-tale marks such as trampled weeds and underbrush or broken branches. No matter where they searched, they could not find a further continuation of the trail. It ended in the center of a meadow, half way up in the jungle clad hills.

"You don't suppose they could have been taken away in some kind of an airship, do you?" asked Uncle Andy.

"No," said Henry. "There are no marks here showing that any such vessel has been sitting here. Moreover, if the alien had come in an aircraft, why would he land it here and walk so far?"

"_Hey! Get yo'selves off'n dat place!_"

When they all looked, startled, behind them, they saw Pee Bee standing on the edge of the meadow.

"Pee Bee!" exclaimed Valerie, relieved to see something that was both familiar and harmless in this place. "How did you get here?"

"Get off'n dat place you're standin' on!" shouted Pee Bee. "It goes down into de ground where all dose other folks's went!" His eyes were wide with superstitious terror. "Man, ah had mah suspicions dat Missin' Link was de debbil, an' ah don't need no further convincin'! He's _it_! He done took dem folks t'_his_ place! Dat's where dey are!" he yelled, hysterically. "Dey's done gone to de hot place! Get off'n dat ground!"

"Poor Pee Bee!" said Peggy. "Now he's going crazy on us!"

* * * * *

Pee Bee ran back and forth at one edge of the meadow, helplessly wringing his hands but not daring to approach his friends.

"Look at this," said Martia. "It's a cairn!"

They had not noticed it before, because it was small and half concealed by weeds.

"Who could have put that there?" asked Peggy.

"Perhaps one of our captured friends," said Uncle Andy, squatting down to examine it.

"_Get off'n dat ground!_" shouted Pee Bee, at the top of his voice.

Uncle Andy removed the top rock from the cairn and uncovered a metal pipe with a screw cap on it. "Oh, oh!" he said. "Booby trap!"

"Unscrew it!" Henry urged him.

"Do you think you'd better?" asked Valerie.

"What else can we do?" put in Martia. "We can't just sit down here and form a colony of our own!"

Uncle Andy looked at the two women and their faces colored. "You asked for it!" he said, abruptly, and unscrewed the cap.

Beneath the cap were two tiny light bulbs embedded in a small panel, in addition to a red button. One of the lights glowed red.

"Well! Civilization at last! Shall I press the button?"

"I think Pee Bee may be right," said Henry. "They probably all went down under the ground and this is the control operating the hidden opening."

Uncle Andy looked up at him. "But if we go rushing in we're liable to end up captives too...."

In that moment, however, the decision was made for them. They discovered that the cairn marked the exact center of an area that was about fifty feet in diameter. This area suddenly sank downward.

"Run!" shouted Uncle Andy, springing to his feet.

But it was too late.

* * * * *

The walls of the pit into which they descended were twenty feet high before they could reach the edge of the circular area. As they continued their descent, the walls grew higher--fifty feet, seventy-five, a hundred....

* * * * *

Pee Bee threw himself on the trampled jangle grass and beat at his head in blind frustration.

"Ah told 'em!" he cried out. "Ah done told 'em t'stay off'n dat debbil ground! Now dey done gone 'n left me all alone--'n where am I?"

He sat up, abruptly, more bug-eyed than ever before. He listened.

The still, hot air brought him only the sound--and the smell--of the pristine jungle surrounding him. A giant bird with a black back and brilliant yellow belly soared over-head and squawked at him hostilely. Somewhere down the hill something small and warm-blooded squealed in terror. He heard a tremendous threshing about in the underbrush and remembered the vines that made a net for their prey--then clutched it inescapably and mashed it into pulp before devouring it. The eternal sky that never turned dark and cool, that sky up there that beat its itchy heat down on him and was making a rash creep up on his skin--it wasn't God's blue sky.

But it was _his_ sky--Pee Bee's! All Pee Bee's world now.

He sprang to his feet and screamed, "Dey can't leave me alone in dis place!"

But when he looked at the big, round, gaping hole in the center of the meadow he had to admit the reality of the situation. He _was_ alone!

So he threw himself down on the musty smelling grass again and sobbed uncontrollably. How had he gotten himself into this? By being in the Army in the first place. He didn't make the wars and all the trouble in the world, but they dragged him off to Europe to hold a bayonet in the people's faces--at a boundary line. He didn't make those boundaries! God made the world, but he didn't make no boundary lines. Man made the boundaries. Man made shoes for me to shine.

Shine, _shine_?

_All God's chillun got shoes...._

"Pee Bee!"

Was that somebody calling him? Sure! Hank Thomas, standing there by his newspaper stand at 12th and Central. The traffic light was red. _Was_ red. _Was_ red.

When? A _billion_ years ago! That's what Henry said.

"Pee Bee!"

That was _Henry_ calling!

Pee Bee sat up again and looked out onto the meadow. The hole was gone, all filled in. In the middle of it stood Henry, alone, beckoning to him.

"Come on, Pee Bee! It's all right!"

Pee Bee jumped to his feet and started to run. Then he stopped, abruptly.

"Oh no!" he said. "Ah done heard about _my_-rages before! Sometimes it's a lake in de middle of de desert or one of dem oh-wayseses, but you ain't gonna fool Pee Bee! Ah's stayin' right here an' if Gabriel's still got wind left after all dis time t'blow dat beat-up ol' horn o' his he's gonna have t'play a solo fo' jist little ol' me--'cause I ain't leavin' dis spot! No debbil's gonna git me. No animulated bush is gonna git me! An' no _my_-rage is gonna git me! Ah's jist gonna sit here an' wait fo' me, only kind of pick-up dat pays off--when Gabriel blows dat horn!"

Henry approached him and took him by the arm. "It's all right, Pee Bee. It's me in the flesh. Now come on! There's no time to lose."

As the circular slab of meadowland lowered itself once more into the ground, Pee Bee remained on his knees, clutching Henry to him for dear life. At the bottom of the pit he fell into Uncle Andy's and Valerie's arms, sobbing. They patted him and consumed several minutes in reassuring him.

All the while, the others shared one thought in common that they felt it would be inopportune to express to Pee Bee. The place they had reached appeared to be empty. Yet someone had operated controls to let them in--those button controls right there in the passageway.

The question was: _Who?_

* * * * *

They were in a subterranean city, or palace, or laboratory. It was difficult to determine the purpose of everything they saw. Light apparently without a source followed them automatically wherever they went. The walls, ceiling and floor seemed to be made of a translucent substance that was as soft as rubber yet tougher than steel. Now Henry's billion year theory made more sense to the others. In all that time some high form of civilization had to evolve. And this was indisputable evidence that it had.

But why was it hidden so cleverly under the ground? This fact allowed them to presuppose the existence of an enemy. What, in the outer world, could oppose the race that had built this?

Or more logical still--what, in outer space?

"Perhaps," said Uncle Andy, "it's the ionosphere. This is another answer to the danger of hard radiations."

"But not for long," said Henry. "When the critical moment comes there'll be no more atmosphere. What will they do without air?"

"The place is empty," observed Peggy. "Where did the others go?"

That was the principal question.

Twenty minutes later, they stood in a circular room which was roughly forty feet in diameter. In one wall was a mirror, ten feet high. It shimmered like molten silver. They had been in the room twice already.

"What do we do now?" asked Valerie. "Go back to some of those control rooms and start pulling levers?"

"Wait!" exclaimed Martia. "Listen!"

In another moment they could hear the sound of their own breathing. Then--unmistakably--they heard slow, hesitant footsteps.

Valerie and Peggy paled, remembering only too vividly the one-eyed towering creature that had thrown Weston thirty feet through the air. Henry appropriated Valerie's bow and arrow. Uncle Andy, his jaws clamped on a pipe that had long since burned out, took a firm grip on his axe. Pee Bee stood rooted to the floor, unable to do anything but stare in the direction of the curving passageway from which the sounds of the footsteps emanated.

"Weston tried violence against him," whispered Martia to Henry. "Maybe if we--"

"Shh!" From Uncle Andy. He raised his axe and braced himself.

The automatic, progressive light of this place advanced into view and blended with their own light aura as the owner of the footsteps approached.

Once more, Henry's mind began to awaken into that strange condition of ultimate clarity, as it had in alternate time, in New Bretania, before the machine guns.

"Hold up!" he said, lowering his bow.

"Yes!" exclaimed Martia. "It's a friend!"

At that moment, Scarface stepped into view, gun in hand. And Peggy almost swooned with relief.

Pee Bee wiped his forearm across his moist brow and said, "Man! Dat's de finest lookin' _my_-rage ah seen today!"

Uncle Andy could not refrain from studying the two adolescents again in amazement. They had definitely known beforehand that Scarface would appear instead of the alien.

"I've been doing some checking," said Scarface, without smiling, and without preamble. "There's only one place they could have gone."

"Did you let us in here?" asked Uncle Andy, irrelevantly.

"Yes. There's some kind of viewer that shows who's upstairs. When I saw you out there I pressed the entrance button. But I've been busy since. I think I know the next step."

"Where have you been all this time?" asked Henry.

Scarface glanced at Martia, then at the shimmering mirror behind her. "Trying to trace down missing persons," he answered. "I was topside in the jungle when One Eye brought in his prisoners. So I came down here to pick up the trail, and it ends in front of that mirror."

* * * * *

As all of them turned to look at the shimmering mirror, Scarface advanced toward it to show them something that had, until now, escaped their notice. He mounted two steps of a raised dais on which the mirror stood. Then he halted before it and pointed at its base.

"Look at that!" he said.

Protruding from the strange substance of the mirror was a small branch. He kicked it outward with his foot, and more of the branch emerged into view.

"One of the bunch that was captured dropped that as he went through. Look!" He shoved his hand into the mirror up to his elbow, then pulled it out again. "No pain at all," he said.

"A teletransporter!" exclaimed Henry.

Scarface looked at him quizzically. "I knew _you'd_ have a name for it," he said. "But come again?"

"A teletransporter. I get more of the picture now," said Henry. "Underground stations like this may be scattered all over the planet. Transportation between them is accomplished instantaneously by this means. Perhaps, with the proper setting of controls, one could walk around the world, through various stations, in a few minutes!"

"Whoa!" said Uncle Andy. "When did you ever see a teletransporter?"

"I didn't, but their possibility may be extrapolated from a set of known facts in our own era of time. One premise is that energy may be propagated at the speed of light through the ether, in various pulsation patterns that can be used for the reintegration of sound or light in receivers. Another premise is that matter is energy. Therefore, it lies within the realm of possibility to reduce matter to its basic energy components, broadcast the energy in a representative pattern sequence--perhaps on multiple wavebands--and reintegrate the same form of matter at the other end. On the other hand, new principles may have been discovered after our own time, such as the manipulation or use of hyper-space or ether warp of some kind. But I'm sure this is a bonafide teletransporter. We have only to step through it, the way it is adjusted now, and be where our friends are. Since Scarface is armed, I think we need not fear being surprised by the alien."

Scarface raised his brows and looked at the others. "It's simple when you know how," he said, wryly. "But there's an easier way of analyzing this contraption. I'll walk through it. If I don't come back, you can decide for yourselves if you want to follow or take up camping in that jungle outside for the rest of your lives. Here goes!"

"Wait!" cried Uncle Andy.

But Scarface walked into the mirror and disappeared.

They waited. Five minutes. Ten minutes. And Scarface did not return. Finally, Pee Bee offered a solution.

"Ah sees it like this," he said, breaking an oppressive silence. "Ah feels safe when ah's on de right side of dat gun. Now if we goes through dat mirror an' finds Scahface, we's better off than we is here. If we goes into dat mirror an' gets snuffed into nothin'--then dat means Scahface an' all de rest is probably big, flattened out blobs of nothin', too. So we might as well join 'em instead of hangin' around here. Ah's sick of it, an' ah's ready!" Before they could stop him, he hurled himself into the mirror and disappeared.

The remaining castaways looked at each other in silence for almost thirty seconds.

Then Uncle Andy said, "I think we'd better try it."

Valerie grasped his hand and Martia's. "Let's all go through together," she suggested, quietly.

They drew close to each other, held hands, and formed a straight line of five as they walked through the mirror together--just as the corridor behind them filled with light again and a pair of bloodshot eyes noted their departure....

* * * * *

This was definitely a tremendous, subterranean city, or the beginning of one. But its only inhabitants, other than the alien, seemed to be the survivors of MATS flight 702. They were still in a state of hypnosis, standing there on the pillared mezzanine that overlooked the vast room below and beyond them. Other mezzanines were visible on the far side of that tremendous chamber, and beneath them a dozen or so tunnel entrances indicated that there was much to be seen further on.

Among the people who stood out there on the mezzanine were Pee Bee and Scarface, also in a trance, as well as the Texas GIs, the missing WAACs, Martia's governess, Emily, the two mothers, Mr. Langham, Sir Rollins--and Lady Dewitt.

Martia might have cried out and run to her mother were it not for the fact that the alien, himself, confronted them.

They stood in an alcove that was half filled with banks of controls and instruments. The alien stood before these controls and glared at them purposefully as they came through the teletransmitter. His neck was dark with dried blood, and the three arrows still protruded from his side. His stooping posture gave more evidence than before that he was growing weaker.

As they came through and caught sight of him and the others, one of his hands moved on the control panel, then paused.

_Don't do that!_--came a sharp command into his mind.

He straightened up suddenly, his single eye brightening in shocked surprise as he looked first at Henry, then at Martia.

Valerie, Peggy and Uncle Andy watched the alien, white-faced, uncomprehendingly, as he slowly turned to face them squarely, his eye fairly glittering with inner lights of its own. Then--without warning--he uttered a few unintelligible words, groaned, and fell on his face.

"Quick!" said Uncle Andy. "The gun!" He ran, himself, to pluck it out of Scarface's nerveless fingers.

"But what happened!" exclaimed Valerie. "Is he dead?" She and Peggy did not follow Henry and Martia as they went over to look at the alien.

"Henry," whispered Martia. "What _are_ we? I know what you did!"

Henry paused to look at her. "Martia, Lady Dewitt is not really your mother--_is_ she?"

Martia colored.

"You know there are no secrets between us," he insisted.

"No," she answered. "I am an orphan, like you."

"An orphan equipped with photographic memory and extra-sensory perception," he said, rapidly. "Also, other things, like extended perception in time. You have lately come to sense that your mind was 'fixed,' long ago, to keep you from using your full powers and to prevent you from knowing who or _what_ you were, but these recent experiences have started an awakening process--"

"Yes!" she agreed. "Henry, what--"

His eyes bored into hers, his nostrils flaring in his tense excitement. "Shall I tell you where you were really born?" He turned his head and looked down. "Wait! He's beginning to stir! _He_ can give us the final answer!"

As the alien stirred, one of the tendrils on his wrist twirled a control on the panel at his waist. Martia swayed, but Henry stood his ground, blocking that telepathic signal and showing Martia how to do it at the same time. But Valerie and Peggy and Uncle Andy dropped to the floor, unconscious.

The alien rose slowly to his feet, and Henry turned, instinctively, to get the gun that Uncle Andy had dropped. Then he and Martia, as well as the alien, stiffened in surprise as Scarface smilingly picked up the gun and leveled it.

"Everything is going to be all right," he said, confidently. "I think I have all the answers now. It was not the impossible coincidence I imagined it to be, his coming upon all three of us on board that plane. I think that he--"

"Look out!" screamed Martia.

Out of the mirror had come an unexpected figure, hurling itself upon Scarface's back. Scarface went down and the gun was torn from his fingers, even as the alien reached for his controls on the instrument panel behind him.

"No you don't!" yelled Tommy Weston.

He stood there, his clothes half torn off, supporting himself on one good leg and painfully trying not to bring pressure to bear on the other, which appeared to be sprained.

"I'm _still_ running the show!" he yelled, hysterically.

_Quick!_--came a thought from Scarface to the two adolescents. _Through the teleporter!_

As they literally threw themselves into the silvery mirror in back of them, they heard Weston firing shot after shot into the alien....

* * * * *

Back in the subterranean chamber where they had come upon their first teleporter, Scarface reached behind the mirror and adjusted something, whereupon the sheet of silvery substance took on a bluish sheen.

"You see, I knew all along what this was," he said. "But if I had told you that it would probably lead you right into Mlargn's hands you would not have dared follow. You needed one more shock to bring you out, and I waited there for you, waiting for my final proof." He smiled. "In his weakened condition, it was too _much_ of a shock to Mlargn. I didn't quite expect him to pass out like that--the poor beast! Well, anyway, Weston has taken care of him, and this adjustment will keep him from following us."

"Wait, please!" interrupted Henry. "You're assuming too much knowledge on our part. We--"

"Just one more detail," said Scarface, as he made a last adjustment behind the mirror. By now it was a shimmering pink. "Follow me," he directed. And without further explanation he stepped _back_ through the teleporter.

Under ordinary circumstances, Henry and Martia would have reacted emotionally to this new development, and fear would have restrained them. But this was a very special circumstance because they had had an awakening. A calm logic told them that Scarface would not have directed them to follow him if it would do them any harm. One of the premises of that logic was that they had "read" at least his attitude. He was definitely an ally--and the ultimate answer to their mutual enigma.

So they followed him.

They found themselves in a great, domed citadel which covered the entire top of a small island. Some miles away was a long stretch of jungle-covered land and low hills easily recognizable as the country where they had first camped. They could even make out the silvery glitter of the wrecked plane.

They remembered having seen this island from the shore, but it had looked like a flat-topped, barren rock protruding from the sea. Then it came to them that the citadel on top was invisible from the land.

Scarface sat at the console of a tremendous instrument panel. On his head was an elaborate headpiece equipped with silvery anodes that clamped against his skull. His eyes were closed. His fingers made delicate adjustments on the console while strange, almost ultra-sonic tones emanated from a battery of glowing tubes on the wall.

Martia and Henry sensed that they were not to disturb him. So they walked around inside the dome and looked at the sea, and the old, old land. Their minds were awakening to new perspectives and powers, and slowly they caught glimpses of a billion year pattern of destiny that dazzled their thoughts. So they barred these perspectives, holding them breathlessly at the threshold of soaring consciousness--waiting for experienced guidance.

At length, Scarface finished his task and came over to them. "While I am waiting for results," he said, "I will tell you what you want to know...."

* * * * *

He told them that somewhere in the era of time in which they had been raised, a cataclysm had occurred which had destroyed all life on Earth. Oceans had come over the land and the whole, slow, geo-biological process of regeneration had begun once more. Evolution through hundreds of millions of years had at last arrived at a dominant, intelligent species of which Mlargn, the "alien," was the last survivor.

He told them the story of Xlarn, of the cooling of the sun, of the reaction sphere, and of the Chronotron. And he described the developments which finally led to Mlargn's time journey in search of life before the Beginning.

"Actually, Mlargn made two trips into Earth time. On his first trip he must have arrived somewhere in an earlier century than the one you knew--"

"The thirteenth century," interrupted Henry.

Scarface looked at him in wonderment. So both Henry and Martia told him the legend of the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

For almost a minute, the other was silent. Then he said, "So that's where the ancestors of Galactic Civilization came from...."

"Galactic Civilization!" Martia exclaimed.

Scarface grinned at them. "Yes," he said. "We call it that, because we have inhabited at least a dozen solar systems and are still growing. Let me continue the story...."

Mlargn had chosen a group of children because he knew they could be trained and conditioned easier. When he returned through the Chronotron to his own time, the Xlarnan immortals considered the human captives to be unimaginable, short-lived, soft-skinned bipeds, but amazingly advanced mammalia from the evolutionary viewpoint. And they could think, in a primitive fashion. Moreover, they proved to be incredibly fertile.

Only slightly encouraged, the Xlarnans threw them into a Chronotron cycle of five hundred thousand years. The resultant race and alternate time proved to be something for which they were totally unprepared. Since the continuum between Cause and Effect was a simultaneous structure in time, there it was, complete from beginning to end--a superman civilization that encompassed great stretches of the galaxy. An alien brand of intelligence. Virile resourcefulness and aggressiveness, far outstripping the sterile civilization of Xlarn.

Astounded and frightened, the Xlarnans sought to trace the beginnings of this alternate time, through the Chronotron, and throttle the totally unexpected development at its source. However, this was foreseen by the civilization which had sprung from the Chronotron--and there was war. The Xlarnans were eliminated, except for one, who swore vengeance.

This unsuspected immortal was he who had brought back the ancestors of the star men from beyond Beginning, from the world where the moon was young. This was Mlargn, himself.

* * * * *

Although the star men had abandoned the dying solar system of their origin, it was inevitable that a few of their number should be left behind--castaways who finally organized themselves, built a citadel of their own, and sought to build a small star ship in which to escape the threat of the reaction sphere. But the specialized science that had developed the hyper-space drive eluded them and they struggled in vain, while Mlargn besieged them, jealously endeavoring to discover what they were accomplishing. He applied his warfare so vigorously that one day only Kimnar was left, with two youngsters. In fact, they were babes.

In desperation, Kimnar gained access to the Chronotron. Hoping to create another alternate time, he hurled himself and the two children into further depths of time than he intended.

And Mlargn followed him. Aware of his own immortality and equipped with controls that could reverse his course in time because they were interlocked with the Chronotron, he was determined to spend centuries, if necessary, to find those two advanced children and use them to his own advantage....

* * * * *

Henry shook his head to clear it. "Just a moment," he said. "I might extrapolate from all this that you are Kimnar."

"I am," smiled Scarface. "I arrived with you two in the human era, in Earth's calendar year nineteen hundred forty-four A.D., on June 6th, to be exact. The country was France. The place--Caen...."

There was a stunned moment of silence. Then Martia's eyes widened. "But that was--!"

"Yes," said Kimnar, smiling grimly. "The Allied invasion of Normandie. I landed right in the middle of D-Day."

"What happened?" asked Henry. "I mean--to you?"

"I was injured by shrapnel. That's how I acquired the scar on my face. I woke up later in a hospital and have been looking for you two ever since."

"Kimnar," said Henry, "are Martia and I sister and brother?"

Martia's mind leaped out to find the answer in Kimnar's thoughts before he could speak. "No!" she cried, happily. "We're not!" Henry suddenly found her in his arms.

"She's right," Kimnar confirmed.

"You two were survivors of Mlargn's attack in those days when Jirahn was alive--but you were not of the same family."

"Who was Jirahn?"

Kimnar waved a hand toward the great instrument panel. "It was he who invented that hyper-space transceiver. Or rather, he re-invented it, remembering much of the science of our kin, the star men. Just before Mlargn's powerful attack, in which he utilized a deadly radiation that killed everybody in the citadel, I believe Jirahn succeeded in contacting the star men. But I could not be certain, as I had been away from the citadel when the attack came. Upon my return, I found my friends dead, and Jirahn sat slumped over those controls with the head gear attached to him. Certain lights were signalling to me from the board, but I could not decipher them. Moreover, I feared that Mlargn would find the right teleporter frequency to tie his system in with ours, and that he might surprise me at any time. So I removed the bodies, dumping them into the sea, and prepared, generally, to 'abandon ship.' Just as I was about to leave, I found you two halfway down the cliffs on a covered terrace that your parents had been in the habit of using. They had left you there for your naps. It was then that I conceived the idea of finding the Chronotron and trying to create a new alternate time based on your descendants."

"But Kimnar," persisted Henry. "What about that transceiver? You worked it when we first arrived here, and I remember you mentioned something about 'waiting for results.'"

Kimnar shrugged. "I tried the thing, and to the best of my knowledge I was transmitting through hyper-space at full power. So far, there has been no response. I have the receiver wide open."

"Do you mean--it is conceivable that some of the star people might return for us?"

Kimnar smiled in a puzzling sort of way. "I tossed them the bait," he said. "I think they'll consider the risk worth while--if they received my message."

"What risk is there now? I'm quite sure Weston finished Mlargn off."

* * * * *

Kimnar raised his eyes heavenward. "Remember? The reaction sphere could go any time. Fortunately, most of the harder radiations are expending themselves convexly, into outer space, and what is shooting towards us still has many miles to travel. But it's getting very unhealthy around here. When the sphere blows, it will take the Great Ring with it--the ring that used to be the moon."

Simultaneously, Henry and Martia thought of something else. The other passengers, their original companions. What of them--and Weston, with his gun?

"We can't leave them here to die," said Henry. "What about the Chronotron? Can't we send them all back?"

Kimnar shook his head. "The Chronotron is not that accurate at such long range. Only a few people at a time can go through, and they might land anywhere, from Earth's prehistoric ages to Xlarn's eras of development ante-dating the generation of an oxygen content atmosphere. Moreover, Mlargn changed the location of the Chronotron. I have not been able to find it. That was what I originally went back to look for when I left you on the beach after that fight with Weston."

"Wait a minute!" cried Martia. "But my moth--I mean, Lady Dewitt and those others found it!"

Kimnar looked at both of them wonderingly. Briefly, they told him about the alternate time episode involving New Bretania and Texania, which Mlargn successfully nipped in the bud.

"I must have been underground somewhere at the time," said Kimnar, "traveling through various teleporters. Otherwise, had I been on the surface, I have enough temporal perspective, myself, to have been able to remember that alternate time experience." He frowned. "If Weston ever finds the Chronotron--"

"Well, why not?" asked Martia. "You couldn't blame them for going back--or trying to!"

"I see what he means," said Henry. "If any of them should go back to the approximate time from which we started and do anything to circumvent that moon experiment--"

"_What_ moon experiment?" asked Martia.

"I forgot to tell you, I guess. Kimnar knew because he read it in Uncle Andy's mind. Uncle Andy as Andrew Dearden, is one of the world's greatest rocket specialists. He was just returning from Africa on that plane after having supervised all preparations for firing a rocket at the moon."

"That _is_ amazing," said Martia, "but--oh!" She read the rest in Henry's mind. The rocket carried the world's first D-C bomb, which letters represented the word, "de-cohesion." In detonation, the bomb was supposed to liberate the cohesive forces of the proton. They were going to observe its effects on the moon.

"I believe," said Henry, "that it produced a sustained reaction in stable matter, and the moon blew to fragments, thus creating the Great Ring. The thermal effects plus orbital perturbations of the Earth destroyed all life on the planet. And I deduce that the free oxygen and hydrogen in our atmosphere made some kind of critical mixture and went _foom_! The result was H_{2}O, oceans of it. And so time began again, biologically speaking, anyway."

"If Andrew Dearden or any of his kind get back there and manage to abolish the 'D-C' bomb," said Kimnar, "then Xlarn will never have been, and neither you nor I nor Galactic Civilization, with its myriad worlds and metropoli and billions of star people and all their science and culture, shall have ever evolved. And there you have a difficult question. Is it better for us to relinquish our existence for the sake of a civilization that might have continued, or to preserve a greater one that actually exists _now_?"

* * * * *

Before they could bring much concentration to bear upon this weighty problem, a new situation diverted their attention. Inasmuch as the three of them were standing by the transparent wall of the citadel and facing shoreward, they could not help seeing the small industrial city that suddenly sprang into being there. Again, up on the hill, was a great black rocket, its nose pointing toward the threatening sky.

But this was not New Bretania. Nor was it Texania. Nor was there the slightest evidence of any type of conflict or preparations for defense, except in the design of the rocket, itself.

"That's a different alternate!" said Henry, instantly. "The city is different--more heavily industrialized. See the steel mills? It's even futuristic. Those insulator towers and antenna, for some kind of power transmission--"

"And that rocket is different--more efficient looking," observed Martia. "It seems to carry armament. You can see the firing cupolas."

"You're both very calm about it," said Kimnar. "Somebody has found the Chronotron. Come on!"

A moment after they had stepped through the teleporter, leaving the island citadel deserted, the hyper-space receiver began to react to signals. Lights flickered rapidly for several minutes. Then a human voice boomed into the empty dome. It spoke in a strange language, rapidly, urgently. But there was no operator there to reply....

When Kimnar, Henry and Martia stepped through the teleporter, they arrived in the circular room they had first visited in the subterranean world of Xlarn.

"There's somebody down here," said Henry.

"They're in that room with the vision screens," added Martia.

Kimnar frowned. "You're right, and I sense that one of them is Weston. Let's have a closer look!"

But already, it seemed, detectors had discovered their presence. In three seconds they heard running footsteps and they saw the tell-tale progression of light advancing toward them along the curved passageway.

Two men came into view, to be followed by a man on crutches who shouldered his way in between them.

"Weston!" exclaimed Martia.

"Dr. Edwards!" Henry cried out. Edwards was the man with the gun--the same gun that Kimnar had used against Mlargn.

The other member of the trio was the Indian Prince, his precious turban now much disheveled and awry.

"Aha!" cried Weston, grinning and leaning on his crutches with a derisive air. "So the wanderers have returned!"

* * * * *

The Indian Prince ran forward and kneeled before Henry, wringing his hands in supplication. In his fat, brown face and his wide, brown eyes was registered an expression of terror and desperation.

"Henry!" he exclaimed. "Only you can give me the answer--it is all so mixed up that I cannot understand. Only you can tell me if it's true!"

"If _what_ is true?" asked Kimnar.

"Shut up, Mohammed!" yelled Weston. "Edwards knows what he's doing! Tell them, Edwards!--before you plug 'em!"

Since Edwards held the gun, he took time to explain. In his eyes was a wild sort of triumph.

"I don't know where you three have been," he said, "but in your absence a great deal has happened. Since young Henry, here, has always exhibited his great intelligence so willingly, perhaps he would corroborate my own deductions--by doing some fast extrapolating!" He said this last word through his teeth. There was a smile on his lips, but not in his dark and wearied eyes.

As he went on rapidly with his story, his three listeners were scanning his mind for the rest of it, putting the whole picture together even before he had finished.

When Weston killed Mlargn, he managed to manipulate controls that finally released all the others from their mental paralysis. He made Lady Dewitt and the Texans show him the location of the Chronotron, and under directions from the various scientists at his command a series of experiments was conducted. Various power settings were utilized, and test groups volunteered or were assigned to be sent back through time. Some, they knew, might arrive in a place where conditions would not be suitable for life. Others might perish in a world populated by carnivorous monsters, or they might freeze, or drown in shoreless oceans. But most of them seemed willing to risk it.

It was Uncle Andy's group that produced the alternate time that the three had witnessed from the citadel. This group had consisted of Andy, Dr. Bauml, Dr. Singer, Valerie Roagland, Peggy Hollenbeck, and several other men and women. Pee Bee, it developed, had been in the first "group," which had consisted only of himself--as he had apparently been in a suicidal mood and was desirous of giving the dice a roll for double or nothing.

Andy's group, it appeared, had only been thrown back about a thousand years, because the "civilization" they founded was small and still dedicated to the same goals which had been in the minds of the basic group when they entered the Chronotron. These descendants remembered their ancestors and carried some of their theories to the point of physical application.

* * * * *

In the meantime, only Weston, Edwards and the Prince remained below. The alternate time civilization, which referred to itself as "Little America," had appropriated the Xlarnan underworld facilities for itself, and the three observers had found it necessary to conceal themselves. To their dismay, the "Little Americans" had destroyed the Chronotron in order to make certain that none of their group would ever be tempted to snuff them out with a superimposed alternate.

Far from abandoning the idea of returning to the world and time of their ancestors' origin they had concentrated on time-travel theories of their own, with the intention of evolving a more accurate method so that they could be sure of where they were going.

"You said something to me and your Uncle Andy on board the plane before all this happened," Edwards remarked to Henry. "Something about novae and super fast light rays being thrown along the Fourth Coordinate. That must have started them on the road to their present discoveries and development, because there's a ship out there now that only uses rockets for take-off and navigational purposes. Once out in deep space it is supposed to operate on Cosmic energy, or so we have heard. It will go out faster than light. The idea is that when that happens it will be rotated out of three dimensional space and be forced to expend its extra velocity along the Fourth Coordinate, emerging in another time when it again slows down to the speed of light. But this isn't all. These scientists have worked out some new kind of mathematics and seem convinced they have been able to determine the direction and the rates of acceleration and deceleration necessary to deliver them into any given era of time, past or future. And their flight equation calls for the time we came from. Of course, they'll not hit it in the first attempt, but all subsequent time-jumps will be like vernier adjustments, focussing them down into the twentieth century--even that specific part of it they're aiming for."

"You can't let them do it!" exclaimed Kimnar. Weston, Edwards and the Prince stared at him in mild astonishment.

"I don't know what your objections may be, Scarface," said Edwards, "but as a matter of fact we _don't_ intend to let them get away with it!"

Weston grinned sadistically, his gold-capped teeth glistening. "You see--_we_ are going instead! Of course we'll cop their pilot, and he'll do what we tell him. And here's another little point. I'm not so sharp with the science, so Edwards will tell you that, too. Tell them about Africa, Doc!"

* * * * *

The three listeners tensed. They saw it coming. The "Little Americans" were well aware of Andy's connection with the D-C bomb. Andy, too, had been able to deduce, largely from the lack of ocean tides in this world of Xlarn, that it could have been the bomb that had brought the world of Xlarn into being by the destruction of the moon. The most sacred admonishment to his descendants in alternate time had been to find a way of getting back to the twentieth century and prevent the bomb from being launched. That single act would enable the original Earth civilization to continue, and Xlarn would cease to exist.

"It's all a nice, neat package," said Weston, "because don't forget I worked that French Morocco project, too, and I know how to sabotage that damned rocket! Then to make the whole story turn out real pretty with a happy ending, we have Mohammed here to pay off like he said, for getting him back home!"

The Prince still looked at Henry, his turban almost down over his eyes. "You have heard!" he cried out. "Tell me, Henry! Can it be done?"

"There's just one little technicality," said Henry. "How do you propose to capture that Cosmic drive rocket outside?"

Weston grinned again, and Dr. Edwards explained. "Our friends upstairs never suspected our existence. They probably assumed we got lost somewhere in the Chronotron. Having had no one to defend themselves against, they have produced no weapons of any description, with the exception of those they have installed on the rocket, for use when they get back to the twentieth century, if necessary, to force the issue concerning the D-C bomb. So they are quite vulnerable to a surprise attack. This gun should do the trick easily enough. It is fully loaded."

"What of their superior numbers?" asked Kimnar. But he read the answer before it was voiced.

"The poor devils were quite aware of the reaction sphere," Edwards answered. "There isn't much time left, you know. They chose their pilgrims, and the rest--"

Martia paled. "All dead!" she exclaimed.

Edwards shrugged. "Euthanasia. Tragic, perhaps, but very convenient. We only have six men to contend with."

"I don't want to appear too forward about all this," said Kimnar, slipping back into the sarcastic dialect of Scarface, "but we'd like to ride in that star buggy, ourselves. Maybe you can use another hand in your surprise attack?"

Henry and Martia looked at him quizzically, then their brows furrowed in deeper puzzlement as they read the weighty thing that was in his mind.

"To hell with you," yelled Weston. "I owe you something for that lousy deal you gave me on the rock. On second thought, maybe a bullet would be too easy. Maybe you should wait and see the sky blow up. You and the kids wouldn't want to miss all the pretty fireworks, now would you?"

The Prince sprang into action. Swiftly, he took up a position in front of Henry, Martia and Kimnar. Trembling, and with arms outspread, he cried out, "If you leave them, you can leave me, too! Shoot me--anything! But Henry and his friends are sacred! They go, or I stay!"

Dr. Edwards grimaced, looked at his gun, then at Weston. The latter glowered at the Prince, menacingly.

Finally, he muttered an oath that made Martia's face turn crimson. And he added, "What's the difference! We'll take you as excess baggage, but on condition you'll follow orders. Edwards here is going to be awful nervous on that trigger, so don't try anything."

* * * * *

The surface world was very warm and the sky was sickeningly bright. Vegetation drooped, dried up, dead or dying, and the plant stench of rot was in the degenerating air. In the mind of every sweating human left on Xlarn was one thought:

_It can happen any second now...._

Driven by the deadly threat of the sky, Weston and Edwards did not waste time on strategy. They approached the rocket base directly, out in the open, in the glaring light. The pilot and one other man was inside. Four others met them, in mild astonishment, but there was very little time for conversation.

When Weston let them know his intention, and when they looked at Dr. Edwards' gun, they smiled, resignedly.

"What is life or death to us now?" said the spokesman, a somewhat older man than the others. "The main consideration is our common purpose. You, too, want to stop the _bomb_. And if Doctor Edwards here is, as you say, a prominent authority known to that time, his influence would be greater than ours. As long as you intend to take Kennedy, the pilot, our efforts and sacrifices shall not have been in vain. Go--before it is too late!"

Once at the ladder Weston threw the crutches away and practically pulled himself up to the airlock with his powerful arms. Edwards followed close behind with his gun, and then came Martia, Henry and Kimnar, who gave the Prince a helping hand as he climbed.

The four on the ground watched silently for five minutes.

Then they saw their colleague, Mark Thixton, climb down out of the rocket. That left Kennedy alone--with those others.

Thixton walked over to his waiting friends. "Seven of them," he said. "The two youngsters will have to share an acceleration sling together." After a long moment he added, "Pray God they make it in time!"

The others said nothing. They only hoped Kennedy would take off fast enough to get through that raving pile in the sky. The radiation insulation was excellent in that ship, but they still wondered if escape would be possible.

_It can happen any second now...._

* * * * *

When Martia pulled out of the blackness that she had fallen into during acceleration, she began to cry. Henry could read the thought in her mind. Those brave, kind men back there--left to die.

Then came a disturbing thought from Kimnar who lay in the sling above them: _You realize that we are through the reaction sphere. If they succeed in their purpose, you and I cease to exist. But what really matters is Galactic Civilization! That, too, will evaporate and be non-existent!_

Henry and Martia were too weak to think back at him. But they thought to themselves. Earth, as they had known it, with its teeming billions of people and its cities and sciences and cultures.

_And its wars and nationalisms and ideologies and greed and corruption!_--interposed Kimnar's thought, vehemently.

But its beaches under the blue skies and a real, normal sun, with the children bathing and laughing, and its theatres and arts, its churches and universities and--Paris! Think of Paris! If they could stop the bomb, all that would continue to be--

_I can show you six thousand cities greater than Paris! And if you consider Earth, then think of solar systems--dozens of worlds greater than Earth--more advanced, benevolent, civilized, where men cannot lie and cheat because they know each other's hearts and minds! Weigh all that against one world!_

_No_--thought Henry, at last. _Consider Earth's own future expansion, if saved from cataclysm. Think of its own possibilities of reaching for the stars and also establishing a Galactic Civilization!_

Kimnar did not respond.

* * * * *

Suddenly, Kennedy came out of his straps and yelled. He was looking out the great vision port, from which the radiation shielding had been removed. Everybody sat up and stared into outer space.

In the lower part of their field vision was the Great Ring that had once been the moon, and below it was the glowing reaction sphere that covered Xlarn. It looked like an incandescent Saturn, with the mighty star-walls of Infinity rising behind it. But even this tremendous spectacle was insignificant in its effect when compared with ten other prominent objects out there.

"Space ships!" shouted Weston. "Where the hell--"

Ten great spheres, with rods at top and bottom and thick rings around their "equators," as though they were space-flying gyroscopes. They were converging slowly upon the rocket.

"Shall I tell you what they are?" asked Kimnar enthusiastically. "They are in the hands of Fate!"

"If you know what they are, don't get corny, Scarface!" roared Weston, climbing out of his sling and grabbing the gun from Edwards. "Spill it!"