Part 2

Andreson, taken aback at the girl's sudden outburst, hardly knew what to say. He was spared the task of replying, however--

The sun went out!

* * * * *

The girl gave a smothered little cry, and the human clumsily tried to make his way through the blackness toward where he had last seen her. A powerful four-fingered hand grasped his elbow roughly.

"Stand still," Atel growled. "Jina! It may be another attack. Wait for the tower lights."

Andreson was uncertain as to whether "Jina!" was an expletive or the girl's name, which he had never heard before, but he stood still, resisting an impulse to shake Atel off. After a moment an eerie sound drifted to his ears: a distant, musical keening.

"Ah. It is a raid--there's the alarm."

As he spoke, a dim radiance filtered down over them, bringing the ranked seats of the council chamber into ghostly relief. It was coming down from the dome, but the great jewel no longer scattered rainbows. The light did not seem to have any single source.

"Aloft with him," Atel ordered.

Reluctantly the girl gripped the Earthman's other arm, and two pairs of wings thrummed together in the echoing chamber. He felt himself arrowing dizzily skyward, and tried to hold his body stiff.

A second later they were standing on the high ledge among the deserted couches. Below them, the city, seen here from its highest tower, was presenting a heart stopping new facet of its beauty. Every one of the crystalline shafts were gleaming with blue-white flame along its entire length; though no single one was too bright to be looked at directly, their total effect was of a sea of light almost as brilliant as high noon. Tiny motes drifted back and forth across the pillars of radiance: Varans in flight, evidently going to their posts in answer to the alarm.

* * * * *

But when Andreson looked up to see what had happened to the sun, what he saw wiped the miracle of the city from his mind.

The sky had turned to rock. The whole metropolis was trapped in a tremendous hemisphere of some strange substance, a stony bowl, smooth and polished, and veined with dark red lines like bad marble. Here and there the glow of the city struck sullen fire against the lava-like surface.

When Atel finally spoke, his voice had none of its previous arrogance. "They have us now," he husked. "Our sky is granite to them--and they've destroyed cubic miles of it, instantaneously! Our power, our air ... cut off!"

"They've worked a miracle," the girl said with unwilling respect. "The beasts are scientists--we knew that in the beginning. Don't you see, Atel? They'll use that dome to get above the city! And their borers, too--"

Indecisively Atel spread his wings half-way. "We can't carry this Earthman about the city now," he said. "Jina, go to your post. I'll take him back to my rooms."

"But--" Andreson and the girl protested simultaneously.

"Need I remind you that I command this sector during emergencies, by Council order?" the Varan snapped. "He'll be no safer with us than alone in the apartments. Take him down again."

Mutely Jina took the human's arm, and the two picked him up again--he was becoming a little tired of being catapulted through the air once every hour--and plunged back to the catwalk door.

"All right," the Varan told the girl, his voice edged with impatience. "You're needed elsewhere, Jina."

She disappeared silently into the cavern of Starstone Chamber. Atel slid the door back and cocked his head, a grotesque silhouette against the faintly hazed oval opening. After a moment, Andreson heard the sound too: a weird, intermittent buzzing noise. It set his teeth on edge, and sent little waves of sheer hatred coursing through his body. The stocky Varan drew him out onto the platform and pointed upward.

"Borers," he grunted. "You can see one from here."

It was quite high, about half-way between the summit of the tower and the surface of the rock sky, and moving very slowly. It reminded Andreson of a legless centipede--a long, joined cylinder, with the same stony, red-veined texture that the great bowl presented. In the feeble light he thought he saw small openings appearing and vanishing: the space-beasts, moving about inside their mechanism! The brief glimpse was somehow the most horrible thing he had ever seen. He could distinguish at least two other tones in the gruesome buzzing, and he knew that the borer was not alone above the city.

"They've learned that hollow things are deadly--learned from us," Atel spat out bitterly. "See the column of light inching out from the borer's nose? They are disintegrating a tunnel for their vacuum torpedoes. It's a slow-motion kind of warfare--but when one side wins constantly, it can't last forever. Feel the radiation?"

Andreson discovered that he was scratching. His skin felt as if he had a mild sunburn. "The boring mechanism?" he suggested.

"Right," Atel admitted, his tone grudging. "Matter-against-matter generates radiant heat. Space-against-space generates X-rays and worse. Deadly stuff! If our gunners can only--"

Andreson never heard the end of the sentence. Without the slightest warning he was again sprawling through the hot dark air--

Alone!

III

Kimball's right shoe caught in a burrow and he fell again. This time the expected shock came late; evidently he had been on the brink of a pit of some sort, for his shoulders slammed against the hard ground with an unexpected impact, and he slewed down a long decline. He lay at the bottom for an indefinite period--neither time nor distance had any meaning in this blackness--and then got up again.

Through the steady, muted roaring which had been in his ears ever since he had dropped from the torus coil, a roaring like the sound in a seashell, multiplied to the point of madness, a leathery muttering sound began to grow. He yanked his flashlight from the belt-clip and shot a cone of light upward.

He was rewarded with a ululating, deafening scream, and something winged and huge sheared off from the beam. The muttering of the wings faded again, and with it went a sticky blubbering, like the crying of an idiot child. Sick at his stomach, he pumped a shot after it, and was surprised to hear it scream again.

That would hold them for a while. They weren't very cautious about the automatic, for they seemed to expect that he would score a hit with it only by rare chance; but they hated the flashlight. They'd not try that dive-bombing stunt on him soon again.

He could hear them settling around the rim of the pit. Deliberately he lit a cigarette. For a second he could see the bulky, pasty bodies and the blinded heads arching above him; then they all whispered with agony and drew away out of sight. Even the dim coal of the burning fag was too much for them.

But before long the batteries of the flashlight would be drained, the cigarettes gone, the matches exhausted. When that time came, Kimball knew, he would be torn to tatters, but it didn't bother him much now. He had been almost unconscious with fatigue when the badly-adjusted master machine had dumped him into this nightmare; but the beasts, savage though they were, had been curious. For a while they had questioned him with very little hostility, and had aroused his interest enough to give him second--or had it been twenty-second?--wind. Their upsetting version of telepathy, which projected subtly different emotional states instead of ideas, had awakened him thoroughly.

He had just realized that he had arrived _inside_ the Earth, probably in a space-negative state to boot, when he had felt the urge for a cigarette....

He sighed and stood up. There was no way to tell how long he had been in this midnight universe, but if he could only stick it out until a full twenty-four hours were up, the master machine would act on him again. The faulty windings of its coils would prevent it from returning him to the abandoned grocery as it was supposed to do--but at least it would throw him out of _this_ black, demon-haunted universe.

At his movement, the beasts rustled eagerly back to the rim of the pit, scarcely audible in the mass echo which was as natural to the hollow world as air. He turned on the flashlight, pointing it at the ground--he did not care to hear them all scream at once. There was a thundering flurry of wings above him; then silence.

Doggedly, he began to climb. _Keep moving_, he thought, _you can sleep in your next universe--wherever that'll be_.

The beasts wheeled patiently.

* * * * *

Andreson lay tasting the sensation of being dead for several minutes before he realized that he was hardly even jarred. His eyes were open, but nothing he could see made sense to him. There was no sign of Atel. Lying flat on his back, he looked stupidly upward at a column of soft light that seemed to reach miles into the air, ending in glowing haze. The rock dome had vanished, and in its place was a pattern of gigantic, garish stalactites.

Wait a minute. There _was_ something familiar here--

He rolled over cautiously and found an edge to the mysterious surface he had fallen to. He thrust his head over it and peered downward.

The rock dome was below him, not above! The space-beasts, who reacted to gravity in reverse, had imposed their environment upon the city. Only the solarium platform, which had been directly above where he had been standing on the catwalk, had saved him from mashing against the dome. He wondered if the Varan gunners had been able to hit any of the borers under these conditions. He couldn't hear the buzzing sound--no, wait, there was a single buzzing tone, seemingly far away. Well, two down, anyhow.

A winged figure sailed by below him, its pinions tensely outspread, gulling the air. He shouted at it, but there was no response. He wondered what had happened to Atel. He must have fallen from the catwalk, too, but certainly he couldn't have been hurt--he didn't look like the type to pass out in mid-air. Andreson called again. After a pause, an infinitely remote response came back to him: _Atelatelteltellelellll_....

The echo of his first shout! The Varan must have forgotten about him in the shock of the reversal, and flown off to his post, leaving the Earthman stranded. Andreson knew it was quite possible that he had been deliberately abandoned, but he forced himself not to think about it.

Right now, he had to get off this ledge, and back inside a building. A preferable spot would be Atel's rooms; they were close, and there would be only a short, harmless distance to fall either way, no matter what the warring factions did with the city's gravity. Yet Atel's doorway, so mockingly close, was in reality as good as miles away unless he could figure out something nearly as good as flying!

Suppose he should wait where he was, and fall back to the catwalk when the Varans succeeded in neutralizing the effect? He shuddered. The catwalk was narrow and he might easily miss it. In any case, it might take a long time--the space-beasts seemed to have the edge on the Varans so far, and if they won, he'd starve here. He eyed the wall of the building above him. It was about twenty feet "up" to the catwalk, and no handholds were visible. The top side--now the "under" side--of the solarium platform was no better; all the furniture had long since fallen away, and even had it been still there, bolted to the surface, he'd have thought twice before trying to crawl from couch to couch toward Starstone Chamber's roof. It was a long way to the rock sky.

He risked standing up, hoping that the Varese would not choose this instant to change things around again--if they did, he'd be dumped on his head. The illusion of _downness_ was quite perfect, but it was hard to forget that it was an illusion. His knees wobbled as if he were standing on a pile of telephone books.

After steadying himself against the wall, he made a slow circuit of the tower, stepping over the structural members of the platform cautiously. No doorways here--even a flying people usually enter floors from the top side. Returning, he eyed the upper edge of the catwalk doorway. It was an eight-foot opening, and he was exactly six feet tall; that left a margin of about six feet, which he might be able to jump. He wasn't in very good shape, and the platform didn't offer much of a starting run, but he'd have to chance it.

He backed gingerly to the edge of the platform, hunched, ran, leaped. He struck the glassy wall at full length, and clawed frantically at it--

Missed. The drop back to the deck knocked the wind out of him again, but he got up stubbornly. Crouch ... run ... leap--

* * * * *

His hands latched over the edge of the lintel and closed on it. Drawing his knees up into his waist, he planted his toes and heaved. The first push got his elbows over the edge, and after a long struggle he managed to bend his body over it at the belt. Suspended, he looked dizzily "down" at the inside of the Chamber, his feet dangling in thin air.

It was only an equivalent distance to the bottom side of the inner solarium platform, but he didn't want to go that way. There'd be no sense in rattling aimlessly about the roof of the hall, waiting for his back to be broken across the seats. Somehow, he had to work himself down to the catwalk.

There was no other way but to shinny along the side of the lintel. He swapped ends, so that his legs were now in the Chamber, and took off his shoes and socks with a good deal of difficulty. His feet were sweating--indeed, he was wet all over--so he wiped them with the tops of the socks; then he began precariously to inch himself upward.

By the time he made the bottom side of the catwalk, he was weak with fear, and his clothes were soaked; but he couldn't allow himself any time to recover, for there was now nothing "above" him but the chasm of the city street. He worked his way across on his hands and knees--no matter which way "down" was, this was a thin bridge for an earthbound man, a bridge much more decorative than it was useful--and lowered himself over the edge until he could curl his body around Atel's doorway.

A moment later he was sprawled on Atel's ceiling, amid a litter of the surly Varan's personal effects. He had hardly come to rest when he fainted with a small sigh.

* * * * *

The second flipover of the city's gravity barely jounced him, but it seemed to cause a lot of damage elsewhere. He had just gotten to his feet when a terrific crash rang from the street below, and was followed at once by others in other parts of the metropolis. He went to the catwalk and looked over it--very tentatively, for he was warier than ever of open spaces--but the distance was too great. He guessed that something which hadn't been fastened down when the original reversal took place had just made the return trip.

As he peered, four or five of the winged people stepped from a platform far below his eyrie, and began to mount. Since they were between him and the glowing side of the next building, he did not recognize Atel and Jina among them until they were almost upon him.

As they settled gracefully on the catwalk, he noted with some surprise that they were all armed with a glass-muzzled, pistol-like weapon instead of the usual metal bar; and judging from their expressions, they anticipated trouble.

"I see you weren't killed," Atel said grimly. He seemed a bit disappointed.

"No. But I did a lot of dropping back and forth," Andreson returned acidly. "Why the artillery?"

"These men are members of the Council Guard. They think you're a spy of some sort. They suspect me, too, for forgetting about you during the fighting."

"That's ridiculous!" Jina burst in, her breast pulsing hotly. "They never thought of it until you suggested it!"

"We can't afford to run any risks."

"Who am I spying for?" Andreson demanded. "The beasts? Jina's right--it is ridiculous."

"Yes, the beasts," one of the Guardsmen said flatly. "You're a native of Earth, no matter what your Time, and so are they. You could easily be the vanguard of a raid."

Andreson's temper was already short from the buffeting he had taken. "There's not a shred of evidence for such a theory," he snapped.

"Unfortunately, there is," Atel purred. "We noticed a beast travelling through the foundations of the city, just below the energy barrier, and managed to trap it. We let it get up into a pillar and then energized both ends. We were just about to kill it with hollow slugs when it materialized--the first time the beasts have ever succeeded in doing it, and it's an evil augury."

"Well? I still don't see...."

"_It was an Earthman._"

Andreson's mind nibbled around the edges of the fact. It was startling enough in itself, but he could make little sense of it. How would an Earthman have gotten into the reverse universe? And how at this Time in the dim past?

"Perhaps it's another victim of the gallery," he suggested, frowning. "It never occured to me before, but that infernal place might have been set up deliberately as a time-trap--perhaps by the beasts!"

"Perhaps," the Guardsman said. "But we can see no purpose behind such time-trapping, and Atel's interpretation makes better sense. Come along with us."

Andreson shrugged. "Where to?"

"Starstone Chamber. The Council has been called to vote on what dispensation to make of both of you. Atel--hold his other arm. If the beasts wear down our shield we will all be thrown on our heads again."

The Earthman allowed the Varans to take his elbows without any protest. He had a very vivid picture of himself buttered crimsonly over the inner surface of the rock arching above. _Save the heroics for later_, he thought.

He had imagined a Council meeting as a huge affair, with all the banked chairs filled; but actually there were only about twenty of the Varese present, plus the lone, mysterious Earthman. Andreson scanned the stranger's features eagerly as they approached.

"Well, I'll be damned!" he shouted. "What are you doing here?"

"Hello, Ken," Kimball said calmly. "I hardly know myself. Read my letter yet?"

"No. Say--are _you_ responsible for that Surrealist trickery back in our own time? I should have guessed it. I ought to push your face in."

"I wouldn't blame you," the scientist agreed. "But I never dreamed you'd hit upon it by accident, before you'd read my note explaining what it was. In the letter I made a date to meet you there, and I arrived a little early. I went out to pick up some supplies, and while I was gone--well--"

"I'll have to let you off this time. You already look a bit damaged, Johnny."

* * * * *

Damaged was hardly the word. Kimball looked as if he had been caught in a cement mixer. His clothes were filthy and cut to ribbons; bloody knees showed through holes in his trousers, he had a long, raw cut across his forehead, and his voice was husky with weariness.

The Varans had listened to the conversation with polite impatience, mixed with suspicion. The Councilman who wore the gem on his forehead, a replica of the giant diamond above them, broke in with an authoritative gesture, waving the group to seats.

"Mr. Kimball has offered us certain explanations," he said. "They seem adequate; it appears that he is the agency of Mr. Andreson's misfortune. But we are losing one battle, and can't afford to take on another. Our major question must be--How can we believe you?"

"One problem at a time," Kimball said. "About your present battle. I've watched your whole history, and I know you're doomed to lose it. This city will be deserted in another century. But it will be an orderly retreat, and will result in the complete extermination of the space-beasts."

Atel's mouth drew down at the corners. "Obviously a fabrication. If we wiped out the beasts, why should we leave?"

"Because you'll wipe them out with matter-bombs, set to fall into their universe in their state, and then explode into yours. The process will cause violent earthquakes on Earth's surface--it'll change the whole climate of the planet, wipe out the giant reptiles, start the tiny mammals on their long upward climb toward the species Ken and I represent. Your civilization wouldn't survive such an upheaval. By the time things have quieted down, you'll be more comfortable on Venus."

There was a small stir of surprise among the Varans. "We already have a small colony on Venus," the Council head admitted in a somewhat friendly voice. "But as things stand now, I cannot see how we can hold them off for the rest of a century!"

"I can help you there. You work on sun-power, right?"

"Yes. The mining of atomic fuels on this savage planet would not be fruitful. But that rock dome over our heads has cut us off, and our stored power will give out shortly. We've already had to cut down on the city's lighting, and we're trying to drill the dome."

"You'll never drill that dome in a thousand years. It's maintained by atomics--it might just as well be pure neutronium for all the dent you'll make in it. I can show you how to build a time-coil. We'll just open a window onto Tomorrow Noon and let the sunlight stream in on your main converter. It's really quite simple once you know the principle."

"By the Jewel! Have you repealed the law of the conservation of energy?"

"Not at all. Just doesn't apply. Energy taken from one Time doesn't alter the total available in the continuum. Here, I'll show you." He pulled out a pencil. "Got any paper? No? Ken, do you still have that letter on you?"

"Here you are," said Andreson, handing it over. "I'm glad it's going to be good for _something_, anyhow."

* * * * *

The besieged city was dark, except for a few furtive gleams far below. On the solarium platform they could see little but the dim shapes of the nearby pinnacles, and the tiny rivers of light quivering on the glassy flanks. Above, the stone cap pressed down heavily. Despite Kimball's time-window into Tomorrow Noon, the confined air was hot, motionless, enervating.

"It's a bad age, Jina," Andreson said. "Full of warfare and misery. I don't think you'd like it."

Jina stirred protestingly beside him. "You paint it in very dark colors, Ken. We have our own war here, and the jungle, the storms, the great reptiles...."

She broke off as a dark figure swooped silently from the depths, passed them, and began to rise more slowly toward the dome. A tiny glow at its head made a red trail in the dimness, and it did not seem to have any wings.

"That must be your friend," the girl murmured, pointing. "See--he has one of those things called cigarettes, that he smokes all the time."

"Yes," said Andreson, not much interested. Since Kimball had arrived, he had been the center of interest among most of the Varans, and Andreson had been allowed to shift for himself. It had taken some persuasion on Johnny's part to get Andreson a copy of the anti-gravity "wings" with which they had equipped the Earth physicist. For a while the neglect had nettled Andreson, and at the moment he definitely did not want to talk to Kimball. Jina interested him a good deal more.

But Jina was still dreaming of her picture of Earth, as it would be millions of years hence. Before Andreson could protest, she leapt into the air and soared after the trailing cigarette glow. He watched, grousing, while the little red spark halted in mid-air and did a short minuet. Finally he stood up, picked up the heavy torpedo of his own levitator, clipped the control box to his belt, climbed into the parachute-harness. A touch of his finger sent him skyward.

"Hello, Ken," Kimball said cheerfully.

"Hello."

"I was just on my way to test the apex of the dome. Seems like we might make a break-through there."

"Soon, I hope."