Part 5

"You were willing to have a small bunch of guys tackle this freak in the lounge on board the plane," Weston shouted. "But now when you're face to face with him you run! Don't go yellow, Merman! I said I was taking charge, and I _am_!"

Weston looked at the crowd of castaways and grinned, contemptuously. "This was our 'common goal,' wasn't it? Now I've got it my way! If it was up to you guys, you'd all put on your best ties and sit down to have a conference. Not me! I say--_get_ him!"

Whereupon, he led his men toward the alien, axe in hand.

"No, wait!" cried Dr. Bauml. "Don't harm him or we'll never know!"

When the alien saw Weston and his gang approach, he did nothing. He only stood there and watched them come. He still wore the same pack of apparatus on his back and the controls at his waist. The tendrils around his double wrists flicked nervously. And many there were who wondered what had become of Scarface--the man with the gun.

Weston stopped in front of the alien, about five feet from him, which was approximately just beyond the other's reach.

"Now talk, damn you!" he said. "You got us into this and you're going to get us out of it!"

But the alien gave no answer. Nor did his single, multi-faceted eye move from its fixed focus upon the man who addressed him. It glared in its concentration, indefinably.

Weston turned to his men. "He's dead beat," he said. "Those bullet wounds made him weak. We gotta capture him, but don't mess him up too much. We'll just get him down and tie him up. Somebody get some rope!"

Confidently, Weston dropped his axe temporarily and hitched up his trousers. As he did so, his arms and chest bulged and glistened massively in the eternal light of the sky. Sceranka hulked ponderously behind him, his ham-like paws ready for action. Five more of Weston's best huskies closed the semi-circle before the alien.

* * * * *

Henry could feel the pulse in his arteries, and he saw a pink spider making a web in front of him, in the timeless, geometrical design that all such spiders made. Beside him, he could feel Martia's tenseness. Down by the beach, the waves rolled peacefully across the sands, sighing with the eternal voice of the sea. The jungle smelled of damp rot and sickly sweet flowers. And he sweated.

Weston, grinning somewhat tensely now, slowly lifted up his axe again, with the blunt end toward the alien. He took one swift step forward, but that was all. The alien emitted a blood-curdling, monstrous roar and waded into the gang, just as Weston reversed his axe and struck him a blow in the neck. It was an interrupted blow, because the alien's great arms flew up and sent Weston sailing unconscious through the air. He then grabbed Sceranka, oblivious to three arrows in his side and four men climbing onto him, striking, punching and tearing at him. Sceranka's rib case popped audibly as he was instantly crushed and mangled. Then the alien turned and tore one man's arm off and sent another of his attackers flying after Weston, headless. The others turned and ran.

But they did not get far.

He paralyzed them with some invisible force controlling it from his waist. Others did not need this treatment, because they had fainted.

Then he released them from the paralysis sufficiently for them to walk, but not to run. He motioned to all of them, making it quite plain that they were his prisoners and were to follow him into the jungle.

Without a murmur, they obeyed like somnambulists. The alien leaned over the ones who had fainted and did something else with the controls at his waist. These also revived, in a state of trance, and obeyed his silent commands. In single file they went--Merman, Nelson, the navigator, the commissary steward, Congressman Burley, Dr. Bauml, Dr. Edwards, Dr. Singer, Colonel Rogers, the women, the servicemen--all of them blindly following a trail into the Unknown.

Henry and Martia turned to look at their companions. There were Uncle Andy and Valerie and Peggy. But Pee Bee had gone. His trail of sudden departure was marked cleanly through the otherwise impenetrable underbrush on their right. Sizeable branches looked as though they had been shorn clean.

Silently, these five watched their friends and enemies depart--all of those who had not been killed--and excepting Weston, who seemed also to be dead. He lay face down in the sand, arms pointing toward the jungle, feet awash in the surf. He had been thrown thirty feet.

Henry felt Martia shudder.

* * * * *

It was decided that to trek aimlessly through the jungle unaware of what they were looking for would be futile. Instead, they chose to follow the well delineated trail of the captives in order to determine where the alien was taking them.

Uncle Andy and Henry provided the two women with bows and arrows which had fallen from the hands of some of the alien's attackers.

"Do you know how to use them?" he asked.

"Yes," said Valerie Roagland, "but I hope it will not be necessary." The arrow heads were tipped with sharpened pieces of aluminum rod taken from the plane. In fact, some of the arrows were made entirely of aluminum rod.

"We don't know what may be in that jungle," said Uncle Andy, picking up Weston's axe for himself. He carefully examined the blade of the axe. There were traces of very dark blood on it. "Our Pied Piper was wounded in the neck by Weston's blow. I wonder if he'll survive. After all, bullet wounds, arrow wounds--and a chomp in the neck with an axe!"

"Good Heavens!" exclaimed Peggy Hollenbeck. "That ought to spell curtains even for Superman!"

"But--" Martia started to express herself, then her eyes widened in alarm as the full implication of her thought struck her. "He is the only one who knows what this is all about!" she exclaimed. "He's the conductor, the engineer and the crew! He knows how we got here and how to get us back to where we came from--if that is possible. If he dies now--!"

They all looked at each other in shocked silence, except for Henry. He merely experimented with one of the bows.

"She's right," he said. "Whether friend or enemy, we've got to make sure that creature does not die until we learn what we need to know. But I'll tell you one thing that may be encouraging...."

Peggy Hollenbeck's chin began to tremble and her eyes misted suddenly. "Henry, if you can say _anything_ encouraging about this whole business, for the love of God let's have it before I crack up!" Valerie put her arms around her and the other burst into a fit of crying, which was a delayed reaction from what she had witnessed fifteen minutes before.

Martia might have joined her, but the secret knowledge she shared with Henry helped to sustain her.

"Somewhere in that jungle," said Henry, "is a time machine...."

He calculated that the shock of that statement would bring Peggy out of her semi-hysteria, and it did. She looked at him over Valerie's shoulder, her tearful eyes suddenly wide with surprise and wonderment. Valerie and Uncle Andy both turned slowly to stare incredulously at the two adolescents, both of whom appeared to share the same conviction.

And Uncle Andy thought: _What incredible thing is it these two children share in common?_

But he asked, "What makes you think so?"

* * * * *

It was then that both Henry and Martia launched themselves into a detailed and vivid account of that strange interlude in time which they, alone, remembered. The other three listened, with both mixed emotions and mixed opinions relative to the youngsters' sanity.

"The reason we're giving you such a wealth of details," Henry concluded, "is because therein lies the proof that there is a time machine in the jungle."

Uncle Andy shook his head, bewildered. "I'm afraid I'm hopelessly lost," he said. "I can't see where it fits in. And if it happened, why wouldn't the rest of us remember it? You say we were there, too."

Henry cast a covert glance at Martia, and only she could understand what that look meant. Impulsively, she grasped his hand and held on to it.

"Let's skip your lack of memory for a minute," Henry answered. "Instead, try to remember the fact that certain people were missing in this camp before the meeting took place."

"That's right!" said Valerie. "The English people--" She looked at Martia. "Your mother, Lady Dewitt! She went away and got lost!"

"And Sir Rollins!" put in Peggy.

"Now it comes back," said Uncle Andy. "They had gone out to look for springwater and had not returned."

"To make a long story short," said Henry, "there were two separate groups. First, the English group, consisting of Lady Dewitt, Cyril Rollins, the Crispin sisters, the two mothers who lost their babies, and Mr. Langham. The second group consisted of Mania's governess, Emily, three WAACs, and the three Texas GIs.

"Now as I see it, here's what happened. The first group found the time machine and entered it, possibly without knowing what they were doing. They were transported back in time perhaps several thousands of years. Stranded there and with no other recourse but to survive, they set up their own type of colony, and their descendants established the Empire of New Bretania."

Peggy looked at Valerie, and both found a common conviction in their eyes. They were sadly understanding and patient as they looked back at Henry and Martia. Uncle Andy only refilled his pipe with the last of his tobacco and watched Henry intently.

"Now wait a minute!" put in Martia. "Henry's not as crazy as you think! Let him continue!"

"We're listening," replied Uncle Andy.

"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.