Part 8

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_CHAPTER 15_

OVER THE ICE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_CHAPTER 16_

BEFORE THE COUNCIL OF KOM

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

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

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

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