Part 3

He found himself in a great high-domed room filled with ordered ranks of mighty but absolutely incomprehensible machinery, all humming enigmatic paens of power. Far down the serried ranks of gargantuan equipment he saw a light glinting on mighty crystal tubes.

With hypnotic fascination, Jackson advanced slowly through the maze of humming mechanisms. The closer he came to those enigmatic tubes, the wider his pale eyes opened, until, as he stood at the base of the rod-high crystal cylinders, he looked like a puppet registering amazement and consternation.

* * * * *

Doctor Gerard held neither Jerome Jackson's cowardly fear of danger, nor Randall's contempt for it. While there were important scientific facts to be learned, danger didn't count. It just didn't exist insofar as he was concerned.

Consequently it wasn't at all surprising that Gerard stepped right into a regular hornet's nest of trouble.

The little Doctor had been counting doors on his way down the corridor, more from scientific habit than anything else, and on the seventh door to his right, he noticed a very strange insignia. It was a weird diagrammatic inscription which immediately caught his interest.

Emblazoned in the central panel in glowing outline was a triangle enclosing a huge multi-faceted eye. As Gerard stared at the weird orb in its geometrical figure he suddenly recalled that a similar figure had been used by ancient necromancers and later by hypnotists, as a symbol of their questionable accomplishments.

Puzzledly he wondered whether its use here in this fantastic world of the past held any esoteric connection with its meaning in the far-distant future. Without stopping to consider potential consequences, he pushed the stud which opened the panel, and stepped inside.

When his eyes finally became accustomed to the even deeper gloom, he saw that the room was filled with a number of coffin-like glass cabinets and an equal number of switchboards crowded with dials and levers. Slowly he edged toward one of the crystal cabinets and peered down into its dimly illumined interior.

He saw a number of oval white objects resting on tiered trays, for all the world like eggs in an incubator. Then Gerard realized that was exactly what these instruments were. Incubators! But they were Kralon eggs, not chicken eggs. Furthermore, it was obvious that the elaborate instruments which adjoined the incubators had a far more involved function than merely maintaining the eggs at incubation temperature.

Doctor Gerard's grizzled eyebrows lifted in interest as he turned back to examine the dials. Both the design of the controls and the hieroglyphics engraved upon them were entirely incomprehensible to him.

He shrugged his shoulders, then began to turn every triangular control on the panel to its extreme limit.

Nothing untoward happened during the alteration of the first two settings, but when Gerard threw over the third, all hell broke loose in that dim crypt!

Violet light danced between the poles of circuit breakers and ate away the metal like butter. Great gongs dinned a cacophony of sound through the lurking dusk of the room, then were suddenly silent as brilliant lights flashed on.

* * * * *

Meanwhile, Gordon Malherne had also engineered something for which his text books had provided no solution.

After leaving his four companions, he had started down the corridor furthest to the right.

"Always go right," he told himself whimsically as he crept noiselessly down the dim hallway. "And you'll never go wrong."

However, this must have been the exception which proved the rule, for Malherne hadn't gone a dozen yards when things started to happen.

A double panel just ahead and to his left slid open and a column of small worker Kralons, two abreast, started marching into the corridor.

The two leaders saw the engineer almost simultaneously, and both started for him with mandibles clacking furiously.

Malherne started on a dead run for the "Hive" entrance. Behind him he heard the harsh rustle of chitin-clad limbs.

It seemed for a moment as though he were gaining, then the foremost insect lunged and caught his jacket. It threw Malherne off stride, and he caromed against the wall of the corridor. He regained his balance almost instantly, but he had lost ground, and he felt another limb clutch his right arm.

He jerked to a stop, pivoted suddenly in an attempt to dislodge the hold. His motion threw the foremost Kralon into the one immediately behind, and the human and the two huge insects went down in a heap.

When Malherne hit the floor under a tangle of limbs, he reached in his pocket and pulled out a knife, snapping the spring blade open in the same motion.

He slashed viciously at everything which touched him, and was rewarded with a raucous clatter of mandibles and the sticky feel of a warm liquid which spattered his hands and face and rendered his knife almost too slippery to hold.

He pulled free from the two mangled Kralons, slashed at a third which had hooked through the fabric of his sleeve. Then he went down as a heavy blow caught him in the temple.

When consciousness pushed through the haze, Malherne found himself back in the stockade. He was lying on a crude bed in the main hut. Zor Ala was bending over him.

"How do you feel?" the man from the 43rd century asked solicitously. "It appears that you encountered a little trouble."

Malherne gingerly felt the lump on his temple. "So I did," he grimaced. "But how did I get here? Did those entomological nightmares really let me live, even after I carved them up?"

Zor Ala nodded somberly. "For awhile, at least," he said. "They intend to drain all knowledge possible from any of the 'fish' they catch from the future before the--" He shrugged, left his sentence unfinished.

"But your companions," he continued. "Where are they?"

Malherne winced. "Still somewhere in the Hive, I guess. I got caught before I got started. Let's hope the others have better luck. I'm still alive, though," he added thoughtfully. He stretched painfully, then sat up, grimacing as the wrenched muscles responded.

"Zor Ala," he said, "how does it happen that these insects are so much further advanced way back here in time, while in my day insects apparently have nothing but complex instincts? Seems as though they should have progressed up the evolutionary scale the same as everything else."

The future-man shook his head, sat down on the crude bench. "No one knows what happened to the Kralons after the Carboniferous Period," he said. "Nor does anyone understand why later insects retrogressed from the logical thinking of the Kralons' level of intellect, back to a mere set of complex instincts.

"We do know that the Kralons made a mighty stride ahead of the rest of Earth life many millions of years ago. They've admitted to me that they have not progressed at all for untold ages now, and they're very worried. They don't know why they do not progress in an evolutionary sense as the rest of the life forms seem to be doing.

"And they are exceedingly worried about the future, for we have let them know that apparently the Kralon race vanished around the end of the Carboniferous Period, leaving only diminutive descendants with instinct rather than intelligence to show that their race might ever have existed.

"Of course, we of the future know that there is another similar parallel in the disappearance of the dinosaurs. As you probably have read in paleontological treatises, those huge reptiles seemed to have had everything their own way through the late Triassic, the Jurassic and the Cretaceous Periods."

The engineer nodded. "I remember a paragraph from Gamow's 'Biography of the Earth' which I learned by heart," he said. "It went like this: 'The kingdom of giant reptiles, with its innumerable representatives on the land, in the sea, and in the air, was certainly the most powerful and most extensive animal kingdom during the entire existence of life on the Earth, but it also had a most tragic and unexpected end. During a comparatively short period toward the end of the Mesozoic era the tyrannosaurus, stegosaurus, ichthyosaurus, plesiosaurus, and all the other 'sauri' disappeared from the surface of the Earth as if wiped away by some giant storm, leaving the ground free for miniature mammals that had awaited this opportunity for more than 100 million years.'"

* * * * *

Malherne paused, reached in his jacket pocket and pulled out the half packet of cigarettes he had been hoarding. He offered them to Zor Ala, and when the other refused, he lit one and inhaled gratefully.

"Then, in conclusion," Malherne continued, "Gamow says that the causes leading to the elimination of all the dinosaurs in a very short period of time are obscure. There are many hypotheses which have been advanced by various scientists to account for it. One theory was that the rising of general ground levels destroyed the inland seas and marshes. But that wouldn't have had any effect on the dinosaurs who had already fully adapted to dry land. Neither would it affect those reptiles who inhabited the oceans. So the whole episode has remained one vast mystery, without much chance of solution."

Zor Ala nodded. "Even in my time we still didn't know," he said. "We had theories that perhaps the tiny mammals of the later Mesozoic were eating the eggs of the dinosaurs to an extent which brought about their eventual extinction. There was also the theory of 'dilution of genetic stock' in a very old race of any life form. That is, through millions of years of reproduction, the hereditary stock of any race eventually becomes so diluted that the cells become 'tired' of dividing. As a result, reproduction dwindles away, and the race dies out. But even that doesn't satisfactorily explain the geologically sudden death of the dinosaurs."

"Apparently quite a parallel to what must have happened to the Kralons," Malherne observed. "How is it that we don't find clear paleontological evidence of the existence of the Kralons?"

"No calcareous skeletal structure," returned Zor Ala. "They have only a chitinous exoskeleton. Also, you must remember that the dinosaurs held sway for almost 100 million years, and invaded almost every part of the world. In all that time, with the animals existing by the billions in almost every clime, there were naturally a few 'saurs' who fell into asphalt pits or other unusual environments where their bones were preserved for us.

"That is not true of the Kralons, for they seem to have suddenly appeared as the first insect type, sometime during the latter half of the Carboniferous Period, and existed as a race for only a few million years.

"Furthermore, their distribution is apparently very limited. From what they have told me, there are only a few dozen community hives or nations like this one. Thus it is not at all surprising that such an extremely restricted species, possessing no calceous skeletal structure, left no paleontological evidence."

Malherne considered this thoughtfully. "Then you believe that the insect types of the future are degenerated descendants of the Kralons?" he asked.

"Undoubtedly," returned Zor Ala. "But without the size or the logical reasoning ability of the Kralons. You see, insects apparently arose suddenly during the Carboniferous Period, without any prior evidence of existence in the ages preceding. They seem to be an offshoot from the main line of evolutionary development, and their sudden appearance in geologic history is without precedence in the development of life forms."

Malherne was nodding eagerly. "In connection with that, why is it that an insect goes along in its development, just like a common worm, until it reaches a certain size and age. Then it builds itself a cocoon or chrysalis, becomes a pupa, and starts a sort of 'prenatal' development all over again, but this time emerging as a full-fledged insect? Seems like they've been given a second crack at development which the other forms of life didn't get."

"That is substantially correct," agreed Zor Ala. "And we of the future have suspected that a higher type of life from somewhere has intervened in the development of life on Earth, and has experimentally given a boost to one branch of Earth-life by showing it how to re-encyst in a secondary 'egg' as a pupa, and thus continue its progress toward a higher evolutionary form before it finally emerges as an adult type."

"Whew!" Malherne ejaculated. "Whoever or whatever did that must really have been supermen!"

Zor Ala smiled. "At least," he agreed.

Malherne was struck with a sudden inspiration. "Look, would it be possible that the Kralons had something to do with the disappearance of the Dinosaurs during the latter part of the Mesozoic?--I understand, of course," he added hastily, "that this period where we find ourselves is around 100 million years before the time when the dinosaurs met their Waterloo. However, isn't it possible that descendants of the Kralons could have retained sufficient intellectual development to have been a serious threat to the existence of the 'saurs'?"

Zor Ala shook his head. "I'm afraid your theory won't stand up," he said. "For the Kralon race apparently only existed for a few million years, disappearing from the surface of the Earth around the end of the Carboniferous period.

"Thus the Kralons must have died out very nearly 100 million years before the dinosaurs' catastrophe, and the giant insects were apparently supplanted by only small, unintelligent prototypes without their size or intellectual vigor. No, there is almost certainly some other reason for the disappearance of the huge reptiles."

Malherne came to his feet suddenly. "Here I am discussing fantastic and fanciful theories, when four of my companions are somewhere in that hive of monsters! I've got to help them!"

"Calm down," Zor Ala soothed. "You would do them far more harm than good, now that the Kralons are watching for you. The best thing to do is to stay here and let them work out their own salvation as best they can. I know it sounds rather calloused, but any interference on your part now will certainly not be helpful."

"But I can't just sit here!" objected Malherne.

Zor Ala nodded. "I know how you feel," he said. "But you can do your friends far more good alive than--"

He left the sentence unfinished. Then, as if he had been considering something, he continued: "You're an engineer, Malherne, and I think it's time for you to have a talk with Gordo Lanson concerning an idea we have in mind. How do you feel by now?"

"A little creaky," said Malherne, rising and stretching painfully. "But let's get started."

V

He followed Zor Ala out of the central hut and across to a smaller one. At Zor Ala's knock, a voice called, "Come in."

As they entered, Gordo Lanson looked searchingly at the two men, then through the open door beyond them. His expression became concerned.

"What happened to your companions?" he asked. "You ran into trouble?"

Malherne laughed rather embarrassedly. "I don't know about the others," he said. "But I stupidly picked a fight with a whole army of Kralons, and ended up back here, right where I started."

The stocky physicist grimaced. "Well, I'm afraid your companions will have to look out for themselves," he said. "You certainly can't help them by doing something noble and frantic."

"That's what I've told him," said Zor Ala, "and I think he is reluctantly in agreement."

Then he continued, "Malherne is an engineer, Gordo, and I thought perhaps it might be wise to acquaint him with the rudiments of your theory on Time Flux, and to give him an idea of what we have in mind."

Lanson nodded, shuffling the heap of crude parchmentlike sheets in front of him into a stack on the edge of the desk. He motioned toward one of the rough benches. Zor Ala and Malherne seated themselves, then waited for Lanson to speak.

"As an introduction," the psysicist began, "are you familiar with the theory of Teleology?"

"Only that it has something to do with the future affecting the past," said Malherne.

"That is a broad statement of its general implication," Lanson agreed. "And this predicament in which we find ourselves makes it necessary for us to attempt a use of ramifications of that theory. Put it this way," he continued. "If you were positive through an esoteric source of knowledge that a certain event definitely was to happen in the future, would it not affect your reactions to existing environment? Would it not influence your actions in working toward a goal? Would it not thus aid in the fulfillment of that occurrence?"

"You mean that the knowledge would give me courage and confidence to accomplish what I knew would eventually come to pass?" asked Malherne.

"That is one way of putting it," said Lanson. "But it can be stated a trifle more scientifically. Let us say rather that the Teleomagnetic effect of such an occurrence induces a tendency in the past to evolve toward such an event."

"I think I have it so far," said Malherne, "but it's getting shaky!"

Lanson laughed. "I'll admit it's a little like the perplexity of the 'Flatlander,'" he said, "who was trying to find a way out of a circle which had been drawn around him. He proceeded to investigate his barrier through every dimensional direction known to Flatlanders, which of course were limited to two. He utilized movement through both of those as he followed around the interior of his barrier to the point where he had started.

"Being a very observant and discerning Flatlander, he finally realized he was getting exactly nowhere in his two-dimensional attempts to escape a three-dimensional barrier." Lanson paused, grinned.

"We humans are faced with a somewhat similar difficulty in trying to solve a multi-dimensional problem with three-dimensional thinking. However, there is some precedence for hoping that we can surmount the obstacle. Remember that mankind, without ever being able to see the interior of an atom, was able to divine the number and function of its component parts, and was finally successful in inducing both fission and fusion of unstable atoms."

Malherne nodded agreement. "But where does this lead us?" he asked rather impatiently. "How is this discussion of obscure theory going to help us escape from the world of the past, back into our own ages?"

Gordo Lanson nodded toward the stack of parchment sheets on the desk, covered with his meticulous figures. "That is an attempt," he said, "to formulate a method for determining the amount of Teleomagnetic energy or influence required to bring about a given distortion in the Time-flux."

Malherne considered this for a moment. "Oh. I think I'm beginning to see," he said. "You are attempting to compute the amount of energy required to return us to the various ages from which we were pulled by the Kralon's Time Trap."

"Something of that sort," nodded Gordo Lanson.

"To answer a question you are undoubtedly thinking," interjected Zor Ala. "We have found, by laboriously gleaning bits of knowledge from the Kralons, the location of the equipment which induces the Teleomagnetic or gravitic energy which powers the Time Trap."

"Where is it?" Malherne asked.

"In one of the laboratory rooms off the main corridor in the Hive," returned Zor Ala. "The Time Net itself is supported on pylons situated outside the Hive building immediately adjoining the Time-Trap generator room."

"What plan do you have in mind?" asked Malherne eagerly.

"Not a fully-formulated one at all," returned Zor Ala. "But each of us is doing whatever he can to further his knowledge of the Kralon's equipment, and all of us are trying to prepare to take advantage of any opportunity which may arise in the future."

"But," objected Malherne, "even the Kralons apparently can't control the Time sector from which they get their victims. By their own admission, they are trying to gain knowledge by picking humans from as far in the future as possible. But apparently they have been only partially successful, for some of the people they have obtained are from a Time preceding mine. It seems that Gordo Lanson and Dar Mikol and you are three of the few from a period further in the future than my time."

Gordo Lanson nodded. "That is the reason for all this," he said, gesturing toward the stack of sheets on the desk. "I am attempting to formulate a method of controlling the point from which or to which the Time Trap gleans or delivers its victims. Apparently the Kralons have never accomplished that, but I think we can succeed in doing what they could not."

"May the Lord grant that to be true!" said Malherne fervently.

"I regret," said Zor Ala, "that Randall felt it necessary to make his foolhardy attempt to invade the Hive, but of course I understand and sympathize with his reasons.

"He feels entirely responsible for the passengers of the Diamvator, and considers himself obliged to attempt their rescue. However, I am very much afraid that his attempt will be ill-fated."

Lanson nodded. "The Kralons are very intelligent," he said. "And they will have no scruples whatsoever in dealing with troublesome humans. They resent the fact that their own race is to vanish from the surface of the globe in one phase of the future, and that man has supplanted them as the intelligent, governing form of life. And they intend to do something about it!"

Malherne nodded impatiently. "Yes," he said, "but what can we do now? What can we do to help Randall and the rest of my companions? And how can we prepare to use Lanson's theories concerning the Time Trap?"

Both Zor Ala and Gordo Lanson regarded the engineer understandingly. They realized his fear concerning his companions, and sympathized with his frustration in being unable to help them.

The physicist nodded toward the pile of sheets on the desk. "If you remember your calculus," he said, "you could be of great help to us by checking my figures."

Malherne looked uncertainly toward the desk. "I'll do what I can," he said.

* * * * *

When Randall and McClellan threw their combined weights against the panel in the Hive corridor, they had no idea what lay beyond.

The metal sheet bulged, then popped from its guides, and Randall sprawled through the opening, with McClellan atop him.

They found themselves in a room which was shining white from ceiling to floor. In the middle of the room was a flat white table over which several Kralons were absorbed.

Gathered around the central figures were a dozen or more Kralons, apparently spectators. And on the table lay something which Randall knew, from its outlines, had once been human.

Randall looked around for a weapon. A neat stack in one corner of the room caught his eye. There were a dozen or more foot-long metal bus-bars or ingots, apparently spares for fusing electrical circuits.

McClellan followed his glance. Simultaneously both men dove for the bars, each arming himself with one of the twenty-pound metal ingots.

Meanwhile, the room was in a furor. The metallic clack of Kralon conversation sounded furiously, and huge insect figures were converging from all sides.

"Back to back," said Randall tersely, "and let 'em have it!"

The first Kralon who approached the Australian put up a protective foreleg, but the heavy ingot brushed it aside like a matchstick, and crushed the Kralon's head to a pulp. It went down twitching, and the next insect had to scramble over the body to reach McClellan.

Meanwhile, Randall was flailing at two Kralons which were trying to reach him with their vicious claws. Whenever one got in the way, the heavy bar cracked the chitinous shell like that of a crab, and both Kralons drew back, nursing their injuries.

Randall spoke tersely over his shoulder. "Edge over toward the stack of bus-bars," he told McClellan.