Chapter II

First all was blackness, then in that blackness was a spot of light that grew larger and larger and ever larger until the world was filled with roaring light. And now the dim, fluttering sounds began to make sense, and a voice was saying, "I see the young man is awakening. Good. Now we will take a little trip through my laboratories."

This was Larry Wilson's welcome to the incredible surroundings in which he found himself.

He was lying on a small pallet. Or, rather, two small pallets which had been placed end to end to accommodate his six-foot frame. Above him was a silken coverlet, beneath his head a soft pillow cased in the same material. He moved an arm experimentally and discovered that his rough, English tweed business suit was missing, as were his heavy leather brogues. While he had been unconscious, someone had replaced his Twentieth Century garments with those of Harg's era.

A soft and pliable leather harness fitted snugly about his waist--but as he stretched himself up from his cot he saw that his gear lacked the multitude of cryptic studs and instruments with which the scientist's had been decked.

Then, "Larry--you're all right?"

Sandra Day, who had leaped to her feet as Larry stirred, flew across the room. Her clothing, too, had been supplanted by that of the later era. Her harness differed from Larry's only in the addition of a cupped breast-girdle similar to that once worn by Egyptian women. Leather, soft and white and pliant, clung closely to her slim, lithe body. As Larry looked at her, she faltered. A slow flush mantled her cheeks. Harg moved forward, a delighted gleam in his protruding eyes.

"Modesty!" he said in a tone of enchantment. "Sex shame! Imagine! And we had believed that it died out long before the Machine Era. It would be interesting to mate you two young people and--" He stroked his temple thoughtfully. "But we will think of that later. Come, my dear young savages. Let me show you my _other_ experiments."

Larry's eyes, smoldering rebellion, sought those of Sandra. The girl's cheeks still flamed with a high pride, but she nodded almost imperceptibly, cautioning him to cause no immediate trouble. He grunted, "Okay, let's go. What is there to see?"

The chamber in which he had awakened was a square box of metal, lighted from above by concealed globes of cold light. No windows or doors marred the smooth luster of the walls. But as Harg stepped forward and touched his fingers to a spot on the wall briefly, a section slid back, exposing a brilliantly lighted corridor beyond.

Silently the three moved into the passage, Larry bringing up the rear. As he passed through the portal, he studied it cautiously. If he could only learn the secret of the operation of that door....

"It would do you," Harg interrupted his scrutiny, "no good, of course. This is but one of many inner chambers. There are many other doors and many guards to pass. Moreover, you cannot return to your Time ever--without my help."

Larry started guiltily. The man was uncanny! He seemed to be able to read thoughts!

"Now, here--" said Harg, "are the results of some of my earlier attempts to bring life-samples through the Time warp."

They had turned a corner and entered into a long chamber walled into sections. In each section there was an animal of some sort. So lifelike were the postures of these beasts that Larry half expected a cacaphony of protest to greet their entrance. But the creatures were stiff, silent. Harg smiled his white-gummed, toothless smile.

"Dead," he said regretfully. "All of them. Their bodies survived the passage through the Time warp. But when they arrived, the spark had gone. We have identified most of them. But some still puzzle us."

* * * * *

He pointed to the motionless figures in the cages as, one by one, they passed them. "A cow," he said, "which I brought through from the Fiftieth Century. Notice the exaggerated udders. The result of centuries of cross-breeding for milk. Somewhat different from the same beast of your day, I presume.

"This next is a pterodactyl from the Jurassic Age. I am glad to say it lived two whole weeks after coming down through the warp. The hardier animals were the only ones to survive at all--until I perfected my process. You have already seen my brontosaurus. A harmless thing. We allow it to roam freely, but we had to destroy the dinosaur that came after it....

"You recognize this sabre-toothed tiger? And the kangaroo? An interesting subject, by the way. I brought it through from the year 12,000. It had reached a high stage of development and could converse in simple phrases. A far cry from man's estate, however."

"You mean," said Sandra, "it could talk?"

"Oh, yes. But then many of the lower animals _do_ speak, you know. Of course I use the ancient meaning of the word. I mean they employ the vocal organs. They have not _this_!" He tapped the skull covering which both Larry and the girl had noticed before.

"That?" said Larry wonderingly. "What is it?"

But the little man was wringing his hands in exasperation. "Now, I declare!" he cried. "All this time, you have been opening and closing your mouths while we were communicating, and I thought it was caused by some physical disturbance! _You_ use vocal converse, too!"

"But of course," said the girl.

"It is quite unnecessary!" snapped the scientist. "With the _menaudo_, I can understand your thoughts clearly--and communicate my own to you, as well. In the future, both of you will be kind enough to think without speaking!"

"Why?" asked Larry bluntly. "Miss Day and I aren't mind-reading big-brains like you. If we wish to speak to each other--"

For the first time since they had met him, Harg's ever-present smile faded. A trace of his annoying superiority, self-confidence, seeped away. In his eyes there was a groping expression oddly akin to fear.

"There is nothing you need tell her!" he ordered. "I do not care to risk my--" He stopped suddenly, cannily. When he spoke again, it was in a milder tone. "You may, if you wish, converse with your mouths when I am not present. But in my presence I require you to think your conversation."

A sudden suspicion began to form in Larry's mind. He stifled it instantly; thrust it from him lest Harg grasp that faint, half-formed thought. Hastily he changed the subject.

"This other beast--" he began aloud. Then, remembering Harg's warning, he stopped and rephrased the query in his mind. "This other strange beast," he thought. "What is it?"

He knew, then, why Harg had taunted him for his interest in the mechanism of the door. For swift as an arrow the answer formed itself in his brain.

"A phoenix," replied Harg, "of the late Stone Age. A most curious creature; half animal, half bird. Originally it was a native of the planet Mars. It adapted itself to utter cold and airlessness when that planet's atmosphere waned. A few phoenix migrated to Earth, but failed to survive in our heavy atmosphere."

"That explains," cried Sandra, "the legend of the phoenix prevalent in our day. It was believed that the bird destroyed itself in fire to rise again, reborn."

"An amusing misapprehension," nodded Harg. "No doubt it was founded on someone's having seen a phoenix pass unscathed through flame. The creature was quite immune to temperature changes. But not to disease. It was this that, finally, caused its extinction.

"Now, in this next chamber--" He paused, obviously piqued. "I must confess, we have been unable to classify this beast. It is utterly unknown to our science. Apparently it does not breed true, nor can we determine its age--"

Larry and Sandra stared once at the quadruped in the booth, then broke into a duet of long and hearty laughter. Harg stared at them annoyedly. "Well?" he snapped. "Well?"

Larry said solemnly, "Harg, you've caught a rare beast there. There are none left in your day and age except the two-legged variety."

Harg said, "You know it, then? Its name, quickly!"

"We call it," Larry told him, grinning, "the jackass!"

* * * * *

The tour of inspection completed, Harg returned his two captives to the cell they shared. When the door closed behind him, Larry turned swiftly to Sandra.

"Now what? I'm not sure I understand just what's going on around here, but whatever it is, it means trouble. Spelled with a capital 'Harg.' That little monkey didn't knock me cold with his yellow fuzz just for the hell of it. He means business."

"I'm afraid," said Sandra seriously, "he intends to do just what he said--and in just as offhand a manner as that in which he mentioned it. To probe our brains for race memories, then dissect us for biological knowledge."

"But why?" demanded Larry. "For Lord's sake, why? We're human beings, the same as he. He couldn't kill us in cold blood, just to--"

"To him," said Sandra, "we are nothing but a pair of savages. He is not being deliberately cruel, no more so than a Twentieth Century scientist who practices vivisection to add to his knowledge. He is proud of us as an acquisition. May even like us in some cold, inhuman fashion, as we like cats and dogs. But we represent a scientific problem to be solved--and there is no thought in his mind of mercy."

"Then," said Larry forcefully, "we've got to pull our freight. Get out of here. But how? That's the rub."

"We're helpless against him," mused the girl, "on all save one point. That is the subject he wanted to avoid. Hearing. Larry--Harg can't hear! Not as we understand the word. His ears have atrophied. Or, perhaps--" A sudden light shone in her eyes. "I have it! His ears are--"

"Wait a minute!" broke in Larry excitedly. "For once I beat you to the draw. I guessed it in the museum. These jaspers of the 260th Century are not only _unable_ to hear, they're _afraid_ to hear! They wear those leather headgears because they have to. Because something had made them extremely sensitive to percussion."

"And I know," chimed in the girl positively, "what caused it. It was the change!"

"Change?"

"Yes. You've noticed the sky, haven't you? Didn't you see something strange about it?"

Larry thought for a moment. Then, "The sun! There isn't any sun."

"There is a sun," cried the girl, "but you can't see it. It's concealed behind a huge dome of _impervite_--a sort of leaded, polarized glass. Harg told me all about it while you were unconscious.

"In the year 17,000 A.D., or thereabouts, there was a terrible catastrophe on Earth. Man's constant drainage of electrical energy created a rupture in the Heaviside layer, and the layer collapsed. As you know, the Heaviside layer is Earth's only protection against potentials from space, from the undiluted strength of the Milliken rays.

* * * * *

"Without that protection, life on Earth was doomed. So large areas were domed over with this sixty-foot-thick layer of _impervite_. And--"

"And in the meantime," interrupted Larry, "intense subjection to cosmic radiation, along with the increasing use of telepathy, turned the human race's hearing apparatus from a useful organ into a vestigial one."

"And one," agreed the girl, "sensitive as the nerve of a tooth. It must be that. It couldn't be anything else. So there is Harg's weakness. Now, if we can only find some way to play upon it--"

Larry said gloomily, "But he still is the only one who can return us to our own time."

Sandra's hand touched his swiftly, confidently.

"We'll find some way to make him," she whispered. "We'll do it, you and I--"

Even under these circumstances Larry Wilson found the touch of that hand thrilling, the confidence of Sandra's voice, with its "you and I," endearing. It was a jest of the gods that this new glory should have come to him at last in such a situation. But the year mattered little. Time or no Time, he knew, and he thought she knew--

"Sandra," he said, "there is one thing--"

"Shhh!" she cautioned suddenly. "Footsteps!"

The metallic doorpane slid back, and once again Harg entered the room, this time accompanied by a pair of diminutive companions garbed in plainer, cruder harness than that of the scientist. Larry made an effort to expunge all thought from his mind, fearful that the man of the future might read his new determination. But Harg smiled easily.

"You will come with me now, Miss Day."

Instantly Larry was on the alert. "Where are you taking her?"

"It is not yours to ask, savage," said Harg curtly. "But reassure yourself. She will come to no harm."

Sandra's eyes pleaded with Larry; silently she let the attendants lead her away. After the door had closed behind them, Larry began to pace the floor angrily. His mind was tumultuous with conflicting thoughts and emotions. Damn them! he thought. If this was the world of the future, it would be better that the future never come! Anyway, he knew he wanted none of it! He wanted to be back in the good old Twentieth Century where men were men, not callous, grinning little sawed-off runts.

But--how to get there?

* * * * *

A scraping sound from the farther wall of his cell interrupted his angry reverie. Instantly Larry was again a man of action. On silent feet he tiptoed toward the mysterious sound. The scratching persisted. Larry drew a deep breath, then pounded on the metal with his bare fist.

"Who's there?"

Immediately the noise ended. Larry waited breathlessly. Was this a trap of some kind? Or was it just some experiment of Harg's, designed to test him as laboratory students test the reaction of rats in a maze?

His footsteps deliberately loud, he stomped away from the wall. Then he stole back quietly. After a brief moment of waiting, the gentle, fumbling sound resumed. Larry pressed his ear to the metal wall. He could hear a faint noise as of someone breathing deeply. He leaned closer....

Then, suddenly, the wall before him slid away, and he was catapulted forward against a flesh-and-blood body that grunted under the impact of his weight!

Larry regained his balance; came up with doubled fists. But his fists, like his mouth, dropped open abruptly as he stared in astonishment at his antagonist. This was no puny dwarfling such as he had expected. This was a _man_--a man whose stature was greater even than his own! A mighty, bronzed, strong-thewed giant with a shock of silvery-white hair capped by the _menaudo_ of the future folk!

The great one's face was etched with bitter lines of disappointment. But the look faded as his eyes swept up Larry's six foot frame, noted the breadth of shoulder and the lean, hard muscles of arm and thigh. The stranger rose, and his full lips parted in a smile of greeting.

And, "Peace, friend!" he said in a deep, resonant voice, "I, too, am a captive!"