Chapter III

Sandra Day, seated in an inner chamber of Harg's laboratories, watched curiously as the little scientist busied himself with cryptic recording devices. Two assistants silently performed the tasks allotted them. Save for these three, the room was innocent of humans. Harg turned to one of the assistants.

"Where is the _menaudo_ for our subject?" he snapped.

The man stared stupidly. "In the vaults, Master. I did not know you would want one."

"Fool! You should have known. Let me have yours."

The assistant paled. "No, no, Master! I will get another one quickly. See, I run--"

"You will not be harmed, dolt!" said Harg coldly. "You may get another for yourself immediately--but now I need one for Miss Day. Come, the _menaudo_!"

Reluctantly, fearfully, the assistant stripped the telepathic device from his hairless pate, passed it to Harg. Harg handed it to Sandra. "You will put this on. While my _menaudo_ allows us to converse normally, the experiment we are about to try requires complete flux between both minds. This is only possible when each person wears the _menaudo_."

Sandra understood, now, why her innermost thoughts, her conversations with Larry, had not been intercepted. Telepathy was a matter of willed direction. Thought beams, being electrical, radiated only toward a focused object. Harg could only receive the messages she allowed him to get.

Her eyes flickered lightly over the assistant who had already started for the door. Now was the time to test her theory. She scraped one sandalled foot raspingly across the rung of her chair. The noise was a tiny, grating squeak, barely audible--but the assistant's face contorted in swift agony. His eyes bulged with alarm; he clapped his hands to his ears and raced from the chamber.

"Hurry, woman!" Harg was growing impatient. Subduing her smile of triumph with an effort, Sandra buckled on the _menaudo_. As she did so, a wild giddiness assailed her; she grasped the arms of the chair for support. A powerful wave length of forces unsuspected burst through her brain. She caught the faint, amused hauteur of the assistant across the room; felt Harg's keen, scalpel-like mentality probing the depths of her mind. The giddiness passed as she became accustomed to the strange sensation. The turmoil in her brain settled, from its chaos came clear-cut order.

"You must relax now. Clear your mind of all extraneous thought. I wish to learn something of your former existences...."

Strange that Harg's eyes should be so large. They were like a large light glowing deep into the dark recesses of her brain. A light that kept her awake when she was so tired ... so tired....

If she could but rest, now. Sleep for a while and let the dizzy years slip by ... and the strange sounds ... and the strange scenes ... for surely this could not be she? But it was she ... and she was standing by the open fireplace in a medieval castle, facing a knight in full battle-armor.... Her heart was filled with nameless anguish....

* * * * *

"Prithee, lass," he was saying, "take this parting not to heart. Ere the moon wanes our work shall be at an end, the king avenged and the foul despoiler wrenched from the arms of his scuttish lady. Mordred hath said--"

"Mordred! Mordred!" she cried bitterly. "Even now it is Mordred you speak of. Yet aforetime didst thou call him a prince's brat and a lickspittle. Pray, Gawaine, my love, forswear this mad fancy and flee now to the defense of our lady Guenevere ere it be too late!"

"Nay, sweet," was his answer. "If Arthur be not shamed of his own cuckolddry, then must the Table Round avenge the pride of Britain for him. But, hark! Gareth calls. I must leave thee, love. Farewell. I return soon."

He strode from the hall, proud and straight in his armor. She wept and could not tell why. "Gawaine, my lord!" she sobbed. "There bodes in me a sense that nevermore shall we twain meet...."

"_Go back!" a voice was whispering in Sandra's mind. "Back farther
still. To the days of the past...._"

The _daryeb_ glided, soft as the wing of a moth, upon the smooth blue waters of the Nile. The golden cascade of the sun baked the _sudd_ that floated on the water's surface. She raised her finger imperiously and the boatsman obediently turned the light craft to the shore.

As the Nubian reefed the sail, a young man ran down from the portal of the observatory to the edge of the beach. He grasped her hands eagerly. "Belia!" He bent and smothered a kiss in her perfumed hair. She drew away, pouting.

"Now, by Set," she swore prettily, "thou are more ardent than the bulls of Anubis--when the sun shines. But at night where art thou? In there--star-gazing!" She glanced distastefully at the massive pyramid built by the Pharoah Cheops for his astronomers.

Her lover's bronzed face sobered.

"Great things betoken, lovely Belia. Things thou wouldst scarce understand." He pointed to the blinding orb that blazed above them. "Hear, now--ever has man thought that Ra drives his golden chariot about our mother Earth. But now I, silent and alone, have learned a greater truth. It is not the sun that moveth--but _we_! Ra's abode is the hub about which our tiny mote revolveth! This message have I sent, with my proofs thereof, to the great Pharoah. When he has read them, glory and fame will be my lot!"

A swift fang of fear, sharper than the sting of the scorpion, knifed her heart. Her voice was deep and low.

"You speak sacrilege, my love! What have you done? Not fame will be thy lot--but swift death! This thing cannot be so...."

"_Into the years beyond," came the whispered command. "Project
yourself still further backward, woman from the past. Back ... and
back ... and back...._"

Dank, steamy rain splattered on her crouched back, plastering the long, coarse hair to her naked body. A tongue of flame ripped from the thunderous vault above and the gods roared in mighty anger. She was Thaa, daughter of Gor, mate of Bab the Hungry One.

Hunkered against the farthest wall of their cave, she shivered with cold and fright as she clutched her mewling newborn to her downy breast. Ten days had the god-tears fallen, now, turning the world into a morass of water. The time of Great Cold approached, when meat was scarce and comfort scarcer. Thaa shivered.

Again the gods hurled a shaft of forked light down the skies. Bab, glowering at the cave mouth, called to her.

"Thaa! See?"

She sidled to him, forgotting her coldness in the strange sight that greeted her eyes. In the plain below was a round and shining ball. A cave stood open in the sides of the ball; from this cave issued creatures. Not men, like themselves, nor animals like Tran the Long-Toothed or Shur the Swinger. But odd creatures dressed in silver hair that glistened. Hastily she swung behind Bab as he clambered down the side of the cliff, intent on plumbing this marvel.

* * * * *

Fearlessly they approached the shining ball. One of the creatures raised his voice in strange, fluent, meaningless syllables. Others of the Shining Ones came running. They raised hands in token of friendship. Bab and Thaa responded. Thaa shivered in awe as she watched the strange beings. Were they gods? she thought.

One of the visitors saw her shiver, moved forward.

"Poro methe eus?" he asked.

Thaa gazed at him dumbly; her eyes adoring. The tongue of the gods was not for mortals to know. She bowed. The young visitor turned to one of his elders.

"The creature is cold, but knows not that I have asked her so. What shall I do?"

The elder nodded sadly.

"What matters it? Let them live or die, sad brutes, as you think best. When I consider the waste, the futility, of our tedious voyage across the emptiness of space to find _these_ as our neighbors--" He sighed.

"Yet some day," mused the younger one, "may evolve from these beasts men like ourselves. Who knows? Our world is older than theirs, and wiser. Yet even now our planet is dying. By the time they have become intelligent enough to return this visit, we may be dead, our civilization ended.

"Poor brutes! I am minded to show them kindness. They should live. We can give them at least one comfort--"

From his pocket he drew a glittering toy. As Thaa watched he pressed it. A ruddy, wavering tongue licked from its mouth. "Poro methe eus?" he repeated gently. He handed the tiny cylinder to Bab. Bab's clumsy fingers fumbled with the button, once more the tongue of fire leaped forth. Bab dropped the bauble, howling, and scampered for the refuge of his cave.

But Thaa retrieved the little gift. She too pressed the release, and a pleasure-look passed over her features. Here was warmth! Here was a god-gift against the time of the Great Cold. With this to protect them, their cave would be always comfortable. She raised her eyes gratefully.

"Poro-pro--" Her brute tongue mouthed the god-words awkwardly. "Pro--methe--eus--"

"_Back ... back ..." whispered the insistent command. "Back farther
still. To the very dawn of life...._"

_She heard the voice but could not obey. Her mind was a vast sea
of swirling blackness, her senses shrieked in rebellion against
intolerable pain. "Back--" Mad pictures imaged on her brain, fled
howling. There was one brilliant burst of coruscating light--then
darkness and peace._

Harg-Ofortu frowned impatiently, fingered his subject's pulse, and snapped off a switch. He motioned to his assistant. "The woman," he said, "has fainted. Take her away. We will continue our experiments later."

* * * * *

When Sandra wakened at last, it was to find Larry bending over her, chafing her wrists, looking down into her eyes anxiously. There was a lingering warmth on her lips; short seconds ago might have found his face even closer to hers. He sighed with relief as her eyes opened. The sigh became an oath.

"Damn his rotten little hide! I thought you were out for keeps. What did he do, Sandy? Are you all right?"

She was all right. A little rocky. She discovered that when she tried to rise and her head ached wickedly. But she was all right. She told him her memories of the experiment. "It was like a horrible dream, Larry. But it was more than a dream. It was true. I have lived those scenes before ... somewhere ... sometime. They were so clear, so vivid." She shuddered. "But I hate to think of going through that again. I won't be able to stand it. I could feel my brain tottering on the brink of insanity toward the end."

Larry said savagely, "You won't have to go through it again!"

Sandra touched his hand, smiling wanly. "It's no use pretending, Larry. We're caught in a trap, you and I. Fate has destroyed us; thrust us forward into a Time when man is without mercy. Humanity is dead. All that remains is a race of grinning, scientific demons."

"That," interrupted Larry feverishly, "is where you're wrong, youngster! I haven't been sitting around twiddling my thumbs while you were gone. I've had a visitor."

"A--a visitor?"

Larry told her, then, of the silver-haired giant who had forced entrance into the cell. "His name was Sert. He was a man and a friend. He was one of the Underlings."

"The Underlings?" repeated Sandra.

"Yes. This world we are in is not peopled only by cold-blooded creatures like Harg. There are two mutant races of humanity. One tall and strong, as we always dreamed the future-man might be; the other spindling, puny, and viciously intelligent.

"These latter, Harg and his fellows, are the descendants of those men whose brains, for some reason more receptive to the stimulus of ultra-short wave radiation, were spurred to great heights during the period of the Great Catastrophe.

"The cosmic bombardment had three types of result. Either it killed outright--and Sert tells me that millions died--or it damaged the brain and did not harm the body, or it impaired the physique and stimulated the brain. During the era of chaos which preceded the building of the _impervite_ domes, the highly activated dwarfs seized the reins of leadership. They have held them ever since. The Underlings are their workers, their slaves, their servants."

Sandra said despairingly, "But I don't see how it can profit us to join forces with dull-witted slaves--"

"Slaves, yes! But they are dull-witted no longer. Generations have erased the madness from the Underlings' brains. The Masters hold them in subjection now only because they have superior armament. The golden force-ray, for one thing.

"But rebellion is stirring amongst the Underlings. Sert is one of the leaders of a secret rebel party. He was stealing through the building, seeking new converts, when he accidentally entered our cell."

Some of Larry's excitement communicated itself to the girl. She said, "But what are we going to do?"

"Sert," Larry told her, "taught me how to open the doors around this joint. It's not hard when you get the hang of it. Every wall has a door-lock. The locks work on a network of selenium cells imbedded in the metal; these are controlled automatically by body-radiation emanating from the fingertips. Ever hear of anything like that before?"

Sandra said dazedly, "Mitogenic radiation!"

"Yes. That's what Sert called it, too. Well, all you have to do is discover the proper way to touch the doors. The right combination and bingo! If your fingers are sensitive, you can do it without much fumbling. I learned easily."

"You still haven't told me what we're going to--"

"We're pulling out of this coop--tonight! In the machine shops, Sert has a gang of a half hundred rebels. We will join them."

"And then?"

"Then," said Larry tightly, "we'll figure out some way to clean out this rat's nest. We're going to give Earth back to the Men again. And I do mean 'men!'"