Chapter V: Part 5

He turned to us, now. "This mechanism," he said, indicating the gleaming apparatus, "is what we call a brain-reader. As you know, the brain preserves in its convolutions an indelible, unchangeable record of every word and action. When we remember a thing, we simply refer to that record, which we call memory, but which is in reality a very tiny change, but a lasting one. And this apparatus, when connected to a human brain by way of the nervous system, reads, from the myriad convolutions of that brain, the record of memory which is stamped on those convolutions."

With a swift movement, he fastened three clamps of metal to his body, one above the forehead, one around the neck, and the other along his spine. "These clamps make direct contact to the nervous system, through the skin," he explained, "and to them I attach the three cords from the brain-reader," suiting the action to the word. This done, he snapped a switch in the little box beneath the horn, and at once a nasal, metallic voice began to speak from that horn, in the Kanlar tongue.

Kethra's own voice came to us above the twanging one from the brain-reader. "It is giving a record of my experiences within the last few hours," he explained, "and will go back farther and farther as it continues, back to my very first memory, if allowed to run. Or I can use it to concentrate on any given period of my own life, and it will read with unvarying accuracy the impressions and sensations of my brain during that period. A mechanical, perfect memory," and he snapped off the switch and removed the clamps from his body.

"Nor does its usefulness stop there," he added, while we stared dumfoundedly at the little mechanism. "Here," he went on, picking up one of the withered gray objects, "is a human brain, the brain of one of the great men of our people, who died five centuries ago. And yet every memory and every thought and sensation in his life, imprinted unchangeably on his brain, is available to us by using the brain-reader."

He rapidly fitted over the withered brain a hollow hemisphere of metal, and attached to it the cords from the apparatus. A snap of the switch, and again the same nasal voice broke the silence, from the horn, speaking in the Kanlar tongue, and reading steadily on from the brain it was connected with, reciting the inmost thoughts and ideas and aspirations of a man dead for five hundred years. I shuddered, involuntarily, and Kethra snapped off the apparatus.

"It seems strange to you," he said, "but you will see the wisdom of such an apparatus. When a great man dies, a man of mental ability above the rest of us, his brain is removed, especially prepared, and then filed and indexed in a building reserved for that purpose. There are thousands of brains preserved there, and every one of them is available at all times, by means of the brain-reader, to aid us with its knowledge, its experience, its memories. Thus when a man dies among us, his intelligence does not die, but remains as a record for us to consult at will, a record of that man's ideas and achievements."

"And while we were unconscious," I broke in, "you used the brain-reader on us? Learned our story, learned why we came here?"

"It is so," he said, and his face darkened. "We sought to know who you might be, the first strangers ever to approach us. And from the brain-reader came your amazing tale, and we know all that you came to tell us, concerning that creature of evil you term the Raider. And it is that knowledge that has brought those crowds below to await the decision of the Council."

"But the Raider?" I cried. "_What_ is it, Kethra? Do you know?"

"I know," he said simply, and a brooding expression dropped on his face. "I know," he repeated, "and all here in Kom know. And that you too may know, who have had dealings with this same Raider, I will relate to you what we do know. Soon the council meets, and you will be questioned further. But now--"

He was silent a moment, then spoke in a voice vibrant and low-toned.

* * * * *

"The history of the Kanlars," he began, "the people of the cylinders, the evil ones whose doom draws near. Know, men of the past, that ages ago, though not so far back as your own time, our people dwelt in four mighty cities, each of which was nearly as large as Kom itself. There was no ice-flood from the north, then, and the country around those cities was green and fair, yet none lived in that country, all preferring the gayer life of the vast towns. Long ago, the people had learned to make their food from the soil direct, as we do today, and so there was no need of tilling the land, or living on it. And so, into the four great cities had drifted all the people in this land.

"In each city, the buildings were constructed of a different design. Here in Kom, all of the buildings were cone-shaped, and thus this became known as Kom, the city of cones, and we, the dwellers in it, as the people of the cones. Another city was the city of cubes, another the city of spheres, and still another the city of cylinders.

"Each of these four cities was free and independent, each ruled by a council selected by its inhabitants. And being thus independent, there arose rivalry between the cities, and fierce jealousy. Each strove to outdo the others, in their scientific achievements, and each strove to keep its blood from intermixing with the others. Thus in the city of cylinders, the Kanlars, or people of the cylinders, gradually evolved into a bright-haired race, while in Kom, the Khluns, or people of the cones, were a dark-haired race. And the other two cities differed likewise from each other and the rest.

"Ages passed, and then down from the north rolled a mighty tide of ice, sweeping over the whole land and submerging all under its frozen flood. It rolled down toward the four cities, and finally had forged south until it was at the gates of the city of cubes. In desperation, the people of the cubes appealed to those in Kom for shelter, and it was granted them. They came down to Kom, every one, and the ice rolled over and hid the city of cubes. Next it engulfed the city of spheres, and its people likewise found refuge in Kom, which was the most southern of all the four cities. And finally, the ice-tide swept over the city of cylinders, and its people, the Kanlars, were forced to seek refuge in Kom also, though they liked it not.

"But the ice did not stop. It came on, ever south, until it threatened to cover Kom also, and leave our people homeless and shelterless. So, taking counsel among themselves, the people of Kom set out to stop the progress of the glacial sheet.

"They kindled great uprisings far beneath the earth's surface, until the tortured earth heaved up in a great wall across the ice-flood's path. And then, that this wall of earth might not be swept away, the scientists of Kom showed them a way by which every kind of material could be transmuted at will into other elements, by a recasting of its electronic structure. And, using this power, the people of Kom smoothed the gigantic barrier they had created, and then, using the instruments their scientists had devised for them, they turned on the great wall a ray that changed it to metal by its power of element-transmutation. It was finished, and when the ice rolled down to this smooth mountain-range of metal, it was checked, halted. Far away, on either side, it rolled on and engulfed the country, but the wall so dammed it that it could not progress farther toward the city.

"Yet the cold of the glacier was not halted by the wall, and to combat that cold, the great shield of force was devised that stretches over all Kom, and into which you crashed in your car. It admitted the sun's light and heat, but excluded the cold winds from the glacier. And thus, having thwarted nature itself, the troubles of the people of Kom were seemingly at an end.

"The people of the other three cities settled down contentedly enough in Kom, and each people built their own type of dwelling, cube or sphere or cylinder. And all mixed, intermarried, and mingled in race, with the exception of the Kanlars, the people of the cylinders. These still held apart, though unobtrusively.

"And as the years went by, the scientists of Kom came to more and more wisdom. They found ways to strengthen their own bodies, so that they lived for great stretches of time, as we do yet. They sent their explorers out to other planets, they cast their vision out to the farthest stars. They learned to create life, and they learned to conquer death, almost. The flight of the soul from the body they could not control, for there is a wisdom above man's, but the body itself they could retain as moving and lifelike as in life itself, though soulless.

"It seemed, indeed, that no other steps of wisdom remained up which to climb. And then, without the knowledge of the other people, the Kanlar scientists set themselves to conquer the secret of time. Unable to find a way of controlling time themselves, of moving in it at will, they created a monstrous, undreamed-of thing, a thing of shapeless, inchoate body, which was yet living, and which could transform itself, at will, into mists and vapors, and in that gaseous form could travel at will through time. And this thing the Kanlars made, setting in it three orbs of light that were its organs of sense and its seat of intelligence, and this thing is the same that you now call the Raider.

"This, indeed, happened in my own lifetime, a scant score of years ago. And when the Kanlars brought their creation before the supreme council of Kom, I was a member of that council.

"They explained the power of their creation, they showed its life, its intelligence. And they proposed to the council a plan which possession of the Raider made possible.

"They pointed out that since the Raider could travel at will through time, it could whirl back into the past, or into the future, and seize people from every age, bringing them back to our own time to be our slaves. Always there had been none but free people in our cities, nor were slaves needed, since nearly all of our work was done by machinery, yet such was the evil plan of the Kanlars.

"The council rejected the plan in horror. And it also warned the Kanlars that unless they destroyed the thing they had made, the council would hunt it out and destroy it itself. The Kanlars left in rage, and took with them the Raider, but later they promised to destroy it within a certain period of time, saying that they desired to study it further before doing so.

"So for a time they kept the Raider, and it grew swiftly in power and intelligence, until it became a deity to the Kanlars, a being whose every word to them was law. Again the council warned them to destroy their creation, and again they agreed to do so. But in secret, on a night soon after, every one of the Kanlars assembled on their air-boats and fled from the city, taking with them the Raider.

"We could not know where they had gone, but sent out many scouts to search for them. And when all our scouts had returned without finding trace of them, we decided that they had fled with their evil god to another planet, and so the matter rested. We had always thought that the ice-fields in the north extended clear to the pole, and could not know of the land there where the Kanlars had gone.

"But now, with the knowledge the brain-reader gleaned from you while you were unconscious, all the people in Kom know the peril that hangs over them, know that the Raider and the Kanlars have gathered thousands of fierce warriors from all ages, and that they plan to sweep down and loot our city and kill its people. So the council meets, now, to decide what course of action we will take."

Kethra finished, and I silently pondered his amazing story, but Lantin broke in with a query. "Two things puzzle me," he said; "how is it that you speak the same tongue as the Kanlars, and why are there no cylindrical buildings in the city below? You spoke of each people building its own design of dwellings here, but there are no cylinders."

"When the Kanlars fled," Kethra explained, "the cylinders were demolished, for none of the other peoples would then live in them. As to our language, it was always the same, for all the four cities. You call it the Kanlar tongue because you heard it first from them, but it is equally the language of the people of Kom."

* * * * *

Before we could ask more questions, a single bell-note sounded from a corner of the room. "The council," murmured Kethra; "you are summoned before it."

He motioned us out of the room and led us down the corridor outside, toward a small elevator that was curiously familiar in appearance, there in that building of the future. A lever was touched and we flashed silently down a long shaft, past level after level of the great cone's interior. The car stopped, and we stepped out of it into a small antechamber. Following Kethra across it, we strode through a high, arched entrance, into a great amphitheater, a semicircular room with bank on bank of rising tiers of seats. In each seat was a man attired like Kethra, and the gaze of all was instantly focused on us as we entered. On a dais at the semicircle's center sat four men, older than the others, and there was another chair beside the four, which was empty. A servant swiftly placed two collapsible seats on the dais, on which Lantin and I seated ourselves. Then Kethra strode to the front of the dais and began to address the assemblage.

He spoke in an even, unraised voice, but from the expressions on the faces of the council members it was easy to see that his words were of intense interest to them. He reviewed the history of Kom, which he had already briefly recounted to us, and then pointed out the peril that threatened the city. He concluded with a strong plea that the people of Kom should take the offensive and strike at the Kanlars and the Raider in their own city, rather than let the battle come to Kom.

When he had finished, there were many questions as to the means to be employed for the battle. It seemed that air-boats had not been used greatly of late in Kom, because of the difficulty of flying beneath the great roof of force, and thus it would be hard to transport a force over the ice-fields in any short space of time.

But Kethra waved aside these objections. A great fleet of air-boats could be made in a few days, he declared, if the people of Kom turned their energies toward it. As to weapons, the scientists of Kom could design these, and they would also be made in great numbers, as effective as possible.

A solidly built, white-haired man in a lower row stood up and exclaimed, "But what of the Raider?" (I give our own equivalent of the unpronounceable term used by the people of Kom for that being). "Remember he is powerful, how powerful we can not even guess. And, if hard-pressed, he can flee into time and bide his time to strike at us again, with or without the Kanlars."

"Not so," replied Kethra. "When we build our air-boats, we will equip each with the time-traveling apparatus invented by these two men, which is installed in their own car. Thus equipped, our air-boats will be able to pursue the Raider into time and destroy him, should he flee there."

There were other objections, other questions, but Kethra overrode them all. It was plain that he was intent on following his plan of striking at the Kanlars unexpectedly, instead, of awaiting their attack, and he finally won the council over to his side. We were called on twice to furnish information on pertinent points, and finally, after hours of debate, the council voted by a large majority to build with all speed a great fleet of air-boats, equipped for time-traveling, like our own car. As soon as completed, and provided with weapons by the scientists, the entire force was to speed north under the leadership of Kethra, drop unexpectedly upon the city of the cylinders, and crush the Kanlars and the Raider forever.

_CHAPTER 17_

THE BATTLE--AND AFTER

Six days after that momentous meeting of the council, a mighty fleet of air-boats rose and circled above the city. The character of the invisible force-shield above the city had been altered to allow the passage of any air-boat through it, and now no less than five hundred of the air-boats hovered over Kom. In design they were much like the ones I had vaguely glimpsed in the city of cylinders, long and flat and narrow, pointed at either end and with a low wall around their sides for the protection of their occupants.

The people of Kom had worked wonders in those six days, thus to construct half a thousand of the flying cars, and to equip them with a time-wave apparatus like our own. Every car was thus equipped, the apparatus on each being a direct copy of that in our own car. Lantin and I still clung to our own car, however, which had been overhauled for us by the scientists of Kom after our crash, and which was unhurt by the collision. And most of our time, during that period, had been engaged in directing the manufacture of the time-traveling apparatus, and teaching a selected few the operation of it. These few, in turn, taught many others, and by the time we were ready for our start, there was at least one man on each air-boat who understood the time-wave mechanism.

The plans of our expedition were simple enough. We were to drop down on the city of cylinders, destroy it utterly, and annihilate both the Kanlars and the Raider, if possible. I think that in reality none of the members of our expedition had any real desire to meet the Raider, but I knew that in spite of the fear they had of him, they would obey the orders of Kethra without faltering.

I knew but little of the weapons which the scientists of Kom had furnished to the occupants of the air-boats. Kethra had spoken to us of a sound-ray, an intense beam of sound-vibrations which, directed on some object, could be changed in frequency until it matched that object's frequency of vibration, which would result in the destruction of the thing so focused on. It was the principle of two tuning-forks, which will cause each other to vibrate across a great distance, if of the same period of vibration. I had heard mention of other weapons, also, designed to combat the Raider, but had seen none of these.

Now, as the great fleet hovered and circled above the white city of Kom, with our own time-car poised above the fleet, a single large air-boat drove up through the mass of the others and hung beside us. It was the car of Kethra, a long, black one, and near its pointed prow stood the white-robed leader himself.

He bent, spoke an order into a mouthpiece, and then his car slanted up and northward, with swiftly increasing speed, while the great fleet below did likewise, his order being communicated by a form of radio to every air-boat. Still hanging beside the car of Kethra, our own time-car raced along, since we were to guide the fleet toward the city of cylinders.

By the time Kom had disappeared behind us, the fleet was flying almost two miles high, in wedge-shaped formation, with our time-car and the air-boat of Kethra at the wedge's apex.

It was late morning when we flashed high over the colossal metal wall that held back the ice-flood. It soon vanished behind us, and we were again flashing north across the ice-fields.

The sun's rays slanting down almost vertically on the ice far below set up a dazzling glare that was almost blinding. Looking back, I saw an air-boat behind and below us crash into the one ahead of it, and both plunged down to destruction on the ice. Some half-dozen cars spiraled down toward the wreckage, but the main body of the fleet swept on, unheeding of such accidents.

* * * * *

All of that day the fleet raced on, while, in the time-car, Lantin slowed our pace to keep beside them. Sunset came, an arctic sunset, with a crimson globe of fire falling down behind the boundless steppes of ice, suffusing the sky with a glare like blood. Abruptly Lantin uttered a low exclamation, seized binoculars and gazed north through the window beside him.

I sprang to his side, and when he handed me the glasses I saw, far ahead, a little cluster of black dots that stood out jet-black against the crimson sunset. But already Kethra too had seen them, and a score of cars leaped forward from the main body of the fleet, in pursuit, our own time-car among them.

We flashed up toward them, and they grew in size, resolved themselves into air-boats much like those around us. As we neared them, they turned and fled north. Two of them, much swifter than the others, were out of sight almost in a second, safely beyond our pursuit, but the others, seven in number, saw that escape was impossible, so they turned to fight.

For a moment, the fight was on their side, for they turned quite unexpectedly and raced straight toward us, in a solid mass. Lantin's hands flashed over the controls and our car slanted up above the onrushing seven with the speed of lightning, but as it did so a blue flash leapt from the foremost of them and barely missed us.

The air-boats behind us were not so fortunate, for as the streaks of blue light from the enemy touched them, four plunged down to the ice, in flames. The seven attackers, unscathed thus far, passed under them in a swooping dip, turned, and came racing back for another blow.

But now the surprize of our forces was gone, and they struck back. A sudden sound smote our ears, even in the time-car, a low thrumming sound that rose in pitch higher and higher. I could see the men on our air-boats pointing blunt-nosed metal objects toward the oncoming cars of the enemy, and abruptly the significance of it struck me, and I understood that they were using the sound-ray Kethra had mentioned.

The seven air-boats rushed on toward our own, and I had a flashing glimpse of their decks, crowded with armored guards and with a few of the brilliant-robed Kanlars directing them. Blue flashes leapt again from the seven, and two more of the air-boats of Kom cometed down in bursts of fire, but now, as the seven dipped again under the air-boats of the Khluns, the thrumming, high-pitched sound increased sharply in intensity, and I saw five of the seven Kanlar cars literally break up into small pieces and fall, tumbling down toward the ice-fields below them in a shower of men and small pieces of metal. It was the power of sound, which causes a steam-whistle to shake a house to its foundations, a thousand times amplified by the apparatus devised by the men of Kom.

The remaining two air-boats of the Kanlars attempted to flee, but in a moment they too broke up and fell, as the men of Kom altered the vibration-frequency of their apparatus to affect the two remaining cars.

Behind us, now, the great main fleet of our air-boats was coming up, and there was a short halt in midair. Kethra's air-boat swept up beside us, and I opened the door in the top of our time-car, and stood up to hear him.

"Those were scouts," he cried to us, "a patrol of the Kanlars' air-boats. And two got away! They'll warn the Kanlars of our coming."

"But what do you intend to do?" I asked. "You'll not give up the attack?"

"No!" he shouted. "We'll go on, and meet them if they come out. But there will be no surprize now."

"But what of our friends?" I asked. "We were to rescue them from the pit."

"We'll send an air-boat for them," he said. "It can speed up to the city of cylinders, and since the Kanlars will come down to meet us now, it can sink down into the shaft you spoke of without interference, and get your friends. I will need you with me, to guide us to the city of Kanlars, in case their fleet doesn't come out to meet us."

And so we swiftly decided. At an order from Kethra, an air-boat slanted up toward us and hung beside us. We gave the pilot of it, and his two assistants, precise information that would enable them to reach the temple and get down to the pit, where they could rescue our comrades from the roof-top where they would be awaiting us. The pilot was instructed to race up toward the city of cylinders in a wide circle, to avoid meeting any of the Kanlars' air-boats, and when the city was deserted by guards and Kanlars, as we were confident it would be, he could easily penetrate to the temple and the pit. He promised to carry out our instructions faithfully, and sped away into the gathering dusk toward the northwest.

* * * * *

Night was falling now, and with an order from Kethra, the fleet again began to move, speeding toward the north, but going warily now, with a fringe of swift scouts flying above and far ahead, and with Kethra's car and our own soaring at the point of the fleet's triangular formation.

On we sped, into the darkness, showing no lights and progressing entirely by compass. Midnight came and passed, while we raced north over the limitless ice-fields, and it began to seem that the Kanlars had no stomach for fighting, now that we had come to attack them. I relieved Lantin at the controls of our car, an hour after midnight, and while he caught a little sleep on the car's floor, we soared smoothly on.

The soundless, mighty fleet of air-boats moving steadily along behind me, the monotonous, endless ice below, and the hour after hour that passed without any attack materializing, all of these smoothed down the fears in my mind and lulled me into a temporary lassitude. Half drowsing at the controls of the car, I kept beside the air-boat of Kethra, speeding on into the thick darkness. A glance at a dial told me that we were within a hundred miles of the ice-field's end, and the thought pulled me up somehow from the sudden weariness that had gripped me. Then, a half-mile ahead of me, there was a blinding glare of azure light, a crash that came loudly to my ears even from that distance, and then silence.

Through the mighty fleet behind me pulsed a sudden murmuring sound, a whisper of excitement, of expectancy. Lantin, aroused by the crash, jumped up and was at my side.

"One of the scouts," I cried to him; "the Kanlars are attacking them, and one was destroyed."

Even as I spoke, two more blue flashes jetted out of the darkness ahead, and two air-boats that were racing back to us went down in flames. And then, rushing toward us out of the darkness, came the Kanlar fleet.

In the very van of our own fleet, I had a twisted, misty vision of myriad dark shapes that rushed toward us; then, instinctively, I slanted our time-car up and sped up above the battle. We were weaponless, for the sound-rays could not have been used through the walls of our closed car, and so to remain in the very center of the conflict was to invite purposeless destruction.

For a moment, the world was filled with crashing sounds, as the two oncoming fleets met, their air-boats crashing here and there into air-boats of the opposing fleet. Then the battle resolved itself with sudden decision into myriad individual combats.

Stretching far away into the night, all around us, lay the two fleets, inextricably mixed and mingled with each other, and incapable of acting in two single units. Flashes of blue lightning burned from the air-boats of the Kanlars, and car after car of the Khluns was going down to death on the ice two miles below. By the light of the flashes, and the ensuing flames, the scene below us was ghastly, the air-boats, filled with brazen-armored guards and bright-robed Kanlars, or with the white-clad Khluns, grappling there in midair, plunging down to destruction, or swooping giddily upon one another. There was a chorus of humming sounds that rose even above the roar of the battle, and here and there the air-boats of the Kanlars were disintegrating and falling, spilling forth their occupants in midair. It was well that the Khluns had constructed their own air-boats of a material immune to their own sound-rays, since mixed as the battle was, many of their cars would have been downed by their own allies' weapons.

The battle had met and joined in less than a minute, while we hung above it. So far the fighting had been even, but now a thing occurred that tipped the scale in the Kanlars' favor.

Without warning, every air-boat of the Khluns suddenly glowed with misty light. Shouts of surprize and rage came up to us. The cars of the Kanlars were as dark as ever, and now, swooping out of the darkness upon the shining air-boats of the men of Kom, they sent them reeling down in flames by the dozens.

"Look!" cried Lantin, pointing up through the window in the car's top.

Far above, high over even our own car, were some twenty round, glowing circles of light, a light that was identical with the misty light that glowed from the cars of the Khluns.

"The Kanlars!" Lantin shouted. "There are air-boats up there, with apparatus that makes the Khluns' cars shine, while their own remain dark! They must be destroyed, or it is all over with our forces!"

I looked around for Kethra, but he was lost to view in the battle that raged below. Nor was there any of our allies' cars around us, so I turned our own time-car and sent it racing up toward those glowing circles above.

Straight toward them we sped, with the power opened wide, and I braced myself for the shock. Our car struck the first glowing circle with a staggering shock, and ripped through the air-boat above it as if it were paper. We slanted on up, and looking down, I saw the car we had struck reeling down toward the battle below, broken and afire. I turned our car, hovered like a poised hawk for a second, and then flashed down again on the line of air-boats.

A dozen flashes of blue flame burned up toward me, but the tremendous swiftness of our car carried us out of line before they reached us. Flashing down on a long slant, I pointed the car's steel prow toward the center of the line of cars, and this time we plowed across two of them in our resistless, ramming swoop.

As we sped away into the darkness, I heard other crashes behind me, and when I again turned the car, it was to see the last of the Kanlar air-boats carrying those glowing circles go tumbling down to destruction. For below us the Khluns had seen and guessed the meaning of our attack, and had sped up to finish off those who had escaped us. And with the destruction of that score of hovering Kanlar cars, the strange glowing light that emanated from each of the Khlun cars ceased. What that light was, we never knew. Undoubtedly the Kanlars had devised some method of causing our own air-boats to become light-emitting, while theirs remained dark. Possibly a ray like the fluorescent "black light" of the World War, from which they had guarded their own cars by special means. Whatever the nature of it, the light was a deadly weapon in such a night battle, causing the Khluns' air-boats to stand out as shining marks for the blue flashes, while the cars of the Kanlars hovered invisibly about them in the darkness. But now, with the disappearance of that light, the battle tipped in favor of the men of Kom. Their deadly sound-rays filled the air with thrumming, and in groups, in masses, the air-boats of the enemy disintegrated, broke up, poured down to earth in a mixed shower of men and metal. Finally but a scant thirty cars remained of the Kanlar fleet, while around them circled almost two hundred of the Khlun air-boats, striking at them with the deadly sound-ray.

As we hovered above the battle, a single air-boat drove up toward us, and I saw that in it was Kethra. He stopped his car beside our own, and I opened the door of our car, while Lantin leaned out and shouted to him.

"You've won!" cried Lantin, pointing down to the night below us, where the thrumming of sound-rays and jetting flashes of blue showed the dwindling conflict.

"We've won," he replied, "but where is the Raider?"

"Lurking in the temple," replied Lantin, "and it is there we must go now, to rescue our friends and destroy the Raider."

"We'll do that," replied Kethra, "but first--" Abruptly he stopped speaking, and seemed to be listening tensely. I, too, was listening, and over the crash of air-boats and the humming sound-rays a sound came to my ears that beat in them like the drums of doom.

A little whisper of wind, a whisper that grew swiftly louder, that shrieked, that roared, that bellowed. Up from beneath came a gust of wind of such force that our car heeled around under it, and with it came a piercing whistling to our ears, an eery chorus of wind-shrieks that changed to a thundering gale. Then, a hundred feet below us, there flashed into being--the Raider!

* * * * *

A moment he hung below us, a thing of whirling mists, the three orbs of green glowing radiantly through the darkness. Then he had dropped down onto the battle, expanded, extended his own misty form until it held within it the score of air-boats in which were the survivors of the Kanlars' forces.

A second it continued thus, its vaporous form enveloping the remaining cars of the Kanlars, and then, out from the green, radiant triangle of orbs there burst flash on flash of green light, aimed at the surrounding cars of the Khluns. The cars touched by that green light vanished, simply disappeared from view, leaving a little cloud of radiant sparks which dimmed and vanished likewise.

There was a great shout from behind us, and down toward the Raider, from the car of Kethra, there dropped a thing like a black, enveloping net, queerly tenuous-seeming in the one glimpse of it I had. It was like a net of black force, dropping down on the Raider, but before it reached its objective, the Raider and the cars it held within it had abruptly vanished.

"The Raider!" cried Kethra. "He's gone on into time, with the surviving Kanlars! Follow, follow, follow!"

From the scores of air-boats below us came a savage yell, and there was a second's pause, a second's silence, and then our car was struck by a gale that nearly overturned it, and we hung alone in space. Kethra and his air-boats had followed the Raider on into time, with the time-wave apparatus we had showed them how to use. I knew, too, that at that moment half the air-boats were speeding into the past and half into the future, in search of the Raider, for that had been our plan in case we had need to pursue the Raider into time.

"Shut the car-door!" I cried to Lantin. "We'll follow, too."

"Wait!" he shouted, his head out of the circular door, peering away to the north.

The gray light of dawn was welling up in the east, and by it I saw, away to the north, a black speck that rushed down toward us. It raced on, and now I saw that it was a Khlun air-boat. It sped on toward us, and now I recognized it as the one we had dispatched to rescue our four friends from the pit.

The car sped on toward us, and I saw that on it were the pilot and his two aides, but not our friends. Even before the pilot shouted to us a premonition of disaster filled me.

"The pit!" cried the pilot, bringing his car up beside us.

"What of the pit?" I shouted. "What of our friends?"

"They're safe, for the time," he answered, "but the hordes are coming out of the pit!"

"What?" I yelled.

"They're coming out," he repeated. "I went straight to the Kanlar city, as you had instructed, and found that the Kanlar fleet had sped south to meet you. The city was in confusion, with all of the Kanlars and the guards gone with the fleet, and only the slaves and the women still there. I took my car straight into the temple, and found the shaft open that leads down to the pit. I went down that shaft, and picked your four friends up from the roof you designated, and they told me that after all the guards on the stair had left, with the fleet, the hordes in the pit began battering at the gate of the stair. I saw them doing that, hovering above them in the darkness. They are mad, thirsty for loot and blood and battle. They cry among themselves that they will seize the flying-platforms on top of the temple and go south to loot Kom."

I gasped. The merciless hordes of the pit, sweeping down on unprotected Kom! I knew that there were men in the pit capable of operating the flying-platforms, if they reached them. They would sweep down upon the city beyond the ice in an avalanche of death and destruction. And Kethra and all his men were somewhere in time, pursuing and battling the Raider!

"Where did you leave our friends?" cried Lantin.

"At the pit's edge, in the temple," answered the other, and we exchanged swift glances, the same thought coming to us at the same time.

"They asked to be left there," added the pilot.

Lantin spoke swiftly to him. "Go after Kethra!" he told him. "You have the time-wave apparatus on your air-boat?" And when the other nodded, he said, "Then go on into time and bring back Kethra and his forces! If the hordes get to the temple's top and seize the flying-platforms, it is the end for all at Kom!"

The pilot hesitated. "And you?"

"Wheeler and I are for the temple," Lantin told him; "with our friends, we'll try to hold the hordes in the pit until you come back with Kethra and his forces. Go, man!"

The pilot cried assent, clicked a switch, and his car had disappeared, speeding into time after Kethra and his men. And now, under my control, our own car sped north toward the city of cylinders.

* * * * *

I think that of all our trips in the car, we attained our highest speed then. Rocketing low above the ground, the landscape beneath us, the endless billows of ice, seemed to pass beneath us in a white blur. We shot across the sky like a comet, and in a few minutes the green land of the Kanlars' country replaced the ice, and then there hove into view the gleaming white city of cylinders.

I swept down toward the great cylinder that was the temple, and brought the car to earth in the shelter of a little clump of trees outside the great building. We sprang out, raced up the ramp, and down the tunneled entrance into the temple's interior.

The metal floor was not in place, and before us yawned the abyss that was the shaft leading down to the pit. Away across the temple, standing on the ring of black flooring that was the shaft's rim, was a group of men, seemingly tiny, toylike figures there in the empty temple's immensity. We ran around the black rim toward them.

It was Denham and his three companions, and they ran forward to meet us, gripped our hands warmly.

"Where are your forces?" asked Denham. "Where are the people of Kom? The hordes are getting ready to come up from the pit, man! Listen," he commanded, and I walked to the shaft's edge and looked down.

From far below, muffled by the great distance, yet coming with force to my ears, there rose a dim roar, the savage shout of thousands of mad warriors. And above that dull roaring there was the clangor of metal smiting on metal.

"They're beating down the gate," Denham said, "and in a few minutes they'll be pouring up that stair. But where is the aid you were to bring?"

In a few words I explained the battle we had taken part in, and the pursuit of the Raider into time by Kethra and his men. "We must hold them in the pit, somehow," I told them, "until Kethra and his forces come back. If those hordes once get to the temple's roof and seize the flying-platforms, it means hideous death for all at Kom!"

"Couldn't you close the metal floor of the temple?" suggested Lantin. "Swing it back in place and close the shaft?"

"But how?" asked Denham. "We've searched but can't find the secret of the floor, or how it is moved."

"But the collapsible stair!" I put in; "you can fold that back! Lantin and I did, the night we escaped!"

"Look!" ordered Denham, pointing toward the spot where the little folding stair had been. I looked, and despair rushed over me. For the stair had been removed, and instead of it, steps had been cut into the side of the shaft itself, leading from the spiral stairway in the shaft to the ring of black flooring on which we stood.

"The guards must have cut those steps after you escaped," said Denham, "probably because they would not allow anyone to play on them again the trick you did. We heard of your exploit, in the pit."

Up from the shaft was coming now an increasing clamor, and the battering on the gate far below had increased in fierceness.

"But how, then, are we to hold them in the pit?" I asked, despairingly. "A messenger has gone into time after Kethra and his forces, and if we could only check these hordes until he comes--"

Abruptly the Aztec spoke, calmly, gravely. "We are five," he said, "five strong swords. And the stair is narrow."

There was a moment of silence, for the idea he broached was stunning in its audacity. Then D'Alord laughed in sheer delight. "Good!" he cried. "Why, 'twill be easy! Ixtil is right. We are five blades here, and the stair is narrow. We'll show them sword-play, eh?"

A sudden reckless excitement burned through me like fire. "Good enough!" I cried. The Roman broke in on us. "Down the stair, then, at once! We'll meet them at the very bottom, if possible, and then when they do force us back up, it will give us a long enough delay for the aid you speak of to get here."

We ran toward the steps cut in the shaft, but Denham halted us by an exclamation. "Look!" he cried, pointing some distance along the wall of the temple. "There are suits of the guards' armor, hanging up. We'll need them, before we are through today!"

We saw the wisdom of his suggestion, and hastily acted on it, donning suits of the brazen armor and helmets to match. The Roman alone, who was already attired very similarly, did not join us.

And now we rushed toward the steps in the shaft's side, and down them to the beginning of the spiral stair. Down the stair we ran, recklessly throwing ourselves around the curves of that airy, high-flung pathway. Looking down, I saw that the light in the pit was growing, as the dawn began to flame in the world above, and I glimpsed vaguely through the rising mists a great horde that eddied and swirled about the bottom of the stairway. Up to our ears, stronger and stronger, came the clanging of heavy metal objects striking the barred gate, while there rose at the same time a savage roar from the pit's blood-thirsty hordes.

We raced on, down and down until I was near to dropping with exhaustion. And still the Roman sternly spurred us forward, with the cheering assurance that the farther down we went, the farther up the hordes would need to press us back. Finally we reached the fourth curve of the spiral stair above the ground, a height of perhaps two thousand feet above the pit's floor. And there the Roman halted us.

"We'll make our stand here," he said. The clangor and the roaring below were deafening, now, and for a few minutes we lay upon the steps exhausted, then rose to our feet, one by one. Fabrius stood a step below the rest of us, his heavy shortsword in his hand, calmly looking down toward the pit. I drew my own rapier, my heart thumping wildly, but I strove to appear as calm as the Roman. Denham, with elaborate unmindfulness of the roaring mobs below, drew forth a snuff-box containing a few grains of the brown powder, and offered us each in turn a pinch, which we refused, then daintily took some himself.

"Ha, Ixtil," cried D'Alord, slapping the Aztec on the back gleefully, "this should be a better fight even than those in the pit, eh?" The chieftain smiled darkly, shifting his saw-toothed sword from hand to hand, but made no other answer, and the Frenchman turned to me.

"What of him?" he demanded, pointing to Lantin. "He has no sword."

I turned in dismay, for I had forgotten my friend, almost. "You'd best go back up to the temple's top," I told him. "Wait for the coming of Kethra, and guide him down to us. You can be no good here, you know, so don't risk yourself."

The others seconded my suggestion, warmly urging Lantin to return to the temple's top and await the aid from Kethra, but he refused. "I have this," he said, showing us an automatic which he had snatched up when we sprang from the time-car. Finally we compromised by placing him on the stair some distance behind and above us, where he could use the few but precious shots in his weapon when it was most necessary to do so.

Now we turned from him, for with a sudden mighty clang the great gate below went down. There was a tremendous shout, a savage roar of triumph, and then the tramping of thousands of feet as the hordes in the pit flooded toward the overturned gate and raced up the stair.

* * * * *

Looking down, we saw them ascending toward us, coming in such close-packed order that many were crowded from the low-walled stair and dashed down to death below. But still they came on, a bellowing, blood-thirsty mob, until they were winding around the stair just across the spiral from us.

Denham drew his sword, now, and we stepped down so that we stood in a single line across the stair, the Roman at the center, with D'Alord and Ixtil on his left side and Denham and me on the other.

And now the hordes surged around the bend of the stair, racing up toward us. A sudden cry went up from them as they glimpsed us, and momentarily the human wave sucked back, and the close-packed mob halted. A moment there was silence, while they stared up at us. I stole a glance at my companions. The face of Fabrius was stern but unperturbed, and he gripped his sword firmly, eyeing the mob below with eagle gaze. D'Alord's face was darkly flushed, his eyes gleaming. Ixtil leaned forward in a tense, tigerish crouch, while Denham, beside me, lounged negligently, leaning on his rapier and regarding the crowd below us with a mocking, contemptuous smile.

Only a moment that silence lasted, while the hordes gazed up at us. Then, as they saw that we were but five, a beastlike roar went up and they raced up toward us, vying for the honor of slaying us.

Up, up they came, a sea of ragged figures, a storm of flashing weapons. A catlike Egyptian and a giant Chinaman were first of that mob, with behind them the massed weight of the hordes in the pit, pushing up from far below, to win up to the flying-platforms that would carry them to the loot of Kom.

As though in a dream, I saw the fierce faces coming up toward us, and then there was a clash of steel on steel that brought me to my senses. D'Alord and Fabrius had each leapt forward a step and with two strokes that were like darting flashes of lightning had struck down the Egyptian and the Chinaman. Over their bodies came the others, and for an instant the air seemed thick with darting sword-blades, at which I whirled and thrust and parried.

A brutal-faced man in medieval chain-armor was my nearest opponent, and as I realized the fact, he swung up his heavy sword for a crashing stroke. But while he raised the cumbrous weapon, I darted out my rapier and he fell with a spreading red stain at his throat. A white-robed, sallow man thrust at me with a long spear, over his body, but the sword of the Roman flashed down and cut the head from the spear, then flashed again and the man went down. A dozen blades glinted off my armor and helmet, and I thrust out savagely and blindly, felt the blade pierce through flesh and blood, once, twice. And now, shaken by our first fierce resistance, the mob fell back a little, while we stood panting, surveying the scene of that first clash.

At our feet lay a dozen or more men, dead or dying. As yet none of us had been wounded, with the exception of D'Alord, who was bleeding from a cut on the back of his wrist. The narrowness of the stairway had been our salvation, since only a few men at a time could come at us, and these were hampered by the press of those behind them.

But I saw that the battle had only begun. The mob was again surging up toward us, more fiercely than before. I glanced back up the stair, but there was no sign of Kethra's forces. Then I turned my attention back to the oncoming hordes, for already our blades were clashing with theirs.

A succession of savage faces appeared before me, confused and changing, and I thrust until my wrist was tired to numbness. I heard, even above the clash of blades and shouts of our opponents, the voice of D'Alord, who was mocking his opponents in rapid French, disparaging their skill and crying out when he beat down their guard. And, soaring high over all the other sounds of the battle, rose a weird, piercing cry, the battle-cry of the Aztec.

"Alalala!" he shouted. "Alalala! Alalala!"

The stairs at our feet became slippery with blood, choked with bodies, and we gave back a few steps. This gave us further advantage, for we stood on firm, dry footing, while those who came at us slipped and fell on the smooth metal of the steps below us, smeared as it was with the life-blood of their fellows. Yet they came on, ever on, forced us around and around the spiral, up, up, ever up the stair.

We were forced up until we had entered the shaft and the wall on our right gave us added support. In the semi-darkness of the shaft, too, it was harder for those coming at us to see us, while they were more plainly visible to us against the light of the pit below.