"No. I mean my going there--a girl of the Scientists, who is not like
the Aran women?"
"Yes," George said stoutly. "_I_ didn't want you to be there." His hand
impulsively touched hers. "I didn't like it, Dee. You're too nice a
girl. And I don't think Loto liked Azeela being there, either."
Instead of answering, she gave a sudden cry.
"What is it?" George demanded in alarm.
She had no opportunity to reply. Through the side window the other
plane showed less than a thousand feet away; a shimmering ghost that was
gone as soon as they had seen it!
George leaped to the proton switch, but Dee checked him.
"Wait! Wait till Azeela tells me what happened."
In the absorption of their conversation, Azeela's messages had been
ignored. Toroh had slackened his time-flight; he was preparing to land.
It was an unfortunate occurrence, for Toroh had seen the other plane. He
still did not guess that Azeela herself was guiding the pursuit.
Again, without warning, the other plane appeared. This time it was
flying, coming directly toward them. George held his breath. Toroh's
plane was so close he had no opportunity even to move from his seat. It
was running level with them in time; _it was charging them! Had Toroh
gone mad? He would kill them all!_
It was no more than a second or two. Through the window George caught a
brief glimpse of the shimmering thing rushing at them. Then it swerved
upward.
"_He's going to fire a thunderbolt!_" Dee gasped.
George was aware of a flash; but he had not seen it, only imagined it.
The attacking plane swept overhead and vanished-dissolved into
nothingness!
Toroh had fired a thunderbolt. The rush of electrons traveling at the
speed of light from Toroh's plane to George's had been too slow. The
mark was gone into a different time before the thunderbolt could reach
it!
The incident left George and Dee shuddering; but confident now that, so
long as they kept moving through time, Toroh could not harm them.
George's dials now registered the passage of some sixty-eight hundred
years. He was amazed. Then he realized how long he and his companion had
been talking, and the time-velocity at the twentieth intensity had been
accelerating tremendously. He had forgotten to look beneath him; he did
so now, and the island was not there. The channel was gone; the
mountain range had disappeared. The cataclysm that had formed the island
had been passed.
Azeela's messages told that her plane was now nearly a hundred years
nearer the Anglese time-world. Toroh, finding his attack ineffective,
had given it up. He had started a horizontal flight; he was looking for
a city in which he could land.
George and Dee sat helpless, for Azeela could not describe which way she
was flying.
"Lost!" George exclaimed. "We've lost them! Of course, she can't tell us
which way they're going when there's nothing down there but gray
forests--and blurred gray sky overhead."
It seemed probable that they would never see Toroh's plane again.
Already it was many miles away from them in space, though in what
direction they could not guess.
The two planes swept back through time, invisible to each other, yet no
more than a few hundred years apart. The rescue of Azeela--for the
present at least--was certainly impossible. Toroh was looking for a
civilization, some gigantic city where he might secure weapons. George
decided he must do the same. He discussed it earnestly with Dee, and
again, temporarily, Azeela's thought messages were ignored.
At fifteen thousand years--more than halfway back to the time-world of
the New York City of George's birth--structures began rising out of the
forests. By retrograded changes made visible, at first they seemed
moldering ruins; then, broken, neglected areas of deserted cities; then
the inhabited cities themselves.
At eighteen thousand years George and Dee were poised no more than a few
miles from where Orleen stood so many centuries later. A huge river with
a delta emptied into the open gulf; a broad expanse of lake was near by.
And on both sides of the river and around the lake a gigantic city rose
in terraced buildings of masonry and steel. Dee stared in awe at its
towers, bridges, aerial streets with the monorail structures stretching
above.
"We might land here," George suggested. "Shall we, Dee? You'd think
they'd have _something_ to help your father in the Anglese war."
She nodded, and he prepared to land on an open space a few miles north
of the city outskirts. They came to the ground at the third intensity of
proton current. Everything was gray, soundless.
"All ready, Dee?"
"Yes."
He flung over the switch. When the shock had passed, George stood up;
Dee was already on her feet beside him. It was night outside; lights
were flashing. They rushed to the window. The sky was lurid with
bursting colored bombs; an inferno of noise sounded, an intermittent
pounding that seemed to shake the earth.
From-almost directly overhead a red rocket exploded. Its light
persisted, illuminating the scene for miles around with a vivid red
glare. The giant city buildings were visible. As George stared, a great
flame seemed to leap from the sky. One of the buildings fell.
Nearer at hand a cloud of swarming mechanisms burst out of the air,
swooping down, circling. Beams of light from them and from the city
crossed like swords in the sky. The earth under the plane was rocking.
Beside it, a green flash struck and sent rocks, boulders, and dirt
flying up like a waterspout.
"George! _George!_"
Dee's terrified cry in his ear was almost drowned by the scream of
dynamos; the whistling, bursting, and pounding.
George's trembling fingers found the proton switch; he pulled it. The
inferno of the night melted, slipped away into a gray, soundless blur.
War! They had fallen into the midst of a battle--that giant Earth city
defending itself, perhaps against invaders from another planet.
"We won't try that again," George murmured.
"Azeela," said the girl suddenly. "She tells me that Toroh has secured
weapons! He is returning to our time-world!"
Toroh had landed at another city, in another time, but still in that
same greater civilization. He had chosen a night, bound Azeela, left her
in the plane and stolen weapons.