The man who mastered time

whiter. The villages were sparser, smaller and shorter lived--the people struggling southward against the threatening, unrelenting cold, which spared nothing but the island of the Anglese. Rogers was first to notice a radical departure from the normal conformation of the landscape. They were, by their own calculation, over Georgia. George, watching the dials closely, had just noted twenty-two thousand years. Far ahead, over the rim of the southwestern horizon, a line of mountains was rising. "Look!" exclaimed Rogers softly. "The mountain chain running east and west. The new mountains! The island must be just beyond them." He maneuvered the plane into a climb; the gray land and sea tilted and began dropping away. The mountains seemed to be following them up, higher and closer, until at last the plane was over them, barely a thousand feet above their rocky spires. It was a scene of wild grandeur that now spread out beneath their eyes: dark, craggy cliff faces, with snow capped summits, a pure white peak and a gray blue valley beside it. And the whole mass reared ten thousand feet above the sea. The plane swept forward; the jagged, tumbled land slid northward, close beneath it. Then, abruptly, the crags and peaks dropped away; it was as though the plane had leaped ten thousand feet into the air. Far below lay a narrow channel of gray water, stretching east and west. And beyond that lay another land, its outer coast curving to the south. "_The island!_" exclaimed Rogers softly. "What a cataclysm was here--a rift that let the sea in and buckled up the mountains!" "The island!" echoed George. "And we're at twenty-three thousand five hundred years! We've some distance yet to fly," he warned. "Hadn't we better slacken our time progress?" With their flight through space temporarily checked, the 'copters holding them motionless, Rogers cut down the proton current to the fifth intensity. Eagerly they looked below them. Beyond the channel lay the island, curving up in an arc from the south and out to the west. They could not see across it, but only to a ridge of mountains at its center. Huge palms grew everywhere, and the shoreline formed a broad, curving beach of white sand. An island paradise--though their time progress still laid a gray cast over the green, blurred the water into a formless haze along the beach and shifted the vegetation into a confusion of changing forms. "We must get started," Rogers said at last. "At twenty-eight thousand years we must be within sight of the southern tip." It was a flight almost due south. Lakes occasionally were visible, and two or three small rivers, one of which changed its course suddenly under their eyes; and everywhere that tropical verdure, mounting and melting, always shifting with its rapid growth and decay. In some three hours more--with another longer rest for Rogers, during which time the 'copters held them poised motionless--they sighted the southern tip of the island. It had narrowed here to a point no more than two miles wide, ending with a curving beach and the broad, empty ocean beyond; a beach with a palm-covered mountain slope close behind it. Rogers had made several changes of time progress during the latter part of the trip, and they were poised over the sea near the tip of the island for no more than a few moments when the dials recorded twenty-eight thousand two hundred years. Rogers consulted Loto's notes. "He landed in this time world at twenty-eight thousand two hundred and four years. We must stop at the beginning of that year and watch for his light." Using the fourth intensity, the daylight and darkness was separated into two brief, but distinguishable periods. Thus the voyagers sped through the days and nights, the weeks and months and forward into another year. At the beginning of the fourth year, Rogers changed to the third intensity. It was daylight--a yellow-red, swiftly mounting sun; flying blurs of white clouds close overhead; a blue sea, and a bright green island. The sun plunged across the sky and sank blood red, with an instant of glorious colors suffusing the western sky. Night came, with its deep, purple mystery. Then day again. Thus the days of that fourth year went by; each hardly a minute long, but slow to the two men so anxiously watching. They were tired to the point of exhaustion, but the excitement and anxiety kept them going. "He said from the tip of the island," Rogers murmured. "A blue-white, vertical beam of light shining for a day and a night...we couldn't miss it. A minute would show it to us plainly." "I haven't taken my eyes off that island for a second," commented George from his seat on the floor. "Why doesn't he hurry up? He's down there, why doesn't he give us the signal?" Rogers did not answer. The sun dropped below the horizon. The turning world, with its motion made so visible, was dizzying to one who watched the sky. The purple night was momentarily colored with a red moon; it rose and swiftly plunged into a thick bank of clouds that swept down upon it. Abruptly, from the tip of the island, a shaft of blue-white light shot into the sky. It wavered an instant, then stood motionless: _clear_, _distinct_, _unmistakable_! CHAPTER SEVEN The proton current had been entirely cut off. The interior of the cabin was solid in appearance once more. The Frazia motors were still droning and the plane hung motionless in a night that was without wind. Below it, now, lay a scene of complete normality: the sea was rolling up on the white sand and the moon, almost at its zenith, bathed the green island in a silvery, red-tinged light. And from the tip of the island, quite near its southern branch, Loto's narrow beam of blue-white light was flashing upward into the sky. They descended, in a gentle glide. The beach was broad and firm; they landed upon it, swooping along. It was like racing an automobile along the sand in the moonlight, with the ocean on one side--far out at low tide now--and a jungle of green, tropical vegetation on the other. Rogers, at the controls, saw a number of human figures standing on the beach ahead of him. They scattered hastily, and the plane, rapidly losing velocity, went past them and stopped a hundred yards farther. "_We're here!_" George cried. "Let's get out. Was that Loto we passed? Where's the light? Are we near it?" The light could be seen no more than a hundred feet away among the palms. They climbed hastily from the plane. A figure was coming forward along the beach at a run; a slight figure in wide trousers of white cloth, and a short, flapping jacket. "Loto!" shouted George. "That you, Loto?" From a distance came a faint, "Hello-o... George!" The runner increased his speed. It was Loto. "Well," he exclaimed, as he shook their hands. "You got here right away, didn't you? I've only had that light up two or three hours." "We're tired out," said Rogers, when the greetings were over. "Do we stay in the plane or can we leave it?" A man was standing fearfully at the edge of the green jungle nearby, and Loto called him forward. He was dressed in wide trousers, like Loto's except that they were smeared with dirt and sand, and his feet and torso were bare. He came, timidly, and Loto spoke to him apart. The man nodded his head, indicating that he understood his orders. Then he trotted away, joining three or four others of his kind, gesticulating toward the plane. They all approached it reluctantly. George plucked at the flaring sleeve of Loto's short jacket, his only garment above the waist. "How's Azeela, Loto? Is she...is everything all right?" "Yes, she's all right. But I needed you and father here. Wait! Not now. I'll tell you later." Rogers joined them. "We're about exhausted, Loto. We must have some sleep." "Yes, of course. I knew you'd be. I've a house near here--only a hundred yards or so. They'll guard the plane." His gesture indicated the men who were now on the sand, moving about the plane, but evidently afraid to touch it. "You can trust them?" "Implicitly." They followed Loto. George was tired, but so excited that he did not realize it. The night air was warm and heavy with moisture. It was oppressive; it reminded him somehow of the steam room of a Turkish bath. He found himself perspiring. They left the moonlit beach and, following a tiny, white-sand path, plunged into the depths of the jungle. Palms of every variety stood about, their graceful fronds interlacing overhead. There were huge trees loaded with fruit, bananas, mangoes, grapefruit. Some of the other fruit trees George dimly remembered having heard of but could not name, and still others he was sure were entirely new. It was dark in the jungle here, and very silent. The steamy air was redolent with perfume--orange blossoms, George thought. The light signal was nowhere to be seen. George wondered if it had burned out, or if Loto had ordered those men to extinguish it. "Here we are," said Loto abruptly. A house was standing at their right, in an open space with the moonlight gleaming on it--a large, tropical-looking bungalow. There was a broad veranda on three sides, with windows opening into the house. The house itself was raised some four feet off the ground on coconut posts, and a brown-thatched roof spread over everything like a mound. It seemed to be a house that would have ten rooms, at least. George wondered what made it look so peculiar. Then he realized that its board walls were not vertical, but sloped inward toward the top, so that its rooms would be smaller at the ceiling than the floor. It looked like a house of cards. Loto had turned into another path. A brown picket fence enclosed the house with perhaps an acre of ground. Inside was a flower garden, abloom with an extraordinary profusion of flowers. A short flight of wooden steps led to the veranda. There Loto stopped. "I think we should retire at once," Rogers said. "We have so much to talk of--but it will wait." "Yes," Loto agreed. "Come with me, Father. George, you stay here. I'll be right out." George sat down on the veranda, with his back against a round palm trunk that was supporting its roof. He realized now how tired he was, and this heavy air made him sleepy, he heard the others moving away, entering the house. He took off his coat, then his shirt and, using them for a pillow, stretched himself out at full length on the board flooring of the veranda. In a moment, when Loto returned to take him to the room they were to occupy together, he found George sleeping peacefully. * * * * * George awakened with the morning sun streaming through a window. He was on a broad couch, and in a chair beside him, Loto was reclining comfortably, smoking his black brier pipe. He smiled. "Oh, you're awake, are you? You ought to be--it's hours after sunrise." A vague memory of being taken into the house by Loto the night before drifted back to George. He remembered being half-asleep and talking to his friend, but it was all like a dream. The room was small, queer-looking, with its walls sloping together toward the ceiling. But it was bright and clean, with brown fibre matting on the floor. The air was as moist and heavy as ever, and even warmer. George sat up, mopping his forehead with his shirt sleeve. "I've got your clothes," Loto said, indicating a stool with garments lying on it. "You don't need much in this heat. Get up and try them on." George was presently arrayed, like Loto, in low, tight slippers of soft hide--clipped dog-skin, Loto told him--with trousers of white material, bulging above the knees and tight at the ankles, and a brown and green