The man who mastered time
George was trembling with excitement. "Tell her to suggest that they
land."
Toroh was, at that instant, landing. It was a familiar spot to Azeela;
she described it exactly to Dee, and the younger sister recognized it.
Toroh's plane had entered the second century before Fahn's time-world
when George--some fifty years further back--arrived at the spot in space
Azeela was describing. There was the little rise of ground, with the
channel beyond. The vegetation was different, but the level rock was
there. And Toroh's plane was resting on that level rock.
Dee's voice was shaking so that she could hardly talk. "Will it--kill
her, George?"
He was white faced, tense. "Tell her to read the dials as exactly as she
can."
Azeela read them. George held his watch in his hand; he noted the hour
and minute it gave.
"She has called Toroh's attention to something outside," Dee's voice
translated swiftly. "She opens the cabin door. He is behind her but he
does not suspect."
George kept his eyes on his watch. Two minutes since Azeela gave them
her dial-reading, and he knew the approximate time-velocity of the other
plane.
Three minutes!
"She is on the platform. The blurred rock is only a few feet below her.
Azeela is pretending something is wrong under the plane. Toroh is beside
her--but he does not touch her. He does not suspect she would dare...."
Three minutes and a half.
"She jumps--"
George waited. "Is she all right? Is she all right?"
Silence.
"Can't you get her? Oh, Dee, can't you get her?"
The communication was broken.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
"It fell," Rogers murmured. "Was that Toroh's plane, or George's?"
Loto did not answer; he stared with set face at the crystal mirror,
which was turning purple with the deepening shadows of nightfall. The
mountains into which the plane had fallen were a vague silhouette
against a sky of stars.
"If we could only see over there," Rogers added wistfully. "Is this
tower we're looking from now the nearest to the mountains, Loto?"
It was the nearest. But Fahn was talking swiftly into a small mouthpiece
beside him.
"We may be able to see into the mountains," he said in a moment. "We
must find out which plane it was. Perhaps Toroh fell and was killed."
The anxiety on his face belied the calmness of his tone. His two
daughters were out there; possibly one or both had met death in that
falling plane.
A man entered the cave-room hurriedly, a solitary worker whom Fahn had
summoned from another part of the cavern. A youngish man, he wore dark
glasses, a black robe and gloves.
Fahn questioned him briefly; he brightened, nodded, and hastened away
again.
Loto explained: "He's been working on a new invention, Father. We hoped
to use it in the war, but now we fear the attack may come before it's
ready. There is only one small model constructed--finished today."
The man returned with a small mechanism--a black circular disk, an inch
thick and two feet in diameter. On it was mounted a cone-shaped lens a
foot high. It looked something like a tiny model of the lighthouse lens.
An operating mechanism was fastened behind the lens; it was an open box
with tiny coils of wire inside. And near this was what looked like a
miniature searchlight.
Fahn inspected the apparatus. His assistant made some connections,
adjusting another mechanism on the table. Then, turning the disk over
and holding it in the air above his head, he released it. The thing
floated, motionless, its lens-tower hanging downward. The small
searchlight also pointed downward and from it a beam of blue-white light
struck the cave-floor with a circle of brilliant illumination.
Fahn smiled his approval; the young assistant seemed gratified.
"It's a development of the communication towers, combined with the
levitation dais you saw at the Festival--the apparatus Toroh's brothers
tried to steal," Loto said to his father.
A moment later the young scientist had disappeared with his flying lens,
taking it outside the cavern to release it into the air.
Fahn sat at the table with the newly installed mechanism under his
fingers. In a few moments the assistant was back, empty-handed; he stood
before the now blank crystal mirror with the other men, anxiously
watching for the success of his work.
"This was greatly used a few centuries ago," Fahn said. He sighed. "Our
ancestors knew so much; it is so hard to keep up with them."
The crystal mirror presently became illumined. The scene was the
darkness of night; stars reflected moonlight from a moon just outside
the line of vision. Below--a thousand feet, perhaps--a vague palm-dotted
landscape was sliding into view.
To the watchers, the illusion was like flying through the night, looking
downward.
"I shall light the searchlights," Fahn said.
A broad circle of blue-white illumination fell upon the shifting land.
Across it, the palms of the island were moving backward. The viewpoint
of the whole scene was unsteady. The horizon bobbed up and down, like
the horizon viewed from a plunging ship. The moon showed momentarily,
them swung sidewise out of sight.
Soon the channel appeared; the dark mountains were coming nearer; they
tilted downward, almost out of sight, as the lens mounted an incline to
pass above them.
"Can we find where the plane fell?" Loto asked anxiously.
Fahn did not answer at once. At last he said: "It will be difficult. It
may have fallen behind the mountains, or into them. I do not know."
In the mirror, the shifting viewpoint presently showed the mountains
from above; the searchlight circle was sweeping across a tumbled land of
crags, plateaus and ravines--a white band of snow lying thick on the
higher peaks. The lens was circling now; the turning, swaying viewpoint
made the watchers dizzy.
Finally they saw it--a broken plane lying on its crumbled wing. The
searchlight clung to it; the lens lowered until the image of the plane
seemed more than a hundred feet below.
"_Toroh's plane!_" Rogers exclaimed.
There were figures moving about the plane, men and dogs. The men were
dragging some apparatus from it, loading it onto a sled. One of the men
was Toroh! The viewpoint was close enough now to distinguish
him--_alive!_
But the flying lens had descended too close; the Noths were staring
upward. A flash mounted from below; the crystal mirror turned a blinding
white--then went black.
Toroh's thunderbolt had struck the flying lens and destroyed it.
* * * * *
George and Dee gazed from their hovering plane at the empty surface of
the level rock face below them. Somewhere in time Azeela was lying
there, unconscious, killed perhaps; the thought messages from her were
stilled. Had Toroh gone on? Or had he stopped to try and find her?
They were anxious moments for George and Dee--moments that by George's
watch stretched into an hour or more. They were both at the point of
exhaustion. They had eaten a little--the plane was provisioned--but they
had not slept throughout the trip. George made a close calculation. He
knew the time-speed of Toroh's plane; he could estimate closely what
Toroh's dials must have read at the instant Azeela jumped.
They found her at last, lying on the rock, unconscious. They stopped,
carried her into the plane, and, before they started again, revived her.
There was a heart stimulant among the plane's medicines; she drank it
gratefully. She was not injured, though badly bruised by her fall. She
had been knocked unconscious as she left the plane. The instant her body
parted contact with its vibrations, blackness had come to her; she did
not remember striking the rock.
George was jubilant. Had he been able to rest, he would have wanted to
go on after Toroh. But he did not dare rest.
"We'll go on home," he decided. "You're a brave girl, Azeela." He smiled
down at her as she lay stretched out on the leather seat. "I'll start
slowly; you've had all the shock you can stand."
That same night in which the flying lens had been destroyed found George
piloting his plane into the cavern at Anglese City. Fahn and Rogers
were there to greet them. George handed down the girls, and descended
with a flourish. In the excitement of his triumphant return, he forgot
how tired and sleepy he was.
At the moment Loto was in another part of the cavern. He came running
forward. He did not see Azeela at first.
"George!"
"Hello, Loto! Here we are. Were you worried?"
Then Loto saw Azeela.
"I brought her back to you," George said softly. "There she is, old
man--all safe and sound."
But Loto did not hear him; his arms were around Azeela.
George turned to Dee. "You think he'd sacrifice her for the whole nation
of the Anglese? I should say not!"
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
A month went by in days and weeks of activity throughout the island. To
the Scientists it was a time of unparalleled stress and anxiety. The
government was in their hands for the first time in history, and a
war--the first that anyone of that time-world had ever faced--was
impending.
With Toroh's return his attack would not be long postponed. Fahn knew
it. The radio proclaimed it to the Bas everywhere. An army must be
trained at once; the Bas, Arans and Scientists were appealed to for
volunteers.
It was Fahn's plan not to wait for the Noths to land on the island; but
to anticipate the attack and send an army to meet it. The nation
responded to the appeal. Conscription had been considered, but within a
day the Bas had offered themselves in such numbers that it was obvious
any form of conscription would be unnecessary.
The second day after the radio appeal for volunteers, the fact became
evident that the Arans were refusing to go to war. In every village
recruiting stations were listing the names of the young men of the Bas
who presented themselves, but no Arans came. By the audible broadcasting
Fahn called them severely to account; but still they remained in hiding.
They were sought out. Cowardice, sullenness, declaration that their
birthright made it unnecessary--they seemed to have a score of reasons,
but the fact remained they would not willingly serve.
Scenes of violence were reported the next day. A Bas father, giving two
sons to the coming war, had struck down an Aran youth whom he
encountered; a party of Bas, angered into unlawfulness, had entered an
Aran household in Orleen and beaten a group of Arans who were holding
festivities; an Aran woman had been killed.
"Serves them right," George exclaimed indignantly. "I'd kill them all."
Fahn was perturbed, but then he shrugged. "We have far more young men
from the Bas than we can use. I shall tell them to ignore the Arans. And
in warfare such as this, an unwilling fighter is worse than none."
"Damned cowards," George muttered. "We'll save their hides for 'em,
while they stay home and have parties."
The Scientist had caught the words. "Yes, George, because now that is
easiest for us. I want no trouble here on the island. But
afterward--when we have won--_then_ we can deal with the Arans."
"I wouldn't have 'em on the island," George declared. It would have been
an unfortunate Aran youth who encountered George during the days that
followed.
The recruiting, hand in hand with the manufacturing activities of the
cavern, went steadily on. In every principal village the Bas youths were
registered and drilled, as yet without weapons. Officered by older men
of the Bas, they waited for the equipment and orders to come to them
from Anglese City.
The information Fahn had regarding Toroh and his Noth army was vague,
unsatisfactory; its very meagerness seemed to forecast disaster.
Somewhere beyond the mountains the Noths were gathering along the