The man who mastered time

I have so much to tell you. Toroh took two of his dogs and his sled and went away after about a week. He was gone a month, and during that time I stayed docilely in the house. I saw many opportunities when I might have escaped. But now I would not, without taking the girl--whose name, by the way, is Azeela--and I could not expose her to such danger as always seemed imminent. I must have convinced them all that I was harmless. No one paid me great attention except the woman, Koa. Often I would see her peering furtively at me from some distant doorway. Azeela soon became friendly, and since we both had nothing to do, she devoted herself to learning our language. I tried to learn hers and failed miserably. But she picked ours up with extraordinary rapidity--perhaps because her mind was quicker, her memory more retentive. And I think, also, because she has behind her the inherited instincts of knowledge through all the centuries from our own time-world forward. Anyway, within the month she could speak English freely enough for us to get along--with a quaint little accent that is wholly indescribable. I think her language was derived very nearly from the English we speak today. Ours was, to her, merely archaic; but hers, modern beyond my time, was too much for me. It was an extraordinary story that Azeela had to tell me--as extraordinary as mine must have seemed to her. We became friends, and with friendship came a renewed desire on both our parts to escape. Her people were many hundred miles away, and, when I told her of my plane, I very soon persuaded her to let me take her back to her own country. Quite evidently my plane had not been discovered. If it had not snowed so heavily that first night, the dogs would have led Toroh back over my trail to it. But it was still safe, though I did not know it then; and the thought that it might have been found bothered me a lot, I can tell you. We decided to try and escape. Toroh was expected back any day. We spent a morning discussing it, planning it in detail. My weapons were gone, and Azeela did not know where they were. Bool had a cylinder of the blinding-flash--I call it that because their name for it would mean nothing to you--but we could not get it; he always kept it about his person. The woman, Koa, we did not think was armed--though she might have been. Toroh had taken two of the dogs. There was one left, and almost continually it was pacing about the house outside. We realized that even if we succeeded in getting away from the place, the dog would follow and overtake us before we could reach the plane. Bool was in one of the outbuildings nearly all that morning. Koa was moving about the house. We did not think she was listening to us; but she was, and evidently she had picked up something of our language--enough to give her the import of what we were discussing. She appeared suddenly, and with a furtive glance around, told Azeela she would help us escape. Azeela translated it to me, and the woman nodded grimly in confirmation. She was sorry for Azeela, and she hated Toroh sufficiently to want the girl out of his clutches. Koa's plan was simple and it sounded eminently practical. She had no weapons, and did not know where any were, except for her father's, and that she would not dare try to secure. But late that afternoon Bool would be in his room dozing. Koa would lock the dog in the kennel. Then we would be free to depart. The sun was almost setting that day when Koa informed us that the time had come. We had restrained our excitement; Bool had apparently not noticed anything unusual in our outward appearance during the day. He had retired to his room as customary, and Koa had taken the dog away. I did not altogether trust Koa, and it made me shudder to think of taking Azeela outside and perhaps having the dog spring upon us from somewhere. But we had to chance it, and the woman seemed sincere. We had searched the house as best we could without arousing Bool, but we found no weapon of any kind. At last we were ready, I in my fur coat, Azeela in furs; shoes, trousers and coat all in one piece. She looked like a slender little Eskimo girl, and I smiled as she pulled up a fur hood and fitted it close about her face, tucking her hair up under it. I had been mistaken about headgear; it was just a coincidence that I had never seen anyone in this time-world wearing a cap. I put on my own cap and we were ready. As we met in the main room, Koa nodded sourly for us to be gone. At that instant the dog, outside in the kennel, gave a long mournful howl. I don't know why; I suppose it was just fate. Koa, waving us toward the doorway, hastened away to quiet the dog. For a moment I hesitated. Should we start? Had the dog gotten loose? That moment of hesitation was too long. Bool stood in the doorway, staring at our fur-covered figures. Astonishment, anger, rage swept over his face. His hand went to his belt; he jerked something loose. I heard Azeela give a sharp cry of warning. Bool's hand held an object like a little crescent of glass, with a tiny wire connecting its horns. Sparks darted from the wire. I was about to leap forward when suddenly I was stricken. I can only describe it as paralysis. I stood stock-still; my arms dropped to my sides. I felt no pain, but I was rooted to the spot, without power to lift my legs. Azeela, beside me, was evidently within the influence of the weapon, also. She was standing rigid. Bool's face held a leer of triumph. His left hand was fumbling at his belt for some other weapon. I knew that in another moment he would have killed us, and still I could not move. I tell you, it was a ghastly feeling. There was a numbness creeping all over me. My hands were turning cold. My feet felt wooden. My legs were giving way under me, and in a few seconds more I think I should have fallen. It all happened very quickly. Behind Bool, Koa had appeared. He did not hear her, and she darted forward and struck at his wrist. The little crescent of glass dropped to the floor and was shattered. A wave of heat swept over me--the blood rushing again to my limbs. Bool had turned furiously upon Koa, but my strength was coming back fast. I jumped at them, caught Bool unprepared. My body struck his and we went down. He fell backward with me on top of him. His hand now held a metal cylinder; he was trying to get it up to my face. Azeela came darting across the room, threw herself upon us, and twisted the weapon from Bool's fingers. I did not know she had done it. Bool was kicking, squirming, and his left hand had me by the forehead, pushing my head back to expose my face. Enraged, I flung myself down on him, my forearm striking his head against the floor. His hold relaxed; he lay still. When I got to my feet, Koa was stooping over Bool. She seemed frightened at what she had done, although I knew well enough that the man had mistreated her constantly, and that she could bear him no great love. She waved us away, still with that same stolid grimness. "Ask her if the dog is locked up, Azeela," I said. The woman nodded at me vehemently, and I gripped Azeela's hand and we hurried out. It was just sunset. The sky was like blood; the snowy ground was all tinted with it. We ran west, so fast that Azeela could hardly keep on her feet. I suppose we went a mile or two, then slowed up and walked a little, then went back to a run. There was nothing but that unbroken expanse of snow, with the drop that was the river ahead of us. At last I could make out the break in the plateau surface that marked the gully. We were running, and were no more than fifty feet from it, when from behind us we heard the loud baying of the dog--that eager baying of a dog following a trail and closing in on its quarry. I went cold all over. I knew what had happened. Bool had recovered, and, in spite of his daughter, had let the dog loose upon us! I caught a glimpse of Azeela's white, frightened face as I gripped her hand and jerked her forward. It was faster than carrying her. She stumbled, almost fell headlong, but I pulled her up and onward. We came upon the gully. For one agonized instant I wondered if the plane would still be there. The dog seemed almost upon us. I could hear its eager whine as it came leaping along. Then I saw the plane--snow-covered, but undisturbed. We flung ourselves down the gully side, sliding, falling to its bottom. The deep snow there broke our fall. The dog was at the top; I saw its huge head and bared fangs as it dashed along, selecting a place to descend. I jumped to the cabin platform of the plane and shoved open the door. Then I stooped, grasping Azeela under the armpits and lifting her. The dog came sliding into the gully, and gathering itself up, it leaped. But we were inside, and I slid the door closed just as the brute's great body struck the cabin with an impact that rocked the plane. The dog fell, but was up again with a snarl, standing on its hind legs, its huge paws scratching at the cabin wall. I had flung Azeela to the floor of the compartment. She shouted at me reassuringly, and I jumped to the Frazia controls. A moment later the 'copters were raising us out of the gully. The dog's baffled yelps grew fainter. As we rose into the air I saw Bool, a quarter of the way from the house, stumbling along through the snow, following the trail. I went up a thousand feet, dropped a little, and began horizontal flight. To the south, perhaps a mile away, Toroh's sled, with its two dogs, was swinging up toward the house. He saw the plane, and, as we swept over him at an altitude of some five hundred feet, he turned and followed us. It was amazing to see those two gigantic dogs run. They kept the sled almost under us. We came to the south of the island and they went down a declivity and out over the frozen, snow-covered water. Toroh was lashing them with a long whip. I put on more power, and we gradually drew ahead. When we had crossed the broad expanse of bay, the sled was no more than a black blob in the distance. It swung to the right, turned and went back--lost to our sight in the gathering darkness. We were alone, headed southward to Azeela's native country. * * * * * Azeela and her people live on an island which once was the mainland--the southeastern corner of the United States, as you know it. It's a narrow, crescent-shaped island, something like Cuba in outline, but smaller. It's separated from the mainland by a channel some ten miles at its greatest width. The climate, now, is vastly different from your time-world. Climate is the most potent factor of all that influences mankind. The change throughout ten thousand years was dramatic in its effects: it hastened decadence, it drove civilization toward the equator. And then, as though nature were bent upon destruction, disease sprang up in the only warm regions left--disease that could not be coped with. Insects, carrying and transmitting deadly bacteria, swarmed over what we call the torrid zone, making it almost uninhabitable. You must realize over how long a period this went on. Even that was thousands of years before Azeela's birth. This island had formed, and nature had seemed to hold it the one place where humanity could make its last stand. A volcano stood at each end; beneficent, treasured because they contained heat. The internal fires of the earth had broken through here. Hot springs and geysers dotted the land. A river just below the boiling point rose from subterranean depths, flowed for a hundred miles, and plunged down again. And a huge range of mountains running east and west on the mainland to the north offered shelter from the cold winds that were coming down.