CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Once again the plane hung like a shimmering ghost above the towering piles of steel and masonry--New York City at the peak of its civilization. For Azeela and Dee, it had been a brief trip of awe and wonder; a trip northward through space and back through time.

After the cataclysm, they had stayed but a week back in Anglese City. The entire western end of the island had sunk into the gulf, carrying Toroh and his Noths and the Arans and their King to destruction. In Anglese City a new government was formed--a democracy of the Bas, with Mogruud at its head.

Rogers was impatient to return to his wife in New York City. Azeela and Dee, left orphans, had no wish to stay. Unobtrusively as it had come, the Frazia plane departed.

In the humming, glowing cabin of the plane the voyagers were waiting for the dials to reach the time world for which they were headed. On one of the side benches, the ghostlike figures of Loto and Azeela sat a little apart from the others; they were talking softly as they gazed down through the window beside them.

"You think Mogruud will make a good leader?" she asked. "My father would have been so strong, so stern, but always just and fair...." Her eyes had filled with tears.

He pressed her hand sympathetically. "I know, Azeela. But you mustn't grieve. He gave his life for his people."

"Yes. And he said 'Good-by--for a little time.' Oh, Loto--I did not realize then what he meant."

"He knew--someday--you would be with him again. And you will." His arm went around her tenderly. "I shall always try to make you happy. I promise it, Azeela. Always, as long as we live."

"Beloved," she murmured. "Beloved, who always understands."

Rogers had been talking to George and Dee. He left them to attend to the motors. Dee was watching the scene beneath the plane; as they fled back through the centuries the great city was melting away.

"Your city that we're going to," she said after a long silence. "George, is it like this? Are we almost to its time now?"

"No," he laughed. "It's a very little, puny city I have to show you, Dee. I used to think it was wonderful. But it's only a conceited child--learning as fast as it can and thinking it knows everything. I used to be like that myself. But this sort of trip changes one."

She did not answer.

"I'm glad you're coming back with us, Dee."

"Yes," she said abstractedly.

"Dee," he persisted out of another silence, "I wonder if you know how happy it makes me to have you--here where we're going. I've wanted to tell you for a long time--maybe you don't know how I feel. I--"

* * * * *

On this return journey, the plane had now reached the height of its time velocity. The swiftly changing form of the city blurred the scene into a confusion of shifting details, among which only the broadest fundamentals were discernible. The northern section of Central Park presently lay open. Then the great building that covered its southern end melted into nothingness, and trees and water were in its stead.

George was at the dials. "One hundred years! We're almost into our own century!"

Through decreasing intensities of the proton current, they slackened their time velocity. The park, whitened with winter, turned green again as the previous summer was reached. Soon the days separated from the nights. The sun came up from the west, plunged swiftly across the sky, and dropped into the east.

It was spring, but the retrogression soon brought winter again. A January snowfall lay white beneath the naked trees of the park. But it was autumn in a moment.

Rogers was watching the dials closely. Summer again; then spring. In one of the brief periods of night he threw the switch to the first intensity. The plane began drifting to the south. The dim stars were swinging eastward in a murky sky. The city lights shone yellow.

The roof of the Scientific Club came into view among the buildings south of the plane. Rogers threw off the current completely.

"Look, Dee!" cried George. "Look, Azeela! There it is at last! See the board enclosure?"

* * * * *

An evening in March. In the large living room of the Banker's Park Avenue apartment, a group of his friends were gathered. Dinner was over; a butler was serving coffee and the men were lighting their cigars.

A woman and four men--all in evening dress--were sitting in a group; mingled with their voices came the soft, limpid tones of a piano. It stood in a secluded alcove--a grand piano of carved mahogany. On a bench before its keyboard, a young man in a Tuxedo was playing. George. Dee stood beside him, leaning against the instrument. She was gazing first at the page of music with a puzzled frown, then at his fingers as they roamed the keys, and then, in admiration, at his face.

On a high-back davenport before an open fireplace, Loto sat with Azeela. There was an artificial black flower in her spun-gold hair; the mourning custom of her time world. Her milk-white throat was bare, and the blue of her dress was mirrored in her eyes. She was silent, staring into the flames licking upward from the huge logs.

"That's very pretty music," she said finally. "So big an instrument--this piano as you call it--you never would think one could play it."

"Chopin," he answered. "A piece by Chopin. George plays Chopin mighty well. Azeela, there is so much I have to show you. Just that one little thing--Chopin, for instance. I want you to hear the music of some of the great composers and pianists."

"And the opera," she prompted. "And you promised you would take me to a theater."

"I will, of course. There are so many things for you to see. Why, it will be just like a new world, a new life that you're just beginning, Azeela."

"Yes," she murmured. "A new life in a new world. It seems like that already."

"And wait till you ride in the subways! You'll be surprised how--"

But she shuddered. "I do not believe I want to do that. It would bring back memory of the cavern...other things."

George and Dee left the piano and walked over to the fireplace. Azeela moved over on the davenport. Loto stood up, but George shook his head.

"Thanks. Dee and I thought we'd try the window seat."

Across the room the Big Business Man, the Doctor, and the Banker were demanding additional details from Rogers.

"That Toroh and his Noths were in the cavern at Orleen" the Banker said gruffly. "Can't you keep the thing straight? I want to hear it consecutively--not jumped around in this way."

Ensconced in the window seat, George and Dee gazed out at the yellow lights of the city around them--a city so different from anything Dee could have even imagined.

There was a soft, rose-shaded light beside the girl. George was not looking out of the window, but at her. He had seen Dee in many costumes, but never, he thought, was she so beautiful as right now.

A girl of his own time world. He had not realized that this was the way he had always wanted her to look. Her dress, dropping to a few inches above her ankles, was soft and clinging. Her black hair, like Azeela's, was dressed high on her head. Like Azeela, too, she wore the dark mourning flower. The soft light beside her cast a flush on her milk-white throat and cheeks.

Feeling his gaze, she turned.

"You like the way Lylda has clothed me? It feels very strange."

"Yes," he said. "You look beautiful, Dee."

She turned back to the window in confusion. From below, the hum of the city floated up to them; the raucous sirens of automobiles.

"Yes," he repeated. "I do like it very much, Dee."

Abruptly his arms were around her; he was kissing her.

"George! Some one will see us!"

"No," he protested. "No, they won't. Anyway suppose they do? I don't care--do you?"