CHAPTER FOUR

Occasionally, now, some brave effort seemed to be made to build the city on a different scale. There were other types of architecture, always smaller; little sections, newly built, stood heroically, surrounded by gigantic, moldy ruins. Suddenly I realized that it was a dead city at which I was staring. There were no longer changes, except those natural to the passing years. The city was deserted; its inhabitants had died or had fled--or both.

It was after five o'clock. The dials registered just short of eight thousand years. I had less to see now, and I could give my attention to other things. The ruins of a dead city do not remain long in visible existence. Two thousand years more were recorded. Beneath me the vegetation seemed untouched by the hand of man; only in a few scattered places were there any remaining ruins: a tumbledown segment of building; the broken base of a tower; skeletons of crumbling steel here and there; headstones on the grave of what once had been a city.

With these changes the contour of the landscape itself was forced to my attention. The rivers had changed; they were broader. South of Manhattan Island, and somewhat to the west, I could distinguish a great expanse of water. All the lowlands there--the "Meadows," as we call them--had sunk. To the north, the land seemed higher than normal, and an arm of the sea had crept in up there to lap the foothills.

I have not told you of the temperature I was experiencing. When I started there was an almost immediate drop--a blending of day and night, winter and summer. It penetrated into the cabin, making the ship almost cold after the warm August evening of my departure.

Now, however, at seven o'clock, when I had been gone some nine hours, I felt that it was growing noticeably colder. And the faintest suggestion of a vague whiteness began to creep into the scene below me. That is an odd way for me to phrase it. I was seeing each minute only the _effect_ of the snowfalls of thirty winters, blended with all the other seasons. The snowfalls were increasing in severity; I became aware of that in the aspect of the scene, but I cannot describe it.

It was after seven o'clock now. I had been gone about nine and a half hours. The dials showed eleven thousand four hundred and fifty odd years. I now faced a new problem: the landscape we had seen in our experiment had nothing in it of great duration. How could I find it, or tell when I had reached its time? That house in which the girl was held captive could stand no more than a hundred years, if that. And it was the only distinguishing mark in the whole scene. I would pass the lifetime of that house in a minute or two. I puzzled over this for quite a while. I had almost decided to stop and verify the actual, momentary conditions beneath me. And then I realized I still had far to go. There were trees, plenty of them, beneath me. They were constantly shifting and changing, but quite distinguishable, nevertheless. And in the enclosure about that house, Father and I had seen a tree--the only tree in the landscape. It was a curious looking tree, stunted, and with a look of the far north about it. These below me, at eleven and twelve thousand years ahead of our present, were more or less normal looking trees--or they probably would have been, had I stopped to examine them.

I still had far to travel, so I increased the current from the tenth to the fifteenth intensity. Again I was conscious of that feeling of lightness in my head, and the humming and vibration of everything increased. I had almost forgotten my personal sensations; had quite forgotten them, in fact, for several hours past.

I passed fifteen thousand years. I could see that the ocean to the north had come further inland. There was now, from my altitude, no evidence of mankind visible, nor anything to indicate that man had ever lived on this earth. The scene was more blurred now and grayer. I could still make out the bay to the south, with a range of hills on Staten Island and water behind it and to the west as far as I could see. The rivers bounding Manhattan were still there, but the Palisades along the Hudson had broken down.

Directly beneath me was forest. I believed I had not drifted much from my original position. I was still over where Central Park had been some twenty thousand years before. The forest--it was more like woods--covered a narrow rolling country between the two rivers. I knew I was moving through time much more swiftly now, perhaps twice as fast as before. The vegetation was blurred, almost distorted. It was changing constantly and, on the whole, was growing sparser, more stunted. It was as though I were traveling northward, or ascending a mountain almost to the timber line. Another interval passed. My time-velocity had so increased that once I thought I could see a hill rising. But that probably was imagination.

I had been gone some twelve hours--it was almost ten o'clock--when I realized I was about exhausted. My head was reeling; my eyes burned and watered. It was growing much colder--so cold that I switched on the electrical heating apparatus.

That was when the dials recorded between twenty and thirty thousand years. I don't remember exactly. I was confused. The scene beneath me was noticeably whiter, and I was now drifting to the south. I felt perturbed. I was going too far.

I had reached about forty-five thousand years when abruptly I realized that there was no vegetation in the scene! Just when it melted away I had not noticed. It was all a whitish blur, now, that suggested very snowy winters blended with a shorter summer season. I leaped to the control, and threw its handle back, pausing an instant at each intensity of current until I had come to the first. There I left it.

These new sensations of decreasing my time-velocity so abruptly were almost equally as severe as those when I started. The humming slowed up. My whole body seemed to be turning to lead--or freezing. I was heavy, stiff, and cold. I was standing up, and I managed to grip the side of the cabin for support, and reaching down, I threw off the switch, cutting off the current completely. There came a tremendous, soundless clap in my head; I seemed tumbling headlong into an abyss of blackness.

I do not think I lost consciousness. My senses reeled for what seemed an age, but was doubtlessly only a second or two. I fell into a chair and the horrible dizziness passed. I raised my head and looked about me.

My first impression was of the extraordinary solidity of the cabin interior. I had not realized how shadowy it had been before. Two little electric bulbs were burning overhead. They illuminated the compartment. The windows were black rectangles; It was night outside.

I was cold; I could see my breath in the chill of the room, even though one of the electric heaters was in operation. Everything close to me was oppressively silent; the humming still seemed to persist vaguely, but I knew it was only the reaction from it roaring in my ears. From the next compartment came the drone of the Frazia motors.

When I had fairly recovered normality, I went to the nearest window. The sky was blue-black. There was no moon and the stars seemed a trifle hazy. Beneath me I could make out a barren expanse of snow. I checked my compass. Its needle had steadied now, and I saw that my drift was almost directly south. The ship was moving rapidly, and I was alarmed. I knew that, even with the compass, I could easily get lost--geographically, so to speak.

My first action was to ascend. When I was up some six thousand feet I started back northward, against the wind.

I was hopelessly lost, both in time and in space. I could distinguish nothing in the starlit, snowy landscape that seemed familiar. Whether or not I had passed the time world I was seeking, I had no idea. Then I flew low, skimming the snow no more than one or two hundred feet above it. There were houses! Huts would be a better word. I think they were built of snow, but I could not tell. It seemed an Arctic world.

I knew then I had gone too far in time. I decided to stay near here in space until morning. Fortunately that proved only a short time away. Within half an hour the stars paled; twilight came and passed, and the sun rose--a huge, red, glowing ball.

I was circling about, quite high--six or eight thousand feet possibly. By this reddish light of early morning I could see the bay south of me. There was no Long Island; the ocean had closed in to the north and east, and I was near its shore--a cold, snowy beach, with lazy rollers. But west of me there was a river--the Hudson, I was sure--double the breadth of one I had known. It seemed to come from a mountainous region in the northwest, and an arm of it north of Manhattan emptied into the sea.

Everywhere there was snow. The bay was full of floating ice. Across the river was an area of stunted trees. I was over Manhattan Island, I was sure. I circled around, searching. It was not the time world I was seeking--that was obvious. Should I go on, or go back through the centuries I had passed? I decided on the latter.

I had now been away from you nearly sixteen hours. I was worn out. I flew across the river, found a level plateau to the north. There was no sign of human habitation in the vicinity. Shutting off my Frazia motors completely, I descended and came to rest on the surface of the snow, in a time world forty-six thousand and eight years beyond our present. I ate a little and, dropping to the floor of the cabin, fell asleep. Unwise maybe, but I had to take a chance.

At any rate, I awakened without having been disturbed. It was night again; I had slept some twelve hours. I flew upward, back over Manhattan Island, and threw the opposite proton current into its first intensity.

I need not go into further details. My sensations were the same as before, though they bothered me less as I grew more accustomed to them. I came back through time. At intervals I stopped and examined the landscape.

The wind was blowing almost continually from the north during all these centuries. I flew into it slowly, keeping my approximate position without great difficulty. I tried to hold myself near the south center of the island, and look northward. I was right in going back through time, I soon discovered. From close to the ground where I stopped once, I could see a rolling hill near by that had a familiar contour. I cannot describe it to you, but once I saw it from that angle, I knew it was in the landscape we had seen from the laboratory.

Then I found the tree. There was no house. No snow, either, for I had chanced then to stop in a summer season. The tree was too small. I chose a ten years later time world, and watching the dials closely, descended at a period ten and a half years later. I had struck it exactly; it must have been within a week or two from the time world Father and I had observed.

I had occupied some eight hours with this search. The dials had stopped now at twenty-eight thousand two hundred odd years. I was at that instant flying at an altitude of no more than a few hundred feet. It was again early morning, just after sunrise, and there was that familiar, snowy landscape we had seen from the laboratory.

The house, with its enclosure and outbuildings, lay below me. I circled over it, staring down through the floor window. The Frazia motors are greatly muffled, as you know, but, even so, their sound carried down to the house. A figure came out into the enclosure, and stared upward at me. It was the girl--in a fur garment, but bareheaded--watching my plane. Before I could think what to do, three huge dogs, each of them the size of a pony, came leaping from one of the outbuildings and stood in a group, snarling at me with such volume and power that they made my blood run cold.

I was circling slowly over the house, cursing my lack of caution and still too confused to do anything, when the figure of a man appeared in the enclosure, clad in furs and bareheaded like the girl. He stood head and shoulders over her. Evidently the noise of the dogs blotted out the sound of my motors. He did not look up into the air, but striding angrily to the girl, struck her in the face with the flat of his hand. Then he dragged her, cowering, into the house.

I straightened out, and flew south. The howling of the dogs died away. Without realizing where I was going, I headed down the wind. Soon I was over the water. I had risen, and in the morning light could see the landlocked bay into which the main channel of the Hudson emptied. The bay itself had an entrance to the sea almost at the river's mouth.

It was midwinter, I learned afterward. The river and the bay both seemed frozen over, with a mantle of snow on their ice. I passed above an island--Staten Island, no doubt--and mechanically swung to the west.

What was I to do? I had several rifles in the plane, as you know, and one of the latest Collinger hand guns. My instinct was to land at the house boldly, overawe its inmates with my weapons, and carry off the girl. That was a fatuous thought. I very soon realized that for all I knew they might have the power to strike me dead with some weapon totally unknown.

I was still flying west. I found myself far out over Jersey, and still I had decided nothing. There were houses beneath me and even a little village or two. But I did not heed them, though fortunately I had sense enough to ascend to a higher altitude where I could escape observation.

The sun was rising above the sea behind me, and at last I swung about to face it. As it mounted higher--it was moving at about normal speed--some of the red, glowing look was lost; it assumed more of its familiar aspects of our own time world. But still an hour above the horizon as it was now, I could stare at it quite steadily without being blinded.

I was heading east. In another ten minutes I would have been back in Manhattan. I decided that I would leave the plane secluded somewhere and approach the house on foot, quietly. If I could only elude the dogs and not arouse them, I hoped to be able to get into the house and get the girl out. I realize now it was a foolhardy plan.

I flew very low up the Hudson from its mouth. I was afraid I might be seen. Then it suddenly occurred to me how easily I could avoid that with certainty. I threw the switch of the proton current into the first and then the second intensity, and began a slow time flight forward through the day simultaneously with my flight up the river.

I found a good hiding place for the plane on the east bank of the river--a broad, flat sort of gully some two hundred feet wide. I figured this was about abreast of the house, and I lowered the plane into it. It was difficult to do because of my southward drift, but I managed it. As I neared the ground I shut off the proton current and came to rest in time and space almost at the same moment.

The sun was just setting behind a line of hills across the river. As I had not eaten for several hours, I sat in the cabin now and ate, planning exactly what I should do to rescue the girl.

You will not understand it, but as I sat there, alone, with no one to consult, it did not seem to me so desperate an enterprise. My Collinger, no bigger than your hand, would silently fire a dozen bullets in as many seconds, each capable of killing a human, or one of those dogs.

It was the dogs I was most afraid of. And yet, as I had observed from the laboratory, they did not run loose about the grounds at night, but were trained to stay in the kennel, which was some distance from the dwelling...three or four hundred feet, perhaps.

I decided to start about midnight. My clock gave a totally different hour, of course, from the correct one of that particular time world. But I was planning to leave the plane about six hours after sunset.

It was a long evening, but the time finally arrived. I put on my fur coat and went bareheaded, because I wanted to look as rational to the girl as possible. At best she would be afraid of me, a stranger--probably more afraid of me than of her captors. I realized fully what a difficulty that would be. An outcry from her, or any resistance on her part, might lose me everything. But my intentions were the best, though she could not know it.

I left the plane. Besides the Collinger, I had a hand compass and a small flashlight. It was very cold. I scrambled out through the snow, up the side of the gulley to the level land above--a climb of sixty or seventy feet. The snow was deep, with an underlying surface of ice that would support my weight. Up here on the higher land it was colder than ever. The north wind hit me full, and I had been walking no more than five minutes when it began to snow--tremendous flakes, that soon came in a thick, soft cloud, and blotted out everything around me. In my pocket I had my fur cap with ear tabs, and I soon found I would have to wear it.

I was heading across the wind, plowing through the loose snow. I could see only a few feet ahead of me. It was a pathless waste. And suddenly the whimsical thought came over me that I was crossing Fifty-ninth Street, and soon I would be near Columbus Circle. It was the same space, the same location. Nothing was different but the time--the changes time had brought.

I took out my compass and, by the light of the flashlight, I consulted it. I was heading as nearly as I could toward the house. So far as I had been able to tell before, there was no other habitation on the island. I suppose I struggled along for nearly an hour. I figured I must be in the vicinity of the house now, though I could see nothing but the snow covered ground a few feet ahead of me, the whirling flakes close at hand, and the blackness overhead. Without warning, through a rift in the clouds to the east, came moonlight; a gigantic, egg-shaped moon with a reddish tinge to it that gave the scene a lurid, extremely weird look.

The house was in sight, ahead and to the left, on a slight rise of ground no more than a quarter of a mile away. I was faced now with the necessity for a definite course of action. From the laboratory, with my telescope, I had occasionally seen the girl late at night, sitting in the central living room of the house. I had seen her through the windows, and she had always left the living room in a southeast direction. The house faced south; I felt that her room was in the southeast end. The enclosure lay mostly behind the house, toward the north, with the dog kennel in its extreme northern wall.

This was all advantageous to me. I knew I had to keep away from those dogs. With a wind of from twenty to thirty miles an hour blowing from them to me, I felt sure that they would not get my scent. My plan was to get into the house through either a sort of gateway in the southeast wall of the enclosure, or directly in through a window. I expected to locate the girl and carry here away--by force, I suppose. I was confident--absurdly so, I realize now. I think it was the enthusiasm--the excitement--of being actually engaged in what I had contemplated for two long years and had worked so hard to attain.

My heart was beating fast as I crept forward, the Collinger in my gloved hand. It was still snowing hard, and presently the clouds swept back over the newly risen moon; but I was now so close up that I could see the dark outlines of the house, and the wall of the enclosure.

The building was only one story, but quite high, with a queer looking overhanging roof. The wall of the enclosure was some ten feet high. I circled to the south, and was soon close up to the main doorway of the house. The whole place was piled with snow. There was not a sound, only the howling of the wind as it swept in gusts under the low eaves.

The glass door--I suppose it was glass--was a single rectangular pane in a dark, narrow frame. It was no more than three feet broad, and at least twelve feet high. Behind it I could see the dimly lighted interior--a soft, blue-white light. I could not see where it came from.

For quite a while I must have stood there motionless, peering in. A portion of a large room was in the line of my sight; It seemed unoccupied. I could see a back wall hung with something dark; a sort of low couch to one side; queerly shaped, low chairs and a table or two. And there was a floor covering of some thick, soft textile, and several furs lying about. A large fur rug covered the couch.

To the right I could see a low archway, hung with a curtain. That was in the direction of the girl's room. There were two other archways with curtains, but evidently no interior doors to the house.

I had been pressing against the glass pane; it seemed to give a little. I pushed. The motion was inward, and greater at the bottom. I knelt down and shoved it. The lower half swung silently and smoothly inward and upward, while the upper half came out and down. The whole twelve foot pane was pivoted at its center. When it paralleled the floor it stopped, and there was a six foot opening leading into the house.

I took a cautious step, listening intently, peering around me--behind me--with the sudden feeling that something supernatural might leap forth and spring at me any instant.

But the Collinger, my finger on the trigger, gave me courage. In my left hand I held the flashlight, and very slowly I crept toward the curtained archway behind which I hoped the girl might be. Suddenly I remembered my cap. I smiled at the absurdity of the detail, but, nevertheless, I pulled it off and stuffed it in my pocket. Then I went forward, pushed aside the curtain, and entered the space behind it.

I was in darkness as the curtain dropped. It must have been a sort of anteroom, or a short hallway, for some twenty feet ahead of me I saw another curtain with a blue radiance beyond it.

A moment more and I had pushed aside the second curtain and stood peering into the room beyond. It was more dimly lighted than the living room. Across it, in a angle of wall, the first thing my gaze caught was a low couch or divan, bathed in the blue radiance from a brazier beside it, which left the rest of the room in gloom. The girl lay there asleep. A soft, pure-white fur was covering her, but her bare arms and shoulders were above it. One arm was crooked under her head for a pillow; the other, almost as white as the rug, lay stretched out over the fur. On her breast, her golden hair lay in waves.

I stood transfixed by the ethereal loveliness of the face, calm in deep slumber. It was a small oval face of seemingly perfect features, with soft, curving red lips, smooth, rosy cheeks and long, silken lashes that lay motionless as she slept.

My emotion at the picture was short lived; other thoughts crowded up me. What was I to do? I could not awaken the girl and ask her to come with me. She would not understand the words, and if she did, she would probably have screamed before I could get them out. Seize her, stifle her cries and carry her off forcibly? Perhaps that is what I should have done; taken her to the plane and left explanations until afterward.

But I could not bring myself to do that. Somehow, my whole instinct was to retreat from the room. I felt myself a gross intruder in a sanctified place, my very gaze an insult. What I would finally have done, I don't know. Events took the decision out of my hands. The wind outside roared with a sudden gust that must have pulled loose something under the eaves. There came a rattle, a thump, loud in the silence of the house. Then the wind died again.

I glanced up to the ceiling, startled, with my heart pounding and the Collinger pointed toward the sound. I could see nothing but the dark rectangle of a window up there. My gaze fell again to the couch--and met the opened eyes of the girl. She was sitting up, her hair tumbling over her shoulders, one hand instinctively gripping the white fur to raise it more closely about her, the other pressed against her mouth. I think I could never imagine an expression of more utter terror than that on her face.

I murmured something intended to be reassuring and made the mistake of taking a step forward. It was the worst thing I could have done, for her frightened scream rang out through the house. I guess by then I was thoroughly confused. I turned back toward the curtain. I would escape from the house--come back some other time. Or should I pick her up now, and run with her? She was small, frail. I could carry her easily; escape almost as quickly with her, perhaps, as by myself. And shoot back at anyone--anything--that followed.

I found myself back at her couch. She had withdrawn to the further side of it, huddled against the wall. Her horrified eyes were on my face, but she did not scream again.

There was a noise behind me, and I swung about. The curtain was parting. There was a figure there. I could not see it plainly; it was in the darkness, and I was in the light. I aimed the Collinger, pressed the trigger. Simultaneously, a tiny pencil-point of light seemed to spring at me from where the figure was standing. A brief, very tiny but horribly intense glare flashed in my eyes.

I was in darkness; everything went black. I did not fall, but reeled sidewise. I heard a mocking laugh and footsteps coming toward me; a hand struck me across the mouth.

It is terrible to fight in total darkness. I stumbled aimlessly somewhere, and felt the Collinger twisted from me. But when I lurched in that direction, my outflung arms met only empty air. Again a hand struck me across the mouth; again that mocking laugh. My assailant was playing with me.

I was unhurt, and desperately I rushed to where I thought the room's exit might be. But strong fingers gripped my shoulder and I was flung violently sidewise. I must have struck my head against something as I went down. My senses faded; the last thing I remember was that jeering, mocking laughter floating out of the darkness.