CHAPTER FIVE

When I came to, I was still lying where I had fallen. Striking my head had knocked me out momentarily. I heard voices; some one was kneeling beside me. I opened my eyes, but everything was black. I remember feeling my head; It was not cut. I was unhurt, and I struggled to a sitting position. Whoever it was beside me, now stood up and moved away. The girl's voice came to me out of the darkness. The low words were unintelligible--yet they were words not wholly unfamiliar in ring.

The darkness was full of little darting red spots. And my eyes pained me; the backs of my eyeballs were burning. I was blind. I had thought the light in the room had suddenly been extinguished, and a vague idea that my antagonist could see in the dark had possessed me. But it wasn't so. He had blinded me with the tiny flash of light that had struck into my eyes.

My head was still reeling from the blow it had received when I fell. They carried me, half conscious, into some other room, and left me lying on something soft. I closed my eyes, but I could not shut out those darting red spots. At last, I must have drifted off to sleep.

When I awoke it was morning. The red glow of the sunrise was coming in through a small aperture up near the ceiling. I could see it; the blindness had passed. My head was still ringing and my eyes still pained me, but I was uninjured. I was on a low couch, with a fur rug under me. My overcoat lay beside me on the floor. The whole thing seemed like a dream, but finally I got it straightened out in my mind.

I was in a fairly large bedroom. Two windows of heavy transparent material were up near the ceiling. Opposite the windows was a doorway with a curtain. I slipped into my overcoat, searching its pockets. My cap was there, but the compass and the flashlight were gone and my Collinger had already been taken from me.

The storm outside seemed to have passed. The house was dead silent. I went to the curtain; beyond it was a small hall, empty, and with another curtain at its further end. This I pushed aside cautiously. I was looking into the main living room of the house, and met the direct gaze of a man who was lounging there.

I dropped the curtain hastily, but he had seen me and sprung to his feet--a powerful man, taller than myself, with gray, loose-fitting trousers and naked torso. I retreated back to the bedroom; the fear of what he might do to me, blind me or worse, made me anything but anxious to encounter him again.

He followed and was upon me, twisting me by the shoulders to face him. He was a man of about thirty-five with black hair, long to the base of his neck; a smooth-shaven, strong, rugged face; keen gray eyes beneath black, bushy brows; a nose a little like a hawk, and a wide mouth with thin lips. It was the sort of face that bespoke power and cruelty--a nature born to dominate its fellows. His gaze was searching, puzzled. I knew he was trying to make me out--wondering what manner of man I was, and where I had come from. He spoke to me. I could not understand the words, but again I got the impression that they were familiar English words spoken differently. I answered him. I don't remember what I said, but he frowned and pushed me from him, toward the couch.

I had decided to appear docile. I stumbled to the couch and sat down on it. He stood in the center of the room, regarding me, and I managed what I hoped might be an ingratiating smile. This seemed to appeal to him, for he smiled back. Then he swung about and left the room.

For a while I sat quiet. The girl--where she was I did not know. I would have escaped without her if I could, but escape did not seem possible; at least, it was more of a risk than I cared to take. The feeling came to me that even now as I sat on the couch, I might be observed. How could I tell whether someone was watching me from behind some hidden orifice, through which, as I turned my gaze that way, that tiny, blinding beam of light would spring at me?

It was too big a chance. I would wait, and when I knew better what I had to contend with, watch for an opportunity to escape.

The room was fairly light now, with that queer, reddish light. I could see the sky, brilliant with a glorious red sunrise, through the little windows overhead. I moved the table and climbed on it; outside was snow, tinged with red. I was at an east end of the house, perhaps next to the girl's room.

At a corner of the building nearby sat one of the dogs--like a gigantic shaggy wolf, quiet but alert. His head was fully six feet above the ground as he sat there, squatting on his haunches. He heard me open the window, and trotted quietly over to look at me. My fascinated stare met his eyes squarely--eyes that seemed to hold an almost uncanny human intelligence. He seemed satisfied with the situation, for he trotted back to the corner of the house and sat down again. But he was still watching me.

I dropped to the floor. The incident had left me shuddering. What manner of brutes were these, with gleaming, tusk-like teeth, dripping jowls and a power in those tremendous muscles that must have far exceeded the strongest horse! And eyes that might have been human! At that moment, escape seemed further away than ever.

For three days they fed me in that room. A woman came mostly. She wore a loose, shapeless robe of dark cloth. It was dowdy-looking. Her hair was iron-gray, long to her waist, twisted into a bundle and bound with strips of dark cloth. Her face was thin, careworn. She brought me my food; some kinds of cooked meats and starchy vegetables, like potatoes. She was kind enough, but grim, as though I were an unpleasant task that her conscience made her discharge punctiliously.

I tried to talk to her, but she couldn't understand me, nor I her. Afterward, I learned she was the older man's old maid daughter. The old man himself came in a few times; a smooth-shaven, stalwart man of about seventy, dressed in wide, flowing trousers and naked above the waist. Sometimes he wore a short little house jacket. His name was Bool. The younger man--the master of the house--was named Toroh. He came in and sat by me a few times, always intent on seeing that I was properly cared for. But there was no mistaking the fact that he would have killed me without compunction had I annoyed him; and I could not forget his sardonic laughter when he had blinded me.

I've been telling you about my first three days in the house. I did not see the girl except once, just for a moment. I was not held to the room, although I stayed there almost constantly. And one or the other of those dogs was outside all the time. After the first day, I grew bold enough to go into the living room.

Once, when I was sitting alone in the main room, the girl entered. She stood in the doorway, and for the first time I realized how small and slight she was. She looked almost Egyptian--I mean her manner of dress. She was wearing a blue-colored cloth wound wide about her hips, with a dull red sash hanging knee-length down one side; sandals on her bare feet; breastplates of metal, and a broad, low-cut collar of cloth with little coins on it that widened to cover her shoulders. And her golden hair was parted forward over her shoulders in plaits that ended with little tassels.

She was standing there staring at me, and this time there was no fear in her eyes--only curiosity. My heart leaped; it was what I hoped for most. I could do nothing toward planning to get her out of the house as long as she continued to be afraid of me.

I smiled at her in as inoffensive and friendly a fashion as I could. Her eyes fell, then came up and I could see she was wondering at my clothes; my shoes, trousers, shirt and tie. Abruptly I realized that, except for my garb, I probably did not look extraordinary or frightening to her. The thought gave me new courage. I stood up, and spoke. At once she turned and ran from the room.

We were a strange household, but after a time, except for having my meals alone, I found I could move about pretty freely. Once Toroh brought me my electric torch, and, making sure I did not aim it at him, he made me light it. I knew he believed it a weapon. I thought this a good chance to convince him I was friendly. I smiled and shined it into my eyes, to show him it was harmless. He grunted and, taking the flashlight from me, tossed it across the room, indicating it was of no use or further interest.

Then he produced my Collinger and made me show him how to operate it. But he was too clever to let me hold it; he did not let it get out of his hands. When he had fired it at a mark out the doorway, he grunted again and laid it on the snow. At a distance of twenty feet he stood with some object in his hand which he did not show me. Abruptly the Collinger flew into fragments! All its cartridges had been exploded simultaneously. The bullets whistled past us, startling Toroh as much as they did me. Later I learned he had exploded it by something akin to radio. He picked up the remains and when he got back into the house, he tossed my broken weapon away disdainfully. It was the attitude a soldier of today might have toward an Indian warrior and his bow and arrow.

Toroh, I learned later, thought I had come from another planet. He had seen my plane the morning I hovered over the house. No one from another planet had been to the earth for centuries. But history told of them, and he thought I was one of them, come again. He treated me kindly enough--probably because I did not anger him or cross him in any way. But I had seen him strike the girl in the face, and one day he struck the woman. I have never seen such a look of sullen, repressed hatred as she gave him. She seemed to hate her father, too. Later, I often saw him cuff her when she annoyed him.

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.

Anglo-Saxons with a strain of Latin had settled on this palm-covered, tropical island long before the conditions farther north had become so drastic. They kept to themselves and fought against the pollution of their blood by others; they were descendents of the highest type of Earth civilization.

For centuries they were left to themselves, to drift along in their own fashion. But with the coming of the cold, the mixed races of the north began moving down--coveting the island. Then these island people suddenly sprang into activity. Defense of the homeland brought action; lost arts of war were revived. The Anglese--that is as near the sound of their word for themselves as I can get--repulsed all comers.

To the north was now a climate that held snow from September to June. Only three brief months availed for agriculture. The mixed peoples there did not rise to master such rigors. Centuries of struggle turned them almost primitive, with arts and sciences and ways to conquer their environment lost and forgotten. They became barbarians.

Such is the condition as I have found it. I can give you details only of our northern half of the western hemisphere. Transportation is back nearly to the primitive; the rest of the world is almost unknown to Azeela's race.

Toroh, I've learned now, is an Anglese, but they banished him. He was plotting to overthrow the government. When he was banished, he went among the barbarians of the north and began organizing them for an attack on the island. Toroh has scientific knowledge; up there in the north he has been manufacturing weapons. Then he came back to the island secretly, and abducted Azeela. She's the daughter of Fahn, the leading scientist of the Anglese--he's the man who holds the reins of power. With Azeela as hostage, Toroh planned to make Fahn yield.

But now that I have released Azeela, Toroh's attack will come swiftly. That is why I send you this message. Toroh is a menace--the greatest figure of evil in this time-world. There will be war, a struggle in which the Anglese may go down before the onslaught of Toroh and the hordes of barbarians with whom he has allied himself. Oh, I can't tell you all the details...I'm too tired.

I'll stop now, and send this message back to you in the cube. And, Father, you know what we arranged--that you would come and join me if I needed you. Well, I do; I need you here now.

As we agreed, I will raise a light-beam signal, which will mark the exact point in space and the exact moment in time at which I want you to be here.

For me, that moment _is now_!

So as soon as I dispatch this message off to you, I shall raise the signal. It will be at the southeastern tip of our island. For you geographically, it will be about Miami. From that point in space, you cannot fail to see it, if your time-flight is slow enough. I will hold it in the sky for as long as I can, so that it will have enough duration for you not to miss it.

Please tell _Mamita_ not to worry about me, or about you either. We will both come back to her safely. You may bring one or two of our friends who wish to make the trip. I think that George will want to come and I would like to have him. You need bring no weapons; they would be worse than useless.

_Please hurry, Father. I need you!_