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Title: Flight into Super-Time
Date of first publication: 1932
Author: Clark Ashton Smith (1893-1961)
Date first posted: July 1 2012
Date last updated: July 1 2012
Faded Page eBook #20120701

This eBook was produced by: Delphine Lettau, Mary Meehan
& the online Distributed Proofreaders Canada team at http://www.pgdpcanada.net




                     FLIGHT INTO SUPER-TIME

                     BY CLARK ASHTON SMITH


Some who read this narrative will no doubt remember the disappearance of
the eccentric millionaire Domitian Malgraff and his Chinese servant Li
Wong, which provided the newspapers of 1940 with flamboyant headlines
and many columns of rumor and speculation.

Reams were written concerning the case; but, stripped of all reportorial
embellishments, it can hardly have been said to constitute a story.
There were no verifiable motives nor explanatory circumstances, no clues
nor traces of any kind. The two men had passed from all mundane
knowledge, between one hour and the next, as if they had evaporated like
some of the queer volatile chemicals with which Malgraff had been
experimenting in his private laboratory. No one knew the use of these
chemicals; and no one knew what had happened to Malgraff and Li Wong.

Few, perhaps, will consider that any reliable solution of these problems
is now afforded through the publication of the manuscript received by
Sylvia Talbot a year ago in the fall of 1941.

Miss Talbot had formerly been affianced to Malgraff, but had broken off
the engagement three years prior to his disappearance. She had been fond
of him; but his dreamy disposition and impractical leanings had formed a
decided barrier from her viewpoint. The youth had seemed to take his
dismissal lightly and had afterwards plunged into scientific researches
whose nature and object he confided to no one. But neither then nor at
any other time had he shown the least inclination to supplement by his
own efforts the huge fortune inherited from his father.

Regarding his vanishment, Miss Talbot was as much in the dark as
everyone else. After the breaking-off of the engagement she had
continued to hear from him at intervals; but his letters had grown more
and more infrequent through his absorption in unnamed studies and
labors. She was both surprised and shocked by the news of his
disappearance.

A world-wide search was made by his lawyers and relations; but without
result. Then, in the late summer of 1941, the strange vessel containing
the aforesaid manuscript was found floating in the Banda Sea, between
Celebes and the Spice Islands, by a Dutch pearler.

The vessel was a sphere of some unknown crystalline substance, with
flattened ends. It was eighteen inches in diameter and possessed an
interior mechanism of miniature dynamos and induction coils, all of the
same clear material, together with an apparatus resembling an
hour-glass, which was half-filled with a grey powder. The outer surface
was studded with several tiny knobs. In the very center, in a small
cylindrical compartment, was a thick roll of greenish-yellow paper on
which the name and address of Miss Sylvia Talbot were plainly legible
through the various layers of the sphere. The writing had been done with
some sort of brush or an extremely heavy pen, in pigment of a rare shade
of purple.

Two months later, the thing reached Miss Talbot, who was startled and
amazed when she recognized the writing as that of Domitian Malgraff.

After many vain experiments, by manipulating certain of the exterior
knobs, the vessel was opened; and it came apart in two hemispheric
sections. Miss Talbot found that the roll of paper contained a
voluminous letter from Malgraff, written on yard-long sheets. This
letter, with the omission of a few intimate paragraphs and sentences, is
now offered to the public in obedience to the writer's wish.

Malgraff's incredible tale, of course, is easily enough to be explained
on the ground of imaginative fabrication. Such, in the opinion of those
who knew him, would be far from incompatible with his character. In his
own whimsical and fantastic way, he is said to have been something of a
joker. A new search has now been instituted, on the supposition that he
may be living somewhere in the Orient; and all the isles adjacent to the
Banda Sea will be carefully examined.

However, certain collateral details are somewhat mysterious and
baffling. The material and mechanism of the sphere are unfamiliar to
scientists, and are still unexplained; and the fabric on which the
letter was written, as well as the pigment used, have so far defied
analysis. The paper, in its chemical composition, seems to present
affinities with both vellum and papyrus; and the pigment has no
terrestrial analogue.

       *       *       *       *       *

THE LETTER

Dear Sylvia:

You have always considered me a hopeless dreamer; and I am the last
person who would endeavor or even wish to dispute your summary. It might
be added that I am one of those dreamers who have not been able to
content themselves with dreams. Such persons, as a rule, are unfortunate
and unhappy, since few of them are capable of realizing, or even
approximating, their visionary conceptions.

In my case, the attempted realization has led to a singular result: I am
writing this letter from a world that lies far-off in the two-fold
labyrinth of time and space; a world removed by many million years from
the one wherein you live, the one whereto I am native.

As you know, I have never cared greatly for the material things of
earth. I have always been irked by the present age, have always been
devoured by a sort of nostalgia for other times and places. It has
seemed so oddly and capriciously arbitrary that I should be _here_ and
not _otherwhere_, in the infinite, eternal ranges of being; and I have
long wondered if it would not be possible to gain control of the laws
that determine our temporal or cosmic situation, and pass at will from
world to world or from cycle to cycle.

It was after you dismissed me that my speculations along such lines
began to take a practical turn. You had told me that my dreamings were
no less impossible than useless. Perhaps, among other things, I desired
to prove that they were not impossible. Their utility or inutility was
not a problem that concerned me, nor one which any man could decide.

I shall not weary you with a full recountal of my labors and researches.
I sought above all else to invent a machine by which I could travel in
time, could penetrate the past or the future. I started from the theory
that movement in the time-dimension could be controlled, accelerated or
reversed by the action of some special force. By virtue of such
regulation, one would be able to move forward or backward along the
æons.

       *       *       *       *       *

I shall say only that I succeeded in isolating the theoretic
time-force, though without learning its ultimate nature and origin. It
is an all-pervading energy, with a shorter wavelength than that of the
cosmic rays. Then I invented a compound metal, perfectly transparent and
of great toughness, which was peculiarly fitted for use in conducting
and concentrating the force.

From this metal I constructed my machine, with dynamos in which I could
develop an almost illimitable power. The reversal of the force,
compelling a retrograde movement in time, could be secured by passing
the current through certain rare volatile chemicals imprisoned in a
special device resembling a large hour-glass.

After many months of arduous effort, the mechanism stood completed on
the floor of my Chicago laboratory. Its outward form was more or less
spherical, with flattened ends like those of a Chinese orange. It was
capable of being hermetically sealed, and the machinery included an
oxygen-apparatus. Within, there was ample room for three people amid the
great tubular dynamos, the array of chronometric dials, and the board of
regulative levers and switches. All the parts, being made of the same
material, were transparent as glass.

Though I have never loved machinery, I surveyed it with a certain pride.
There was a delightful irony in the thought that by using this
super-mechanical device I could escape from the machine-ridden era in
which I had been born.

My first intention was to explore the future. By travelling far enough
in forward time, I expected to find one of two things: men would either
have learned to discard their cumbrous and complicated engines, or would
have been destroyed by them, giving place to some other and more
sensible species in the course of mundane evolution.

However, if the human future failed to inveigle me in any of its phases,
I could reverse the working of the time-force and go back into the æons
that were posterior to my own epoch. In these, unless history and fable
had lied, the conditions of life would be more congenial to my own
tastes. But my most urgent curiosity was concerning the unknown and
problematic years of ages to come.

All my labors had been carried on in private, with no other aid than
that of Li Wong, my Chinese cook, valet and housekeeper. And at first I
did not confide the purpose of the mechanism even to Li Wong, though I
knew him to be the most discreet and intelligent of mortals. People in
general would have laughed if they had known what I was trying to do.
Also there were cousins and other relations, all enviously watchful of
my inherited wealth ... and a country full of lawyers, alienists and
lunatic asylums. I have always had a reputation for eccentricity; and I
did not choose to give my dear relatives an opportunity which might have
been considered legally sufficient for the well-known process of
"railroading."

I had fully intended to take the time-voyage alone. But when I had
finished building the machine, and all was in readiness for departure, I
realized that it would be impossible to go without my factotum, Li Wong.
Apart from his usefulness and trustworthiness, the little Chinaman was
good company. He was something of a scholar in his own tongue, and did
not belong to the coolie class. Though his mastery of English was still
imperfect, and my knowledge of Chinese altogether rudimentary, we had
often discussed the poetry and philosophy of his own land, as well as
certain less erudite topics.

Li Wong received the announcement of our projected journey with the same
blandness and aplomb which he would have shown if I had told him we were
going into the next state.

"Me go pack," he said. "You want plentee shirt?"

Our preparations were soon made. Apart from the changes of raiment
suggested by Li Wong, we took with us a ten days' supply of provisions,
a medicine kit, and a bottle of brandy, all of which were stored in
lockers I had built for the purpose. Not knowing what we might find, or
what might happen by the way, it was well to be prepared for
emergencies.

All was now ready. I locked Li Wong and myself within the time-sphere,
and then sat down before the instrument-board on which the controlling
levers were ranged. I felt the thrill of a new Columbus or a Magellan,
about to sail for undiscovered continents. Compared with this, all
former human explorations would be as the crawling of emmets and
pismires.

Even in the exultation of that moment, though everything had been
calculated with mathematical precision, had been worked out to an
algebraic degree, I recognized the element of uncertainty and danger.
The effect of time-travelling on the human constitution was an unknown
quantity. Neither of us might survive the process of acceleration in
which lustrums and decades and centuries would be reduced to mere
seconds.

I pointed this out to Li Wong. "Maybe you had better stay behind after
all," I suggested.

He shook his head vigorously. "You go, I go," he said with an
imperturbable smile.

Making a mental note of the hour, day and minute of our departure, I
pulled a lever and turned on the accelerative force.

       *       *       *       *       *

I had hardly known what to anticipate in the way of physical reactions
and sensations. Among other contingencies, it had even occurred to me
that I might become partially or wholly unconscious; and I had clamped
myself to the seat to avoid falling in case of this.

However, the real effect was very strange and unforeseen. My first
feeling was that of sudden bodily lightness and immateriality. At the
same time, the machine seemed to have expanded, its walls, dynamos and
other portions were a dim and shining blur, and appeared to repeat
themselves in an endless succession of momentary images. My own person,
and that of Li Wong, were multiplied in the same manner. I was
indescribably conscious of myself as a mere flickering shadow, from
which was projected a series of other shadows. I tried to speak, and the
words became an indefinitely repeated echo.

For a brief interval the sphere seemed to be hanging in a sea of light.
Then, incomprehensibly, it began to darken. A great blackness pressed
upon it from without; but the outlines of everything within the sphere
were still visible through a sort of luminosity that clung to them like
a feeble phosphorescence.

I was puzzled by these phenomena and, in particular, by the outside
darkness, for which I could not account. Theoretically, the days and
night through which we were passing at such supreme velocity would merge
in a sort of greyness.

Centuries, æons, _kalpas_ of time, were going by in the strange night.
Then, mysterious as the darkness, there came a sudden, blinding glare of
light, intenser than anything I had yet known which pervaded the sphere,
and died away like a lightning-flash. It was followed shortly by two
lesser flashes, very close together; and then the outer gloom returned
once more.

I reached out, with a hand that became a hundred hands, and succeeded
somehow in turning on the light that hung above my instrument board and
chronometric dials. One of these dials was designed to register my
forward motion in time. It was hard to distinguish the real hands and
figures in the ghostly blur by which they were surrounded; but somehow,
after much poring, I found that I had gone onward into the future for no
less than twenty thousand years!

Surely this would be enough, at least for the initial stage of my
flight. I groped for the levers, and turned off the accelerative power.

Instantly my visual sensations became those of a normal
three-dimensional being in normal time and space. But the feeling of
lightness and immateriality still persisted. It seemed to me that I
should have floated in mid-air like a feather, if it had not been for
the metal clamps that held me to the seat.

I heard the voice of Li Wong, whom I had practically forgotten for the
moment. The voice came from above! Startled, I saw that the Chinese,
with his wide sleeves flapping ludicrously, had floated upward and was
bobbing about in the air, trying vainly to recover his equilibrium and
re-establish his feet on the floor!

"Me fly all same sea-gull," he tittered, seeming to be amused rather
than frightened by his novel predicament.

What on earth had happened? Was the force of gravity non-existent in
this future world? I peered out through the glassy walls, trying to
determine the geographical features of the terrain in which we had
landed.

It must be night, I thought, for all was darkness, shot with a million
cold and piercing stars. But why were the stars all around us, as well
as above? Even if we were on a mountain-top, we should be surrounded by
the vague masses of remote nocturnal horizons.

But there were no horizons anywhere--only the swarming lights of
irrecognizable constellations. With growing bewilderment, I looked down
at the crystalline floor, and beneath me, as in some awful gulf, there
swam the icy fires of unknown galaxies! I saw, with a terrific mental
shock, that we were suspended in mid-space.

My first thought was that the earth and the solar system had been
annihilated. Somewhile during the past twenty thousand years, there had
been a cosmic cataclysm; and Li Wong and myself, moving at inconceivable
speed in the abstract time-dimension, had somehow managed to escape it.




CHAPTER II

A Bizarre World


Then, like a thunderclap, there came the realization of the truth.
_The sphere had moved only in time_; but, in the interim, the earth and
the sun had been travelling away from us in space, even as all stellar
and planetary bodies are said to travel. I had never dreamt of such a
contingency in all my calculations, thinking that the laws of
gravitation would keep us automatically in the same position relative to
the earth itself at which we had started. But evidently these laws were
non-effective in the ultra-spatial dimension known as time. We had
stood still in regard to ordinary space, and were now separated from the
earth by twenty thousand years of cosmic drift! Considered as a
time-machine, my invention was a pretty fair vehicle for instellar
transit.

To say that I was dumfounded would only prove the inadequacy of human
words. The feeling that surged upon me was the most utter and abominable
panic that I have ever experienced. The sensations of an explorer lost
without a compass amid the eternal, unhorizoned ice of some Arctic
desert would have been mild and infantile in comparison. Never before
had I understood the true awfulness of inter-sidereal depth and
distance, of the gulf wherein there is neither limitation nor direction.
I seemed to whirl like a lost mote on the winds of immeasurable chaos,
in a vertigo of the spirit as well as of the body.

I reached out for the lever that would reverse the time-energy and send
the sphere backward to its starting-point. Then, in the midst of all my
panic, of all my violent fear and topsy-turvy confusion, I felt a
reluctance to return. Even in the bleak abyss that yawns unbridgeable
between the stars, I was not allured by the thought of the stale and
commonplace world I had left.

I began to recover something of stability, of mental equipoise. I
remembered the bright flashes that had puzzled me. These, I now
realized, had marked the passage of an alien sun and planetary system,
coinciding in its orbit with the former position of the earth in space.
If I went on in abstract time, other bodies would doubtless occupy the
same position, in the everlasting drift of the universe. By slowing the
movement of the sphere, it might be feasible to land on one of them.

To you, no doubt the sheer folly and madness of such a project will be
more than obvious. Indeed, I must have been a little mad, from the
physical and psychic strain of my unparalleled experience. Otherwise,
the difficulties of the landing which I so coolly proposed to
myself--not to mention the dangers--would have been glaringly manifest.

I resumed the time-flight, at a speed reduced by half. This, I
calculated, would enable me to sight the next approaching orb in time to
prepare for landing.

The darkness about us was unbroken for an interval of many ages. It
seemed to me that eternity itself had gone by in the rayless void, ere a
brilliant glare of light betokened a nearing sun. It passed us very
close, filling half the heavens for an instant. Apparently there were no
planets--or, at least none that came within sight.

Steadily we went on in time; till I ceased to watch the dial with its
blurred and multiplied ciphers. I lived only in a dream of unreal and
spectral duration. But somehow, after awhile, I knew that more than a
million years had been traveled by the sphere.

Then, suddenly, another solar orb swam up before us. We must have passed
through it, for the sphere was briefly surrounded by an incandescent
flame, that seemed as if it would annihilate us with its intolerable
flare. Then we were out of it, were suspended in black space, and a
smaller, gleaming body was hurtling toward us.

This, I knew, would be a planet. I slowed the sphere to a rate of speed
that would permit me to examine it. The thing loomed upon us, it whirled
beneath us in a riot of massed images. I thought that I could
distinguish seas and continents, isles and mountains. It rose still
nearer, and appeared to surround us with swirling forms that were
suggestive of enormous vegetable growths.

My hand was poised in readiness on the lever that would terminate our
flight. As we swung dizzily amid the swirling forest, I brought the
machine to a full stop, no doubt risking an instant destruction. I heard
a violent crash, and the vessel rocked and reeled deliriously. Then it
seemed to right itself, and stood still. It was lurching half to one
side, and I had nearly been wrenched from my seat, while Li Wong was
sprawling in an undignified position on the floor. But nevertheless, we
had landed!

       *       *       *       *       *

Still giddy, and trying to regain my equilibrium, I peered through the
crystalline walls on a weird and exuberant tangle of bewildering
plant-forms. The time-machine was lodged between the swollen,
liver-colored boles of certain of these plants and was hanging four or
five feet in air above a pink and marshy soil from which protruded like
sinister horns the brownish-purple tips of unknown growths.

Overhead, there were huge, pale, flabby leaves with violet veinings in
which I seemed to detect the arterial throb of sluggish pulses. The
leaves depended from the bulbous top of each plant like a circle of
flattened arms from a headless torso.

There were other vegetable forms, all crowding and looming grotesquely
in the green, vaporous air whose density was such as to give almost the
appearance of a submarine garden to the odd scene. From every side I
received a confused impression of python-like rattans, of poddy,
fulsome, coral-tinted fronds and white or vermilion fungoid blossoms
large as firkins. Above the jungle-tops, an olive-golden glimmering in
the thick atmosphere betokened the meridian rays of a muffled sun.

My first feelings were those of astonishment--the scene before me was a
source of giddiness to eye and brain. Then, as I began to distinguish
new details in the medley of towering, outlandish shapes, I conceived a
super-added emotion of horror, of veritable disgust.

At intervals there were certain immense, bowl-like flowers, supported on
strong, hispid stems of a curious tripodal sort, and hued with the
ghastly greens and purples of putrefying flesh. In these bowls the squat
bulks of mammoth insects--or, rather, of what I took to be such at the
moment--were crouching in an evil immobility with strange antennæ and
other organs or members hanging down over the rims of the bowls.

These monsters appeared to mock the cadaverous coloring of the flowers.
They were inexpressibly loathsome, and I shall not endeavor to describe
their anatomy with any degree of minuteness. I shall, however, mention
the three snail-like horns, ending in ruby-red eyes, that rose above
their bodies and watched the forest around them with a baleful
vigilance.

About the base of each of the tripodal stems, I perceived the carcasses
of quaint animals, lying in a circle, in varying stages of
decomposition. From many of these carrion, new plants of the same type
as the bowl-flowers were issuing, with dark, ghoulish buds that had not
yet unfolded.

As I studied these plants and their guardians with growing repulsion, a
six-legged creature, something between a wart-hog and an iguana, emerged
from the jungle and trotted past within a dozen feet of the
time-sphere. It approached one of the bowl-shaped blossoms, and sniffed
at the hairy triple stem with a thin ant-eater snout. Then, to my
horror, the squatting form in the bowl sprang forth with lightning
rapidity and landed on the spine of the hapless animal. I saw the flash
of a knife-like sting that was buried in the grotesque body. The victim
struggled feebly, and then lay supine, while its assailant proceeded to
make use of an organ that resembled the ovipositor of the ichneumon-fly.

All this was highly revolting; and even more repulsive was my discovery
that the insect-form was actually a part of the flower in which it had
been reposing! It hung by a long, pallid, snaky rope, like a sort of
umbilical cord, from the center of the tilted bowl; and after the
hideous thing had finished with its victim, the cord began to shorten,
drawing the monster back to its lurking-place. There it squatted as
before, watching for fresh prey with its ruby eyes. It was damnably
obvious that the plant belonged to a semi-faunal genus and was wont to
deposit its seeds (or eggs) in animal bodies.

I turned to Li Wong, who was surveying the scene with manifest
disapprobation in his almond eyes.

"Me no likee this." He shook his head gravely as he spoke.

"Can't say that I care much for it, either," I returned. "Considered as
a landing-place, this particular planet leaves a good deal to be
desired. I fear we'll have to go on for a few more million or trillion
years, and try our luck elsewhere."

I peered out once more, wondering if the other plant-types around us
were all possessed of some disagreeable and aggressive character or
ability, like the bowl-flowers. I was not reassured when I noticed that
some of the serpentine rattans were swaying sluggishly toward the
time-sphere, and that one of them had already reached it and was
creeping along the wall with tiny tendrils that ended in suction-cups.

Then, from amid the curling vapors and crowding growths, a bizarre being
appeared and ran toward the time-machine, barely avoiding one of the
cord-suspended monsters as it launched itself from a tall blossom. The
thing fell short of its intended prey by a mere inch or two, and swung
horribly in mid-air like a goblin pendulum before it was retracted by
the long, elastic cord.

       *       *       *       *       *

The aforesaid being was about the height of an average man. He was
bipedal, but exhibited four arms, two of which issued from either side
of his elongated, pillar-like neck and the other two from positions
half-way down on his wasp-waisted thorax. His facial features were of
elfin delicacy, and a high, fluted comb of ivory rose from his broad and
hairless crown.

His nose, or what appeared to be such, was equipped with mobile feelers
that hung down beside his tiny puckered mouth like Oriental mustaches;
and his round, discoid ears were furnished with fluttering,
streamer-like diaphanous membranes, thin as strips of parchment, on
which were curious hieroglyphic markings.

His small, sapphire-brilliant eyes were set far apart beneath ebon
semi-circles that seemed to have been drawn with pigment on his pearly
skin. A short cape of some flossy vermillion fabric served to cover his
upper body; but, apart from this, there was nothing that one could
distinguish as artificial raiment.

Avoiding several more of the plant-monsters, who lunged viciously, he
neared the time-machine. Plainly he had seen us; and it seemed to me
that his sapphire eyes implored us for succor and refuge.

I pressed a button which served to unlock and open the door of the
sphere. As the door swung outward, Li Wong and I were assailed by
numerous unearthly smells, many of which were far from pleasant. We
breathed the surge of an air that was heavy with oxygen and was also
laden with the vapors of unfamiliar chemical elements.

With a long, flying leap, the strange entity sprang in air and gained
the crystal sill of the open machine. I caught the flexible
three-fingered hands of his lower arms and drew him to safety. Then I
closed the door, just as one of the cord-hung monsters hurtled against
it, breaking its keen, steely-looking sting and staining the clear metal
with a rill of amber-yellow venom.

"Welcome, stranger," I said.

Our guest was breathing heavily; and his facial feelers trembled and
swayed with the palpitation of his fine, membranous nostrils. Apparently
he was too breathless for speech; but he made a series of profound
inclinations with his crested head, and moved his tenuous fingers with
fluttering gestures that were somehow expressive of regard and
gratitude.

When he had recovered his breath, and had composed himself a little, he
began to talk in a voice of unearthly pitch, with sharp cadences and
slowly rising intonations which I can compare only to the notes of
certain tropic birds. Of course, Li Wong and I could only guess at his
meaning, since the words, wherever distinguishable as such, were totally
different from those of any human tongue or dialect.

We surmised, however, that he was thanking us and was also offering us
an explanation of the perils from which we had rescued him. He seemed to
be telling us a lengthy tale, accompanied with many dramatic gestures of
an odd but eloquent sort. From certain of these, we gathered that his
presence in that evil jungle was involuntary; that he had been abandoned
there by enemies, in the hope that he would never escape from the
wilderness of monstrous plants.

By signs, he told us that the jungle was of enormous extent, and was
filled with growths that were even more dreadful than the bowl-flowers.

Afterwards, when we had learned to understand the language of this
quaint being, we found that our surmises had been correct; but the
narrative, in its entirety, was even stranger and more fantastical than
we had imagined.

As I listened to our guest, and watched the swiftly weaving movements of
his four hands, I became aware that a shadow had fallen upon us,
intercepting the green, watery light of the blurred heavens. Looking up,
I saw that a small air-vessel, of discoid form, surrounded with turning
wheels and pointed wings that whirred like the sails of a windmill, was
descending toward us and was hovering just above the time-machine.

Our guest perceived it also, and broke off abruptly in his
story-telling. I could see that he was greatly alarmed and agitated. I
inferred that the air-vessel belonged, perhaps, to his enemies, to the
very beings who had left him to a cruel doom in that fearsome terrain.
No doubt they had returned to make sure of his fate; or else their
attention had in some manner been attracted by the appearance of the
time-sphere.

The alien ship was now hanging near the tops of the giant plants between
whose boles the sphere had become lodged in landing. Through the silvery
whirl of its wings and rotating wheels, I saw the faces of several
entities who bore a general likeness to our guest, and were plainly of
the same racial type. One of these beings was holding a many-mouthed
instrument with a far-off resemblance to the Gatling gun, or
mitrailleuse, and was aiming it at the time-machine.

Our passenger gave a piercing cry, and clutched my arm with two of his
hands while he pointed upward with the others. I required no
interpreter, and no lengthy process of reasoning, to understand that we
were in grave danger from the foreign vessel and its occupants. I sprang
immediately to the instrument board, and released the lever that would
send us onward in time at the utmost speed of which the machine was
capable.




CHAPTER III

The Flight Through Time


Even as I pulled the lever, there came from the ship a flash of cold
and violescent light that seemed to envelop the time-sphere. Then all
things in the world without were resolved into a flying riot of
formless, evanescent images, and around us once more, after a brief
interval, was the ebon darkness of interstellar space. Again the ship
was filled with momentary, repeated phantoms, to which were added those
of our curious guest. Again the dials, the levers and the dynamos
multiplied themselves in a dim, phosphorescent glow.

Later, I learned that our flight into forward æons had saved us from
utter annihilation only by the fraction of a second. The force emitted
by the many-mouthed weapon on the air-vessel would have turned the
sphere into vanishing vapor if we had sustained it for more than a
moment.

Somehow, I managed to clamp myself into the seat once more, and sat
watching the weirdly manifolded hands and ciphers that registered our
progress in universal time. Fifty thousand years--a hundred thousand--a
million--and still we floated alone in the awesome gulf of the
everlasting cosmic midnight. If any suns or planets had passed us during
the interim, they had gone by at a distance which rendered them
invisible.

Li Wong and the new passenger had clutched at the handles of the lockers
in which our provisions were stored, to keep themselves from drifting
aimlessly about in mid-air. I heard the babble of their voices, whose
every tone and syllable was subdivided into a million echoes.

A peculiar faintness came upon me, and a dream-like sense of the unreal
and irrational attached itself to all my impressions and ideas. I seemed
to have gone beyond all that was conceivable or comprehensible, to have
overpassed the very boundaries of creation. The black chaos in which I
wandered was infinitely lost from all direction and orientation, was
beyond life itself or the memory of life; and my consciousness seemed to
flicker and drown in the dark nullitude of an incommensurable void.

Still we went on along the ages. On the far-off, receding earth, as well
as on other planets, whole civilizations had evolved and elapsed and
been forgotten, and many historical epochs and geological eras had gone
by. Moons and worlds and even great suns had been destroyed. Travelling
down their eternal orbits, the very constellations had all shifted their
stances amid the infinite. These were inconceivable thoughts; and my
brain was overwhelmed by the mere effort to visualize and comprehend
their awfulness.

Strangest of all was the thought that the world I had known was lost not
only in sidereal immensity, but in the rayless night of a remote
antiquity!

With more than the longing of a derelict sailor, adrift on chartless
seas, I desired to feel underfoot once more the stable soil of _terra
firma_--no matter where, or what. We had already made one landing in the
dizzy labyrinth of time and space; and somewhere, somehow, among the
æons through which we were passing, another cosmic body might offer
itself, intersecting in its spatial path our own position in abstract
time.

Again, as before our initial landing, I slowed our progress to a rate
that would allow inspection of any sun or world we might happen to
approach.

There was a long, dreary interval of waiting, in which it seemed that
the whole universe, with all its systems and galaxies, must have gone by
us and left us hanging alone in the void that lies beyond organized
matter. Then I became aware of a growing light; and, retarding the
time-machine still further, I saw that a planet was nearing us; and
beyond the planet were two larger fiery bodies that I took for a binary
system of ours.

Now was our opportunity, and I determined to seize it. The new planet
whirled beneath us, it rolled upon us amain, as we still moved in time
at a rate whereby whole days were reduced to minutes. A moment more, and
it rose from the gulf like some gigantically swelling bubble to surround
us with a maze of half-cognizable imageries. There were Atlantean
mountain-tops through which we seemed to pass, and seas or level deserts
above which we appeared to hover in the midst of broken cloud-strata.
Now, for an instant, we were among buildings, or what I assumed to be
such; then we were hurled onward to a broad, open space. I caught a
confused glittering of many-pointed lights and unidentifiable, thronging
forms, as I reached out and brought the sphere to a sudden halt.

As I have said before, it was a perilous thing to stop thus in
accelerated time above a moving planet. There might well have been a
collision that would have destroyed the machines; or we might have found
ourselves embedded beneath fathoms of soil or stones. Indeed, there were
any number of undesirable possibilities; and the only wonder is that we
escaped annihilation.

As it was, we must have come to a halt in mid-air, perhaps fifteen or
twenty feet above the ground. Of course, we were seized immediately by
the gravitational influence of the new world. Even as my
sense-impressions cleared with the cessation of the time-flight, we fell
with a terrible, ear-splitting crash, and the sphere almost seemed to
rebound and then rolled over, careening on its side. I was torn from my
seat by the shock of impact, and Li Wong and our passenger were hurled
to the floor beside me. The stranger and myself, though sorely bruised
and shaken, contrived to retain consciousness; but I saw that Li Wong
had been stunned by the fall.

       *       *       *       *       *

Giddily, with swaying limbs and reeling senses, I tried to stand up,
and somehow succeeded. My first thought was for Li Wong, who was lying
inert against the tilted dynamos. A hasty examination showed me that he
was uninjured. My second thought was for the time-machine, whose tough
metal revealed no visible damage. Then, inevitably, the world into which
we had fallen in a manner so precipitate was forced upon my attention.

We had come down in the very center of what appeared to be an active
battle-field! All around us was a formidable array of chariot-like
vehicles, high-wheeled and high-bodied, drawn by quaint monsters that
recalled the dragons of heraldry, and driven by beings of an unearthly
kind who were little more than pygmies.

There were many foot soldiers, too, and all were armed with weapons such
as have never been used in human history. There were spears that ended
in curving, saw-toothed blades, and swords whose hilts were in the
middle, and spiked balls at the end of long, leathern thongs, which were
hurled at the enemy and then drawn back by their owners. Also, each of
the chariots was fitted with a catapult, from which similar balls were
flung.

The users of these weapons had paused in the midst of what was plainly a
ferocious battle, and were all staring at the time-machine. Some, I saw,
had been crushed beneath the heavy sphere as it plunged among them.
Others had drawn back, and were eyeing us doubtfully.

Even as I surveyed this singular scene, with bewilderment that permitted
no more than a partial cognizance of its baffling details, I saw that
the interrupted combat was being resumed. The monster-drawn chariots
swayed back and forth, and the air was thick with flying missiles, some
of which hurtled against the walls of the sphere. It seemed, perhaps,
that our presence was having an effect on the morale of these fantastic
warriors. Many of us who were nearest to the sphere began to retreat,
while others pressed forward; and I was able for the first time to
distinguish the members of the two factions, who obviously belonged to
different races.

Those of one faction, who were all foot-soldiers armed with spears and
swords, were seemingly a rude barbaric type. They outnumbered the others
greatly. Their fearsome, uncouth features were like graven masks of fury
and malignity; and they fought with a savage desperation.

Their opponents, who comprised all the chariot-drivers, as well as a
smaller body of foot-soldiers, were more delicate and civilized in
appearance, with slighter limbs and anatomies. They made a skillful use
of their catapults; and the tide of the battle seemed to be turning in
their favor. When I perceived that all those who had been struck down by
the time-machine belonged to the more barbarous type, I inferred that
possibly our apparition had been construed as favorable to one faction
and inimical to the other. The catapult-users were gaining courage; and
the spear and sword bearers were becoming visibly demoralized.

The combat turned to an ever-growing rout. The corps of chariots
gathered in a crushing mass about the time-sphere and drove the enemy
swiftly back, while, in the heat of conflict, a barrage of singular
weapons continued to assail our hyaline walls.

Ferocious-looking as they were, the dragons seemed to take no active
part in the struggle, and were plainly mere beasts of draught or burden.
But the slaughter was terrific; and crushed or trodden bodies were lying
everywhere. The role of _deus ex machina_ which I appeared to be playing
in this outlandish battle was not one that I should have chosen of my
own accord; and I soon decided that it would be better to fare even
further afield in universal time.

I pulled the starting-lever; but, to my confoundment and consternation,
there was no result. The mechanism in some manner had been jarred or
disconnected by the violence of our fall, though I could not locate the
precise difficulty at that moment. Afterwards, I found that the
connection between the instrument-board and the dynamos had been broken,
thus rendering the force inoperative.

Li Wong had now recovered consciousness. Rubbing his head, he sat up and
appeared to be pondering our remarkable _milieu_ with all the gravity of
an Oriental philosopher. Our passenger was peering out with his
brilliant sapphire eyes on this world to which he was no less alien than
Li Wong and myself. He seemed to be eyeing the odd warriors and their
dragon-teams with a cool, scientific interest.

The more civilized of the two factions was now driving its enemies from
the field in a tide of carnage. Our sound-proof walls prevented us from
hearing the crash and rumble of chariot-wheels, the clangor of clashing
weapons, and the cries that were doubtless being emitted by the
warriors.

Since nothing could be done at the moment to repair our machinery, I
resigned myself, not without misgivings, to an indefinite sojourn in the
world whereon we had landed so fortuitously.

       *       *       *       *       *

In perhaps ten minutes the raging battle was over, the unslain remnant
of the barbarians was in full flight, and the conquerors, who had poured
past us in an irresistible torrent, were returning and massing about the
sphere at a little distance.

Several, whom I took for commanding officers, descended from their cars
and approached us. They prostrated themselves before the machine in the
universal posture of reverence.

For the first time, I was able to form an exact impression of the
appearance of these beings. The tallest of them was barely four feet in
height, and their limbs, which were normal in number according to human
ideas, were slender as those of elves or leprechauns. Their movements
were very swift and graceful, and were seemingly aided by a pair of
small wings or erigible membranes attached to their sloping shoulders.

Their faces were marked by a most elaborate development of the nostrils
and eyes; and the ears and mouths were little more than vestigial by
contrast. The nasal apparatus was convoluted like that of certain bats,
with mobile valves arranged in rosettes, and a nether appendage that
recalled the petals of a butterfly orchid. The eyes were proportionately
enormous and were set obliquely.

They were furnished with vertical lids and possessed a power of
semicircular rotation and also of protrusion and retraction in their
deep orbits. This power, we learned later, enabled them to magnify or
reduce any visual image at will, and also to alter or invert the
perspective in which it was seen.

These peculiar beings were equipped with body-armor of red metal marked
off in ovoid scales. Their light-brown arms and legs were bare. Somehow
their whole aspect was very gentle and un-warlike. I marvelled at the
prowess and bravery which they had shown in the late battle.

They continued their obeisances before the time-machine, rising and
prostrating themselves anew, in an alternation like a set ritual with
gestures and genuflections of hieratic significance. I conceived the
idea that they regarded the machine itself as a conscious, intelligent
and perhaps supernal entity; and that we the occupants, if perceived at
all, were considered as internal and integral parts of the mechanism.

Li Wong and I began to debate the advisibility of opening the door and
revealing ourselves to these fantastic devotees. Unluckily, I had
neglected to provide the sphere with any device for determining the
chemical composition of other-world atmospheres; and I was not sure that
the outside air would prove wholly suitable for human respiration. It
was this consideration, rather than any actual fear of the mild, quaint
warriors, that caused me to hesitate.

I decided to defer our epiphany; and I was about to resume my
examination of the deranged machinery, when I noticed an ebullition in
the massed ranks of soldiers that were drawn up around us at some little
distance. The ranks parted with a swift, flowing motion, leaving a wide
lane through which, presently, a remarkable vehicle advanced.

The vehicle was a sort of open platform mounted on numerous low, squat
wheels, and drawn by a dozen of the dragon-creatures, arranged in teams
of four. The platform was rectangular, and the small, castor-like wheels
served to elevate it little more than a foot above the ground. I could
not determine its material, which was copperish in color and suggested a
heavily metallic stone rather than a pure, smelted metal. It was without
furnishings or superstructure, aside from a low breastwork at the front,
behind which three drivers stood, each holding the separate reins of a
tandem of monsters. At the rear, a strange, outward-curving arm or crane
of some black, lustrous material ending in a thick disk, rose high in
the air. One of the elfin people stood beside this crane.

With exquisite and admirable skill, the drivers brought their unwieldy
conveyance forward in a sweeping arc through the empty space between the
time-vessel and the surrounding army. The devotees of the sphere, who
must have been commanding officers, retired to one side; and the
monster-hauled vehicle, passing us closely, was adroitly manuevered and
drawn about till it came to a halt with its rear end opposite the sphere
and the black arm inclining above our very heads with its heavy
horizontal disk.

The being who stood beside the curving arm began to manipulate an oddly
shaped and movable projection (which must have been a sort of lever or
control) in its dark surface. Watching him curiously, I became aware of
a sudden and increasing glare of light overhead; and looking up, I saw
that a lid-like cover was sliding back from the disk at the arm's end,
revealing a fire-bright substance that dazzled the eye.

Simultaneously, I felt a sensation of corporeal lightness, of growing
weightlessness. I reeled with vertigo, and reaching toward the wall in
an effort to steady myself, I floated buoyantly from the floor and
drifted in mid-air. Li Wong and the stranger, I perceived, were
floundering eerily and helplessly about amid the machinery.

Perplexed by this phenomenon of degravitation, I did not realize at
first that there had been a similar levitation of the time-sphere
itself. Then, as I turned in my aerial tumbling, I saw that the sphere
had risen from the ground and was now on a level with the floor of the
strange conveyance. It occurred to me that an unknown magnetic force was
being emitted by the bright disk above our heads.

No sooner had I conceived this idea than the outward-curving arm began
to rotate, swinging back upon the vehicle of which it formed a part; and
the time-machine, as if suspended by invisible chains, swung with it,
maintaining a vertical position beneath the moving disk. In a trice, it
was gently deposited on the platform. Then, like the switching-off of a
light, the glaring disk was covered again by its dark lid, and the
properties of normal weight returned to my companions and to me.




CHAPTER IV

The Great Battle


The whole process of loading the sphere upon the platform had been
accomplished with remarkable celerity and efficiency. As soon as it was
completed the three drivers, in perfect concert, reined their animals
about in a long semicircle, and started off on the route by which they
had come. Moving at considerable speed, we rolled easily along the wide
lane that had been opened through the quaint army. The chariots and
foot-soldiers closed behind us as we went; and looking back, I saw them
wheel about and reform, with the chariots in the van. Passing through
the outmost ranks, we took the lead, and the whole army followed us in
martial order across a low plain.

I was struck by the seeming discrepancy between the preter-human control
of gravitation possessed by this curious people, and their somewhat
primitive modes of warfare and conveyance. Judging them, as I did, by
terrestrial standards, I could not reconcile these things; and the true
explanation was too bizarre and fantastic for me to have imagined it
beforehand.

We proceeded toward our unknown destination, with the dragons trotting
at a leisurely pace that covered more ground than one would have
expected. I began to observe the surrounding _milieu_ and to take note
of much that had escaped me heretofore.

The plain, I saw, was treeless, with low hummocks and intervals of
winding mounds, and was wholly covered with a short, lichenous growth
that formed a kind of yellow-green turf. One of the two suns was hanging
at meridian; and the other was either just rising or setting, for it
hovered close to a far-off horizon of glaucous hills. The sky was tinted
with deep green, and I saw that this color was due to the combined light
of the suns, one of which was azure blue and the other verging upon
amber.

After we had gone on for several miles and had passed a row of
intervening hummocks, I beheld a strange city in the near distance, with
low mushroom domes and peristyles of massive pillars that gleamed like
rosy marble in the sunlight amid plots of orange and indigo and violet
vegetation.

This city proved to be our objective. It was thronged with people, among
whom we passed on the dragon-drawn platform, borne like the trophies of
a triumph. The buildings were roomy and well-spaced and were
characterized by deep porticoes with swelling, bulbous columns. We
learned subsequently that the material used in their construction was a
sort of petrified wood, belonging to a genus of giant prehistoric trees,
that had been quarried in enormous blocks.

After passing through many streets, we neared, in what was apparently
the center of the town, a huge circular edifice. It consisted of a
single dome upborne on rows of open, colossal pillars, with an entrance
broad and high enough to admit with ease the vehicle on which the
time-sphere was being carried. We rolled smoothly through the portals
and along a level pavement beneath the vast dome.

The place was illumed by the horizontal rays of the sinking yellow sun,
which fell on the ruddy floor in broad shafts between the massy pillars.
I received an impression of immense empty space, of rosy-golden air and
light. Then, in the center, as we went forward, I saw a sort of dais on
which stood an extraordinary machine or contrivance of parti-colored
metals, towering alone like an idol in some pagan fane.

The dais, like the building, was circular, and rose four or five feet
above the main pavement. It was perhaps sixty feet in diameter, and
there were several stairs, graduated to the steps of the pygmy people,
that gave access to it. Around the dais, in semi-circles on the
pavement, with ample space between, there stood many low tables,
supported on carven cubes and with benches about them, all of the same
material as the edifice itself. The tables were set with numerous black
pots, deep and shallow and multiform, in which grew flowers of opulent
orange and cassava colors, together with others of delicate white, of
frail pink and silvery green.

These details I perceived hastily and confusedly as our conveyance moved
on toward the central dais without endangering any of the tables. A
sprinkling of people, who gave the impression of menials, were hurrying
about the place, bringing new flower-pots or re-arranging certain of the
ones that had already been disposed. Many of the elfin warriors,
dismounting from their chariots, had followed us through the great
portals.

Now the vehicle had drawn up beside the dais. By the operation of the
black arm with its magnetic disk, the time-machine was lifted from the
platform and deposited on the dais not far from the tall contrivance of
multi-colored metals. Then, circling the dais, the vehicle withdrew with
its dragon-team and vanished through the open entrance.

       *       *       *       *       *

Whether the place was a temple or merely a public hall, I could not
decide. It was like the phantasmagoria of some bewildering dream, and
the mystery of it all was not solved when I noticed that hundreds of the
faery people were seating themselves at the flower-laden tables and
were bending toward the blossoms with a regular contraction and
expansion of their voluted nostrils, as if they were inhaling delicious
perfumes. To complicate my bewilderment still further, I could
distinguish nothing on any of the tables in the form of food,
nourishment or even drink, such as these heroic warriors might well be
expected to require after an arduous battle.

Dismissing temporarily the baffling enigma, I turned my attention to the
peculiar mechanism which occupied the dais together with the
time-sphere. Here, too, I found myself at a loss, for I could not even
surmise its nature and purpose. I had never seen anything like it among
the most ingenious, pernicious and grotesque inventions of terrene
mechanics.

The thing was quite gigantic, with a bristling, serried and fearsome
array of highly polished rods and pistons. It had long, spiral bands and
abrupt, angular flanges, behind which I made out the half-hidden
outlines of a squat cylindrical body, mounted or at least seven or eight
ponderous legs that terminated in huge pads like the feet of
hippopotami.

Above the complicated mass there towered a sort of triple head, or
superstructure of three globes, one above the other on a long metal
neck. The heads were fitted with rows of eye-like facets, cold and
bright as diamonds, and possessed numerous antennæ and queer, unnameable
appendages, some of great length. The whole apparatus had the air of
some mysterious living entity--a super-machine endowed with sentience
and with intellect; and the three-tiered head with its chill eyes
appeared to watch us malignly and inscrutably like a metal Argus.

The thing was a miracle of machinery; and it gleamed with hues of gold
and steel, of copper and malachite, of silver and azurite and cinnabar.
But more and more I was impressed by an evil and brooding intentness, an
aura of the sinister and the inimical. The monstrosity was
motionless--but intelligent. Then, as I continued my inspection, I saw a
movement of the foremost legs, and became aware that the machine was
advancing stiffly on its massive pads toward the time-vessel.

It paused at an interval of five or six feet, and put out a long, thin,
supple, many-jointed tentacle from the mass of appendages that adorned
its topmost head. With this tentacle, like a raised whip, it struck
smartly several times at the curving wall of the sphere.

I could not help feeling somewhat alarmed as well as puzzled; for the
action was unmistakably hostile. The blows of the tentacle were somehow
like a challenge--the equivalent, so to speak, of an actual slap in the
face. And the wary movement with which the machine stepped back and
stood facing us, after delivering the whip-sharp blows, was curiously
like the manuever of a fighter, squaring himself for combat. The thing
seemed almost to crouch on its elephantine metal legs and pads; and
there was an air of covert menace in its poised array of mysterious,
deadly-looking parts and appendages.

At this moment there occurred a singular interruption which, in all
likelihood, was the means of averting our death and the destruction of
the time-globe. A group of the elfin people, four in number, ascended
the stairs of the dais and approached us, bearing among them a large
vessel, like an open shallow urn or deep basin, which was filled to the
brim with a sluggish, hueless liquid, suggesting immediately some sort
of mineral oil. Behind this group there came a second, carrying another
vessel full of the same oleaginous fluid.

The two delegations, moving forward in perfect unison, deposited their
burdens at the same instant, with the same peculiar genuflections,
setting one of the basins before the time-sphere and the other at the
feet of the belligerent alien mechanism. Afterwards they retired
discreetly as they had come. The whole performance had the air of a
religious rite--a sacrificial offering, intended to appease doubtful or
angry deities.

Not without inward amusement, I wondered what use the time-sphere was
supposed to make of the oily liquid. It seemed probable that we and our
conveyance were regarded as a single mechanism, active and intelligent,
and perhaps similar in kind to the curious robot we had found occupying
the dais.

The latter machine, however, was manifestly familiar with such
offerings; for, without acknowledgment or ceremony, it proceeded to
stoop over and dip certain of its metal proboscides in the oil. These
organs, I perceived, were hollow at the ends, like the trunks of
elephants; and I saw that the liquid in the basin was diminishing
rapidly, as if it were being sucked up.

When the vessel was half empty, the monster withdrew its proboscides;
and then, by the simultaneous use of these members, turning and coiling
with great suppleness in different directions, it began to oil the
innumerable joints and flanges of its intricate machinery. Several times
it suspended this remarkable process, eyeing the time-sphere balefully
as if watching for a hostile movement. The whole performance was
inconceivably grotesque and ludicrous--and sinister.

The main floor of the huge pillared hall, I now saw, had filled with the
pigmy warriors, who were seated about the flower-burdened tables. All of
them seemed to be inhaling the odors of these flowers in a manner that
resembled actual ingustation; and I conceived the idea that they were
regaling themselves with a feast of perfumes and perhaps required no
other nutriment.

       *       *       *       *       *

Turning from this quaint spectacle, to which I had given only a
cursory glance, I perceived that the metal monster had apparently
finished the anointing of its complex machinery and was again posting
itself in an attitude preparatory for battle. There was a stealthy
turning of half-hidden wheels and cogs, a covert throbbing of well-oiled
pistons, as the mechanism faced us; and certain of its tentacles were
poised in air like lifted weapons.

What would have happened next, in the normal course of events, I am not
altogether sure; but the probabilities are that we would have been
blotted out of existence very promptly, efficiently and summarily.
Again, by a singular intervention, the time-vessel was saved from the
anger of its strange antagonist.

Without warning, there came a flash of brilliant blinding flame, as if a
thunderbolt had issued from mid-air between the dais and the dome. There
was a crashing, shivering noise that shook and penetrated our virtually
sound-proof walls; and everything about us seemed to rock with the
convulsions of a violent earthquake. The concussion hurled us back upon
our dynamos; and I thought for an instant that the sphere would be flung
from the dais. Recovering myself, I saw that a third machine had
materialized on the dais, opposite the time-sphere and its opponent!

This machine differed as much from the hostile robot as the latter, in
its turn, differed from the time-globe. It was a sort of immense
polyhedron, with an arrangement of numberless facets alternately opaque
and transparent. Through some of the facets, clearer than glass, I was
horrified and astonished to behold the thronging faces of entities
similar to, or perhaps identical with, the beings who had threatened us
from the air-vessel in that far-off world where we had picked up our
unusual passenger.

There could be only one explanation: we had been pursued through the
cosmic continuum by these vengeful and pertinacious creatures, who had
evidently employed a time-space vehicle of their own. They must have
possessed unique instruments of incredible range and delicacy by which
to detect and follow our course in the labyrinth of stellar gulfs and
ages! Turning to our passenger, I saw by his troubled air and frantic
gestures that he too had recognized the pursuers. Since I had not yet
been able to repair our machinery, the position in which we now stood
was a serious dilemma. We were without weapons of any kind, for it had
not even occurred to me to bring along a revolver. I began to wish that
I had fitted the time-machine with the arsenal of an American racketeer.

However, there was little time for either regret or apprehension. The
course of events was now taking an unforeseen and incalculable turn. The
formidable robot, diverted from its war-like designs upon us by the
appearance of the newcomer, had immediately squared itself around to
face the polyhedron, with its metal members raised in a flailing gesture
of menace.

The occupants of the polyhedron, on their part, seemed to disregard the
robot. Several of the opaque facets began to slide back in the manner of
ports, and revealed the yawning mouths of tubular weapons, all of which
were levelled at the time-sphere. It appeared that these people were
intent only on destroying us, after having followed us with fantastical
vindictiveness through many æons.

The robot, it would seem, construed the opening of the ports as an act
inimical to itself. Or perhaps it did not wish to yield its legitimate
prey, the time-sphere, to another and foreign mechanism. At any rate, it
bristled forward, winnowing the air with all its tentacles and
proboscides, and tramping heavily on the dais with its myriad pads, till
it stood within grappling-distance of the polyhedron.

Coils of greyish vapor were beginning to issue from valves in its
cylindrical body and pipe-like throat; and raising one of its hollow
proboscides, it snorted forth a sudden jet of crimson flame--a briefly
flaring tongue that struck an upper facet of the polyhedron, causing it
to melt and collapse inward like so much solder.

The occupants of the alien time-machine were now slewing their
tube-weapons around to face the robot. A violent fire leaped from one of
the tubes, spreading like a fan, and severing cleanly an upraised
tentacle of the monster.

At this, the angry mechanism seemed to go mad, and hurled itself at the
polyhedron like some enormous octopus of metal. Jets of scarlet fire
were issuing from several of its trunk-shaped organs, and great ruinous
rents appeared in the facets of the polyhedron beneath their incessant
playing.

Undismayed by this, the wielders of the tube-weapons concentrated their
violet beams on the robot, inflicting terrific damage. The uppermost of
the three globular heads was partly shot away, and metal filaments
trailed from its broken rim like a shredded brain. The serried array of
tossing members was torn and lopped like a flame-swept forest. Rods,
cogs, pistons and other parts dripped on the dais in a molten rain. Two
of the foremost legs crumpled in shapeless ruin--but still the monster
fought on; and the polyhedron became a twisted wreck beneath the
focussing of the red fires.

Soon several of the violet beams were extinguished, and their wielders
had dissolved into vapor and ashes. But others were still in action; and
one of them struck the central cylinder of the robot, after demolishing
the outer machinery, and bored into it steadily like an acetylene torch.
The beam must have penetrated a vital part, for suddenly there was a
tremendous, all-engulfing flare, a cataclysmic explosion.

The immense dome appeared to totter on its trembling columns, and the
dais shook like a stormy sea. Then, an instant later, there fell from a
dark cloud of swelling steam, a rain of metal fragments, glancing along
our crystalline sides and strewing the dais and the main floor for some
distance around. The monster, in its explosion, had involved the alien
time-vessel, which was wholly riven asunder; and nothing remained of our
pursuers but a few blackened cinders.

Apart from this mutual and highly providential destruction of the
inimical mechanisms, no serious damage had been done; for the main
building, I now perceived for the first time, was deserted--the pygmies
had abandoned their feast of odors and had retired discreetly, perhaps
at the very onset of the battle. The time-sphere, though it had taken no
part in the combat, was left by a singular and ironic fortuity in sole
possession of the field.

I decided that fortune, being so favorably disposed toward us, might be
tempted even further with impunity. So I opened the door of the vessel,
and found that the atmosphere of the world outside was perfectly
breathable, though laden with an odd mixture of metallic fumes that
lingered from the late explosion, and fruity and luscious fragrances
from the potted blossoms.




CHAPTER V

The World of Mohaun Los


Li Wong and the passenger and I emerged on the dais. The yellow sun
had gone down, and the place swam with the blue, religious light of its
ascendant binary. We were examining the littered ruins of the strange
machines when a large delegation of elfin warriors re-entered and
approached us. We could not divine their thoughts and emotions; but it
seemed to me that their genuflections were even more expressive of
profound reverence and gratitude than those with which the time-sphere
had been hailed after the routing of the barbarian army. I received an
almost telepathic impression that they were thanking us for a supposed
act of deliverance at which we had been merely the onlookers.

In time, this impression was to be fully confirmed. The metal monster,
it seemed, had come originally, like ourselves, from the outside
universe, and had settled itself among this perfume-eating people. They
had treated it with all due respect, had housed it in their public hall
of assembly and had supplied it liberally with certain mineral
lubricants which it required. The machine, in exchange, had deigned to
instruct them regarding a few scientific and mechanical secrets such as
that of degravitation by means of a reverse magnetic force; but the
people, being somewhat non-inventive and non-mechanical by nature, had
made little use of this robot-imparted knowledge.

The metal monster, in time, had become disagreeably exacting and
tyrannical; and moreover, it had refused flatly to help the pigmies in
their war with another people when need arose. Therefore they were glad
to be rid of it; and they seemed to take it for granted that we had made
away with the monster as well as with the invading time-machine. So far,
I have not thought it worth while to disillusion them.

No less than seven terrestrial months have now gone by since the landing
of the sphere. My companions and I are still sojourning among the
perfume-eaters; and we have no reason to complain of our lot, and no
cause to lament the worlds we have left so far behind us in time and
space.

In the interim, we have learned many things, and are now able to hold
converse with our hosts, having familiarized ourselves by slow degrees
with the peculiar phonetics of their speech.

The name of the world, as well as I can render it in human spelling, is
Mohaun Los. Being subject to the gravitational pull of two solar bodies,
it follows a somewhat eccentric and prolonged annual orbit.
Nevertheless, the climate is equable and salubrious, though marked by
meteoric phenomena of an unearthly sort.

The people among whom we are dwelling call themselves the Psounas. They
are a fine and estimable race, though bizarre from a human standpoint as
any of the mythic tribes whose anatomy and customs were described by
Herodotus. They are the ruling race of the planet, and are inconceivably
more advanced in many ways than their rude weapons and methods of
warfare would lead one to imagine. Astronomy and mathematics, in
particular, have been developed by them to a degree that is far beyond
the achievement of human savants.

Their food consists of nothing grosser than perfumes; and at first, it
was not easy to convince them that we required a more material
nourishment. However, once they had grasped the idea, they supplied us
abundantly with the meaty foods in which Mohaun Los abounds; and they
did not seem to be shocked or scandalized by our base appetites--even
though fruits and other non-atomizable matters are eaten only by animals
and the more aboriginal races of this world. The Psounas, indeed, have
shown toward us at all times a spirit of urbane tolerance and _laissez
faire_.

They are a peaceful race, and during their whole former history have had
little need to acquire the martial arts. But the recent evolutionary
development of a half-bestial tribe, the Gholpos, who have now learned
to organize themselves and to make weapons, and have become quite
aggressive as a consequence, has compelled the Psounas to take the field
in self-defense.

       *       *       *       *       *

The descent of the time-machine, falling upon their enemies during a
crucial battle, was a most fortunate happening; for these ignorant
savages, the Gholpos, regarded it as a manifestation of some divine or
demoniac power in league with the Psounas, and were henceforward
altogether broken and cowed.

The Psounas, it seems, were prone even from the first to a more
naturalistic supposition regarding the character and origin of the
time-sphere. Their long familiarity with the strange ultra-stellar robot
may have helped to disabuse them of any belief in the supernaturalism of
mere machinery. I have had no difficulty in explaining to them the
mechanism of our vessel and the voyage we have made along the æons.

My efforts, however, to tell them something of my own world, of its
peoples and customs, have so far met with polite incredulity or sheer
incomprehension. Such a world, they say, is quite unheard-of; and if
they were not so courteous, probably they would tell me that it could
not even be imagined by any rational being.

Li Wong and I, as well as the Psounas, have learned to talk with the
singular entity whom I rescued from the diabolic living flowers on a
world midway between the earth and Mohaun Los. This person calls himself
Tuoquan, and he is a most erudite savant. His ideas and discoveries,
being somewhat at variance with the notions that prevail in his own
world, had caused him to be regarded with suspicion and hatred by his
fellows; and, as I surmised, he had been abandoned by them, after due
process of law, to a cruel doom in the jungle.

The time-machine in which they had followed us to Mohaun Los was, he
believed, the only vessel of the kind that had so far been invented by
this people. Their zealous and fanatic devotion to legality and
law-enforcement would have led them to pursue us beyond the boundaries
of the universal continuum. Fortunately, there was small likelihood that
they would ever dispatch another time-machine on our trail: for the
lingering etheric vibrations that had enabled them to follow us, as dogs
follow the scent of their quarry, would die out long before they could
construct a duplicate of the unreturning polyhedron.

With the aid of the Psounas, who have supplied me with the necessary
metallic elements, I have repaired the broken connection in the
time-sphere. I have also made a miniature duplicate of the mechanism, in
which I am planning to enclose this letter and send it backward through
time, in the seemingly far-fetched and fantastic hope that it may
somehow reach the earth and be received by you.

The astronomers of the Psounas have helped me to make the needful
computations and adjustments which, indeed, would be utterly beyond my
own skill or the mathematical knowledge of any human being. By combining
in these calculations the chronometric records of the dials in the
time-sphere with the ephemerides of Mohaun Los during the past seven
months, and allowing for the pauses and changes of speed which we made
during our journey, it has been possible to chart the incredibly
complicated course which the mechanism must follow in time and space.

If the calculations are correct to the most infinitesimal degree, and
the movement of the device is perfectly synchronized, the thing will
stop at the very moment and in the very same place from which I left the
earth in retrograde time. But of course it will be a miracle if it
reaches the earth at all. The Psounas have pointed out to me a
ninth-magnitude star which they think is the solar orb of the system in
which I was born.

If the letter should ever reach you, I have no reason to think that you
will believe my tale.

Nevertheless, I am going to ask you to publish it, even though the world
in general will regard it as the fantasy of a madman or a practical
joker. It pleases an obscure sense of irony in my mental makeup, to know
that the truth will be heard by those among whom it must pass for a
fantastic lie. Such an eventuation, perhaps, will be far from novel or
unprecedented.

As I have said before, I am well enough contented with life in Mohaun
Los. Even death, I am told, is a pleasant thing in this world, for when
the Psounas wax old and weary, they repair to a hidden valley in which
they are overcome by the lethal and voluptuous perfume of narcotic
flowers.

However, it may be that the nostalgia of new ages and new planets will
seize me anon, and I shall feel impelled to continue my journey among
future cycles. Li Wong, it goes without saying, will accompany me in any
such venture: though he is quite happily engaged at present in
translating the Odes of Confucius and other Chinese classics for the
benefit of the people of Mohaun Los. (This poetry, I might add, is
meeting with a better reception than my tales regarding Occidental
civilization.)

Tuoquan, who is teaching the Psounas to make the fearfully destructive
weapons of his own world, may decide to go with us; for he is full of
intellectual curiosities. Perhaps we shall follow the great circle of
time, till the years and æons without number have returned upon
themselves once more, and the past is made a sequel to the future!

                                          Yours ever,

                                              Domitian Malgraff.

THE END

       *       *       *       *       *

        [Transcriber's Note: Publication Information]

                       WONDER Stories

                        AUGUST, 1932

                FLIGHT INTO SUPER-TIME
                _by Clark Ashton Smith_         Page 218


[The end of _Flight into Super-Time_ by Clark Ashton Smith]