Contents

“ATLANTIS? A fairy tale!” The man by the window half turned. “You can’t be serious.” He began that protest confidently, but that confidence ebbed when there was no change in the expression on his companion’s face.

“You saw the films of the first three runs. Did those look like the product of someone’s imagination? You have inspected all the security measures devised to make sure they were not. A fairy tale, you say.” The quiet gray-haired man leaned a little farther back in his seat. “I wonder what does lie buried at the roots of some of our traditional tales. Norse sagas, once dismissed as fiction, have long since been proven to be chronicles of historic voyages. Much of our folklore is distorted clan, tribal, or national record. Dragons—now—our planet did have an age in which armored dragons marched the earth.”

“But not in the memory of mankind!” Hargreaves came away from the window, his hands resting on his hips, his chin outthrust as if he welcomed battle, verbal at least.

“Don’t you ever wonder why certain tales have persisted, why they continue to linger over centuries, told again and again? The man-devouring dragon.”

Hargreaves smiled. “I always heard it that the proper dragon preferred a diet of tender young maidens until some doughty knight changed his mind for him with sword or lance.”

Fordham laughed. “But dragons, in spite of their dietary habits, are firmly fixed in folklore around the world. And their like did once roam the earth.”

“At a time, I repeat, which far antedated the arrival of our most primitive ancestor.”

“As far as we know,” Fordham corrected. “What I say is that there is a persistence of certain types of fairy stories. When we set up this project—and you know the reason for it—we had to have a starting point. Atlantis is one of the most lasting of our legends. It has become so much a part of our heritage that I think it is generally accepted as fact.”

“And all founded on a few sentences that were used by Plato to hang some of his arguments on.”

“But suppose that Atlantis did once exist.” Fordham picked up a pencil, turned it end to end on the pad before him, but made no markings. “Not in this world.”

“Where then? On Mars? They blew themselves up, I suppose, and left that pocking of desert craters.“

“Oddly enough, according to legend the Atlanteans did eventually blow themselves up, or the equivalent. No, right here on this planet. You have heard of the alternate history theory—that from each major historical decision two alternate worlds come into being.”

“Fantastic.” Hargreaves interrupted.

“Is it? Suppose that it is fact, that on one of those alternate time lines Atlantis did exist, just as on another dragons overlapped mankind.”

“Even if that were so, how would we know about it?”

“True. We could be separated from those lines by whole networks of major choices and decisions. Yet, suppose when we were close together, there was a kind of seepage—perhaps individuals even crossed. We have well authenticated stories of strange and unexplainable disappearances from our own world, and one or two odd people have turned up here under very peculiar circumstances. And Atlantis is so vivid a story, has so seized upon the imagination of generations, that we used it for our checkpoint.”

“Just how?”

“We fed into the Ibby every known scrap of material on the subject that is known by the modern world from the reports of geologists sounding the sea bottoms for possible ridges of a sunken continent to ‘revelations’ of cultists. And Ibby gave us an equation in return.”

“You mean you set up the probe-beam on that?”

“Exactly. And you have seen the resulting test films. Those came from Ibby’s calculations. And you’ll admit they bear no resemblance to the here and now.”

“Yes, I’ll say that much. And they were taken?”

“Right out there, over the landscape you’ve been viewing. We’re set today for a ten-minute run, the longest we have dared to try. We use the mound for a checkpoint.”

“Still having trouble over that?”

Fordham frowned. “We gave out the story that we are clearing to build an addition to the labs. This Wilson who is making all the fuss is chronically opposed to government authority. He’s built up this ‘Save our historic mound’ crusade mainly to get himself space in the city papers and to harass the project. Started a rumor last year that we were dabbling in some weird new experiment that would blow the whole county off the map. He was warmed then by the security people. But he believes this mound thing is safe. However, ‘Save our historic mound’ isn’t as good for arousing interest as ‘Look out, the eggheads are going to blow us up.’ His campaign is already running down.

“However, the mound makes a good checkpoint because it is older than any other surviving man-made landmark hereabouts.”

“What if you turn up mound builders instead of Atlanteans?”

“Well, then we’d have a better set of films than those we already possess to rivet attention on the project, though those we do have are more to our real purpose.”

“Yes,” agreed Hargreaves. “And if this does work—if we can get through ourselves.”

“We can tap natural resources, riches such as we cannot imagine in this era. We’ve plundered and wasted and used up most of the living treasures of our world. So now we have to try to pillage somewhere else. Well, shall we go to see—Atlantis?”

Hargreaves laughed. “Seeing is believing; one picture is worth a volume of words. Give me a good film to take back to Washington, and I may be able to up your current appropriation. All right—show me Atlantis.”

The weather for early December was surprisingly mild. Ray Osborne opened the collar of his leather jacket. His ex-paratrooper boots flattened ragged clumps of last season’s grass. The shadow of the Indian mound enclosed him now. Early Sunday morning—Wilson had been right in his suggestion about the time. The fence had had a gap just as he had promised. There was only one building in sight, the tower part of the hush-hush installation. And on this side of the mound, he was safely out of sight, even if anyone was on duty there.

What were they planning to build anyway—clearing it flat with bulldozers? What would people do when there was no more open country at all? Ray turned to face the mound, readying his camera for the shots he had been sent to take. His finger pressed

And, as if that had thumbed the red switch of final doom, the world went mad. Ray staggered back, aware only of intolerable pain in his head, pain associated with violet flashes that blinded him. Silence—He rubbed at his watering eyes. Mist faded, and he stood, swaying drunkenly, staring about him in stunned disbelief.

The raw wound of the clearing, the distant earthmoving machinery, and even the mound were gone! He was in the shadow, not of mounded earth, but of a towering giant tree, with another and another beyond!

Ray put out a shaking hand. He could feel rough bark—it was real! Then he began to run down a moss carpeted corridor between trees whose girth was that of monsters. “Get back!” shouted something inside his head. “Back?” asked another part of his dazed mind. Where was back?

Minutes later he burst from the dimness of that incredible forest into a grass-grown plain. A withered root protruded from the earth to send him sprawling, and he lay drawing air into his lungs with panting gasps. Soon he became aware that a hot sun beat down upon him, far too warm for winter. He pulled up to his knees to look about him.

Ahead no break in that plain, behind him the forest—nothing he had ever seen before. Where was he? Shivering, though the earth under him was warm, Ray forced himself to sit quietly. He was Ray Osborne. He had gone out to the project on Sunday morning as a favor to Les Wilson, to take some good shots of the mound to go with the article Les was writing. Shots—his hands were empty! The camera? He must have lost it back there when it happened. What had happened?

Ray dropped his head between his hands. He fought a battle with primitive panic and tried to think logically. But how can one think logically about something such as this? One minute standing in a sane, ordinary world—the next being here. And where was here?

Slowly he got to his feet, thrusting his twitching hands into the pockets of his jacket. Go back. He half turned to face that silent density of forest and knew that he could not go in there again, not yet. His heart began to thump heavily when he thought of it. Somehow this open land seemed the lesser of two evils. So he trudged on, to find a little later a break in the plain. Below was a narrow gully that housed a stream, and around that grew tall brush and saplings.

As he sought a path down the steep side, there was a crashing in the brush below. Out of that green thicket, straight at the almost perpendicular slope hurtled a dark shape. Sharp hoofs pawed frantically at the wall, bringing down soil and stones. Then, appearing to realize there was no climbing it, the creature, with a toss of its antlered head, turned to face its hunters.

Ray clutched at the grass of the verge to keep from sliding over. The hunted animal was directly below him, head low, breathing in labored snorts. But he could not believe it was real. Elk, if this huge monster could be an elk, did not run wild in southern Ohio. It had an antler spread of more than six feet and was far taller than Ray—as out of proportion as the forest trees.

From the brush leaped shaggy-coated wolfish beasts. Avoiding the reaching scoop of the elk’s antlers, the first lunged for the animal’s foreleg, clearly no novice at this wicked game. They made a running fight, dashing in to slash and then speeding away before the larger animal could well defend itself.

Ray was roused from his absorption in the battle by a shout. The hail drew one of the hounds momentarily out of the fight. It answered with a sharp bark. In a moment two-footed hunters appeared. They carried nothing Ray could identify as a weapon, though one of them had a short rod of metal. This he aimed at the throat of the cornered elk, and from its tip shot a ray of red light. Bellowing, the elk reared, to crash forward, nearly striking one of the hounds. The dogs rushed in to tear at the still quivering body, but the hunters pulled them back from the kill, sending them howling with well-aimed kicks and cuffs.

Drawing a dagger from a belt sheath, one of the men set about butchering the fallen animal. Another fastened leashes to the metal-studded collars of the hounds, while the third wrapped the fire rod in cloth and stowed it down the front of his jerkin.

All three were of medium height, but the broadness of their shoulders and the heaviness of their upper arms gave them a dwarfish look. Their coarse black hair, shoulder length, was sleeked smooth with grease and held by leather thongs. Their skin was between copper and olive in shade. Broad mouths with thick lips parting over strong yellow teeth, dark eyes, and hooked noses comprised their features.

They wore tunics of grayish leather, tanned to the flexibility of cloth, garments that reached from shoulder to mid-thigh. Over these were sleeveless metal-enforced jerkins. High thick-soled buskins covered feet and legs to the knees, but their arms were bare, save for bands of metal set with dull stones. Their wide belts supported sheathed daggers.

Ray crouched there, no longer attempting to reconcile anything he saw with reality. A dream—it must be a dream. In time he was going to wake up. Then one of the dogs discovered him. Its red eyes found the source of the strange scent that had tickled its nostrils. With a howl it flung itself to the limit of its leash. The strand of hide halted its spring. In an instant it tried again. This time the thong parted. But, like the elk before it, it could gain no foothold on the gully wall. It continued to paw futilely at the gravel, giving tongue like a mad thing.

Bewildered, Ray was easy prey. With a shout one of the hunters pointed to him. The leader whipped out the rod and aimed. Ray had turned to him. The leader whipped out the rod and aimed. Ray had turned to run, but he was never to reach that safety a foot or so more of soil might have given him. Something within him stiffened; he could not move.

Unable to stir so much as a finger, he stood impotently waiting the arrival of his captors. With the aid of their single strange weapon, they blasted a series of steps up the side of the gully. He had not died at once as had the elk; that was all he knew.

They approached him in a body, and Ray stared steadily back at them. The immobility of their heavy features and the lack of readable emotion in their opaque eyes was disquieting. Masks, Ray thought, subtly evil masks. With an icy qualm he realized he was confronting something alien, beyond the boundaries of his old sane world.

Now they circled him warily, studying their capture. The weapon-bearing leader broke the silence with an interrogation in a guttural, hissing tongue. When Ray did not reply, the man’s brutal jaw thrust forward pugnaciously.

Again he questioned, but this time in a murmur, almost sing-song. Another language, Ray guessed. His continued silence appeared to disconcert his captors a little.

At last the leader snapped an order. From his belt one of the others freed a thong of hide and stepped behind Ray, to whip his powerless wrists together and lash them tight. Still under the influence of the strange weapon, Ray was forced to submit. He was shaken with a sudden loathing at the touch of the hunter.

Once he was bound, the leader raised the rod. No beam from its tip followed, but Ray was up—frozen again. Without a backward glance, the rod bearer walked away. The hunter who had bound Ray flicked him across the shoulders with the end of that thong, pointing after. Ray’s loathing heated into anger, not only at his captors, but also somehow at the whole disaster that had befallen him. He might not know where he was or why, but the feeling that he would learn and exact payment after that learning steadied him. He found strength in his anger, and he clung to it as a drowning man might cling to a rock in the midst of a raging river.

They followed the lip of the gully for about half a mile before there was a break in the steepness of the wall. Ray, bound as he was, could not have descended their stair, and even now he hesitated over the scramble. The guard rapped him across the ribs with the flat of his long dagger to start him. But at the fourth step, Ray lost his shaky balance and tumbled forward, to slide down in a cloud of dust and gravel, ending with a knock against the trunk of a sapling, his skinned face lower than his long legs.

Surely, he thought grimly, if this was a dream, that ought to have awakened him. There was a dull ache at the base of his skull. Helpless, unable to gain his feet, he lay awaiting the pleasure of his captors.

They were leisurely in their own descent. One of them came to prod Ray up with a well-aimed kick. When he could not stand in answer to that encouragement, two of them heaved him erect. With a vicious push, which almost sent him sprawling once more, they started him on.

Blood oozed out from gravel cuts on his lips and chin, drawing the attention of small stinging flies he could do nothing to dislodge, since jerking his head about made him dizzy. When they reached the elk, he was made fast to a tree, while the hunters continued their butchery. After hacking portions of meat free, they fed .z some to the dogs and packed others in green hide. Then, one, taking some entrails, dragged them along the ground, leaving a red trail.

A short distance away, he came to a black hole in the slope with a sand mound below it. Dropping the scraps of offals there, he broke off a twig, thrust it into the n hole, and turned it around and around. Then he leaped away as a wave of large ants curled up and out.

The others had freed both Ray and the snarling hounds, and taking up the meat, they started downstream. Ray glanced back at the kill. It was buried under a heaving dark blanket.

He estimated later that they must have traveled: almost an hour before the gully widened into a regular valley. The brush, which had torn his unprotected skin and left red scratches on the hunters’ bare arms, became thickets of trees and patches of waist-high grass.

Ray’s discomfort increased with almost every step he was herded into taking. His face, scraped raw, bitten, and stung, was puffed and swollen. His eyes had, narrowed into slits in the tortured flesh. The steady ache at the base of his skull spread across his shoulders and down his back. He had lost all sense of feeling in his cramped arms. Yet in a way, he welcomed all these , torments; they kept him from his thoughts. Where was. he? What had happened? That this was a dream he could no longer believe, no matter how he held despairingly to such a hope.

The end to the need to keep staggering came at last. Abruptly the valley came to shore land, and the stream flowed on to form a miniature delta on the lip of a rolling sea. Sea?

Keen salt air roused Ray to something again approaching coherent thought. Sea? In the midst of a continent? He looked upon the pale crescent of sand with a kind of dull horror.

There could be no sea here. But then here was not his own world! He was firmly caught in a nightmare.

A hail from the beach urged his captors to a swifter pace, and they dragged him with them, one on either side to jerk him along. Down at the edge of that incredible water, smoke, thin and tenuous as morning mist, plumed up from a driftwood fire, and several dark figures stood to greet the huntsmen.

“Still say fairy tale?” Fordham did not raise his eyes from the view screen.

When Hargreaves did not answer, he glanced around. There was a frown drawing the other’s features into a pattern of angry belligerence. Fordham had witnessed that reaction before. This time he welcomed the sign of doubt battered by evidence.

“All right. I see something—trees—like those on your other films.”

“Trees?” Fordham pushed. “Do they resemble any you have seen before?”

“No.” Hargreaves’ admission came reluctantly. Fordham continued to press.

“Trees such as those,” he pointed out, “have probably not been seen in this part of the world for several hundred years. The early settlers are reported to have had their problems when they cleared this land. Sometimes it took years to remove virgin forest, stump and root.”

“All right! I’ll admit you have something, that we see a section of country through that beam which certainly is not out there now and may not have been for a long time. But time travel—Atlantis—I have to have more proof before I send in any recommendation.”

“You have the films to take back with you. I only spoke of Atlantis as a possibility—I didn’t promise it. You may merely see pre-Columbian or just pre-Revolutionary Ohio but there. We have no way yet of proving or disproving Ibby’s equation. But you’ll have to admit it is an impressive beginning.”

“I want to see the film of what we’ve just watched,”

Hargreaves said. “I want to see if I can spot the change when the beam went on.”

“Take a little time to set it up.”

Hargreaves’ scowl grew deeper. “I’ve got plenty—for this. And I want to see what I’m taking back. There’ll be a lot of questions to answer.”

“There.” Fordham settled down in the projection room. “Here we go, Now—here’s the cutting as is.”

Raw earth under the weak sunlight of winter, a bulldozer to the left throwing a shadow, the rise of the disputed mound

“I’ll admit I saw a change. I only hope that the film shows it!”

Fordham laughed. “Hypnotism? That’s what you think I’m doing? What would be the point? Unless you think I’ve ridden a hobby completely out of sane bounds. This is the first time we’ve held a beam so long—so we should have more detailed evidence.”

Hargreaves stared at the screen. “When can you.” he hesitated.

“Go over the line ourselves? So far we can only look. We don’t know about the going. We’ll have to build up a lot more power.”

“That growth of timber.” Hargreaves watched the great forest, or that portion of it the beam and film had trapped for them. “Might be a lot of other resources to be tapped. Looks like an empty world.”

“Yes, be practical. Suppose we can open a door into wherever that is, draw upon the resources there. Now—what sort of reaction do you believe you would get to a presentation before the committee if you stress that?”

“They would want to be sure it had a fifty-fifty chance of working. How soon before you will be able to make a real experiment?”

“Send someone through, you mean? I don’t know. It has taken us two years to get this far.”

Hargreaves shook his head. “Get your films; let me show them. We may be able to grant you at least half of what you asked for.”

“Generous. But I suppose to be expected.” Fordham’s words were not as grudging as they might have been. He was inwardly satisfied with his half-convert. They watched the run-through, Hargreaves well forward in his chair. There was the scar of the cutting, the mound, then a flicker, and the trees. But a sharp exclamation from Fordham broke the hum of the projector.

“Langston,” he called to the operator, “backtrack. Hold it slow just before the switch.”

“What—?” Hargreaves’ protest stopped as he looked at his companion. Fordham’s satisfaction of moments earlier had disappeared.

The scar about the mound again came into view. “To the left of the mound—right there—look!”

Hargreaves looked. A figure, difficult to distinguish, but surely a human figure, stepped within the path of the beam. That which had shown as a flicker when the film was run at normal speed now became a flash that made him blink. Then there were the trees and, surely, beside one of them still that human figure.

“Come on!” Fordham was making for the door in a surprising burst of speed for one of his age and habits. They were actually running as they passed down a hallway and into a small outside parking area. Fordham jerked at the door of his car and scrambled into the driver’s seat. And Hargreaves had just time to make it in beside him and slam the door before they skidded across the concrete, heading for the gate.

The guard saw them coming and must have had his wits about him, for he threw the automatic switch just in time. Hargreaves released his breath in a faint whistle of relief. At least Fordham had not plowed into that barrier as it looked he might do.

Luckily the road was deserted beyond, for they entered it at a prohibited speed. Caution must have caught up with Fordham somewhere along that stretch, for he slowed to turn into the lower cutting, where they bumped and skidded along the rough road of the earth movers.

Then once more the director was out and running for the mound. His fear or excitement kept him several paces ahead of Hargreaves, but when the latter rounded the end of the mound, he came upon Fordham at a dead halt. The director held a camera in his hands. But of the figure they had seen on the film, there was no sign at all.

“He’s gone!” Hargreaves stated the obvious.

Fordham looked up from the camera, his face bleak. “He’s gone, yes—out there.” He looked over his shoulder to where they had seen those rows of trees. And Hargreaves shivered, knowing how that other had gone but not where.

2

“WHERE?” Hargreaves heard himself putting that thought into words.

Fordham’s answer came in a voice hardly above a whisper. “Atlantis—perhaps.”

“But—you said that the forest could be pre-Columbian—or even later,” Hargreaves protested.

“Sure. It could be that—or anything. You saw it, and the film and you see this now.” Fordham waved the camera. “That poor fool went in, or back, or out whichever way you want to express it—and we sent him.”

“Can you get him back?” Hargreaves pushed aside speculation, reaching as ever for hard fact.

“It will take at least four days, maybe more, to build up the power in the beam again. These things have to be timed. Why do you suppose we selected this particular date and hour to try it this time? It isn’t just a matter of pressing a button to open a door. There has to be a careful working from code. Four days.” He stared around him. “And we have no way of telling how fast time passes over there. He won’t be just sitting there for four days—he has no idea that we’ll try to get him back. He may be miles away when we are ready.”

Hargreaves turned away from the mound to look out over the raw cutting. “But it will have to be done. And the sooner we get to work doing it.”

“Of course.” But Fordham sounded as if he knew already they faced a hopeless task. Hargreaves still gazed at the cut.

“Atlantis—no!” And there was determined refusal in his voice.

Ray stumbled, to sprawl face down in sand near a fireplace rudely built out of rocks. Exhausted, he was content to lie there, paying small attention to the hunters and those others who awaited them in this camp, but he was not left undisturbed.

Legs, slightly bowed, encased in boots of stiff hide to which patches of thick hair still clung, moved into his restricted line of vision. Then one of those boots was thrust under him, and he was rolled over, face up to the sky. The newcomer wore the same leather tunic as the hunters, but a kilt fashioned of metal strips clashed together as he moved. Instead of a metal-reinforced jerkin, he wore breast and back plates cast in single pieces to fit his barrel chest and wide shoulders snugly. His left arm from wrist to elbow was sheathed in a metal cuff guard, but his right was bare save for two jeweled bracelets.

He was bareheaded, and the long black strings of his hair were whipped about his face by a rising wind. But he carried in the crook of one arm a helmet with two bat like wings set in a center ridge. A sword swung at his belt. Taller than the hunters, less swarthy of skin, he seemed of a different caste. But the same emotionless mask covered his features.

After a long survey he barked an order, and one of the hunters came to slit the bonds about Ray’s wrists and pull the American to his feet. The officer asked questions and the hunter replied, with a pantomime, as well as words, explaining the capture. When he had done, the officer proceeded to interrogate his prisoner by gestures—a wide sweep of hand to the west and then one word:

Mu.

Ray shook his head. And the officer seemed disturbed at his reply. He frowned and pointed east with another question Ray did not hear very well. Suddenly the American understood—they wanted to know where he came from; that must be it.

He pointed back to where that grim forest must stand. For any more than that, they knew as much as he did about it. He was unprepared for their reaction to his answer.

The officer’s eyes narrowed as might a cat’s. His thick lips drew apart in a snarl, displaying purplish gums and yellow teeth. Then he exploded in a cackle of derisive laughter, his disbelief very plain.

Rounding on his followers, the officer made another of the hunters repeat the story of Ray’s capture. It was given as before. Then the hunter pointed to Ray’s bare head, to his wind-ruffled short brown hair, and reached out a hand still unwashed after the elk butchery to tug at the leather jacket their prisoner wore, directing the officer’s attention to it. He promptly signed for Ray to take it off: The hunter rifled its pockets, producing a handkerchief, a notebook, and a spare film pack.

In a few minutes the prisoner stood shivering in the wind, his clothing all spread out on the sand. But his captors still searched the pockets as if they were convinced he must carry some important object. One of the hunters appropriated his pocket knife; another turned his wrist watch around and around until ordered sharply by the officer to hand it over. Shaking out the handkerchief, the leader piled therein the contents of Ray’s pockets, tying it all into a bag, placing that in a wicker basket.

Ray stooped to reach for his clothing, but the officer’s hand shot out with a backhanded slap that sent him sprawling. A hunter tossed a package of hide to the captive. Hot with anger, Ray pulled on a meager garment that was rather like a kilt and utterly inadequate as protection in the growing chill of the wind. He wondered what would happen if he tried to jump the officer.

Even as his imagination supplied a few details satisfactory to him, steel fingers closed upon him again, spinning him half around as his right arm was whipped away from his body. On the pale skin of his right forearm was a small bluish circle, radiating lines, a juvenile attempt at tattooing that the years had not erased. The officer sneered as he inspected it. Then he flung Ray’s arm from him and spat.

“Mu.” Not a question now but statement.

So night came in the new world. Apparently they had some future use for him, for he was given a portion of roasted elk. Then his arms were tied again—and his ankles as well—and one of the men flung a skin coverlet over him as he tried to burrow into the sand for warmth.

Where was he? Suddenly that mattered more than how he had come here. The historic mound, then the trees, now here. Indians? But even if time travel was possible outside of fiction, these were not Indians. And the sea did not run into Ohio and—and—Ray fought the panic again rising in him, which wanted to set him running, screaming All right, he did not know how he got here, nor where here was. But his immediate problem was the hunters and what they planned to do with him. After a while his tired brain was as benumbed as his shivering body, and he slept, exhausted.

The shrill cry of a bird awoke him in the early dawn. Under a makeshift tent of cloaks, the officer snored and twitched, and a sentry nodded by a dying fire. So the dream continued. Ray attempted to sit up, but his bonds bit cruelly into his flesh. By digging his heels into the sand, he edged along until his shoulders scraped one of the boulders about the camp site. Cautiously he worked himself up to a sitting position.

In the east a faint pink deepened. A gray bird dived to seek breakfast in the waves. With a sharp nod the sentry roused, yawned, and spat noisily into the fire. Then he got to his feet, looking at Ray with an evil grin.

Opening proceedings by planting the toe of a boot in the prisoner’s ribs, he twitched Ray forward to inspect the security of his bonds before slamming him back with a jolt against the rock. Having carried out one duty, he went to stir the fire into life.

Ray shook his head. Dried blood and dust encrusted his face. A pulse throbbed heavily in throat and temple. If he could only get his hands free The officer rolled out of his tent and unbuckled the clasp that fastened his under tunic. Dropping the garment by the armor he had shed the night before, he ran out into the waves. As he splashed there, he suddenly shouted, and the rest of them came to their feet, calling and pointing to the open sea, where a black shadow cut through the blue-green.

Returning, the officer dried his body and dressed, loosing a volley of orders that sent his men into scurrying activity. One of them unfastened Ray’s ankles and hauled him to his feet.

A ship was coming, but it was unlike any vessel Ray had ever seen pictured. Perhaps half a mile off shore it halted its rush, oars flashed from its narrow sides, and it scuttled on in like a water beetle.

Ray had seen illustrations of Roman galleys, but those had also masts and sails. This only possessed bow and stern superstructures, crowned with roofs, which were also upper decks. The waist was lower, and there the rowers labored in open pits. The bow came to a sharp point set with a brightly painted figurehead.

From a slender pole on the afterdeck whipped a blood-red flag.

There was a look of power to this slim, cruel vessel, an air of grim efficiency. Whoever Ray’s captors might be, they were evidently well able to care for themselves in this strange world.

The ship came to anchor, and a few moments later a long boat swung overside to hit the water. With a rhythmical sweep of oars, it made for the shore where the hunting party waited, their bundles ready, the fire smothered in sand.

Now the officer cut the cord about Ray’s wrists. He rested his hand on the hilt of the sword in a way to be understood. To suit his captor’s convenience, the prisoner must be freed, but he would be foolish to try an escape.

Six men and an officer made up the boat crew. They shouted questions at the hunters as they splashed overboard to drag in their craft. The commander of the shore party pulled Ray forward, showing him off: It would appear that his capture was a noteworthy exploit on the part of the hunters and that the officer in the boat was openly envious. Then the hunter-officer pointed inland and asked a question to which the other nodded assent.

Unloosing their dogs, three hunters padded away while the others made for the boat. Ray climbed in clumsily, his legs and arms still stiff from his bonds, and was shoved down between two seats. They headed back to the vessel.

Nearing the flank of the ship, they warded off their boat with shortened oars until a rope ladder dropped. Two of the shore party went up, and then the ladder was thrust into Ray’s hold. He climbed awkwardly, giddy from the swing, chill with the fear of losing hold and falling, to be caught between boat and ship. The officer from the camp came behind, impatiently prodding him on.

The prisoner dropped down into the crowded waist, and behind him the officer flung up an arm to salute a red-cloaked individual. The red cloak, so like a smoldering coal, drew the eye. It was not really a cloak, Ray saw, but a long crimson robe, the color of new-shed blood, which covered a tall, very spare man from throat to heels.

Beneath the rounded dome of a closely shaven skull, large black eyes peered from either side of a jutting, beaklike nose. The mouth below was sunken, the lips puckered, and the chin had a sharp upward hook. With one earth-brown hand the man caressed the bony line of his jaw, staring not at the officer making the report but at Ray.

And under the probing of those lusterless black eyes, the prisoner suddenly felt unclean, as if something foul with slime had crept across his flesh. The hunters and their officer were brutal, but, Ray realized, this man was something he did not, could not understand, wholly alien to his own world. He experienced a shrinking inner horror under that gaze, a need to range himself against the wearer of the red robe and all he stood for. And so strong was this surge of revulsion that it frightened him.

“So—Murian.”

Ray quivered. He could not have understood those words, yet he did. Or was it only with his mind that he “heard”?

“So, Murian, like all your kind, you would stand against the Dark One? Puny follower of a dying flame, think you that we cannot link your will to ours in the end? Remember, the Bull One can trample out flame. Who can withstand his will?”

Ray shook his head, not in denial of the other’s words but in an effort to clear away the giddiness that the realization he did understand carried with it. Who was the Dark One? Murian—what was Murian?

A faint shadow of some emotion crossed the Red Robe’s mummy face. “Seek not to evade with such feeble tricks. You understand well what is said to you. Get you down with your fellow and learn humility.”

Thought reading? Well, it could be a part of the rest of this wild dream. Ray did not resist when three of the warriors standing near on him and bore him further along the waist. At the far end they spread-eagled him against the wall and made him fast by bands of iron set in the planking.

When they had left, he turned his head and saw that he had a companion in restraint. Fettered as was he, so close by that the fingers of their hands almost touched, was another captive. He drooped limply in the irons, his head fallen forward on his breast, so his long hair veiled his face. But by the rest of his appearance, he was of a different breed from the ship’s company.

His skin was no darker than Ray’s, and he was as tall. The long locks of hair were the color of polished bronze, snarled and matted and, in one place, bloodstained. A tunic of yellow, mid-thigh in length, hung in tatters from one shoulder. Its rags were confined at the stranger’s waist by a broad gem-studded belt. But there was only an empty sheath to show he had once been armed with a sword. Like the hunters, he wore high boots, but infinitely superior in workmanship. Ray wondered if the other captive was unconscious. At least they were in the same trouble and perhaps could make common cause. He hissed softly, hoping for an answer. A groan as faint as a sigh answered him. Ray hissed again, and the other stirred, turning his head with painful slowness.

The perfection of the stranger’s features, marred now by cuts and greenish bruises, was remotely like that of some Greek statue, Ray thought. But no son of Argos had ever possessed such high, wide cheekbones, nor the heavy, drooping lids that. half concealed blue eyes. He stared at Ray, amazed, and then his battered lips worked. In the soft speech the hunters had once used, the stranger asked a question. When Ray shook his head, the other was visibly startled.

“Who are you who have not the tongue of the motherland?”

Mind-touch again! Ray tried not to flinch. At least this time such contact had not brought with it the suggestion of foul invasion.

“Ray—Ray Osborne—a prisoner.” he answered slowly, in English the other seemed to understand.

“From whence come you? Remember—think slowly that I may read from your memory, see with your eyes.”

Obediently Ray retraced his bewildering journey, from his visit to the mound to the unexplained forest, the plain, the meeting with the hunters. And panic must be battled anew. What had happened? Where was he? On what sea? In what world?

“So that is the way of it—a slip-through. But I do not recognize your time.”

“My time?” Ray repeated.

“Yes, you are from the far future—or the past. It is known to the Naacals that perhaps man can travel so. Though those who have tried, by our records, never return. But for you it came by chance, which is indeed a strange thing, since only adepts of the first rank think upon such things—then only after much training and study.”

Ray swallowed. Without surprise, this stranger apparently accepted such insanity as possible, knew that it had been done before. A slip-through—through what—into where? Where—if he only knew that, perhaps he could fasten on something that did make sense. He asked the first question he could sort out of a bewildering whirl of thought.

“Who are these men—in this ship?”

And the reply was ready enough. “We are prisoners of the Atlanteans—the children of the Dark One. Look you to their sign.”

With his chin the other indicated the red banner on the deck above.

But that was impossible! Atlantis had never really existed—it was only a legend of a continent supposed to have vanished in catastrophic disaster before the first stone of the Great Pyramid had been laid. It was the fable that had given a name to one of the great oceans of his own world, but it was only fantasy.

“Why do you think captivity has twisted my wits?” the other asked calmly. “I speak the truth. We are prisoners of the sons of Ba-Al, the Dark One of the Great Shadow. And five days hence this ship will sight the cliffs of the Red Land itself.”

“But that can’t be true!” Ray protested. “Atlantis is a myth, a Greek myth.”

“Of Greek, I know nothing. But I say to you, Atlantis is real, too real, as you shall see when we dock at the Five Walled City. It is as real as these hoops forged in the fires of its smithies, which now hold us in bondage, as the hate of that son of Ba-Al who commands the obedience of the captain of this vessel, as the stripes they have laid upon our bodies. The Red Ones now rule the wind and wave of the western sea. Shame be to us of the Flame that it is so. Atlantis waxes. So strong does she think herself that she moves now to stand alone against the world.”

Ravings, of course

“Why do you strive to close your mind to the truth? You are awake, you are alive. Do you not feel, taste, breathe, see, even as I? Accept the evidences of your sense—that you have passed from your time and world into ours. It must be, as the adepts say, that men without preparation cannot face such journeys, for it seems that you cannot now allow yourself to believe the truth.”

“I dare not,” Ray whispered. His mouth was dry, parched, and he shivered with a chill not born of the wind against his half-bare body.

“Are you then a nothing one who has no control upon his thoughts, no reins upon his fears?” demanded the other sharply and with some scorn.

“Madness—it is madness.” Yet Ray reacted to that scorn with a small spring of anger that gave him strength.

“No. It has happened to others. I tell you, the adepts have done it.”

“And none returned.” Ray pointed out.

“True. Yet perhaps they did not meet with disaster either. Tell me is it not true that you still live? And while a man lives, all else is possible. Could you reach the city of the Sun, there would be those there to show you the true paths of time. Are the men of your age so ignorant that they do not know time is the great serpent, that it turns and coils upon itself so that one time may almost touch upon another? One can then, perchance, slip through. While those who have gone on such quests have not returned, our seekers have seen through into other times and places. They have looked upon the fields of Hyperborea, which has gone from us a thousand, thousand years and is only a legend now. Do not fear what is past; look to the future, for these black hounds of the Great Shadow are about us, to be grappled with in the here and now. And that is a peril worse than any you have yet faced!” His words were now cold and hard in Ray’s brain. “I will swear Flame oath to you on that!”

If he had passed into another time, then he was utterly, nakedly alone, incredibly lost. Again the American fought panic.

“They have named you Murian; better that you be Murian. If they guess you are otherwise, then the priests will have you. And those of the Great Shadow.“

“What is Murian?” Ray interrupted.

“A son of the great motherland, as am I. For I am Cho of the house of the Sun in the motherland. Those of my courtyard are swordsmen to the Re Mu himself.”

“The motherland?” Learn, learn what he could. Hold to the fact that if this was the truth, all the knowledge he could gain would be weapons, tools, or defense.

“The land in the far west, where life began again from a few seeds, legend tells us, after Hyperborea was swept away. Mu mothered the earth, and from her shores came forth men to people Mayax, Uighur, and Atlantis. Re Mu rules the world, or did until the fish ones of Atlantis dabbled in forbidden learning and fell under the Shadow—or marched under it by their own wills!

“Their first Poseidon—their leader—was a son of the house of the Sun in the motherland. But in time his line died out, and the people chose their own ruler. He was strong in will and in desire for power, and he turned from the path to life to assail the wall between the Shadow and our earth: that wall nurtured by the Flame to protect man from all that crawls in the outer dark. He drank power as the herders of the hills drink strange dreams from the juices of the tracmon.

“And he did not want to stand again in the Hall of the Hundred Kings to receive the word of the Ru Mu but to go his own way.”

Listening, Ray forgot fear, fastening on the need for getting a picture of this new world, erecting thus a barrier against dangerous thoughts. ‘

“Thus began the rule of Ba-Al, the father of evil, hate, lust, all those thoughts and desires within a man that do him harm. It began secretly, underground, in caves, then more openly. It was a corrosive within the ranks of warriors, the companies of the people, the seamen. Only the Sun-born remained true to the Flame. Then, on a last day, the Sun-born were put to the sword and thereafter has Atlantis stood alone.”

“There is a war going on?”

Cho shook his head. “Not yet. The motherland has been dangerously drained of her old strength, having given so generously to her children that she is nearly a hollow shell. Her best men and materials have been spread among the colonies. But now the Poseidon, grandson of that first devil worshiper, is ready to rend the veil of peace. He mouths his defiance—which is one. reason why I stand here.”

“You were captured in a fight?”

“No, I had not that much satisfaction. I was sent hither to the Barren Lands to search out any secret forts or strongholds of the Atlanteans, places where their vessels may hide between raids. We were on a scouting expedition ashore when we were ambushed by pirates. Learning my rank, they did not slaughter me out of hand but sold me instead to this Red Robe for three swords of Chalybian forging and four emeralds. More perhaps than I would bring in the open market of Sanpar, the accursed, where the Witch Queen rules the scum of all nations. That was at dawn this morning.”’

“What will they do with you?”

“Should I escape the altar of Ba-Al, it will be to rot in their dungeons—or so they reckon. Three ships of ours have vanished during one moon, and none of their crews escaped. But if the Flame will favor me.” He stopped abruptly.

3

SOMEONE was descending the ladder into the rowing pit. Ray heard the clink of armor and the thud of more than one pair of boots. Two of the hunters passed before him carrying a polished bone-clean skull with huge antlers—the elk’s? They lowered their burden to the deck and went away. But the officer behind them remained, stooping to cover the skull with a cloth. A hurried thought message reached Ray.

“Stand ready, comrade! If you are freed, make for the corner of the deck in the shadow of the ladder. If I cannot join you, dive for the sea. It will be far better than aught this ship offers.”

Cho had not asked if he could swim, thought Ray. But the Murian’s gaze was on the officer, and under that steady regard, though the Atlantean did not lift his eyes to meet it or seem aware he was so watched, his movements grew less certain. He fumbled a little, and then he did look at the prisoners. As his eyes at last met Cho’s, he arose slowly. He might have been moving under compulsion.

Held by the Murian’s stare, he came to them, one slow step at a time: Stopping before Ray, he plucked at the iron ring holding the American’s right wrist. Then, after the arms were free, the Atlantean went down on one knee to unfasten the ankle rings. But all this time the officer worked by touch alone, his eyes held by Cho’s. Ray stood free. He hesitated only a moment before he sped to the shadow the Murian had indicated. Then he turned. The Atlantean was now loosing Cho.

Suddenly the officer jerked upright. He shook his head and raised his hands uncertainly to his forehead. Ray shifted from foot to foot, hands on the rail. It was apparent that whatever had made the Atlantean obey Cho’s wishes was failing. Could the Murian reassert mastery? Maybe. The officer was stooping again to the ring.

Then he swayed. Recovering balance, he smashed his fist into the Murian’s face. A second vicious blow split Cho’s lips. Ray leaped, but not for the sea. “Go! The guard comes.”

The American lost the rest of that order as he attacked. His arm crooked about the officer’s throat; he dragged him back and struck sharply against the base of his skull. As the Atlantean fell, Ray clutched at the sword in his belt, bringing its heavy pommel down against, the owner’s head.

“Go.” ordered Cho again.

Ray made no answer. He pulled at the rings and use the sword blade to lever them open.

“Come on!”

Together they ran for the corner by the ladder. Cho struck open a port.

“This is for a flame thrower. Let us hope it is also wide enough for us. Through with you! Can you swim?”

“A fine time to ask. But yes, I can.”

“In with you then. And try to stay under the surface for as along as you can.”

Ray wriggled through, a tight fit, scraping his bare shoulders. Then he was in the water, and automatically his arms and legs moved.

“Follow me!” He caught sight of a white body.

Blood pounded in his head. He must breathe, he must! There was an arc of pain banding his ribs. Just when he thought he could no longer stand it, he came up into light and air. Before him a smooth shoulder cut waves, and he took that as his guide. The muscles of his back ached; the water stung in his face and in the scrapes on his shoulders. He had swallowed some, and it made him sick. But he swam on, though’ his strokes were uneven now. The shore—the ship—he could sight neither, only sometimes the swimmer ahead.

Doggedly Ray fought to keep moving, his head above water, limiting time to the next stroke. If only he could rest! Little thrills of pain shot along his legs; heavy weights seemed suddenly to have been attached to his arms.

His knees bumped painfully on a harsh surface rock. Gritty sand puffed up between his feet. Exerting all his remaining energy, he threw himself forward, to be seized and pounded on by the surf. With his mouth sand eyes filled with sand, coughing and retching, Ray crawled out of the clutch of the waves and lay face down on a beach.

Presently he stirred. The stinging salt in the cuts on his face and body were an irritant that brought back a measure of consciousness. Sun seared him as he blindly pulled himself up to look about.

A little to his left Cho lay, partly in a rock shadow, his head pillowed on his arm. Ray sat up straighter and began feebly to brush the coating of sand from his body. Then he crawled to the Murian, took him by the shoulder, and tried to rouse him.

“Come on—we’d better get away.” Ray croaked. “They’ll send a boat, pick us up again.” It was a little s hard to believe they had had any success, even this far.

“There is no need.” Cho had yielded to his urging hand and was sitting up to look seaward. “The sons of Ba-Al go.”

Ray shaded his eyes with his hand against the glare of sun on the water. Oars flashed along the sides of the vessel. Incredible as it seemed, with their escaped captives almost within reaching distance, the Alanteans were making no attempt to come after them but were heading out.

“Why—?”

“Because the hunter comes.”

Ray’s gaze followed the Murian’s pointing finger. Far out, just sliding over the horizon, was a needle-like shadow.

“From the fleet. And these scavengers would avoid direct battle with such. Mark how they change course to flee.”

The Atlantean vessel was veering sharply to the east. If the newcomer continued on its present course, there would be a wide space between them, increasing all the time.

“Will the Murians go after them?”

“No. To initiate attack is forbidden. We can defend if they strike first; that is all. But they cannot be sure of that, so they flee an enemy equal to themselves as rats do when the farmer sets torch to field weeds.” Cho laughed but with, little amusement.

“But the Murian ship—why?”

“It comes for us.”

“How do they know?”

Cho spread his hands in a gesture of bafflement. “How can one explain? Are men of your time so ignorant of ordinary powers? Is it possible to live so crippled? Yet, it seems that you do. I have been calling with the mind ever since I was taken. At last my men: heard; now they come.”

“Calling with the mind?”

“As I speak to you now without words. You must: learn our tongue, though, for it wearies one too quickly to draw ever on the inner power for ordinary matters. It is so we can call to those who know us, are seeking us in return.” He sighed and then asked a question. “Why did you not do as I bid and leave when my control over the Atlantean failed?”

Ray flushed. “What did you think I would do? Just cut and run?”

Cho eyed him intently, but what he thought he did not broadcast. When he spoke again, it was of a different matter.

“See, the dwellers in the Shadow have placed their, receiver on the highest notch. They are not minded to be overhauled but run like beasts before hounds.”

Oars no longer fringed the sides of the vessel; yet,‘ that sharp-prowed ship was disappearing eastward with what seemed to Ray an amazing burst of speed. The Murian cruiser did not alter course to intercept the enemy. Still it stood in for the shore, high enough out, of the water now that an orange flag could be seen.

“Now they must take to the oars,” Cho murmured. Scarlet-painted blades ran out, dipped, sending the vessel on at a slower rate of progress. In color the ship was a clear silver-gray, and it cut the waves into foam with majestic pride—though to Ray’s eyes it had a curious half-finished look without masts. When it reached the former anchorage of the Atlantean vessel, it heaved to, and a boat was lowered. It was quickly manned and headed for the shore.

A last powerful swing of oars sent the small craft through the surf, the two men jumped waist-deep to guide it in. Ray studied the newcomers with keen curiosity. It was plain these tall young men were of a different race than his late captors. Their skin, beneath the golden wash of suntan, was fair, and their long hair shaded from white-blond to mahogany.

Tunics of leather covered them, and each wore a sword. Jewels glistened and flashed from armlets and broad collars. And they moved with a kind of light grace that Ray mentally associated with practiced Judo fighters he had known in his own time.

But they cast aside all dignity as they surged forward to Cho, laying hold on him as if he were something precious they had lost and feared never to see again. After greeting them all, he turned to Ray.

Keeping his eyes on the American, he reached an empty hand out and made some request. Instantly the leader of the boat party drew his sword and laid its hilt in Cho’s hand. The Murian planted the point of the blade deep in a patch of sand between the American and himself. Then he caught Ray’s right hand in his, drawing it to rest with his on the hilt of the upstanding sword.

Still gazing intently at the American, he chanted a sentence that was taken up by the men behind him. Then the leader stepped forward, a short dagger in his hand. He pricked the wrists of both men so that two small trickles of blood mingled on the sword hilt.

“Thus do I claim you sword brother and shield mate, new son of my mother’s courtyard, one blood with my house henceforth.”

The words of the oath burned clearly in Ray’s mind. He knew an instant of hesitation, the feeling that if he accepted such kinship, he was stepping through another door. But even as that warning doubt pricked at him, another portion of his mind denied it and reached almost greedily for what might be security of sorts in an alien world. Was any acknowledgment expected of him? He could see this was some formal rite, which might carry—that inner warning shrilled—more responsibility than he could guess. But he answered aloud:

“Yes.” And he knew Cho understood.

For the second time Ray was in a ship’s long boat. But this time Cho was beside him. And he was no prisoner—or was he? Had he really any choice? Against that wariness warred a feeling of expectancy, which continued as he followed Cho up the ladder, over a deck crowded with men who cheered the appearance of the Murian, and down into a large cabin. And the cabin then claimed his full attention.

By the standards of his own age, Ray suspected, it might be considered barbaric because of the lavish use of precious metals and bright colors. Yet’ it was not Oriental, nor did it follow any “native” style of art he had ever seen. And he did know a little about art through his photography.

Around the walls were panels of a dead-black wood, which were inlaid with intricate designs, combining gem stones with bright paint or enamelwork. Between these hung long curtains of brilliant fabrics. A table of the same wood as the panels occupied the opposite end of the cabin, with long benches on either side and a high-backed chair at its head.

From beams overhead swung two balls of rosy light, encased in filigree globes. The chains from which the pendants hung swayed with the motion of the ship, so that the light appeared to wax and wane.

As Ray halted to stare about him, Cho went to the table. He poured liquid from a flagon into a stemmed goblet, listening meanwhile to a young officer he had introduced to Ray as Han. Suddenly the Murian put down the flagon with a click and uttered a sound of protest. Then he glanced back at Ray.

“We have been recalled. This northern sea and that of the east are closed, which means.”

“War?” Hazarded the American. One world or another, one time or another, he thought dully, war seemed to be ever present.

Cho nodded. “If and when the Re Mu wills. But now we go home.” He turned to Han, apparently asking more questions.

Ray felt a steady vibration creeping through the walls and the deck of the cabin. He steadied himself with one hand against an inlaid panel, suddenly not sure of his balance. He was eying one of the benches as a more secure base when there was a sharp movement from Han. The young officer flung up his arm as if to ward off a blow; his mouth twisted in pain. Then, with only an inclination of his head to Cho, he turned and left them. Cho soberly watched him go.

“Lanor was his sword brother, and Lanor fell beside me with a pirate dagger in his throat. Han eats sorrow this day. But that debt will not go unpaid. We shall remember it when we stand sword to sword with those of Ba-Al, and the accounting then shall be a just one. Now, do you eat and drink. Then we shall sleep—for no man can do well empty and weary.”

They drank, a wine Ray thought, from finely wrought goblets. And they ate from plates that were works of art, though once he saw what they held, Ray was more interested in contents than containers. It was only when he was satisfied that he raised his eyes to the wall of the cabin behind Cho’s head and saw that the panels there were three in width and the design on them was not a decorative pattern but had meaning—a map!

Ray leaned forward, his breath coming faster as his eyes followed shorelines on that unbelievable map. Some of it—but how little—was familiar. There were two continents, one north and one south, but bearing only a vague resemblance to those he had known. The Mississippi, the Ohio, most of the north-eastern and southern portions of the North American continent were now under sea, while Alaska was linked firmly to Siberia. The heartland of Brazil, to the south, was a landlocked ocean. To balance the drowning of lands he knew, there were two new continents—one east, one west—so that the map was now roughly diamond shaped, a land mass at each corner.

More than anything he had seen during the past two days, that map drove home the sharp lesson of the change.

“What is it?” Cho set down his goblet and put out his hand. What the Murian read on his face, Ray did not know, but in some measure his shock must have been mirrored there.

“That—that map!”

The Murian looked over his shoulder. “More decorative than useful, I fear,” was his comment.

“Then—then that is not this world?” The American breathed more freely.

“It is, except that it is not a chart by which to set any ship’s course. In mass it is right enough. See”—Cho went to the wall here are the Barren Lands—” With a fingertip he traced the remaining part of the Ohio Valley north. “Hunters come here, outlaws, but there are no regular settlements. It is too harsh a hand to attract many, only those who have need for a wilderness in which to hide or those who have a desire to explore a little. Now, we are about here.” His finger moved down into the sea. “We head south—to cross the Inner Sea.” Swiftly his finger moved to Brazil. “This is Mayax, loyal to the motherland, strong and rich. Then we go through the western canals to the western ocean and thence to Mu.” His goal was the land mass to the west.

“And Atlantis lies to the east,” Ray stated rather than questioned.

“True. Is this so different from the lands of your own time that you find it fearful to look upon? Why should that be so?”

“Because” Ray hunted for words. ”because it is hard to believe that a man may walk about his ordinary business in a land he knows well one moment and the next be elsewhere, where all is different. All that shows as sea here”—it was his turn to approach the map—”is land for me. And it is densely populated with many growing cities—too many. Men are finding that expanding population a threat. And here, this is also land.” He set his palm over the sea of Brazil. “But there is no Atlantis, no Mu—only ocean and scattered islands”

He heard a small gasp from Cho. “How long, how very great a time must separate our worlds, brother! Such changes on the face of a planet do not come easily. You have spoken of Atlantis as a tale in your world. Do they then have an ending for it? Or do they speak of Mu, the motherland?”

“There are stories of Atlantis, supposed to be tales only, with no fact. It is said to have vanished beneath the seas in tidal waves and earthquakes because of the wickedness of its people. This ocean in my own time is named the Atlantic because of the persistence of an old belief that Atlantis lies somewhere beneath it. Of Mu. I never heard.”

“What did you do in this northern land of yours, brother? Were you a warrior? When you brought down the Atlantean, you used a strange blow such as I have not seen before.”

“For a while I was a warrior. Then there was family trouble, and I was needed at home.”

“Needed at home—But now—when you cannot go home—?”

Ray shook his head. “That need is past.” He did not want to think about that. “I was about to return to the army when this happened to me. New buildings were being put up on a government project.” He did not know how much of this Cho would understand but felt a need to put it all into words. “When they started to clear the land, there was trouble because of an old Indian mound. People protested against its being leveled before it could be properly investigated. Les Wilson—a man I know—was trying to get them to wait. He was writing articles about it, and he wanted some good photo shots of the mound. I promised to take them. And I was doing just that when—when I found myself in a forest of the biggest trees I’d ever seen. That’s the whole story. And I still don’t know what happened or why.”

Cho looked puzzled. “Shots of an Indian mound,” he repeated slowly, as if completely bewildered.

“A machine—a camera of our time” Ray explained. “You use it to take pictures of objects, a very popular way of keeping visual records. And the Indians—they were native of this north continent whom my people found in possession of the country when they came from the east to colonize it about four centuries ago, four hundred years. Some of the early tribes, who had already vanished before the first settlers of my blood arrived, had built great mounds of earth that still remain, and we study them, trying to learn more about the people who made them.”

If the world is so much older in your time,” commented Cho slowly, “there must be the remains of many, many vanished peoples from which you can learn.”

“Yes, in many places there are ruins and old tombs of long-forgotten races. Some races we know of only by a few scattered stones, which say that man once built something there. That and no more.”

“You have a liking for this pursuit of those gone before?”

Ray shrugged. “I’m no archaeologist, but there is a kind of treasure-hunt lure to such searching. And I have read much about it. I had a lot of time for reading a while back.” Once more he pushed away the sharpness of memory.

“Brother, I might try to say many words to you”—the Murian regarded him soberly—”but words cannot banish thoughts, no mater how well they are intended. You fight now upon a field where no sword brother, however well meaning, can stand at your right hand or al your left, for the battle is yours alone. But to each day its own evils. Forget this for a space if you can”—he spread out his hand upon the map—”and let us sleep.”

Ray followed him behind one of the curtains to a small side cabin, where there were two bunks. Cho was already stripping off the remaining rags of his water soaked tunic.

“’Rest while one can’ might well be the slogan of all during these troubled days. What man can say what a new morning will bring?”

Reluctantly Ray crawled into a warm nest of soft covers. His eyes closed, but there was no rest for his thoughts.

“Well, what do you have?” Hargreaves slumped in the chair. A dark sprouting of beard accentuated the shadows under his eyes, and he blinked slowly, as if the effort to keep them open and focused properly was almost beyond him.

“We know the man now. He’s Ray Osborne. Wilson put him up to coming out to take some pictures of the mound. He’s an acquaintance of Wilson’s, does part-time photography for the local newspaper.”

“Newspaper!” Hargreaves burst out hoarsely. “Just our luck to have a newspaper mixed up in this. We need that about as much as an N-bomb!” He fumbled with a cigarette pack and threw it from him savagely when he discovered it empty. “I suppose Osborne’s disappearance is already burning up the wire services east and west.”

“Not yet. We have that one small piece of luck, or edge. Osborne wouldn’t have turned in his shots until this morning. I notified Wilson that we’ve confiscated them and Osborne is under arrest for trespassing,” Fordham returned.

“In the name of Judas, why? That’ll bring the whole pack down on us, yapping about freedom of the press and all the rest they cry about!”

The director shook his head. “No. They’ve all accepted the idea that this installation is top secret. Our story is that Wilson sent Osborne in, knowing it was closed territory—that he tried to pry. That buys us time, as Wilson has been warned about breaking security before. Luckily Osborne was a loner.”

“How much of a loner? Let Wilson get his family stirred up properly, and some lawyer will be out here in an hour, baying at the gates.”

“This much of a loner.” Fordham picked up a slip of paper from the desk and began to read:

“Ray Osborne, son of Langley and Janet Osborne, old family here in the valley, but no relatives now closer l than second cousins. Born in 1960, which makes him around twenty now. Had one year of college, then drafted. Served overseas six months. Specialist in unarmed combat and scouting, interested in photography. Ten months ago his parents were in a traffic crack-up, his father killed, his mother badly injured. The Red Cross got him a hardship discharge, as there was no one else to take care of her. He came back here, took a part-time job, and looked after his mother who was an invalid. A month ago she died. He told the editor at the paper that he intended to go back into the service. He has no close friends; his army service and the circumstances of his mother’s illness broke off most of his past relationships. Was a quiet sort of chap, did a lot of reading, hiked about the country taking pictures. Sold some of those. No trouble, well accepted, but’ nothing strong for or against him in town.”

Hargreaves sat up a little straighter. “Well, if we had to send a man out wherever this one went, we’re in luck that it was Osborne. No family, no friends, to make trouble. I wonder

He stared at a wall it was obvious he did not see.

“Yes?” prompted Fordham after a long pause.

“You say he told people he planned to re-enter the service. I think it can be set up that he did. So now, let the papers go through and he’s our man; then we can hold the whole story under wraps while we move in to get him. Because the brains really want him—and badly. With what he’ll have to tell us, he’s worth more, than twelve space platforms and one moon station. We’ve got to get him back and pump him, pump him down to the last breath of air he took out of wherever he is!”

“If we can.”

“We have to; that’s orders. Don’t worry. They’ll send you every man, every bit of material you need to put it through. We have to get him back. Do you realize that we’re on the trail now in a direction the Eastern powers have never prospected? This is ours alone!”

“And if he’s dead?”

“Then we have to get his body anyway.”

“We can probably get the beam on again soon. But that merely opens a very limited area. What if he’s traveled miles away? There’ll be no way of tracing him.”

Hargreaves loosened his tie a little more so it lay in a stringy loop on his rumpled shirt.

“They’re working on that now in another way. You get the door open, and maybe they’ll have figured out how to find our man by that time. But Lady Luck had better ride with us on this one!”

4

A DREAM of trees, of running along a long moss-grown aisle between their huge boles, pursued ever by what he could not see—Ray awoke. Outside the narrow porthole that gave on the sea, it was night. The other bunk was empty, his cabin mate gone. Yet this time he had awakened with all senses alert, knowing just where he was, as if, beneath that disturbing dream from which he carried only a wisp of memory, some acceptance had been at work. This was the present, and it was as real as the fabric under his hands as he raised himself on the bunk.

He reached for the kilt he had thrown aside when he had lain down but found other clothing. Fumbling with unfamiliar buckles and fastenings, he dressed. The sandals were light on his feet as he knotted their thongs clumsily about his ankles. Then he went into the outer cabin.

The rosy light was stronger with the coming of darkness. There was no one there. Should he go on deck or wait? His momentary hesitation made him aware of the polished surface of a mirror, and on impulse he went to face it.

A stranger, thin, with a sun-reddened skin and unruly brown hair, stared back at him. The scant gray tunic revealed a body that, for all its leanness, promised endurance. Buckles of silver, thickset with small green stones, glittered on his shoulders, and a belt patterned with the same gems encircled his waist. But he was suddenly shy and ill-at-ease. This was not Ray Osborne. And the confidence with which he had awakened began to fade. As he turned abruptly from the mirror, someone entered the cabin.

Ray’s eyes widened. This was certainly Cho, but the Murian was now no bedraggled fellow prisoner. A red-gold tunic clung to his body. Jeweled armlets encircled both wrists and upper arms. His sword belt and the hilt of the weapon that swung from it glittered icily. The long hair was swept back and held by a metal band from a face where there was still the imprint of bruises. Like the cabin and its furnishings, his splendor held something of that exuberance of color and ornament that Ray’s time deemed barbaric.

The Murian laughed. “So—you look astounded, brother. Does dress do so much for a man? This is what is due my rank. Nor”—he surveyed Ray critically—”does our garb suit you ill. True Murian you look, or will when your hair grows. It is over-short for a free-born warrior. And now—food!”

Cho clapped his hands, and a man in a plain tunic entered with a tray. The Murian waved Ray to the table, where covered dishes and goblets were being set out. It was difficult, if not impossible, for Ray to identify the contents of those dishes. He had eaten earlier in a daze of hunger and weariness, knowing only that it was food. But now he was more attentive. There was a stew and a platter of roasted meat already cut into bite-size portions. Small cakes were dipped into individual bowls of thin jam. And with it all, a tart wine.

The Murian sighed when they had finished. “We lack only fresh fruit. But that is not for a ship’s board these many days out of port. You rested well?”

“I dreamed.” Ray did not know why he said that, and he was startled at the sharpness of Cho’s response.

“Dreamed of what, brother?” There was such a note of command in that that Ray answered readily.

“Of trees, such a forest as I found when I came into this time. Of running between them and behind.”

“Behind?” The Murian was still peremptory. “Behind what?” he asked again as Ray did not reply at once.

The American shrugged. “I do not know what, except that I ran from it. No matter, it was only a dream.” He was surprised the other seemed to take it so seriously.

“‘Only a dream’—why say you that, brother? Dreams are spirit guides for any man. They forewarn; they show the feelings our waking minds do not know. Do not the men of your time think any upon the meaning of dreams?”

“Not like that. Anyway, it was perfectly natural for me to dream of running from some mysterious danger in that forest, seeing as how all this began for me there.”

“Perhaps you are right.” But, Ray thought, Cho did not look convinced. “Shall we go on deck?” the Murian said.

He held out a cloak and then took up another for himself. The moon hung round and full above the ship, its clear light cut now and then by a drift of clouds. The oars were inboard, yet the ship drove on, though no sail was set. Ray realized that the ever-present vibration of the fabric of the ship must come from some motorized form of propuls. Cho had gone to stand by the steersman, and now Ray joined him.

“What drives the ship now that your oars are in?”

“This.” Cho answered readily, leading the way down to the waist. On the aisle between the rowing benches was a half-open hatch, and Ray looked down into a small metal-walled cabin. Apu, Cho’s second-in-command, adjusted levers on a box that hummed and droned with life and from which spread that vibration.

“Our energy receiver. Waves of energy are broadcast from land stations and picked up by ships. It cannot be used close to shore or in harbor, and in some of the older ships not even in the Inner Sea. Oars serve them there. Each vessel is assigned a certain wave length from which to draw, and then only at stated times, unless there is an emergency.”

Han came along the deck with a message. Ray began to find his ignorance of the spoken language irksome as Cho translated for him.

“There is a ship to the west. But it cannot be one of ours, for the recall went out long ago. It may be a pirate—or Atlantean. We shall not try to speak it, lest we provoke attack”

He was interrupted by a cry from Han. Far out in the black of the sea, an orange light curved up from the surface of the waves. Cho shouted an order, and an instant later an answering green glare sped from the bow of their own vessel. The light out on the sea dimmed and then glowed red.

Cho was calling orders. Ray moved back out of the way of the men, who were running to different stations. Now their own green beam became pearl-white, turning the night ahead of the ship into day but leaving the ship itself in the dark. That glow across the water turned white in answer.

A little of the tense rigidity left Cho. “It is one of ours. Atlantean ships cannot counterfeit that signal. We must learn its mission and why it lingers here after recall.”

Their beam of light became a series of flashes. When the other replied in kind, Cho read it for Ray. “Ship of the fleet, Fire Snake, disabled in storm. Can move by oar power only. Who are you?”

“Signal them aid,” the Murian said to Han. And this time Ray, to his surprise, understood his words.

Again that distant light flashed.

“Ship badly disabled. We cannot make the Inner Sea. The Sun-born Ayna says farewell.”

Once more Cho gave orders. Their own ship changed course to the west, centering on that beam.

“We shall take the crew on board and then sink her,” Cho said. “There can be no lingering to nurse a cripple with the wolves of the Red Land out! Little fortune for the Lady Ayna to so lose her first command.”

“A woman commands a ship?” demanded Ray.

“But of course. All the Sun-born have a duty to the Re Mu. Perhaps a lady will one day be sent as his mouthpiece to some colony. How then may she order the fleet for such an undertaking unless she has already commanded a ship?” Cho asked in surprise. “Is it not so with your people, brother?”

“No. At least not in my nation.”

“Many must be our differences. Some day we shall compare them. This Lady Ayna is of the house of the

Sun in Uighur. I have never met her but have heard of her wisdom and courage. And she will destroy her ship with her own hand, if that must be done.”

They sped on, that guiding light ever brightening Han still shot flashes from their own ray, answered at intervals from over the waves. Suddenly Cho shouted to Apu tending the receiver. Then he said to Ray, “They have been sighted by a raider. It will be a race as to which of us will reach her first.”

Waves boiled from the knife-edge bow in milky foam. On deck men stood to battle stations with tall shields, swords loose in scabbards, and some busied themselves about squat machines.

Now they could see the Fire Snake bathed in the light of her own signal ray. She lay low in the water, her waist deck almost awash. And out in the dark somewhere must be the raider creeping in for the kill.

Cho’s commands passed along from officers to men. Ray could make out figures on the doomed vessel,: shadows flitting across her slanting deck. Her small boats were being slung into the water. Then all but one pushed off, heading for Cho’s ship. Cho pointed to the one remaining.

“That waits for the Lady Ayna—she must destroy her ship.”

Over the deck, now awash, darted a slight figure, to leap to the waiting boat. With mighty strokes the rowers sent the small skiff surging from the side of the sinking vessel. There was a moment of silence while, by the aid: of the light still on the deserted deck, they could see the boats racing toward them. Then a column of purple flame flowered upwards, filling sky and lapping sea with angry brilliance. With a roar it and the Fire Snake disappeared.

The first survivors were already climbing over the rail of Cho’s ship, and the commander went to welcome them. At his coming the strangers cried about some slogan and raised their arms in salute. Then came an officer. He reached back to aid one who followed, and the Sun-born Lady Ayna stepped upon deck.

She was slight, no great beauty, but she carried herself as might an Empress of Ray’s imagination. Her dark hair was bare of helmet. A band of pearls about her forehead, the ends twisted in her braids, proclaimed her rank. She wore a knee-length tunic and over it armor for breast and back.

“Hail, Lord Cho!” she said clearly. Her voice was low, but it carried well. “Since the Fire Snake sails no more, I crave your favor for these, my men.”

Again, to his astonishment, the speech was clear for Ray, though he was sure she was not mind-beaming it to him.

Cho raised fingers to forehead in return. “The Lady Ayna, Sun-born of Uighur, need only make known her wishes. This ship, its men, are at her command.”

The girl laughed and lost some of her defensive dignity. “Let us then be gone, Lord Cho, lest even worse befall. One of the Red Ones noses in, lured by our signals.”

Cho nodded and gave an order. The Lady Ayna beckoned forward her officers. “This is Hek, this Romaha.”

In turn, Cho introduced his men. Last of all the Murian’s hand fell on Ray’s shoulder, and he drew the American closer. “My sword brother—Ray.”

The Lady Ayna smiled. “Happy am I to greet you, my lords, though I could wish mightily that we met at a more fortunate time and for a better reason. Atlantis comes to war openly it seems.”

“The recall would bring that to mind, yes. Will you grace our cabin?”

With the sure step of one at home on shipboard, she went down into the great cabin, where Cho led her to the high chair and called for wine.

“Can it be true—that they dared to take the White Bird in an open attack?” She sipped at the goblet Cho had offered.

“That is the reason given for the recall. If so, they must at last bring upon themselves the full wrath of the Re Mu.”

She frowned, turning the goblet around in her, fingers.” The dwellers in the Shadow will discover that, though the mother has long been patient, there comes an end to forbearance. They will not soon forget—those who survive it—the punishment to follow. Is it true, Lord Cho, that you were prisoner of the Red Ones? Such a message reached us.”

In answer, the Murian held out his hands. Still to be seen about his wrists were the marks of bonds. “Ten days did a pirate have me, then I was sold to the Atlanteans.”

She gasped. “So it is true! They dared to lay hands upon one of the Sun-born, using him as if he were an outlaw, a man of no house! How did you then win free?”:

“With the aid of the Flame, working upon their dark minds”

Her eyes shone. “Yes! That they have no answer for much as they have tried to find one. The Ba-Al himself is powerless against it. So you escaped.”

“Also by the aid of my brother.” Again he touched Ray’s shoulder. “For I was near drained with weariness, and at the end I could not hold the power. But he had me free in spite of that.”

“After you had first freed me,” Ray corrected.

At his words the Lady Ayna started to give him her full attention. “Who are you who speaks no tongue of any land of ours? From what ship came you, Lord Ray?”

“From no ship.”

“Then whence? I know of no colony in the Barren Lands.”

“Through time, from the far future, I think. I know it; sounds impossible, but it must be true. There is no other explanation. I was in my own time, then suddenly I was in a forest, and then I was captured by Atlantean hunters. They took me to their ship—where—Cho already was.”

She continued to eye him narrowly, as if she could read his mind, weigh and assess his every thought. “This is truth. I have heard the Naacals speak of such journeys in the temple schools. But none who have ventured forth to test it have yet returned to us. And you are not like unto us—so you have come a long way, and you have ill-chosen your time, or chance has ill chosen it for you.”

Ray wondered at her calm acceptance of what he considered still a most improbable explanation. What sort of reception would a Murian suffering the same fate have received in his own world? He flinched away from imagining it. Maybe he was lucky.

The Lady Ayna arose. “My thanks for your aid this night, Lord Cho. Now I must report to the motherland. Have you a cabin for my body rest?”

Cho parted the wall curtains and showed her a waiting bunk. She entered and stood for a moment, one hand ready to draw the drapery behind her. “Good fortune to us all, from this hour forward.” Then she allowed the tapestry to fall into place.

An lour later Ray crouched shoulder to shoulder with Cho at the bow of the Wind Ruler. Their heavy cloaks were damp with spray. The moon was hidden by gathering clouds. But they knew, though they could not see it, that somewhere in the dark a raider was attempting to cut across their course.

“Dare we carry that attack to them, tooth and claw, they would slink away like the cowardly carrion eaters of the plains. But to fight, while we are alone in a sea they now claim, would be deadly folly. For all we know, they but scout for a pack, a fleet that would be down on us as the condors of Mayax gather to a puma’s kill.”

“What if they attack?”

The Murian laughed shortly. “Let them but try that.”

All the crew had stood to arms when they had sought the Fire Snake. Even though the Wind Ruler was now back on its former course, the shield wall stood, the machines were in the open, and men kept their battle stations. Now, at another order, there was a faint ringing, and on the sides of the rowers’ benches screens arose level with the planking of the upper decks. Next to Ray was a long tube projecting from a box, and three sailors stood to duty there. An officer, one of the Lady Ayna’s, came to report.

“Yes, all is in readiness,” the Murian said. “The men of the Fire Snake did not join us empty-handed but brought their own flame throwers. They mount these beside ours. We need only send up the battle flare. Then the raider will blunt its teeth upon death!”

Cho went from bow to stern, Ray behind him. As he progressed, the Murian inspected the preparations, but when he reached the afterdeck, he paced back and forth, twisting the border of his cloak until the fabric split in a long tear. Ray tried to see through the dark.

“If they would only come in,” he muttered. Long ago, or so now it seemed, and very far away in space (he could think of this world better as divided from his own in space), he had been trained for war. Not this kind, but battle did not greatly differ. And even as he spoke those words, he knew the answer—waiting was an age-old weapon used by many men in many places during the centuries.

“That is just what they will not do,” Cho continued. “Well do they know the value of forcing waiting upon their enemies—waiting until the first sharp vigilance relaxes ever so little. Then comes the attack. We must keep an untiring watch. If I ever cross the five walls those sons of Ba-Al use as their shields and meet them face to face with their backs to those same walls and no hole for them to bolt through—then shall all waiting be done and every moment of this night paid for. But those clouds across the moon—Sun forbid we have mist and fog in the morning!”

Ray glanced at the lowering clouds. “Those mean bad weather?”

“Perhaps. We can only hope the Sun will not forsake us. Come—let us see to the foredeck again.”

Planking had been laid across the rowing benches in the waist, making a new deck, which seemed firm enough. This space was filled with an orderly complement of men, quiet now for the most part. On the bow deck three of the tube and box machines were now in place, their crews beside them. And there was a soft light

“No sight as yet, Sun-born,” reported a lookout.

Once more Ray was puzzled by his ability to understand. But this was no time for questions.

“Nothing.” Cho repeated as if to himself. “Fog at daybreak, think you?”

Han held his head high, seeming to sniff the wind, studying the clouds across the sky, then glancing at the waters.

“Mist for sure, Sun-born, rain perhaps. I fear we must sail by director alone.”

Cho struck the rail with his fist. “A cover under which that raider can creep unseen!”

“Yes, Sun-born. But for us also a cover—if fortune favors us.”

Cho turned briskly. “Just so it must be. They may draw their net to find it empty. But never must we underrate them, nor think that fortune smiles wholly upon us. And I believe that none of us will breathe easier until the shores of the Inner Sea close about us.”

“Truth in your words, Sun-born. The Atlanteans know all the tricks of the father of all Shadows, and evils are thought-spawned from him.”

“Be it so.” Cho’s tone was stark and cold. “Even if fortune chooses to fail us and we be taken, the last and mightiest trick lies still in our hands, to be used at our bidding alone. The Sun-born Ayna pointed the way for us this very night.”

“You mean—blow up the ship?” asked Ray.

“So would we go Sunward in all honor, taking many of the enemy with us to a final judgment. No ship of the motherland must fall into their hands while one of the true blood lives. And such an end would give us cleaner, swifter passage from this world than any Atlantis would grant a prisoner, as well we know.”

The Lady Ayna came to join them. “You stand to arms, Lord Cho?”

“To await the raider. It will come.” He nodded to the sea, certainty in his voice. “You have made your report?”

“I have told of the loss of the Fire Snake, and the Great One was approving of what I have done. The Re Mu sends greetings and bids you haste, for no aid can be sent if we are attacked.” She hesitated. “But something then happened, Lord Cho, and this gave me fear.”

Her voice was lower, and Ray saw she clutched here cloak about her with hands on which the knuckles had whitened with the fury of her grasp.

“I—I was cut off!”

Cho swung around, his expression one of amazement. “What do you mean?”

“My contact with the motherland was broken—and not by the Re Mu. Never before has such a thing happened.”

“How broken?”

She shivered as if the warmth of the cloak was gone and the wind chilled her to the bone. “It was as if a, black curtain was drawn. When I thought a question—there was no answer. I waited for twice around the silver rim of the timekeeper and tried again. There was no response, not even from a shore watcher in one of the Mayax temples!”

When Cho remained silent, she added, almost pleadingly, “What can it mean?”

The Murian’s face was closed still, as if he were thinking so deeply that he did not see her or any of his surroundings. She put out a hand to touch his arm, and he started under that contact, light as it was.

“What—what is it?” she asked again.

“It may mean that those of Atlantis have tampered with the Sacred Mysteries to discover the secret of the Sun-born.” he said.

She shrank away from him as if he had spoken some monstrous thing. Han exclaimed aloud. But Cho’s eyes were blazing.

“Those soon-to-be-dwellers-in-the-outer-dark-and-cold! That they should so dare! But the Re Mu will have been warned when it happened. This means that the door of the inner power is closed to us. If we must fight, we will not dare to call on anything save the might of our own arms and weapons, lest we open to them what we would die to protect.”

The Lady Ayna regained a measure of her former serenity, or perhaps it was control. “What man may argue with fortunes But we can be worthy of that entrusted to us. And one does not speak of defeat before the battle is joined.” Now she smiled at Cho as if she did not wish him to take her words as a rebuke. “Let me try once again—but if the raider comes, I ask you to summon me.” She left them.

Cho looked to Ray. “It seems that you have truly been drawn into a net. This quarrel means nothing to you. And safer by far would be the empty plains of the Barren Lands than these waters when the Red wolves are out!”

He was very right—this was no quarrel of his, Ray thought. It was settled, it must have been, eons before his birth. Yet, there was something else—At the time it had been only words, a ritual of another race. Now it was a thing Ray remembered and held to.

“You said to me, when our blood was mingled on the sword hilt, that we were brothers.”

“That is so!”

“Then does it not follow that we share battles also? It seems that though I come not here of my own will, yet now I do have a choice—and I make it thus—Having no country any longer, I stand by friends. I think I have those”

“There is no need to ask that!” Cho returned.

“And I have also enemies—out there.” Ray gestured to the sea. “So I choose.”

Cho nodded. “May you never regret it, brother.”

“Amen,” Ray thought, but he did not say that aloud.

5

“SO they have blacked out your radio,” Ray hazarded, putting his own interpretation on what he had just heard from the Lady Ayna.

“Blackout—radio?” Cho returned.

“Yes, your communication system.”

“You think of a machine to do this?” Cho smiled. “I had forgotten how little you know of us. We need no machine to communicate with the Re Mu, we of the Sun-born. In times of stress even certain of his higher officers are trained by the Naacals to accept thoughts, just as my mind can now touch yours. This was the manner in which the Lady Ayna reported the loss of the Fire Snake. Only those born with such powers, or those trained in them, can do this.”

“Then how can the Atlanteans interfere with telepathy?” Ray asked. He could believe part of this after his own experiences.

“That we must discover. None but those trained in the thought-send could do so, and of that number all were known. Or so we believed until tonight. We knew that the Red Robes had something like unto it, but we thought they could not interfere with the true sendings. But now—they can! The Re Mu and the motherland will never know our fate here in the north unless we win through to Mayax. In all our history such a thing has never happened, nor did we believe that it could!”

Slowly the sky was lightening in the east, but only to a leaden gray, and a cold drizzle came, piercing the warmth of their cloaks, to make them shiver.

“Mist and rain as Han foresaw,” Cho observed. “Let us hope the sons of Ba-Al find it as difficult to sight us as we shall to see them. Come, let us break our fast.”

Below deck they found the Lady Ayna huddled in the seat at the end of the table. Her face under the rosy light was haggard. She forced a wan smile and then shook her head in answer to Cho’s unvoiced question.

“Their wall remains, my lords. If we fight, it will be alone.”

Cho dropped heavily on the nearest bench. “So be it. But perhaps it will not come to that. The Flame willing. Let us have food.” He clapped his hands for the serving man, and the Lady Ayna sat up straighter.

“The ships of the motherland are famed for their provisions. Uighur cannot serve forth the dainties of Mu. Or so I have been told by our officers who have returned from tours of duty there,” she commented.

“Where is Uighur?” Ray asked.

She turned her head to stare wide-eyed at him. Cho went to the map set in the cabin wall. He pressed his fingers to a spot in its frame, and part of it moved to the right, hiding a portion of Atlantis. This revealed at the left the rest of Mu in the Pacific and, beyond, the coastline of the Asian mainland, but one very different from that Ray had known. Again the sea swept far into what would be China, and a portion of the Gobi Desert, and the highlands of future Tibet formed a new shore. This Cho indicated.

“Uighur.”

But the Lady Ayna continued to stare at Ray. “How is it that you know not Uighur?”

“For the same reason that two days ago I did not know Mu either. I am from another time, remember? We had no memories of Uighur there.”

“But of Atlantis.” Cho said slowly. “Why should the Red Land carry as a legend into the far future when all the rest is gone? What did they do, those followers of the Shadow, which set so great a fire blazing in their time that its warmth and smoke went on down untold centuries?”

Tine Lady Ayna’s eyes were bleak. “I can think of one kind of disaster. What did your people know of the Red Land, Lord Ray?”

“That it lay in the ocean as a continent, an ocean in our time unbroken save for a scattering of small islands to the far east and west. That it sank in a combine earthquake and tidal wave as the result of some evil doing on the part of its inhabitants.”

“A lost land. And did they ever seek it in your own timestrive to find remnants of it?”

“They tried so hard that they proved scientifically i1 had never existed at all. It was supposed to be purely a legend.”

The serving man brought in a tray, and they began to eat, with need dictated by hunger. But Ray glanced up often at that map and wondered. Why was it that remnants of such a civilization as this had not existed somewhere to bear out the truth of legend? True enough, the world he saw on that chart was greatly altered geographically from that of his own time. But certain portions remained the same. And all—every fragment—of a high civilization could not have vanished so completely.

“The raider is in sight!” Han stood in the doorway.

Ray’s spoon. fell back into the bowl before him, splashing the contents. Cho crossed the cabin in almost one leap, but the American was close on his heels as they reached the outer deck.

“There!” Han pointed to a black shape in the mist.

“To stations!” Cho shouted.

Someone joined Ray at the rail—the Lady Ayna. She ought to stay below, he thought, and then remembered that she had commanded a similar fighting ship, knew, more about such matters than he.

But the raider appeared not to have sighted them in, turn, for it stayed on course, slipping back into the fog. Even after it’s going, the tension on the Wind Ruler did not lift.

“She will be back,” promised Cho. “Now she tries to scent us as might a hunting panther sniff a trail. See—she returns!”

He was right. Again the sharp bow of the other ship cut the curling mist. She had come part way around, and the Wind Ruler was closer. He found it hard, Ray discovered, to think of that sinister dark wedge across the water as another ship, bearing men such as those now standing silently about him. There was no sound of voice, only the swish of foaming waves from their own bow as the Wind Ruler held to her course.

Then, as if she had known where they were all the time and had been playing at cat-and-mouse with them, the raider changed course a fraction more and made straight for the Murian vessel.

Calmly Cho gave his orders. “Apu, keep us on course, full speed ahead, no matter what chances. We must make a running fight of it. Use flame throwers, Han, only if we come close enough to be sure they will hit. Hold all fire until the command.”

Officers scattered to their posts, Hek and Romaha from the Lady Ayna’s command taking their place in the waist. The soldier-servant came from the cabin with three shields of reddish metal and long cuffs of the same. Cho slipped the cuff over Ray’s left forearm and showed him how to clip the shield fast to that.

“These are a defense against flame throwers,” the Murian explained. “Should you see one of those black tubes, such as our men wear now at their belts, in use, keep up the shield. I do not believe this raider carries death-breathers; raiders seldom do. We shall hope not, for against those there is little defense.”

Wearing his own shield, Cho went to the wheel. “A night and a day will see us into the Inner Sea—and freedom from all pursuit.”

The Lady Ayna shrugged like one tossing off a burden. “Then,” she answered almost gaily, “what have we to fear? Surely we of the true blood can keep the followers of the Shadow off that long. See, even now they waver as if fearing to attack, though they have come into position to do so.”

Indeed the dark ship appeared to hesitate, though the mist was so distorting, half revealing, half concealing, that this might only be illusion. But it seemed to Ray that the bow of the raider did swing a little to one side as the Wind Ruler continued on course. The Lady Ayna was right, the headlong advance of the enemy checked, swinging farther away. They passed it, now near hidden in the fog, unchallenged.

“They fear us! They dare not test the might of the motherland in open battle!” exulted the girl.

Cho shook his head, plainly ill at ease. “I do not like it. By all the rules they should have attacked then. But they turned aside.”

“What can any raider hope to do against a ship of the fleet ready and willing for battle?” she returned. “It is merely that the captain over there is a man of sense. They may skulk about, seeing if their Ba-Al will give them some small advantage, but they will not risk fronting our bared teeth.”

During the next two hours, it seemed as if she were right in her reading of the situation, that the hovering ship feared to press the Murian vessel openly. The raider stayed just within the curtain of the mist, in sight, keeping pace with them, but did no more.

Han, however, shared Cho’s mistrust of that slinking menace. Now and again he looked up from the wheel, glancing almost apprehensively at their unsought companion. And so it continued until high noon loosed a watery sunlight through the clouds.

Cho ordered food served to the men on deck. And they, too, ate where they stood, ever on guard.

“It may be that they wait for night and the dark to favor them.” Cho brushed crumbs from his fingers.

“Let us also yearn for that, Sun-born,” replied Han. ”Engaging at night is a chancy thing. Escape may be ours.”

Cho flung back his cloak. “Not so! She is coming up!”

The raider was moving in with a darting speed. Ray drew the sword Cho had given him and looked curiously at the burnished blade. This was no weapon to fit his hand. He held it awkwardly and ran his finger downy one of the keen edges. His mouth was dry, and he found himself swallowing too often. At last he slammed that weapon back in its sheath. His bare hands and knowledge of infighting might serve him far better now. But in spite of his training in his own time and place, this was the first real war he had ever faced. Around him the crew made preparations with quiet efficiency, adjusting their weapons. He envied them their knowledge and the skill that gave them both occupation during this wait and a defense when the test came.

“Remember, the shield is for protection,” Cho cautioned.

Ray nodded grimly.

Then, as sudden as a squall in the tropics, came the attack. From the bow of the raider shot a green ray, bright even in the sun, striking the side of the Wind Ruler. Ray caught the scent of burning.

“Too low!” cried the Lady Ayna.

Inch by inch that green light crept up to where the Murians waited. Cho’s fingers dug into Ray’s arm. “Your shield—behind it!”

Ray swung the shield across his body, crouching a little behind that barrier which suddenly seemed very light and useless. The beam slanted across the deck where they stood.

One of the men stationed by a death-breather screamed horribly. Convulsively he flung out his right arm. On the bare skin, writhing as might some loathsome reptile, was a patch of vivid green. The sailor screamed again, flinging himself back from the machine he served, falling to the deck close to Ray. Instinctively the American started forward, hand half out, but Cho’s grip jerked him back and away.

“No! We can do nothing. He is already dead, and it will attack any other living flesh.”

The man shrieked once more and then lay still, the others edging away from his crumpled body.

“See—it seeks now other victims, having fed once,” Cho hissed.

That splotch of green, no longer seeming part of a beam of light, but something far more tangible, with an evil life of its own, wriggled from the arm of the dead man, fell upon the planking, lengthened into a snake, and began to inch along. Han leaned over the wheel. In his hand was a pear-shaped crystal. As he held it out, a spark of fire shot from it to strike directly upon the serpent light. There was a shrill hum that hurt the ears and the green thing was gone, leaving at blackened smear on the deck, from which arose a tiny curl of smoke.

“That—that was alive!” breathed Ray.

“Not as we know life,” Cho returned. “That is one of the favorite weapons. They will try again—“ Once more the parent beam came from the raider, this time aimed much higher. It struck upon Han’s shield, to cling there, as if it struggled to find a way through from behind that metal barrier. Baffled, it withdrew, only to strike at the rest, one by one.

When it reached Ray, it was a weight pressing him back, so that he retreated a step or two in surprise, before standing up to what was really no great force of pressure. The rim of the shield was in close contact with his body, and behind it he braced against something that writhed, turned up and down, and tried to find some crack in the metal through which to reach him. Then it was gone, and the beam swept along the metal screen protecting the waist and came to the foredeck. But nowhere did it find a second victim.

As yet the Wind Ruler made no counterattack, which led Ray to wonder. Nor did it deviate from the course or slacken the speed Cho had ordered. The raider had fallen a little behind now, as if the need for launching that beam had slowed it. But with the failure of its first blow, it plowed ahead to launch a second, which came in a rain like patter.

Ray looked down. Inches from his feet two small slivers of metal stood point down, still quivering. He cried out; another such sliver hung from his shoulder. Cho leaped to take the wheel.

“Loose the death-breathers!” he ordered.

One of the sailors near Ray steadied the tube on the box, while his companion inserted therein a ball of an unhealthy yellow color. One of the men bore down on a small lever. The yellow ball rose almost lazily into the air, swung up and out to the raider, and crashed upon her bow deck. There was a puff of saffron smoke. The raider swung quickly, but the smoke crept back along her deck, a cloud thicker than the fog that had veiled her earlier. It hid all but a small portion just above the waterline.

Cho passed the wheel to one of the sailors. “That—that was against all orders, except for dire necessity. How is it with you, Han?”

The officer leaned limply against Ray, who had moved in to his support. His face had a sickly greenish tinge beneath sea tan. The metal sliver must have carried some deadly poison.

“Another must take duty, Sun-born—I…”

His full weight slumped against Ray, and the American shed his shield to ease him to the deck. Cho took him into his arms, supporting his head.

“Grieve not for me—I go to the Sun. Light a candle from the Flame—for…”

His head rolled against Cho’s chest, and the Murian touched his sweat-beaded forehead gently. Then he looked to the raider, dipping and rising in the waves as if there was now no sure hand on its wheel.

“You have paid, followers of the Shadow—but the payment will be asked again, and yet again! This do I swear by the Flame! Han’s true and lasting blood-price shall be collected in the Five Walled City itself! It may not be this year—but it will come!”

Ray helped him wrap the dead officer in his cloak. When they arose, the sailors were gingerly picking the metal darts from the deck, gathering them with careful attention not to touch their discolored points. But for the sailor who had died of the green fire and for Han, the fight might never have taken place.

“Sun-born! Look to the raider!”

They had drawn away from the other ship, leaving it wallowing in the waves apparently without direction. But now it was answering to some competent hand again, creeping forward, though not with its former‘ speed, to follow them still.

“How can this be?” cried the Lady Ayna. “The death-breather—it should have killed all on board!”

“They must possess defenses of which we know naught,” Cho replied. “But it appears they are crippled. Give us until late tomorrow and we are free. But if they bring by signal another of their kind.”

“Yes,” the Lady Ayna echoed him, “there remains that. See, they creep it is true, but they do not leave us.”

The Wind Ruler had drawn a length ahead of the dark raider. Still now that ship fell in behind, keeping; the same course. A crippled hound, plainly, yet one that had not given up the hunt. And there was something uncanny in that determination.

Night came early under a cloud-filled sky. And still the silent Atlantean vessel pursued them, nosing along sullenly with perhaps not the will nor the power to draw level with the Wind Ruler again. The Murians hoisted a white running light, but there was no answer from across the water. However, their own illumination spread across the waves, making sure an enemy boarding party could not come upon them unaware.

Ray rubbed his smarting eyes, strained from too much watching astern. Like those about him, he had not discarded the tall shield, and its weight cut more and more heavily into his arm muscles.

Sometime late tomorrow, Cho had said, they would be at the entrance to the Inner Sea and could expect aid, if they must have it, from the forts at the inlet. That black shadow by the wheel was Han and the sailor, sewn into their battle cloaks, ready for daybreak burial. And still the dark and silent enemy plowed in their wake.

The Lady Ayna had gone below, but Cho had taken the wheel and Ray elected to wait as long as the Murian kept duty. He had never been so tired before—or so it seemed. Nor, he had to reluctantly admit to himself, so afraid. Hand-to-hand combat, even steel to steel, a man could brace himself to face. But the crawling green fire that had something akin to life and a rain of poisoned metal thorns had no equal in his past training. His fingers curled as if about a rifle—a weapon eons away. That, grenades—mentally he made a list of what he wanted now in place of the useless sword weighting his hip.

At last Cho relinquished his post to a crewman and spoke. “Rest now.”

In the cabin there was no sign of the Lady Ayna. Ray put aside the shield and pulled off his sodden cloak. He saw Cho stumble to the nearest bench and half collapse against the table, leaning forward, his head on his arm.

His own head back against the wall, Ray closed his eyes. A moment earlier he had wanted nothing but sleep, to close his eyes and forget everything. But now, against the dark of his lids, he saw—trees! Rank after rank of them, towering into the sky with limbs beginning many feet above his head. Between them were shadows that flowed to and fro like the wash of restless waves. And deep inside him a faint uneasiness stirred weakly. He knew a small, faded desire to walk under those roof-high branches, deep, deeper into the shade of the trees. Somewhere within them was the gate, the rent in the fabric of time, and if he could find it, he would return

The trees grew darker and darker until trunks, branches, and restless shadows were all one and the same. And in Ray the wish to return to the gate was stilled. He slept at last.

There were five men now in the director’s office instead of two. But one of the five held the attention of all.

“I can promise you nothing, gentlemen. Psychophysics is as much of an experimental program as this ‘Operation Atlantis’ of yours.”

Fordham put down his pipe. “I know there’re a hundred different experimental programs in existence.”

“Put that in the thousands, and you’ll be closer to the truth,” said the first speaker.

“All right, thousands then, Dr. Burton. And, tell me this: does anyone know what’s being done—the all—over picture?”

“They have the reports.”

Fordham smiled wearily. “Who reads them? Probably several different committees. But does anyone ever try to coordinate the whole picture any more?”

“Probably not, until something such as this happens and there is a state of emergency,” the other agreed.

“Now, do I understand you right, Dr. Burton? You believe that you might have a way to influence our man to return to the point of recall—through some mental process? Always supposing Fordham does get his door—or whatever you want to call it—open again?” the man in the general’s uniform leaned forward to demand impatiently.

“Stress that word ‘might,’ General Colfax,” returned Burton. “We’ve had a few results that have amazed us, but it depends upon the man tested and the circumstances. There is this in our favor—this Osborne was suddenly thrust into a situation for which he was totally ‘unprepared, which would put him under immediate strain. According to his record”—he picked up the sheet of paper before him but did not glance at it, rather looked from man to man in the room—”he has had no contact at all with our type of training. However, he is said to be a ‘loner,’ which means he may be self-sufficient to a point, enough not to panic immediately. What he will, or did, make of his transition from here to there is anyone’s guess. We can only try to compare him with the controls we have studied.

“He may have lingered about his point of entrance, seeking a return—if he can possibly have figured out what did happen. If so, our problem is relatively easy. If he was frightened enough to run panic-stricken then we can try the brain call. I have hopes of that because he will be unique in that time era. Therefore, always providing he had not gone too far, we can hope that a call pattern attuned as closely to the type we think he may be as we can set it will bring him back.”

“A lot of ‘ifs’ in all this,” commented General Colfax. “I say we would be on the safer side sending in a squad.”

“Just suppose you marched your squad through, General,” Fordham cut in, “into a wilderness such as the North American continent was perhaps four thousand years ago. Hunting one man across such country would not be easy. If Dr. Burton can call him back.”

“If again! What makes you think the country would be so different?”

“You saw the film,” Fordham replied simply. “Did that look like downstate Ohio to you? Trees such as those—”

“—take centuries to grow, I know,” Colfax replied. “And if the doctor’s gadget does not work?”

“Face it!” Hargreaves blinked bloodshot eyes. “We may never see Osborne again. He could have been dead an instant after that film was shot. We aren’t sure anyone could survive such a trip. But even if we don’t find him, we’ll have to send explorers through sooner or later. Maybe the doctor’s think-beam can help on the next try, if it doesn’t succeed with Osborne.”

“When will you be ready?” Fordham asked Burton.

“We haven’t gotten anything down to a walkie-talkie size. No, we’ll have to dismantle, transport, assemble again. I can’t honestly give you any estimate. We’ll work round the clock and cut all the corners we can. But it will be several weeks at least.”

“Several weeks,” General Colfax repeated. “I wonder what will happen to Osborne meanwhile. If he is still alive!”

6

RAY awoke and lay blinking for a moment or two, trying to hold onto something carried out of the dreams—something of importance. But already it was gone. Cho stood above him, only partly visible in the gray light that was not clear day.

“It is dawn,” said the Murian, as if that statement had some inner and important meaning.

The American arose, wincing at cramped muscles, to follow Cho to the upper deck. Fog and clouds were gone. Around them lay the sea as smooth as those restless waves might ever be. In the east the sky was rose and pale gold. But on deck lay two bundles sewn into cloaks.

Cho paused. “Han—my friend.” Then he walked to the rail. Others raised the planks on which those bundles lay. All of the crew were there, to Ray’s reckoning, standing at attention as if for review. The banner, which crackled in the wind from the ship’s mast, was now halfway down the staff.

“...sea”—Cho’s voice grew stronger with each word—“our heritage from ancient days, open now for these, your sons. Having performed with honor their duty, they are now at rest. Shelter their bodies while their spirits abide safe in the halls of the Sun.”

The boards tilted. Ray heard a catch of breath from the Lady Ayna. Then the rising sun turned the waves into a golden glory as the Wind Ruler sped on.

Night, or the gloom of the day before, had been in keeping with the black shadow of the raider. Ray did not know why he had expected to find it gone with this new bright morning, nor even why his surprise at seeing it still behind, just within eye limit, was so disturbing. It came no closer; perhaps it could not overtake them. But the crew of the Murian vessel continued to stand to arms and keep a wary lookout.

Their conversation was broken at times by long pauses as they watched their own wake.

“It is all wrong!” Cho set both hands on the rail as he stared at that distant pursuer. “They are dead; they must be. That ship is manned by the dead!”

The Lady Ayna caught her lower lip between her teeth, as if by that pressure alone she could keep from words she would rather not utter. But Ray answered.

“You may be right; you know the powers you control. But as long as it comes no closer.” Only he felt it, too, the gnawing of nerves caused by that ever-present shadow on the sea that did not move in or give one the chance to strike back, remaining always a hovering threat, the worse for what it aroused in one’s imagination.

“Yes, as long as it does not come close.” the Lady Ayna echoed him. “And we must be near the sea gates of Mayax. Do you know, Lord Cho, I have never seen the motherland. Even as Lord Ray, I shall visit a strange country, when we harbor at the City of the Sun. Is it like unto Uighur?” She was almost chattering, trying to use words to cloak her thoughts.

Cho gallantly seconded her. He turned purposefully away from his stern watch. “It is very different. Uighur is made up of mountains and narrow valleys, but in the motherland wide fields border broad rivers. The city lies at the mouth of one such river. Sometimes at nightfall the dwellers in the courtyards take small craft and go out upon the water for their pleasure. They sing together, and the harpers play.”

The Lady Ayna sighed. “Thus, in times of peace. Yes, different from our windswept land where the horse herds run free and wild to the outposts, beyond which outlaws struggle with beast-men and devils of the Dark to keep life within their bodies.”

“Do devils of the Dark then still exist?” asked Cho.

“The skin and long fangs of one were delivered in a packet of tribute hides the month before the Fire Snake sailed. Sometimes the youth of the courtyards hunt them. I have a dagger with the tooth of a devil forming its hilt. But that devil was slain in my father’s youth. They take to the heights and are solitary things, coming out only when they have a bad year and famine drives them to new hunting country.”

“So. Yet it is told in Mu that all devils were slain; long ago, being now only in stories to frighten children. The devils, Ray, are like—in part—to man, shaggy with heavy hair, yet walking erect. Their fangs are long and curved thus—the upper ones, that is. And always they live in high, wild places. They hunt in the darkness of the middle right. And they leave great, strange tracks in the mountain snow.”

“Snowmen,” memory supplied Ray. ,”

“You had them in your time?” the Lady Ayna questioned eagerly:

“Another legend—still in the country that you call Uighur, which in my day contains the highest mountain lands of the world. Your devils have been reported, their tracks seen, but none have been killed or captured.”

“How odd that this is so,” the girl said slowly. “The devils known in your time, yet a land such as Mu forgot; how much else remains?”

“Say rather,” Cho broke in, “why do some linger while others are forgot? Devils of the Dark—Atlantis—why these?”

The day wore on, cloudless, full of light. It was warmer, so they put aside their cloaks. And now there were birds above the waves, which were more of a blue-green. Trails of dark weed laced the surface of the sea, and once a fish broke water, rearing its head as if, to gaze intelligently at the passing Wind Ruler.

“Dolphin!”

The Lady Ayna followed Ray’s pointing finger. “Sea dancer,” she corrected. “So these, too, you know, Lord Ray’?”

“In my time they have growing importance. We have learned that they are highly intelligent. We are seeking to communicate with them.” She looked from the American to the dolphin and back again.

“It is known that the sea dancers are friendly, that they have been known to aid swimmers in difficulty, and they are under the protection of the Sun. No man dares raise a hand to hurt them. But they are of the sea, and while we go upon its surface in ships, swim in it a little, it is a world closed to us.”

“No, you wouldn’t have subs”—Ray nodded—”or scuba masks or the new water lungs.”

Cho was listening intently. “Is it then that your people have found a way to make the depths of the sea open to man? How?”

Ray described submarine activity as best he could. How men in his era not only traveled in the depths, but how, equipped with water-breathers, they could roam at will, more nearly part of the sea than man had been since the first amphibian had crawled from the waves to begin land-nourished life.

“But—how wonderful!” cried the Lady Ayna. “Ah, to travel in the sea! Truly you live in a time of wonders, a time when man must have the whole of the world open to him! We have been taught that once war is conquered, this would be so.”

“War is still with us,” Ray replied. “Many of the things we have learned have come because of the necessity of defense or attack in war. No, my age is far from golden.”

“Golden?” She repeated: inquiringly.

“Mankind looks back to a golden age when there was no war and all was peace and happiness.”

Cho smiled wryly. “When was that age then, brother? In our time, which is a legend to you? No—you see for yourself how much peace abides with us. In the days of Hyperborea? We have our own legends, and those speak only of death and disaster struck from the spark of man’s greed and lust. If there was a golden age—where would one seek it? In the past—no! We have been taught to look to the future.”

“Which to my time is dark,” Ray replied.

“Lord—the signal!”

They turned to look southwest at the foreman’s call. Against an afternoon sky a white trail mounted up ands up, making a line across the blue.

“The signal tower of the outer gates,” Cho said.

“It would seem that we have won our race after all,” the Lady Ayna commented.

Ray looked astern. The raider was there, but only just visible, as if it had stopped.

It was that, Ray thought, which had kept them‘ uneasy, the waiting for some last attack from that’ sinister black blot.

The Lady Ayna drew a deep breath. “The air is cleaner for its going. Look ahead now, not behind. The future still awaits us.”

There was a bustle about them. The metal walls that had shielded the waist dropped back. The machines of war were being covered by their crews. Ahead, on a narrow tongue of land pushing into the sea and ending in a fringe of rock teeth, was a tall tower.

Cho was giving orders and moving about the deck.

“We will go straight in,” he said when he returned. “h shall not stop at Manoa but head directly for the canals. See, they acknowledge us with banner salute.”

There were puffs of white from the tower’s head;: then a flag dipped and rose again. The wind pulled it straight for an instant, and Ray saw its insignia, EL. rising rayed sun on a green field.

They rounded the reefs, altered course to the west, and shortly saw another cape to the south. On this stood a squat, earth-hugging building that had the look of a fort. Cho smiled. Some of the strain had gone from his face.

“We are in now. Let us eat and drink in comfort.”

It was still day when they returned to the upper deck. Cho strode up and down restlessly, paying little attention to the others.

“Now we no longer sail alone,” pointed out the Lady Ayna. “That is a grain carrier and, beyond, a merchant ship from the motherland, and next is a ship of the northern fleet.

“Some of these have been recalled to lie idle here until the North Sea is safe again. Others do business in these waters. But the Inner Sea is always safe—the storms of the north and the whims of the southern gales are unknown here.”

“Why are those turning?” Ray asked. Two ships ahead were altering course, opening a lane for the Wind Ruler.

“Because we fly that.” Cho came up to them. He pointed to their own flag, its full sun proudly emblazoned on a crimson field. “They know we bear urgent news, and so the word has been passed to give us open water.”

When dark came, a light was trained upon that banner, continuing to proclaim their need for swift passage. And it was accorded them the next day also, even though they were in the crowded shipping lanes about Manoa’s harbor. This capital of an imperial province Ray saw only from the sea. But its soaring white towers and pyramids gave the impression of a long-established civilization.

He discovered during these days that the tongue of the motherland was becoming his. At least he could understand easily, though when he replied, his own tongue still twisted over its clicking consonants and slurred vowels. He practiced all he could, while Cho also gave him a grounding in the Atlantean language.

They met with their first delay at the canals to the western sea. Ray could detect no resemblance here to the continent of his own time. This backbone of southern America must ruse in the future to form the sharp spine of the Andes, but now the only heights visible from the deck of the Wind Ruler were gentle rolling hills behind the canal port city.

There was confusion on board, a coming and going of officials. But finally they were passed through, and the keel of the Wind Ruler slid into the waves of another sea.

“Thanks to the Sun, we are free at last!” Cho returned from seeing the last port officer overboard. “After what has happened, I do not like delays, nor do I find port gossip of high interest.”

“The Re Mu.” began the Lady Ayna.

“Yes, to him we must give truth, not words to hide it, lest alarms spread. And what truth we have is not pleasant. The Re Mu—perhaps he will see ways in which we might have done better. His is the wisdom we cannot aspire to. And this was my first command.”

“Ah, but you return with your ship,” broke in the Lady Ayna.

“Which I might not have done had fortune frowned upon me as she did upon you. There is no disgrace, my lady, in failure if one has acted to the best of one’s ability—and tries again.”

“How blue the sea,” she said abruptly, as if she would turn her thoughts outward. “It is gray along the shores of Uighur, and too dark in the north where it washes the Barren Lands.”

“Why do you call them the Barren Lands?” Ray asked. “There is wilderness, yes, but they are not barren. There are forests.” He paused, thinking of trees dark and tall, yet alive.

“Perhaps because no colony has been set there,” replied Cho. “To us of the motherland, they seem forbidding, as if hiding secrets not for the eye of man.”

“Yet it is not so in your time, is it?” the Lady Ayna said. “Tell us about them then.”

He told them of the crowded and crowding cities, of the ever-pushing population that covered the earth with more and more dwellings, of superhighways, of airfields, of the thrusts into space.

“You seek to rule the moon, perhaps land ships on other worlds!” marveled Cho. “Man does so much, yet you say that all this is still flawed.”

“Yes. The more devices man makes, the more death comes from them. Machines take to the skies, they fall, and those in them are killed. Or else they sow death as they fly, and women and children are killed in their homes. Men talk around the world, but they break every law they have made. Some of them have greater wealth than they can reckon; others die for want of bread. So it is.”

“As it always has been,” mused the Lady Ayna. “Yet you are still men, some good, some evil. Have you ever ridden in the sky?”

“Yes.”

“What was it like?” Cho demanded.

“Like swimming, a little. One can see the world below or be caught in the clouds.”

“That I would like,” said the Lady Ayna. “It would have been good had you brought such a bird with you.”

Ray laughed. “There are many things I could have brought that would have been highly useful, but I never thought of a plane.”

He told other tales of his own time as they sailed across the western ocean. But the Lady Ayna never tired of hearing of the planes that took men through the clouds:

“The Naacals should be able to make such,” she observed. “It should be suggested that they seek such knowledge.”

Cho was startled. “But one does not suggest matters to the Naacals; it is for them to decide the paths of wisdom to be opened to our feet.”

“When they hear the words of the Lord Ray, they should be moved into that path,” she insisted. “It would be pleasant to look down upon the clouds, to travel as a bird.”

Her insistence apparently disturbed Cho. “Ray shall talk to the Naacals, yes. That is only what will follow when they hear of this coming. But we cannot make suggestions.”

“Who are the Naacals?” Ray asked quickly when it appeared that the Lady Ayna was prepared to argue.

“The priests of the Flame who are the guardians of ancient wisdom and the seekers after new—to teach mankind. They journey between colony and colony spreading knowledge, increasing as ever they can our stores of learning. Many things they tell only to the Re Mu, and perhaps a few of the Sun-born who are discreet and have the proper care for wisdom. My mother was so honored when she became a daughter of the temple after my father’s death.”

“I shall enter the temple when my sea duty is done,” said the Lady Ayna.

Cho smiled. “Say you so now, my lady. But I will wager that within the year you will summon some warrior to your right hand. Then we shall hear no more of temples.”

Her eyes sparkled, and there was a curve to her lips. “Do you have the power to read the future as a Naacal or one who has passed the Nine Mysteries?” Then she swung away from them and was gone to the inner cabin. Ray looked to Cho for enlightenment.

The Murian still smiled. “So say all women sometimes—that they would have naught of us and prefer temple powers. It is quickly forgotten when the time comes for the marriage bracelets.”

“We are not too far from Mu now?”

“We should harbor before nightfall and sleep this night in my mother’s courtyard. I do not believe we shall be summoned for audience before the morrow, though the Lady Ayna may go this night.”

Within the hour came the welcome call of “Land!” Then the oars were put out, and the rowers took their places. One of the officers beat stroke time on a small drum, and they pulled together with practiced ease.

“Harbor police.” Cho indicated a light craft skimming toward them.

“What ship?” They were hailed from the police boat.

“Wind Ruler of the northern fleet, the Sun-born Cho commanding, with urgent news for the Re Mu.”

“Pass free.” The police cutter was already on its way to meet a lumbering merchantman.

The oval harbor was full of shipping. Heavy merchantmen, stately passenger vessels, ships of the fleet, barges, and fishing smacks swung at anchor. And the docks hummed with throngs of laborers.

This was a city wherein most of a world was stirred into one rare mixture. And he longed to be able to sort out sounds, sights, and impressions at greater leisure.

Cho turned into a narrow, quiet lane, outstripping their officer escort. He stopped before a scarlet door set in the left-hand wall.

“Many thanks for your company and aid, my lord,” he said, the door already swinging under his sharp push. Ray hesitated for a moment, and the officer smiled.

“All of us know of the Lord Cho. He is a good son to the Lady Aiee. May you rest in the light of the Flame, lord.” With a salute he was gone.

Ray entered a large garden, closing behind him the door Cho had left ajar. There were palm trees and flowers, and a pool rimmed with mossy marble. Ferns grew there, reflected in the quiet water. Cho stood by it, and now he looked to Ray.

“She is coming.”

The woman who crossed a lawn of closely mown grass did not look up but seemed intent upon her own thoughts. She was as tall as Cho, her skin almost as fair as the pearls about her throat and the robe she wore. Her hair was yellow and hung in thick pearl-twisted braids to her waist. But the calm beauty of her face was all Ray saw.

Memory stirred in him, and he could not help what he did then. He turned on his heel and went back to the red door in the white wall. He went blindly, seeing not what was there but what was in his mind. The door did not yield to his push, however, as it had to Cho’s eager hand. And he beat on it with force enough to bruise his fist.

“My son.”

No words—only in his mind, as it had been with Cho when they first met. And—somehow—healing flooded in with those words, pushing away memory. But he would not turn; he dared not. For the last time his fist struck against the stubborn panels of the door. He did not want—he could not turn and face Beyond the city rose terrace by terrace, such a one as might have come out of a dream. White flashing metal, rainbow hues, it built by wall and tower up and up. The houses and palaces Ray had seen from afar at Manoa were the rough dwellings of an outpost village compared to this.

“There lies the heart of our world. What think you of it, brother?” asked Cho. “Does it equal the cities of your age?”

“I do not think my time holds its equal. In size, yes, but not in beauty.”

They docked, and Chu handed over his command to his second officer. There was an honor guard drawn up to salute them with swords as they disembarked. Its officer spoke to Cho.

“You have made a quick voyage, Sun-born.”

“Three days from the Inner Sea,” Cho answered with some pride.

“Fair time indeed, my lord. There is a litter waiting for the Lady Ayna. And you, my lords, are you for the Lady Aiee’s courtyard?”

“Yes.” Cho sounded impatient.

The Lady Ayna stepped forward. “It seems our ways part here, my lords. Surely friends and battle comrades need no farewells of ceremony. Till we meet again may the Flame guard you.”

She raised her hand in salute and was gone with her escort, swiftly swallowed up in the crowd. But the officer had remained behind.

“Your commands, Sun-born?”

“Let us go as swiftly as we may.”

He opened a passage for them. Ray would have gone more slowly, trying to see what he could, but Cho hurried him on. Two or three turns from one crowded street to another brought them away from much of the press of traffic. There were still carts, horses, camels, but many pedestrians. And the range of garments, the brightness of color, and the difference in races Ray glimpsed were hard to assess when he was constantly urged on. It would seem that he walked the streets of a…

“Ray.”

His own name, not as he had feared to hear it in re-awakened bitter pain, but in another voice. His hand dropped to his side.

“Ray.”

That was such a call to obedience as he could not push away. Reluctantly, how reluctantly, he turned and faced eyes—eyes that were all encompassing. They saw into him, not just as he stood now but as it had been for him in the months past. Those eyes reached across the barrier between this world and his own, and knew—he was sure that they knew.

“Ray.” for the third time. This was not a demand for attention now but a welcome. And there was a hand on his. He was as aware of that as of those all-knowing, all-seeing eyes. The hand drew him back into the garden, and somehow it also drew him in the same instant over or through another door, unseen but sensed. For a space Ray was free of the world of his birth.

“AWAKEN!”

Ray opened his eyes. He was shaking with cold, an iciness that struck far into him; yet he was not lying on a frigid bank of snow. But neither was he on the couch where he had gone to sleep.

Bright bars of moonlight, so bright that they dazzled his blinking eyes, lay across the floor before him. And under his bare feet that floor was chill. How had he come into this hall and why did he stand there, one hand resting on a door latch? He had no idea; he felt only complete bewilderment.

“Awaken!” Again that low-voiced command came from behind.

He turned to face a robed and cowled figure, half in the shadow, half in that shattering moonlight. Now a hand raised to toss back the cowl. Ray confronted the Lady Aiee. She held up her other hand between them, and on the outstretched palm a small ball glowed into life, with a clear white light that for the moment hurt his eyes.

“Come.” Her voice was soft, hardly above a whisper. She turned as if she knew she would be obeyed, moving soundlessly along that moon-striped corridor to a partly open door.

Within, she placed her ball of light upon a small tripod, and immediately it sprang to heightened glow, making plain the room with its chairs, its couch, and a table heaped with linen book rolls.

“Hither!” She waved him onto a chair by that table, and Ray sat down. Still he shivered with the cold that was not so much a part of the air about him as of some inner chill.

The Lady Aiee poured wine into a white flower-shaped cup. And into the liquid she measured drops from a finger-1ong vial. “Drink!” She put the cup into his hands.

Again Ray obeyed. The liquid was warm in his throat, warmer still as he swallowed. As he set aside the emptied cup, she came to him, setting her hands one on each shoulder, drawing his eyes to meet hers.

It was—it was like being whirled away by a force of power one could neither understand nor control. Ray’s feeble, instinctive resistance was swept aside instantly. What she wanted of him, he did not know. But she was willing some answer from him.

At last she broke the contact, the pressure of her fingers leaving his shoulders. And only when it was released was Ray conscious of how determined that hold had been.

“What—?” For the first time he dared a question and then was not quite sure of what he wished to ask. How had he come into that hall? What did she want of him?

“You were walking while asleep,” she told him, “moved by some force not of your waking mind. I had to learn the nature of this force, from whence it came.”

“Walking in my sleep! But…”

“You will say you have not done this before,” the Lady Aiee replied. “That is the truth as you know it. Listen, my son. You have heard that I am of the temple. As such, I have had training. Your own time depends much upon material things, upon knowledge where there is proof that a man can see, hear, taste, or feel. We have other learning, which is not so easily made manifest. It deals with the unseen, the unheard, that which can be sensed obliquely but not held out into the clear light of day.

“But you are not of our blood or of the shaping of this world, and much that lies within you is new to us. You may have powers we do not know, experienced as we are in such matters. Forces we do not understand you can bend to your will. With one of my people, sleepwalking is the sign that they are under control. It can be an evil thing, and the victim must undergo cleansing in the temple.”

“Under control?”

“Moved by the will of another. And this is a thing the sons of the Shadow do.”

Ray shook his head: “I am no Atlantean. I have told the truth.”

The Lady Aiee nodded. “That I know. To one of the temple, the touch of the Shadow is like fire soot on a man’s face. And had you been possessed against your will, then I would have learned it when I ‘read’ you a moment ago. But something stirred you to walk while one part of your mind was at rest. And that is important to learn. It may be that your own time still has ties upon your spirit and would reclaim you. Or it may be.”

“What?’” It all sounded plausible when she spoke, though his training and background made him question it as having no more validity than the moonlight in the hall had substance.

“That something else strives to use you. When you were taken by the Atlanteans, one of their Red Robes looked upon you, did he not? And those who took you gave to him the possessions you carried when they made you prisoner. Thus he has a mental picture of you and, in his hands, things that you have worn close to your body. From so much a strong quest-mind can build even more. But if that is the case, then you are safe for a while. The draft you have just taken will make you no longer a target for such a searching and invasion. And those in the temple will work for you.”

“But—that’s witchcraft! It doesn’t really happen! Like sticking pins in a doll and imagining your enemy is going to suffer.”

There was such a sharp intake of breath from her that Ray looked up. “What know you of pins and dolls and ill-wishing?”

The warmth had gone out of her voice, leaving it remote and unfriendly.

“Stories of my time in which men of sense do not believe.”

“No? Then they are fools and not men of sense. The old powers must be nearly forgotten. But certain forces do come to the call of an ill-doer. Do not disdain old stories, man out of time, for in them lies a core of fact. There is light and there is dark in the world, and to each certain men incline. If they are willing to pay the price—for each demands a price—then certain knowledge and the power to use it becomes theirs, by degrees of hard learning. Those who have not the learning see a few material objects and believe that is the whole of the matter, not knowing they should cringe and flee from what lies behind those playthings. And in this time those are not playthings. Listen and believe. Scoffing might cost you your life!”

Ray was impressed in spite of himself. She believed so implicitly in what she said that he must accept it as a part of this life.

“You think that perhaps that Atlantean priest was trying to get at me some way? But why?”

“For such reasons as you yourself can list if you think. You are far from stupid. First, you are a new element that has been tossed into an old quarrel at a time of crisis. And such are ever to be treated warily.”

“But I’m just one man with no particular skills.”

She lost some of her remote withdrawal. “One man before this has upset the balance, turned the tides of history into a new way. What you carry in your mind may be of service to those with whom you choose to stand. That is one reason to lay mind-control upon you—though to try to do so in the very citadel of the Sun shows audacity beyond belief. On the other hand, you are among us, accepted and secure. Thus could you be eyes and ears for them. No”—she must have read his expression aright—”do not be angry. It would be to their advantage to have this so without your conscious knowledge. Perhaps”—she frowned now—”in my concern I did ill. It might have been better to have watched and waited.”

“To see where I would have gone?” He caught her thought. “If I try it again.”

The Lady Aiee shook her head. “You will not now, at least for a space of days. Did I not say that the draft cut you free from influence? But those in the temple will know more than I. Now”—once more her hands were on his shoulders, this time drawing him to his feet—”do you return to your bed, where you will sleep well, ands in the morning you will awake refreshed with a mind at peace.”

Had that meeting been a dream, he wondered, when] he rolled over on the couch and felt the warmth of the; sun strike across his head and shoulders? Yet it clung, to his mind in sharp detail as dreams do not do, almost as if it were a warning.

“Ho!” Cho came in. “Rise, brother. Not only food but a fair morning awaits!”

They swam in a pool with silver sand at its bottom and an array of fantastic, leering monsters carved about its rim. Then they dressed in silk tunics. “Your hair grows,” Cho observed. “That is well. Free-born warrior does not go cropped as a debt-server.” He combed his own long locks and fastened them with; gemmed clips at the nape of his neck.

The Lady Aiee was already seated at the table on the terrace above the garden when they joined her. She crumbled small grain cakes in her hands and threw the bounty to a flock of brilliant birds on a stone walk below, laughing at their greediness. To Ray as well as Cho, she offered one of her hands after brushing off the crumbs, and the American tried to copy the Murian’s grace in kissing it.

“A fair morning, my sons. But it cannot be spent as one wishes.”

“A summons?” Cho asked quickly.

“Just so—to the palace. Mayhap afterwards we can show Ray something of the city.” But it seemed to the American that she watched him gravely, as if her thoughts were serious. Did she still think that he might be a threat to all this, an unconscious spy in their midst? Ray lost the small exultation he had felt since waking. There might be no cloud across the sun, but a ghost of last night’s chill crept up his spine. Cho began a quick coaching of what must be done according to court etiquette, and Ray forced himself to concentrate upon the other’s words. It would seem that the Murian Emperor did not live in such state that semiprivate meetings such as they were now summoned to attend were ordeals, yet there were forms to follow.

The Lady Aiee interrupted her son after a moment or two. “Ray, the Re Mu is like unto no other man of our world, nor, I believe, of yours. He is truly one set apart, the selected of the Sun-born, having undergone during his training such ordeals as no ordinary man can face. Our rule does not pass from father to son, as is sometimes true in the lesser kingdoms, but to the best man of the next generation, after careful selection, of all the Sun-born blood. He who sits on the Sun throne is indeed the one of us who had proved his right to hold all power in his two hands. Be not uneasy before him. He sees much deeper into truth and falsehood than other men, and the honest man of good heart is fearless in his presence.”

Was that again more than reassurance—a warning? Ray could not tell. But there was no retreat now, and, as far as he knew, he was honest. Ray was startled at his own thought. Why should he question his honesty? Warnings—witchery—push them out of one’s mind, concentrate only on what had happened. He had a straight story, and every word of it was the truth.

They went in curtained litters, not a mode of transportation Ray fancied, but one that was dictated by custom. And there was an escort from the palace to clear a path and see their trip was made as quickly as possible. When their bearers at last put down the litters, Ray emerged in a courtyard where a fountain played. Before them was a flight of stairs up which the Lady Aiee led them, Ray falling in a step or two behind at her left, as

Cho walked to her right. To the sentry at the top, gave their names, and he stood aside before the entrance to a hall.

At its far end hung an ivory-colored curtain and beside it a gong of beaten silver, with a mallet of the same metal. The Lady Aiee struck the gong twice, and before the murmuring echoes had died away, a voice from beyond the curtain spoke.

“Enter, Aiee, my daughter, with the son of my brother’s son and the stranger from beyond.”

They came into a larger chamber where there was no use of jewels or metal to break the ivory walls and flooring. Above them the roof was a dome, its center open to the sky, and directly below that opening were four men. Instead of the brilliant silks Ray had seen before, three of them wore long white robes, such as he had seen on the Lady Aiee the night before, the cowls thrown back as capes. And they were aged, stooped, their hair as white as their robes.

The fourth man sat a little apart. His tunic was yellow, his belt of that reddish metal of the shields that had protected them in battle. On his head was a crown in the form of a sun disk surmounted by a nine-headed serpent.

The Lady Aiee went to one knee before him; Cho and Ray, less agile, followed her example.

“Greetings, Aiee. And to you, Cho.” The dark blue eyes of the man who ruled most of the world were now turned on Ray. “And to you, also, stranger, who has come so far a journey. Come you hither.” He arose from his chair and led them to the other end of the room, where benches of ivory were cushioned with silk. There he waved them to be seated facing him.

“The Lady Ayna had much to tell us.” he began.

Ray could not help staring at the Emperor. Those dark eyes—like the Lady Aiee’s, they seemed to see not what was directly before them but what lay behind outward appearances. They were old, very old, with wisdom, such wisdom as the American had never encountered in his own time and place. Yet the man could not be of more than middle years.

The Emperor was looking at Cho. “You felt that this raider was a strange ship?”

“After two of my crew were slain, we released the death-breather. Though it enveloped the ship, yet still it followed us. It was as if those aboard were not dead.”

One of the Naacals had drawn nearer, and now he spoke. “In our knowledge that weapon has no defense. They must now possess wisdom we have not.”

“If so, I fear they have paid such a price for it as will lie heavily on them in days to come,” the Re Mu replied. “They are to be pitied.” He paused and then smiled faintly. “You have done as was right, Cho. And now.” Once more those eyes were turned on Ray.

“I think you have already done us some service, man from the future, when you freed Cho from the Atlanteans. Perhaps you have powers beyond our knowledge, strengths strange to us. But why do you throw in your lot with Mu?”

“My own world is gone. As for aiding Cho, first he aided me. Otherwise—I do not know.” Then after a moment Ray added, “Is it possible for me to return to my own time?”

The Re Mu turned to the priest, and the Naacal answered in a high, thin voice.

“Had the youth come to us by dream, even as we ourselves visit other times in spirit, perhaps this would be so. But to go in body, that is a different matter. None of us who have ventured to do this have ever returned.”

“I believe that this truth you must accept,” The Re Mu said. But his eyes probed deeper, deeper, for a long moment before he added, “Your given name is Ray, which is like unto our word for the Sun power, a potent sign. Tell me, what thought you of this Atlantean ship that should have been a dead hulk, yet still came after?”

“That it was evil.”

“So agree all of you. I, too, believe that it contained evil. And to face new evil is a thing to think long on.” He fell silent, and when he spoke again, his voice held a formal note.

“Let this youth be numbered among the Sun-born, even as a son of our house. The duties of that station shall be his, for I say unto you now, my son, among us duties far outweigh rights. And it may be you will discover our world a harsh one. Learn of it what you can, even as it shall learn of you.”

It seemed that their audience was concluded and they were free to go. Once more in the outer corridor, away from the actual presence of the Emperor, Ray tried to understand what had been the reason for the Re Mu’s impact on him. It was not the Murian’s physical bearing, fine though that was, nor any great wisdom in his words. It was rather what he did not do or say but what was ever behind him like a great, billowing cloak, which made him a figure of awe and veneration.

They returned to the litters and their waiting escort. The Lady Aiee was smiling.

“Since we are no longer on summons,” she said, “I have asked that we be taken to the marketplace that Ray may see the busy heart of the city.”

It appeared proper now to loop back the curtains of the litters, or so Ray assumed when Cho did so, and he could see more of the city. The streets were wide and well paved, with stone-rimmed beds of flowers and small trees ornamenting them at intervals. Then, at the edge of a circle, they came to a halt, and the Lady Aiee dismissed escort and litter bearers with her thanks.

Ray saw some in the crowds more plainly dressed than he and his companions. But there were none in rags, nor did any appear to be less than well fed.

“The flower sellers.” Lady Aiee indicated a side way that was a riot of color. Cho went to one of the booths and returned, after a moment or two of bargaining, with a small bouquet giving forth a sweet fragrance, which he presented to his mother. She sniffed it appreciatively.

“Now why does not the spring’s breath ever grow in our garden? The Flame knows we have tried to raise many times, tending and cosseting it. Yet always does it shrivel and die. One of the mysteries no Naacal can solve. Now”—she placed her hand on Cho’s arm—”do I not owe homecoming gifts? What better time to choose them.”

“While we are still greatly welcome?” Cho laughed. “Ah, yes, by all means, let us profit by that. Where to, my lady?”

“Krafiti’s, I believe.”

They went past the alley of the flower sellers and came to a side way, where the street was lined by open-fronted shops. Sun struck in here and there to raise rainbow arcs from wares spread on display trays. Ray had never seen such an open showing of gems, arid he gaped, amazed, lingering behind the others. Many of the jewels were set in the red metal new to him, and he asked Cho what it was.

“Orichalcum. It has many properties and is a compound of gold, copper, and silver, but in what proportion of each is the guarded secret of the smiths.”

One of the merchants arose to greet the Lady Aiee. “Indeed the Flame favors me this day, that the Sun-born lady and her lords find it their pleasure to visit my unworthy shop.”

“Indeed, Krafiti, if you will fashion masterpieces, then you must continue to tempt us past forbearance. I have heard much of a certain pearl headdress.”

“Let the Sun-born but be seated and it shall be brought for their inspection. Ham”—he spoke to his assistant—”bring forth the crown of one hundred and ten.”

“Now we shall see true beauty,” Cho told Ray in a whisper. “Krafiti is a master craftsman, and his agents bring him the finest stones from all over the world.”

The assistant reappeared bearing a tray of ebony. On its black surface rested the life-sized bust of a woman, also of the same dark wood, and on the head was the crown.

A net of rose-shaded pearls was meant to confine the wearer’s hair in the back, and over the forehead rose the nine-headed serpent constructed of the same gems, some as large as Ray’s thumbnail. The Lady Aiee put forth a finger and stroked the head of the serpent before she spoke.

“Well do you design your temptations. Now that I have looked upon it, I cannot rest until it is mine.”

“But, of course! Did I not fashion this thinking of the Sun-born? To none else would I offer it. If you do not wish it, then it shall be broken apart and the pearls used otherwise.”

“It is mine. Let it be brought to the courtyard. Now show us armlets, for I owe homecoming gifts to the warriors who have seen duty in far places.” She smiled at Ray. “It is the custom among us to present small treasures to those returning from difficult journeys. Choose you one of these and wear it with good fortune.”

Ray looked down at a bewildering array of gemmed arm bands. Then he glanced up at her. “You choose for me; it is your gift.”

Her smile deepened, and he knew she was pleased.

“This then.” She took up a band carved from jet in the form of nine-headed serpents, small diamonds making the reptilian eyes. “The serpents are for wisdom, which all men need. And it is unlike all others.”

“Save this one,” Krafiti answered. He held out one of milky jade, made to the same design, but with ruby eyes.

“Then that is yours, Cho, if it pleases you.”

“As it well does,” he replied promptly.

“Upon the inner side you shall set names,” the Lady Aiee ordered. “For the black ‘Ray,’ for the jade ‘Cho,’ and send them with the crown.”

“It is done, Sun-born.”

Ray looked at them lying together, black against white, and both the brighter seeming for that contrast. Serpents—they appear to revere snakes here, he thought, not to hold the prejudice of his own time against that species. The arm band was beautiful in its craftsmanship, a work of art, and it was a gift of friendship. Yet somehow—he did not know why he wished it would remain where it now was, to be worn by another. It was as if that black band held some dire promise.

He got to his feet quickly, suddenly conscious the others were waiting for him. And the Lady Aiee was watching him closely.

“What is it?” she asked a little sharply.

“Nothing. The contrast, black against white, makes them more arresting.”

She looked to the bands. “Yes, that is true. And that is all?”

“All,” he replied firmly. He was going to have no more of forebodings born in the imagination—they seemed to be far too easily nurtured in this world.

7

THOUGH life in the courtyard of the Lady Aiee might have luxurious outer trappings, it was not, Ray discovered, an idle one for any of them. His own task seemed to be learning the Murian script for reading of the book rolls. And it was not easy. In the passing of time Ray began to note that there were portions of Murian life that were not as open to him as those rolls over which he pored.

The Lady Aiee vanished for hours, active in temple duties. That was the one major building in the city that he had not been invited to visit. It was, he gathered, the very heart of the land. Why had they neglected showing it to him?

Or was it neglect, Ray asked himself one morning when he had gone to the window to rest his eyes on the greenery without. He had caught a word or two between Cho and his mother that very day, enough to know that Cho was going to the temple for a special ceremony devoted to those lost at sea. Yet nothing had been said to Ray concerning this.

Was he—had he walked again by night in answer to what the Lady Aiee seemed sure was another’s will? If he had, he did not know it. Did they still hold him in a certain suspicion so they would not take him into any shrine they held in respect?

The Sun was the symbol of their supreme being. That had been easy enough to understand, and it was one of the oldest of all beliefs. But there was a Flame to which they alluded now and again, also a sign of religious power.

So far he had kept within the bounds he thought they had set for him, going only on such errands around the city as he had been invited to share, to the market, to the docks with Cho, and once on a pleasure party on the river, where the Lady Ayna and her hostess in the city had also been guests. What he had seen, Ray stored away, to mull over privately. But there was always an uneasy feeling, now growing ever stronger, that what he was shown were only surface things and that all that really mattered in this land was kept from him. In spite of the ease of manner and friendly attitude of those about him, he remained ever the stranger.

“My lord.”

So intent was he upon his own thoughts that he was startled by those words from the doorway. And in his surprise a small suspicion sprang to life. Perhaps he was never really left alone. He glanced back at the serving man.

“Yes, Tampro?”

“A messenger, lord, from the Great One.”

“The Lady Aiee, Lord Cho, they are gone.”

“The messenger would speak with you, lord. He came in haste.”

A royal messenger, for him?

“Admit him.”

But Tampro had already gone, and a moment later a man in the uniform of the palace guard stood in his place.

“To the Sun-born, greeting. The Great One asks for your presence in the Hall of the Sky.”

Ray nodded. His thoughts were jumbled, and he forgot the formal phrase that should answer that. He followed the other to a litter, noting that again the curtains were drawn after his entrance so that he could neither see nor be seen. Why? His imagination supplied a score of answers in almost as many moments, and each wilder than that which had preceded it. The bearers moved at a jog trot, which suggested the need for speed.

He heard the challenge of sentries, a low-voiced reply from his escort. Then they were out of the bustle of a city street into comparative quiet. Finally the bearers came to a halt and set down their burden.

Ray emerged, but not in the same fountained court yard he had visited before. This was a narrow space between two high walls. No plants grew here to break the starkness of those white stone stretches, and there was a promise of grim purpose that awoke wariness. Directly before him was a door giving entrance to a tower.

The white surface of its sides was smooth except for the door. But, as Ray looked up, he saw symbols of gold set above. And for all his past patient study, these he could not read. The messenger-officer stood in the doorway motioning for Ray to join him.

“The Great One waits!” Impatience was in his tone. “Above” He stood aside to wave Ray onto a stair that curved about the inner wall of the tower. And the American climbed that alone, the officer remaining below.

There was a curious simplicity to the inner portion of the tower, as if it had been deliberately designed to copy an older and ruder form of architecture from a day when men built in rough stone and learned skills even as they so built. The stair came through an open well into a room that occupied the whole of the tower’s interior, an empty room. Again the stair curved up, leading higher, through a second empty room and, a third.

Then he came to the topmost section. Awaiting him there were not only the Re Mu but also two of the Naacals. Behind them the circular expanse of the wall was broken at intervals by opaque ovals, certainly not meant as windows, for, though it was bright sunlight without, no light entered through them but came from globes resting on tripods near the three seats. The rest of the room was as bare as those below.

Ray knelt, feeling awkward and foolish, but following the ritual of the court. However, none of them; made him greeting. Instead, he found himself the center of their probing gaze, and his distrust grew. This had the feeling of an inquisition, save that he had no crime to answer for

“That is the truth. We do not summon you to any accounting.”

It was the Re Mu who spoke. “No, not for anything in the past are you summoned here, but rather for an act to come.”

Ray was bewildered. “You believe that I mean you harm in some way?” Here it was, Lady Aiee’s suspicion. So he did have a right to feel apprehensive.

“No—you may be able to work us well, not ill! Tell him, U-Cha.”

“It is thus,” one of the Naacals said. “Those of Atlantis have now truly closed the lanes of thought, an act never before committed since land and living things rose from the slime of the sea bottom after Hyperborea was dashed to the depths.

“Always have certain minds in the motherland been trained to communicate with like in the colonies. Thus does the Re Mu give his commands to the viceroys of the outer lands. Now we can so speak only to the frontier posts of Mayax, no farther. Those who have chosen of their will to march into the Shadow have set up a barrier none of us can pierce. And what foulness they plot behind that cloud—that we must learn for the sake of the motherland.”

“It is thus.” The Re Mu leaned forward a little, and again that overwhelming aura, which seemed as much a part of him as his cloak, engulfed Ray, whether by the Emperor’s deliberate will or not, the American did not know. “We cannot break this barrier. But there is a small chance that you might be able to do so. You come from a time when different thoughts and powers are a part of its people. What bars us may be no hindrance to you. Would you be willing to aid us in trying to see what our enemies would do?”

“Do you mean—send me to Atlantis?” Ray asked slowly.

“Not in body, no, but in mind,” replied the Naacal U-Cha.

“For such voyaging,” the Re Mu added, “we have many safeguards. Ah,” he broke off, his eves holding Ray’s. “I see that you know little of the mind and its powers. Your strength in your time is founded on other means. So, to you, this is a fearsome thing, for you would not loose what you neither understand nor can control. But do not suspect this so much. Have you not already talked mind to mind? Once you are taught, you will have use of the inner power as have all the Sun-born. But I respect your hesitation, since to you this is an unwalked wilderness over which no trails run, an uncharted sea.”

He was useful to them, Ray thought. They would be careful of a tool they needed. And it was true that he had communicated with Cho and the others, and no harm had come from it. Still—the Lady Aiee had warned him—he might already have been tested as a tool—by the other side.

“Not so!” Again the Re Mu read his thought. “Think you we would dare to use what we doubted? You shall see the proof of that here and now.”

The second of the Naacals drew forth from beneath his cloak a crystal such as Ray had seen in the Lady Aiee’s hand on the night he had walked in his sleep.

“Hold this within your two hands, touching first your heart and then your forehead.”

The priest did not hand it over but tossed the crystal through the air, and Ray caught it. Obediently he closed his hands upon it, palm to palm. It was not cool as he had expected, but faintly warm. He brought his hands to his chest for a long moment, and then, at the Naacal’s gesture, raised them to his forehead.

“Return it now.” The Naacal held out his hand, and Ray tossed the small sphere back even as it had come to him. It glowed faintly, but otherwise it was as it had been before. The three, looking upon it, nodded as one.

“None tainted with the Shadow could have done this,” the Re Mu said. “Now, what is your choice? It must be freely made.”

“How will I know what to look for—if I go?” Ray asked.

“You will be sent to the proper places,” replied the Emperor.

“When?”

“Now. Delay is dangerous.”

Ray ran his tongue over his lips. Yes or no? He did not doubt that they believed firmly in what they would do. But to him it was questionable. Still—let them try, if it meant so much.

“All right,” he answered quickly, suddenly afraid his reluctance would win.

The Naacals took over. A stone in the wall turned at a touch, opening upon a basin of water that held in its depths a sparkling life. They stripped him and bathed him in that water, which left his flesh tingling. Then they wrapped him in a robe as white as theirs and set him down in the chair that had been the Re Mu’s. The Emperor now stood behind Ray and cupped his hands in a blindfold over the American’s eyes.

“See a dark curtain hanging before you,” ordered the Murian ruler.

Suddenly it was there, black, thick, tangible, falling in heavy folds.

“Go through—forward!” rang the command in his ears.

Ray obeyed. Between his fingers he felt the smooth fabric of that curtain, its weight across his hand as he pushed at it to open a slit. Then he clung to it in agony, for flame washed about him, searing.

“Back!” Somewhere a voice shouted that, but very faintly.

Ray stumbled ahead. The slit was open and promised an escape from the fire he could not see. He plunged through it and was out, in the midst of light.

He stood at one end of along, columned hall, the red walls of which were swallowed by shadows. On those walls in mute colors, but missing no details, were murals such as fiends out of hell might have devised and executed. Ray tried to turn his head, his eyes away, sickened. But the will he sensed in control of his actions made him stare at each horror as he went, as if assessing all their obscenity and cruelty.

As he came along the dusky side of those pillars, Ray discovered he was not alone in the hall, for beyond was a black stone altar and, about it, a group very intent on some action. There was a chant he did not understand, but he paused behind a pillar, knowing that this, too, was something that must be witnessed.

On the surface of the altar crouched a statue of gold. The thing had a bull head with wide stretching horns, incongruous when coupled to a human body. And around its gleaming yellow hovered a murky black cloud. This Ray recognized, without surprise, as evil, the evil inherent in the thoughts of which this beast-thing was the symbol.

Those by the altar numbered five. Two wore red robes, had shaven skulls, like the Atlantean priest he had seen on board the ship, and were servants of this foul god. A third had warrior’s armor, and the fourth a rich robe and many jewels.

The latter had a small round mouth with pale lips, rather like the sucker of a devilfish. His small eyes were set deep in rolls of greasy skin. Ray knew instant hate, revulsion, as if all his emotions had been so heightened that response came quickly and in top degree.

On the lower step of the altar lay the fifth man. He had been stripped and bound, a helpless prisoner. But from him there came a kind of light that Ray read as a reflection of desperate courage. By his skin and hair, Ray guessed the captive to be Murian.

The chanting stopped, and one of the priests moved, the murky light glinting on a blade in his hand.

“Fish one!” The captive spat at the Red Robe. “Mu stands against all of you and your devil god!”

As the blade slashed down, his body arched under the blow, and then he gasped. The other priest was ready to catch the gushing blood in a waiting bowl. Hand to hand that bowl passed, and men drank from it.

Ray, sick, struggled against the will that held him there until he was released and the hall of horrors was gone. Now he stood high on a wall above a harbor choked with ships. And there he remained for some time, as if through his eyes all below was being carefully examined, though to him it meant no more than many vessels of different shapes and sizes closely crowded together.

Then the harbor in turn vanished, and he was in another hall, but this time of a palace rather than a temple. Though the walls were still of red stone, here the hall was lined with other colors, and there were tapestries of fantastic design.

The man of the jeweled robe, whom he had last seen at the altar of the bull god, sat on a throne with courtiers gathered around him. And over all that assemblage the murky cloud hovered. Ray knew it for an effluvium of spirit, and he did not question his ability to see it. Before the Poseidon—for this man could be no other—was a group of prisoners, heavily chained Murians.

Faint and far away, as if from some great distance, Ray heard the words of the ruler. Sight was far sharper than sound for him.

“You stand alone. Your motherland has left you to us. Even tonight the blood of your captain has satisfied the thirst of Ba-Al. Mu is now as a pinch of dust upon the hem of our cloak, which we shall shake off, to be scattered by the wind. You would do well to see this.”

One of the captives flung back his head, trying to clear his face of his loose, tangled hair. “Evil worshiper, Mu lives forever! Her arms are about us always. If it be her will that we die for the good of others, than we die. You spawn out of the pit of the Dark. Do you believe any son of Mu would work wickedness at your command?”

The Poseidon smiled cruelly. “So”—his voice was now so soft and far away that Ray could hardly separate one word from the next—”you still speak stiff-necked and with arrogance in your mouth, defiance on your tongues. Nay, I shall kill no more of you now. You shall I keep that your feet may sear as you are forced to run across the coals of what was once Mu.”

“The motherland does not fall so easily, not while one of our race yet breathes. If you reckon so, you are the greater fool!” was the captive’s prompt reply.

Now the fat, oily cheeks of the Poseidon darkened, seeming to swell with anger. “Out with them to the slime pits—out!”

The will summoned Ray again as he caught a last glimpse of the captives being dragged away. This time he found himself in the shop of a merchant, like unto those he had visited in the marketplace of the Murian city.

“Not much longer must we stand aside for the traders of Mu.” There was satisfaction in the voice of the man who lifted a tankard to his lips, drank, and touched a square of linen delicately to his lips thereafter.

“The motherland has great powers.” There was a tone of doubt in that answer from one of his companions.

“Bah!” The merchant drank again and licked his lips appreciatively. “Have not the priests of Ba-Al learning also?”

Then Ray was in the upper chamber of a tower, or high building, for from a window nearby there was a hazy glimpse of lights far below. For the first time since he had stepped through time’s gate, he was surrounded by objects that had kinship with his own world. Strange as some were, the tubing, and much else named it a laboratory. And at a table in the far corner were two red-robed Atlanteans.

“We must have a man to feed it again,” one declaimed. And once more, though Ray stood close to the pair, their voices were dim and far away.

“There is one waiting, a Murian prisoner. Let him welcome the embraces of the Loving One, as will his kin hereafter!” The priest’s vulpine face was alight with an eagerness that was like hunger, and the murk of evil was very dark over his head.

But his fellow looked down at his own hands, where they lay upon the table, and there was doubt plain in his dark face.

“Do we open gates we cannot close again? Sometimes I fear we leap too far, too soon.”

“Does not the Shadow lord stand to protect his own? The day of the Flame is now at sunset.”

What evil they, then wrought Ray did not remember. If the will watched it through his eyes, it was, mercifully, wiped from his mind before he stood again at the dark curtain. Once more he passed through an agony of fire as he felt its fabric balled within his fists. And then, weak and ill, he opened his eyes to the tower room in Mu, its opaque wall openings like great blind eyes.

The Re Mu faced him, but the former serenity was missing from his face. And the Naacals were also men looking upon an ultimate doom with naught to defend them. Ray’s fatigue was a heavy burden, a kind of sickness.

“So, that is what they do—unlock the gates that no human should lay hand to.” Re Mu half whispered. “Do they not know that such as they have invoked always turns upon its would-be masters in the end? It can be brought forth, but to send it hence again is another matter. Peace be on those they have sent Sunward. And you”—he spoke now to Ray, reaching out to pull the robe closer about the American’s shoulders—”to your our debt is beyond measure, for not to have known what they do would be our disaster.”

“What happened in that laboratory?”

“Be thankful you cannot remember. We must go—to prepare our answer. But it shall rest heavily upon our minds until we lie at peace in our grave-niches. They have committed a sin for which there is no pardon, and payment shall be exacted in kind. U-Cha—bring the water of life.”

The elder Naacal handed the Emperor a cup of the sparkling water. Slipping his arm behind Ray’s shoulders, the Murian ruler supported him until he had drunk all of the liquid. As it ran down his throat, Ray felt new life and energy come into him.

“You must rest. And these shall watch so that your sleep shall be dreamless. Then we will send you home.”

Already the weight of sleep pressed on Ray’s eyelids. He was hardly conscious of the fact that the Naacals had produced a mat they smoothed out on the floor, that the Re Mu, with his own hands, assisted them in lowering the American to it. Yet, in spite of his desire to sleep, he shivered when memories he did not summon of what he had seen, or thought he had seen, in Atlantis returned unbidden. Then a hand touched his forehead, and words were spoken in a language he did not understand. Memory vanished, and there was only sleep.

When he awoke, there was a soft glow about him. Those ovals, which were not windows, held a light of their own, bathing the room, him—someone stirred, and he turned his head slowly. Even that small movement required a vast amount of will and determination. The Lady Aiee smiled at him.

“They have told me of what you have done, and I have come that you may be tended by one of your own courtyard.”

Ray’s eyes closed despite his desire. “One of your own courtyard.” But what had any Murian courtyard to do with him? This was not his world, nor his time, and he was the alien Trees, tall, tall as the towers of Mu, rising up from the soil. And between them flowed shadows that made a bewildering maze of the ground. Somewhere among them—farther—farther—he must go—farther “Ray! Ray!”

Faintly, like the voices of the Atlantean dreams, so came that call, but it was imperative, so demanding that he had to listen—to listen and then to stop running between the trees toward the unknown goal.

“Ray!

His hands were caught. He tried to break the grip that held them and could not.

“Return!”

Not faint that call but as loud as a thunderclap heralding a storm, with such power in it that he cowered, fearing the coming of a lightning after stroke. “Return!” Again that command was delivered, as if there could be no question of disobedience.

Ray opened his eyes. Beside him knelt the Lady Aiee. It was her hands that held his. And behind her stood the elder Naacal, his fingers upon the lady’s shoulders, as if they must be linked so.

“Stay!” It was the Naacal who commanded that. Now he loosed his grip on the Lady Aiee to bend over Ray. Between his hands appeared, as if from thin air, the crystal globe. And light from the wall panels seemed to speed into it, to reissue as a luminous cloud, bathing the American.

Once more he closed his eyes. But now there were no trees, no need to seek—nothing but healing sleep.

8

A LONG-LEGGED bird ran along the curving line in the sand that marked the high tide, searching for victims of the sea. It had already feasted on a small devilfish and was anticipating other rich finds. Rounding a rock, it squawked and flashed in retreat.

Ray, disturbed by that screech of fright, raised his head from his arms and looked about the pocket-sized cove. A butterfly with wings of metallic blue danced above his head, only to flutter away. The beach was his alone. He wanted it so. In one sense he was always alone. In spite of the warm acceptance of the Murians, there was ever in his mind a barrier between them, the feeling that this was not real, at least for him.

What had happened eventually to this land and people? Some world-wide catastrophe must have changed the whole face of the planet, to reshape it into the divisions of land and sea known in his time. Had remnants of the Murian nation escaped to more stable lands, been caught on islands that were mountain tops raised from Mu’s rolling plains? Civilization must have died quickly in such chaos. The survivors would descend into savagery, and all but legend would vanish. Her kings would be the half-remembered gods of degenerate races.

Was this now the last days of Mu or her prime? The Barren Lands, they were his own—if anything here could be linked to him, or he to it. Some day—some day he would go back there.

There was a pattering as the greedy bird, deceived and heartened by Ray’s silence, ventured back. After watching the American for a long moment, the bird scuttled on to round another rock on the other side of the cove.

It shot back, again squawking wildly, and Ray heard splashing, as if someone or something moved through shallow wave wash. He hoped they would not come on, and they did not. But their voices carried easily, by some trick of the echoing rocks. A single word aroused the American to strict attention.

“Ba-Al’s temple on the night of the midyear feast. Risk our necks for Mu? If they believe that, they are fools. I say—free ourselves as Atlantis did. Expel the Sun-born. If they won’t go—why, then let them meet Ba-Al. He has a use for such, I understand.” The speaker laughed.

“Then you sail east?” asked another voice.

“On the third day from this, or sooner if we can clear. These Murian fools did not question my sailing authority—why should they? I am only a grain trader from Uighur, bound for the outposts of Mayax, and have taken the same route two years now. They know me when I wear that cloak. There is but one small thing. There is one of those accursed Sun-born—the Lady Ayna—in this city now, and she knows my face. I visited her courtyard before the matter of the hide ships, when I was proclaimed a five-year outlaw. If she sees me here in forbidden territory, she will report it. The Sun-born to Ba-Al, that is what I say!”

“How will you pass the eastern guards to reach our friends?”

“That is my secret. Give me what knowledge you have gained, and I shall take it safely, never fear. This is not my first trip to carry such. And your brothers in the Shadow will welcome me.”

“I dare not seek too much. There are sections of the temple that are forbidden and protected. They have ways of reading more than a man’s surface thoughts, these Flame-tutored priests. It is much that I have been accepted, even as a novice.”

“You will get what is asked of us.” There was a threat in the first voice now. “We know that in some way, recently, they have been able to penetrate the curtain of darkness. And they discovered the Loving One; so much have linked minds relayed. You must discover how they did this thing and any defense they plan—that is vital. Now, get you back before they question why one who goes to the bedside of an ailing father is seen at the seashore in talk with a merchant captain from Uighur.”

“Seen?” There was sharp panic in that cry. “But you said that this was a place of safety, where we could meet without any fear of discovery.”

“There is no place that is completely safe, you fool! The element of risk is always present in our business. If you do not believe that, then you are worse than a fool. Never cease to be aware that you walk a cord over a pit of fire in spite of your safeguard talisman. Now—go!”

Ray crept across the sand to the rock at the end of the cove. But he was too late to see more than that one wore the white robe of a Naacal, the other a leather tunic once stained blue, now faded and bleached by salt spray. A plain, crestless helmet hid the latter’s hair, and from the rear he might be any captain of a small trader.

As they vanished up a path on the cliff wall, Ray god to his feet, brushing sand from his tunic. He tried to remember where lay the. nearest guard station along the road. Surely he had passed one coming here.

When he had scrambled up to the road, there was no one in sight resembling the two he wanted to trail. A couple of elephants rocked by, throwing up a cloud of dust, their back burdens tightly lashed. And a horseman with the royal couriers’ horn slung from his shoulder spurred to overtake the ponderous march of the beasts.

All travelers halted at the outer gate of the city, to be passed by a guard. An ancient custom, long abandoned, had been recently revived and was now a source of much complaint and grumbling by those who could see no reason for such delays.

“Name and rank?” a soldier asked Ray with a weary, voice of one who had done this fifty times before this hour and would do it doubtlessly fifty times again the next.

“The Sun-born Ray, of the courtyard of the Lady Aiee.”

“Pass.” But the soldier stared in open surprise. To see one of the Sun-born on foot and alone was so out of the ordinary as to alert suspicion.

Ray hurried into the street beyond, unaware that he was already a matter of report between the sentry and his superior. The citadel—he must get there as soon as he could. Again he named himself to a sentry at the outer wall of the palace.

“The Sun-born Ray, with a message of importance for the Re Mu!”

He came into the courtyard of the fountain and, after a wait, was brought into the audience chamber of the Emperor. The Re Mu was attended now not only by the Naacals, but also by warriors who looked at the American in surprise. But the Re Mu beckoned him forward.

“One who comes in such haste must bear a matter of some import.”

Ray glanced at the officers, and the Murian ruler raised his hand so those others fell back some distance. “You may speak.”

Swiftly the American told his story, and as he spoke, the Re Mu’s face became a mask of authority.

“You have done well to seek us quickly with this. Can you describe these men—their faces—?”

“No, Great One. Beyond the fact that one wore a Naacal’s robe and the other was a sea officer from Uighur, I have no other identification. I think that I would know their voices were I to hear them again.”

“According to his own words the Lady Ayna knows the seaman. That is one aid. But the novice…”

One of the Naacals beside the Re Mu stirred, and there was cold fury in his voice.

“Be sure we shall find the traitor and also what arts he has employed that the safeguards of the Flame did not uncover him. What we learn from his lips shall be speedily yours, Lord of the Flame.”

“Which leaves the seaman for us. Hold yourself in readiness, Sun-born, to return hither and help to identify him. You have our leave to go.”

9

Ray returned to the courtyard of the Lady Aiee. He was tempted to visit the docks and look there for a Uighur seaman in a stained blue jerkin. But it was close to twilight, and his common sense told him that the forces the law would set in motion would be far more effective than any amateur effort on his part.

“Ray! Where have you been?” Cho strode along the garden path. “We have been seeking you.”

“I went to the seashore.” Ray hesitated. Should he tell Cho the rest? Why not? There had been no promise extracted from him not to. He mounted to the terrace and found the mistress of the household already seated at the table.

“I am sorry,” he said hurriedly. “I had not thought the hour so late.”

“But, I think”—her expression changed—”you have a better excuse for us than mere lapse of memory. Is that not so?”

“This.” For the second time he told his story. “Then I reported it to the Re Mu.”

“By the Flame! Traitors within the city!” Cho exclaimed.

“Within the temple! But how could evil cloak itself so well as to enter there undetected?” The Lady Aiee sounded shaken, uncertain, as Ray had never heard her before.

“The Naacal said they would search him out.” Her distress was such that Ray was uneasy in turn. Somehow during the past days he had come to look upon her as one so sure of herself that she remained a secure support in all difficulties.

“Those who cross the Naacals,” Cho replied, “do not find life so pleasant that they desire to cling to it long. One could almost pity such a one.”

“No!” His mother’s voice was sharp. “There is no pity for one who deliberately twists the things of light to serve the Dark. For this one knows good and, of his own will, serves evil. He is a chooser of the Shadow even as those of Atlantis. Pity is for the weak of spirit, not the weak of heart.”

“I think now we move one, perhaps two, steps closer to the day when the fleet goes forth to the east.” Cho sounded as if he found that a satisfying thought.

Ray remembered his dream journey, or had it been a dream? To Cho, battle might be a matter of black and white, evil vanquished by good. So had the Murian always spoken of this struggle, in the rare times he mentioned the future. But there was that laboratory in the Atlantean tower and what had been blanked from Ray’s memory. Now he wished’ he could recall it, for what might be fact can be worsened by imagination, and when he allowed himself to remember, more than one horror vividly came to life for him.

“They may have new weapons,” he said now, “strange ones”

Cho glanced at him. “I cannot ask questions, but you speak as one who knows.”

Though he had not been told to keep his dream journey a secret, Ray had, instinctively, never spoken of it since the visit to the tower. And this was the first time Cho had ever approached the subject even obliquely.

“I am not sure of what I know, if I know anything at all,” Ray said now. And though he spoke the truth, he was sure that the Murian took it as an evasion.

Cho shrugged. “No matter. We live under orders.”

Ray hesitated. He had so little in this world to cling to—Cho, by reason of chance and then through honest liking, the Lady Aiee—Suppose he lost even such little as he had? But before he could speak, the servants brought the evening meal, and they talked of the small surface things of the day.

The American ate what was set before him, not very much aware of taste or flavor, merely that he was hungry and this satisfied his need. But he noted after a while that the Lady Aiee scarcely touched the contents of the dishes offered her. At last she arose and went to the edge of the terrace, looking beyond the garden wall to the lights of the city.

“How long will this last?” she asked. Her words were low, but they carried.”We shall survive this war—that the casting of the temple lots told us. But the end comes in time. Perhaps not during our own years or in the time lived by our sons’ sons. Still the darkness of the future shall swallow us up. And you tell me, Ray, in your time we are unknown. Atlantis falls and man remembers dimly; Mu goes and even legend is lost. The sea covers both of us, and new lands arise, with new races who know not the law, perhaps any law. And it all begins again. Nations form from savage bands, new cities, new learning, new struggles—but no end to pain and war and evil. Is that not also so?”

Ray nodded. “It is so.”

“You say in your time men land on the moon, reach for the other planets. But if they cannot conquer the war within them, then they only carry it out and out—perhaps some day to the stars. And what will be the good of that?”

“No good,” Ray agreed. “Yet.”

“Yet”—she caught the thought from him—”it is the nature of our species to be so, at war within, as well as without. And until we can conquer ourselves, we carry the touch of evil with us wherever we go. So perhaps we shall set black and bloody fingers even upon the brightness of the stars. But these are the thoughts the Shadow casts upon our minds to make us believe all struggle is for naught, so surrender comes the easier. We go up against Atlantis, lest in this time and place the Shadow does envelope the earth—our earth. Mu is old; Mayax, Uighur grow old. Atlantis is rotted by evil. What of the Barren Lands, Ray?”

“Great plains, and a forest.” He fell silent, thinking of that forest. “Trees.”

“Trees?” Cho repeated, rousing Ray to the fact that he must have said that aloud.

“Such trees as were not known in my day,” he explained. “At least not in that part of the land. It is a country that, I think, does not welcome men.” And he realized that he had unraveled a small part of the mystery. It was true that the forest did not welcome man, that it resisted, tried to expel the intruder.

“Yet, it is your country,” said the Lady Aiee.

“It will be. Now it is for no man unless he would battle it.”

“Which in time he shall.” That was a promise from her.

Lissa, the Lady Aiee’s maid, came through the beginning dusk.

“A messenger from the citadel. The Sun-born lords are to report at once.”

“Go in peace.” The Lady Aiee held out her hands, one to each. “Though I think we have but little of that left to us—so treasure what we have.”

No litters this time but a file of guards. And the clink of sword against body armor was sharp in the quiet side street, though lost in the hum of the main highway.

The Re Mu was enthroned in the audience chamber, but his only courtiers were two Naacals and a company of warriors. The escort with Ray and Cho saluted with bared swords, and the sullen rasp of metal against metal caused a man standing before the throne to glance malevolently at them.

“A bench for the Sun-born.” The Re Mu acknowledged their reverences. Two of the warriors pulled forward a narrow seat for them to share.

The Murian ruler turned his attention to the man before him.

“Your clearances state that you sail with grain to supply the eastern outposts of Mayax.”

“It is as those state, Great One.”

Ray started with surprise. This was the traitor from Uighur. He would swear to it.

“Your home port is Chan-Chal?”

“That is so, Great One.”

He was a younger man than Ray had expected. And there was a kind of assurance about him that was either a very well-maintained cover for a man skilled in meeting danger or else a reckless determination to defy his enemies to the end.

“How many years did you sail with the fleet?”

“The five of custom, Great One. I am no Sun-born to walk the decks for only three.”

No cover, Ray was sure. This man knew he was finished, but he would go down fighting. His defiance was now open.

“Have you heard of one Sydyk?”

“Aye. He was an officer of the fleet, outlawed for stealing public revenues.”

“Sentenced to five years’ outlawry. Yet now he walks the streets here. Have you seen him?”

“Why set riddles, Great One?” One of the guards stirred as if to correct the prisoner’s insolence. But a slight gesture from the Emperor kept him in his place. The dark blue eyes of the Re Mu glittered in the masked calm of his face.

“No riddle. You have been identified by the Sun-born Lady Ayna, one who has reason to know Sydyk well, as that man.”

“She is right. Who am I to argue with one of the Sun-born? I have broken outlawry, as have others before. Sell me in the open market according to the law.”

Ray wondered—was that why the man from Uighur was so bold? Did he believe that he was merely accused of breaking outlawry and did not suspect that they knew more of him? But would the Re Mu sit in judgment on such a minor case? Had Sydyk no suspicions because he had been brought here?

“Lord Ray!”

The American started, then got to his feet to answer the Emperor’s beckoning hand.

“You have heard the voice of this man before?”

“Yes, Great One. This is he of whom I spoke.”

“You are willing to so swear?”

“I am.”

At the Re Mu’s nod Ray returned to his seat. If Sydyk suspected the worst now, he was tough enough or well enough trained to give no outward sign.

“Traitor!”

The force of that broke through Sydyk’s well maintained front. He paled under the dark of his sea tan.

“Your accomplice has betrayed all your plans. And now he has gone to the reward found fitting by those who serve the Flame he tried to befoul by his very presence in its temple. We know why you have come here. You pitiful fool, will Ba-Al now come to your aid? Will even his deluded followers raise a single sword in your behalf? Speak freely and mayhap compassion may temper justice.”

Sydyk might have been staggered a moment earlier, but he was again behind his shield of confidence or desperation.

“If I die, I die. But little will be learned from me.”

“No?” The Re Mu smiled, a very small and fleeting smile. Ray, seeing that, shivered. Never would he want to be so smiled upon.

“You shall go with the Naacals.”

A shade passed over the face of the man from Uighur, then was gone again.

“To the Naacals do I go then. But while I can, I shall keep a still tongue.”

“Evil are you, and the willing servant of evil. Yet courage is yours if in an ill cause. But this is a time when some men must suffer for the good of many. The Sun of Mu decrees”—the Re Mu’s voice took on the formal tone of ceremony—”let it be so.”

They took Sydyk out, but as they passed Ray, the man from Uighur stared at the American.

“Remember me in days to come, Sun-born.” He made of that title words of contempt. “For Ba-Al shall show by whose aid his true servant dies. And his temple shall see you yet. I know this as we are sometimes given true sight before death approaches!” He laughed shrilly as the soldiers dragged him on.

Cho was on his feet, staring after. “He saw—he saw you in the Red temple. A man close to death sometimes speaks true of the future. May the one above grant that it be as an invading warrior and not a prisoner you walk so!”

“We have grown too complacent through the years.” The Re Mu’s voice cut across Cho’s. “Another day and these traitors might have been beyond our reach. Perhaps we can learn more from Sydyk, since the novice was more timid and but lately recruited to their service.”

He seemed to be musing upon his thoughts and to have forgotten them. Ray expected some dismissal, now that his part had been played, but it did not come. Long minutes dragged by, and there was silence in the chamber, except for now and then a faint scrape as some guard shifted position. What were they waiting for? Ray wriggled on the bench. He wished he dared attract attention and so be released from that attendance without purpose. It seemed to him that even in this white-walled hall there were shadows that darkened and crept upon them and the throne, as if night drew in not in a natural way but as a threat.

The curtain at the doorway parted, and a. guard came, saluting the Emperor and passing to his hand a writing tablet. The Re Mu read and then looked up.

“Sydyk was unknown in person to those he served. And tonight, before he was taken, they forbade him to risk further communication with them. Lord Ray, what was it that he said to you as they took him forth?”

“That he foresaw me in the temple of Ba-Al.”

“The temple of Ba-Al. But not how you came there. Pray to such gods as you acknowledge that he saw only a portion of the truth.”

Cho stepped forward. “Great One, this Sydyk was unknown to his masters in the east, and they will not seek him for a space. Cannot one of us take his place, to enter the heart of the enemies’ land?”

“Those who send spies will be prepared against them in perhaps a far more expedient manner than we have been. What think you, U-Cha? Shall we consider this?”

“It is written so in the stars.”

“Then”—Cho was almost breathless—”let me offer myself for that service!”

Slowly the Re Mu shook his head. “We make no hasty decisions. We shall see, we shall see.”

“Great One.” The senior of the Naacals spoke, his voice falling to such a murmur that they could not hear. Ray saw the Emperor nod.

“Lord Cho, it is our will that you search out upon the charts of the Barren Lands such harbors as might give good hiding to any scout from the fleet.”

“Yes, Great One!”

“And you, Lord Ray, will go with Ah-Kam to set into the records all of Sydyk that you heard.”

The younger Naacal stepped away from the throne and waited for Ray to join him.

They went through the second doorway, into a corridor which was less public. Ray thought, perhaps a private way for the Re Mu. He looked inquiringly at his guide and saw the gleam of crystal in the other’s hand. Then from it shot a dazzling beam, blinding his eyes.