The machines did not hesitate, but held to their course through a mysterious, dark world in which the only sound was the scuttering of their own progress. Throughout the night they pursued a winding way among the trees, still bearing in the direction of the mighty spire. The darkness appeared to have little or no hampering effect upon them, and dawn found them with but few miles left to cover. And it was with a very weary thankfulness that the captives were carried clear of the forest into the open space surrounding the base of the artificial mountain. For they were not only fatigued, but hungry and thirsty, and oppressed by the impossibility of making their wants known.
The mass of the building at short range was stupendous and overwhelming, rearing before them like an ill-smoothed cliff and dwarfing them into a feeling of helplessness. One high, arched entrance pierced it at ground level, and through this diey were borne into ever-increasing gloom.
For five minutes they travelled through pitch-black corridors filled with the scuttering sounds of many mobile machines; then their captors came to a stop, for the first time since they had left the rocky valley. There came a click, followed by a rattle, as a door of sheet metal slid up into the roof. Beyond it was revealed a dimly lit, cave-like hall. The binding tentacles loosened, to set the three on their feet. Gentle thrusts sent them staggering stiffly forward. The metal door clattered down behind them.
For a moment they stood silently gazing about them. The meagre light emanated from a group of translucent balls placed in the middle of the floor, and served to show imperfectly the rear end of the hall. Of the other end. beyond the lights, nothing could be seen but a velvety darkness. Roy took a step forward, and then stopped abruptly at the sound of something moving in the shadows. He drew his revolver and pointed it menacingly, as he continued his advance. Two figures came dimly into view, rounding the clustered light-balls.
'Stop!' Roy ordered. He turned to speak to Del, but the little man brushed him aside and rushed excitedly forward, calling to the two figures.
Roy, with Betty beside him, was left to look on wonderingly as the three greeted one another. He could see, now, that the strangers were similar to Del both in stature and clothing. A few moments later, they were led up and introduced. They regarded Roy and Betty with the same curiosity as Del had shown at the first meeting, and evinced the same incredulous surprise at hearing of their twentieth-century origin. Del explained:
'These are my friends, Kal Two Eleven A and Ril Three Thirty-Two A. They were both of them my assistants,' he added.
Roy's wonderment grew. 'Then you are also from 10,402?' he asked.
The dwarfed Kal shook his large head. 'No, we are from 10,424. It took us over twenty years to duplicate the time-travelling machine.'
'But you know what date we have reached now?'
Again Kal shook his head. 'We have no more means of discovering than you have. One can only guess―'
The clatter of the metal door cut short his speculation. The group spun round, to see three more human beings urged gently into the hall. There was a fleeting look of alarm on the face of the tallest of the newcomers. As the door rattled down behind them, he produced a black tube and advanced, holding it trained upon them.
'Who are you?' he demanded in a firm tone. 'And by what right have you made us prisoners?'
Roy looked the man over. He stood perhaps six feet, and was built with slender strength, in excellent proportions. His hair, though fine and sparse, was jet-black, as were the eyebrows which ran in a single frowning bar across his forehead. His jaw was square, his mouth thin-lipped and firm, and his eyes keen. The strength of character which he showed seemed out of accord with the soft silk (or synthetic silk) garments which clung in lustrous folds to his knees. One of his companions was similarly clad. The third newcomer hung back, little more than a shadow in the dim light.
'Who are you, I say?' repeated the speaker.
It was Del who answered. He gave particulars of his own group, and countered with a like request. The new arrival put away his tube.
'I am Hale Lorrence, and this is my companion, Julian Tyne.' He indicated the other silk-robed man. 'We have come from the year 3920.'
'And the third member of your party?'
The man who called himself Hale shrugged his shoulders. 'She has told me that her name is Jessica Tree. She claims to have started from a.d. 2200.'
The vaguely seen figure stepped forward. She revealed herself as a girl of perhaps twenty-four or twenty-five. A russet tunic, heavily worked with metallic thread, covered her to her knees. Her legs were a sunburnt brown, and her feet were encased in shoes to match her tunic. Black hair, cut short, clustered about her softly oval face, and she surveyed the company from a pair of lustrously dark eyes. Her tone, as she spoke, betrayed her dislike of Hale's manner.
'It is more than a mere claim,' she said, coldly. 'It is a fact that I come from 2200.... What year is this?'
Del shrugged his shoulders. That is what we all want to know.'
'I don't,' cried Betty's voice, viciously. 'I don't care a damn what year it is! The one thing I'm certain about is that I have been kidnapped. And if somebody doesn't do something to get me back where I belong—and do it darned quick—there's going to be trouble around here. See?'
Hale Lorrence regarded her speculatively for a moment, and then turned to Del.
'We are hungry and thirsty. Is there any food here?'
Kal had ascertained that there were dishes of water at the other end of the cavern, but no food.
After they had drunk, Roy started on an exploratory tour of their prison. He could discover no opening other than that closed by the metal door. The walls would have easily revealed any crack, for they were smooth and unornamented. The finish to them puzzled him not a little. Although they were hard and smooth, the effect was not that obtained by any mechanical finishing process. It was, he felt, the kind of result one would expect if a giant hand had attempted to shape the material in its plastic state, without the use of tools.
The end of the circuit found him no wiser than the beginning. He returned to find the rest of the party endeavouring to clear away some of their mystification. Del was saying:
'... therefore, this must be a kind of "dead" spot in time. It is as though our machines had been thrown into the flow of time and swept along until, for some unguessable reason, they met an obstruction at this point. Every one of us has arrived here because his machine was faulty in some way or other. To take an illustration—a bad one, I admit, but enough for our purpose—one may consider time as a river. You may turn boats adrift on it at many points, and they will all collect together at the same serious obstacle, whether they have travelled a hundred miles or two miles. We are now at some period where the straight flow of time has been checked—perhaps it is even turning back upon itself. We know no details at present, but it is certain that the same curious phenomenon has thrown us all together.'
'But,' Hale objected, 'time, like space, surely is curved?'
'It may be—in fact, it must be; but I see no reason why there should not be interruptions in time. After all, are not the stars interruptions in space?'
'You mean that space may interrupt time in the same way that time distorts space?'
'Roughly, yes—if you can consider the two apart, which I find impossible. I merely repeat that we have struck some barrier and been thrown up like so much jetsam.'
'Then there may be others, besides ourselves?'
'As many others as made faulty time-travellers.'
Julian Tyne joined in the conversation. He spoke with a lazy drawl which irritated his listeners.