Patience was evidently the machine's long suit. Four times it had repeated the smoothing and scratching before they craned over to stare at its moving tentacle in excited silence.
'M,' it wrote.
'M—E—N?'
Del dropped to his knees. Swiftly he traced a large 'YES,' in the dirt.
'HOW?' it asked, after an interval.
Del pointed to the time-travelling machines, and ran across the room to indicate the broken part of his own. The machine understood his meaning, and its feeler fell to scratching what proved to be the beginning of a tedious written conversation.
'For the Lord's sake,' said Roy, some time later, 'tell it to give us some food—we're all in pretty bad need of it!'
The door opened, a few minutes later, in response to some unknown method of communication, and a machine scuttled in bearing circular objects a foot in diameter and three inches thick. Roy picked one up, examined it, and then knocked it experimentally with his knuckles. It gave an unmistakable sound.
'Wood!' he said, disgustedly. 'What the dickens does it think we are? Try it again, Del. Say "fruit" or something like that.'
Some hours later, feeling very much better for the fruit which had been produced in generous quantities, Roy sat beside Jessica and watched the three dwarfs hard at work on one of the time-travellers. The damage to Del's machine had been less serious than he had feared. Such parts as had been ruined could be supplied from the duplicate contrivance in which Kal and Ril had travelled, A couple of hours' toil saw the replacements almost completed.
'Not that it's going to help us any,' said Betty, complainingly. 'You couldn't get more than four into that cage affair, even at a pinch.'
Del agreed. 'But this'—he pointed to the tentacled machine —'is intelligent. Maybe it can duplicate it for us from a pattern.'
'That's good!' Betty sneered. 'I suppose you're trying to kid me that you're not going to slip off in that traveller and leave us here?'
'We have no intention of doing such a thing.'
Betty shrugged her shoulders and moved away. She favoured Roy with a contemptuous glance as she passed him, and made her way to the side of the moody Hale Lorrence. It was noticeable that, a few minutes later, much of his moodiness had evaporated and the two were deeply engaged in a whispered conversation.
Jessica was puzzled by the relationship between Roy and Betty.
'But I don't understand why you brought her,' she said. 'You're not in love with her.'
Roy agreed, with a slow nod.
'No, I'm not in love with her—not now. But in 1941, I was. She disappeared that year, and for ten years afterwards I devoted myself to building a time-traveller, so that I might find her again. I can see, now, that for all that time I was idealising her. By 1951, I was no longer in love with Betty, but with an ideal girl of my own imagining—a Betty I had built up in my own mind. You understand?'
'I understand. So when you went back to the real Betty ...?'
'It was to fetch her from 1941 to 1951. On the return trip, the machine let me down. And,' he added, in a voice so low that she could scarcely hear it, 'I'm glad it did.'
He paused a moment before he went on: 'Tell me, how did you get here—and alone?'
'There's very little to tell. It happened entirely by accident. I had been helping my father to build the machine. Perhaps helping is rather a grand word for the little part I took, but he had no other assistant. My part of the work was far more practical than theoretical. I was very hazy as to the principles of the machine, but I was frequently called upon to make tests of the wiring and connections. Yesterday—thousands of years ago, it is now—I was testing some switches in the traveller. My father must have made the main battery connections and forgotten to warn me. The next thing I knew was that the laboratory had disappeared and there was a sandy plain all around me.
'I realised at once what had happened, and I worked the levers desperately. Nothing responded. I got out of the machine, with an idea of going to find help. Then a red thing came marching over the plain. I was frightened, so I hid as best I could. The thing came up without noticing me. It lifted up the traveller and threw it down on one side, breaking it badly. Then it went on, and I think I lost my head for a time, for I knew I could never mend the machine. I never remember crying in my life before, but I felt so terribly desolate and alone. A little later, the white machines came along and found me.'
'Well, you've got company now, at any rate,' said Roy. 'And I don't think there is any need to be sad. Del will get us back somehow. I've a great faith in that little chap, queer as he looks.'
Hale Lorrence and Betty rose to their feet and began to saunter in the direction of Del and his fellow-workers. After some moments' close examination of the cage, Hale said:
'Your machine is on a slightly different plan from mine. Will you explain it?'
Del indicated the controls and settings, while his assistants put finishing touches to the repairs. Betty climbed into the traveller and began fingering the switches. Roy stopped talking to Jessica and watched. There was a furtiveness about the pair that he did not like. Hale seemed to be edging round, as though he wanted to gain a coveted position. Kal looked up and proclaimed that the work was finished. Immediately, a gleam came into Hale's eyes.
'Look out!' Roy shouted. But he was too late. Like a flash, Hale snatched a high-power heat-ray from Kal's belt.
'Back!' he roared, pointing it at them. 'Back, all of you!'
There was no disobeying the command. Kal and Ril drew ray tubes, but both hesitated to use them—the precious time-traveller stood right behind Hale. As they backed away, the egg-shaped metal creature in the middle of the room stirred its limbs, as though realising what was afoot. One metal tentacle came snaking across the floor towards Hale. Without hesitation, he pressed the catch of his tube and lopped the shining limb away. Another came shooting in his direction, and it too fell to the ground. He turned, and sent a savage jet of heat searing full at the metal body. He swung back, glaring at the group of men; it seemed for a moment that he was minded to end their existences with a final sweep of the heat-beam.
Roy's revolver came into action with a crash. The heavy bullet took Hale in the arm. The tube dropped from his hand, and he bolted into the machine. Roy, as he took aim again, saw the other, unwounded hand reach for the switch. Once more his revolver spurted, but the bullet flattened itself against the wall. The time-traveller, and with it, Hale and Betty, had vanished.
Chapter Five
THE SECRET OF THE MACHINES
An inarticulate cry, something between a moan and a scream, brought them facing to the centre of the room. One of the Numen was clawing wildly at his body and emitting animal-like howls. Behind him lay the remains of the machine, split by Hale's ray-stroke into two parts. From it a glistening, black tide of life was flowing in their direction. The unfortunate Numan had stood nearest, and already the black flow covered him thickly. Even as they watched in unmoving amazement, he fell writhing to the ground and his body became a mere mound in the blackness.
'Ants!' cried Roy, as the black horde advanced. 'Millions of ants!'
The affrighted group backed up the hall, the two surviving Numen gibbering with fear. Del caught up the tube which Hale had dropped.
'Low power.' he ordered. 'Ray them all.'
There was little need for the command. Kal and Ril were already playing their tubes back and forth across the advancing line, withering the insects by thousands. Julian Tyne, shaken into activity, first by the desertion of his friend and then by the threatening menace, joined in, sweeping his own ray with telling effect.