The Sunless World

Neil R. Jones

Table of Contents

Foreword 1

INTO THE HYDROSPHERE 3

TIME'S MAUSOLEUM 52

THE SUNLESS WORLD 82

Foreword

In 1950, the book of life closed for Professor Jameson. His was a quiet death at home and in bed, his end not having been entirely unexpected. It has been written that death is life's greatest adventure. How little the professor realized this fact is lost and closed to conjecture, for he looked upon his own death entirely in the light of his brilliant experiment. He had envisioned immortality of the flesh rather than the immortality of life and sentient entity, a bodily preservation far beyond the vainest expectations of the Egyptian sages, measured in terms of ages.

It may have been a horror of worms, or of slow, bacteriological decay, prolonged by the artifices of embalmers which prompted him to guard his dead body from the inevitable fate which is the heritage of all life. Professor Jameson was a scientist, and a dreamer as well, or else he would not have eventually swerved radically from the paths of predecessors, striking out into virgin fields of unique possibility.

The inspiration, the professor later came to fully realize, was preceded by a personal desire to seek immunity from the eternal law of dust to dust. He experimented with serums first of all, hoping to parallel the results achieved by H. Rider Haggard's lost tribes of Kor in his immortal She, realizations which humbled the skills of the Egyptian embalmers. Partial success accompanied by a dissatisfaction with his efforts caused him to contemplate other modes of preservation. Probably his best theory along this line of endeavor yielded the practical solution of having his dead body immersed in a great block of transparent glass.

But glass is not indestructible to earthly elements in the face of untold millenniums. The professor reasoned that just as long as he employed an Earthly means of preservation he was doomed to disappointment, for atomic structure is contagious to universal change when subjected to varying planetary conditions.

The idea, which exploded into activity within the professor's mind one day, left him stunned momentarily. He envisioned the spectacular and uncanny, though nonetheless feasible, possibility of preserving his dead body in the vast depths of the cosmic void. He built a funeral rocket powered with radium propulsion, a slim, sleek, glistening rocket as his coffin, the symbol of his funeral, which his nephew faithfully attended following his death. According to his plans, the coffin-rocket became a satellite of the Earth.

More than forty million years fled by. The rocket, protected from occasional, flitting meteors by a constantly recharged equipment of radium rays acting as forces of automatic repulsion, encircled the Earth constantly, like a tiny moon. Professor Jameson had accomplished his ambition. Yet how true it is that men plan without taking into consideration the caprices of Fate, that unmoved destiny which rules the courses of worlds apart.

It was one of Fate's caprices which brought a party of space wanderers, machine men from a distant corner of the illimitable, star-studded heavens, into the shadow of the dying world, a planet lifeless and untenanted, a pathetic semblance of past glory, sentineled by a lonely rocket satellite revolving about the Earth on its endless orbit.

The machine men of Zor had achieved immortality by removal of their brains from organic bodies of flesh and blood to machines which knew replacement and repair rather than death. A cubed body, four metal legs, several metal tentacles and a metal, cone-shaped head enclosing the vital brain presented a weird, yet practical, aspect. Conveniently encircling the metal head were shuttered eyes, working much on the same principle as television plates, a single eye situated in the apex of the head to permit upward vision. Mental telepathy served them as a means of communication.

Professor Jameson's surprise can be better imagined than explained when he came to his senses to find himself a machine man. The Zoromes had transposed the brain from his perfectly preserved corpse to the metal head of a machine. He found himself a machine man, a convert to the ranks of these scientific adventurers of the cosmos, who journeyed from one planetary system to another, exploring the never ceasing wonders of an endless universe. Given the choice of a career with the Zoromes or a heritage on the dying Earth, Professor Jameson chose the former course.

Now, he was a seasoned mariner of the cosmos. He had looked upon worlds brilliantly and kaleidoscopically illuminated by double suns, had fought the terrors of a barely accessible dimension, and he had fraternized with intelligent, thinking creatures who walked on three legs. He had accompanied his metal cohorts into the mysteries of further adventures. But like the other machine men, Professor Jameson, too, was looking forward to their arrival upon Zor, his adopted world, which he had never seen. Much would happen before that, however.

INTO THE HYDROSPHERE

Chapter I

Like a ghost of the cosmos, the spaceship of the Zoromes flitted silently into the rapid growing sunlight of a star. To one side lay the crescent of large planet, rough, jagged mountain peaks presenting a serrated embroidery for the surrounding twinkle of the far-off stars. Ahead in the path of the spaceship, yet farther distant than the planet they were passing, a smaller world gleamed like a bright jewel, shedding a dazzling luster. Its brilliance was quite in contrast to the dull crescent of the outer planet.

From afar, the greater brilliance of the small world had aroused the curiosity of the twenty machine men. Always on the outlook for the unusual, and more than willing to digress from the general route they were pursuing in the direction of distant Zor, the travelers sped on toward the bright comet.

"Why do you suppose it gleams so brightly?" queried 88ZQ4.

Professor Jameson regarded the planet they were approaching rather critically. Then he gave reply.

"It may possibly be the quality of the atmosphere. Then again, the surface of the planet may be an endless sea, at least on the hemisphere facing us. The latter supposition seems more probable."

6W-438 left his place at the telescope. "It is no use trying to see anything there until we are in a position where the sun will be directly behind us."

Grouped about the professor stood his metal companions, nineteen in number, all tried and true. Four of them, 88-

ZQ4, 92ZQ153, 5ZQ35 and 45ZQ42, were as yet a bit inexperienced, being the recent converts from the planet of the double sun, yet they had proved themselves on several planets since leaving their own world. Brlx, Ravlt, Glrg and Jbf were no longer known by their unclassified names but, like Professor Jameson, 21MM392, possessed numerical classification in the exacting category of the Zoromes.

The remaining fifteen machine men were from the original stock who had found the professor's rocket satellite in the shadow of the dying world.

Their attention was now centered upon the bright planet ahead of them. Little observation was accorded the large world they were passing. Telescopic observation had revealed a rough, sterile surface of upflung mountains, rare atmosphere, and meteoric craters. The world beyond interested them more.

Had they observed the larger world more closely, they might have seen dark, lurking shapes which hung upon their path, approaching them cautiously from behind. Several of them crept closer to flank the craft of the Zoromes. The first intimations the machine men had of the mysterious followers was a sickening jar which ran through the ship.

Instantly, all was pandemonium, yet from all the immediate confusion there resolved a definite order as machine men ran helter-skelter to their various positions.

"A meteor," exclaimed 38RU-497. "Our repulsion rays have become imperfect!"

"Meteor nothing!" was 29G-75's startling announcement. "Spaceships--out there!"

He waved a tentacle toward several dark shapes which hung close to them on three sides. The grim, silent followers were visible where the sunlight from the nearby star struck against their sides. While the machine men watched, an iridescent flash spouted menacingly from one of the dark ships. Again came the jarring crash as the spaceship of Zor listed to one side.

"They're attacking!" exclaimed Professor Jameson. "Man the destroyers!"

With alacrity, several of the machine men leaped to the weapons of offense. A glare of light stabbed the vacuum, flashing against the nearest ship from which had come the power beam. For a split second, the intense light supplanted the position of the lurking craft. When it disappeared, the spaceship was gone. 56F-450 trained his piece on another of the mysterious ships. With its companions, the shadowy craft turned tail and fled, but not before the machine man's ray split the darkness once more. The second ship suffered the fate of the first. The others retreated from sight, proving the adage of discretion versus valor.

"What were they?"

"And from where did they come?"

These were the questions the machine men flung at one another, yet there were none among them who really knew. 41C-98 ventured the obvious solution.

"They probably came from that world." He designated the mountainous surface of the crescent which stood out so sharply against the star sprinkled background.

"We can investigate later," said 744U-21. "Right now, the little world is more important."

"But what if they attack us again?" asked 5ZQ35.

"They won't," 56F-450 replied. "Not after the way I blew those two ships of theirs into nothingness. We proved rather conclusively that we are their masters in regard to weapons."

The ship of the machine men sped on in the direction of their main objective. By approaching the little world at right angles to their previous course, they were enabled to view it to better advantage. During the maneuvering, a sharp watch was kept for the ships which had displayed their animosity so recently, but nothing more was seen of them.

6W-438 at his position near one of the farther range telescopes of the ship did state, however, that he had seen several small dots descend into the far-off mountain passes of the larger world. This rather corroborated the assertion of 41C-98.

"We'll go back that way after we explore this other planet," said the professor.

Little did they realize the startling events to befall them ere they reached the larger world, nor did they reckon on the time to be spent on the small world which now grew larger before them.

Thoughts of the fight in space were speedily forgotten for the time being, as the machine man at the telescope made a surprising announcement.

"Why, I can see no land at all! Only water, water and more water! It seems but a vista of endless ocean!"

"You're looking at only half the globe, remember," 744U-21 reminded him. "There may be land on the opposite hemisphere."

"Perhaps," was 6W-438's partial admission, "but the globe is rotating rather slowly, and no land has appeared yet."

And as the ship of Zor raced closer to the bright sphere at a greatly reduced speed, the expressed doubt of 6W-438 appeared to be borne out. The planet made a complete rotation, yet no land was visible anywhere. Only an unending expanse of water circled the equator, and this was continuous from pole to pole. Measurements were carefully taken and recorded. The diameter was estimated to be three thousand miles. The gravitational attraction and density were about to be computed when the machine men hit a snag. The difficulty led to an amazing discovery.

"To find the mass attraction, we must find the dimensions of the lithosphere, the land surface beneath the ocean," stated 744U-P1, "or at least gain a workable average of the ocean's depth."

A specialized telescope used to probe ocean depths at a great distance was trained upon the watery world. A halt was ordered, and the spaceship came to rest, hanging free in space. At this required distance, only topographical features were distinguishable. All details were lost.

"That ocean is deep," marveled 20R-654, turning the wheel of the telescope slowly to gain deeper penetration.

He adjusted the instrument to detect solidity at a great depth. Only unfathomable water lay below them. At five hundred miles depth the search for solid land still mocked the efforts of the Zoromes. At seven hundred miles deep, the maximum properties of the telescope were reached. The machine men could penetrate no farther. In turn, each of the machine men took a look into the immense depth of water.

"21MM392, it is my opinion that there is no land at all below that ocean," was 744U-21's opinion. "If it has no bottom at all, then the water extends unbroken clear through to the other side of the planet."

"You mean that it is a perfect hydrosphere?"

"Yes, a ball of water. An undersea ship might follow the diameter of the planet with unerring accuracy."

"We possess no certainty that the hydrosphere is a perfect one, however," said the professor, "but we can find out."

The planet of water grew larger as the machine men edged their spaceship nearer. Upon the ocean, bright yellow spots soon became visible. The machine men regarded them critically through the great telescopes. The spots were scattered far and wide, the closest ones more than a hundred miles apart.

"What are they?" Professor Jameson asked.

"It is hard to tell," replied 6W-438, "until we obtain better vision. The sun is so bright on the water around them that--"

The machine man's utterance was cut short by a discovery of 744U-21. The latter had been closely examining one of the yellow patches as it neared the horizon away from the direct glare of the sun.

"A city!"

The announcement was electrifying. Evidently, some form of intelligence resided on the watery world.

"But there is no land on which to build," 5ZQ35 expostulated.

"Nevertheless," 744U-21 reiterated, "I can see a city."

"Then every one of those yellow spots must be a city."

The machine men of "Zor were anxious to learn more of the strange world. Professor Jameson now assumed a position at one of the telescopes, gazing down at one of the yellow spots they were approaching. The glare of reflected sunlipht on the water was indeed troublesome, but with the aid of a colored lens slid into place the professor was able to view the details of the yellow city.

The city, surrounded entirely by water, he estimated to be probably a mile or more across. It consisted of a thousand or more buildings, low to the "ground." The highest building did not exceed forty feet, the architecture being of rambling and haphazard design. Most of the structures were either dome shaped or else roughly square. Many of them, however, rose to pyramids of unequal sides, while others were rectangular. Professor Jameson saw the inhabitants moving about along the avenues separating the buildings, but from his vertical view he found it difficult to make them out clearly.

The spaceship landed on the water not far from one of the yellow cities. Instantly several boats shot toward the cosmic traveler. The professor marveled at the skill and speed with which the skiffs were handled. At a distance of several hundred feet, the boats stood off from the floating spaceship, waiting.

Several of the creatures stood up while the others sat in the boat wielding oddly designed paddles. The machine men obtained their first good look at the residents of the yellow city. They were between five and six feet in height and wore no clothing over their green, mottled bodies. The professor's first impression was of frogs, walking straight and erect. Bearing out this resemblance still further were the webbed dVits which terminated both upper and lower appendages. The heads of these four-limbed creatures destroyed the illusion. They were quite round and would have been nearly spherical if the faces had not been flat. Sunken eyes gave the creatures a pathetic appearance, while an angular snout and a circular, gaping mouth completed the psysiognomy. If they possessed ears, these organs were internal rather than external, the professor surmised to himself.

They were debating with one another excitedly, their boats clustered closer. Their voices, like the garrulous chattering of wild parrots, came clearly across the water. Finally, one of the boats drew away from the rest and came near to the spaceship. 88ZQ4 poked his head out of the spaceship. Instantly, several lances were hurled at him by those in the nearest boat. A concerted wailing arose from the other boats, as if in protest against this act of hostility.

Most of the lances glanced harmlessly off the side of the spaceship. Two of them, however, struck 88ZQ4 quite squarely but with the same result of the other lances. They glanced off the metal man without leaving so much as a scratch. Swiftly, the attacking boat shot away toward the city. The other skiffs approached slowly. In the demeanor of the latter boatmen, Professor Jameson saw no warlike signs. They came rather fearfully. As they coasted alongside the ship, he saw in their minds a supplication of mercy. A weird, incomprehensible chatter arose from their throats, and the professor saw plainly that they were asking a forgiveness of the rash act of their brother.

The contrasted actions of the strange creatures puzzled the professor greatly. The first boatmen had displayed a desperate sort of defiance. In the minds of these others, the machine man discerned subjection to a nameless terror.

Behind that terror lurked hate. That, the professor saw plainly. Here was a mystery which required solution.

The professor, followed by several more of the machine men, climbed upon the hull of the spaceship. The entreating chatter of the boatmen ceased. They were evidently struck dumb in surprise. But, unfortunately for some of their number standing up in the boats, several of them bent to their oars in sudden alarm. This act produced a comical effect. Those standing were taken off guard by the sudden paddle thrusts and sent sprawling into the water.

The victims of the ducking showed remarkable agility in the water and appeared to handle themselves in this element equally as easily as on kelp land. They were back in the skiffs in the twinkling of an eye, continuing their surprised gaping at the Zoromes. Recovering their voices, they broke into a jabbering din. The paddlers kept the boats at a respectful distance, ready to shoot away toward the nearby city at the first alarm. The machine men waited for them to return to the edge of the spaceship, but they showed no signs of returning.

It was in the power of the Zoromes to implant thought impressions on the minds of any intelligent creatures equally as easy as it was for them to divine the thoughts of others by mind reading. Professor Jameson now sought to allay the fears of the hydrosphere inhabitants and gain communication with them.

"We shall not harm you," he radiated. "We are friends."

The jabbering ceased. The boatmen looked at each other wonderingly. Again the professor sent out his mental call. The creatures muttered among themselves and stared at the Zoromes, mystified yet trusting. Timfdly, they came up closer. Their leader chattered interrogations. From the others mind, the machine men caught ragged pieces of what he was saying.

"We do not know your language," was the professor's reply. "Think well what you would say, and we can understand you even as you have understood us."

"Who are you?" asked one of the boatmen.

"Adventurers of the cosmos," was the machine man's reply. "We come from a world far out in the universe, countless light-years distant from your system of worlds."

Most of this was lost among the green mottled creatures, the professor readily saw. Their intelligence was not sufficiently developed for them to conceive of worlds other than their own. In this, they were not far removed from many people the professor had known during his Earthly life forty million years ago.

"Why did you attack us?" 88ZQ4 queried.

"It was Ogweg who led the attack," spoke the leader, giving voice momentarily to the name of his companion. "He thought you were enemies from the depths." The boatman pointed down into the ocean.

"And who did you think we were?" the professor asked. "Why did you not join Ogweg in the attack?"

"Because I knew it to be hopeless. Such attacks have brought down upon us only more oppression. We are powerless in the hands of the Uchke."

"Who are the Uchke?"

"Our oppressors--Our conquerors. Everyone of our floating cities feels their iron hand. As far back as our ancestors can remember, it has been so."

"Why don't you fight them?" 744U-21 demanded.

"As I have said before," stated the leader of the boatmen, whose name the machine men later learned was Chopoc, "we are powerless in their hands. They live where we cannot reach them, far below us, and they possess terrible powers of destruction. From time to time, they come up through the water in ships not tinlike yours to take slaves. No slave has ever returned to tell what happened to him."

The machine men maneuvered their spaceship into the city of the Plekne, as the creatures called themselves. Here, the machine men made many amazing discoveries. The first thing to startle them in its uniqueness--was the city itself. It was a floating mass of kelp, heavy seaweed, a veritable sargasso. The kelp grew far above the water and was woody in texture. The houses were built of the tough weed, the growing strands having been artfully interlaced and woven to make the various walls, partitions and ceilings. All the streets were made of the twined weed which grew to a certain length and then hardened above water level.

The Plekne, Professor Jameson learned, also used the tender young sprouts as edibles, the rest of their fare consisting of fish and other sea foods. From time to time, the Zoromes perceived strange, swimming creatures that resembled the Plekne. Their upper appendages were like those of the Plekne, with the exceptions of the long, wavy fins which ran their length. In place of lower limbs, however, they possessed tails like a fish. These marine counterparts of the Plekne, who breathed through their skins, seemed to stay in the vicinity of the kelp city, often surprising the machine men by wriggling their way up through the kelp and into one of the municipal pools where the seaweed had been cut away.

Chopoc explained to the professor that these mermen were the Nacac, a species closely related to the Plekne. It was a common belief, Chopoc stated, that the Plekne had descended from this race of water dwellers, having evolutionized through succeeding aquatic and amphibious stages before becoming surface dwellers. Professor Jameson was rather inclined to accept the theory himself, especially in view of the Plekne's webbed hands and feet, their agility in the water and Chopoc's revelation Jthat Plekne, whose boats had sunk far out at sea, had swum a hundred miles or better to reach one of the kelp cities.

The professor marveled at the lack of ego on the part of the Plekne, who, rather than maintain the idea that they were descendants of god-like individuals far above the status of the Nacac, honestly accepted the conclusive proofs of their evolutionary transcendency. This was surprising in view of their undeveloped state of progress and crude, simple routine of life. They were happily unburdened with the theological superstitions and weird practices which the professor had found were all too common among the less intelligent order of creatures to be found among the worlds of the universe.

The professor met Ogweg, he who had ordered the attack on the spaceship. The truculent Pleknan admitted his mistake in thinking the Zoromes to be a party of the raiding Uchke. Professor Jameson could not help but admire Ogweg's pluck in deliberately attacking a superior power. Chopoc had spoken uneasily of the Uchke's terrible weapons which were unloosed among them at the first signs of disobedience or aggression. Ogweg's act had been a brave, yet futile, gesture. Rather than submit peacefully to the raiders, he preferred combat. This attitude contrasted sharply with the fatalistic resignation of the other Plekne who admired, yet deplored, Ogweg's fatal resolve.

The machine men found much to interest them in the kelp city. They made friends with the Nacac who were dumb and could not speak, but whose simple thoughts were plain to the consciousness of the Zoromes.

Lingering in the vicinity of the kelp city, the machine men hoped for a sight of the deep water dwellers who were wont to raid the kelp cities for slaves. The Uchke were evidently a superior, though cruel, race, and the machine men desired to learn more about them. If possible, the Zoromes hoped to arrange for the security of the Plekne before they left. Sympathetic sentiment had been aroused for the honest and simple creatures.

Chapter II

Several rotations of the hydrosphere brought successive periods of daylight and darkness upon the kelp city. Professor Jameson and a few of the machine men had gone with Chopoc to the treasure room of the city. The machine men could scarcely believe their eyes when they found the treasure of the Plekne to consist merely of stones, varying in shape and size from pebbles to rocks half as large as the machine men's heads. They were certainly rarities to the Plekne, though they were the same as those rocks which might have been found in endless quantities on any world other than the hydrosphere.

"Chopoc, where did all these come from?" asked the professor.

"From the stomachs of fish which are found from time to time floating dead on the water. Their bodies are generally burst open."

"Because of a lack of sufficient pressure after they leave the lower levels," mused the machine man, more to himself than to the rest.

He said no more on the subject, but on the way back to the spaceship he thought much about the fish with the stones inside them. The ship of Zor rested quietly on the tranquil water several hundred feet off shore. After the first landing in the city, the machine men had kept the spaceship out on the ocean. The immense weight of the stellar flyer had wreaked havoc with the kelp laced avenue upon which it had first come to rest.Professor Jameson, with 744U-21, 6W-438, 88ZQ4, 6N-24 and 56F-450, was not far from the boats of the Plekne, which waited to take them to the spaceship, when a sudden geyser of water shot skyward out of the ocean a short distance away. A large object spewed out of the fountain and plunged back into the water where it bobbed up and down on the surface. Instantly a wail and cry ran through the ranks of the Plekne, as the fountain subsided and the long, ominous hulk headed slowly for the kelp city.

"The Uchke! The raiders!"

Younger Plekne were hustled into the houses where they skulked furtively, knowing what little chances there were of escaping the hawk eyes of the brutal invaders of the peace and happiness of the kelp city. Uneasiness, hate and intense fear throbbed in the excited conversations of the Plekne.

Professor Jameson and his metal companions stopped short near the water's edge on the close-woven kelp. Zoromes on the spaceship waited for the initiative of the grim raider from down under. Deadly, destroying apparatus was trained upon it, while an invisible screen of repulsion force lay protectively about the spaceship. They had not long to wait before the Uchke showed their hand.

A brilliant ray shot out toward the six machine men and they felt themselves hurled into the air. Beneath them, the kelp had received most of the power. A deep hole had been blasted completely through the city's edge, and down toward this yawning cavity tumbled the six Zoromes. In his hurtling fall, Professor Jameson caught a fleeting glimpse of the Uchke vessel which had fired upon them. A bright glare of light enfolded it, and the submarine invader disappeared before the unleashed destruction from the spaceship of Zor.

Yellow-green water engulfed the professor. Down into the depths his metal weight dragged him in spite of his desperate efforts to seize broken strands of kelp. A short distance to one side, he saw the struggling form of 88-ZQ4. The other machine men were nowhere in sight.

"88ZQ4!" he called. "Join tentacles with me! Let us keep together!"

By turning his body slightly sideways, 88ZQ4's descent became merged with that of the professor, who was slightly below him. Frantically, Professor Jameson thrashed his metal limbs, checking his drop sufficiently for 88ZQ4's metal legs to come within reach of an upflung tentacle. The two machine men sank deeper into the hydrosphere's watery grave, their bodies joined by two tightly wound tentacles.

The professor knew that if he and 88ZQ4 could remain together, they would be of more help to each other than if they were separated. He searched with straining eyes through the darkening, murky depths for their four companions, but he saw none of them. Had the ray of the Uchke destroyed them? He wondered. Perhaps they had been fortunate enough to have fallen back upon solid kelp.

A shadowy form flitted past them in the yellow semi-gloom. It turned, circled them in a downward spiral, following their descent into the watery depths. Then it came close, and in the deepening shadows the professor made it out for what it truly was.

"One of the Nacac!" he exclaimed, radiating rapid instructions to the curious fish.

Recognizing the machine man, and obeying the telepathic suggestion forced so strongly upon its mind, the merman came close and allowed the two machine men to fasten their tentacles to him. He swished his strong, jointed upper fins and vibrated his tail in an upward movement, but his best efforts only accomplished a slower descent of the Zoromes into the bowels of the hydrosphere.

Two more of the Nacac appeared out of the surrounding sea and lent their aid. The machine men commenced a slow rise, but Professor Jameson realized that they had already sunk miles through the clear water. He knew that the three Nacac would tire of the difficult task long ere they reached the surface, so he detailed one of them to swim away for more help. He also advised the two remaining mermen to conserve their efforts until help arrived, keeping the two machine men from sinking deeper. Since his reception into the ranks of the machine men of Zor, Professor Jameson could not recollect having been in a more helpless position.

With a great deal of relief, he saw a cloud appear far above them, grow and resolve itself into the semblance of small, separate clouds which were the Nacac rescue party. They were none too soon in their coming, for the two mermen supporting the Zoromes were rapidly tiring of their exertions at this oppressive depth.

While the rescue party was still some fifty feet above the two machine men and their two supporters, a dark shape of gigantic proportions swam up from below them. Large, baleful eyes regarded them hungrily, while the cavernous mouth opened and rushed at them, frightful jaws gleaming. A shroud of darkness leaped over the professor's vision, and he felt himself squeezed between cold, clammy walls. A clashing and grating of strong jaws severed a tentacle and threatened to crush his cubed body, but the strong metal resisted the terrific leverage.

From above, the Nacac froze in sudden horror, as they saw two of their companions and the two machine men swallowed by the voracious fish. In terror they sped for the upper levels away from the frightful monster of the dark, deep strata, shooting toward the surface with the speed of arrows. With them, they bore a horrid tale to the machine men in the spaceship far above.

The professor was aware of a rippling vibration which squeezed him between cold, soft walls. Something clanked against him with a dull sound. It was the metal body of 88ZQ4. Professor Jameson called out to find how his companion had fared.

"Are you all right?"

"Two of my tentacles are gone," came the quick reply, "but aside from that I seem to be still intact."

The machine men presently felt themselves toppled into an abyss, but the sensation was short, for they landed softly into a pulp mass from which they staggered to a standing position. Beneath them, the cold, rough wall shuddered at the contact of their metal feet.

"We're in the fish's stomach!" the professor exclaimed.

He flashed on several bright lights set deep in his cubed body. 88ZQ4 followed suit. They examined their living dungeon, awed and mystified for a moment by the sudden, eerie experience of being eaten alive. The pulpy mass which rose high about them bubbled and surged past them slowly like a subterranean river of mud. The machine men recognized it as bits of partly digested fish. Several sections of the two ill-fated Nacac revealed quite significantly the fate which had claimed them. The living ceiling above the heads of the two Zoromes rose and fell, touching the tips of their heads, then revolting as if in protest.

"This fish is going to find us pretty hard to digest," the professor quipped. "We'll be one stomachache he won't forget."

"What are we to do?" 88ZQ4 asked.

"That is open to question."

Their prison slanted quite suddenly and stood on end. The machine men hurtled together as the walls of the monster's stomach suddenly clamped tight. By the change in the direction of gravity, the machine men were aware that the fish was whirling and changing directions rapidly, yet always seeking lower levels.

"We're in deeper water now," observed the professor, noting the constricting walls of the sea monster's stomach. "The greater pressure evidently aids the digestion of this fish, and he instinctively goes to deeper levels when troubled in this manner."

"Let us escape from here," 88ZQ4 suggested. "If we fall to the center of the hydrosphere, we may stand a better chance of rescue than if we let this fish carry us all over the globe."

"The only escape I can see is to cut our way out."

"You mean that heat ray you carry in your fore tentacle?" queried 88ZQ4.

"Exactly."

"The tailspin we just went through won't be anything at all to what will come when you start burning a hole through this fish."

"True enough," Professor Jameson agreed. "We must kill him first."

The machine man carefully estimated the direction in which he expected the sea monster's heart to be and then leveled the attached cylinder of the heat ray against the gleaming wall. The cylinder was a weapon he had fashioned especially for himself.

The cylinder glowed as an intense white light became focused. Professor Jameson braced himself tightly against the constricting walls as the agonized fish gave a furious lunge, clipping the water at berserk speed, seeking to escape the terrible gnawing deep in its vitals. Soon the frantic efforts became weaker. Professor Jameson noted with satisfaction that the walls of the sea monster's stomach were relaxing their vicious clutch, though they still sagged inward from the pressure of the depths.

The floor of the stomach became the ceiling as the machine men were once more tumbled about. The dead fish had keeled over on its back. Patiently, the machine men waited for the fish to become settled before they tried to tunnel their way free of the great body. Professor Jameson gloomily contemplated the partially digested remains of his late friends, the faithful Nacac, who had died in a vain effort to aid them.

If they didn't survive, then what chance did Jonah have? the professor mused.

"Do you suppose there is any chance of this fish floating to the top of the water now that he is dead?" 88ZQ4 asked.

Professor Jameson pointed to the trickle of water which was issuincr from the creature's gullet, slowly filling the stomach. "If there was a chance of it once, there is none now. We're going down."

The machine men set to work burning a passage out of the giant fish they had killed. They took what the professor believed to be the shortest route, which was upward now that the fish lay on its back. From outside there came a sudden bump which jarred the entire fish.

"What was that?"

The body of the fish rolled slowly to one side. Professor Jameson finished the black circle he had been cutting. A final rush of water from outside burst into the fish's stomach, forcing out the half charred residue left by the heat cylinder. The dead body was at rest. Followed by 88ZQ4, Professor Jameson climbed out of the opening he had made and slid down the belly of the giant fish.

All about them lay the vast darkness of the deep sea, punctuated here and there by the ghostly lights of marine creatures. Professor Jameson's feet struck something solid. Once more the two Zoromes flashed their body lights to lessen the intensity of the darkness about them.

Small, silvery fish with long, silky trailers scattered from the path of the light beams in myriad waves. Weird, deep sea denizens with frightful faces ogled at the machine men in surprise and contemplation. The two Zoromes found themselves standing in several feet of light ooze. At a distance the multitude of silvery fish were busy feeding off the ooze like real grazing animals of the deep.

"We're on the bottom, all right," was the professor's comment. "There is no telling how many hundreds of miles of water there are above us."

"But 744U-21 told us this was a perfect hydrosphere," reminded 88ZQ4.

"That was just his opinion," said the professor. "I was inclined to believe it myself until I saw the treasure of the Plekne."

"The stones?"

"Yes. It suggested pretty strongly that this planet possessed a rocky core. Just how big this core is we have yet to discover."

The two machine men waded through the ooze, lost on the hydrosphere's sea bottom. All kinds of strange fish swam and crawled about them, some scurrying from the light, others staring at the two Zoromes stupidly. Many of the fish were equipped with natural lights of their own which they flashed on and off at will.

A sudden warning from 88ZQ4 made the professor glance up just in time to see semi-transparent jaws close upon him. Unconsciously, he had walked into the cavernous jaws laid in waiting for unwary creatures of the deep sea. The professor found himself enclosed by a bulbous, transparent body. He saw 88ZQ4 quite plainly a short distance away, yet his tentacles encountered a scarcely visible wall which prevented his escape. In desperation, the professor turned on his heat ray. It did not function. Not until then did the machine man realize that he had exhausted the charges of the weapon in their escape from the fish.

He threshed about wildly with his tentacles, fearing any moment that the ocean denizen would swim away with him, separating him from his fellow Zorome. But the fish did nothing of the kind, and suddenly it occurred to Professor Jameson that, unlike the ocean rover into whose capacious jaws they had recently fallen, this creature waited for his meals to come to him rather than go in search for them. Because of such a lazy habit, evolutionary tendencies had long ago deprived this species of mobile parts and had bequeathed instead the faculty of partial invisibility.

One of the professor's threshing tentacles suddenly broke through the tough texture of the fish's body, and with a mighty effort the machine man ripped the tiny tear into a gaping rent through which he stepped and joined 88ZQ4.

"They all think we are something good to eat," was his sally. "That's the only diversion down here, the one great law of the sea, hunting, killing and eating--then to be eaten. It represents an endless cycle. Larger fish eat the smaller fish and are in turn eaten by still bigger fish, and so on up. The biggest fish eventually have their day and are devoured by minute organisms of the sea which in turn die and fall to the bottom of the sea as ooze which is eaten by the smaller fishes."

The machine men toiled onward through the ooze which sometimes rose above their heads, making for difficult progress, and then again disappearing entirely from the ocean floor. Professor Jameson was amazed at the clarity of the water at this depth. Their lights shone far ahead of them, and, when they were turned off, luminescent fishes were visible for quite a distance.

Then, the machine men saw far ahead of them a great light which glowed from below the horizon. Rapidly they turned their steps that way, for it did not appear to be the emanations of a fish.

The two Zoromes plodded onward through the sucking ooze toward the light which spread far upward into the murky waters. Quite suddenly the light disappeared, to be replaced once more by the melancholy darkness of the great, silent depths. But the machine men had the general direction and kept onward. At the professor's suggestion, they showed no more lights. The dawn of comprehension was striking his mind, and his suspicions were brightening into certainty.

They had come a long way over the curved ocean floor when unexpectedly the great light shot up just a short distance ahead of them, dazzling and intense. Professor Jameson drew his companion down into the ooze so that only the apex of their metal heads were left in sight. From this position, the two single eyes stared at the scene before them. A square, flat surface of sea bottom lay clear of the ooze, and the two Zoromes recognized it as a metal platform. From above, a huge, elongated vessel sank slowly downward into the bright glow of the light.

"The Uchke!" 88ZQ4 exclaimed.

"As I suspected!" said the professor. "Here is where they stay!"

As the machine men watched from their places of concealment, they saw the metal platform divide in two and slide back from the center. Into the cavity beneath slowly sank the submarine of the dominant Uchke. Returning from a raid on one of the numerous kelp cities, their ship probably contained many slaves from the ranks of the Plekne. When the top of the vessel had disappeared beneath the level of the ocean floor, the two parts of the metal platform rolled together once more.

"There's an air-lock under that!" was the professor's emphatic announcement. "Those Uchke are an air breathing race, and somewhere in this rock core they have a hideout!"

"It doesn't seem reasonable," was 88ZQ4's opinion. "They are air breathers, yet they choose to live under artificial conditions rather than live on the surface."

"It is unnatural," the professor agreed. "We may find out why they do this."

"How?"

"We're entering the air-lock."

"But it is clamped shut," protested 88ZQ4.

"Wait until another submarine comes in or goes out," promised the resourceful professor. "Then we may get our chance."

In the meantime, the light had disappeared, and they were in darkness once more. Patiently they waited. It was not long before the great light sprang into dazzling brilliance once more. Far above them, the machine men saw two of the Uchke raiders slowly descending. While they watched, the metal parts of the air-lock entrance slid aside, and a vessel bobbed up out of the air-lock. It swung sidewise over the spot where Professor Jameson and 88ZQ4 knelt in the concealing ooze. It was evident that the air-lock saw a great deal of traffic.

"Now's our chance!" the professor cried. "Run along under the vessel and duck down inside!"

88ZQ4 executed the move with alacrity, closely followed by 21MM392. They bumped against the bottom of a water-filled chamber.

"Into a corner!" the professor urged, remembering that the vessels of the Uchke were rounded.

Professor Jameson fully realized the perils of discovery, but that was a gamble they must take. In his own mind, he cherished the idea of stealing one of the submersible crafts and executing a return to the surface.

The two machine men drew back into the darkness of a corner as the first vessel slowly sank to rest on the bottom of the chamber with a dull thud. While the second vessel dropped into the entrance, a fountain of bubbles gushed from valve openings around the wall opposite the machine men. Water was being forced out under heavy pressure.

"Come," said the professor as he walked up behind the second craft and clung to the exterior apparatus of the submarine.

88ZQ4 took his position beside 21MM392. Quite suddenly a strong current of water exerted itself upon their metal bodies with a pulling tendency. They clung tighter with their tentacles against the inrush of water into the air-lock. The vessel moved forward, and they were aware that the wall had lowered.

The water in the air-lock frothed and bubbled in an ever-decreasing level as the air forced it out upon the ocean bed. The two machine men gradually lost the slight buoyancy the water had given them and became heavier. Jumping off the side of the submersible vessel they scuttled into the darkness of a niche. Their action came none too soon. A metal doorway opened in the craft and several of the

Uchke filed out. It was the machine men's first view of the cruel dwellers of the deep who preyed so constantly upon the helpless Plekne.

They were like figments of an evil dream, their ruthless-ness and brutal character plainly stamped on beetling visages. Professor Jameson was strongly reminded of the snarling face of a gorilla he had once seen long ago, during his Earthly life. But there was no hair on the faces of the Uchke, and their foreheads were prominent instead of sloping, revealing that they were advanced thinkers. Their bodies, however, were small and out of proportion to the size of their heads. Four upper appendages branched forth, terminating in clawed digits. Two stumpy legs afforded the creatures movement.

From out of the submarine, more than a dozen unfortunate Plekne were roughly hustled and joined with a group emerging from the first craft farther down the chamber. Dejected and helpless, the Plekne represented the extreme state of oppression they had ultimately reached. Professor Jameson marveled to himself that individuals like Ogweg ever were born among the subjected Plekne.

"Wait until they all leave," the professor told 88ZQ4, "and then we shall see what can be done about stealing one of these vessels."

"But what about the wall?" asked 88ZQ4. "We cannot lower that."

"Perhaps it is operated by remote control from inside the vessel," the professor suggested hopefully.

When the Uchke had all disappeared, the professor and his companion emerged from their concealment and stole noiselessly down the long hall of the submarine port. The professor was examining the last ship in line, when the unexpected happened. A blaze of light shot suddenly from the floor ahead of them, and up through a wide, cylindrical shaft, which the machine men had failed to see in the gloom, shot a car laden with the Uchke.

It was dismay rather than fear which prompted the two Zoromes to drop back out of sight. But already several of the undersea dwellers had caught the gleam of li<?ht upon moving metal, and they were out of the car in pursuit of the shadowy forms just beyond the aura of their light.

The first Uchke to approach was surprised when a curling tentacle lashed out and applied a mighty contraction about his neck. His surprise lasted less than a minute. The others, several in number, leaped into the fray and for a moment all was a mixed confusion of tentacles, grappling arms, cubed bodies and kicking legs, both flesh and metal.

Anguished cries rang out as the machine men in their cold, calculating manner found vital portions of the Uchke anatomies. The latter were no match for their two metal adversaries and would have been no serious menace to even one of them in hand-to-hand combat.

The result of the conflict was already a foregone conclusion when one of the Uchke, jumping free for a moment, pulled an object from his belt. A white ray of light leaped forward full upon the professor who had already accounted for two of the Uchke and was looking for a third victim. The power hurtled him over and over as if a terrible windstorm of unbelievable velocity had quickly a-risen in the undersea chamber. His brain leaped into oblivion.

Chapter III

When Professor Jameson recovered his senses, he felt soft, nimble fingers working upon his metal body, and a strange metal rasped and clattered against his legs. As his brain cleared, he saw that he was still in the chamber of the undersea craft. Two of the Uchke were busy removing his metal legs. Like a shot, he lashed out with his tentacles and caught the raiders of the hydrosphere in a tight grip.

Swinging them over his reclining body, he squeezed the life out of them and then flung their dead bodies against the nearest wall. A mental supplication of help broke in upon his brain.

"21MM392!"

The professor essayed to rise, but discovered that while he had been unconscious from the blast of the power gun, which would easily have killed a flesh and blood creature, the devilish Uchke had succeeded in removing three of his four metal legs. They had been busy with their implements on the remaining leg, when the professor had surprised them with his recovery.

"21MM392I Come!"

The cry permeated Professor Jameson's brain once more with its morbid suggestion of dire disaster. The "machine man turned to look upon a nerve jolting scene. 88ZQ4, stripped of his metal legs and tentacles, was being dragged over the floor by the remaining Uchke. The creature's face darkened into a set snarl of derisive hate, as he saw the professor's instinctive effort to rise. The Uchke, seizing the metal head of 88ZQ4 in a strong grip, slowly dragged the metal torso of the machine man toward the shaft where the elevator car stood. ,

Professor Jameson made another effort to rise, steadying himself with his tentacles, but, realizing the futility of it, he started crawling to intercept the Uchke before the latter reached the shaft with his inert burden. Using the one leg to shove and the tentacles to pull, he edged slowly in the direction of the shaft. The progress of the Uchke was handicapped by the heavy weight of the machine man's head and body which he was endeavoring to drag to the elevator car. Had he dared, the Uchke would have returned to the side of one of his fallen companions for a power gun, with which to dispatch the menacing monstrosity of metal which crawled so slowly yet surely to head him off. But he dared not pass by those horrible tentacles which waved at him so threateningly.

88ZQ4, without workable appendages, was helpless. The professor increased his pace. The Uchke sweated and pulled the harder, measuring the distance to the shaft with alarmed eye. The professor was farther away, yet he was increasing his speed. It was a grim race, and the raider of the inner world was of no mind to give up his metal prize. The professor feared, most of all, that the Uchke would escape and sound an alarm.

Eager to return to his comrades with the trophy of 88-ZQ4's head and body, the Uchke taxed his wits to best the oncoming machine man. Setting the extremity of 88ZQ4's cubed body in a rolling motion, he skillfully rolled the conical head in his four arms, guiding the helpless machine man toward the car. He reached it first, only a short distance ahead of the professor.

Once inside the car, the Uchke slammed shut the door against which the professor gave a terrific lunge a split second later. Simultaneously, the car shot downward, rasping against Professor Jameson's metal body with such a rapid speed that gave him no chance to regain his equilibrium. Clutching widely at the lip of the broad shaft, the machine man toppled into the black depths below him. He expected to crash upon the top of the descending car at any moment, smashing flat his head and scattering the all important brains, the only death blow ever suffered by a machine man.

But still he hurtled downward, and to his bewilderment and increased horror there was no cessation of his accelerating fall. The velocity of his drop rapidly increased, so that the air in the shaft fairly shrieked past him. He wondered vaguely where the elevator had gone--and how soon he would smash himself into a pile of lifeless, inert junk.

Sheer amazement smote the professor as he fell lightly upon the top of what he readily assumed to be the elevator car of the fleeing Uchke, yet his sensations of dropping rapidly were but slightly diminished. Truth flooded in upon his brain, washing away the flotsam of doubt, wonder and incredulity. The downward flight of the elevator was so fast that it had been with difficulty that his rapidly accelerated fall had finally caused him to overtake it.

With clutching tentacles, the professor gripped the roof of the speeding car firmly. Beneath him lay the helpless metal body of 88ZQ4, being taken to the refuge of the Uchke. Where was this habitation of the deep sea raiders? They had already fallen many miles. Previously, Professor Jameson had estimated the diameter of the hydrosphere's core to be no greater than a hundred miles, basing his figures upon the sea bottom's curvature. The rendezvous of the Uchke must be at the center of the core.

While the professor was engaged with these thoughts, the elevator's wild speed .became braked and the mad momentum checked. Gradual light replaced the darkness as the car slowed to a stop. It was well for the machine man that he clung tightly with his tentacles, for a sudden tendency to fall upward was exerted upon his body, lifting him away from the car. He realized a confusion of directions. Which way was up? Gravity had seemingly reversed itself. He was no longer on the top of the elevator car. He now clung to the bottom. Professor Jameson knew that he had reached the world of the Uchke, directly in the center of the rocky core. Letting go his hold upon the car, he dropped upon a small platform below him and found concealment in the gloom of a flight of steps.

He saw the Uchke open the door of the car, heard him yell to his companions, who appeared and helped him remove the cumbersome body of the machine man, 88ZQ4. Impulsively, the professor sent out a mental call to the helpless Zorome, telling him of his presence. Unknown to the Uchke, the two machine men held a mental conversation.

The brain emanations were too high to be caught by the dwellers of the rock-core.

From his spot of concealment, Professor Jameson saw the blustering and grinning creatures of the inner world carry his helpless comrade out of sight through a wide doorway. The captive machine man, according to the professor's instructions, kept him posted so that the latter might follow and await a favorable opportunity.

"They are carrying me upward," 88ZQ4 radiated to the professor who skulked unseen in the rear of the stairway. "We are entering an airship. There are many ships here. We are sliding off a platform."

"Are the ships being guarded?" the professor queried.

"Several of the Uchke are about. If you come this way, go careful, 21MM392! You should see where I am now! It is like a world turned inside out! The land slopes up to meet the horizon, which is really a muddled haze of the inner surface of the rock core! It is the world of the Uchke!"

"How far across is it?" asked the professor, forgetting the immediate peril for the moment.

"Twenty miles easily; probably more. The airship is rising into this vast immensity of the sphere's center. We are heading for a huge ball, a floating island of dazzling light which seems to be sending synthetic daylight to the surrounding world. It is nearly a mile through, I should judge, and there are many buildings on it."

The emanations of 88ZQ4's brain grew fainter as the airship which was bearing him away flew farther from the mainland.

"What holds the island in place?" asked the professor.

"A mutual attraction in all directions of the surrounding globe," was 88ZQ4's faint reply. "There are no visible means of support."

"I must follow you!"

"We are shooting straight for the island. That is where they seem to be taking . . . " The brain impulses of 88ZQ4 died away in flickering waves.

The ship bearing the prisoner had passed beyond the faculties of mental communication. Professor Jameson, a crippled machine man, saw no one in sight. The Uchke summoned by 88ZQ4's captor had all gone. Slowly, partly to avoid making more noise than could be helped, and mainly because with only one leg he could make no better progress, the professor crept up the stairway and through the entrance to the airship hangar. A surprised Uchke stared him in the face. With the speed of thought, the professor flung a tentacle around his neck, strangled him and threw the inert body into the chamber below. The Uchke had been just ready to enter a nearby airship. From beyond, the professor heard the mingled voices of more of the Uchke clustered about their various ships. Professor Jameson lost no time in entering the airship.

Peeping from the windows, he saw many other ships scattered about, the Uchke going in and out of them. Many of the enslaved Plekne were also in sight, engaged in menial tasks for the most part. Aside from a careful notation of the direction in which the airships came and went, the professor paid no more attention to outside interests. The controls of the craft had him puzzled for a moment, and he was busy deciphering their various uses, when a startled cry broke forth from behind him.

The metal eyeshutters on that side of his head lifted inquiringly, and he saw a frightened Pleknan regarding him with wide, frightened eyes.

"Do not cry out!" the professor warned him.

The man from the kelp city stood dumb in surprise. No sound had issued from this metal monstrosity which he had caught moving about inside the ship, yet a silent command had been given him. Accustomed to obeying orders, the Pleknan remained immovable, his thoughts a bewildered chaos of fear, wonder and perplexity. The machine man immediately followed up his advantage.

"I am a friend of the Plekne from the upper world," the professor informed him. "Tell me how this airship is operated and we may escape."

"Escape!" The Plakenan uttered this one word aloud.

"Yes. Do as I tell you. I have a comrade who must be rescued."

The Pleknan recovered sufficiently from his astonishment to come to the aid of the machine man, and rapidly he explained the uses of the various controls.

"You know much about these ships," the professor told him. "Will you pilot for me?"

"Where--where shall we go?"

"To the very center of this inner world--that bright island of the air."

"You mean the island of light," was the Pleknan's reply, fashioning his thoughts after the mental suggestions of the Zorome.

"It is where 88ZQ4 was taken."

"Tell me; are there many of your kind?" the Pleknan inquired, gaining confidence from the kindly manner of the machine man.

As the Pleknan guided the ship along the hangar toward the entrance, Professor Jameson told him briefly how the spaceship of the Zoromes had come to the world of water. Much to the impatience of the professor, a halt was necessary while several ships landed and entered the Uchke hangar.

"Are you from the world of the Uchke?"

"From the world of the Uchke?" the^professor echoed. "Is this not the world of the Uchke?"

"Only a colony where all the slaves from the surface are first brought. I am Bwengik. We caotive Plekne know a great deal more of our enemies than those upon the surface. Once taken here, we never see our cities again."

"Who are these Uchke?" the professor asked. "What world are you talking about?"

"I myself do not quite understand what the Uchke mean. To us Plekne who are captives here, there are only two worlds: the outer world of water and this strange inner world of solidity. Yet, from time to time, many of us are taken away from here and up through the water to a great world which the Uchke talk about as home. We Plekne are constantly being taken from the kelp cities, trained here for a definite period of time and then rushed off to this fabled world which we have never seen. The Uchke keep themselves supplied with slaves from the kelp cities."

The professor had made so many astounding discoveries since coming to this weird planet that this new surprise came at a time when the affairs of the hydrosphere were still in a rather disorganized state of comprehension. But at last the professor believed that he perceived a glimmering of the real truth.

They were off the platform, shooting into the air. A strange sight lay spread in panoramic perspective before the machine man. The inner world lay below him like a curved bowl, a continuous city rising upward and away into the horizon. The island of light represented a glorious spectacle. Like a great dazzling gem, it floated midway in the center of the atmosphere globe. Huge, artificial sunlamps threw their illuminating beams in every direction. Situated between these gigantic lamps were visible the spires and other architectural features of many buildings.

"What are those buildings for?"

"They are the prisons, mostly. The storerooms are also located here."

"The prisons . . . drive past them," the professor ordered. "Circle high."

The Pleknan did as he was directed. Professor Jameson sent out a call to his fellow machine man who, the last he had heard, was being taken here.

"88ZQ4! I have come! Do you hear me?"

"We hear you, 21MM392!" came the startling reply. "But 88ZQ4 does not hear!"

Fear struck simultaneously with stark amazement. Did the ingenuity of the Uchke possess a machine for revelation of projected thoughts? Was 88ZQ4 dead, that he did not hear? Were the Uchke mocking his futile efforts? For a moment, the professor's "mind was crowded with terrible thoughts which left him baffled and unnerved. But the next transference to reach him relieved his apprehension considerably.

"Quiet your fears, 21MM392. It is I, 744U-21, your very good friend."

"Where are you?"

"In company with 6W-438, 6N-24 and 56F-450 in the prison of the Uchke on their island of light."

"How did you get there?"

"When the explosion came, we sank directly to the sea bottom. I believed we would come to rest at a common level in the center of the hydrosphere. Imagine my surprise to discover a rocky core to this world of water."

"I know," said the professor. "Your previous opinion visualized a perfect hydrophere. I had my doubts after leaving the treasure-house of the Plekne."

"Yes, it seems this world either possessed a rock core in the first place or else meteor showers throughout the ages have built one, and if this is--"

"But the Uchke!" exclaimed the professor, cutting short the scientific theorizing of his fellow Zorome. "How did you fall into their hands?"

"One of their submarine prowlers found us on the sea bottom. They knocked us over with a power-release which did not kill us. The next thing we knew, we were entering an air lock of this world within a world."

"Without tentacles or legs," supplemented 6W-438. "We are still that way--helpless to move about."

"88ZQ4 told us your story," said 56F-450. "He is here with us."

"You suggested that something is wrong with him. What is it?"

"88ZQ4 is senseless from a power shot of the Uchke. It seems he clamped one of his eye shutters down on the finger of a too inquisitive Uchke."

"They have removed our limbs," 744U-21 lamented. "Soon, they expect to operate on our heads. It will be a farewell for us when that time comes. At this moment they are preparing for it."

"All they have of me are three legs!" Professor Jameson swore vehemently. "If I could only get a message out to the spaceship!"

"Not much chance of that unless you go to it direct through one of the air locks. Then you would need a submarine."

"You might be able to make it," was 56F-450's optimistic suggestion.

"And leave you five here to have your heads split open?" Professor Jameson protected. "Not much!"

"But what can you do alone against an entire city?" 744U-21 challenged. "You are unarmed and have scarcely more than half your appendages."

"They have not caught me yet," replied the intrepid machine man, "and until they do the battle is not lost."

As if to threaten this statement, several airships of the Uchke bore down on the professor's circling ship suggestive-ly.

"They have discovered the Uchke you killed!" cried Bwen-gik. "They know that this is his ship!"

"Put on speed!" the professor ordered. "Elude them! But do not go far away from the island of light!"

Professor Jameson was doing some desperate thinking. Trouble dogged their heels, and the situation called for action. The Pleknan displayed skillful control of the ship as it accelerated around the island of light like a tiny satellite, momentarily throwing the pursuers off the track. The professor was still in a state of indecision when a call came from the captive machine men.

"21MM392! The Uchke are coming with their tools! They are about to take our heads apart!"

Mad inspiration struck the professor. The decision had been forced upon him. There was no longer an alternative to consider. He stared down at the vast network of window designs in the prison buildings.

"Shine your lights!" Professor Jameson told his metal companions, hoping against hope that the rascally Uchke had not tampered with the body illuminators.

Almost immediately, one of the thousands of windows below the circling ship became suffused with the subdued glow. The professor marked it carefully.

"The airships!" exclaimed Bwengik. "They have us cornered! We're lost!"

The terrorized Pleknan pointed to the many ships of the Uchke, which were closing in from all sides. They were trapped. A general alarm had been issued, and the stolen craft was fast becoming the concentration point for all aircraft in the sky. Like destroying ants, they closed in viciously upon their circling prey. Bwengik, confused, seeing no avenue of escape, became frozen at the control board, stupified. The machine man pushed the Pleknan out of the way and seized the direction lever himself. A cry from below hastened his action.

"They are removing my head!" wailed 6W-438. "They are trying to pry it apart!"

As the cortege of circling ships drew in close, the professor, having previously watched Bwengik at the controls, looped the ship in an incomplete circle. The craft never righted itself, shooting like a plummet for the prison buildings of the inner world. Bwengik gave voice to a cry of mortal terror as the island of light rushed swiftly at them.

With a terrific smash, they struck the building close to the glowing window. The professor dared come no closer. Both Zorome and Pleknan were hurled from their positions and battered about inside the craft as it tore through the side of the prison.

Professor Jameson arose from the mass of wreckage little the worse for the terrific crash. He and Bwengik had been in the rear of the ship when it struck. The front portion was crushed, a jumbled mass of ragged metal. Professor Jameson moved a bit uncertainly toward the inert body of the Pleknan. Blood flowed sluggishly from several wounds. Forcing himself along by shoving his one leg, the machine man lifted the limp form in his tentacles.

Bwengik was dead. His flesh and blood body had been unable to withstand the tremendous shock of the impact. Though ground beneath the heel of the Uchke for the greater share of his life, the Pleknan had died a heroic death. Then and there, Professor Jameson swore fervently that, if he won out against the Uchke, and were it within his power to do so, he would free the unfortunate Plekne from the cruel bondage they suffered.

Ripping away the debris from a gaping tear in the ship, Professor Jameson crawled forth into the evil-smelling prison on the island of light. Several Uchke lay dead on the floor, partially buried beneath the bulk of the wedged airship. The machine man had struck his first blow in the cause of his comrades, having unwittingly snuffed out the lives of several enemies in the fall of the vessel.

The professor recollected that it had been to the richt of the spot where the ship had crashed where he had seen the glow from the cell window. He made his way in this direction, crawling out from under a sudden fall of debris loosened by the crash. The machine man emerged into a corridor just in time to run into three startled Uchke come to investigate the fallen ship. Taking advantage of their mute surprise, the professor lashed out with three tentacles, catching three soft throats in contracting metal loops. He choked the life from them rapidly, and then pilfered the dead bodies for the power guns they carried. With the three weapons, Professor Jameson crawled into the cell from which the three Uchke had just come.

There before him, resting on their square metal bases, stood his five companions, immovable except for the metal eye shutters. Without legs, without tentacles, they were helpless indeed. The head of 6N-24 hung loosely to the metal body, while the head of 6W-438 lay sideways on the floor. Professor Jameson's collision with the building had been timed none too soon, interrupting the grim work of the Uchke.

"How much better off are we now?" suggested 744U-21. "It is only a respite. Soon, the Uchke will be down upon us in a swarming, overwhelming horde."

"I have weapons!" exclaimed the professor. "We can make a stand of some kind!"

"You will make the stand, 21MM392," said the head of 6W-438 from its position on the floor. "We are helpless."

The pattering of many feet on the floor of the corridor outside precluded further communication. Professor Jameson waited, power guns held tense. Into the room burst a horde of the Uchke, their weapons ready. But they were unprepared for the sight which met their eyes. There in front of their five metal captives stood the crippled machine man, defiant and purposeful. The scene flitted across their vision for a split second to be replaced by a blinding glare which hurled them backward into the corridor, their power guns firing wildly.

Dead, mangled and dying, the party of Uchke were no longer a menace. Professor Jameson had gained the respite which 744U-21 had foretold. The remainder of the Zorome's fatalistic expectations seemed likely to be borne out, for the sounds of an organized attack were heard far down the corridor, becoming louder as the enemy approached. The professor now took advantage of the turmoil's cessation to refasten the loosened head of 6N-24 and to replace the decapitated brain-case of 6W-438.

Several Plekne, slaves of the Uchke, burst into view, power guns held firmly, yet uncertainly. Fright lay mirrored on their countenances. Bawled threats from down the corridor urged more of the Plekne to crowd up to the doorway and attack. The professor could easily have killed a dozen, so awkward and backward were the Plekne in their handling of the weapons. It was clear to the mind of the professor that these slaves had been urged on by their masters with the threat of death hanging in the balance.

Fear makes poor soldiers, and the Plekne were no exception to this universal rule. As the machine man raised his three weapons menacingly, the Plekne darted aside and out of sight. Only one did not retreat. With a resigned expression of hopelessness, as if his act made little difference to him, he stood his ground and prepared to fire.

It was evident to the professor that, through fear of an uprising, the Uchke had neglected to teach their slaves the proficient use of the power guns. The slow and awkward manner in which these reluctant minions of the Uchke handled the weapons spoke much to the practiced eye of the machine man.

The power charge intended for the professor went wide of its mark, striking down the metal head and torso of 56F-450. Over he fell like a spinning ninepin, stunned and unconscious. The Pleknan prepared to unloose another charge at the machine man.

"Stop!" Professor Jameson commanded. "Do not fire!"

The mental order was given with such force and startling directness that the Pleknan became confused and inactive, the force of the concentrated thought temporarily halting his intent. Growls and grumbled threats broke forth from the cowardly Uchke farther down the corridor as they urged back those of the Plekne who had retreated so discreetly. Professor Jameson seized the temporary advantage offered him. "We men of metal are friends from your kelp cities I We shall help you escape if you will join us!"

Chapter IV

Plainly, in clear mental pictures, Professor Jameson impressed upon their minds the relationship which had grown up between Zorome and Plekne. The slaves in the corridor gathered silently around their companion who had knocked over one of the metal men, yet had not been fired upon in return. They stared at the triple armed machine man, assimilating his ideas, both surprised and impressed.

Screams of rage and shrieked orders were hurled by the Uchke, from their places of protection, at their slaves who had been sent to overwhelm the machine men or else die.

"Join us," the professor suggested, having waited for his first impressions to clarify themselves, "and if we escape the Uchke, we shall return to your kelp cities."

A flash of power hurled itself from the obscurity of the corridor beyond the Plekne. Three of the slaves were whisked out of sight, others bowled over and injured. It was an ominous warning. The Plekne must fight for their masters or else die. This was the issue which forced conviction upon the slaves of the inner world. To the surprise of the Uchke, who had not been the recipients of Professor Jameson's telepathic communication, their armed slaves hurried into the cell of the six machine men."

Certain that the machine men had been overcome, though in what manner the Uchke failed to stop and reason why, they fairly fell over one another in their haste to reach the prison cell and reclaim the thinking machines which they had found only stunned for a short length of time by the power guns. They hastened, lest the machine men recover too soon. At the doorway, an intense wave of destruction met them full in the face, pouring itself into their ranks, and they never knew what hit them. Under Professor Jameson's leadership, the Plekne had at last turned upon their oppressors.

"Let us get out of here!" one of the Plekne cried. "When they discover what has happened, they will blow us out of here at once!"

"But my comrades--they cannot move!" the professor deplored. "They have been deprived of their mobile parts!"

"Wait!" exclaimed another of the slaves. "I know where the metal legs and arms are stored! It is not far!"

"Can we win through to them?" the professor asked.

"Yes, but it will not be safe to leave your companions here alone. Part of us must remain."

"It's certain death!" argued another of the Plekne.

"Why can't we carry your companions, if they are not overly heavy?" suggested Klegmo, the Pleknan whom Professor Jameson had previously refused to shoot. "The Uchke possess more terrible weapons than those which you have seen demonstrated. They will train them on this quarter of the building."

This was agreed upon, and wasting no further time four Plekne lifted 56F-450 and staggered down the corridor with him. Other Plekne brought the remaining machine men, and Professor Jameson crawled along with the rear guard. They hurried to an elevator which Klegmo stated would bring them to the storeroom where the appendages of the Zoromes had been taken. As the elevator dropped downward rapidly, a shudder ran through the building. To their ears came a dull, muffled roar. It was all too significant of what might have happened to them had they remained in the cell near to the spot where Professor Jameson had crashed with the stolen airship.

The Uchke had yet to realize, however, that their troublesome prisoners were still a deeper menace than they had anticipated. When the elevator stopped, there were Uchke to meet it with power guns. These blazed forth silently, taking their toll of Plekne, but the odds were too great, despite the latter's lack of skill in handling the weapons. The three guns of Professor Jameson were largely a deciding factor, and the fight was soon over. A dozen of the Plekne were dead, and it was impossible to move all five machine men.

"Bring the metal legs and arms with all speed that you can muster!" the professor told his allies. "I shall stand guard over my friends."

The Plekne acted with alacrity. The machine men waited nervously as the professor was ready to repel any attacks with the all important first blow. It was at 6W-438's cunning suggestion that he took refuge behind his companions.

"If we are struck, you are still left to fight," counseled 6W-438, "but if you are struck, what can we do?"

The precaution, though a wise one, was unnecessary, for the Plekne soon burst into view, carrying the metal legs and dragging the tentacles.

"Hurry!" was Klegmo's panted admonition. "We got them without a fight, but we have been discovered by a general alarm, and there's a large force of the Uchke in pursuit of us even now!"

In mingled fear and elation, Professor Jameson hurriedly equipped 744U-21 with appendages, while the Plekne stood ready to repel the oncoming Uchke, if the chase grew hot. In return, 744U-21 fitted the professor's body with two more legs, so that the machine now lacked but a single leg and a tentacle. Before they finished the job, it was found that all except 744U-21 were insufficiently equipped, for the appendages of 88ZQ4 lay in the chambers of the air lock beneath the sea bottom. 88ZQ4 was equipped with two metal legs, while the rest had three each.

The machine men were not quite finished when the Uchke burst into view--not a few of them, but a rapidly gathered multitude. The first thing of which Professor Jameson was aware, was a convulsive shock hurling him back against 6W-438. A dizziness assailed him, and he knew that a chance shot of the enemy had struck him. It had not been a direct hit, and dazedly he felt himself hustled into the elevator by which they had descended to this lower level. As they shot rapidly upward, he collected his senses once more.

"We must spread a general uprising among the Plekne," he heard Klegmo say. "It is our only chance--and theirs, too."

744U-21 consulted with the Plekne, and they discussed the advisability of their next move. The machine men listened eagerly to the bits of information, learning much of the inner world and especially of the island of light.

"We can make our best stand right here on the island," Klegmo told him. "There is an arsenal here and a broadcasting system to the mainland. Most important of all is the fact that this island is of great importance to the inner world, and the Uchke will forbear using their most destructive weapons on us to avoid ruin."

"This is a strategic position," was 744U-21's opinion. "First of all, we must take over the arsenal before the Uchke become aware of our plans, or have an opportunity to forestall us. Then you can broadcast to the mainland, urging the Plekne to revolt and help us."

"We must kill off those of the Uchke who are on the island," said Klegmo, as emotionless as if he had been one of the metal men himself, "and liberate the Plekne from the prisons here on the island."

Having laid the plans of their defense, the machine men and Plekne hurried to the arsenal. Those of the machine men who were without their full number of metal legs locked tentacles for better balance. Few of the enemy were encountered, and these were shot down unceremoniously before they could lift a weapon in defense of themselves.

At the arsenal, Klegmo showed them the long range guns which could be wheeled about from place to place and were light enough for two or three Plekne to carry.

"Why do they have so much armament here in the inner world?" Professor Jameson inquired. "They have no enemies to fight, and the Plekne are kept in subjection."

"Most of this armament is made here and taken to the world of the Uchke, wherever that is," replied Klegmo. "For what reason, we never have known."

"And these guns with the light carriage--"

"They are finely sighted with telescopes and have a power range which will reach to the mainland twelve miles away."

Small power guns were discovered in endless quantities, but the Zoromesv were especially pleased with the larger weapons of defense; with these the formidable sharpshooters could count on holding off the circling airships, keeping them at a fairly safe and respectful distance. The atmosphere between the island of light and the mainland swarmed with these ships of the Uchke. It was plain to the Uchke that all was not well on the island of light, and they were soon to become aware of a rebellion among the slaves instigated by the infernal metal monstrosities they had captured on the sea bottom of the hydrosphere. The airships waited for orders, ready to intercept any ships which left the gleaming island of the air.

But the Zoromes and Plekne were attempting no mad scheme such as that anticipated by the Uchke--at least not while the latter were so firmly and smoothly organized for trouble. Under the direction of Klegmo and 744U-21, the Plekne armed themselves to the teeth and hurried throughout the island of light, taking command of all important points, killing their hated masters by force of numbers--what few of them were left on the island--and releasing a horde of imprisoned Plekne.

Among the cells were found several Uchke who were serving sentences. These were promptly put out of the way or else left in their cells, according to the mood of whichever Plekne discovered them. Ages of oppression were partially avenged in the space of a short time.

Six machine men and nearly five hundred Plekne soon found themselves in sole possession of the island of light, and the effects of this temporary freedom and power on the Plekne were truly revelational. Confidence and a fighting spirit replaced their previous fatalistic hopelessness and resigned fear. To the last Pleknan, they were ready to fight it out for freedom and escape, though it was apparent that freedom might end in death, while escape represented only a symbol for which to wage their battle.

Under direction of the machine men, the long range guns were hurriedly stationed by eager Plekne at all parts of the island looking down on the surrounding mainland twelve miles away. The island was now a veritable fortress, bristling with armament, yet Klegmo shook his head with a melancholy smile.

"A magnificent effort worth dying for, the greatest the Plekne have ever accomplished, yet futile. You do not realize the terrible weapons which are stationed on the mainland and which will be used against us if all else fails to root us from our position."

It was a grim prophecy, a forecast of death's grim scepter which was to fall wantonly and wastefully. Yet Klegmo was among the most enthusiastic and energetic of the Plekne despite his gloomy outlook. It was Klegmo himself who took charge of the broadcasting. His message was heard by Plekne in all sections of the inner world, bringing hope and desperate resolve to the slaves of the Uchke, and chagrin to the Uchke themselves. As Klegmo had expected, it was the spark needed to ignite revolt into a billowing flame all over the inner world. The message also revealed the situation to the bewildered Uchke and paved the way for an attack.

The Uchke realized that the island must be captured if the revolt was to end. They concentrated thdegir efforts in this direction, giving little attention to the Plekne rioting all about them on the mainland. The masters had held their slaves in contempt so long that they could not recognize them as fearsome antagonists. But the machine men--that was a different matter, and under the machine men on the island the directed attack of the Plekne could be reckoned as a serious hazard. The Uchke meant to strike swiftly at the crux of the situation.

Their neglect of the trouble on the mainland, however, was a mistake which they realized only too late. While they were engaged in concentrating an air attack on the island of light, the Plekne were carrying on a war of assassination, pillage and destruction. Fired by years of oppression and enervation and the inspiration of Klegmo's urging voice, they were in and out of the buildings of the inner world, skulking, striking down and hampering the Uchke who were organizing for a massed attack upon those who held their island of the air. Carnage and death strode hand in hand, as many Plekne dying as Uchke: although the latter were trained, the efforts of the Plekne, while more crude and awkward, were effective.

On the island of light, the defenders waited grimly. Klegmo continued his encouragement to the unorganized mobs of slaves on the mainland, unaware that the Uchke had at last realized the effects of his words on the slaves, and had set up a stabbing roar of static to drown out his instigation. This din of the loudspeakers only added to the chaos and confusion on the mainland. To those on the island, bright spurts of fire, which grew and swelled into billowing flames down on the mainland, offered mute evidence that the Plekne were firing the inflammable portions of the Uchke cities.

To the eyes of Professor Jameson these distant conflagrations appeared as brilliant stars in the gray dusk of an early morning. Dark specks approached from the mainland, ominous and threatening, to join those airships already waiting for the moment of attack. They eventually formed in a great ring, encircling the island of light, looking for an opening. A tumultuous bombardment destroyed the island's arsenal, but the action was much too late. The foresight of the Zoromes had occasioned all arms to be removed from this vulnerable spot so familiar to the enemy.

At a mental command from the machine men, who were stationed at various points of observation on different sides of the island, the long range guns sprang into furious action, blowing to pieces the ships of the Uchke one after another. Coordination of thought, the complete mental accord between Plekne and Zorome and unity of purpose were all responsible for the terrible price the uncalculating Uchke paid. More than half the attacking fleet was snuffed into wreckage before the rest could escape from the vicinity of the island. Back to the mainland the remaining ships zigzagged, presenting difficult targets to the inefficiency of the unpracticed Plekne, despite the marvelous accuracy of the mechanism guided by the telescopic sights.

Up from the mainland sprang several tiny dots, speeding toward the island of light at so terrific a speed as to appear only in very indistinct details, so blurred was their rapid passing.

"What are they?" Professor Jameson inquired wonderingly.

"Small fliers whose speed is so great that they are very hard to hit," one of the Plekne explained. "There are not many of these, but they are very quick."

"If they come close enough, we can bring them down."

The speed fliers of the Uchke indeed represented elusive targets as they sped like malignant demons about the island of light. They were very small, probably holding no more than two Uchke, and it was the professor's opinion they traveled at a speed better than a thousand miles an hour. They came very close to the island, yet they unloosed no attack. Many shots were taken at them, and finally one of them, less careful to fly in a wavy line, was blasted out of the air.

"What are they up to?" queried 744U-21.

"It is hard to tell," said the professor.

Klegmo, too, admitted his ignorance of this maneuver, but the question was soon answered by the Uchke themselves. A blue effulgence sprang forth quite suddenly from the rear of one of the speeding fliers. The indigo cloud spread rapidly, yet seemed to lose none of its intensity, unfathomable and seemingly opaque. Similar spouts of azure mist sprang from the tails of the other fliers as they hurtled past the island, and soon the blue clouds merged, the distant landscape of the surrounding mainland disappearing from sight. To Professor Jameson, it seemed like staring upward into the deep vault of a clear October sky, such as he had once known on Earth. In this case, however, the sky seemed to have been thrust alarmingly close.

"It's a screen!" 744U-21 exclaimed. "Their ships will be invisible behind it!"

Though the situation was indeed menacing, Professor Jameson felt rather a contempt for the weapons of the Uchke, so antiquated and inferior were they to the ones used by the machine men. To himself, he visualized what quick work the spaceship from Zor might make of this inner world were it here. But it was not, and the six machine men and their allies from the kelp cities were in a desperate position.

"Each one ready at his gun!" warned 6W-438 from the other side of the island. "The Uchke will have difficulty penetrating this veil and must reduce1 their speed! Get them before they land!"

But one and all of the defenders knew that the enemy had scored a decisive advantage, and that bringing down the ships before they landed would be difficult indeed.

"Keep your side-arms ready," was Professor Jameson's ominous reminder. "If we fail to bring down the ships before they land, we shall have hand-to-hand fighting."

"They're more than our equal at that," deplored Klegmo. "The Uchke, as many a disobedient Pleknan has learned but once, are proficient with their power guns."

Zoromes and Plekne settled down for a grim, nervous wait, staring watchfully into the blue translucence, ready for the first fighting ships of the Uchke. Professor Jameson found this monotonous, for several times his imagination caused him to visualize from the corners of his eyes a descending ship of the Uchke, which on closer scrutiny proved to be only one of the taller towers of the island, silent and unmoving.

And then came the mental alarm of 56F-450, who was stationed on the other side of the island. One of the raiding ships had come through the misty veil before the guns could be brought into action. Its occupants were already pouring out of the ship ready for battle. Plekne were being mowed down by the power guns.

A blurred shape, becoming more distinct, appeared through the cloud and was followed by a companion. Professor Jameson saw the ships coming, and his attention diverted itself from the encounter on the island's antipode to the situation at hand. He swung the large gun up on the farther ship and released the power charge. With satisfaction, he saw the ship explode and the remnants of craft and inmates shower upon the island.

Meanwhile, the first ship had landed, and now a yelling, growling horde of the inner world dwellers came running over the rooftops, power guns held ready. Leaving one of the Plekne in charge of the long range gun, Professor Jameson selected the rest of his gun crew and stole softly into the shadow of a nearby dome. On came the Uchke, a bit uncertainly, yet nonetheless resolved to wipe out all Plekne and machine men who came their way.

Professor Jameson crept around the dome to come up charted, and were sacrificing a small part of the island's architecture in order to blast them out.

"The best thing we can do," Professor Jameson suggested, "is to move our armament to safer positions, leave a few guards to watch for attacking airships, and get as near the center of this island as possible until the Uchke think they have the upper hand. When they quit firing, we can come out, man the guns and blow them out of the sky again."

"Revenge is sweet," Klegmo told them, "but it means only a postponement of our rendezvous with death. Our numbers are dwindling--the Uchke are many--and, eventually, even the metal men must suffer destruction."

It was a potent prophecy, and all well realized the validity of its foundation. The Plekne were ready to sell their lives only at the most expensive price they could exact from their conquerors, while the machine men never gave up as long as the brain continued functioning in its metallic protecting case.

The warning of Klegmo was well borne out to the effect that the machine men were not entirely invincible by the weapons of the Uchke. The disheartening report that the machine men now numbered but five reached the professor from 744U-21. In one of the explosions which had scored a direct hit, 88ZQ4 had met his death. The entire gun-nest had been blown to oblivion. The only traces left were scattered metal parts of the Zorome. Formerly Brlx the Triped, 88ZQ4 had known but a comparatively short career as a machine man.

Leaving but a few Plekne at various points ready to warn of an air attack from the mainland, the remaining Plekne and the machine men burrowed deep into the central chambers of the island's interior. Outside, building after building--in which the defenders had recently held forth--was demolished as the Uchke set to work, blasting out their troublesome prisoners. The jarring shocks were felt to the very center of the island, yet the machine men and Plekne were temporarily safe from the bombardment. As Klegmo had assured them, the Uchke would spare their precious island of light as much as possible.

From intermittent reports of the Plekne guards situated in the comparatively safe and obscure observation points of the island's surface, the defenders learned that many of the great sun lamps had been shot out and that half the mainland now lay in darkness. It was also reported that the rioting Plekne on the mainland had been subdued, having been slaughtered or else chased into hiding. Their hampering influence had previously been a great help to those on the island. Now, however, the Uchke were free to concentrate their efforts on the island itself. Zoromes and Plekne enjoyed a respite during the bombardment. Though the machine men were tireless, the Plekne were not, and they sadly needed the rest which they now obtained for the first time since hostilities had commenced.

The periodic shaking of the island under the bombardment of the Uchke became lessened, and word from the surface notified those in the island's center that the firing was now becoming limited and airships were seen taking off from the mainland. During the intense firing, it had been impossible for ships to approach the island and land safely, and this fact had been appreciated by machine men and Plekne.

As they hurried to the surface of the island once again, a strange sight lay revealed before their eyes. Gloom rested over fully half the mainland like grim, black pits of darkness, where the dead sun lamps had once made the inner world light as day. There had been a method, however, in the gunnery of the Uchke. The brilliant sun lamps had not been extinguished through inaccurate sighting, but to reduce the glare from the island and make far clearer observation of the defenders' positions.

The machine men and their allies found that the island, through the extreme care of the Uchke to blow up only their recent strongholds, had really suffered but little damage. The idea of the professor, to remove their armament to new spots, had been a prudent one. Airships were on their way, but this time they were cautious--the main contingent hung well beyond effective firing range, while only a few ships circled warily in toward the island. The Uchke believed they had practically annihilated their enemies, yet none were too eager to assume the risk of finding it out.

And it was well for them that they exercised such caution. Seeing they could not inveigle the ships to come close by holding their fire, the defenders let loose at the scout ships which drifted a bit hesitantly in the direction of the island for a safety inspection. A few scout ships were blown to pieces, the remainder of the fleet which had waited patiently scattering in all directions to the mainland.

It was Professor Jameson's opinion that the concentrated destruction, which was hurled simultaneously from every gun on the island after the fleeing airships, must surely have dismayed the hopeful Uchke. He looked for a new maneuver on the part of the dwellers of the inner world.

"Hell will break loose nowl" was the equivalent of Kleg-mo's statement.

And hell did break loose, though in no bombastic manner such as the machine men had been expecting, not as a terrific display of power sufficient to rend the island into several separate chunks. Quite to the contrary, death made its advent in a silent, sure, sinister manner.

Chapter V

Pale yellow rays stabbed upward from the mainland in thin pencils of light, clearly distinguishable in those portions of the inner world which were plunged into darkness. Like phantoms, the yellow light flickered slowly, searchingly, about the island, as if feeling for something that was hidden. Several of these lights were being employed by the Uchke from various sections of the mainland.

"What are they?" queried Professor Jameson to Klegmo, who was not far distant.

"Death rays!"

"Do they burn?"

"No--they disintegrate!"

Across twelve miles of atmosphere, the thin pencils of light pierced their way, wandering and exploring for the defenders of the island stronghold. Klegmo, having apprised the machine men as to the rays' terrible qualities, urged them to radiate orders for a general scattering of the Plekne all over the island.

"It is the end!" he lamented. "Yet we must not die like the low creatures which the Uchke believe us to be!"

"The ray ejectors can be blasted out with the long range power guns," 744U-21 suggested. "Up until now, we have not fired at the mainland."

"It is too far," replied Klegmo, "but we can try."

"The targets are stationary, quite unlike the airships," was Professor Jameson's contribution to the council of war. "Careful sighting and continual firing may bring results."

"That will reveal our positions," countered another Pleknan, "and our only chances are evasion of the ray."

"Why not hide in the center of the Hand?" was the despairing cry. "The range has been set for that."

One of the gun nests, acting on previous suggestions to pick off the ray ejectors, shot streak after streak silently down upon the mainland. The reports reached the island faintly. Almost immediately, the nearest ray swerved in the direction of the offending weapon. Out of the place hurried the Plekne, fleeing in terror from the grim, inexorable ray. Several escaped, yet the ray overtook three of them. Professor Jameson looked on in mystification as he saw parts of the terrified Plekne disappear, saw them fall and completely vanish. Having finished its terrible work, the yellow ray wandered away in search of more victims.

"Why did the Uchke fail to use these rays before this?" 6W-438 queried from his outpost on the antipode of the island. "It is their least destructive and most effective weapon."

"Wait--and you will see what it does to the island of light," promised Klegmo'. "Watch the buildings. The effects on them are much slower. Soon, where the yellow ray has touched them, they will crumble to ruin. I once saw the ray demonstrated."

"So that is why they kept this in reserve!"

General orders were given to scatter and watch for the rays to come. When they came, they must be eluded. Sustained life belonged to the fleetest and most observant. The long-range guns were to be sighted and fired from time to time and then abandoned when the ray came to search them out and destroy.

Professor Jameson's opinions came to reflect the fatalistic attitude of Klegmo. Plekne and Zoromes, they were all marked by the stigma of death. The cruel ray would eventually discover them all, or enough of them to render defense of the island an impossibility. Once more the professor saw the yellow ray sweep unwittingly over the hidden retreat of several Plekne. Their dying screams rang dismally upon the air as they stumbled forth, one of them with an arm cut away neatly by the devastating ray. The ray flitted after the armless one who ran, overtaking and finishing the work which his flight had interrupted. The ray then returned to complete its gruesome work on the struggling remains of those who had been unable to run. It reminded the professor quite forcibly of an anthill and a small boy with a burning glass. The scene was grim with evil forebodings.

And now Professor Jameson saw why the Uchke had reserved this ghastly weapon until after other means of subjection had failed. With a dull roar and crumbling of dust, several of the nearby buildings sank into ruin. All over the island, similar scenes were being enacted. Those of the Plekne who had yet eluded the yellow ray were endangered by the slow destruction of the buildings in which they hid. Upon the professor's mind suddenly rang a cry of distress. It was 56F-450, nearest of Professor Jameson's mental companions.

"21MM392--I am pinned beneath the ruins!"

"Are you damaged badly?" the professor asked in apprehension.

"I believe not--fortunately. But my poor Plekne friends are beyond all help, I fear."

Without further query, Professor Jameson acted on a bold, impulsive gesture. Across from him, quite a distance away over the smooth roof, lay the ruined spire in which the machine men were imprisoned. The professor abandoned caution. Why gamble with the fates any longer? If their doom was irrevocably sealed, would furtive dalliance avail them anything?

Rapidly he bounded over the roof, making good use of the metal stanchion he used as a crutch. A yellow ray flickered eagerly to meet him. Back on the mainland, an evil face lit with cruel glee and anticipation, as a watchful eye glued to a telescope saw what it had hoped to find--one of the machine men. Professor Jameson saw the dread light approach him, yet he made no effort to dodge out of sight. In fact, such an attempt would have been too late. The yellow light raced quickly for him, then slowed up as its watching controller saw that the metal man was making no vain effort to escape. The yellow light engulfed the professor quite suddenly, following him in his rapid flight.

Much to his surprise, the machine man felt no visible change. Was he immune? Then an idea struck him. Like the buildings about him, a longer time was required to ef-feet the change. Into the ruins the doomed machine man raced, the yellow light hanging grimly on his trail, like the ghastly beam of perdition. 56F-450 was securely pinioned beneath two metal beams. With a mighty effort of combined strength the two machine men lifted the encumbering obstacles, and 56F-450 climbed to freedom.

"The ray!" he exclaimed. "It has us!"

Professor Jameson nodded, a habit of assent or agreement which the Zoromes had noted was peculiar to him.

"We are not dead!" was 56F-450's surprised ejaculation.

"No," said the professor. "It seems to be only a question of time."

"You mean we have but a short time in which to live?"

"That is just what I mean."

"What of our brains?" queried 56F-450. "Why is it they do not disintegrate like those of our friends, the Plekne?"

"For the same reason, 56F-450, that my own brain did not depart from its metal body in the transition cube of the Tripeds. Our metal brain cases appear to be immune to penetration."

"Then, like the surrounding buildings," mused 56-450, "we can only wait for our heads and bodies to disintegrate."

"If we are to die, we'll die fighting!" the professor swore vehemently. "We may, in a measure, wreak vengeance on these Uchke! Yonder is an empty airship! Let's be off!"

They ran to the ship as fast as their inadequate number of metal legs would permit, the yellow ray tagging them persistently. It settled down over the airship, and then they were off into the air, Professor Jameson at the controls.

"Now that the ray has played upon the airship, that, too, will soon fall apart," opined 56F-450.

"We shall probably be dead before that," was the professor's practical, yet cheerless, answer.

Like a veritable demon, the ship sprang screaming for the mainland at a terrific pace. A loud explosion behind them rocked the craft. The professor turned from the controls. A ragged tear had been inflicted in the rear of the ship.

"The power guns! They're trying to get us before we can accomplish anything!"

Professor Jameson veered upward once again to be halfway between the island of light and the mainland. Sweeping around the island in a wide circle at the fastest speed the craft could maintain, the machine man raced against his worst enemies, time and death. The weapons of the ship were directed at the mainland, and the professor barraged the inner world with all the destructive forces and power projectiles the ship possessed. 56F-450 assured him that his efforts bore fruit, as he watched the distant terrain six miles below them for the effects of the destructive explosions. The ship's offensive charges soon became exhausted and useless.

"What now?" asked 56F-450. "Death still awaits us!"

"Do you feel any difference in yourself yet?" queried Professor Jameson.

"No!"

"We have time then to take up another ship," said the professor, heading for the island once more.

On the island of light, fully one-quarter of the buildings were laid in ruins from the effects of the terrible yellow ray, and more of the sun lamps of the inner world were extinguished. Professor Jameson landed close by another deserted ship which had been left upon the island during the hand-to-hand fighting under the azure mist.

"What are you doing, 21MM392?" came the silent voice of 6W-438 from nearby.

"Doing all we can before we die," was the professor's desperate reply. "The yellow ray has marked us."

"Do not fear it," came 6W-438's startling announcement. "We are invincible against its powers--that I have recently discovered, as have 744U-21 and 6N-24."

"But the buildings here even crumble beneath it," the professor pointed out.

"Only those parts of the building which are made of rocky substance," corrected 6W-438. "See the metal parts strewn all about. They are entirely intact, though they collapsed with the rest of the building."

With intense relief, the two machine men heard the evidence of their salvation, 'but contemplation of it was shortlived. A terrific explosion blew the airship before them into ragged wreckage, hurling them backward.

"We're not invincible against that, if it hits us!" the professor exclaimed, as the two machine men picked themselves up and ran to join 6W-438.

"Nor against those, either, if they get close enough," said 6W-438, waving a tentacle skyward to the swarm of airships which were heading for the island.

"Where is our defense?" cried 56F-450. "Why don't they fire?"

As if in answer, a few scattered bursts issued from the island.

"We are practically wiped out," was 6W-438's reply. "There are five of us left and no more than a dozen of the Plekne."

In the obscurely lit sky, the horde of angry ships grew from tiny pinpoints to large dots. Their coming was only too significant. The Uchke had all but wrecked their precious island of light in order to conquer the rebellious slaves and the formidable machine men who represented the nucleus of the trouble.

"What is that?" queried 6W-438 suddenly, pointing off toward the mainland.

The three Zoromes stared at a thin shaft of silver that shot upward from the mainland for nearly a mile or more. A cascade of tiny points were being ejected at the termination of the shaft, falling back and disappearing on the mainland.

"Another weapon of the Uchke," ventured 56F-450.

"If that is so, we are safely beyond its reach," said the professor. "It barely leaves the mainland."

"But it is growing larger," said 6W-438. "See how it is reaching out for us. The shaft is growing thicker, too."

In truth, the curious silvery stream had really assumed larger proportions, yet its termination was less than a quarter of the distance from the mainland.

"That is no weapon 1" Professor Jameson exclaimed with sudden realization. "It is water!"

"Water?"

"From the surrounding hydrosphere!"

"Do you suppose it is another trick of the Uchke?"

"I do not understand it," came the mental call of 744U-21. "From my position, three water spots are visible."

"That makes four!"

"Look--the airships!"

6W-438 pointed skyward. The oncoming airships had slowed their speed and had momentarily wavered from their deadly intent. Several of them wheeled and headed for various sections of the mainland. The rest of them hesitated several minutes while the machine men and a handful of Plekne waited nervously for the next move.

"The Uchke are not responsible for this," stated Professor Jameson. "The ocean has broken its bonds and has spread fear among them."

"If the Tsea had only interfered earlier," 744U-21 lamented from the opposite end of the island. "It might have saved us."

"Where is Klegmo?"

"Dead!" came the gloomy announcement of 6N-24. "The last explosion got him!"

The armada of Uchke aircraft once more turned to its grimly appointed task despite the fact that the mighty hydrosphere was pouring millions of tons of water into the inner world of the planet's core. Far away in the distance, just above the mainland, came dazzling bright flashes which puzzled the machine men. A good share of the ships had been turned back in that direction. The remainder of the fleet rapidly neared the island.

It was the professor's belief that the ships returning to the mainland had been called back in a desperate attempt to repair the leaks. How had four different leaks occurred almost simultaneously? The bright flashes which the machine men had seen down over the mainland were growing larger and coming nearer. They were unlike the power discharges of the Uchke weapons. Professor Jameson realized, however, that there was little time to ponder the strange occurrences, and the urgent admonition of 744U-21 was superfluous.

"Find cover! It is our last chance! If we can hold them off until the water rises--"

The vengeful ships of the Uchke, meeting with feeble opposition, were now so close that Professor Jameson knew 744U-21's advice to be little more than a desperate gesture. With 56F-450 and 6W-438, he found concealment, yet from a position where they all might watch.

Then came the bombardment. The air roared and trembled around them. The entire island quivered and bellowed to the terrible concussions which shook it. For a time, he professor wondered vaguely if the staggering blasts might not throw the island of light out of balance of attraction and send it hurtling like a moon of doom down upon the mainland. Like angry wasps, the ships of the Uchke raced madly over the island, circling it constantly, letting their terrific barrages of concentrated destruction fall haphazardly. Whole buildings were cast high into the air, then rent to infinitesimal debris by the Uchke working to save the island of light. Their entire colony of the inner world was doomed.

Frantically, they sought to wipe out the metal men ere they must flee the churning waters which roared through the ruptured air locks.

Since his escape from the raging volcano on the planet of the double sun, Professor Jameson had never known such chaos, such din. The island rocked, staggered and swayed, threatening to lose its balance of suspended equilibrium. Several terrible concussions threw the machine men from their feet, so close had death swung its gleaming sickle.

They were doomed. Each and every machine man was aware of this, yet they clung tenaciously to life, clung firmly to the vain possibility that the explosions would miss them, conscious that while their metal heads still existed there remained a spark of hope. But the wrath of the Uchke knew no limitations. They slowed their mad speed for the final salvo to comb the regions of the island yet untouched. Their extermination of the island's defenders was about to be completed. Professor Jameson realized this quite significantly.

No use was there of fleeing to the island's center. The inner chambers were buried beneath tons of exploded debris, choked up and partially filled. The surviving Plekne, Who had fled there in terror from the unloosed hell of the Uchke, now lay crushed beneath the rains or else trapped in a living death, buried alive. Miraculously, all five Zoromes had survived the sweeping fire of the Uchke, but now, as the ships circled lower, Professor Jameson knew that the hour of the machine men was nigh.

He stared beyond the flickering shadows of death's grim harbingers preparing for their last attack before quitting their doomed inner world. The silver shafts of water now reached not so far into the air but were broader. Lakes were forming on the mainland from the rushing, gushing, tumbling rivers of seawater which grew in volume by the minute. Soon, the professor knew, these lakes would merge, and there would be an endless, inland, upcurved sea, rising even higher until the inner world represented a globe of water surrounded by its thick shell, the hydrosphere's sea bottom.

A roaring filled the professor's auditory senses, and he felt himself cast on high. Thick was the dust about him. He crashed downward, still sensible, and, as the dust cleared, he saw that the concealing roof above him had been blown completely away with half the building. Not far from the professor, partially covered by wreckage, lay 56F-450 and 6W-438. Darkness, except for the lights on the mainland and those directed from the aircraft, reigned in the inner world. The remaining sun lamps had been shot to pieces.

The light from a ship soaring into view above them flickered forward toward the three metal bodies--Professor Jameson groaned inwardly, knowing what it portended. A dazzling flash, dimming into insignificance the glow from the Uchke airship, suddenly revealed to the professor the forms of his metal companions digging deeper in under the debris to be out of sight. They still lived. He was glad.

Again came a silent, dazzling flash high above them, and the marauding ship of the Uchke disappeared. Realization suddenly came to the professor, and the sudden knowledge overwhelmed him with intoxicating joy. And if the bright flashes, now occurring everywhere, were not sufficiently significant of the state of affairs, a telepathic cry came down which certainly credited Professor Jameson's senses with having guessed rightly.

"Zoromes--do you still live?"

Five hearty responses assured 38RU-497 that his call had not been a vain summons to the dead, which he had more than half expected and had feared.

"Lay low until danger has been cleared."

The machine men of Zor had come through the hydrosphere to the rescue of their lost companions. But of the details, and by what manner the machine men had learned of the inner world and had known that the lost Zoromes were there, the professor knew he must learn later. In the bright, flaring flashes which lit the sky from time to time, Professor Jameson saw that the machine men had set up and utilized the little scout cruisers of space. How they had been brought into the inner world he could only conjecture.

The Uchke were being shot from the sky rapidly by the invincible ships of Zor, and the five Zoromes on the island of light knew that it was only a question of time when the menace of the Uchke would be removed. No more shots were fired at the island. The dwellers of the inner world were having their hands full in a futile effort at defense against the machine men.

The death of 88ZQ4 was avenged a thousand-fold many times over. The intermittent flashes of the Uchke ships as they were sent to oblivion revealed from time to time the contours of the mainland. First, the professor saw that the water had submerged all but the higher promontories; later, only a few of the tallest buildings thrust their tops above the churning, tumbling waters; then, they were finally gone beneath the surface. Only a vast, restless expanse of water lay on every side, and slowly it diminished the distance of the island.

Scout ships from Zor came and rescued the five survivors. From the ruins of a building there issued a limping figure supporting another in his arms. A Pleknan with a wounded comrade, the sole survivors of more than five hundred slaves who had battled side by side with their six metal allies, had lived through the final and most terrible attack. The two Plekne were taken aboard one of the little ships. To the surprise of Professor Jameson, he found it piloted by Ogweg, the truculent Pleknan who had dared cast a futile attack at the might of the Uchke.

The Uchke had all disappeared, as the machine men discovered on searching about with their giant lights. Floating on bits of wreckage, some of them swimming in the calmer waters far from the bubbling undercurrents marking the hydrosphere's ingress, were many of the Plekne who had rioted on the mainland. Excellent swimmers, they were rescued by the machine men from the watery graves they were so desperately battling.

The irresistible waters were pouring in faster, having dug deeper channels by the force of outer pressure. Soon, only a thin layer of air insulated the island of light from the waters of the conquering hydrosphere. Professor Jameson watched in the brilliance of the ship's glow as the air surrounding the island suddenly clustered into several gigantic bubbles and sped for one of the openings leading from the core of the hydrosphere. Where once there had been a colony of the Uchke, there was now only a mammoth cavern of the hydrophere's center into which the sea rolled unobstructed. The ruined island of light now lay in a watery grave.

No longer would the Plekne have cause to fear the menace from down under the kelp cities. It was in the professor's mind to see that the Plekne of the hydrosphere no longer had to fear the cruel Uchke at all.

The scout ships of Zor, built strong to resist the undersea pressure, filed out through one of the great channels of the hydrosphere's core. On the way to the surface, Professor Jameson learned from 29G-75 how the machine men of Zor had come into the hydrosphere in search of the six lost machine men.

"When the Uchke raider fired on you, as you returned from the kelp city, we thought you were dead. Then came the story of the Nacac and of the futile attempt to rescue you--how a great fish had swallowed you and 88ZQ4.

"We made plans to search the center of the hydrosphere. The scout ships were taken from the mother ship and assembled for undersea penetration. We searched far and wide on the bottom of the sea, realizing that if two of you had survived the Uchke shot, the other four possessed equal chances. By all means, even had the Nacac not brought us the story they did, we should have searched for our six lost companions to discover their fate. Several of the Uchke craft attacked us, and in this way we discovered one of their air locks, destroying all but one of their submarines which we pursued to its lair."

"Who unloosed the waters into the inner world?" asked the professor.

"We did," was 29G-75's prompt reply. "The air lock was guarded against our entrance, and depth charges were released in an effort to drive us off or destroy us. Before anything definite could be decided upon, Ogweg took matters into his own hands. He blew the air lock to bits, realizing that inside the core of the planet were the Plekne's hated oppressors. While we entered, he searched the ocean bottom for more of the smooth platforms marking entrance to the inner world. He found and destroyed three more before tiring of the sport. Then he joined us. The currents of water were fast and strong, dragging us through the channel at a rapid pace, hurling us far out into the atmosphere of the inner world. We were immensely surprised, not having looked for a rendezvous beneath the sea to be constructed on such a large order.

"We were confused as to the situation. Though we believed you to be inside the core somewhere, not having found you on the carefully scoured sea bottom by telepathic call, we landed and captured several Uchke, forcing them to tell us where you were and why so much fighting was being carried on. It was easy. We read their thoughts before they even guessed our intent. Among other facts, we discovered that this planet's core is not their home. 21MM-392, do you know whence they come?"

"I do not know for certain," was the professor's reply, "but I can guess pretty well."

"And what is your guess?"

"The planet we passed on our way to the hydrosphere. Remember the strange ships that attacked us?"

"Your guess is correct," said 29G-75. "The Uchke used this inner world only as a slave-base and manufacturing plant. It seems that long ago they hollowed out this world by disintegrating the rock."

"29G-75, we must see that the Uchke never menace the Plekne again. Some day, the Uchke may return. We must go to this planet of the Uchke and render them harmless. Then only can we leave this planetary system and head back in the direction of Zor."

"21MM392, are you aware of what system of worlds we shall pass in this direction?"

"I have not consulted the charts lately," said the professor. "Why do you ask?"

"Because you may be interested to know that our route back to Zor will take us close to your planet Earth, where we found your dead body encased in its rocket satellite."

As Professor Jameson pondered this revelation, the little scout ship bobbed into the light of day, gently riding the surface of the hydrosphere. Upon the horizon lay the faint outlines of a distant kelp city, lined resplendently against the red sunlight of the dying day.

TIME'S MAUSOLEUM

Chapter I

PLANET OF THE UCHKE

The Uchke were conquered. Their planet lay at the mercy of the metal invaders from the planet Zor. A few battles had decided the entire issue, and the Uchke had wisely yielded themselves. Their cities, except those few which had borne the brunt of the machine men's power, were spared, for the Zoromes had no intentions of annihilating the Uchke. To remove their menace against the Plekne was sufficient. To this end, Professor Jameson, 744U-21, 6W-438 and others of the machine men conferred with the high officials among the Uchke.

It was a puzzle to the professor how these bestial creatures could conceive the high plane of civilization which lay about them. They seemed little more than brutes. If hair had grown on their faces, they would have looked much like gorillas, except for the more prominent forehead which suggested intelligence. But to the professor, they did not seem beings of the order of intelligence he might expect to have conquered space and made themselves masters of the distant hydrosphere. The bodies of the Uchke were small and were out of proportion to their heads. Clawed digits terminated the upper appendages, and the creatures were afforded movement on two stumpy legs.

The machine men held mental conversation with the leaders of the Uchke.

"Your spaceships are to be destroyed so that you may never again cross space and molest the Plekne," said 744U-21. "All knowledge you possess of space navigation must also be destroyed."

In the minds of the Uchke, the machine men read the reply.

"We do not design the spaceships; neither do we possess the knowledge of space flying, though we are proficient in the operation of the ships. The Qwux show us everything."

"The Qwux?" queried Professor Jameson, a light breaking in upon his mind. "Then, you are not the rulers of this planet after all!"

"We are the rulers of this world!" the Uchkek flashed, forgetting momentarily that he spoke to the planet's conquerors.

The proud manifestation of authority was disregarded by the Zoromes as they probed to the crux of the mystery.

"Who are these Qwux?" 6W-438 demanded. "Where do they live?"

"They live on this world, and they are those among us who deal in science."

Though the machine men failed to gain an accurate picture of the Qwux in the oddly fashioned minds of the Uchke, the impression was sufficiently strong for them to conceive of another species. 744U-21 brooked further questioning.

"If they are your scientific thinkers and masters, take us to them," he demanded.

"Not our masters," the Uchke protested. "We are their masters."

With this paradoxical statement, the matter was dropped. A fast aerocar took them over the nearby mountain peaks to a huge building which loomed high upon a cliff overlooking a deep valley. The car came to rest at an entrance of the mighty edifice.

Professor Jameson, 744U-21 and 6W-438 were ushered into the building. Instantly, the machine men were all interest. The great structure was literally a beehive of laboratories, scientific workshops and experimental chambers.

"The Qwux live here," said the Uchke. "These are their laboratories. They live in the top levels. It is one of their rest periods."

The machine men saw no one except Plekne slaves and a few Uchke overseers.

"We shall take you to Zlestrm. He is greatest in knowledge among the Qwux. They look up to him. We give Zlestrm all our orders."

The last remark was given with an egotistical display of authority which puzzled the professor. If another race on the planet possessed such faculties of power, why did they, even though in the minority, allow these ignorant creatures to overrule them and dictate orders?

Elevators lifted the machine men and their guide high into the upper levels of the great building which rivaled the mountain peaks which surrounded it. They were ushered into an anteroom, and never in all his life, nor in all his cosmic travels, had Professor Jameson ever gazed upon such luxury and elegance as that which surrounded him.

Curtains of thin woven metal rustled softly at the end of the room. They parted, and into the room stepped a creature whom the machine men readily surmised was one of the Qwux. A pair of long, thin legs supported an oval body, which, like the Uchke, boasted upper appendages ending in long digits. The fingers of the Qwux, however, were more refined in shape and color. It was apparent instantly that they were of a higher intelligence than the Uchke. Their heads and bodies were more in accord with each other than those of the brutal conquerors of the hydrosphere.

"I have been expecting you, men of metal," said the Qwux. "I am Zlestrm."

"So we have learned," replied 744U-21. "And you are the real figurehead, the ruler of this planet's destiny?"

Zlestrm spread his palms in a deprecating gesture which Professor Jameson recognized as characteristic of his own long-gone, long-dead race.

"The Uchke rule," said Zlestrm. "We Qwux are the brains of this world, however, if I may say it."

Zlestrm bent an apologetic look in the direction of the Uchke. In his expression there lingered a trace of subtle humor. The Uchke failed to gather any significance from the conversation. The machine men bent their concentrations on Zlestrm, and the flow of thought waves were far above the duller perceptions of the Uchke.

"How did such a strange reversal like that ever occur?" Professor Jameson asked.

"Long ago, the Qwux were the rulers of the planet. We were greater in numbers than we are now. The Uchke were little more than roving brutes of the forest. The Qwux were not fighters. We loved luxury. The Uchke finally banded together and overthrew us."

"But with all this power you could easily revolt and become masters of the world again!" 744U-21 expostulated.

"Yes," replied Zlestrm. "We could easily have done that. But why should we? We have a pact with the Uchke which gives us all these enjoyments we so dearly love. We have no fighting or working to do. They, with their boasted power, do all of this. The Uchke are satisfied because it is through our mentality that they possess the great cities you saw."

"We blew up a few," mentioned 6W-438, edging toward the vital point. "The Uchke ceased their fighting after that."

"Yes--on our advice," Zlestrm replied. "I suppose your visit concerns the Plekne. Poor creatures. It is well that you freed them from bondage. The Qwux were never amenable to the situation, but the Uchke would have it so, and--" Zlestrum made a significant gesture which took in the luxurious surroundings about them. It was suggestive that rather than stir up trouble with the Uchke and place their indolent ease in a precarious position, the Qwux would permit almost anything which did not interfere with them. Their rule was to follow the path of least resistance.

"But suppose the Uchke some day learn all your scientific secrets, or reach a stage where they may believe themselves superior to you?" the professor asked.

"That day will never come I" Zlestrm exclaimed triumphantly, with a bit more fire than the machine men had previously credited to him. "Our secrets are handed down hereditarily from one generation to the next. Each of the Qwux specializes in a branch of science. Were it not for the fact that my ancestor handed down to me the fundamental secret of the preparation of spaceship propellent fuel, our ability for space navigation would die out."

"You alone hold that secret?" queried 744U-21.

"I alone do," was Zlestrm's proud answer.

The machine men reached a simultaneous decision.

"The easiest and most effective solution to our problem," the professor observed.

"Zlestrm," 744U-21 addressed the Qwux. "We are leaving your planet without destroying anything--not so much as a single spaceship."

"That is magnificent of you," Zlestrm fawned.

"There is to be no more bloodshed," the machine man added.

Zlestrm could scarcely believe his ears.

"Only one thing," said 744U-21.

"And what is that?" the Qwux asked.

"You are coming with us on our journey into space."

On the face of Zlestrm, blank surprise was replaced by consternation.

"But in that case the spaceships of this world will soon become useless--unless I convey my secrets to another."

"You will convey no secrets," warned 744U-21. "You are our prisoner."

"This world will carry on without you," said Professor Jameson, "and without the faculty of space navigation to the hydrosphere."

The machine men spent several days upon the planet of the Uchke. During that time, Zlestrm was kept in custody aboard the spaceship of Zor. At first he bemoaned his fate, but gradually he grew reconciled to his prospects on assurance that all conveniences necessary for his subsistance during his lifetime stay with the machine men of Zor would be granted him. He finally reached a point of enthusiasm where he actually looked forward to the endless trip--an endless trip for him. The colorful tales of his captors were partly responsible for this.

"You will be dead before we ever reach Zor," 744U-21 told him. "Your lifetime shall have expired before the home world is reached."

Zlestrm was offered the privilege of becoming a Zorome but he shrank from the idea of an operation on his brain, with its subsequent removal to a metal head. Though himself a savant of high standing in science, Zlestrm's timid nature did not inspire him to submit himself to any possible chances of harm.

"There is one additional favor I would like granted," said the Qwux.

Professor Jameson was instantly reminded of the deep cushioned settee which Zlestrm had been persistent in having moved aboard his airtight compartment "in the spaceship.

"What is it?"

"I have an invention on which I am working--have almost completed. In fact, it is so nearly complete that I have given it several tests and found it quite successful."

"It sounds interesting," said 6W-438. "What is your invention?"

"A time traveler."

The machine men were visibly moved.

"A time machine?"

"Something like that," replied Zlestrm, his mind catching the picture of an intricate, fabled mechanism the thoughts of the machine men had conjured up.

"But it is impossible," stated the incredulous professor. "I have often heard the theory discussed. It is like the irresistible force hitting an immovable body, a conflicting impossibility."

"Actual time traveling is an impossibility," Zlestrm admitted, "that is, a physical impossibility."

"You probably mean that mental time traveling is possible, memory, for example," Professor Jameson suggested.

"Not exactly that," said Zlestrm. "With my time traveler it is possible for me to see actual occurrences I never knew or heard about. I have looked back into time, but looking ahead--that is where my time traveler still lacks in perfection."

"Bring your machine and the necessary equipment with you," said the professor. "There are reasons, well-timed, which may afford me a specific use for your time traveler."

* * *

And thus it happened that the machine men of Zor took an exile with them when they left the planet of the Uchke, an exile whose sole loss represented future safety for the Plekne in their drifting kelp cities of the hydrosphere.

Zlestrm dwelt in an airtight compartment furnished with an atmosphere rejuvenator and reserve supplies of his natural air sufficient for the balance of his lifetime which would be spent in cosmic travel. Entrance to and from his compartment was gained by means of an air lock. When Zlestrm joined the machine men in other parts of the ship, he wore a lightly constructed spacesuit.

Aided by the machine men, he worked a good share of his time on the time traveler. Professor Jameson seemed the most interested of the Zoromes. As 29G-75 had previously reminded him, they would soon pass the planet Earth, where the machine men had discovered the professor's rocket satellite. The professor was eager for the completion of the time traveler before they reached the solar system.

Zlestrm finally announced that the time had come for tests to be made. 29G-75 consulted the constellation chart for the nearest system of planets on which to land and conduct the tests. Zlestrm, however, told the machine men that it was unnecessary. The nature of his invention made it possible for them to try the time traveler inside the spaceship.

It was a queer looking apparatus which Zlestrm had put together, yet it appeared to be simply constructed. The mechanism was enclosed in a large container mounted upon a glassy, translucent base. This base was prepared from a tough, viscous substance which seemed nothing more than an exceedingly hard composition of jelly, not unlike India rubber. Several cone-shaped vents protruded from the container, while a small platform was' built entirely around it.

"Who will conduct the test with me?" asked Zlestrm. "The platform will easily hold two of you besides myself."

Professor Jameson stepped forward, followed by 41C-98. They took their places on the platform where Zlestrm instructed them to stand. The Qwux then turned to the controls on the top of the container. Out of the cone-shaped vents issued a filmy cloud which gathered about the time traveler and the three who stood on its platform. Like a billowing cloud, it grew and spread over them until their comrades were lost from sight beyond the heavy mist.

As the vapor cleared, the professor saw beside him 41C-98 and Zlestrm still in their same positions on the platform. But all around them lay the heavy mist like a hollow sphere. Indeed, it seemed to Professor Jameson as if they were inside a large rubber ball. Everything beyond lay invisible.

"We must wait for the vapor to solidify," said Zlestrm. "Then we shall travel back in time."

Gradually through the cloudy mist the dim shapes of the machine men and parts of the spaceship became visible.

"The vapor is disappearing!" 41C-98 exclaimed.

"No--it is solidifying," corrected Zlestrm. "Soon, it will be transparent and we will see outside as clearly as if it were not there. 744U-21 and the others, however, will see only a large white globe resting on the floor of the spaceship. The transparency works but one way."

Professor Jameson saw his metal comrades clearly as they moved about the spaceship, as if nothing stood between himself and them, yet all was silent. He heard not a sound beyond the slight movements of Zlestrm and 41C-98. He mentioned the fact.

"Oh, yes!" exclaimed Zlestrm. "I forgot about the audio-phone!"

He adjusted the controls, and there broke into the professor's hearing the clatter and rustle of metal feet on the metal floor and the rustling of tentacles.

"Can they hear us?"

"No," replied the Qwux.

He pulled several levers and the scene beyond the time bubble shifted with such amazing rapidity that there was visible only a conglomeration of flickering shadows which resolved into a dull, quivering grayness. A terrible clattering din arose to a shriek and wail. Zlestrm immediately shut off the audiophone and profound silence replaced the bedlam.

"The scene you are about to witness took place some time in the past before your spaceship came to the hydrosphere," Zlestrm explained, busy at the controls of the time traveler.

Chapter II

THE BACKWARD PATH

The scene cleared. Professor Jameson saw the machine men gathered about the ports of the spaceship. Through the ports came the mingled effulgence of blue and orange light. Professor Jameson was surprised to see himself standing beside 25X-987, who had long been dead.

"The planet of the double sun I" he exclaimed.

"Can we hear them?" asked 41C-98.

"Of course," Zlestrm replied, and he turned on the audio-phone once more.

Sounds of the spaceship, sounds from the past they were examining, came to the three time travelers, but none of the machine men's thought waves reached them.

"Your time bubble seems to be impervious to the reception of thought waves," said the professor.

"You two would know that better than I," the Qwux replied.

In sporadic leaps, Zlestrm bridged lengthy periods of time, coming up to the present once more.

"We shall now try the future although I know pretty well what to expect. At present, you have witnessed nothing very sensational, just a review of the past in this spaceship. In reality, we have not been moving through the past, but by means of the time bubble we have brought the past to us. Past scenes of this spaceship have been mirrored in the time bubble."

Zlestrm now worked at a different set of controls on the large container. He was a bit careful, cautious of his movements. Again there came the weird cacophony of mingled sounds and the flickering bolts of movement.,Professor Jameson once more saw his metal companions moving about the spaceship. Again he saw himself, and he saw Zlestrm as well. They were all behaving strangely. Indistinct and hazy, they moved in several directions at once. There seemed to be more than one of each Zorome. The professor saw several counterparts of himself moving about the spaceship. Most surprising of all, the conglomeration of double and triple personalities moved through one another easily, without apparent notice or realization.

Baffled, Zlestrm moved the scene far ahead. The results were the same. Sometimes the spaceship appeared empty except for dim-moving, shadowy forms. Again, the conglomeration of machine men, like countless superimposed photographs, were visible: sometimes clearly, sometimes dying away. Several times Professor Jameson saw what appeared to be no spaceship at all, only the twinkling stars of empty space. Once, a planet loomed into sight through a nearby port, then dissolved from sight.

Zlestrm was just as puzzled as his two metal companions. He seemed unable to understand it, working desperately with his controls to bring some order out of the meaningless chaos depicted by the time bubble. He sped back toward their present existence and overlapped into the near past. He stopped the flight of time.

The scene before them stood out in amazing clarity. It showed Zlestrm and several of the machine men preparing for the test. They saw the machine men staring at them with unseeing eyes, eyes that saw only the opaque globe resting on the floor of the spaceship. Again Zlestrm jumped into the future, obtaining the same results as before.

Professor Jameson had been doing a bit of thinking. "I believe I can enlighten you, Zlestrm," he said.

"How do you explain all this?" asked the Qwux, waving a hand at the confusion of shifting scenes which merged and contradicted each other so chaotically.

"When dealing with the past, you treat with something already established, events which have taken place. In no way can that which has happened be changed. That is the fundamental reason why you could construct no time machine which would carry you either backward or forward in time, physically. Just imagine, Zlestrm; if this were so, you might go back into time, meet and kill yourself, then commit suicide, and your time machine which took you back into time would never have been invented. It makes just that much sense--a ludicrous impossibility."

Both Zlestrm and 41C-98 pondered the professor's sound logic while all about them moved the same endless conglomeration of conflicting events.

"Now, let us consider the future," said the professor. "None of it has taken place, and it is yet to be made. This mixture of future events portrayed in the time bubble represents possibilities. Events occur as a matter of simultaneous coincidences linked together like a chain. Suppose, Zlestrm, that you saw the future depicted as accurately as you have reviewed the past. You might see yourself performing some task, for instance. How easy it would be to divert yourself from this and contradict the future in some manner. It would require but a slight deviation from routine to throw into chaos any given train of coincidental events, so closely do they depend on one another. The future is too shifting and unstable to be depicted accurately, and it is surprising that your machine has done so well with the future."

"I believe you are right, 21MM392."

"It stands to reason," Zlestrm agreed.

"Upon my world, forty million years ago," said the professor, "there were people who forecasted the future. They possessed peculiar qualities of mind not given to the vast majority. This gave them an insight into the future, and they were known under such names as soothsayers, necromancers, diviners, prophets, mediums, clairvoyants and fortune tellers. It is quite possible that their gifted faculty was not unlike the workings of your time machine. They saw the future as a conglomeration of conflicting possibilities, and they chose from this according to judgment and whim. They were not infallible and were often in error. Their percentage of accuracy, of course, depended upon the extent of their power as well as their intelligence and judgment."

"Suppose we return to the present," suggested Zlestrm. "Our test has been completed."

"What would happen to us if the time bubble should break while we were in the past or future?" queried 41C-98.

"We would immediately find ourselves in the present with a shattered globe," was Zlestrm's reply.

The Qwux brought them back to the present and then pressed a lever which dissolved the globe about them. Once more they were with their companions, telling of their trip into time.

"What has taken place is nothing, however," the professor promised. "Wait until we reach the Earth. I shall trace mankind down through the ages and find what happened to the civilization I left at the time of my death."

* * *

Time passed slowly and monotonously for Zlestrm despite his ability to sleep. He was not a machine man, and an organic body made him aware of the passing of time. Several of his planet's years had passed before the outer planets of Professor Jameson's solar system blurred into sight. Since the time traveler had been tested, several improvements and facilities had been added. At the professor's insistence, the composition which made up the time bubble was prepared to withstand the rigors of intense heat and the opposite extreme of cold. An installation of mechanisms below the vapor chamber gave the time bubble mobility, either in air or in space.

The spaceship of Zor flashed past Neptune. Far off to one side lay Saturn, which no longer possessed its rings. The outer planets, with the exception of Mars and the Earth, lay on the opposite side of the dying sun. Earth glowed dully as a very thin crescent.

A strange sensation seized the professor as he looked upon his home world, yet there was nothing homelike about the dying planet which might have appealed directly to him. The continents as he had known them were gone. Even the poles of the planet were not the identical spots which had characterized his period of life forty million years before. A great change had been wrought.

One half of the dying world forever faced the blood-red ball of a cooling sun, the face of the planet heated to a tremendous degree. The remaining half of the sphere was cold, frozen, desolate. The atmosphere, unequally divided over the great globe, was nearly gone. The Zoromes had discovered on their last trip to the Earth that a thousand mile band of territory encircling the Earth represented the extreme limits on which they might emerge from their spaceship.

The spaceship was brought to rest in this twilight zone where the cooling sun, whose gigantic ball now lay nearer the Earth, hung upon the horizon. Attracted by the mighty luminary, the Earth and its sister planets had circled ever nearer down through the eons of time. Somewhere in the incalculable future, Professor Jameson knew that the Earth would return to the flaming folds from which it had been hurled at birth.

"Our time traveler is now also a miniature spaceship or globe traveler," said the professor. "We can penetrate to the uttermost depths of Earthly time and make observations On any part of the planet we wish. Our repeller rays can project us as far into space as we wish, and our detector will keep us informed of the exact proximity of the Earth's surface at all times. The machine has been enlarged so that it will now accommodate four machine men and Zlestrm. 744U-21 can select two more to fill the party."

To accompany Zlestrm, 744U-21, and Professor Jameson into the time's uttermost realms, 6W-438 and 45ZQ42 were given positions on the platform of the time machine. The time traveler was set on a piece of level ground, and in the twilight brilliance of the dying sun, the five anachronistic adventurers took their places.

From the machine issued the dense vapor which enveloped them, presently forming a shining globe about them. The remaining machine men, fifteen in number, stood by the side of the spaceship and looked on as their companions became lost in the cloudy haze which grew to the semblance of a shining sphere, the time bubble.

"Give it your highest acceleration, Zlestrm," Professor Jameson urged. "We are going back to the beginning of time on the planet Earth."

"I would like to look upon the civilization of your time," said Zlestrm. "It would be interesting for you to see yourself as you were forty million years ago."

"Forty million years is as nothing to what you are going to see," was the professor's reply. "We are going backward billions of years. We shall eventually move up to my time; then you shall see the race of creatures from which I came."

The machine men watched Zlestrm as he rapidly stepped up the flight across time's chasm. There were no flickering shadows, no sounds, this time. The color of the globe was a grayish hue, so rapid and inconceivable was the transition. The machine men were unaware of how much time had passed since they had blown the time bubble about them, but Zlestrm's recourse to food and drink brought this fact to the professor's attention. He called to Zlestrm, who was busy examining the air rejuvenator:

"Stop and see where we are."

Zlestrm did as he was directed, and the gray inner surface of the time bubble disappeared. The time travelers found themselves looking upon a strange scene. Smoky vapor curled all about them, and, through it, could be dimly seen an intensely hot globe in the sky.

"We're nearly there," said the professor. "Go back still farther."

Once more Zlestrm started them on their backward flight through Earthly time. Again the professor told him to stop. The gray of the time bubble grew to a bright gold which slowly resolved itself into an intensely white brilliance. Zlestrm screamed and covered his eyes from the glaring light. The machine men's eye shutters clicked rapidly shut. Zlestrm cowered on the floor, his head shielded. Professor Jameson groped for the controls, not daring to look.

"Do not look!" he cried. "It means blindness for you, Zlestrm--new optical plates for us!"

"Where are we?" asked 6W-438.

"Somewhere near the center of the sun," the professor replied, finding the object his groping tentacles searched for.

His tentacles curled about the long lever and pulled it. Blackness soon replaced the intense brilliance. The machine men, who had been left beside the spaceship, looked on wonderingly as the globe shot into the sky, grew small and disappeared in space.

From far out in space, the machine men and Zlestrm looked back at the bloated star from which they had just emerged and left far behind.

"Where is the Earth and the other planets?" asked Zlestrm.

"In there," said the professor, pointing back at the dazzling star. "They have not been born yet."

"When will it take place?"

"Just as soon as that other star reaches this vicinity," Professor Jameson replied. "It may easily be a couple hundred of your lifetimes, Zlestrm, so we had better jump ahead this time. To do that, we must return to the sun. Protect your sight."

The machine men who had been left behind looked on in awe as they saw the time bubble return to Earth and leave again. This maneuver was repeated several times as the five occupants of the time bubble moved upward toward the momentous birth of a solar system.

"We have not long to wait," said the professor. "The suns are nearing each other. They are behaving strangely."

It was true. As the machine men and Zlestrm watched from their distant point in space, the two stars bulged at the sides facing each other. Though the movement was not visible, the machine men knew that their rotation had been accelerated. Wispy clouds of flaming material flew away from the great stars, forming a nebula about each. A gigantic paroxysm seized both of the cosmic bodies. It seemed that they literally belched forth their flaming insides, which swirled and drifted about them in circling rings.

"Let us return," said the professor. "It will be the fourth ring which will probably be the Earth."

"Which system?" queried Zlestrm.

"The one with the eleven rings," the professor explained. "You will notice that the other system has twenty rings or more. Several of them merge."

"Are you sure of Earth's being the fourth ring?" asked 744U-21. "I thought it would be the third."

"The Earth is now the third planet from the sun," stated Professor Jameson, "but, during the era at which we are now looking, a nearer planet than Mercury circled the sun."

They entered the vast flaming ring, and the time bubble was rapidly accelerated into the future.

"There will be little to see for many hundred millions of years," Professor Jameson told them. "The ring, as you already know, eventually resolved itself into a planet and a moon. We shall return for the first life on the Earth, the first life beyond the fossil stages."

Down the pathway of time they moved in long jumps, halting now and then to find what period of Earth's lifetime they had reached. Finally, crude forms of life in the way of vegetation and animals became noticeable. When they reached the age of reptiles, Professor Jameson knew that it would not be long before they might expect to view mankind's predecessors and ancestors. Zlestrm and the professor's metal comrades were enthralled by the sight of the great dinosaurs, the bloated sun, the myriads of life forms and the everlasting fight for food and existence, but the professor was impatient to move onward.

There were animals who often took to the trees and swung skillfully among the branches. They bore a remote resemblance to apes and simians of Professor Jameson's day, yet nowhere could he remember any scientific reconstructions of his day which resembled them. The time bubble made another leap of several thousand years and the professor found that this curious animal had divided into two distinct groups. One species resembled a low form of ape, while the other was apparently of greater intelligence.

Here, thought the professor, might be the answer to evolution's riddle. Those in the time bubble watched the progression and gradual evolution of this type up through the ages. No longer was there any doubt. This was man's early ancestor. The creature upon whom the professor looked appeared as a man with apish features and characteristics.

The time bubble moved onward ever nearer the era contemporary with Professor Jameson's, life on Earth. The professor estimated the period to be roughly two hundred thousand years before the advent of Christianity. Men had banded together and commenced living in caves. Domesticity had found its birth.

Professor Jameson and his companions were watching a colony of the troglodytes in their community on a cliffside when 45ZQ42 suddenly pointed to a small dot falling slowly out of the sky.

"One of the flying reptiles," observed Professor Jameson. "It is rather surprising to find a few surviving saurians in this advanced era. They really belong to an earlier age."

"That bird has no wings," said 744U-21, pointing to the small dot which grew in size and dropped into a nearby forest.

"We shall investigate."

They left off watching the troglodytes and hurried to where a large metal sphere roamed aimlessly over a dense forest bordering the foot of a steep declivity.

"A spaceship!" cried 6W-438.

"From another world," said the professor. "Mars--probably."

Suddenly, the spaceship veered sharply toward the cliff, dropping lower. Those within the time bubble saw a strange scene. Upon the termination of a narrow ledge stood a caveman, his back against the wall. Down upon him rushed a gigantic cave bear. From the strange spacecraft there shot forth a blinding ray of white light full upon the fearsome beast which, unable to halt its mad rush, plunged against the rocky wall beside the caveman, dead. The spaceship hovered near the cliff, its occupants evidently examining the troglodyte they had just saved.

Zlestrm moved the time bubble to a position which brought their vision within the spacecraft. It contained two creatures of strange build and over-large heads, grotesque caricatures of mankind.

"A space expedition from Mars," concluded the professor after a cursory examination of the spaceship and its occupants. "Their world, being much smaller than the Earth, cooled first."

A brief trip was made across space to Mars to verify the professor's belief. He was right. On the planet Mars they discovered a highly developed civilization, but the entire globe seethed with war and destruction.

"If they keep that up very long, they will be making no more space expeditions," prophesied 744U-21.

Back once more they went to the Earth, and once again time was covered in large leaps of several thousand years each, bringing them to what Professor Jameson recognized as the early Biblical era.

"Right here, I wish to gather some geographical data," said the professor as he helped Zlestrm maneuver the time bubble off the Earth and into space once more.

Below them, the Earth rolled like a gigantic ball. The continents stood out clear and bold.

"For what are you looking?" Zlestrm asked.

"Atlantis," replied the professor. "It was a continent believed to have existed before the dawn of authentic history. It was supposed to have sunk beneath the ocean. Look-there it is I The continent near the center of Earth's crescent!"

"Shall we watch it sink?" asked Zlestrm.

"Not this trip," the professor replied. "I wish to cover a long period of time before we return to the spaceship, and to accomplish it we cannot stop too long in one period of time."

Chapter III

RIVER OF LIFE

The time bubble was next maneuvered to a position over the Mediterranean. Here, Professor Jameson failed to find a broad expanse of water. It was an immense basin of dry land, partly desert. Where a deep sea was one day to be found, there was now but a vast area of sunken continent. Moving the time bubble, they discovered that a comparatively small section of land separated the great Atlantic from the slowly sinking valley of the Mediterranean.

"If that keeps up," said 744U-21, "it will take but a slight convulsion of nature to send the ocean flooding into the valley."

"Yes--that's what actually did happen," the professor replied. "And there were people living in the bottom of the valley."

"A good many of your species must have been drowned," 6W-438 observed.

"They were," the professor admitted. "The story, however, as handed down to us by legend, lost nothing in the telling. It grew in size until report had it that the entire Earth was covered with water. The valley dwellers who managed to escape must have thought so, I guess."

"Let us view the cataclysm," 744U-21 suggested. "It will be interesting."

By slow degrees, the time bubble was moved along in twenty year strides; it was moved all over the valley in search of Noah's Ark which, if the story was authentic, the professor believed must be in the process of construction. But nowhere could trace of it be found, though they searched among all the villages and spots of human habitation.

"Possibly a fable invented by those who escaped to higher ground," the professor suggested. "Either that or else we have skipped it. Perhaps it is too early to search for it."

But the next step of the time traveler brought them into the midst of murky green waters which rolled high above them.

"We've passed it," said the professor. "Retrace slowly, Zlestrm."

The Qwux did so. That water disappeared, and they found themselves in the throes of a terrible storm of unusual ferocity. Terrific downpours of rain deluged the valley for days. Raging, mountainous seas slammed their tons of frightful weight against the weakening barrier-cliffs near Gibraltar, so that the spray gathered and formed rivulets into the valley of the Mediterranean. The machine men and Zlestrm watched in fascination as part of the rocky buttresses weakened and fell, allowing the mad waves to wash into the valley.

And still the terrific downpour of rain continued unabated, beneath lowering skies as dark as night. Streams of water poured over the cliffs, washing away the rock. By short jumps of the time bubble, the time travelers saw the invasion of the sea increase to alarming proportions. This continued for several days, and then, with a mighty roar and convulsion of the ocean, the remaining wall broke, sending a towering tidal wave rushing into the partly submerged valley.

The time bubble moved onward in erratic jerks covering various periods of time. Occasionally, brief stops were made in order that they might see and hear events occuring in world history. The machine men and Zlestrm witnessed the power of the Pharaohs, the rise and fall of the Mayans, the burning of Rome, the Crusades, the Napoleonic wars, the development of the industrial age, the World Wars and many other sensational pages out of Earth's history.

"They are now approaching the power and achievements of the Martians," 6W-438 remarked. "It is a dangerous period."

"The Martians!" Professor Jameson exclaimed. "We have seen nothing more of them on Earth since the time of the troglodytes. Let us see how they fared."

A rapid trip to the fourth planet disclosed but a few low forms of animals as the only life existing on the planet. All intelligent creatures had disappeared.

"Anything might have happened to the Martians during two hundred thousand years," said the professor.

"Shall we go back and see?" queried 45ZQ42.

"Not this trip," urged Zlestrm. "My food supply is becoming low in quantity."

"That's true," the professor agreed. "Let us move forward.

We are now reaching the period of time when my rocket satellite was sent into space. I am quite interested in knowing how my nephew went about his duties in carrying out the instructions I left him. You will soon see how I defied all time and preserved my body for forty million years after my death. It happened in the year 1950. First of all, I must find my home town, the village of Grenville."

* * *

Professor Jameson took over all controls of the time bubble. Out into space they flitted to get their bearings. Over the continent of North America the professor guided the time traveler, and then they swooped downward toward the Earth. It took the professor but a short time to find his native home.

Out of the graveyard of memories came strange sensations of mind. An intense longing, a homesickness, suddenly struck the professor. Once before, immediately following his resurrection to life by the machine men of Zor, he had felt this way. He took a firm grip on himself, gained self-mastery of mind, then jumped the time bubble ahead several years. A small village lay below them. Professor Jameson moved the time traveler to a position just above a large mansion which stood on a hill overlooking the village.

Like a long-gone dream across time's mighty chasm the scene smote the professor's consciousness. It was a June morning. The sun's rays penetrated the leafy foliage to create a checkered shade upon the greensward, throwing the long, early morning shadows of houses and trees in a haphazard, chaotic design. A gentle breeze of summer set the leaves of the trees slightly in motion, and fresh bloomed roses dropped their loosened petals. The little town, nestling in the foothills of the great mountains whose jagged contours towered away into the blue distance, represented a picture of peaceful tranquility: a simple, country village.

From the mansion issued the figure of a middle-aged man who walked slowly down the pathway to the gate and stood looking upon the restful panoramic scene stretched out below him.

"That--that's me!" Professor Jameson exclaimed, rustling his tentacles nervously.

The machine men and the Qwux stared in fascination first at 21MM382 and then at the flesh and blood creature depicted to them through tlje time bubble.

"Down there, you look as you did when we picked up your rocket satellite!" 744U-21 exclaimed.

"Turn on the audiophone," Zlestrm suggested.

The professor did so. In the village below, life commenced to stir. The roosters had long since ceased their crowing. A dog barked; voices were heard. The village was rousing itself and throwing off sleep to begin the labors of a new day. Joyous knots of straggling children went their leisurely way to school.

The lone figure at the gateway gazed past the village and away toward the great mountains whose giant fingers lay outstretched against the azure sky like huge monoliths of the gods. Professor Jameson remembered that day particularly well, and he knew what his next actions would be.

Eagerly he watched himself walk back toward the house. His companions also watched closely, sensing something imminent. But the professor did not enter the house. He proceeded in the direction of a high fenced enclosure. Inside rose a tall structure. The high tower bore a strong resemblance to a silo and was tilted at an alarming degree, suggesting the leaning tower of Pisa. The professor entered the strange building.

Across the yawning maw of more "than forty million years, his mechanical successor moved the time bubble to a position which enabled them to view the interior of the tower.

"There is my rocket!"

Zlestrm and the machine men stared long at the cylindrical rocket which tapered slightly at its base. Eight cylindrical protuberances affixed to the base provided the radium release for the recoil charge, while stabilizer fins were constructed to guide the rocket safely beyond the atmosphere and into the seas of space. Four straight guide rails ran the length of the tower.

Professor Jameson reached for a lever of the mechanism guiding the time bubble. The scene disappeared, and the time bubble was once more above the mansion. In short, hesitating jumps, the machine man moved the time traveler along through the following months. Finally, reaching the time he sought, the professor stopped the flight of the time bubble.

It was twilight. From out of a leaden sky, big, white, feathery flakes of snow came floating softly down upon the little village of Grenville, clothing it in a blanket of fleecy down. The dark gray of the overcast sky deepened as dusk settled at an early hour of the evening, and still the countless myriad legions of silent, drifting snowflakes continued their descent, the hitherto dark rooftops of the little township putting on their white caps. Lights twinkled in the windows, and mothers called children, who, with lagging footsteps, reluctantly abandoned their merry gamboling amid the first snowfall in answer to the supper call.

Sitting majestically on its hill overlooking the village, the grim, austere mansion of the late Professor Jameson presented a lonesome aspect, even though a solitary light shed its glow from one of the windows of the massive house. The machine man knew that his dead body had been laid to rest within its graveyard vault. A slight shifting of the time bubble showed the professor's nephew, Douglas Jameson, reading the documents and instructions of his dead uncle.

The professor saw ghastly surprise and wonderment cross the young man's face as he read the professor's plans and preparations. Douglas Jameson hurried from the house and entered the outer laboratory of the professor with its rocket tube. Snow had ceased to fall, leaving the ground covered with a ghostly carpet of pure white to the depth of a foot. Overhead, a few dark clouds scudded across the starlit sky, veiling at frequent intervals the twinkling points of light, set like fiery gems against a background of jet blackness.

Douglas Jameson emerged from the workshop rather bewildered and made his way back to the house. It was several hours later, around midnight, before the four Zoromes and the Qwux saw the young man emerge once more from the mansion and start out through the snow. Under his arm he carried a small bundle.

"Where is he going?" queried Zlestrm.

"To the cemetery," Professor Jameson replied, "after my dead body."

They followed him in the time bubble. Sure enough, over the cemetery fence he climbed among the snow-capped gravestones, heading for the Jameson vault. The graveyard was silent, deserted. He was unobserved, yet he looked cautiously all about him.

At the vault, he fumbled with several keys before the grated door swung around and gave him entrance. He was gone for only a few minutes. When he emerged, he carried a bulging white bag over his shoulder. No need was there of the professor to tell his companions what the bag contained. They watched Douglas Jameson with his heavy burden as he made his way toward the cemetery fence. Several times he stumbled over hidden footstones and fell in the light snow which covered him from head to foot with feathery flakes.

Reaching the fence, he hesitated before climbing over, looking cautiously up and down the road to be sure there were no late travelers in sight. Sensing his purpose, the professor also looked up and down the road from his position in the time bubble, and farther down the road he saw what a thin growth of evergreens had concealed from the hasty observation of his nephew, who was in unseen danger.

A man came staggering along the snow-covered road, leaving a winding path of footsteps. Douglas Jameson stood in peril of discovery. Rapidly, the machine man brought the time bubble to a position where the lonely pedestrian's face was visible to him. The professor repressed a mental exclamation of surprise. The man was George Jackson, Grenville's handy man, and he was drunk. How well Professor Jameson remembered the superstitious old man who had often done odd jobs around the Jameson estate.

If the man's unsteady gait had not apprised the professor that he was drunk, the fact that George took the route home past the cemetery would have brought to his recollection George's weakness for liquor. For George's legs constantly persisted in becoming crossed, and it was apparent that he had fallen in the snow several times. The lanky man had no thoughts of the cemetery until he was beside it, and then, when the fact impressed itself on his dulled senses, he merely shook his head lugubriously and passed on, emboldened by the influence of strong drink.

He possessed courage unexperienced during his sober moments, and so without trepidation he continued his winding trail past the army of silent, ominous gravestones, interspersed here and there with a grim, forbidding vault, standing like ghostly sentinels over the dead in the pale, uncertain light of the moon which peeped intermittently through the irregular fringe of the drifting cloud mass.

Douglas Jameson, in the act of climbing over the fence with his heavy burden, saw George at the same moment the latter discovered him. He hurried to get over the fence and across the road. The old man shook as with palsy, a graven image of fright and horrible immobility, his eyes bulging in violent alarm at the sight which confronted him. Outlined dimly against the snow, the figure with its big white bundle swung over one shoulder sobered George Jackson instantly.

He wanted to scream, but his throat was paralyzed, and his legs refused to cooperate with the wild entreaties of his brain. He might as well have been carved of stone for all the sound or motion he was able to elicit from his body. His hair stood straight up from his head as Douglas Jameson hastily crossed the road and hurried from sight into a copse of woodland.

Not until the specter had disappeared from view did the old man once more gain control of his body. A shrill cry of terror issued through the audiophone of the time bubble as George Jackson gave a ludicrous bound which cleared an amazingly large amount of ground as he was off down the road like a shot. Minus hat, and with coat-tails flying in the breeze created by his passage, he was a credit to any cross-country running team, his long thin legs working like pistons to escape the grim apparition which he felt certain was no greater distance than two steps behind him.

The stupefying effects of the alcohol had left him completely the moment he had seen the ghostly phantom scale the cemetery fence. As he ran, his breath came in great, sobbing gasps, and when he stumbled and fell it was to perform a rapid somersault and again continue his breakneck speed. George made his lonely cabin in record time, shoving open the door and slamming it shut behind him.

Professor Jameson, amused at the incident, followed with the time bubble. He had seen the birth of a planetary system, he had looked upon the dawn of civilization, the conquests of Rome and other epochal events, yet none of them impressed him so greatly as this homely little incident which brought back to him so poignantly recollections of his life on Earth with its joys and sorrows in the long ago.

The machine men and Qwux queried the professor over the strange happenings they had witnessed, and the professor explained to them their relationship with his rocket satellite.

"Secrecy regarding the matter was desired until after my nephew's death," Professor Jameson explained.

They waited patiently as George Jackson emerged from under his bed, fear and curiosity mingled on his face. Cautiously, he approached the door and opened it a slight crack, ready to shut it at a moment's notice. No one was outside. He opened the door a little wider and thrust his head outside. The clouds had drifted away and now a steady, unobstructed flow of moonlight afforded an excellent view of the landscape. George's heart pounded against his ribs as his eyes rolled in terror-stricken gaze toward the vicinity of the cemetery. Something upon the heights of the Jameson estate attracted his attention. It also attracted the attention of those within the time bubble.

A blue, luminous flare arose, and then, with a crackling sound barely audible, the gleam of violet-tinted light shot off into the sky. With a scream of fear, the shaking handyman endeavored to do two things at once and do them fast; to pull his head inside and close the door. He attempted the feat with such startling alacrity that the muscles of his arms coordinated with his brain a moment sooner than the time required in which to withdraw his head. The result was inevitable. His head caught in the door, leaving him squirming and howling in an effort to extricate himself. He finally succeeded when he reversed the persistence of his hands in their frantic attempt to close the door.

"That was my rocket he saw!" exclaimed Professor Jameson. "We must go back and trace its flight!"

A slight reverse in time was necessary to bring them back to the point where Douglas Jameson had fastened the professor's body in the rocket. They saw him place the corpse against the plush upholstering of the rocket's interior, fasten a strap beneath the chin and strap the wrists and ankles in place. Then, consulting his watch, he pulled the lever at the base of the rocket and immediately left the place to watch the tower from a vantage point in a window of the mansion. Five minutes later, the blue phosphorescent glow tinged with violet appeared suddenly from the top of the tower, and the rocket broke forth at a slow speed, contrary to his expectations.

There came a low, crackling hiss. The rocket arose slowly to a distance of five hundred feet above the tower, where, with a wild burst of speed, it hurtled rapidly upward, disappearing among the stars. In the time bubble, the professor and his friends followed the flight of the funeral rocket, watching it curve into an orbit around the Earth at a distance of sixty-five thousand miles.

"And now to discover how my nephew carried out his further orders," said the professor as they returned to Earth once more.

Still in the vicinity of Grenville, they jumped ahead to the next day. Great excitement reigned about the Jameson estate on the hill. The leaning tower and its surrounding laboratory was a seething mass of flames, too far beyond the power of the village fire volunteers to save. Their best efforts were employed in preventing the fire from spreading to the mansion and the other buildings.

Satisfied, Professor Jameson moved ahead a few hours and brought the time bubble to the exact spot where he might learn if his nephew's actions had been discovered. The professor and his weird companions found themselves the invisible bystanders in Grenville's general store. Several of the village residents were lounging there, among them, George Jackson. Eagerly, Professor Jameson listened through the audiophone.

"Reckon some of those darned chemicals the perfessor used t' fool with must have exploded," ventured the storekeeper.

"Slim Burton was tellin' as how he saw some funny lights in the sky late last night right up over the Jameson grounds."

"I'm not suprised at nothin' that happened las' night," said George Jackson. "Las' night wan't no night for good folks t' be out! There was ghosts a'prowlin'."

"Ghosts?"

"As I live an' breathe--and I wonder that I still do--for a ghost chased me all the way home from the cemet'y!"

The loungers joined in a loud laugh. George Jackson remained serious, his lined face a deep study of superstitious belief.

"When I got home an' opened the door t' see if it follered me, it grabbed hold of my head an' tried t' pull me outside t' put me in a big bag!"

At this point, the old man exhibited several large bruises about his neck and chin.

Professor Jameson chuckled inwardly to himself, deriving a great deal of humor from this delightful old character whom he had known so intimately during his Earthly life. The transposition of the professor's brain to a metal body had not diminished his interest in the events of his past life, and he had never lost his sense of humor, something which most of the Zoromes did not possess.

Chapter IV

ACROSS THE YEARS

They moved onward for many decades, finding that a great catastrophe had stricken the Earth. An immense cloud of cosmic dust had enfolded the Earth from out of space in its drifting mass, shutting off the light of the sun. Humanity found refuge in vast, subterranean cities. Another jump of a hundred years, however, found civilization once more living on the surface in rebuilt cities, the Earth free of the cosmic veil. The professor was eager to return and see how it had all happened, but Zlestrm's food supply was nearly exhausted and they must move onward faster.

In the twenty-third century, the time travelers found that interplanetary navigation had been conquered.

"They have now reached the stage which the Martians reached two hundred thousand years ago," 744U-21 remarked.

The next hundred years saw colonization of the other planets, inclusive of Mars and Venus. Here and there, Professor Jameson and Zlestrm picked up bits of life contemporary with the period they were visiting. Bandits menaced the colonies of Venus. There was the Durna Rangue, a cult persecuted on Earth because of practices in condemned sciences. The hideous organization had fled to Mars. The time travelers also heard of a sensational escape of a prisoner from the interplanetary penal colony on the Martian moon of Phobos.

Space expeditions to the moons of Saturn came back with strange, manlike creatures from Dione, their arms ending in swordlike protuberances. They were veritable born swordsmen. And from Ganymede, one of Jupiter's moons, were brought even stranger beings. In no way did they resemble humans. They were more like large rubber balls with appendages for movement, these appendages folding into their body at will.

Another leap of two centuries across the years found all three worlds, the Earth, Venus and Mars, equally settled by mankind. No longer were Mars and Venus the wild, unsettled frontiers of interplanetary colonization. They were firmly established along with the Earth. There were space pirates who menaced interplanetary commerce. These, the Interplanetary Guard often fought, when they could find them. The little asteroids and many other out-of-the-way hiding places of the solar system effectually sheltered the buccaneers of space.

Daring astronauts were sent out alone in their tiny space fliers to follow the flight of wild, careening meteors and extract from them their strange metals and precious stones from far-flung corners of the universe. The courses of dangerous meteors and small planetoids were accurately charted.

Spacecraft seemed to avoid the professor's rocket. Those there knew of its history and respected it. Others feared it. Radium repulsion rays, designed by the professor to swerve the rocket from the path of meteors, always kept it at a respectful distance from spaceships.

One of the strangest cases ever brought to the professor's eyes had happened less than six hundred years following his death. A mastery of super-scientific surgery had been performed. A human being killed in a space wreck among the asteroids had been brought back to life. With mangled limbs, a fractured skull and punctured heart, Nex Hulan had been given mechanical arms and legs, an aluminum brain pan, radiophone ears, a rubber heart and had been restored to life, a human robot.

"Half-machine man and half-human I" marveled 6W-438.

The case of the human robot was followed a while. The operation had stimulated his brain cells to greater activity and in some way his intellect was perverted to evil deeds. The next time the time travelers heard of him he was the mastermind of Carconte's moon pirates, one of the most dangerous bands of pirates ever to infest the interplanetary space lanes.

Decades later, the time traveler found the Earth an outlawed world, condemned by its sister planets. Ruled by unscrupulous forces banded together from the three worlds, it represented a menace to the social order of the solar system, a peril to the integrity and order of civilization.

Zlestrm's food was gone. He urged them to abandon further exploration, return to the spaceship of the Zoromes and restock with food for him. Then, they might build another bubble around the time traveler and come back again.

The professor knew the wisdom of this, and so rapidly they moved onward in long jumps of several hundred thousand years in an effort to discover exactly when mankind's reign had ended upon the Earth. Fleeting glimpses were caught of mankind's gradual evolution. There were periods of degeneracy as well as progress, scientific wars being partly responsible for this. Worldwide catastrophes, such as insect invasions and ice ages, also smote civilization heavily.

Several million years beyond his own lifetime, Professor Jameson found humanity still clinging tenaciously to the worlds of the solar system. Venus, a newer world than its two contemporaries, now held the center of life.

Then came invaders from the far-off stars, as the Zoromes had come, but with less peaceful intent. Mankind was conquered and held in cruel, oppressive bondage. In the next flight of the time traveler, it was discovered that civilization had thrown off the chains of the invaders. Not a one of the creatures was left. The entire atmosphere of Venus was gone, however, leaving that planet as cold and dead as Earth's moon. Earthmen had destroyed their oppressors, but at a terrible price.

The air envelope of Venus had been rent asunder and exploded, the terrific concussion rocking the nearby planets, throwing Venus off its old orbit and nearly disrupting the entire solar system. Millions of human lives had been snuffed out along with the space invaders. Those who escaped to Earth found themselves free.

But Earth was chill and cold, the atmosphere rarified. With the loss of Venus' atmosphere had gone the last ideal world of the solar system. Mars had long ago become uninhabitable. The sun, though much nearer its planets than formerly, represented only a cooled, subdued semblance of its past glory, its brilliance dulled.

At a later period of a few hundred thousand years, Professor Jameson found marked changes in humanity. Man had reached an advanced stage of evolution, where one of his ancestors of five million years ago would have disowned him as an incredible monstrosity. His legs were jointed to move in either of two given directions. Four arms terminated in eight digits. The body was comparatively small. This, the professor learned, was due to disappearance of the digestive tract. Science of that era, so far-flung from the professor's life on Earth, had supplanted the comparatively short existence of the gastric organs with a more practical means of sustenance.

Man's radioactive blood was kept charged with energy from huge broadcasting units located over the Earth and on the spaceships in which he traveled. Oxygen was superfluous, too. A lifetime of ten thousand years was common. Man's head had become devoid of both mouth and nostrils. Like the appendix of man, the unused mouth had finally disappeared. Food no longer was a necessity, and articulate speech had long since yielded to mental telepathy, like that of the Zoromes.

Instead of hair, there arose from the head fully two dozen antennae, serving a double purpose of picking up thought waves and the reception of the broadcasted energy for their bodies. Two black, lidless eyes peered intently from the face. Humanity had done away with sleep. The energy broadcasters kept the body recharged constantly.

Professor Jameson found that plans were being made for an exodus from the dying world. An expedition to the solar system of Sirius had discovered an ideal world. The next time Professor Jameson brought the time bubble to a stop, all life had disappeared from the Earth. It was silent and desolate, left only with vague, haunting memories.

"That was over thirty-five million years ago," 744U-21 observed.

"It is a wonder that with all the interplanetary strife, my rocket satellite was not destroyed."

"Yes--it was rather a miracle," 6W-438 agreed, "but I am inclined to believe that your automatic radium repulsion rays for protection from meteors served more than its original purpose."

Once more the professor sought and found his rocket satellite on its eternal pilgrimage about the deserted world, from which it had been sent upon its endless career. Like a cosmic coffin, it pursued its lonesome way in the silence of the illimitable, unending space which enshrouded it.

"And thirty-five million years later we came and took you from your rocket," said 744U-21.

"I am hungry," was Zlestrm's simple statement.

With an empty stomach, the Qwux lacked any kind of an appetite for scientific theorizing.

"We must return to the spaceship at once," said the professor.

"How can we find it unless we return to our own time?" asked Zlestrm. "There's no telling on what section of the Earth we are."

"That is so," said the professor. "Raise the time bubble and prepare it for movement while I accelerate us to our own time."

Zlestrm moved to the controls, while under the professor's manipulation the bubble grew hazy as they raced swiftly through the millions of years. There came a rapid bumping and jolting of the time bubble which nearly staggered the machine men off the narrow platform.

"What was that?"

"We're not rising!" Zlestrm cried in desperation. "I cannot move away from here!"

Professor Jameson sprang to the aid of the Qwux, stopping the mad flight through time. Together, machine man and Qwux worked the time traveler in all directions.

"We're caught!"

"Something is holding us down!"

Beyond the time bubble, they looked out upon a peaceful, quiet scene. A cooled sun moved agonizingly slowly toward the distant horizon. A few stars shone from a twilight sky.

"Where are we?" asked 744U-21. "I mean--in what time?"

"About twenty-eight million years beyond my own life," the professor replied, "or twelve million years short of the present."

"Move onward and we shall see what is holding us down," 744U-21 advised.

Before Professor Jameson could touch the time accelerator the time bubble rolled to one side violently. A rasping crash roared above them. The sun disappeared, blotted out by intense darkness, and the twilight sky with its scattered stars changed instantly as the stars seemingly leaped to new positions and were joined by vast legions of their twinkling companions in the velvety blackness.

"The time bubble has burst!" flashed 6W-438, quick as thought.

Machine men leaped nimbly aside to avoid a rain of shale, which slid from an overhanging rock formation. Professor Jameson picked up the bewildered Qwux and raced with his fellow Zoromes from danger. Behind them, the avalanche, which the trapped time bubble had brought down upon itself by the efforts of its operators to extricate it, buried the wreckage. The machine men became aware of a marked difference in the temperature.

"We are on the night side of the Earth!" the professor exclaimed. "This is the hemisphere which never faces the sun!"

Zlestrm shook in paroxysms of chill. He was fully protected from the rarified atmosphere by his air mask but at the mercy of the biting cold. There was nothing the machine men could do. The Qwux became frantic. He fell to the ground, nearly paralyzed, then staggered to regain his feet. 45ZQ42 assisted him. Zlestrm became delirious.

"We're lost in time!" he cried, tearing crazily at his air mask. "Twelve million years in the past!"

He hung suddenly limp in 45ZQ42's tentacles. Several violent shivers passed through his body. He relaxed and became quite still.

"Dead!" spoke 744U-21. "It was more than flesh and blood could endure!"

"And more than we can hope to endure for long," warned 6W-438. "Our brains in their metal cases will stand a certain amount of cold and then--"

The pause was all too significant. The machine men knew what to expect.

Fiery clusters of stars shone down upon them through the thin, dying air. Icy hills and rough, barren land stretched away to meet the horizon, visible only where the star-sprinkled sky met black shadows. They had left the spaceship in Earth's twilight zone. Where this was they did not know. They only knew that they were lost in the frigid wastes of the dark, frozen hemisphere, alone with death. They had explored the mysteries of time. Now, time mocked them with its precious quantity to be doled out so sparingly ere their brains, like the stiff, inert body of Zlestrm, yielded to the intense cold.

"Let us walk," Professor Jameson suggested, "as far as we can."

Together, the four Zoromes trudged over the frozen world in the direction of a fiery red star hanging low in the Stygian sky. Onward they walked, strange ideas forcing themselves in their all important, yet vulnerable, brains. For the first time in his career as a machine man, Professor Jameson felt an inclination to sleep. It was strange. The stars appeared to be dancing and racing about one another. He was still walking, yet he seemed unconscious of it, as if he were standing still or floating. Yes--that was it: He was floating.

Darkness swept over the land, and the stars disappeared. Were there such things as clouds in this thin air? The professor doubted it. Then suddenly he found himself alone. He was back in Grenville, walking a familiar road. A sudden jerk brought back the bright, glittering stars once more.

"Take command of yourself, 21MM392!" was 6W-438's desperate warning.

Professor Jameson saw his metal companions walking onward at a faltering gait and felt the supporting tentacle of 6W-438 about his cubed body.

"This must be the end," he philosophized. "Right where I started--back on the planet Earth!"

He fought desperately to retain his senses. It was no use. Again he saw the stars obscured as if by a dark cloud. This time, the cloud swept downward, the stars flickering into view again as it swooped past, nearly engulfing them.

"The spaceship!" cried 744U-21. "We are saved!"

That was all the professor knew. Once more his consciousness left him. When he regained his senses, he found himself in the spaceship.

"We reached you just in time," related 56F-450. "During your travels around the Earth in the time bubble, we thought it well to follow and watch you. Your bubble went through some strange antics, but we never lost track of it. From out in space we saw your sudden catastrophe when the gleaming time bubble suddenly disappeared. We came and found you as quickly as possible."

"Poor Zlestrm. He met a quick death."

"And the time traveler is a buried mass of wreckage," added 744U-21.

"I am glad that time traveling is a physical impossibility," 6W-438 observed. "I'd have hated to have found myself marooned twelve million years in the past."

THE SUNLESS WORLD

Chapter I

PLANETS OF DARKNESS

The spaceship of the Zoromes sped rapidly through the cosmos. To Professor Jameson's eyes, the subdued point of light which marked the cooling sun of Earth's solar system had long ago dwindled away into remote obscurity, outshone by the brighter and larger stars, myriads upon myriads, many light-years distant.

Since leaving the solar system, the Zoromes had passed several other systems but had not landed since the memorable experiment with Zlestrm's time bubble. Vague recollections spanning the millions of years past had been aroused in the professor's consciousness by the revealing flight into time's mausoleum, the graveyard of memories.

He had learned much of what had happened to mankind following his death and interment in the depths of the cosmic void. Since leaving the Earth, this recent adventure had largely occupied his thoughts. It had been vast, terrifying and inspiring, this parade of worldly events, leading up from the birth of a world to its decadence some forty million years beyond the twentieth century.

A telepathic communication from 744U-21 brought the professor out of his dream reveries, bringing his mental vision speeding out of the long-gone ages of Earth's history to the situation confronting them.

"We are entering a field of dead suns and worlds, 21-MM392. They are heavenly bodies which have cooled long ago and are now dark and without illumination."

"And without life," added the professor a bit philosophically, thinking of the world on which he had been born.

"Well, I would hesitate to say that," 744U-21 countered. "Many strange forms of life have been found on worlds of varying conditions, even upon airless and sunless planets. I can well recall an episode in our travels which occurred previous to your introduction into our ranks. We encountered a race of metallic creatures who lived entirely from the rays of a sun during the period of daylight and slumped into a coma of inactivity and near-death during the darkness."

"You never related that to me before," the professor reminded his companion. "Were they friendly?"

"They were not," replied 744U-21. "And they were so numerous, catching us entirely unawares at the dawn of a new day, that they swarmed all over our bodies and we were overpowered. But by nightfall they were utterly helpless, and we escaped safely, fully satisfied with what little exploration we had made of this seemingly lifeless, cold world."

"Look." 6W-438 motioned suddenly, pointing off in the distance to a crimson ball vaguely distinguishable against the velvet background of intense darkness. "It is the central body of the system we are now entering."

"Nearly cooled but still molten," 41C-98 observed upon careful examination of the huge sun. "Once upon a time it must have been a blazing, super-heated body."

A deep, blood-red orb, it shed scarcely any light at all and was sprinkled profusely with small, dark spots, the higher areas which, reaching off into space for several miles beyond the main body, were cooled and darkened.

"Watch the detectors close for dark worlds," warned 6W-438. "We want no collisions."

"The detectors are working perfectly," was 20R-654's reply. "We shall pass through the system on a general plane with the orbits."

Directed by 20R-654, the spaceship was safely steered through the orbits of several of the nearer planets, while the remaining eighteen machine men remained at their posts, or looked through the telescopes at the huge, cooled sun they were passing. The planets were picked out by the detectors, which automatically designated their positions, their speeds about the parent body and their proximity to each other. As was the usual case, the machine men found that the outer planets of the senile solar system were spaced farther apart from each other than were the planets which formed the inner circles of worlds.

The dull red orb grew small and indistinct behind them. The machine men stared at a nearby disc of blackness against the star-sprinkled bowl of the universe. It was what they believed to be the outermost planet. The dark disc dwindled behind them as the spaceship, under the able direction of 20R-654, once more returned to its higher speed, the fantastic rate of travel employed only in the abysmal immensities of vacuum between systems.

A mental cry of excitement issued from 41C-98.

"Another world ahead--a small one! We were wrong! That cooling sun has still another planet, but it is so far away!"

"It seems incredible," said 744U-21. "The sun would exert but little force upon it at this distance."

Yet the detector indicated a body not far ahead of them, a body of planetary dimensions. Telescopes were instantly trained that way.

"Diminish speed."

744U-21 consulted relative detectors. The planet's size as distinguished through the telescopes was greatly at variance with its bulk as evidenced by the detectors. He peered once more through a telescope. Puzzled, he again examined the detectors, testing one by the actions of another, finding the planet's weight and gravitational attraction. He looked long at the proximity detectors, examining them as if he almost believed them to be incorrect. He turned to Professor Jameson.

"21MM392, I cannot quite make this out. According to the detectors, this world we are approaching should be of small proportions, yet it looms large in the telescope like a gigantic world."

"A case of unusually light density," offered the professor.

"I thought of that," replied 744U-21, "but in proportion to its size, it will be the lightest planet I have ever come upon in our travels."

Professor Jameson watched the looming disc which blotted the glowing points of stardust from sight like a cloud of cosmic debris in the Milky Way. But this obstruction was no dense, fringy, cosmic cloud; it was a perfect circle of black, a looming planet. The professor was familiar with trick variations in planetary density. Even in his own Earthly life, men had known that several of the outer planets of the solar system lacked the density of the Earth, and they had also known that the density of many stars assumed the astonishing weight of several tons to the cubic foot.

Yet here apparently was a case just the extreme opposite of excessive density. It seemed impossible that the huge world could weigh so little. To the professor's knowledge, the detectors had never yet failed, and he could not bring himself to doubt them. There existed some other explanation to this paradox. 41C-98 broke in upon the professor's thoughts with a startling announcement.

"It is not a planet of the dying sun! It has no orbit! The world we are looking at is traveling on a straight line, headed directly for the planetary system we just left!"

"The system will capture it as one of its own worlds," 6W-438 suggested, "or perhaps there may be a collision with one of the planets or the sun itself."

Excitement and intense curiosity reigned in the spaceship of the Zoromes. From where had this cosmic wanderer, so low in density, come, and what would occur when it entered the planetary system of the dying sun? The speed of the wandering world was gauged and found to be comparatively slow, yet none too long a time would find it shooting among the worlds of the nearby planetary system. A rapid examination proved that no other bodies, such as sister planets or satellites, accompanied it. For a moment, the professor had wondered if two planetary systems might not be approaching each other. But the world they had discovered, given close inspection by the Zoromes, was found to be a solitary wanderer of the cosmos.

The machine men decided to land and discover more about his large world and its light density. The wandering planet loomed large as the spaceship from Zor slowly settled upon the dark, desolate surface. There was not the slightest vestige of atmosphere. The machine men prepared to disembark and explore the strange world. Reminiscent of the near-tragedy they had encountered in the dark, biting cold of Earth's perpetually dark hemisphere, the machine men had equipped their metal heads with temperature equalizers, an extra partition of metal, which fitted so tightly over their peaked heads that it was scarcely noticeable, possessing transparent slots for the numerous eyes of the machine men.

744U-21 directed half the machine men to remain with the ship. The rest were divided into exploration groups. Professor Jameson found himself with 6W-438 and 34T-11. Leaving the spaceship, they played their body lights slowly about them. It was intensely dark, the scintillating brilliance of the fiery, clustered stars alleviating the stygian gloom of the lonely world to no appreciable extent.

An absence of hills and mountains, on this part of the strange globe, was obvious as the three Zoromes made their way cautiously from the side of the spaceship. The ground seemed fairly level, yet it was rough, craggy and calcareous.

The professor experienced a lightness of gravity, which he scarcely expected on a world of such massive size. He bent over and picked up a large chunk of rock which he examined closely. He threw it down, more puzzled than ever, for the rock was of high density shown by its inertia, as dense as if it had been a part of the Earth. Vague suspicions commenced to materialize in the professor's mind concerning the nature of this paradoxical planet. A possible explanation was asserting itself, when a cry came from 34T-11.

"I saw something move over there!"

"The flickering shadows made by your lights," said 6W-438. "They are especially sharp and evident here, because there is no atmosphere to refract the light."

34T-11 seemed unconvinced by this explantion, and all three machine men kept a closer watch about them. The ground was sloping perceptibly inward. When the professor looked around at the distant spaceship, its subdued lights were but partly visible. The next time he looked, he saw only a low rim of rock limned in dark relief against the background of stardust.

"We are entering a shallow bowl," said 6W-438, indicating the surrounding rim of darkness which was gradually rising to make the sky a great, circular place of diamond-studded velvet.

They threw their lights ahead of them. Dim, flickering shadows jumped out of the beams of brilliance. 6W-438 emitted a mental ejaculation of surprise, this being the only comment the machine men had any opportunity to voice. From out of the darkness, an unknown danger leaped upon them, piling upon them and bearing them down. The machine men struggled with the gripping creatures.

Strange, rasping noises grated against the professor's metal body, and he felt himself staggered by the impact and force of several bodies. It seemed that there were many of the invisible assailants. His tentacles curled feelingly around the encumbering things which had forced him off his feet.

The tentacles tightened and contracted with the strength and grip which metal alone can exert.

For a moment the professor felt a subtle resistance from hard, bony exteriors, and then he felt his tentacles crush this resistance amid a wild, frantic threshing of the mysterious attacking creatures that had borne him down. They hung suddenly limp. What fears the machine men may have entertained, when these assassins had leaped upon them so unexpected from the dark, were now dissipated on learning that these creatures were vulnerable.

Others came to pile upon the professor. He was now more familiar with the size and shape of his invisible opponents, and he dealt with them rapidly and passionlessly. One of them he picked up and snapped into the airless void surrounding the dark world. The others he either crushed in his metal coils or else kicked away from him.

The strange menace of the sunken bowl suddenly melted off into the darkness as quickly as they had come, leaving the three machine men with the scattered remains of several inanimate forms which lay crushed from combat with the formidable advantages of the machine man.

"What are they?"

The question evoked in the mind of 34T-11 was also entertained by his two companions. Professor Jameson examined the nearest of the dead creatures, turning the hard, glistening body over and over. It was one of the simplest built, though strangest, forms of life he had ever seen. A cylindrically shaped body, approximately fusiform, tapering slightly at each end, seemed possessed of no head whatever. In fact, the professor was at a loss as to how to distinguish the position the creature assumed in locomotion, for there appeared to be no up or down. Each end of the body terminated in a pair of double-jointed appendages which were suggestive of upright stature. Queer, bulging knobs at the base of all four appendages appeared to be optics. There were eight of these eyes, four on each side of the body. Both appendages and body were sheathed in black, bony armor which the professor might have mistaken in believing extended clear through, had he not crushed a few of the weird creatures in his metal embrace.

That they existed without the use of heat and respiration was quite apparent, living as they were, unprotected in the chill, airless void surrounding the planet. The machine men could find no mouths. How did the things subsist? Another inexplicable feature of these sentient space-dwellers was the soft inner sides of their appendages, covered with rough porous discs, cup-shaped in appearance. 34T-11 suggested that they were used for gripping purposes, for climbing, but the professor was inclined to believe that they were too fragile for this. "Where did they go?" he queried.

"They hurried in the direction opposite to the one from which we came, when they found we were getting the best of the fight," said 6W-438. "My lights were on them."

The three Zoromes hurried to the center of the basin where the concave slope came to a termination. A round, dark cave's mouth greeted them. Without hesitation, the professor led and his metal comrades followed. The cave broadened, and for a considerable distance the three machine men followed a spiral tunnel leading downward. They saw none of the strange inhabitants who had attacked them. The tunnel gradually straightened out, yet always it led downward toward the bowels of the planet. The floor of the rocky passage was smooth, as if worn so by continuous travel. Occasionally the monotony of one direction was broken by a sudden turn or a series of spiral ramps.

Professor Jameson figured that they must have come a long way. They were miles beneath the-surface, when the tunnel broadened into a wide cavern. In the glare of their lights, they saw several of the planet's inhabitants jump and run away. Like phantoms, they disappeared from sight in the brilliance of the machine men's fights. They were seen to run, jump and be whisked out of sight, as if they had suddenly leaped into a cloak of invisibility. It was 6W-438 who explained the illusion.

"They are jumping into some kind of a hole."

Professor Jameson ran in the direction where the headless creatures were fleeing for refuge. He stopped just in time at the brink of a dark abyss, as one of the creatures gave a leap into space ahead of him and disappeared into the impenetrable darkness below. The professor's lights revealed a farther side of the pit several hundred feet across the cavern.

At the brink, the professor leaned over so that his lights might shine upon the bottom and reveal what had become of the space-dwellers who had leaped fearlessly into the broad cavity. He received a severe jolt. The beams shone for a considerable distance into the pit and then became lost in interminable nothingness.

"I can see no bottom!" was the professor's surprised exclamation as 34T-11 and 6W-438 joined him. "The pit just' keeps on going beyond range of the lights!"

"Did they jump to their deaths to escape us?" queried 6W-438. "They seemed more afraid of us in their simple minds than of this subterranean chasm."

"They possessed no wings!" added 34T-11.

"Wings would do no good here," the professor reminded them. "You forget the absence of air."

"21MM392! Step back!"

The cry issued from the brain of 6W-438, laden with concern and feeling of impending peril. Simultaneously, the professor felt a subtle shifting of the ground beneath his feet, and 34T-11 clutched at him frantically as the professor's swift glance revealed beneath his feet a widening crack in the ground which spread beneath 34T-11 also. Their combined weight had weakened the overhanging rock, which was sliding rapidly over its lower strata into the yawning abyss.

The two machine men made a futile, desperate effort to cling with their tentacles, experiencing a sickening, despairing sensation as their tentacles scraped against bare, smooth stone. With the speed of thought, a tentacle lashed out from 6W-438 just in time to catch 34T-11. One of the professor's tentacles was still locked with his companion's, and their rapid slide was broken, leaving them dangling over the pit's rim on the tentacles of 6W-438, who lay flat on his metal body.

"Climb up--quickly!" he urged them.

34T-11 and 6W-438 strengthened their holds with two more tentacles as the professor scrambled up their metal bodies. He climbed upon the ledge beside 6W-438 and reached down to aid in lifting 34T-11.

He scarcely realized what happened next, it came so suddenly. All at once he found himself hurtling through the blackness, his lights spinning a dizzy pattern about his falling body. Once, it flickered across a cubed body, and the professor knew that he was not alone. Any second he expected to be dashed violently against the bottom of the pit, but as his acceleration increased and there came no contact his fear became mixed with surprise.

"21MM392!"

It was 6W-438. The professor returned his call and also communicated with 34T-11, whose body fell straight instead of whirling like those of his two companions. He shone his lights upon them.

"More of the pit's edge broke off!" he cried. "I saw it behind you as you lifted me up!"

Expecting every remark to be their last, the three falling machine men commented desperately on their situation.

"Where is the bottom?"

"Look!" cried 34T-11. "See where our lights shine! The pit is broader here!"

"Where are those things that jumped in here ahead of us?"

At sickening speed, the three Zoromes shot downward, even deeper into the bowels of the strange planet they had come to explore, expecting to become inert junk heaps any moment. Seconds seemed dragged out eternities.

34T-11 edged closer to 6W-438 in their fall so that he might check the latter's rotating motion. In turn, the professor's whirling body was also brought to a vertical halt. All three joined tentacles and fell feet first.

"I can see bottom!" 6W-438 exclaimed.

All three Zoromes peered downward. Sure enough. A growing brilliance rushed upward, rapidly becoming wider in proportions until it engulfed the entire pit. With dizzying speed, they whirled into it. Collecting his bewildered senses, Professor Jameson saw that the walls of the pit were naturally luminous, extending distantly on all sides. 6W-438 had been wrong in his assertion that they were approaching bottom. The pit walls fell away below them to a mere pinpoint of convergence, a pinpoint which remained fixed as they continued their fall, never growing larger.

Remembering his Earthly life, the professor was impressed with the similarity of this endless fall with standing on the front of a speeding locomotive and watching the distant convergence of the never-ending rails. Would their fall never cease? It was unlikely that this pit continued clear through to the other side of the world. The professor was commencing to lose a bit of his previous scare. Why had the creatures of this dark, dead world jumped so daringly into this bottomless abyss?

Professor Jameson became aware of a slight strain on the tentacle of 6W-438. It was his first rapid intimation that something was happening to them, that there was a change. A rush of faint sound whirred by, becoming louder.

"Atmosphere!" exclaimed 34T-11. "Air at the bottom of this place!"

"Bottom?" echoed 6W-438. "I see no bottom, but you are right about the air."

The atmosphere became denser and rushed past them so madly that it was with difficulty that the three machine men clung to each other in the buffeting hurricane of their passage. Professor Jameson was wondering how much farther the pit would continue now that they had plumbed a great part of its airy depth. Was this the last air of the dying planet, and did the creatures they had come upon live in these depths, enabled by evolutions adaptable cycle to walk upon the dead, airless surface?

There were many things which puzzled the professor and to which he did not feel inclined to give sober consideration considering that at any moment they might be smashed to bits by the terrific speed of their fall. How many miles had they already fallen he did not dare guess, but if the inner planet below the crust was at all molten they were fast approaching their doom.

Strange, altered sensations were affecting the professor. He sensed a vague illusion that, instead of falling, he was being shot steadily upward as if aided by an invisible power. Upward? He glanced at the walls of the broad pit, which were shooting past at tremendous speed. No, there had been no turning in their course. They were still falling in the same direction, yet that disquieting feeling, which made the professor feel that he was being thrown upward, would not be denied. The atmosphere was becoming less dense. This, too, was puzzling.

Recent suspicions in the professor's mind flared into conviction. They were falling upward. Of that he was certain. It was no illusion. He turned to his metal comrades with a startling announcement.

"Do not fear striking bottom. We have passed the bottom."

"Passed it?"

"What do you mean?"

"We are falling upward--away from the common center of gravity. This world is hollow, just a thick, hollow shell. We have fallen into one of the surface entrances. The gravity center probably exists slightly more than halfway from the outer surface to the inner surface."

"You mean an inner world?" queried 6W-438. "Like the inner world of the hydrosphere's core?"

"Something like that, only this inner world will be of much vaster proportions. I can well understand now why this planet is so surprisingly large while its weight seemed relatively light at a distance."

"Then we shall stop falling soon and come to a standstill, like a pendulum, before we start falling back the way we came," said 34T-11.

"If you will notice, our momentum is commencing to diminish itself even now," the professor observed, pointing to the dizzying walls which were now flying past less swiftly. "Our momentum is starting to die against the pull of gravity."

"We shall shoot out upon the inner surface," offered 6W-438.

"It is logical to assume that there is some way of checking our flight before we commence falling back, or else those things which attacked us would not have jumped into this hole. We have seen none of them yet."

"The pit is narrowing!" exclaimed 6W-438. "See the cave mouths on each side!"

The speed of the machine men had slowed now so that they were able to distinguish the dark, gaping mouths of caves on all sides. Dark, flitting figures, poking themselves curiously from the entrances, testified to the tenancy of the pit.

"Bottom at last!" cried 34T-11.

"Or top," Professor Jameson added. "Whichever you will."

Chapter II

DEATH'S CAVERN

Far above them, in the direction to which their mad momentum was hurtling them, there was a snarled network of cables. As they sped nearer, the professor doubted vaguely if they would slow up sufficiently for a safe landing. His doubts were justified, for they shot like plummets through the skein of cabled materials, snapping several of the ropes like threads. Their momentum broken, the machine men clattered none too gently against a rocky roof and tumbled back upon the cables, which swayed dizzily with their weight.

Here they sat for a moment, gathering their wits and undecided as to what they would do next. Several large tunnel mouths surrounded them.

"Look!"

6W-438 called their attention to several small dark specks which grew larger below them as the speeding bodies of several of the planet's strange inhabitants came rushing upward even as the machine men had done. With the speed of thought, the professor urged his metal companions into a cave's mouth in the nearby wall.

"We can learn much about this place if we catch them," was his quick decision.

From their concealment, the three machine men watched. There were four of the headless creatures. Three of them landed lightly against the net of cables which they seized hold of and clung to. The other was coming too slow to make the network, and the three Zoromes watched his frantic threshing and kicking in the air, strange motions of all four appendages, which took him even closer to the pit wall before his momentum ceased.Just as he came to a standstill, like the momentary halt of a pendulum, he reached out and seized hold of a rough, jutting outcrop of rock. For a moment he hung there and rested from his exertions; then he gave a leap upward from this position and seized the network, where he clung with his three companions. Shrill, piercing sounds were made by all four, sounding much like the raucous voices of wild parrots. The professor noticed that the sound issued from a gray, vibrating drumhead located midway of the body on one side, pierced with several small openings.

The headless inhabitants of the hollow planet climbed through the nearest openings in the net and sped across to a tunnel mouth in the wall opposite the less pretentious cave which the professor had selected to hide in with the two other machine men. From their actions, the party of four evidently did not know that the three Zoromes had preceded them down the shaft by two or three miles.

"We came swifter than they did," said 6W-438.

"We weigh more and offer less resistance to the air than they do," the professor observed. "While falling in the vacuum, our speeds were the same, but contact with the air slowed them up more than it did us."

"Come," urged 6W-438. "They are out of sight now. Let us follow."

The machine men made their way carefully across the cables lest they break through a weakened strand or fall through the holes their upflung metal bodies had torn. Into the larger passage they made their way, following the four headless creatures.

Like the walls of the broad pit they had left behind, the tunnel was illuminated by the rock itself, shining luminously, throwing off a diffused, ghostly light evenly distributed and casting no shadows. The machine men moved cautiously and slowly, not wishing to overtake the black inhabitants of the pit and excite them to alarm. The tunnel possessed no divergences in the matter of confusing choice, for which the machine men were thankful, though the passage turned and twisted always on a steep, upward slant which the machine men were now positive led to an inner world.

Once, they came near to stumbling on their quarry, who, not possessing the tireless qualities of the machine men, had stopped to rest. Their shrill conversation warned the three Zoromes just in time, and they halted behind a concealing bend of the tunnel, waiting for sounds indicating the onward movement of their recent antagonists.

The shrill piping of the headless denizens of the sunless world became less distinct, dying away, and once more the machine men continued their way, keeping a discreet distance in the rear. Ahead of them, the shrill notes of conversation took on a sudden touch of excitement. The voices were mixed with echoes, reaching the auditory senses of the machine men in an altered manner, much different from what they had heard from them before.

Professor Jameson hurried along the tunnel, attempting to make the most progress possible with the least amount of sound from his four metal feet. In back of him came 6W-438 and 34T-11. The tunnel ended abruptly upon a wide stone ledge, and the three Zoromes found themselves looking down upon a vast cavern into which opened several tunnel mouths. The excited voices came from below them.

As the machine men peered cautiously over the upturned ledge, the first objects to attract their startled gaze were scattered piles of bones, some of them rising in hills halfway to the high ceiling, having been thrown there apparently to maintain cleared avenues through the immense cavern. All the way to the other end of the huge subterranean chamber were these grim hills of death.

Many of the bones were yellowed with antiquity, starting to crumble with age. Many were broken as if snapped by violent effort. All were of the same species evidently, suggesting an open graveyard, yet in this cavernous tomb the professor saw no corpses either fresh or in partial decomposition. There were only the mute, clean picked bones, hills upon hills of them rising upward in riotous profusion.

The machine men peered farther over the ledge. Below them were the headless denizens of the hollow planet whom they had followed, joined now with three more. All seven were snatching and fighting viciously over something which the machine men were unable to clearly distinguish in the ensuing confusion.

Two of them, rolling and tumbling apart from the rest, snorting their shrill notes of anger at each other, fought for a large fragment of what appeared to be a carcass, or part of a carcass, for where it had touched the floor it left a dark, viscous liquid. One of the headless creatures succeeded in wresting the morsel from the other and with a quickness which baffled his companion, he curved his dark, bony torso halfway around the coveted prize, wrapping his four limbs across the remaining semicircle. For a moment, the loser pulled and hauled at the vice-like embrace of his companion; then, seeing that his efforts brought no results, he joined the remaining five who were scrambling and buffeting each other over the smaller pieces.

The machine men sensed a significance in the carcass, over which the headless creatures were struggling so determinedly, and the silent hills of skeletal remains which partly filled the cavern.

Finally, all seven appeared to have obtained shares of the prize, for like their first companion they curled up their dark, horny bodies and wrapped their four long appendages about the remains of what the metal men guessed had once been a living animal of some kind or other. Perhaps this was a hunting ground. If so, what incentive served to draw the quarry to this horrible place?

As the machine men watched, they saw the headless ones change their positions, from time to time, especially the tenacious holds of the long appendages. That they were eating, the professor fully believed, but in what manner he was unable to distinguish. An examination of this species had disclosed no visible mouths. Occasionally, one of them would withdraw an appendage and toss a white, glistening bone skillfully upon a nearby pile of skeletons, where it lodged with a bouncing clatter or else started a running ava-lanch which seemed to maintain the conical symmetry of the ivory hills.

When the meal was finished, the remaining bones were tossed accurately upon the apex of a bleached heap, carrying the suggestion of long experience. The machine men, from their elevated position, caught sight of a lonely figure stepping out of one of the numerous tunnel mouths into the immense cavern. Several piles of bones lay between the new arrival and the headless creatures who had so recently gorged themselves, and neither saw the other . . . .

Professor Jameson examined the newcomer both physically and mentally. Instantly, he perceived it to be of a higher plane of intelligence than the seven below. Besides, it possessed a head, appearing to the professor like a distorted caricature of his own race. The chief differences were longer legs and shorter arms. Two eyes were set quite far apart, nearly on the sides of the head, like those of a fish, and the representative of this new species had nostrils yet lacked a nose. A three cornered mouth and a visible lack of exterior ears completed the physiognomy. Hair was absent, at least from this particular individual. Standing five feet or more, the wanderer from the tunnel was a foot shorter than the black space-dwellers, despite the latter's lack of a head. Unlike the hard, bony composition of the headless species, the newcomer's deep-purple body appeared soft and fleshy.

Like the crust of the planet they inhabited, the headless creatures seemed to possess no up or down. They walked or ran on one set of appendages as nimbly as on the opposite set. This representative of a higher species, however, appeared to possess a pair of legs for walking, while the other set of appendages were what Professor Jameson would have described as arms, the machine men of Zor knowing them as jointed tentacles.

The three Zoromes probed the more complicated mind of this solitary wanderer from the tunnel. They discovered a fearful attitude, yet a resigned, fatalistic premonition of inevitable, inescapable doom, a doom as inexorable as life and death itself. The wanderer walked slowly and with hesitant reluctance into the cavern of death, pausing in bewilderment at the sounds of shrill conversation among the unseen space-dwellers.

An unnameable terror caused the newcomer to draw back instinctively toward the tunnel, turning to contemplate the avenue from which it had just emerged, as if considering flight from this terrible place with its all too suggestive reminders of death, yet there was no retreat. In the mental processes of this higher species, the machine men sensed a battle between instinctive self-preservation and the recently established indifference of despair. There seemed to exist the conviction of a hopeless, impending fate, a fate yet unknown though soon to be realized.

The listless steps of the wanderer rattled a bone recently dislodged from a nearby heap. Seven black bodies grew rigid with attention. The headless denizens of the outer crust arose to their feet, whichever end of their bodies they found most convenient at the time, and raced each other around the towering monoliths of old skeletons.

At the sight of these grim figures, the creature from the tunnel paused in sudden terror. The headless ones also paused in their rush, shrilling to each other. In the simple minds of the headless surface dwellers, the machine men recognized but a single, dominating thought--a single thought--and that was assassination followed by a gluttonous feast. One of the black assassins rushed down upon the purple inhabitant of what the machine men believed to be the inner world.

The outcome of the struggle was never in doubt. The headless one was far superior in physical equipment. His six companions waited patiently for the end which soon came. There was little resistance, no more than a pusillanimous effort born of the instincts of self-preservation. It appeared as if this wanderer into the cavernous boneyard had previously known that any resistance was futile, as if he had known this fact all of a lifetime.

Soon, the seven headless ones were once more wrangling and feasting. Meanwhile, the professor and his metal comrades had found a stone stairway winding down the ledge. Noiselessly, and unnoticed, they descended into the cavern of death, the tomb of skeleton remains.

Halfway down, the professor stopped. An indistinct movement at the far end of the long cavern had caught his eye. He looked carefully and saw another of the planet's purple inhabitants, one who had just emerged from a tunnel's mouth. Three of the black assassins, who had found themselves unfortunate in obtaining only small bits of the recent kill, saw this new victim. They arose and chattered in shrill octaves.

Professor Jameson well realized what would happen, and a sudden resolve prompted him to save this blundering, unfortunate creature who had entered the cavern of death, death to his species alone, apparently. The professor cleared many of the stone steps at a time as he clattered down the rough stairs in pursuit of the three purposeful denizens of the surface world. Divining his object, 34T-11 and 6W-438 were close behind him.

In dumbfounded amazement, the four headless ones who had interrupted their feeding in order to satisfy their curiosity regarding the actions of their three companions, now stared at the metal apparitions striding rapidly between the stacks of bones straight for the three killers who were rapidly closing in upon their bewildered and unmoving prey.

The professor feared their arrival would not be in time to save the helpless creature, for, unlike their previous attack, the three headless ones were rushing forward without slackening their pace, each intent on getting a Hons share of the kill. For a moment, the professor deplored his inability to utter an audible sound, a sound which would cause the black assassins to turn and discover the machine men, thus diverting their attention from the hapless victim they were about to attack.

The creature from the planets interior saw the three Zoromes, but he appeared no less surprised at them than at the dark, headless monsters creeping up on him so rapidly with their vicious, deadly intent. The professor's problem of distracting the attention of the horrid three was solved for him by one of their four companions, who sent a raucous, vibrant trill of warning echoing throughout the cavern. One of the headless surface dwellers had already seized its victim when the pause came following the warning.

The four who had first sighted the machine men now arose and came to join forces with the first three. Professor Jameson seized the first to arrive and sent him spinning through the air to land upon a bone heap, sending the bones dancing and clicking, as if they were once more magically endowed with life, life which had been dormant and long forgotten. Another of the black creatures launched himself upon the professor, who sprang to the aid of the inner world inhabitant. 6W-438 seized the headless monster in his strong, metal grasp and crushed it to death in his tentacles amidst a shrilling and raucous bedlam which was abruptly stilled.

Bulging eyes ogled the professor from the body of the surface dweller who held the wanderer from the inner world. The headless one released his frightened quarry, who made no move to run, and grappled with the strange animal with the cubed body. The professor's strong tentacles gripped the dark, bony body, yet without terrific pressure he could do little more than scratch the surface. Exerting himself, the machine man felt the black body snap quickly. He threw the limp carcass to one side. 6W-438 and 34T-11 had rapidly accounted for the remaining assassins, all except one who now realized, rather vaguely, the folly of attacking these strange metal men. He scurried quickly across the cavern, muttering in excited whistles. The escaping surface dweller stumbled up the stairs and was out of sight below the up-turned ledge where recently the three Zoromes had hidden as they watched the previous events taking place in the cavern.

Professor Jameson turned to the purple inhabitant of the inner world. From the terrorized mind of the creatine, they had already ascertained that he lived on the inner side of the planet.

"Who are you?" The professor concentrated the mental question into the disordered mind of the inner world inhabitant. "Why did you come here?"

For several minutes the machine men could exact no coherent thoughts from him. He uttered strange sounds, and his brain reflected a queer disorder of chaotic ideas, out of which they could make little sense:

The fate . . . no return . . . disaster, death . . . why did he not die? Who were these gods of the caverns? They fought . . . the last trip . . . what of Aou . . . no escape . . . the law . . . was this the end? What was to happen to him?

Not until the professor had patiently impressed on his mind several times that he was not to be harmed could he calm the mental processes, and discourage the unintelligible gibberish of this inner world inhabitant. The machine men desired a reasonable explanation of the strange cavern and the stranger action of the two varying species. Finally, a unified story was gathered.

"I am Ielee of Ayt, a city of Ome," was the substance of the garbled story told the machine men by the creature from the inner world, still uneasy and frightened.

"Why did you come here?" was the professor's query.

"We must all come here some day," replied Ielee. "It is the law. You must know that, since you dwell here."

"We do not live here," said the machine man, suddenly aware that this creature knew no more concerning these caverns than did the machine men, apparently not as much. "Why must you all come here?"

"There is no other way," was the dispirited answer. "It is the fate of the aged and of those who do wrong or become a public burden."

"You are not aged," the professor observed. "You must be a criminal."

"I was sent here because a suspicion existed in Ayt that I was an enemy to the rule of the city, an instigator."

"Why were you not killed in Ayt?" asked the machine man, endeavoring to pry into the secret of the great cavern about which Ielee seemed so annoyingly evasive. "Why must you come here to add your bones to them?"

The Aytan stared morbidly at the piles of bones to which the professor referred, contemplating them with a sudden understanding.

"You come here to be eaten!" the machine man impressed the startling thought upon Ielee's brain. "Those black things were about to kill you when we interfered!"

Ielee looked long at the inert, headless bodies lying in broken, twisted attitudes among the litters of bleaching bones. 34T-11 was down close among them, examining the black appendages, concentrating his attention upon the small, porous discs set close together.

"We come here to fulfill the legend," said Ielee, arriving at the heart of the matter which perplexed the machine men. "We must all, at the end of our allotted time, journey into the depths of these caverns to die, or else the great menace of antiquity shall once more be unloosed upon us. The menace must be kept satisfied."

"What is this menace?" the professor asked. "What do you fear?"

"Ages ago, our ancestors were constantly beset by ravaging hordes which came up out of the ground, spreading horror and death in all the cities of Ome. The passages were walled up, but it was impossible to find all of them, and the menace always reappeared in large numbers, often digging away the barriers our ancestors erected. Legions of our fighting forces were sent into the ground, and they never returned in full rank. A few stragglers came back half crazed with terrors they had encountered, and they claimed that the only way to five in peace from the menace was to send living tribute."

"Sacrifice," interjected 6W-438.

"That is exactly it," said Ielee. "More of our combatants were sent into the tunnels, and they never returned either. Again the menace abated. Since that time, it has been the continuous habit for the aged to wander down these tunnels and never return. The menace has left us alone since that long period when it made its last appearance."

"And what if you should return?" asked the professor.

"I would be killed instantly," Ielee replied. "It is sacrilege to return."

"What did you do that they sent you here?" queried 6W-438.

"I argued against the continuance of cutting short our old age, making us enter these caverns and never come back. I know more about this legend than do the majority of my people. It has come to be their religion, and they keep it clothed in self-conjured mystery. To me, it is merely a myth. No one in our lifetime has ever seen the menace return, and none of the older Aytans, those who will soon take the last journey to their fate, can recollect any of their ancestors being attacked by the menace. There are many who doubt the legend but few of us dare speak our minds openly. I am one of the few."

More so than Ielee, the machine men could well understand the foundation of this legend from their encounters with the headless creatures of the surface. The legend, stripped of any elaboration which the peoples of the inner world might give it, was a simple law of the universe, one species preying upon another for sustenance, but in this case it was a reversed arrangement from the usual. Generally, the machine men found a more advanced species deriving their life continuity from a less intelligent species.

Here, in the depths of this sunless world, a race of physically superior creatures was living a parasitical existence at the expense of a more intelligent, yet weaker, species, the latter's intelligence being the main stumbling block to superior dominance. The black, headless denizens of the outer crust possessed little brains and, like the primitive dinosaurs of the planet Earth, which the machine men had recently looked upon from the time bubble, knew but little fear.

On the contrary, the inhabitants of the inner world possessed just enough mental acumen to afford them an impractical imagination. Like races of Earthly barbarians the professor remembered, their imagination magnified dangers and cloaked them in mythical powers.

Ielee had abandoned his useless chattering when it had finally been driven home to him that the machine men read his thoughts rather than understanding his language. He now expressed a mental equivalent of what the professor's Earthly computations would have recognized as a distance of a mile and a half. But they also recognized that Ielee was not exactly positive of this.

"I have made a discovery," 34T-11 reported. "I can understand now how these headless creatures eat without mouths. These concave porous discs on the inner side of each appendage absorb food a little at a time, first digesting it and assimilating it immediately afterward. The discs are tiny, exterior stomachs."

A brief examination by 6W-438 and the professor substantiated the machine man's amazing discovery. Once more they contemplated the trip to Ayt.

"For me to return means death," said Ielee, "but if what you tell me is correct, then to stay here also means death, a useless and ignominious death."

The Aytan repressed a shudder as he gazed across the cavern. What he saw, the machine men also saw with their endless row of eyes set close to the base of their conical heads. Several dark bodies were hovering about the ledge, moving back and forth indistinctly, as if waiting to see what the curious metal things would do next. They made no move to come down and cross the cavern and attack. Perhaps the motionless bodies of their companions imparted to them an unreasoning, instinctive fear.

"You will not die on your return to Ayt," Professor Jameson promised Ielee. "We shall see to that."

The Aytan resolutely accompanied the three Zoromes back through the tunnel which had brought him to the cavern of bones. In no place did the machine men encounter darkness during the tunnel's entire length. The rock was luminous, a cursory examination proving that this was a natural phenomenon rather than artificial illumination. The professor was surprised at the lack of ascent followed by the tunnel's route. There was little more than a scarcely discernible rise. From Ielee, they learned that the tunnel's mouth entered the side of a mountain of the inner world. This cavern of the fate, they came to believe, was located in the heart of the mountain. If this were so, then they were already above the average level of the inner world.

Inquiring as to the nature of the inner world, Professor Jameson learned that eternal daylight reigned there. The only darkness known was that of certain dungeons in various sections of Ayt, where the rock did not shine as it did elsewhere throughout most of Ome.

They finally reached the end of the long, winding tunnel and found themselves upon a small plateau near the foot of the mountain Ielee had told about. Into the distance stretched a vivid panorama the machine men had partly expected, but which astounded them nevertheless with its impressive sight. Before them was a broad vista of up-curved landscape, the further details of which were eventually lost in a deep blue haze.

Below them lay the city of Ayt, glistening in polychrome relief, a city built of many-colored stone. The dwellings, as seen from the plateau, appeared simply made, their harsh, uneven lines enhanced by the distance, turned magically into silhouettes of beauty, enchantment lent by remoteness. The buildings of Ayt were low, scattered and rambling, that section of the city closest the mountain betraying a lack of architectural finesse, crude, rough blocks of beautiful, varicolored stone piled upon one another in chaotic design, cemented together roughly to create a solidified whole of the unfinished, teetering squares and slabs.

The roofs were conspicuous by their contrast. It might have been said of Ayt that the city possessed no roofs at all. Overgrown canopies of climbing vines merged together above the rough walls to create a dense foliage interspersed with blossoms. These were characteristic of several varieties both in growth and color.

It suddenly occurred to the professor that these cities never experienced the benefits or discomforts of rainfall, and he wondered at this, but it was no time for questioning now. Several figures ran to meet them from a nearby stone hut, one of several structures straggling between the city and the mountain.

The Aytans ventured within fifty feet of Ielee and the three Zoromes, and then they halted, uttering strange cries of excitement, arguing, gesticulating . . . then hurling several words at Ielee, who answered them. The machine men recognized that they were calling the wrath of their superstitions down upon Ielee for having committed the rare sacrilege of a return from the fate. Ielee was uttering replies to the extent that he had escaped a useless death; that he had been rescued by friends constructed of metal; that his philosophy was his own life, to live and fight for, to maintain. The Aytans ran for the village at full speed.

"Come--let us enter the city," suggested 6W-438. "We can explain the situation and perhaps make them understand us."

"It means death!" cried Ielee, exhibiting a strong force of passion. "They think you are the ancient menace returned once more to bring death and destruction on their luckless heads, all because of my sacrilege!"

"Do not fear them," said the professor. "They shall not be allowed to harm you."

Fearlessly, the three machine men started down the graded slope for the city of Ayt in the world of perpetual light. Professor Jameson sensed that it was quite cold here, judging from his standards of Earth life, but the creatures of the inner world, almost as cold-blooded as the headless species of the outer crust, appeared to be accustomed and acclimated through hereditary environment and evolution to these conditions.

The machine men were generally unaware of any difference in temperature other than extreme, burning heat and the intense chill of the void, both extremes often affecting their metal encased brains. Their temperature equalizers remedied this, but they were only worn in such special cases as the exploration on this sunless world had occasioned.

They were no more than half the distance from the plateau to the city proper, when excited cries reached them. From the outermost fringe of buildings constituting the city proper there burst forth a running throng of the species Ielee represented. The machine men sensed in their attitude the infectious demeanor of outraged fanaticism, of fear and mob violence.

"They are howling for my blood!" cried Ielee, who, nevertheless, still maintained his onward pace with the machine men.

"You are a prophet, Ielee," said Professor Jameson, "and a prophet it seems, by some universal rule of psychology, generally lacks the esteem of his own people."

The crowd surged forward, yet the forward wall hesitated in sudden fear, when they found themselves rapidly meeting what they believed to be representatives of the ancient menace. None of them had ever looked upon, or heard a description of, their legendary foes, for those who returned as Ielee had done were put to death before they ever had a chance to voice their impressions of the death cavern and its hideous occupants, if they really went that far before turning back.

Chapter III

HOSTILITY

Professor Jameson and his metal companions recognized the hostile attitude and the unreasoning fear of this superstitious race, and they realized that fear had lent them desperation, the fighting spirit of the cornered animal with its back to the wall. They fully believed that the ancient menace was once more sending its initial vanguard upon their city from out of the ground. It must be met and overcome. Further raids must be forestalled.

Those in the fore of the crowd hesitated, but were pushed by the bolder ones in the rear, the latter's boldness born of the very fact that there were others before them. The professor urged his metal companions to refrain from injuring these people of Ayt, to handle them as gently as possible and strive for a diplomatic and elucidating solution to the problem confronting them.

"We are friends," radiated the professor.

A large chunk of green rock was hurled at the machine men, clattering from the metal legs of 34T-11. This was the only answer, or, rather, a salutatory expression of the crowd's intentions, for the professor's unuttered thought had fallen on excited, determined, fear-ridden minds and was mostly lost. An intense concentration of mental effort would be necessary in jolting the inferior cerebral channels of the Aytans to the mental harmony desired by the three Zoromes.

More objects were hurled at the machine men. More than a score of the Aytans advanced with long poles formed into a lance on one end, a large, stony knob fastened at the other end. They swung these slowly about their heads as they approached warily. More rocks and large pieces of hard, vegetal growths were thrown, some of them testifying to the accuracy of their hurlers by bouncing harmlessly off the metal bodies of the machine men, who kept Ielee well behind them, that he might not be harmed by this barrage of missiles.

Those with the lances threw them at the machine men protecting Ielee. Several of the weapons struck glancing blows, one of them shattering itself upon 6W-438 without so much as scratching him. Professor Jameson caught another one, both amazing and terrifying the awed Aytans by grinding its shaft between two of his entwined tentacles. Several of the Aytans' fighting units now sprang to retrieve their weapons, waving the hard, stone ends about their heads to smash them down upon Ielee and the Zoromes.

The Aytans rushed in dangerously close, casting their hammerheaded lances at the machine men, a few possessing the temerity to leap forward upon their hitherto unresisting opponents, confident that crushing blows would settle and quiet them for once and all.

6W-438's tentacle curled about the throat of one of these over-venturesome Aytans while another grasped the up-flung arm with its murderous bludgeon, abruptly stopping the downward swing, much to the agonizing discomfort of the Aytan, who found himself roughly thrown upon the ground several feet distant from the center of combat. The professor received the full brunt of two lusty swings on his metal head before he could pinion his adversary and toss him aside, dazed yet unhurt. In preventing a sudden termination to the career of Ielee, 34T-11 saved him, none too soon, by pushing himself in front of a well-aimed club. There followed a dull, clashing sound and one of the machine man's eyes grew blank and useless. This required a new optical plate.

Having been vanquished with little effort, discouraged by the invulnerable qualities of the Zoromes, the Aytans fell back. During this lull in hostilities, Professor Jameson realized it to be an opportune time for diplomacy. He waved his metal tentacles to focus the attentions of the Aytans, who became quieter, listening for an audible voice which they did not hear, yet they were aware of strange thought impressions upon their minds.

The three unkillable monsters who had emerged from the ground with Ielee were not representatives of the ancient menace as the Aytans so wrongly believed, certain thought processes seemed to argue with the convictions of the inner world inhabitants. The machine men were from anodier world, very far distant, and they had come with overtures of friendship.

The latter thought regarding another world was lost completely. To the Aytans there was only one other world besides Ome, and that was the world of the dead, peopled as it was with the dominating influence of the ancient menace. If any thought existed of other worlds in the most radical mind among the Aytans, it was a conception of another existence far beyond, carved from an unending universe of solid rock.

Professor Jameson tried vainly to transport to their minds the memory he possessed of the headless surface dwellers overcoming one of their kind, the Aytan who had journeyed to meet the fate. Then he gave them another thought picture, the combat between the black assassins and the machine men in protecting Ielee from their destroying clutches, the fate of all who entered the cavern of skeletons. The professor found it difficult to implant these thoughts on the mind of the Aytans largely because the latter still persisted in preconceived ideas regarding the machine men, and partly because of their suspicious nature, so averse to accepting totally new ideas.

Thos who did receive the thought clearly failed to fully comprehend its significance. It was too much at one time for little minds to digest thoroughly. The professor had said enough to allay active opposition, yet he sensed a general attitude of flagrant distrust and suspicion. It would not settle this suspicion, the machine men well realized, to show hesitation, so they started for the city once more, keeping Ielee safely guarded in a casual manner. But no more objects were thrown. The crowd still chattered but readily opened a lane for the four, closing once more behind, allowing them a respectful distance.

Professor Jameson sensed that all was not right, that a hidden idea existed somewhere, yet he felt confident that whatever the Aytans managed to devise, the three Zoromes could easily better. The Aytans were slow thinking and elementary. In vain he searched the minds of the hurrying throngs, for he could discover no hidden motive. It was confusing, this trying to penetrate the thoughts of so many at one time, so he gave it up.

Down a broad avenue of Ayt they passed, followed and preceded by the Aytans. Startled cries "broke forth suddenly on all sides, causing temporary bewilderment which yielded to rapid action. Like fog in the sun, the crowd drifted from sight on all sides to be replaced by several Aytans with queer paraphernalia, appearing from the concealment offered by the stone buildings.

"Another attack!" 6W-438 exclaimed. "I thought they had some more tricks waiting us!"

"Don't let them snare you!" Ielee chattered, forgetting in his excitement that the three Zoromes did not comprehend his speech.

But the thought which had fashioned the articulate syllables of the Aytan was sufficient. Already the hostile creatures surrounding the machine men were swinging their weapons, of a different kind from the first, long forked poles on the end of which was a loop of heavy rope or cable. Plenty of slack hung from the pole. Instinctively, the professor divined their use. They were a primitive form of lasso, whirled and thrown from a standard rather than from an appendage of the Aytans.

Several of them swished through the air and settled about the machine men with amazing accuracy. Ielee and the professor were snared together, one loop falling over them both. The machine man confidently stressed his tentacles preparatory to breaking it. The superficial snap he gave the cable failed to part it. He exerted more effort and felt it yield a bit. Heartened by this, he put his mightiest strength to the task. Slowly the cable stretched apart, yet it did not break, and when the professor's tentacles released the cable it snapped quickly into place once more, unweakened by his efforts.

6W-438 had already made this discovery, and he charged angrily at the Aytan who had roped him, bent on chastising the daring creature, but another whistling noose from the opposite direction halted his progress. And now, as the noosed cables came hurtling from all directions, entangling the three Zoromes and Ielee, the crowd, which had accompanied them into the city, thronged into the avenue once more, laying hold of the heavy ropes which the professor distinguished as a closely-woven light metal.

Professor Jameson realized at once that they were in the power of the Aytans unless they wished to exercise extreme violence. There existed no opportunity of laying tentacles on those who held the cables, as 6W-438 had discovered, for the combined strength and weight of a score or more of Aytans on each of the other ropes would tense and hold any one of the machine men from progressing voluntarily in any given direction.

The professor thought of the heat ray he carried in the fore part of one of His tentacles. With this formidable weapon, he could easily weave a circle of death about himself among the Aytans, yet he refrained from its use. Not unless it were necessary, to save them from an uncompromising fate or threatening situation, would he use it on these stubborn Aytans.

The heat ray was a special piece of equipment the machine man had installed on his metal body shortly after the advent into the blue dimension on the planet of the double sun, when he had lost his ray gun in the hand to hand fighting side by side with the tripeds against their enemies, the Emkls. None of the other Zoromes had gone to this trouble. The built-in heat ray had already stood the professor in good stead in the depths of the hydrosphere. With it, he and a feUow machine man had escaped from the stomach of a monstrous fish.

The professor noticed that they were being drawn forcibly toward some destination the Aytans had definitely in mind. The professor gathered that it was a prison of some sort or other, yet he received only a hazy impression from the minds of his captors, for they were thinking of it none too strongly, their present thoughts centering on the main idea of preventing their captives from getting loose. It took Ielee to fully acquaint them with their destination. The machine men visioned a broad, deep well in the center of a public square, a deep pit with glassy walls, vertical and smooth.

The professor decided that it was time drastic measures were taken to loose themselves from the cables. Few of his tentacles were pinioned, yet the one terminating in the heat ray was among these. By curling the tentacle slightly, the professor turned the heat ray upon the nearest cable. A slight glow, an acrid smoke, and the cable parted, letting a dozen or more Aytans tumble in a heap from the broken strand.

A cry of alarm issued from the Aytans. The pulling and hauling was continued at a swifter pace. The Aytans burst into a run and pulled the machine men and Ielee after them, those behind the four captives still holding their strands, ready for any furious, forward rush on the part of the machine men.

Vainly, Professor Jameson tried to play the heat ray upon another of the cables, but the close, sentient body of Ielee, bound to him by the tight loop of one of the cables, was in the way. The professor played the destructive ray upon the cable most convenient to reach, one attached to 34T-11. The strand parted quickly, and once more a warning cry arose from the Aytans. Other cries arose, too, ahead of them, and in these the professor detected notes of triumph, not unmingled with admonitions urging haste.

The machine men only partly understood the situation when they found the crowd before them drifting away to either side. A deep, yawning cavity reared its depth before them, and into this Ielee and his three metal allies were forced by stress on the cables. In vain, the machine men fought to retain their stand by the pit's edge, but skillful maneuvering of the cables sent them sliding over the sharp brink, dangling some fifty feet or more over the unscalable den. They were lowered carefully to the bottom, despite the desperate attempts of 34T-11 to scale the cables faster than the Aytans could lower them. The result was a twenty foot drop to the bottom when the cables were released.

"We are in trouble, now," said 6W-438. "They have us where they want us. We are too trusting--not in them but in ourselves. We have no one else to blame."

"What will they do next?" the professor asked, turning to

Ielee, who, beyond a morbid attitude of resignation, appeared unperturbed.

"We shall starve and die," he said. "Not until then will they take us out. I have seen it happen before."

"But I thought no one was condemned to any other death except the fate," said 34T-11.

"This pit is reserved for our enemies from other cities who come to pillage and rob," Ielee explained. "Victims of war are brought here to end their lives."

"They will have a mighty long wait," remarked 6W-438, "if they expect us to starve to death."

"But I am not a machine man," was Ielee's sad rejoinder.

Professor Jameson stared at the smooth walls of their prison rising loftily upward to the rim lined with triumphant Aytans who were pointing and commenting exuberantly, boasting of their accomplishment. The walls of the pit were of the same luminous nature as the walls of the tunnel they had walked through in coming to Ayt, but here several harmonizing shades emanated from the rock.

Ielee, however, saw none of this beauty, or if he saw it, the polychrome chaos failed to impress him favorably. His thoughts were crowded with that which was soon to be. He ruminated over the pit's deadly significance, while the machine men contemplated the possibilities of escape and found them wanting. It was all so crude and simple, yet apparently unescapable. Above them, the sky, a dull, purplish blue, formed a square, retreating roof for this den in which they now found themselves.

The Aytan, who had so daringly and sacrilegiously returned from the caves of the dead, complained of weariness and lay down in a corner for rest, closing his eyes and slumping into a limp heap. The machine men stripped the entangling cables from their metal limbs, casting them into the center of the pit where the Aytans from above would be least likely to retrieve them. The professor had suggested the possibility of using them in some manner of escape, though he had yet to see any practical means of use. There was nothing around the edge of the pit to hold them.

A long time passed, a period which the three Zoromes were unable to accurately estimate. Daylight persisted perpetually. There were no heavenly bodies, no rotation or revolution to mark the time. Ielee awoke several times and then returned to sleep, seemingly his natural escape from the misery creeping upon him. He grew haggard of countenance. From time to time, the inhabitants of Ayt came to the pit's edge in small groups to stare down upon their captives. No efforts were made to molest them.

The Aytans were content to let them starve to death. This would have furnished the professor a point of humor had it not been for Ielee. The deadly intent of their captors was slowly working its full import upon the rapidly weakening Aytan.

The continued vigor of the machine men was an endless topic of discussion and wonder among the groups of Aytans who wandered to the pit from time to time to survey the fate of their captives. It was remarkable, they told each other, how these ancient enemies of theirs subsisted so actively without food. The machine men divined their attitude; besides, Ielee overheard several conversations held at the pit's rim.

Ielee grew steadily weaker and less active, and the machine men feared that soon he would pass away. He became so weak that he could not rise, and finally his consciousness drifted off, so that he scarcely knew where he was, coming to his senses occasionally to babble incoherent thoughts of a disarranged brain.

There were various intervals of time when few came to look down upon the machine men and their dying companion. Sometimes the pit's edge was entirely vacant, especially after the novelty of the new captives had worn off a bit. During one of these moments, Professor Jameson saw a solitary Aytan walk to the edge, look warily about him and then hurl something quickly into the pit before he departed silently as he had come.

Professor Jameson had no time to read what was in the Aytans mind, for the latter hurried away too soon. 6W-438, by whom the object had landed, picked it up for investigation. It was a round object of soft, vegetal growth, crushed on one side where it had landed. For a moment, the machine men were nonplussed by the questionable significance of this action, their first impression suggesting a malicious act by one of the Aytans.

"Food!" the professor suddenly explained. "Ielee has a friend out there!"

"Quick! We must arouse him!" 34T-11 urged. "If it is not too late!"

6W-438 shook Ielee gently, while the professor held several morsels of the crushed food before the starved Aytan's mouth. The odor of food seemed to possess magical properties of restoration, for Ielee came to his senses and seized the food, cramming it indiscriminately into his mouth. He made short work of it, the machine men shielding him from any curious gaze from above. They knew that it would not be well for this food source to be revealed. The professor told Ielee afterward where the food had come from and how furtively it had been delivered.

"From one of those who think much as I do, but who are more discreet about voicing their opinions," said Ielee.

Ielee's guess was correct. When the Aytan from above delivered his next supply food, he and Ielee silently exchanged greetings. With the outside aid of Aou, Ielee quickly recovered his strength and vigor, much to the alarm and surprise of the city's inhabitants, who were now accrediting the machine men with the power of demons who had made Ielee one of themselves. Strange stories concerning Ielee ran rampant through Ayt.

Professor Jameson could not avoid comparison of the Ay-tans with ignorant primitive peoples which he had known during his Earthly existence. The creatures of the outer crust he classified mentally with the gorillas of the jungle. Their mental plane was much the same. It seemed strange to the professor that outstanding thinkers like Aou and Ielee should arise from time to time from a people as superstitiously ignorant as the Aytans. These comparisons drawn across the yawning abyss of forty million years helped to fill the monotonous hours in the pit.

The machine men grew tired of reading their captors' minds. There was little in them. The Aytans had no further intentions regarding their prisoners other than patient waiting. The superstition regarding them as ancient enemies from the caverns of the fate remained fixed. Any pleas the three Zoromes or Ielee attempted to the contrary were regarded as falsities, luring enticements, to turn them loose for mischief.

The Aytans commenced to despair of their ever dying by starvation, marveling no less at the ability of the machine men to subsist without food than they did at the similar feat of Ielee. Aou continued bringing food to Ielee in secret, coming at times when no one else stood near the pit, and the four captives were careful that no one saw Ielee eating.

Professor Jameson wondered if there would be no end to this timeless waiting. He conjectured how near this dark, sunless world was to the planetary system of the burnt-out sun. The probabilities were that the entire system would be disrupted from its old routine and byways, to add a new member to its family, a member by adoption rather than birthright.

The Zoromes discussed the chances of a collision with one of the original planets of the huge, cooling sun itself, but the idea was discounted as a remote possibility, not to be unexpected.

"In all probabilities, this world, in which we now find ourselves, will move into this new system past the sun and become attracted by its superior mass and attraction, curving its path into an orbit around the central body," said 6W-438. "The other planets will be materially affected. Some will have their orbits shortened; others, their orbits lengthened. Satellites of these planets will also alter their courses slightly. All planetary systems, will be found to be carefully balanced sets of cosmic travelers, a veritable family each in itself, any change in their planetary fields having its visible effect on each and every member of the system affected, regardless of their relative size."

To Ielee, the attempts to acquaint him with the immensities of cosmic vastness, beyond the shell of his own world, were futile. He failed to conceive the idea even though offering an open mind. He only realized that the three machine men, who had befriended him in the cavern of the dead, were from somewhere beyond the world of the surface dwellers. Illustrative diagrams which the machine men drew on the walls of the pit in an effort to elucidate the wonders of the cosmos were of no avail to Ielee. He could not realize what space was. To him, the conception nearest to the actual truth visioned a perpetual continuation of solid rock, punctured here and there with the many strange and confusing worlds the machine men were telling him about. When he tried to understand how these worlds moved free of one another about a main, central body, his mental coordination broke into chaos. The idea was too difficult to conceive.

Great excitement reigned one day, or perhaps it would be more exact to say after a period of time, for it had been day ever since the arrival of the machine men in the inner world. Sounds of riotous confusion came gradually toward the pit. The running figures of the Aytans came close. Then came others, pulling the long cables which the Zoromes had known too well. As the victims were drawn into sight at the pit's edge, the machine men recognized them as inhabitants of the inner world of Ome, though a slight difference in body structure from the Aytans was immediately discernible. These new captives were taller and obviously stronger built. They struggled manfully to escape, but it was of no avail. The cables which had successfully withstood the violent strainings of the machine men were unaffected.

"Prisoners!" exclaimed Ielee. "They are from another city!"

There were five of them, the Aytans lowering the tall, inner world captives into the unscalable pit to join Ielee and the machine men. Completely disregarding Ielee, they stared in open-mouthed astonishment at the three metal monsters, undecided as to what they might expect. The professor made overtures of friendship.

"We, too, are captives of the Aytans," he mentally impressed upon them.

"And not the black devils from beyond?" one of the new prisoners asked, chattering in surprise at the message which had been given him so silently by this mechanical creatine that approached him on four legs.

"What do you know of the surface dwellers?" interrogated the professor in rising interest. "How did you know they were black?"

"We have seen them!" came the reply.

"And fought them, too!" added another.

"From what city do you come?" asked Ielee.

"No city, now," was the answer.

"We are outlaws, originally from Uxene. We entered the caverns of the fate together. We found endless stacks of bones. Black things fought us, but they were fewer than we and we fought our way to escape. We ran back through the tunnel to Uxene, but here we had to leave hurriedly to escape the wrath of our fellow citizens, for no one must return from the fate. It is said that the ancient horrors will be revived."

"Where is the Uxene?" Professor Jameson inquired.

"Many long trips from here. We have passed numerous cities since leaving Uxene, too many to recollect. Several were friendly to us, and we stopped at them. Others were hostile, and we found it necessary to flee for our lives. We were trapped just outside this city and brought here."

"What gave you the idea that we were the black creatures from the world of the dead?" asked 6W-438.

"All the way into the city and through Ayt until we were lowered among you, we were promised short shrift because you were demons from the world of the dead who would make quick work of us. Naturally, we expected to find the headless things like those we fought in the caverns of the fate."

The machine men told their story from the time they had entered the cavern of bones up to the time the Aytans had cast them into the prison hold. The five new captives proved sympathetic listeners to Ielee's beliefs concerning this constant sacrifice to the ancient menace. They heartily endorsed his policy of combative resistance.

Professor Jameson now found a new problem, the food supply. Only one had it previously been necessary to feed. Here were five more consumers of organic substance. Whether or not Aou would be equal to the emergency was largely problematical. It was open to conjecture whether another opportunity for Aou to bring food would present itself, for the pit had once more become a popular gathering spot, since the five outlawed Uxenians had been caught.

Though disappointed in their anticipations of seeing the Uxenians torn to pieces before their conjectured fury of the machine men, the Aytans were nonetheless fascinated by the fact that the new prisoners became friends with the metal creatures.

Ielee was becoming hungry again, while the five from Uxene were complaining of increasing appetites. Still the Aytans crowded the edges of the pit, new faces constantly taking the places of those who had temporarily tired of the situation and had left for duties or diversions elsewhere. The Uxenians did not suffer so soon the pangs of hunger which assailed Ielee. They were of a hardier stock, and Professor Jameson appreciated their sturdy makeup, which was more of a match for the black assassins from the surface than was the Aytan physique.

It was plain to see that commerce and war among the cities of Ome had united them in a common belief through legend concerning the sacrifice they must all make on reaching a certain age development. The professor inquired concerning water on this strange inner surface and learned that there were countless lakes, some of them bottomless, scattered over the entire inner world.

Instead of a vast expanse of water divided by continents, Ome represented an endless land surface dotted with lakes. There were no streams or rivers due to the fact that there was no rainfall. The climate was always the same; it never varied. Wind was unknown.

Since the coming of the five outlaws from Uxene, there passed what Professor Jameson would have been ready to calculate as two Earthly days, and still the Aytans changed places constantly about the edges of the pit, like sentinels of eternal vigilance. Several times the nine captives perceived Aou, but the latter dared not bring food in the presence of so many witnesses. It would mean a place for him in the pit, or else the fate itself.

Furor seized the spectators as an alarm spread through the city avenues and focused all attention in the direction of the mountain. Upon the faces of the Aytans ranged about the pit's edge, the prisoners described surprise. This attitude changed to alarm as agonized cries rent the air. Something had stricken the Aytans with sudden horror. Like sheep they stampeded from the vicinity of the pit.

"What is it?" cried Zlei, the leader of the outlawed Uxenians.

"Your metal comrades have come!" ventured Ielee to the professor. "As you said they might!"

"No," said the professor. "It is not they. What your fellow citizens saw up there I have seen mirrored in their minds, Ielee. It is the ancient menace from the world of the dead: the black assassins from whom 6W-438, 34T-11 and I rescued you. They are coming in countless numbers. Now will the Aytans believe more than ever the legend. Your return brought the ancient menace, they will all say."

As if to substantiate what the three Zoromes had seen in the minds of the terrified Aytans, a black, headless form, running on two appendages and waving two others similar in structure, ran to the edge of the pit, its bulging eyes ogling from its body at the nine prisoners. A soft shrilling, like the distant, muffled notes of a steam whistle, echoed into the pit and instantly more of the black monsters appeared.

"It is they!" shouted Zlei.

From above came the cries of conflict, a conglomeration of excited chattering and shrill plaints from both far and near, merging into a bedlam of weird cacophony. Uncounted ranks of the black assassins, who ruled over the caverns of the dead, hurried restlessly and searchingly past the pit and its prisoners.

Up above, an enormous slaughter was in progress. The irresistible hordes of the invincible enemy poured into Ayt. The Aytans did not encounter the mild defensive of a few machine men this time, and they were allowed no opportunity of arranging elaborate traps for their foes.

Professor Jameson raised a fore tentacle and waved it slowly in the direction of the pit's rim where several inquisitive creatures of the outer crust were bending low, trying to discover a means of getting into the pit. The ray hit them squarely, and they fell shrieking and dying into the sunken prison. The professor now turned his terrible weapon on all black creatures which came in sight. Several were badly burned and managed to escape, but most of them, unaware that the peril rose from below them, were falling victims to the machine man's weapon.

Chapter IV

THE ANCIENT MENACE

More came to take the places of those fallen, and soon a heap of dead bodies lay strewn about the edge of the pit, Professor Jameson training his heat ray upon every surface dweller which came that way.

"Now is our chance to get out!" he announced, as the surface dwellers grew less numerous and the sounds of combat became more distant. "Toss up those cables and try to snag them securely in that mass of dead bodies!"

6W-438 and 34T-11 hastily put the professor's plan into effect. Several casts were made while the professor stood in the center of the pit ready to pick off any approaching surface dwellers. Finally, one of the long ropes of woven metal lodged and hung tight. Ielee was the lightest member of the escape party, but he was unequal to the long climb, and so Nayese, a comrade of Zlei, volunteered.

Seizing the cable, he jerked it cautiously several times and then nimbly commenced the ascent. Halfway up, the cable commenced slipping. Nayese hurried his ascent, but the extra strain only increased the rapid sliding of the cable. Down came Nayese, Zlei and another leaping forward to break his fall, the rope, accompanied by the black, twisting corpse of a surface dweller, swiftly following him.

"We can only try again," said 34T-11, swinging a cable ready to throw.

He stopped his swinging abruptly as a lone figure walked among the dead surface dwellers to the edge of the pit. Professor Jameson restrained the initial impulse which sight of the solitary figure had enlivened in his fore tentacle with its deadly ray. An Aytan stood there beside the scattered forms of the surface dwellers, some of whom sagged part way over the lip of the abyss. It was Aou.

"Grasp one of these cables we throw up, Aou, and hold it fast!" Ielee promptly told him.

34T-11 threw, and Aou seized the flying end before it could slither back into the pit. The Aytan braced himself and up came Nayese hand over hand, who then stood side by side with Aou, holding the cable for Zlei and the remaining Uxenians. The three Zoromes were next to climb out of their prison, and then Ielee fastened the cable's end about his waist and was hauled up by 6W-438.

A group of surface dwellers came skulking from a nearby avenue, and perceiving their hereditary prey burst into a rim. The machine men strode to meet them, the professor's deadly ray flitting upon the nearest, who fell writhing in death convulsions, the ray making swift work of his bony exterior.

Unafraid, their quest for food to satiate their unceasing appetites acting as a relentless driving motive, the surface dwellers raced down upon the recently escaped prisoners. The machine men came to grips with the first one to arrive, 6W-438 seizing two in his tentacles, but even so, there were more than the machine men could handle at one time.

From an eye in his metal head, the professor saw Zlei tense himself before the furious onrush of a surface dweller and seize the latter in two outstretched arms, hurling the startled creature into the pit they had just quitted. Two more of the surface dwellers leaped upon, Zlei, but more of the Uxenians were there to aid him. Professor Jameson broke the back of his second opponent and came to the aid of Aou and Nayese, who were grappling with one of the black assassins, each one locked securely in a pair of the creature's strong appendages. The professor burnt him through the middle with his heat ray, turning his attention to 6W-438, who had already done for one of his two assailants, he and the professor pulling apart the remaining one.

The battle was soon over. With the exceptions of several red, irritated spots on the bodies of Nayese and Aou where the strong locked appendages of a surface dweller had already commenced their digestive processes, the victors were unharmed. Professor Jameson turned to Ielee.

"Now is the time to convince the Aytans that we are friends, instead of the ancient menace. Where are they? We shall go to their aid."

"They have probably fled to the rocky fortress up on the mountainside," Aou explained. "It is here that the ancients found the greatest security, we are told, when they were attacked."

Led by Ielee and Aou, the machine men and Uxenians started through the deserted streets of Ayt for the mountainside. On the way, they passed innumerable surface dwellers curled up on the pavements, their bodies and appendages wrapped up in the occupation of feeding, completely oblivious to all possible dangers, their centuries of brutish dominance stripping their senses of all fear of the weaker species in Ome. Professor Jameson exercised the potency of his heat ray upon several of the feeding assassins, while Zlei and Nayese wielded clubs they had picked up not far from the public prison.

They came across scattered piles of freshly clean-picked bones which the black raiders had abandoned to go in search of new prey. Emerging at last from the confines of the brilliant, polychrome city, the escape party saw where the scene of battle had finally shifted. The surface dwellers were besieging the Aytans who had taken to the fortress mentioned by Aou.

Having previously approached Ayt with their backs to the mountain, too engrossed with the city to notice that which was behind them and farther up the mountainside, the machine men had failed to see this embrasured pinnacle leaning against the sheer wall of a towering cliff. It was a considerable distance above and beyond the tunnel mouth leading to the caves of the dead. On three sides of this flat square of rock, the walls fell smooth for more than a hundred feet. Rough, rocky columns, broad at the base, lined the rim of this elevated plateau on three sides, the remaining side backing up against a smooth wall of towering rock.

On the approach, a deep, incised slope was sharply cut, allowing entrance and egress for the rocky heights. It was this entrance which the Aytans were desperately defending against a surging mob of surface dwellers.

From the embrasures punctuating the tall columns, many Aytans peered fearfully down upon the milling masses of black, headless bodies swarming in gluttonous anticipation at the foot of the declivity. A black river of the creatines jammed the slope, trying to push its dark flotsam of assassination upon the plateau crowded with Aytans. A wall of the defenders literally smashed to pieces the vanguard of surface dwellers shoved forward by the irresistible pressure from behind. Exhausted, flailing arms attempted to hold back the ancient menace.

With periodic regularity, a tiring Aytan would relax his vigilance and be seized by black, snatching appendages, hurled backward into the dark, restless throng, his place immediately being taken by another defender. A small group of the surface dwellers would suddenly become a squabbling center of activity and then the ceaseless surge toward the retreat of the Aytans would again push inexorably forward. The surface dwellers were losing many lives, yet they were slowly winning the fight to gain the colonnaded precipice and run rampant among the Aytans.

Aside from those trampled underfoot by the crushing masses of dark surface dwellers, the front ranks now represented an inanimate mass: a dead fighting unit pushed forward from behind and held in place by the walls of the sloping entrance. The Aytans could no longer reach their enemies. A barrier of dead bodies, unconquerable, rallied even in death. The defending Aytans, relieving each other from time to time, found themselves back to the very top of the cliff.

Putting on all speed, the machine men hurried ahead of their allies of Ome, running up the steep incline, scrambling past the tunnel mouth and continuing to the crowding, milling fringe of surface dwellers. The Aytans were on the verge of wholesale defeat, unable to hold out much longer. Without the ability to maintain the terrific pace of the four legged machine men, Aou, Ielee and the Uxenians fell behind. The latter, those who had not found clubs, brandished large thigh bones of the dead Aytans they had passed at the foot of the mountains.

In dismay, they saw more of the surface dwellers emerge from the tunnel. The latter cast affrighted glances behind them; then, hearing the conflict above them, they hurried to join their companions storming the cliff, lured irresistibly by the promise of food in riotous quantity. The professor wove a fan of death before him with the heat ray, but he immediately recognized that this rear attack would never save the Aytans above. It was too late for such counter tactics. There was only one spot where the machine men might check this ravaging horde, and the professor made for this one spot with the rapidity of thought.

The surface dwellers several feet in from the outer edge of the crowd were suddenly buried beneath a hurtling body of metal which trampled and pushed them downward, continuing onward over the close-packed assemblage and up to the opening in the fortress. At the top, the professor noticed quickly that there existed an old contrivance for closing the gateway. Apparent disuse and lack of repair had rendered it useless.

The Aytans were appalled at the sight of one of their recent captives, rushing relentlessly over the headless creatures, whose vicious attack had so bewildered and demoralized them. Evidently one of their leaders, this metal monstrosity from the world of the dead was coming to revenge his imprisonment in the very hour of triumph and victory. Behind him, upheld by the hideous, black pack, were the remaining two things of metal, staggering forward.

This was too much for the Aytans. With defeat and doom closing in all about them, then to have these purposeful beings launch their powerful offensive, was battling with the inevitable will of destiny. The Aytans gave way hopelessly, like the final gesture of a dying animal, letting their clubs fall listlessly upon the rushing tide of antagonists who had pushed past their dead companions.

With Professor Jameson, the first dozen or more of the surface dwellers were forcing themselves upon the broad, flat cliff, eagerly searching for victims among the close-packed ranks of the Aytans.

"Keep fighting!" the machine man exclaimed mentally to the Aytans. "We are helping you!"

To emphasize this message, the professor turned and waved his killing heat ray into the rushing mass of surface dwellers, who had suddenly found all restrictions to their advance given up by the Aytans. The machine man bent low to let 34T-11 and 6W-438 hurdle him and place themselves at his side.

"Get those who are already up here and throw them over!"

The two machine men, leaving the professor to repel the black invaders, hurried into the defending throngs of Aytans who were being overwhelmed by their stronger antagonists. Seizing the surface dwellers in their strong tentacles, the machine men cast them through the embrasures of the fortress, and they fell twisting and hurtling upon the bright colored rocks a hundred feet below, their shrill screams brought to an abrupt silence.

In spite of the heat ray's advantage, the professor found himself hard put to check the onrush of the surface dwellers, whose surging mass had gained momentum with the faltering of the Aytans. Recovered from their initial surprise, the Aytans now returned and fought side by side with this metal creature they had recently kept a prisoner. Dispatching those who had gained the stronghold, 6W-438 and 34T-11 now came to fight alongside the professor and the Aytans. Curling their tentacles around the nearest surface dwellers within reach, they hurled them back upon their headless companions. Flailing a dead surface dweller viciously, 34T-11 smashed down several of the enemy, breaking their appendages and creating considerable havoc, before seizing another victim in his metal embrace.

Meanwhile Aou, Ielee and the five stalwart Uxenians were carrying on a guerrilla warefare of their own. The surface dwellers were all concentrating their attention upon the looming stronghold of the Aytans, crowding as close as their dense numbers would permit. Taking advantage of this, the seven avengers struck down many an unsuspecting foe, slowly thinning the outer ranks.

But more of the black monsters from the outer world were pouring from the tunnel leading to the caves of abandoned hope. Like a flood they suddenly came running forth, seemingly in a state of alarm. It was a signal for the machine men to dig in and fight all the harder against this increasing mass of stubborn weight. From beneath, Professor Jameson felt many strong appendages grip his metal legs, threatening to pull him down. He felt himself going, but a downward flick of his heat ray released him from the difficulty. This was the signal for another forward rush of the innumerable foe. The tentacles of 6W-438 and 34T-11 saved the professor from disaster.

The surface dwellers now possessed a broader front of attack, having gained the precipice itself when the Aytans had despondently fallen back. They were becoming exceedingly hard to hold back in spite of the terrific loss in numbers they were suffering. The professor's heat ray was becoming weaker in effect and needed recharging. Soon, it would be useless. He cast a desperate glance at the horde of new reinforcements rushing out of the tunnel far below. How rapidly they were running, as if they were being pursued.

A black, clutching form scrambled over the professor's pointed head just as a triumphant cry flashed from the brain of 6W-438.

"Look, 21MM392!" he exclaimed. "The tunnel-look!"

The professor hurled the surface dweller from him far out over the sea of waving black arms. His eyes took in the situation. Out of the tunnel, close behind the running surface dwellers, came five machine men. They were equipped with mechanical wings used both for atmosphere flying and for repeller navigation in the wastes of the cosmos.

The five machine men stared about them outside the tunnel, wonderment and confusion reflected from their minds, but this condition was only momentary. The three Zoromes far above them radiated their thoughts with astonishing rapidity. Here was not the dull, slow conversation with the inhabitants of Ome, but the exchange of highly developed, experienced minds possessed of superior intellect.

In a flash, 41C-98, 92ZQ153, 76H-385, 176Z56 and 56F-450 were acquainted with the entire situation and distin-guishment of friend and foe. Like five metal birds, they spread their mechanical wings and flew swiftly upward over the scene of battle. The Aytans were aghast at these new arrivals, but on coming closer the flying Zoromes were recognized as the same species as the three machine men, and the Aytans' alarm was immediately replaced by enthusiastic acclaim.

Those of the surface dwellers, who had run from the tunnel ahead of the machine men, did not come to join the attack but stood in mute bewildered indecision a short distance from the tunnel entrance, watching the amazing flight of the five winged monsters who had so relentlessly pursued them from the cavern of bones. At the sight of the winged machine men, those of the surface dwellers on the outer edge of the thronging multitude turned and ran terrorized down the mountainside, their flight suggestive of a previous encounter with these flying metal men. Creatures who had previously known little of fear fled from the flying Zoromes.

The five new arrivals from the spaceship of Zor carried weapons not unlike that which the professor had built into his fore tentacle, and they played them liberally among the black beseigers of the Aytan fortress, circling low over the enemy who now found their superior numbers defenseless. From an irresistible current of driving energy directed at the Aytan stronghold, the surface dwellers suddenly became a demoralized mob, that looked only for escape from the whirring flap of the light metal wings above them.

To the black inhabitants of the outer surface, that sound spelled terror and doom. It took several minutes for the rioting throng to free itself of the entrance slope to the fortress, but after that they tumbled down the slope at a rapid pace, first on one set of appendages and then on the other, often appearing very much like four-spoked wheels, so quickly did they change ends in their flight.

"We have taught them what it means to be afraid," called 41C-98.

The professor then learned how the five Zoromes had found their three lost companions. 41C-98 circled above him while, with 6W-438 and 34T-11, he preceded a party of Aytans in pursuit of the surface dwellers. The remaining four Zoromes were circling and flitting about the fleeing enemy, flying low to wreak havoc and keep them moving.

"When you did not return to the spaceship with the rest, we sent out a call to you which was not answered," 41C-98 explained. "It took our searching parties only a short time to find the remains of your combat with the planet's headless inhabitants. We followed the tunnel and discovered where you had fallen into the bottomless hole, where the ledge broke with your weight. We returned to the spaceship and reported our discovery. Five of us came equipped with weapons, the mechanical wings and a distance communicator. 56F-450 has the communicator.''

"And the surface dwellers, who later stormed Ayt, were driven there because they fled from your approach?" queried the professor, seeking to have his suspicions confirmed.

"Yes, they must be the ones among whom we spread death and terror when they, unfortunately for themselves, persisted in attacking us, while we searched the caves for you. We could find no trace of you three. In the cavern of bones, we picked up your trail again. The surface dwellers ran from us, as if we were a dreaded plague."

"You caused the recurrence of an old legend and prophecy," said the professor, "but it is just as well, for now the people of Ome will learn to cast aside their old superstitions and overthrow this idea of sacrifice and tribute they have maintained for many ages."

The surface dwellers, finding the machine men attacking them continually from all sides in this unfamiliar environment of the inner world, now turned to but one visible escape, the tunnel entrance from which they had lately emerged. Pushing each other aside, they strove to gain this sanctuary, scrambling out of sight in a long, black stream like so many frightened insects seeking to escape the bright rays of unaccustomed daylight.

The Aytans, inspired with an enthusiasm and bravery unprecedented in even the most remote annals of their history, drove the enemy along like domesticated beasts. More ferocious in the attack were five stalwart figures which loomed fully a head taller than the Aytans. Beside them, the professor recognized Aou and Ielee.

When the last of the surface dwellers had retreated into the tunnel, the eight Zoromes and their allies of Ome turned their attention upon the city. More of the black, headless assassins were found in their characteristic feeding pose, all wrapped up, their four appendages busily digesting the remains of what shortly before had been living Aytans. These few stragglers were instantly killed.

Frightened Aytans were brought forth from hiding places throughout the city, when they learned that the ancient menace had actually fled, pursued by Aytans. For the machine men, it was a physical victory; for the Aytans, it was a moral victory. Of the two, the latter triumph was the more significant.

"The power of the legend is broken!" exclaimed Ielee. "No more will the Aytans go resignedly to death! We now know our enemy and their weaknesses! We shall fight them in the manner best suited to overcome them!"

"And travel among the other cities to enlighten all," added Aou. "We shall ever enter the tunnels and hunt them out, combining our strength."

In the meanwhile, Professor Jameson was anxious to learn of the present relation of this wandering world to the planetary system it was entering.

"I have received no communications since we left the cavern of bones," said 56F-450. "The last I heard, our position was somewhat past the orbit of the fourth planet"

"That far, already?" the professor remarked in surprise. "This hollow world has passed by the six outer planets! There were no visible effects here inside!"

"Because this planet passed the other worlds far off," 56F-450 explained. "But this third planet, which is the smallest one yet encountered in the system, will come perilously close. In fact, this wandering planet on which we are now has accelerated its speed through solar attraction since entering the system, and many of our previous calculations we made in regard to its approaching proximity to various planets have required revision several times."

"Is it heading sunward?" asked the professor in sudden concern.

"No," 56F-450 replied. "But the last report urged us to make haste in finding you and coming back to the spaceship on the surface. 744U-21 was rather alarmed by the direction and accelerated speed this planet was taking toward the third planet."

"If I recollect right, it was not a large world," said the professor.

"About as large as the satellite of your own planet Earth," 56F-450 observed. "I have been trying to gain communication with the spaceship since we drove the surface dwellers back into their tunnel, but there has been no response. They are probably out on a short expedition to one of the nearby worlds."

56F-450 tinned over the communicator to the professor as he joined the party in search of stray surface dwellers, who still hid and lurked in the city of Ayt. The communicator consisted of a cubed apparatus which fitted halfway over the pointed head of a Zorome. Its function was to amplify thought waves and also act as a sensitive detector for the reception of thought waves beyond the ordinary reach of the machine men. There was a limit to the distance of reception, however, and the professor knew that the spaceship of Zor had gone on some hurried trip beyond this limit.

Professor Jameson, expecting a call from the spaceship at any time, waited patiently. In the meantime, the city was scoured from one end to the other. The Aytans returned with two of the surface dwellers securely bound with the looped cables. Instead of killing them while they lay in a gluttonous torpor, the Aytans and Uxenians, at the instigation and inspiration of Ielee, had taken them alive. They were to be kept in the pit where Ielee and the machine men had lingered so long.

"We will take them on a tour of Ome," Ielee explained. "They will be emphatic proof of our claims. We--"

But the professor heard no more. A silent voice, a telepathic call received over the thought communicator, diverted his entire attention from Ielee. "56F-450! 56F-450I"

"This is 21MM392 listening," the professor radiated.

"29G-75 on the spaceship! We have just returned from the third planet, which is in direct line with the course taken by this world! A smashing collision will soon take place unless--"

There followed an anxious pause, as if 29G-75 had turned to confer with someone else on the spaceship.

"Unless what?" cried the professor with the fever of excitement.

"We have been to the third planet and set up a frequency of continuous atomic disintegration! We must destroy a world! It is your only chance of survival, for this hollow planet will be crushed into thousands of pieces like a shell, if these planets ever meet!"

"Is there no time to come back?" asked 6W-438, reading the import of the situation from the professor's troubled mind.

Professor Jameson relayed the thought of 6W-438.

"This planet's speed is increasing!" came the startling announcement. "The third world of the system is commencing to swing off its orbit to meet this wanderer from space!"

"What of the disintegration process?" asked the professor, realizing that an attempt to reach the surface and the spaceship would now be a foolhardy venture. "Is it working?"

"Nothing doing yet," responded 29G-75. "The action will commence at the planet's center and work outward, but it will have to work quickly, for this hollow world is picking up rapid acceleration."

In his mind's eye, the professor, as well as his metal comrades, visioned what would happen. There would be a terrific concussion which would shatter and burst the hollow world from end to end, destroying its life in one entire swoop, reducing the wandering world to fragments which would probably become small satellites of the third planet.

"Where are you now?" queried the professor. "On the planet's surface?"

"Yes. We shall stay and keep sending you reports as long as we dare. 744U-21 has the fear that our efforts at disintegration of the planet have been made too late."

The professor glimpsed a rapid end to the careers of the eight machine men caught in the bowels of this doomed world. Mountains of hurtling, flying, bursting rock would crush them like tiny insects. The hollow sphere would be reduced to insignificant chunks, some of them sent gyrating off into the cosmos on endless, meteoric pilgrimages, other fragments bombarding the fractured surface of the third planet or else becoming satellites.

It was a fearful end to consider. 34T-11 broached the fighting chance of a rapid trip back through the cavern of bones and the bottomless abyss, but this was an even more foolhardy venture than the futile chances of remaining.

"We can only keep to the open away from the mountain and trust to luck," the professor advised. "You who have wings may take your chances far above the inner surface if you prefer, but I can see no advantages in that other than temporary escape."

The machine men waited for further reports. Nothing was said to the uncomprehending Aytans, other than a request of the professor's that they meet outside the city for a conference. What this conference was to cover, the professor did not explain, but the Aytans were ready to follow any instructions the eight Zoromes gave them, grateful as they were for the splendid services they had been rendered.

The real import behind the professor's request was to get the Aytans out into the open, free of the tumbling walls, rock houses and towers of the city. The professor was particular that they should all meet on the side of the city opposite the mountain. He did not launch into an explanation of what was to happen, for he realized the futility of this. The Aytans would not understand; they would possess only a faint, disturbing idea of the impending catastrophe.

"Any signs yet of the disintegration process?" the professor inquired anxiously.

"There are no external evidences to be seen," 29G-75 replied. "We went to the third planet and gave it careful analysis to determine its composition which we found differs radically in consistency from the elements of this hollow planet. This difference is not so surprising when you stop to consider that this wandering world is probably from another corner of the universe, probably flung into space by an undeterminable convulsion."

"Was the third planet found practicable for disintegration?"

"744U-21 figured that unless the planet's core possessed certain nullifying elements, which so short a time gave to us no lengthy opportunities of ascertaining, the disintegration forces we planted with the automatic depth moles would set up a multiple progression of atomic disintegration," 29G-75 explained.

"How far apart are the two planets?" the professor inquired uneasily.

"Only a few thousand miles," came the discouraging report. "This distance is rapidly closing."

In tense uneasiness, the machine men inside the doomed world waited for further reports. It appeared that the forces of disintegration had met the nullifying screen of adverse elements 29G-75 had mentioned. The professor was thinking that, even should the disintegration get underway, it would be too late to avoid a collision with the solid bulk of the third planet. What would their chances of survival be in this chaos of crumbled, whirling, planetary ruins? Each Zorome thought of this problem. To escape the shattered globe would be asking for a miracle, and miracles are the long exception to the universal law of averages.

"Is this world in conjunction with the third planet and the sun?" the professor asked, a sudden idea having asserted itself.

"No," answered 29G-75. "This world is now approaching from a direction which would ordinarily touch the third planet's orbit."

Chapter V

COSMIC CATACLYSM

Fate had ordained that this third planet should be at this particular spot on its orbit at this time. What chances had previously existed of the cosmic wanderer missing the third planet were now discouraged by the mutual attraction of the two bodies which had caused the third planet to swell its orbital circumference and hasten the approach of the wandering world. The meeting of the two was inevitable. The slow revolution of the third planet was gradually lessening, dragged backward by the approaching bulk of the hollow sphere.

Excited cries of the Aytans aroused the professor from his abstractions. They were jumping upward in unprecedented leaps, coming down like feathers.

"The gravity on this side of the world is becoming less powerful," said 6W-438. "It is the influence of the third planet. The gravity on the antipodes of this inner world must be increasing, while on the outer crust the case is just the opposite."

"I fear that we are about to see an entire world and its inhabitants snuffed out in one mighty blow," said 41C-98.

"The last thing we shall ever see," 76H-385 added. "A magnificent, cosmic spectacle reserved for our exodus from life."

"21MM392!"

Professor Jameson pulled himself to immediate attention as 29G-75 called his faculties to immediate matters outside the inner world.

"A bright red crack has appeared on the surface of the third planet!" the excited thoughts of 29G-75 crowded in upon the professor's brain. "It is lengthening--broadening! The disintegration forces are taking hold and multiplying! Another fissure has appeared! It is joining the first, tangent-ly! The planet is belching forth its insides--dazzling--white hot--streaming out over the surface from the torn rents, fusing it!"

Like magnets, the mental faculties of all seven machine men besides Professor Jameson were drawn to his mind, in which were vividly reflected the events 29G-75 was relaying to him over the thought amplifier.

"The world looms nearer! It is becoming a raging inferno, turned practically inside out, little of the dark surface left. It illuminates this hollow globe with a tremendous light it has never seen before! Surface dwellers are running excitedly from one retreat to another! Their strides are ridiculous! Gravity is at its minimum! 744U-21 tells us that we cannot stay much longer! It is becoming too dangerous! The third planet is towering above us--like an avalanche of doom! Both worlds are rushing for each other! Pieces of the third planet are bursting and flying off into space in all directions! Several great chunks just struck this world with exploding concussions! The third planet is now a flaming, bursting ball of disintegrating forces!"

"Will it be dispersed in time?" interjected Professor Jameson into 29G-75's lurid account of the cataclysm.

"Prepare for crash, 21MM392!" came the fatal reply. "The spaceship is commencing to bound crazily about the surface.

It is being drawn straight off the planet toward the other world I We can stay no longer! 20R-654 is fighting to get the ship under control and speed away to safety! Space is full of the meteoric pieces flying off the third planet! A mountainous fragment just passed perilously close! 20R-654 is putting on tremendous power! We are leaving death and destruction far behind! Hold tight, 21MM392; the planets are nearly together! The third planet is bursting apart! An internal explosion of terrific proportions has rent it asunder! There are now sev--"

The fading thoughts of 29G-75 died away as the spaceship from Zor left the dangerous territory of the colliding worlds. The machine men waited for the fatalistic moment which was soon to come. Was it doomsday for them? The professor had been the center of many alarming situations dining his career with the Zoromes, but never before had he been so irrevocably face to face with such an uncompromising predicament as this. He saw that the winged Zoromes were making no move to rise above atmospheric heights. Perhaps they realized the futility of this, being reluctant to leave their three comrades.

Sensing the uneasiness of the machine men, and both fascinated and bewildered by the increasing lack of gravitation, the Aytans were chattering excitedly. Was this why the machine men had urged them to come here--to witness this unworldly phenomenon of weightlessness? Why were the thoughts of these metal creatures suddenly removed beyond their perceptions, and why did they remain so silent, so grim, so tense?

A terrific shudder suddenly rumbled beneath their feet, throwing both Aytans and machine men to the ground. The eight Zoromes sprawled their four metal legs in an effort to remain upright. Thundering noises boomed hollowly as if crossing an immense gulf. A shattering rumble issued ceaselessly from the city of Ayt, as the ground quake reduced the many buildings of polychrome rock to mere mounds of stone, billowing dust clouds hovering over the ruined city like the smoke palls of an immense conflagration.

The atmosphere became hazy with the rising clouds of dust. Currents of air whistled past, terrifying the agitated Aytans with its unaccustomed, windy moan. A rending crash hurled the machine men into the air. Across the city, great avalanches of stone and dust roared down the mountainside upon the nearer buildings of Ayt. More cataclysmic reverberations and terrific shocks were heard and felt. The face of the entire mountain suddenly rose to its full height in tottering, vertical suspension, remained poised and crumbling for a brief second, then fell with a deafening, splitting roar, burying half of Ayt and sending rock debris hurtling across the city among the Aytans and machine men.

Echoes rolled endlessly past, while rocks and particles kept falling incessantly as the ground shivered and staggered, a blurring roar rising across an immense, incalculable distance from time to time, punctuated by persistent, reverberating blasts. The professor realized that this falling debris was not exclusively from the wrecked mountain. The planet was shaking itself to pieces. When it would collapse completely was probably a matter of minutes. Bursting fragments from the third planet had caused this quaking ruin. What would happen when they struck the nucleus? The professor could surmise only too vividly.

Many Aytans lay quiet on the ground, which a cursory glance revealed to the professor, as a swift gale of atmosphere lifted the hanging dust cloud for a moment. Several were dead, killed by the hurtling bombardment of rocks, others injured and insensible. Still others, dizzy from the continual quakes, attempted to stagger to their feet, wandering and falling aimlessly about, their frightened chatter drowned in the roaring, booming bedlam of the planet's groaning protests.

The professor, tumbling among his fellow machine men from a still greater shock than had previously occurred, rose to find a strange, liquid mixture pelting them. It was mud, but where had it originated? The dust in the air, of course, but there was no rainfall in the inner world. Searching for answer to this unheard of phenomenon, the professor instantly recalled the numerous lakes which Zlei, the Uxenian, had told him about.

Water from these lakes had been hurled into the air, perhaps entire bodies of water, falling from one side to the other of the inner world. The professor expected any moment to be picked up with his metal comrades by an invisible power and hurled violently to another section of Ome. Such terrific stress had not reached this part of the inner world as yet. The rain still pelted down in undulating, uneven waves, virtually torrents which subsided intermittently to mere sprinklings. The dust had been settled into convoluting rivers of muddy ooze.

Professor Jameson had no more than expressed a grateful feeling of satisfaction that the terrific wrenchings of the planet and its inner atmosphere had not dashed the eight Zoromes from their position beside Ayt, when the ground suddenly heaved in under him and a rain of fine, hard particles, not liquid, descended upon him in such heavy, relentless quantities that he found it necessary to continually keep his feet moving to prevent burial by the debris. Another convulsion of the ground hurled him into a soft, muddy mass as more of the descending particles engulfed him. He struggled to his feet, but the tremendous weight upon him bore him down. He was being buried.

A dizzying effect of rapid whirling overcame him. Dull, booming noises reached him. A close-packed stillness suddenly reigned, and he was only conscious of intermittent shudderings. The ground about him, of which he seemed to be a concrete part, gyrated and spiralled. Helplessly, Professor Jameson wondered what had happened. He vaguely doubted the stability of his defaulted senses, as if he thought they had been playing him tricks through some jolted imperfection of his mechanical construction.

The uneasy feeling that he was the center of a large section of the shattered planet and was hurtling off into space continued to persist. If this was the case--and the professor, held tight and motionless, had no way of verifying or discrediting this suspicion--would those aboard the spaceship realize his distress and come to his rescue? The chances were slim. Out of several million fragments of the shattered globe, how would they know in which one he was located unless their ship passed close?

With this thought in mind, the professor sent out desperate calls, calls which were unanswered. He tried to move his tentacles. They were bound close to him by the unyielding tons of surrounding debris. If he were a part of a mammoth meteor, there would exist no up or down for him. In vain, he tried to extricate his metal legs to test this possibility, but countless tons weighed them down from all directions. They were as secure as if gripped in the jaws of a powerful vise.

To what future, if any future, was he fated? Professor Jameson recollected that forty million years had passed since his dead body had been rocketed from the Earth into space up to the time the Zoromes came to transplant his brain into a machine. Forty million years! It might even be longer than that before he found himself liberated from this dilemma.

The significance appalled him. No escape from consciousness would be his, no escape like death had accorded him during his forty million years pilgrimage about the Earth. He would, as an imprisoned part of the meteor, remain conscious, helpless and undying. The cosmic traveler might some time in the far-flung future plunge its rough, jagged mass into the incandescent heart of a remote sun or bury its rushing bulk in the bowels of a planet.

Again he sent out his desperate call. No answer. No one had heard him. He remembered the thought amplifier. It was gone, lost somewhere during the upheaval of two worlds. If he had it now, his chances would be improved considerably. A wave of hopelessness, a qualm of desolation and futility swept into his mind.

Was there a definite wisdom in personal initiative beyond a passive degree, or did destiny arrange all? Again the professor radiated for help, designating his position as buried somewhere in a part of the wandering world. He wondered what had become of his seven companions who had been trapped with him in the inner world. Those with the mechanical wings might have been benefited after all by his advice to remain aloft during the catastrophe, but then he recollected the terrific downpours of rain, the rushing air currents and the shower of debris and larger chunks of rock which had struck him down, when he had fought burial by the overwhelming masses which had deluged him.

Several of his mechanical eyes were open, and the dirt pressed itself even into these, so compact was the mass surrounding him. One tentacle seemed dislocated, wrenched from its fastening. The sensations of being whirled about had ceased. The material in which he was imbedded now stayed as motionless as himself.

Once more he sent forth a mental radiation. It was the most he could do. Like a sudden flashing of a light from out of a dismal, unending darkness came a reply.

"Where are you, 21MM392?"

"Buried--immovable--countless tons weigh me down!"

"I am likewise," replied 176Z56, "but I can move myself a bit. I believe I am not far from the surface."

"What surface?" queried the professor., "Where are we?"

"I do not know for certain. Something happened to destroy my consciousness. I came awake to find myself buried and heard you calling. At first, until I heard you state your situation, I believed that you were free and part of a searching party."

"Are we part of a meteor, entombed in a section of the wandering world?" asked the professor, searching out the opinion of 176Z56.

"If that is so, it must be an immense piece, a small asteroid, an entire cross-section chunk measuring from inner world to outer surface, for I can detect gravity. My limbs are slightly capable of movement, and when I lift them away from where I am imbedded they always fall back."

"Try and dig yourself to the surface," the professor urged.

"I shall."

176Z56 commenced his work of getting free. Intermittently he radiated encouraging reports to the professor. He was digging upward away from gravity with his feet, pushing with his tentacles, gradually wriggling his way upward. An impassable barrier blocked his way. He dug around it, finding it to be a large rock. A cavity in this huge stone gave him a place to shove the dirt and stones, leaving him a small, confining cave in which to work.

The roof of his little cave he kept digging away, the residue falling to the floor which grew higher. In this manner, 176Z56 moved more quickly to escape. Finally, the digging became so easy and the dirt so loosely packed that the machine man abandoned the cave, leaping to his full height. His conical head broke into the open, and he knew that he had gained the surface.

"Where are we?" asked the professor in rising excitement, his mind intent upon that of 176Z56.

In fevered anticipation, he expected to see what 176Z56 half expected, a cold, bright canopy of scintillating stars. 176Z56 shook the dirt from his head, carefully brushing out the optical plates in order that he might see. What 176Z56 saw, the professor perceived mirrored in his brain.

"The inner world!" the machine man exclaimed. "It stood the shock! The planet is intact!"

176Z56 stared incredulously at the changed features of the inner world. The mountain had shifted much of its bulk and now overlay most of what formerly had been the city of Ayt, now a buried mass of ruins. The machine man found himself standing on a large hill of rock and dirt which had fallen from the sky, from somewhere beyond the up-curved horizon of the inner world. How the hollow globe had escaped destruction neither he nor the professor could guess.

The rest of the Zoromes were nowhere in sight. Little of Ayt was left, and this only clumps of ruin. Forlorn figures moved searchingly about the disheveled polychrome square and slabs, which the falling mountain had not buried. They were the surviving Aytans. 176Z56 called to them, meanwhile divesting himself of the wreckage of his mechanical wings now battered and bent into uselessness. They came to him, a straggling group, less than a tenth of the original population.

Among them were Ielee and two of the Uxenians. Zlei and Aou were not among the gathered faces. The Aytans seemed too confused, too dumb from tragedy and near-death to comment on what had happened. They listened abjectly to 176Z56, who told them that 21MM392 was buried far beneath them. He inquired concerning the six other machine men.

"The last we saw of them they were being carried off into the air with several of our own people," said one of the Aytans. "We were partly buried and so escaped being carried off."

"Carried off," mused 176Z56. "The wind took them, evidently during that last shock when the gravity grew less. Gravity is back to normal now."

"There must be more of the Aytans who were buried and suffocated, if those above were saved by partial coverment," opined the buried professor. "If the danger is now all past, we can expect the spaceship to return to this planet. They will send a search party for us."

"Unless all the entrances have been closed," was 176Z56's gloomy remark. "But they will get here some way, that is certain."

"If we only possessed the thought amplifier."

One of the keen-eyed Aytans, more accustomed to the strange illumination of Ome than were the machine men, discerned a black dot far up in the sky. It came lower and nearer but was still indistinguishable as to details. Then 176Z56 recognized it for what it really was, as familiar lines took definite form and shape.

"The spaceship!" he cried enthusiastically. "How did it ever get down in here?"

"Attract attention!" called the professor.

176Z56 waved his tentacles about his head and bade the Aytans do the same. The spaceship had evidently seen him with the telescopes, however, about as soon as he had seen the spaceship, for the direct course of the ship was never in doubt. It settled down over the ruins of Ayt and landed not far from the Aytans and the machine man.

Out of the ship came the Zoromes, among them 41C-98, 56F-450 and 34T-11. They had already been picked up by the spaceship in various battered conditions. 176Z56 and the professor learned that these three had fastened tentacles when the hurricane had blown them away. They had finally landed in one of the lakes whose surface waters had been blown into cascading raindrops, leaving but half the ordinary depth. The machine men had walked out of the lake, and it was not far from here that those in the spaceship had found them.

Professor Jameson was immediately dug from the living grave to which he had been so closely confined during the latter part of the tremendous air currents.

"How did you come into Ome with the spaceship?" the professor asked. "What happened to the third planet, and why is it this hollow sphere escaped being crushed?"

"We still have three of the machine men to find," said 744U-21. "Come aboard and while we are looking for them I will tell you what happened after 29G-75 lost touch with you."

"He last told me how close both worlds were to each other and of your winning fight to free the spaceship from the field of new-born meteors," said the professor. "It seems that the third planet was commencing to break up."

"That is just what saved this hollow world," 744U-21 explained. "The disintegration process gained momentum and blew the planet to pieces just before the two worlds met."

"What did this world strike?" queried the professor. "The pieces of the third planet?"

"It struck several large fragments which threatened to break up this world. From the havoc wrought here in Ome, I can see that little more stress would have finished the destruction."

"How did you get in here with the spaceship?"

"Where the ruins of the third planet struck, a huge cavity opens into the inner world. It is several of your miles broad, 21MM392, and we entered through this way."

Professor Jameson further learned that the third planet was entirely destroyed by the ravaging continuation of the atomic disintegration, to which the wandering world had been immune due to its radical difference in elemental structure. The cosmic wanderer had finally fulfilled its destiny. It now followed the old route of the third planet.

The search for 6W-438, 92ZQ153 and 76H-385 required patience and diligence. The first of the three to be found was 92ZQ153, who, upon the planet of the double sun, had been known as Ravlt, one of the tripeds. Like Professor Jameson, he was found buried and helpless. 76H-385 was eventually found wandering through a city in the inner world, a ruined city like all the rest, its inhabitants commencing the reconstruction.

The machine men despaired of ever finding 6W-438. No trace of him could be found, and the machine men commenced to believe that during the collision with the partly disintegrated world, he had suffered an accident to his all important brain. The Zoromes came to the opinion that his remains were buried somewhere beneath the rock debris which had been torn loose all through the up-curved surface of the inner world, especially the material shattered from the wide hole through which the spaceship had come.

It was suggested that they leave a small space flier situated prominently somewhere in Ome, one of the few space fliers carried aboard the spaceship, so that on the long chance of 6W-438's survival he could follow them to Zor. If he were buried alive, they would have heard from him during the search.

The professor was reluctant to leave without some trace of the machine man's fate. He could well recollect his own experiences of having been buried alive, fearing that he had seen his metal comrades for the last time, that he was doomed to ages of immovable solitude. It was his suggestion that more of the thought detectors be constructed, all space fliers aboard the ship be utilized for search, and single Zoromes be sent out with mechanical wings to comb the entire surface of the inner world.

41C-98, one of the machine men who had fallen into the lake, also remembering his long sojourn at the bottom of the ocean on the planet of the double sun, suggested that 6W-438 might be at the bottom of a lake whose sides were unscalable. The professor's suggestion was adopted. The machine men started out on a thorough search with the thought detectors.

While this was in progress, 6W-438 was abruptly found in an unexpected manner. 47X-09, equipped with a pair of the mechanical wings and a thought detector, found the long lost machine man near the cavernous opening through which shone dimly the far off stars.

Instead of the wrecked, battered remains they had expected to find, 6W-438 was alive and without mechanical injury. It was a strange story he told. When the hurricane had blown him away, he had landed several times only to be dragged and hurtled along by stronger gusts of atmosphere. His efforts to cling to the ground were futile, and he was eventually dropped into one of the pits. He had experienced the endless drop, and then, on his return to the inner world, he had found the way closed over with tons of fallen rock which had clogged and jammed the entrance.

He had eventually found a way to the outer surface, where, protected by his temperature equalizer, he had roamed over the outside of the dark world, waiting for the return of the spaceship. His long, tireless journey had taken him to the gigantic entrance which the colliding fragments of the third planet had smashed open in the crust of the hollow world.

Recognizing it as a means of entrance into the inner world, and knowing that he had left seven of his comrades there, he had taken the tremendous drop, catching hold of the jagged side of the wall at the terminus of his upward fall, climbing the rest of the way carefully and with patience. A slip meant a return to the surface.

He reported that most of the entrances previously used by the surface dwellers were closed. On the surface, he had been attacked repeatedly by ravenous surface dwellers. He had found many of them dead of starvation, unable to find their way back into the caverns adjacent to Ome. Incalculable numbers had perished in the world cataclysm, caught in their deep retreats within the planet's thick crust when all the inner cavities had fallen to ruin.

More than three-quarters of the inner world's population had been wiped out, but those remaining were never to fear the surface dwellers again. Ielee, with the aid of the Zoromes during their long search for 6W-438, had spread the new idea throughout the various cities of Ome, the idea of combined measures of resistance. The hideous, parasitic surface dwellers were already a doomed race, no matter how many of them should survive to find their way once more to the inner world.

The machine men found themselves once more ready to resume their route back to Zor, which lay many light-years beyond the area of darkened worlds and their ebbing suns. 6W-438 was found, and no longer was it necessary for the Zoromes to remain. Bidding Ielee and his friends farewell, they headed the spaceship toward the broad opening in the planet's crust, the opening through which 6W-438 had come to join them, thus ending their search for him.

Emerging from the hollow world, they left the illuminated opening far behind. As the spaceship opened speed, the planet below them dwindled away into insignificance beside the distant, dull-red ball of its cooling sun. No longer was it a sunless world. Aided by the machine men of Zor, it had ceased its eternal wandering to fulfill its eventual destiny.

The End