"Where are you hit, darling?"
"I"m--all right," she panted. "I was stunned for a moment. I--can--go on now."
But she went limp in Jim"s arms, and Jim picked her up and stood irresolute, until he heard Parrish shambling toward him over the heaving ground.
"She"s not hurt, I think, only fainted," said Jim. "Which way, Parrish? You lead us."
"Down the slope," panted Parrish. "We"ll be in the ferns in a minute.
We can hide there for a while, till she"s able to walk. G.o.d help us all! And I was once Professor of Physical Chemistry at Columbia!"
The outcry might have seemed comical under other circ.u.mstances; as it was, Jim heartily re-echoed old Parrish"s sentiments in his heart.
The last shock was subsiding in faint earth tremors. The two men plunged down into the heavy fog, which quickly covered them, Jim carrying Lucille in his arms. He felt the ferny undergrowth all about him, the thick boles of tree-ferns emerged out of the mist.
"We can stop here for a while," panted Parrish. "Crouch down! They"ll never find us in this fog, and in a few minutes, when Lucille"s better, we can go on."
"You must tell me where we are and what our chances are," said Jim, after again ascertaining that Lucille was unharmed.
"I"ll tell you, Dent, as quick as I can. It"s the place where I"ve spent five years of h.e.l.l as the slave of that devil, Tode. I never dreamed, when we were working on the old Atom Smasher, that he had adapted it to travel in the fourth dimension. He"s taken us back twelve thousand years or so to the island of Atlantis. History hasn"t begun yet. Atlantis is the only civilization in the world. The rest are Drilgoes, Neanderthal men, wandering in the forests, and still in their stone age.
"It"s true, Dent, what old Plato learned from the Egyptian priests.
Atlantis has been slowly sinking for thousands of years, and all that"s left now is the one great island that we"re on. Nearly all the Atlanteans, the Cro-Magnon men, have perished, except for a few who have crossed in ships to the coasts of France and Spain. They"ll be the founders of modern Europe--Basques and Iberians, and Bretons and Welshmen. Our ancestors! It makes my brain reel to think of it!"
"Go on! Go on!" said Jim.
"There"s a great city on the island, known as Atlantis too. As big as London or New York. With flying-machines and temples and art galleries and big ships that they"re building to carry them away when the next subsidence comes. They know they"re doomed, for every few days there"s an eruption now.
"Tode means to make himself master of Atlantis, and transport it into another epoch by means of the Atom Smasher. But he"s never managed to enter. He"s made himself a G.o.d in the eyes of the Drilgoes, the savages who inhabit these forests. He"s planning to lead them against the city, and he"s got an army of thousands from all parts of the interior, who worship him as divine.
"The Atlanteans are unwarlike. They"ve forgotten how to fight in their thousands of years of peace. But they"ve got a Ray ten times as strong as Tode"s, that brings instant death to everything it touches. It shrivels it up. It"s a different principle. I don"t understand it, but it"s this Ray that keeps the Drilgoes from capturing the city.
"Tode"s got a laboratory inside the cave, fitted up with apparatus that he brought from Chicago, the world capital of the year 3000 A.
D., after disintegrating the atoms and recombining them. But he hasn"t succeeded altogether. He hasn"t learned everything. The future isn"t quite clear, like the past. There"s a dark cloud moves across the spectral lines and blurs them. I think it"s the element of free will--or G.o.d!"
"I know," Jim answered. "He can"t hold that boat steady in four-dimensional s.p.a.ce, as he pretends he can. If he could, it would mean that man was wholly master of his destiny. He can"t and he never will.
"There"s an unknown quant.i.ty comes in, Parrish. It is G.o.d, and that"s what"s going to beat him in the end."
"I"ve not been as idle as Tode thinks," said Parrish, with a senile leer. "I know more about the Atom Smasher than he dreams of. He thinks me just an old fool, the remnants of whose brains are useful to him in his laboratory. That"s why he"s kept me alive so far. He"ll find out his mistake," he chuckled. "I have something Tode doesn"t dream of."
Suddenly Parrish"s air of intense seriousness vanished. He chuckled and fumbled in his rags. Jim felt a small object like a lever pressed into his hand and then withdrawn.
"It"s death, Dent," chuckled old Parrish. "The concentrated essence of the destructive principle. It"s a lever I fitted into a concealed groove in the Atom Smasher unknown to Tode. This lever has a universal joint and connects with a hidden chamber, and when pulled will catapult the annihilated components of a small quant.i.ty of uranium in any direction we desire. The release of the slumbering energy of this uranium will produce an explosion of proportions beyond the wildest dreams of engineers--perhaps, one great enough to throw the Earth out of its...o...b..t!"
"Uranium!... Breaking up its components!" gasped Jim. "You mean you can actually do that?"
"Yes!" chuckled Parrish. "I"m keeping it for the day when Tode becomes a G.o.d. When he"s steadied the boat in time-s.p.a.ce and halted the march of the past, and when he"s got Lucille--then, Dent, I shall so pull the lever that it will release the energy straight at Tode--and destroy the Atom-Smasher, ourselves, and even, perhaps, the whole Earth!"
And he burst into a peal of such wild laughter that Jim realized the old man"s wits were gone.
Was it true, that amazing story? It was difficult to know, and yet anything seemed possible in this amazing world into which Jim had suddenly been thrown.
The vast pall of smoke cast out by the volcano was beginning to subside. Slowly a spectral light began to filter through the valley.
Through the fog Jim could see glimpses of the ferny undergrowth, the giant tree-ferns and cycads that towered aloft. It was like a picture of the earth when the mastodons, the gra.s.s-eaters and the meat-eaters disputed for its supremacy.
Jim bent over Lucille. He saw her stir, he heard her murmur his name.
Suddenly she sat up, fixed her eyes on his, and shuddered.
"I"m all right, Jim. Let"s go," she said. "I can walk now."
She staggered to her feet. Jim put out his hand to support her, but she shook her head. Jim touched old Parrish on the arm. He started and uttered a wild screech; then seemed to come to himself and rose.
But that screech of his was re-echoed from the mountainside above.
Other voices took up the echoes. Lucille clutched at Jim in a frenzy of fear.
"The Drilgoes!" she whispered. "They"re on our trail!"
Seizing old Parrish by the arm, Jim started to drag him into the recesses of the fern forest. Suddenly the b.e.s.t.i.a.l face of a Drilgo appeared.
A yell broke from the man"s throat. The hairy arm shot back. Jim saw the stone tip of the long spear poised overhead. He leaped forward, delivering a blow in the man"s midriff with all the strength of his right arm.
The Drilgo grunted and doubled forward, the spear falling from his hand. The heavy head of stone embedded itself in the soft ground, so that the spear remained upright. As the man collapsed he yelled at the top of his voice.
"This way! This way!" gibbered old Parrish, suddenly alert.
But now the undergrowth all about them was alive with Drilgoes. The three dodged and doubled like hunted hares. High overhead something began to clack with a sound like that made by a woodp.e.c.k.e.r drilling a tree, but infinitely louder.
And out of the void above came Tode"s voice, shouting commands to the Drilgoes in their own language.
Suddenly a column of fire shot up from the volcano, infusing the white mists with a reddish glare. Overhead the three could see Tode. He was flying with a pair of mechanical wings strapped to his shoulders, not more than two hundred feet above them. With a shout of triumph he swooped down. In his hand was a small cylinder, about the mouth of which a phosph.o.r.escent violet light was beginning to play.
"I"ve got you, Dent," he screamed in triumph, hovering above the three, while the wings drummed and vibrated till they seemed the mere play of light and shadow about Tode"s shoulders. "Halt, or I"ll blast your body and soul to h.e.l.l! Halt, or I"ll kill _her_!"
The deadly tube was pointing steadily at Lucille"s body as Tode hovered ten feet overhead, perfectly still save for the whirring wings. The three stopped dead, and Tode, with a shout of triumph, began calling the Drilgoes, who swarmed forward out of the undergrowth.
Huge brown bodies, nude save for their skins of jungle-cat or serpent, they emerged, quickly forming a ring about the three prisoners. Tode fluttered to the ground.
"Fools, did you think you could escape that way?" he asked. "As for you, Dent. I"m going to convince you of the reality of four-dimensional s.p.a.ce as you would not be convinced in the old days. Do you know what I"m going to do with you? I"m going to strip the skin from you with the ray, and take you into the anatomical room at Columbia University and leave you there as an exhibit, Dent!"
Tode grinned like a madman. But Jim was looking past him, at something that had suddenly appeared upon the far horizon.