She checked herself. What was this? I couldn't imagine.
"I have some ideas," she suddenly added, still more softly. Her furtive gaze back to my door made my heart began to pound.
"What?" I murmured. "Ideas of what? Surely you realize you can trust me, Rhadana?"
She nodded. Stood staring at me an instant, with her bosom rising and falling with the emotion of her pondered plans. Whatever they were, it seemed to me suddenly that I could use this woman, perhaps to escape with Doris and Blake. Did she hate Tork, and yet want to be Empress of this new world?
"We will talk again," she murmured. At my door she regarded me again with that mocking little half smile, and then she glided away into the luminous humming corridor.
TWO days; two nights more of that weird fantastic trip. The first time of sleep was over. And all through those next hours of existence as we were living it here on the ship, I stared out at the tumbled, blurred ruins of the great city. The hills and rivers here were obvious now. Changed, eroded contours from those I had known in my own time-world. Ruins of a city. Storms were burying them in silt.
Then there was a cataclysm. For a time it seemed that water was here; but then it receded, so that off to the right the huge Atlantic ocean was rolling up, grey and blurred, fairly close to us; and to the left, the buried city sank under silt and tangled vegetation.
Our forward acceleration was slowing now; a retardation of time-flow for a while more rapid than our acceleration. And the scene which I had thought was empty, now suddenly began to show movement again—transitory little structures that man was struggling to erect, which could endure perhaps hardly a century. I could see them rising, then breaking and melting away. And others coming. Always smaller. Enduring now only a year or two, but our slow velocity at last made them apparent; crude little dwellings.
That day passed for us; and still another time of sleep. The time-dials were nearing two million A.D. when the sound of tramping feet and the frightened voices of girls aroused me, made me realize that we were almost ready to disembark. In the control turret, Blake gripped me.
"If only we could get Doris away from them," he whispered. Get this damned ship and run it back. I've been studying how it operates, Bob."
"Yes, so have I. If only—"
Futile plans. The big red-shirted fellow named Greggson was watching us now, a leer on his face, his hand at a weapon which dangled by his side.
"Almost there," Tork said. "Two million and ten A.D. The New Era. The world of Tork—Emperor of the Earth. . . . Oh, there you are, little Doris. Come here by me. You see how fortunate you are that Tork likes you."
Rhadana brought Doris to us, evidently at Tork's command. The woman flung me a furtive, seemingly significant glance, then glided away. Tork did not see it, but Blake did.
"What the devil," he whispered.
"Quiet, I'll tell you later. Just a chance for us, maybe."
Tork called out a warning and flung the last time-switch. My senses reeled. Down the corridor, I could hear the voices of the captive girls crying out, and Rhadana quieting them.
Then the humming was gone. The luminous, opalescent ribs of the ship were solid and dark-grey. Through the barred window, a dull-red sunlight was
