A Startling Weird-Scientific Story Is
The Time-Raider
The Story So Far
While exploring the ruins of Angkor, Professor Cannell is captured by the Time-Raider, a creature from fifteen thousand years in the future, which sweeps back through time for its victims to build up an army of warriors with which the Kanlars can overwhelm the parent city of Kom. Cannell's friends, Wheeler and Lantin, build a time-car and pursue the Raider into the future, but are captured by the Kanlars and held prisoner with the teeming hordes of warriors in the City of the Pit. The two friends, with Denham (an English soldier of the time of George III), D'Alord (a French musketeer), Fabrius (a Roman legionary) and Ixtil (an Aztec cacique), plan to escape up the spiral stairway and flee to the city of Kom in Lantin's time-car, which is hidden near the city of the Kanlars.
CHAPTER 14
UP THE STAIR
WHEN we entered the broad clearing of the plaza, we found it almost entirely deserted. Above us loomed the winding, spiral stair, and where that stair touched the pit's floor, we saw the blaze of ruddy light that illuminated the high, barred gate of the stair. Keeping well within the shadows, we passed toward the farther edge of the plaza, and in the darkness there, Lantin and I took up our position directly beneath the lowest curve of the spiral stairway, which hung in the air some thirty feet above our heads. Even where we stood, we could hear the tramp of feet around the stair's curve, as guards came and went, constantly patrolling the lower part of the airy pathway. And, too, we heard the chatter and broken laughter of the other guards massed inside the gate.
Speaking in whispers, Denham said, "Be ready to make your attempt at any moment now. But be sure that all the guards on the stair have come down to the gateway before you try it."
"If we get out and come back with aid," I said, rapidly, "where will we find you?"
He reflected for a moment, then said, "You know that tall barracks-building at the northern edge of the pit, right under the wall?"
"The one that is roofed?" I asked, and he nodded. "Yes, that's the one. Well, we four will spend all our nights on that roof from now on. You could come straight down the shaft, in your flying-ear, and pick us up from that roof in the darkness without the knowledge of any here in the pit. But first, go and get aid from the people of Kom, as we planned."
"And Cannell?" said Lantin. "You will look for him?”
"Never fear," answered D'Alord, "we'll find him for you."
The calm voice of Fabrius broke into our speech. "It is time to do our part at the gate," he said to Denham, and the Englishman nodded. "Goodbye," he told us. "I know you'll do your best." A warm hand-clasp from each, and then they had slipped away into the shadows.
For a minute or so, Lantin and I stood silent, listening to the tramp of feet on the stair above us, and then a sudden high-pitched cry broke on our ears from the center of the plaza. It was D'Alord's voice, and he was shouting at the top of his lungs, "Out,
