Page:Weird Tales volume 33 number 04.djvu/64

 And the brooding loneliness in his dark face deepened.

"Swain, and Pedro Lopez, and all the rest," he whispered. "And Chiri—if I could only see them all again"

Then sick hopelessness came over his features. His tall, broad-shouldered figure sagged.

"No," he muttered dully, "That was all a million years away."

A million years!

Holding the sword tightly, Ethan Drew no longer saw the luxurious, lamplit room about him. He was looking into memory now—into memory of the future.

He saw himself as he had been two years before, Private Ethan Drew of the French Foreign Legion, ambushed with a patrol of his comrades by Arab raiders in the deep Sahara, his companions all dead, and he, the last survivor, about to be killed, when suddenly the miracle had happened.

There had been a blaze of light and force about him, and he had known nothing more. And when he had awakened, it had been in a strange place and a strange time—a time a million years in the future.

He had been drawn across those ages of time by Kim Idim, old scientist of that far day, and Chiri, his slim, lovely daughter. And five other men had been drawn out of past ages by the old scientist, too—five fighting-men of different times, snatched across the abyss of the ages by the old scientist's potent time-ray.

Hank Martin, Rocky Mountain trapper of Kit Carson's day; John Crewe, Puritan soldier of the army of Oliver Cromwell; Pedro Lopez, Spanish conquistador of the troops of Cortez; Swain Njallson, huge Viking sea-raider of the Tenth Century; and Ptah, soldier of the armies of ancient Egypt; these were the five who had been drawn out of their own times into the future, the same as Ethan Drew.

Ethan had found them staunch and loyal comrades, those five warriors from the past. Together, he and they had dared the perils of that far future time.

Together, they had helped the girl Chiri save her father, Kim Idim. from those who meant to use the old scientist's time-ray for evil purposes.

And at the last, when the very land was sinking under them all into the sea, old Kim Idim had saved the six comrades from death by sending them back, each to his own time. Ethan Drew had awakened once more in the Sahara, in the very year and day from which he had been drawn.

What had happened to Kim Idim and Chiri? That question had been a throbbing wonder in Ethan's mind ever since. Had the old scientist and his daughter escaped into some still further time in Earth's future, as they had planned? Or had they been engulfed by the catastrophe of the sinking continent, and met their deaths?

He did not know. He would never know, and that realization was a cold ache in his heart. He would never again fight shoulder to shoulder with those five loyal comrades from the past. He would never again see Chiri, that lovely girl of the far future whom he had learned to love.

Ethan turned slowly. Still holding the sword, he stepped wearily through the open French doors onto the terrace of his penthouse. He stood there against the parapet, gazing with hopeless longing into the night.

New York slept, a vast pattern of twinkling lights, stretched under dark, low-hanging banks of cloud. Westward, against the cloud-curtain, glided