Page:Weird Tales volume 33 number 04.djvu/65

 the red and green lights of the late Miami plane.

"Chiri!" whispered Ethan, his lips hardly pronouncing the name.

Suddenly he stiffened. He sensed a change in the atmosphere, a strange, swiftly gathering hush and tension, a murmur as of unfamiliar forces.

He did not understand. But his gray eyes were suddenly brilliant with dawning excitement, with incredulous hope.

"Chiri?" he repeated tensely.

Then it happened. A blaze of light, a crash of thunder, all about him. And he was hurled into darkness.

clash of swords and hoarse shouts of fighting men broke on Ethan's ears as he came back to consciousness. Bewilderedly he opened his eyes. He lay in a small metal room whose high windows admitted a flood of dusky, deep red sunlight quite unlike the sunlight of his own time.

He was lying beside a squat machine of singularly grotesque appearance, crowned by a world-map globe. With a wild leap of gladness, Ethan recognized the mechanism. It was such a time-ray projector as once before had been used to draw him out of his own age into the future.

Then two heads bent frantically over him. It was an old man and a girl, both dressed in short white robes. He recognized the gray hair, thin, lined face and faded blue eyes of the man instantly. And his eyes swung to the girl's face, soft and lovely under a cloud of midnight hair, her red lips parted and dark eyes wide with anxiety.

"Chiri!" he cried, stumbling to his feet. "And Kim Idim! You've drawn me across time again, then? For two long years I've hoped and prayed that you would!"

The girl Chiri flew into his arms.

"Ethan, we are in danger!" she gasped. "This is a time two million years in the future from your age. My father and I fled into this time after the destruction of Tzar—and now the Masters who rule Earth in this age are seeking with their slaves to capture us!"

"That is why I drew you and your comrades out of the past again!" Kim Idim cried. "Only from time could I summon help, when the Masters attacked us here!"

Ethan Drew turned, appalled. Through the open door of the little metal house he saw a strange scene.

Outside lay a weird and unearthly forest of huge green toadstools, towering in the dusky light of the westering red sun. And out of this grotesque toadstool forest, white-skinned men in armor and helmets were surging with uplifted swords toward the little house.

Behind them, urging them on, were a few leaders of totally different appearance. They were tall, red-skinned men with spindly arms and legs, huge chests and high, hairless skulls from whose cadaverous faces looked hollow white eyes. These Masters did not look entirely human!

Fighting with the white slaves of the Masters, holding them back from the house, stood five men: a tall figure in buckskin and coon cap, wielding a clubbed rifle; a Spanish trooper in helmet and cuirass, swearing as he struck with his sword; a big Puritan in felt hat and homespun uniform swinging an enormous broadsword; a huge Viking whirling a gleaming ax; and a small, wiry Egyptian in bronze, stabbing viciously.

"It's Swain, and Hank Martin, and all the rest!" cried Ethan joyfully, starting toward the door.