Invaders from the Infinite Part 16

But suddenly several others, who had come up from one side, appeared from behind a rock. The scientists were wearing their power suits, and had them on at low power, leaving a weight of about fifty pounds. Morey, with his normal weight well over two hundred, jumped far to one side of a clumsy rush of a peasant, leaped back, and caught him from behind.

Lifting the smaller man above his head, he hurled him at two others following. The three went down in a heap.

Most of the men were about five feet tall, and rather lightly built. The "Greek G.o.d" had not yet materialized among them. They were probably poorly fed, and heavily worked. Only the leaders appeared to be in good physical condition, and the men could not develop to large stature.

Arcot and Morey were giants among them, and with their greater skill, tremendous jumping ability, and far greater strength, easily overcame the few who had come by the side. One of the leaders was picked up, and trussed quickly in a rope a fellow had carried.

"Look out," called Wade from above. Suddenly he was standing beside them, having flown down on the power suit. "Caught your thoughts--rather Zezdon Afthen did." He handed Arcot a ray pistol. The rest of the Greeks were near now, crying in amazement, and running more slowly. They didn't seem so anxious to attack. Arcot turned the ray pistol to one side.

"Wait!" called Morey. A face peered from around the rock toward which Arcot had aimed his pistol. It was that of a girl, about fifteen years old in appearance, but hard work had probably aged her face. Morey bent over, heaved on a small boulder, about two hundred pounds of rock, and rolled it free of the depression it rested in, then caught it on a molecular ray, hurled it up. Arcot turned his heat ray on it for an instant, and it was white hot. Then the molecular ray threw it over toward the great rock, and crushed it against it. Three children shrieked and ran out from the rock, scurrying down the hillside.

The soldiers had stopped. They looked at Morey. Then they looked at the great rock, three hundred yards from him. They looked at the rock fragments.

"They think you threw it," grinned Arcot.

"What else--they saw me pick it up, saw me roll it, and it flew. What else could they think?"

Arcot's heat ray hissed out, and the rocks sputtered and cracked, then glowed white. There was a dull explosion, and chips of rock flew up.

Water, imprisoned, had been turned into steam. In a moment the whistle and crackle of combined heat and molecular rays stabbing out from Arcot's hands had built a barrier of fused rocks.

Leisurely Arcot and Morey carried their now revived prisoner back to the s.h.i.+p, while Wade flew ahead to open the locks.

Half an hour later the prisoner was discharged, much to his surprise, and the s.h.i.+p rose. They had been able to learn nothing from him. Even the Greek G.o.ds, Zeus, Hermes, Apollo, all the later Greek G.o.ds, were unknown, or so greatly changed that Arcot could not recognize them.

"Well," he said at length, "it seems all we know is that they came before any historical Greeks we know of. That puts them back quite a bit, but I don't know how far. Shall we go see the Egyptians?"

They tried Egypt, a few moments across the Mediterranean, landing close to the mouth of the Nile. The people of a village near by immediately set out after them. Better prepared this time, Arcot flew out to meet them with Zezdon Afthen and Stel Felso Theu. Surely, he felt, the sight of the strange men would be no more terrifying than the s.h.i.+p or the men flying. And that did not seem to deter their attack. Apparently the proverb that "Discretion is the better part of valor," had not been invented.

Arcot landed near the head of the column, and cut off two or three men from the rest with the aid of his ray pistol. Zezdon Afthen quickly searched his mind, and with Arcot's aid they determined he did not know any of the G.o.ds that Arcot suggested.

Finally they had to return to the s.h.i.+p, disappointed. They had had the slight satisfaction of finding that the Sun G.o.d was Ralz, the later Egyptian Ra might well have been an evolved form of that name.

They restocked the s.h.i.+p, fresh game and fruits again appearing on the menu, then once again they launched forth into s.p.a.ce to wait for their own time.

"It seems to me that we must have produced some effect by our visit,"

said Arcot, shaking his head solemnly.

"We did, Arcot," replied Morey softly. "We left an impress in history, an impress that still is, and an impress that affected countless thousands.

"Meet the Egyptian G.o.ds with their heads strange to terrestrians, the G.o.ds who fly through the air without wings, come from a s.h.i.+ning house that flies, whose look, whose pointed finger melts the desert sands, and the moist soil!" he continued softly, nodding toward the Ortolian and the Talsonian.

"Their 'impossible' G.o.ds existed, and visited them. Indubitably some genius saw that here was a chance for fame and fortune and sold 'charms'

against the 'G.o.ds.' Result: we are carrying with us some of the oldest deities. Again, we did leave our imprint in history."

"And," cried Wade excitedly, "meet the great Hercules, who threw men about. I always knew that Morey was a brainless brute, but I never realized the marvelous divining powers of those Greeks so perfectly--now, the Incarnation of Dumb Power!" Dramatically Wade pointed to Morey, unable even now to refrain from some unnecessary comments.

"All right, Mercury, the messenger of the G.o.ds speaks. The little flaps on Wade's flying shoes must indeed have looked like the winged shoes of legend. Wade was Mercury, too brainless for anything but carrying the words of wisdom uttered by others.

"And Arcot," continued Morey, releasing Wade from his condescending stare, "is Jove, hurling the rockfusing, destroying thunderbolts!"

"The G.o.ds that my friends have been talking of," explained Arcot to the curious Ortolians, "are legendary deities of Earth. I can see now that we did leave an imprint on history in the only way we could--as G.o.ds, for surely no other explanation could have occurred to those men."

The days pa.s.sed swiftly in the s.h.i.+p, as their work approached completion. Finally, when the last of the equation of Time, artificial matter, and the most awful of their weapons, the unlimited Cosmic Power, had been calculated, they fell to the last stage of the work. The actual appliances were designed. Then the completed apparatus that the Ortolian and the Talsonian had been working on, was carefully investigated by the terrestrial physicists, and its mechanism studied. Arcot had great plans for this, and now it was incorporated in their control apparatus.

The one remaining problem was their exact location in time. Already their progress had brought them well up to the nineteenth century, but, as Morey sadly remarked, they couldn't tell what date, for they were sadly lacking in history. Had they known the real date, for instance, of the famous battle of Bull Run, they could have watched it in the telectroscope, and so determined their time. As it was, they knew only that it was one of the periods of the first half of the decade of 1860.

"As historians, we're a bunch of first-cla.s.s kitchen mechanics. Looks like we're due for another landing to locate the exact date," agreed Arcot.

"Why land now? Let's wait until we are nearer the time to which we belong, so we won't have to watch so carefully and so long," suggested Wade.

They argued this question for about two hundred years as a matter of fact. After that, it was academic anyway.

Chapter XVI

HOME AGAIN

They were getting very near their own time, Arcot felt. Indeed, they must already exist on Earth. "One thing that puzzles me," he commented, "is what would happen if we were to go down now, and see ourselves."

"Either we can't or we don't want to do it," pointed out Morey, "because we didn't."

"I think the answer is that nothing can exist two times at the same time-rate," said Arcot. "As long as we were in a different time-rate we could exist at two times. When we tried to exist simultaneously, we could not, and we were forced to slip through time to a time wherein we either did not exist or wherein we had not yet been. Since we were nearer the time when we last existed in normal time, than we were to the time of our birth, we went to the time we left. I suspect that we will find we have just left Earth. Shall we investigate?"

"Absolutely, Arcot, and here's hoping we didn't overshoot the mark by much." As Morey intimated, had they gone much beyond the time they left Earth, they might find conditions very serious, indeed. But now they went at once toward Earth on the time control. As they neared, they looked anxiously for signs of the invasion. Arcot spotted the only evident signs, however; two large spheres, tiny points in appearance on the telectroscope screen, were circling Earth, one at about 1,000 miles, moving from east to west, the other about 1,200 miles moving from north to south.

"It seems the enemy have retreated to s.p.a.ce to do their fighting. I wonder how long we were away."

As they swept down at a speed greater than light, they were invisible till Arcot slowed down near the atmosphere. Instantly half a dozen fast s.h.i.+ps darted toward them, but the s.h.i.+p was very evidently unlike the Thessian s.h.i.+ps, and no attack was made. First the occupants would have an opportunity to prove their friendliness.

"Terrestrians Arcot, Morey and Wade reporting back from exploration in s.p.a.ce, with two friends. All have been on Earth with us previously,"

said Arcot into the radio vision apparatus.

"Very well, Dr. Arcot. You are going to New York or Vermont?" asked the Patrol commander.

"Vermont."

"Yes, Sir. I'll see that you aren't stopped again."

And, thanks to the message thus sent ahead, they were not, and in less than half an hour they landed once more in Vermont, on the field from which they had started.

The group of scientists who had been here on their last call had gone, which seemed natural enough to them, who had been working for three months in the interval of their trip, but to Dr. Arcot senior, as he saw them, it was a misfortune.

"Now I never will get straight all you'll have ready, and I didn't expect you back till next week. The men have all gone back to their laboratories, since that permits of better work on the part of each, but we can call them here in half an hour. I'm sure they'll want to come.

What did you learn, Son, or haven't you done any calculating on your data as yet?"

"We learned plenty, and I feel quite sure that a hint of what we have would bring all those learning-hounds around us pretty quickly, Dad,"

laughed Arcot junior, "and believe it or not, we've been calculating on this stuff for three months since we left yesterday!"