cited voices sweeping through the room and then shouts of praise and joy pouring from their throats. The Leader stood before them, smiling quietly at the fanatical demonstration. At last he raised his hand for silence.
"The Time Machine leaves now!" be announced. At a gesture from him two stalwart, uniformed young men stepped to the machine. "Lieutenant Schmidt and Lieutenant Wolf," he cried fervently, "are doing their Race and their Country and their Cause great and glorious service. They have invented this machine and are prepared to take it into the glorious future which we are creating now. The mighty race which will spring from us will welcome them and honor them and return with them by the thousands to fight with their ancestors."
The two young men saluted, stepped into the machine. A thunderous roar of commendation broke from the audience, crashing between the walls with reverberating echoes.
Once more the Leader raised his hand.
"We salute you Lieutenant Schmidt and Lieutenant Wolf," he said impressively. "Our hearts and our hopes travel with you, wishing for you and for us and for the glorious races we will bring to Earth, success; mighty, magnificent success!"
He dropped his hand and one of the young men in the Time Machine moved a lever slowly to the right. The other, moved an indicator along a row of buttons stamped with units of time. Then he pressed a button. To the accompaniment of roar upon roar of triumph and hysterical encouragement the Time Machine shimmered and twisted slowly. As it turned it gradually disappeared. Bedlam broke loose; even the normally august figure of the Leader pranced in an uncontrolled ecstasy of glee.
"WE have arrived, Lieutenant Schmidt," Lieutenant Wolf, the smaller of the two men, sat quietly. "We are five hundred years into the future. It is our third stop. We tried two centuries, three centuries, four centuries and now five."
"And every time is the same," Lieutenant Schmidt answered dully. "Let us climb out. It can't be any worse."
The two men climbed out of the machine and stared despairingly about at the black and blasted surface of the earth.
"The only people we have seen," Schmidt said bitterly, "were those starving barbarians we saw two hundred years ago. Is it the end of the world? Is this what we are fighting for? To produce this?"
"Watch your tongue," Wolf snapped. "That is treason."
"Treason," Schmidt muttered disgustedly.
Their Time Machine had landed in a slight depression, surrounded on three sides by rough, craggy boulders and blasted rocks. Wolf, staring at one of the slight hills, suddenly grabbed his companion by the arm.
"I saw something move up there," he whispered tensely. He loosened his gun in its holster. "Let us investigate."
Schmidt shrugged and followed him, climbing over the rough brambles and crags that littered the side of the slope.
KOGAR and Merena crouched behind the big black boulder and silently watched the two strange creatures moving across the scarred terrain.
Sharply Kogar drew in his breath and turned his shaggy head to his mate. He licked his lips.
"These creatures live, my Merena."
