out of ages long before his own, riding through this unearthly world of two million years in the future! But his sense of wonder faded as the desperate urgency of their mission repossessed his thoughts.
"It's plain enough to a certain extent what happened," he called as he rode. "Kim Idim and Chin came into this time by means of his projector, and built that little house in the forest and lived there alone. And then the Masters heard of their existence, and came to capture them."
"But it still ain't plain to me," retorted Hank Martin, "where them Masters themselves came from."
"From another world, that dying warrior said," Ethan reminded him. And he nodded, momentarily thoughtful, "They looked like creatures of another planet, all right. Yet how did a few of them conquer and enslave all humans on Earth?"
They emerged suddenly, after only a few minutes ride through the toadstool forest, onto a great, empty grass plain. Its rolling swales stretched to the distant horizon, upon which was poised the enormous, dull-red orb of the setting sun.
Reining their horses and gazing ahead, they made out presently against the glowing red shield of the sun-disk, a far-distant cluster of black domes and minarets.
"That's Luun!" exclaimed Ethan eagerly.
Hank Martin's keen eyes squinted. "It's plenty far away. It'll be near midnight, time we get there."
As they spurred forward, the huge red sun-shield sank rapidly from sight, and the distant towers of Luun quickly vanished in gathering shadows.
Stars pricked out in the darkening sky, and looked down like curious white eyes at the little company that rode steadily on across the night-shrouded plain. Into the sky slowly wheeled strange constellations that Ethan Drew could not recognize, new star-patterns of this future time.
As he rode, he looked up at the planets that shone with calm brightness amid the twinkling stars. From which of those planets had come those red-skinned, hollow-eyed Masters who now were rulers of old Earth?
To Ethan's frantically anxious mind, the ride across the plain beneath those wheeling stars seemed endless. But at last the black domes and towers of Luun loomed large against the light-gemmed heavens, a mile ahead. They had been riding for some time through cultivated fields and pastures.
"Slow down," Ethan called tensely to the others. "From now on, we've got to act like an ordinary group of Luunian soldiers, riding back into the city after duty."
"Me, I don't cotton to cities," muttered Hank Martin, staring distrustfully at the black mass of structures. "An' how can we find Kim Idim an' the gal in thet big place?"
"Why, we'll ask one of these people," declared Pedro Lopez. "And if he won't tell us, we'll cut his throat and ask another."
"That is splendid strategy, Pedro," commented Ptah ironically. "A man who can think up such ruses as that ought to be a general of armies."
"Why, it is nothing " Lopez began grandiloquently, and then as he heard Ptah chuckling in the dark, he exclaimed furiously, "Do you dare make mock of me? I'll show you that Pedro Lopez, the veteran of a hundred pitched battles and countless minor skirmishes, is not to be "
"Shut up, Pedro," rasped Ethan.
