attention. Zurzal attempted to fend off the Jat and still keep his weapon poised.
Once more the flitter banked, withdrew towards the hillock, and the wild Skrem gathered. How many charges they could hold off Jofre dared not try to guess. He believed he did know what those in the flitter had in mind—the wearing down, even the death of him and his companions, whereupon they could move in and take what they wanted. Yet surely those aloft must have superior arms on board—why this cat-and-mouse play with them and the wild Skrem? Except perhaps that they needed Zurzal to operate the machine and so were willing to keep their attackers at bay for now lest they destroy the scanner.
The Jat turned away from Zurzal and threw itself at the scanner while Zacathan, with a hissing cry, his neck frill an engorged crimson, clutched vainly after him. But the maneuver of the Jat brought the Zacathan's hand down on the controls.
There was a sound which drowned out the flitter. Jofre saw that machine tremble in the air, dip sidewise, as if its equilibrium was disturbed. Color, sound burst from behind. Jofre, by the very weight of that blow on his ears, was pushed against one of the rocks which had been part of their shelter for the night. It took some seconds for his eyes to adjust to the flow of images, so merged one with the other that it was difficult to see any one clearly. There appeared to be beings mounted and riding. Someone dressed not unlike the Axe was haranguing a mob of people into which the mounted warriors flowed and comingled—then the whole scene began to flicker at the edges—
Jofre was half knocked from his place by the thud of a small body against him. He threw out an arm to fend the Jat off, still so bemused by that swirl of pictures before him that he did not defend himself fully against that scrabbling paw.
Yan was gone, swallowed up by the play of pictures in the air fanning out farther and farther from the center point of the cone hill which was no longer that, but a great, towered keep more imposing than the largest of the Lairs.
The—the stone—the stone was gone! Jofre stumbled away from the rock support. Yan had taken his stone. Then—
There was no more change, weaving, misting about what he was watching. Instead it steadied into a clear stretch of a different world. The mounted warriors charged the crowd gathered around the priest. People who resembled the maned natives of the present produced weapons from beneath their robes, cut at the mounts, dragged riders like the Skrem from their beasts.
It was so real! Jofre edged closer to the rock and felt a body beside him. Taynad's breath came fast against his cheek. Forgotten was the attack from the chasm beasts. There was certainly no flitter in the air over this battle which they watched rage back and forth across a city so long lost that there was not even a dim memory of it left.
From the towered citadel issued more troops—these on foot. They were real, three-dimensional. Jofre could see them as well as if he had been there on the day when all this had happened.
Footmen fought footmen; those who were the priest's followers showed such ferocity one could only believe that they had good reason to hate the fortress guard. There were leaders standing out among them now. The priest was swept from his command position by a red-maned warrior who was a woman! Jofre could hear ancient screams, echoing from so far down the corridors of time that they were but whispers.
On and on it went. Then there was the seeming of a curtain which dropped between them and that wild scene. Figures moved within that mist but not so violently, and it seemed to Jofre that they did not war—that the struggle was perhaps now ended or else time had jumped and it had not yet begun.
There were clearings of that curtain now and then but only for very short periods of time, just enough to give hints of a city fallen into decay. Afterwards strangers unlike any Jofre had seen on Lochan moved through those crumbling ruins. Until at last there was a final flicker and once more they were in the ruins under the heavy sun.
Zurzal knelt by the scanner, his hand out to the machine, not quite touching it. His frill seemed made of iridescent color, as if one emotion mingled with another to set it so agleam. His eyes were on the stretch of country before him as if they still saw all which had swirled there.
'Sssssssseee, sssseee—' his voice was a jubilant hiss.
However, Jofre had pulled Taynad around so that they both faced, not the country across which that picture had brought life, but the edge of the chasm. Those Skrem who had been brought down, either by Zurzal's weapon or their own efforts, still lay there. One or two not locked into stass were crawling towards the tip of the cut. For the rest—they were gone even as if they had also been swept away by the winds of the past.
'It—it was the Lair stone—' Taynad's voice was uneven, she breathed as one who had been running. 'Did you not see—Yan, the Lair stone—the Jat took it—put it in the scanner for power. How did it know what to do? Why the Lair stone?'
She looked to Jofre as might a child who needed some answer to an important question.
Yan squatted still by the scanner. As the Zacathan, the Jat was staring out to the dregs of the past. Jofre had no answer for her. Yan had been fascinated by the stone, he had sensed it in Jofre's possession before he had ever tried to take it in the night. But why had the creature known that it must be fitted into the scanner? How much had Yan ever understood about their quest and what they wanted to do here?
'Yan knows more than we can tell. He has his own reasons—perhaps sometime he will share those with us —'
She had gotten only so far when they heard again the sound of the flitter beat—coming out of the north. To bring on them again the horde from the chasm?
Certainly those in the flitter had done nothing to help them ward off the attack from the chasm; therefore, they were not to be depended upon now.
'Down—take cover—' Jofre had just time to shout that warning when the Jat streaked at a speed they had never seen it produce before, straight for the guard. Yan leaped, aiming for his head and shoulders. This was an attack for which the man had in no way been prepared. At the same time he staggered backward, trying to claw with one hand to free himself from the furry body pressed close enough to blind him, the forepaws which enwrapped his neck, there came another blow.
Jofre whirled around, fighting to keep his feet, but his bones might have softened in an instant. He crumpled to the ground, half bouncing off a rock. But even that encounter failed to scrape the Jat away and its body was now a lump-load on his chest. The guard found it sheer agony to get a breath, and he realized that, for the second time, he had taken a bolt from a stass stunner, leaving him easy prey for any attack.
