The Time Trap by Henry Kuttner Page B

the Sumerian said hoarsely. “This is magic indeed!”
    The girl touched Murdach’s arm. “What of my people? The robots may slay them.”
    “No. Their energy must be renewed periodically, or they’re lifeless and inanimate. Without Greddar Klon to do that, they’ll run down—lose their life-force. Your people are safe enough, Alasa.”
    “But my epoch isn’t,” Mason grunted. He was beginning to understand something of the incredible task before them. How could they find Greddar Klon in the vast immensity of time—and, if they succeeded in finding him, how could they defeat the super-science of the Master, augmented, perhaps, by the powers of a dozen future civilizations?
    As though guessing his thought, Murdach said, “I can locate Greddar Klon easily enough. His ship causes a warp in the space-time continuum that instruments can detect. But as for fighting him—I would like to get aid first. We can best do that far in the future. Surely there must exist there some weapon that will destroy the Master!”
    He touched the instrument board. Once more darkness blanketed them. Mason felt the girl’s soft body huddle against him, and he put a protective arm about her. The Sumerian was cursing softly and fluently.
    And the ship raced into time, into the cryptic twilight of Earth, driving blindly toward mystery and toward horror inconceivable!

Chapter VII

In Time’s Abyss
    Light came. They hung a thousand feet about the black, sullen waters of a sea that stretched to the horizon. There was no sign of land. In a black, star-studded sky loomed a globe of dull silver, incredibly vast. Its diameter covered fully a third of the heavens.
    Mason said uncomprehendingly, “The Moon—but it’s close, Murdach—very close! How far in the future have we gone?”
    Murdach’s face was white. He eyed the instruments, reached out a tentative hand, withdrew it. Hesitating, he said, “Something is wrong. I did not know—”
    “Wrong?” The Sumerian growled an oath. “You said you’d mastered this hell-chariot!”
    “I—I thought I had. But it is abstruse—Greddar Klon came from a more advanced world than mine.”
    “We’re not—” Mason felt oddly cold as he asked the question. “We’re not marooned here, are we!”
    Murdach’s lips tightened. He gripped a lever, swung it over. His slim fingers danced over the control panel. Nothing happened.
    “For a while, at least,” he said at last. “I cannot send the machine into time. But soon I can discover what’s wrong, or at least I think so.”
    Alasa smiled, though her eyes were frightened golden pools. “Then do your best, Murdach. The sooner you succeed, the sooner we’ll find the Master.”
    “No, no,” Murdach told her impatiently. “We’ll find Greddar Klon in a certain time-sector. Whether we start now or in an hour or in fifty years will make no difference.”
    “Fifty years!” Erech’s vulturine face was worried. “And in the meantime—what will we live on? What will we eat?”
    Ten hours later the question reoccurred. Both Murdach and Mason were haggard and red-eyed from their calculations and their study of the time-ship’s principles. The former said at last, “How long this will take I don’t know. We’d better find food. Too bad we took none with us.”
    “Where?” the Sumerian asked. He glanced around expressively at the bleak, lonely expanse of sea and Moon-filled sky. “I think Ran, the goddess of the Northmen, has claimed the world for her own. The ocean-goddess…”
    “There’ll be land,” Mason said rather hopelessly as Murdach sent the ship lancing through the air. “If we go far enough.”
    But it was no long distance to the shore—a flat, barren plain of grayish sandy soil, eroded to a horizontal monotony by the unceasing action of wind and wave. No mountains were visible. Only the depressingly drab land, stretching away to a dark horizon. And there was no life. No animals, no vegetation; a chill emptiness that seemed