You are safe. And your friends will be located."
"_Will_ be located! Don't you _know_ where they are?" Bert laid handson the big man's wrists and shook him impatiently. The stranger wastoo calm and unmoved in the face of this tremendous thing which hadcome to pass.
"I know where they have been taken, yes. But there is no need of hasteout here in infra-dimensional space, for time stands still. We willfind it a simple matter to reach the plane of their captors, theBardeks, within a few seconds after your friends arrive there. Myplane segregator--this sphere--will accomplish this in due season."
* * * * *
Strangely, Bert believed him. This talk of dimensions and planes andof the halting of time was incomprehensible, but somehow there wascommunicated to his own restless nature something of the placidserenity of the white-haired stranger. He regarded the man moreclosely, saw there was an alien look about him that marked him asdifferent and apart from the men of Earth. His sole garment was a widebreech clout of silvery stuff that glinted with changing colors--huesforeign to nature on Earth. His was a superhuman perfection ofmuscular development, and there was an indescribable mingling ofgentleness and sternness in his demeanor. With a start, Bert notedthat his fingers were webbed, as were his toes.
"Sa-ay," Bert exclaimed, "who are you, anyway?"
The stranger permitted himself the merest ghost of a smile. "You maycall me Wanderer," he said. "I am the Wanderer of Infinity."
"Infinity! You are not of my world?"
"But no."
"You speak my language."
"It is one of many with which I am familiar."
"I--I don't understand." Bert Redmond was like a man in a trance,completely under the spell of his amazing host's personality.
"It is given to few men, to understand." The Wanderer fell silent, hisarms folded across his broad chest. And his great shoulders bowed asunder the weight of centuries of mankind's cares. "Yet I would haveyou understand, O Man-Called-Bert, for the tale is a strange one andis heavy upon me."
It was uncanny that this Wanderer should address him by name. Bertthrilled to a new sense of awe.
"But," he objected, "my friends are in the hands of the spider men.You said we'd go to them. Good Lord, man, I've got to do it!"
"You forget that time means nothing here. We will go to them inprecise synchronism with the proper time as existent in that plane."
* * * * *
The Wanderer's intense gaze held Bert speechless, hypnotized. A swiftdimming of the sphere's diffused illumination came immediately, anddarkness swept down like a blanket, thick and stifling. This was noordinary darkness, but utter absence of light--the total obscurity ofErebus. And the hidden motors throbbed with sudden new vigor.
"Behold!" At the Wanderer's exclamation the enclosing sphere becametransparent and they were in the midst of a dizzying maelstrom offlashing color. Brilliant geometric shapes, there were, whirling offinto the vastness of space; as Bert had seen them in Tom Parker'sinstrument. A gigantic arc of rushing light-forms spanning the blackgulf of an unknown cosmos. And in the foreground directly under thesphere was a blue-white disk, horizontally fixed--a substantial andfamiliar object, with hazy surroundings likewise familiar.
"Isn't that the metal platform in my friend's laboratory?" asked Bert,marveling.
"It is indeed." The mellow voice of the Wanderer was grave, and helaid a hand on Bert's arm. "And for so long as it exists itconstitutes a serious menace to your civilization. It is a gateway toyour world, a means of contact with your plane of existence for thosemany vicious hordes that dwell in other planes of the fifth dimension.Without it, the Bardeks had not been able to enter and effect thekidnaping of your friends. Oh, I tried so hard to warn them--Parkerand the girl--but could not do it in time."
A measure of understanding came to Bert Redmond. This was the thingJoan had feared and which Tom Parker had neglected to consider. Theforces which enabled the scientist to see into the mysterious planesof this uncharted realm were likewise capable of providing physicalcontact between the planes, or actual travel from one to the other.Tom had not learned how to use the forces in this manner, but theBardeks had.
* * * * *
"We travel now along a different set of coordinates, those ofspace-time," said the Wanderer. "We go into the past, through eons oftime as it is counted in your world."
"Into the past," Bert repeated. He stared foolishly at his host, whoseeyes glittered strangely in the flickering light.
"Yes, we go to my home--to what was my home."
"To your home? Why?" Bert shrank before the awful contorted face ofthe Wanderer. A spasm of ferocity had crossed it on his last words.Some fearful secret must be gnawing at the big man's vitals.
"Again you must trust me. To understand, it is necessary that yousee."
The gentle whir of machinery rose to a piercing shriek as the Wanderermanipulated the tiny levers of a control board that was set in thesmooth transparent wall. And the rushing light-forms outside became ablur at first, then a solid stream of cold liquid fire into which theyplunged at breakneck speed.
There was no perceptible motion of the sphere, however. It was theonly object that seemed substantial and fixed in an intangible andmadly gyrating universe. Its curved wall, though transparent, wassolid, comforting to the touch.
Standing by his instrument board, the Wanderer was engrossed in atabulation of mathematical data he was apparently using in setting themany control knobs before him. Plotting their course through infinity!His placid serenity of countenance had returned, but there was a neweagerness in his intense gaze and his strong fingers trembled while hemanipulated the tiny levers and dials.
* * * * *
Outside the apparently motionless sphere, a never-ending riot of colorsurged swiftly and silently by, now swirling violently in greatsweeping arcs of blinding magnificence, now changing character anddriving down from dizzying heights as a dim-lit column of gray thatmight have been a blast of steam from some huge inverted geyser of thecosmos. Always there were the intermittent black bands that flashedswiftly across the brightness, momentarily darkening the sphere andthen passing on into the limbo of this strange realm between planes.
Abruptly then, like the turning of a page in some gigantic book, theswift-moving phantasmagoria swung back into the blackness of theinfinite and was gone. Before them stretched a landscape of rollinghills and fertile valleys. Overhead, the skies were a deep blue,almost violet, and twin suns shone down on the scene. The spheredrifted along a few hundred feet from the surface.
"Urtraria!" the Wanderer breathed reverently. His white head was bowedand his great hands clutched the small rail of the control board.
In a daze of conflicting emotions, Bert watched as this land of peaceand plenty slipped past beneath them. This, he knew, had been the homeof Wanderer. In what past age or at how great a distance it was fromhis own world, he could only imagine. But that the big man who calledhimself Wanderer loved this country there was not the slightest doubt.It was a fetish with him, a past he was in duty bound to revisit timeand again, and to mourn over.
Smooth broad lakes, there were, and glistening streams that ran theirwinding courses through well-kept and productive farmlands. Andscattered communities with orderly streets and spacious parks. Roads,stretching endless ribbons of wide metallic surface across thecountryside. Long two-wheeled vehicles skimming over the roads withspeed so great the eye could scarcely follow them. Flapping-wingedships of the air, flying high and low in all directions. A great cityof magnificent dome-topped buildings looming up suddenly at thehorizon.
The sphere proceeded swiftly toward the city. Once a great air liner,flapping huge gossamerlike wings, drove directly toward them. Bertcried out in alarm and ducked instinctively, but the ship passed_through_ them and on its way. It was as if they did not exist in thisspherical vehicle of the dimensions.
* *
* * *
"We are here only as onlookers," the Wanderer explained sadly, "andcan have no material existence here. We can not enter this plane, forthere is no gateway. Would that there were."
Now they were over the city and the sphere came to rest above aspacious flat roof where there were luxurious gardens and pools, and asmall glass-domed observatory. A woman was seated by one of the pools,a beautiful woman with long golden hair that fell in soft profusionover her ivory shoulders and bosom. Two children, handsome stalwartboys of probably ten and twelve, romped with a domestic animal whichresembled a foxhound of Earth but had glossy short-haired fur andflippers like these of a seal. Suddenly these three took to the waterand splashed with much vigor and joyful shouting.
The Wanderer gripped