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reading dials and gauges. His gnarled scarred hands deftly set controls, and
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moved the shining wheel. Aware of the soft steady thrum of the converter
beneath, Lanning realized that the
Chronion was moving again, through the blue nickering chasm. Through time?
"I went alone," Wil McLan looked back to him, with hollow, haunted eyes. "For
the
Chronion, with all her millions of horsepower, could not have drawn a crew of
sound men from their places in time. Even alone, I had difficulty. An
overloaded field coil burned out. The laboratory caught fire, and I was badly
injured. The very accident, however, so weakened my future geodesies that the
time-drive could pull me out. At the very instant the burning building
collapsed, we broke free into the tune stream."
The dark, smouldering eyes stared away into the shimmering abyss beyond the
crystal dome.
"You have seen Gyronchi, in the chronoscope." The old man shuddered. "And one
look at my body can tell you enough of what reception I had from Sorainya,
when at last I came to her red citadel."
The lean, white-wealed face went hard again with agony and hate. Great tears
burst suddenly from the sunken eyes.
The broken, bloodless claws of hands came up again, unconsciously, to the
bright silver tube. Lanning looked quickly away, until McLan went on:
"Excuse my self-pity, Denny. And I shall spare you the
Commander of the Legion
43
humiliating details of Sorainya's treachery. The instant she had lured me off
the ship, her monsters seized me. She mocked me for daring to desire the queen
of Gyronchi, and offered me my life for the secrets of the time ship.
"When I wouldn't talk, she threw me into her dungeons, and turned the
Chronion over to the priests of the gyrane."
The whisper had become a thin, dry sobbing. "For ten years, in her torture
vaults, Sorainya tried to extract my secrets, while her priests studied the
ship."
The sobbing ceased. The dreadful eyes went shut. The seamed, livid face of Wil
McLan, terrible with its web of white scars, became a mask of death. His
twisted body quivered, and his breath was a hurried gasping. Lanning looked
away again, until at last the old man whispered:
"It was Lethonee who set me free; I think you know her."
A little tremor of eagerness and dread ran over Dennis Lanning. He tried to
speak, made only a little gulping sound, and waited silently.
"She came to me in Sorainya's dungeons," said Wil McLan. "White and beautiful,
holding her time crystal that's another geodesic tracer, somewhat like my
chronoscope.
"Lethonee forgave all the harm my experiments had done Jonbar. She planned my
escape. She searched time for the hour when the disposition of the guarding
giants would make it possible. She examined the locks, and brought me
measurements, for the keys, which I carved, there in the cell, from the bones
of a previous occupant.
"When the chosen night came, she guided me out of the dungeons, through the
quarters of Sorainya's sleeping soldiers the queen had them roasted alive when
she found that I was gone. Lethonee picked out a safe way for me down the
cliff, and across Gyronchi to the black temple.
"Glarath and his priests had taken the
Chronion there. Apparently they had dismantled and studied the drive. Perhaps
they had not understood it completely, however, for they had not ventured on
any time trips of their own. But with what they learned, and power from the
gyrane, they had made a golden shell------"
Lanning caught his breath.
44
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The Legion of Time
"I've seen that!" he gasped. "Carrying Sorainya!"
"Her projected image," said Wil McLan. "But Lethonee guided me to the temple,"
he resumed his whispered narrative.
"The alarm spread. The fighting things roused the priests. With seconds to
spare, I got aboard the
Chronion, started the converters, and escaped into time. I returned to the
early twentieth century. And then at last, guided by Lethonee down the fainter
geodesies of her possible world, I came to Jonbar."
"Jonbar " Lanning interrupted again, with a quick gesture at the crystal block
of the chronoscope. "Can we see
Jonbar, in that? And Lethonee?"
Very gravely, Wil McLan shook his white, haggard head.
"Presently, we shall try," he whispered. "But the probability factor of Jonbar
has become so small that I can reach it only with the utmost power of the
scanning beam, and then the images are very poor. For Jonbar is at the brink
of doom."
His broken fingers touched the thin white cylinder that hung from his throat.
"But there is still one chance." A stern light flashed in his hollowed eyes.
"Jonbar hasn't given up. It was Lethonee's father, an archeologist digging in
the Rockies where my laboratory used to be, who found there the charred books
and age-rusted mechanisms from which he rediscovered the secret of time.
"He made the time crystal. With it, Lethonee soon discovered the menace born
of my unwitting tampering with probability. And she brought me to Jonbar to
aid the defense. That is why I have been gathering up you and your men,
Denny."
Lanning was staring at him, frowning.
"I don't understand," he muttered. "What can we do?"
"These two possible worlds, each armed with the secret of time, are fighting
for survival." A fierce glint burned in the old man's eyes. "Either Jonbar or
Gyron-chi either Lethonee or Sorainya may exist. But not both. The battle is
on, all along the front of time. The outcome will be fixed by that higher
progression, in the fifth dimension."
Commander of the
Legion 45
"But you can see the future," broke in Lanning. "Can't you tell?"
"The chronoscope reveals no certainties," said McLan. "Only
probabilities which it changes even as it reveals them." His white head shook.
"I know, though, that the balance of probability is far in favor of Sorainya."
Desperately, Lanning had clutched at his thin shoulder.
"But we can help?" he demanded. "What is our part?"
"No direct geodesies link Jonbar and Gyronchi," explained McLan. "Therefore
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