pace, as we believed in the old days, and I've
proved it."

Jim saw Tode touch the screw that controlled the fourth dial, and
instantly it was borne in on him that each of the dials controlled one
spatial dimension. This fourth, then, was the time dimension!

Could it be true that Tode had solved the practical problem of
traveling in time, theoretically implied since the discoveries of
Einstein?

He had known in the old days that the Atom Smasher might be adapted to
this purpose, but neither Parrish nor he had dreamed of turning aside
from their endeavor to utilize it for the purpose of releasing atomic
energy.

Thump! Thump! The familiar old sound, rushing back into memory after
all those years, the release of the electrical discharge, echoing
through infinity! The scrub around the pool blurred and was gone. A
vast gray panorama extended itself on either side of them.

They were travelling--in space--and time too. Jim no longer doubted.
And, chilled with horror, he sat there, his arm about Lucille's
unconscious form.

CHAPTER III

_Into the Infinite_

How long he sat there he did not know. Minutes or hours seemed all the
same to him. Nothing but that gray monochrome, of neither light nor
darkness, that endless panorama of miles and years, blended together
into this chaos!

But suddenly there came a shout from Tode. The blur ceased, the lights
flickered. Again there sounded the two thumps of the electrical
discharge. The vibrating mechanism grew steady. Above them, out of the
grayness, a moon disclosed itself, then the pin-points of stars. All
about them was an immense, sandy waste.

"Know where we are, Dent?" came Tode's chuckle.

Jim was not sufficiently master of himself to attempt to answer.

"We are on what will be the Russian steppes some fifty thousand years
ahead of us in time," grinned Tode. "This is an interlude between two
ice ages. Observe how pleasantly warm the climate is, for Russia.
Unfortunately the receding glaciers carried off the top-soil, which
accounts for the barrenness of the district, but in another century
this country will be overgrown with ferns, and inhabited by the
mastodon and wild horse, and a few enterprising palaeolithic hunters,
who will come in to track them down and destroy them with their stone
axes."

* * * * *

"I think you're the same sort of damn liar you always were, Tode,"
answered Jim--but without conviction. There was some