the tube, and a roar of laughter broke from
his lips.

"You fool!" he shouted. "I tell you I am a god, the one god, supreme
above all. Do you think to match your puny will against my own? I tell
you Lucille is mine. And for ever, Dent. Whenever we two have reached
old age, all that will be necessary for us to do will be to turn this
screw a hair's breadth back into the past, and we are both young
again. By holding this vessel steady in four-dimensional space, I can
achieve immortality."

"Yes, Tode," answered Jim, "but, you see, that's the one thing that
you haven't been able to work out yet."

The words seemed to come automatically from Jim's lips. It was only
after he had spoken them that he realized they were true. For a moment
Tode glared at him; then suddenly, with a shriek of insane rage, he
leaped from the instrument board and swung the ray tube with all his
might.

Jim felt the blow descend with stunning force upon his head. He
reeled, flung out his arms, and toppled forward, unconscious....

CHAPTER IV

_Escape_

An intolerably bright light that seemed to sear his eyeballs was the
first thing of which Jim was conscious. Then he became aware of his
aching head, of a sense of utter lassitude, as if he had been bruised
all over in some machine that had caught him up and held him in its
grip for endless aeons.

At last, despite the pain in his eyes, he managed to get his eyelids
open. He tried to struggle to his feet, only to discover that he was
firmly bound with what appeared to be tough creepers, pliant as ropes.

After the lapse of a few minutes, during which he struggled with the
receding waves of unconsciousness, he came to a realization of his
surroundings. That light that had so distressed him--though the
effects were now beginning to pass off--was a pillar of smoke and
flame, shooting out of the crater of a volcano about a mile away,
across a valley.

He was lying in the entrance to a cave, pegged out on his back, and
bound by the tough creepers to the stakes driven into the ground. Up
to the mouth of the cave grew huge tree-ferns, cattails, cycads, and
such growths as existed in earlier ages in the warm, moist regions of
the world.

Beneath the level of the cave a heavy white fog completely shrouded
the valley, extending up to within a short distance of the volcano
opposite. But on the upper slopes of the volcano the sunlight played,
making its crater a sheen of glassy lava, intolerably