* * * * *

He helped me to a better position to withstand the force of the great
roller that came plunging down upon us like a moving mountain.
Virginia was in his arms, too exhausted to do more than cling to him.

"What can we do?" I sputtered, shaking water from my head.

"Not a thing! We're in a pretty bad fix, I imagine. In a few seconds
we will feel the attraction of the meteor's field--the force with
which I tried to draw Virginia to the crater through the fourth
dimension. I don't know what will happen; we may be jerked out of
space altogether. And if that doesn't get us, the tide and the octopus
will!"

His voice was drowned in the roar of the coming wave. A mountain of
water deluged us. Half drowned, I clung to the rock against the mad
water.

Then blinding blue light flashed about me. A sharp crash rang in my
ears, like splintering glass. I reeled, and felt myself falling
headlong.

* * * * *

I brought up on soft sand.

I sat up, dumbfounded, and opened my eyes. I was sitting on the steep
sandy tide of a conical pit. Charlie and Virginia were sprawled beside
me, looking as astonished as I felt. Charlie got to his knees and
lifted the limp form of the girl in his arms.

Something snapped in my brain. The sand-walled pit was suddenly
familiar. I got to my feet and clambered out of it. I saw that we were
on our own landing field.

Astonishingly, we were back in the meteor crater. Charlie's vanished
apparatus was scattered about us. I saw the gray side of the rough
iron meteorite itself, half-buried in the sand at the bottom of the
pit.

"What--what happened?" I demanded of Charlie.

"Don't you see? Simple enough. I should have thought of it before. The
field of the meteorite brought Virginia--and us--through to this point
in space. But it could not bring us back through time; instead, the
apparatus itself was jerked forward through time. That is why it
vanished. We got here just twelve hours and forty minutes after I
closed the switch, since we had been looking that far into the future.
The mathematical explanation--"

"That's enough for me!" I said hastily. "We better see about a warm,
dry bed for Virginia, and some hot soup or something."

* * * * *

Now the rough gray meteorite, in a neat glass case, rests above the
mantel in the library of a beautiful home where I am a frequent guest.
I was ther