now will anyone be able to find New York? Chicago? London? The steel mills of Pittsburgh? I think not. In that length of time, the action of the rain, the frost, and the sun will have completely destroyed every sign that these places once existed. Besides, the continents we now know may have sunk and new ones appeared. How could we locate the ruin of Pittsburgh if the city were at the bottom of the Atlantic? A million years ago there may have been huge cities on earth. Man is not necessarily the first race ever to appear on the planet."

Craig, listening, recognized the logic in what Michaelson had said. There might have been other races on earth! The vanity of men blinded them to that fact, when they thought about it at all. They wanted to believe they were the most important, and the only effort of creation, that the earth had come into being expressly for their benefit. Nature might have other plans.

Michaelson had suggested a logical solution for the dilemma of airplanes and flying dragons existing in the same world.

Craig saw the officers glancing uneasily in the direction from which the planes had come. Off yonder somewhere below the horizon was something. They were worried about it. Against the beasts of this time, the Idaho was all-powerful. But how would the Idaho stack up against the something that lay below the horizon? Or would the ship be able to escape back through the time fault before the threat of the mysterious planes became greater?

Out around the ship, small boats were planting charges of explosive. One boat was dashing out to the wrecked scouting plane to rescue the pilot.

"We have to see if we can get away from here, at once," Higgins said. "We have to set off those explosives and see if they will force us back through the time fault."

They had to get away from this world. There was danger here. Planes that flew as fast as the one that had gone streaking off across the sky represented danger.

Higgins ordered the planting of the explosives to proceed at the double-quick.

"I said I could definitely tell you two things," Michaelson spoke again. "One of them was that we are in the past, millions of years in the past." He spoke slowly, his eyes on the busy boats around the ship. "Are you not interested in the second of the two things I said I could tell you?"

"Yes," said Higgins. "What is it?"

The scientist sighed. "It is that we will never be able to return to our own time!"

"What? But—we are planting mines. If the explosion of the Jap bombs sent us through the time fault, maybe a second explosion will send us back through it."

Michaelson shook his head. "I have investigated the mathematics of it," he said. "It is impossible. You might as well call in your boats and save your explosives. The fact is, we are marooned in this time, forever!"

Marooned in time, forever! The words rang like bells of doom. Marooned forever. No chance of escape. No hope for escape.

"Are you sure?" Higgins questioned.

"Positive," the scientist answered.

Craig looked at the sea. He lit a cigarette, noting that it was the last one in the package. He drew the smoke into his lungs, feeling the bite of it.

Marooned in time, forever!