The time-raider

by Edmond Hamilton

He looked at me more sharply. "I take it that you're no great friend of—" and he stopped, raising his eyes eloquently upward.

"The Raider?" I asked, and when he nodded I said, "Not I! I'm here to find a man—two men."

"Find a single man here?" asked Denham, sweeping his hand around the crowded streets in a hopeless gesture. "It's impossible! And what would you do when you found him? Escape? That, too, is impossible. How would you get up the stair, through the city of the Kanlars? And even if you achieved the impossible and did get through, there would be no place to go, for all around the city above is nothing but wild, uninhabited country where they would easily hunt you down."

"No matter," I told him; "once I got clear of the city above, I could make good my escape."

He looked at me with sudden interest. "So," he murmured; "and perhaps if my friends and I could help you—," but then he checked himself. "I must see them," he said, "before saying more."

I nodded, a new line of thought opening up to me, and then with Denham leading, we went on down one of the branching streets. In that street was a replica of the noisy, motley throng that filled the plaza, and their cries filled the air with a babel of a thousand different tongues. I noted, though, that many spoke in the language of the Kanlars, and guessed that it was that tongue which served more or less as a means of communication between the thousands gathered here, a supposition I later found to be correct.

Most of the buildings along the street seemed to be the barracks Denham had spoken of, housing the city's occupants, though some of them appeared to be wine-shops of a sort, judging from the drunken men who reeled out of them. An inquiry to my companion elicited the information that the only food of the city was the same golden liquid which had been furnished me above, and which I learned was made artificially directly from the soil itself. Thus the cycle of foodstuffs in my own time, where a plant draws its substance from the soil and is then eaten, or where an animal feeds on the plants sprung from the soil, to be eaten by us in turn, was entirely eliminated by the Kanlars, who manufactured their food directly from the soil itself, recasting the chemical composition of it to produce the yellow fluid. This yellow liquid, I learned, was made by slaves in the city above and was piped down to the city below and dispensed to the hordes there in the little buildings which I had assumed to be wine-shops. It seemed that while the stuff was a perfect food when taken in small quantities, yet when an excess was drunk it produced a violent intoxication. And as it was dispensed freely, it was not wonderful that there were great debauches of drunkenness in this under-metropolis.

One result of that we saw, for all along the street there was fighting, deadly battles between men of far-differing times and races. There was no interference in these combats, for there were none of the guards or Kanlars through all the city, the occupants being left to fight their own battles on the principle of the survival of the fittest. An excited ring of spectators was gathered round each combat, shouting at and cheering the opponents, not dispersing until the fighting was over. As we passed the scene of one such duel, I saw the victor dragging away the body of his late enemy.

"Where is he taking it?" I asked of Denham, motioning toward the receding figure.

"To the bottom of the stair," was his answer. "There is an iron rule that in any battle where a man is killed, the victor must carry the body of his opponent to the stair and hand it over to the guards there."