"The pit!" cried the pilot, bringing his car up beside us.
"What of the pit?" I shouted. "What of our friends?"
"They're safe, for the time," he answered, "but the hordes are coming out of the pit!"
"What?" I yelled.
"They're coming out," he repeated. "I went straight to the Kanlar city, as you had instructed, and found that the Kanlar fleet had sped south to meet you. The city was in confusion, with all of the Kanlars and the guards gone with the fleet, and only the slaves and the women still there. I took my car straight into the temple, and found the shaft open that leads down to the pit. I went down that shaft, and picked your four friends up from the roof you designated, and they told me that after all the guards on the stair had left, with the fleet, the hordes in the pit began battering at the gate of the stair. I saw them doing that, hovering above them in the darkness. They are mad, thirsty for loot and blood and battle. They cry among themselves that they will seize the flying-platforms on top of the temple and go south to loot Kom."
I gasped. The merciless hordes of the pit, sweeping down on unprotected Kom! I knew that there were men in the pit capable of operating the flying-platforms, if they reached them. They would sweep down upon the city beyond the ice in an avalanche of death and destruction. And Kethra and all his men were somewhere in time, pursuing and battling the Raider!
"Where did you leave our friends?" cried Lantin.
"At the pit's edge, in the temple," answered the other, and we exchanged swift glances, the same thought coming to us at the same time.
"They asked to be left there," added the pilot.
Lantin spoke swiftly to him. "Go after Kethra!" he told him. "You have the time-wave apparatus on your air-boat?" And when the other nodded, he said, "Then go on into time and bring back Kethra and his forces! If the hordes get to the temple's top and seize the flying-platforms, it is the end for all at Kom!"