"Good-bye, Wheeler! Good-bye, Lantin!"
I answered, waving to him at the car's window, and thus we left him, a dark, dwindling figure against the starlit fields of snow. We raced north, now, and sped on toward our own time, back to the year, the month, the day, when we had started. We swept down upon pinnacled Manhattan, through the warm darkness of the summer night, and after hovering for a time above the perplexing maze of buildings, sank gently down upon the roof from which we had started.
The car stopped, and we stepped out on the roof, looking around us strangely. The scene was the same as when we had left, the panorama of the city's lights around us, the brilliant stars above, and the stabbing search-lights of the anchored battleship.
Lantin stepped across the roof into his apartment. He snapped on the lights, then called to me. When I entered the room and stood beside him, he pointed mutely toward a clock above the fireplace. I looked, and a strange feeling swept over me.
We had made our momentous start from the roof at 10 o'clock exactly, when we had first ventured into time. And now it was but eight minutes past 10, but eight minutes later in that same night.
Eight minutes!
We had gone on into the future fifteen thousand years, had lain for days imprisoned, in the city of the cylinders and the city of the pit. We had met our friends of the pit, had planned and executed our daring escape, had fled madly to our car, pursued by the guards, and had then flashed south across countless leagues of ice. We had stayed for days at Kom, amid the wonders of Kom, had raced back north with the great fleet of Kethra, had met and battled the Kanlars, and had held the ravening thousands of the pit in check upon the great stair, with our friends. We had seen the Raider destroyed, had sped back in time to hang above the wonder-city of the Aztecs, while Aztec and Spaniard battled in the streets below us. Had sped across the world to Rome, in the days of its imperial glory, back through time to Seventeenth Century France, and so on to our own land, to stop once and part with the last of our friends and then speed down to the very roof from which we had made our start. From the far past to the far future, we had ranged through time, from the Rome of the Cæsars to the mighty city of the Khluns.
Eight minutes!
EPILOGUE