"Just the same—" grumbled Syd.
"Just the same," snapped his brother, "you're nuts! Back in our time, these temples are probably crawling with a regiment of vengeful Japs, wondering where the hell we disappeared to. It would be suicidal to go back now. We'd better just sit tight for a week or so ... take advantage of our opportunity, and return to our own time with a real contribution to science."
So it was decided. And somehow a week passed. Where fled those warm days and even more languorous nights, Ramey Winters could never afterward tell. For there was much to be seen and done, and once the weird comprehension of their actually being here established itself in his mind, Ramey, like all the others, dipped eagerly into the garnering of new knowledge.
With the Lord Sugriva they spent many hours. Even feeling sure, as they did, that everything the blue lord of Angkor told them was true, some of his statements were so fantastic as to be almost incredible. As when Dr. Aiken queried him on the extent of Gaanelian colonization.
"I do not know, exactly," admitted Sugriva. "But there must be five, six, perhaps more colonies. One of my compatriots, I know, governs an outpost south and west of here. A desolate territory bordered on the north by vast desertland. Another bears the light of culture to jungle natives on a far continent, a hemisphere removed. Still a third has established himself on a tiny island to the west, where the mighty sea begins."
"Lower Egypt!" cried Dr. Aiken raptly. "Its culture, differing sharply from that of the Upper Kingdom, has always puzzled archeologists. The lost Merouvian civilization which left great paved roads and cities where now is Peru. And a tiny island—?"
"England!" cried Sheila. "Daddy, that explains why the legend of the 'blue gods' persists in ancient Anglo-Saxon history. The Druids worshipped 'men from the skies.' They had their 'sky-blue heaven' of Tir-n'a-nog. And as late as 1,000 A.D. the Picts went forth to battle with their bodies painted with blue pigment!"
But again, as before, arose the question: if these colonies now existed, into what darkness had they disappeared that those of the Twentieth Century knew them only as legend? This was a cause of great sadness to Sugriva.
"I can only confess," he conceded regretfully, "that somehow our mission, the bringing of culture to your less enlightened Earth races, must have failed. Why, I do not know."