"Eh? What do you mean? How?"
"Because," replied Steve tautly, "unless my ears are deceiving me, we're about to entertain guests. I heard footsteps coming down the outer corridor a moment ago, and—see? Now the door is opening!"
CHAPTER II
Priestess Beth
What manner of men Steve Duane expected to see enter the cavernous chamber, he could not have really told. Men of a future era—for by now he was firmly convinced that it was a future era in which he and his companions had roused—might differ from men of the Twentieth Century in great or in no degree. He could even conceive of looking upon members of the long-heralded race of supermen, and was fully prepared to greet such arrivals.
This presumptuous logic, based on hunch, was typical of Duane. Unorthodox, perhaps—but it was this high, swift, imaginative quality of thought which had set him apart as one of his country's ablest young chemical engineers. If hunches like these occasionally led him to error, more often they led him to success in fields where others had failed.
But this time his surmise was completely wrong. For it was no lofty-browed race of supercultured beings who stepped through the doorway. It was, instead—
"Babes!" choked Chuck Lafferty. "Holy cow—dolls!"
"Quiet!" breathed Steve swiftly. But he, too, gazed at the corps of newcomers with numb astonishment. Women they were—but what women! Steve Duane was a scientist. As such he had allotted no place in his scheme of life for the weaker sex. But he knew now, in a single blinding moment, that this was only because never before had he looked upon such a woman as she who headed this group.