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- Herausgeber: Al-Mashreq eBookstore
- Kategorie: Fantasy und Science-Fiction
- Sprache: Englisch
Lost in Time by Arthur Leo Zagat is a mind-bending journey through the ages, blending adventure with the enigma of time travel. When an experimental device catapults a group of explorers into different historical periods, they find themselves grappling with paradoxes, perilous situations, and ancient mysteries. As they struggle to return to their own time, they must navigate treacherous landscapes and confront figures from history who may not be as they seem. Will they unravel the secrets of the time-traveling device and find their way back, or will they be forever lost in the annals of history? Dive into this thrilling tale where every moment counts and every decision could alter the course of time.
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Seitenzahl: 46
Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024
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Table of Contents
Lost in Time
I. — THE STRATOCAR
II. — NO WAY BACK
III. — MURDER WITHOUT A CLUE
IV. — DEATH BEHIND THE ARRAS
V. — THE BOMB
Landmarks
Table of Contents
Cover
Lost in Time
I. — THE STRATOCAR
JIM DUNNING gasped in the surge of terrific heat. A vast roaring deafened him. He leaped to the lashed wheel of the Ulysses. In a single motion he loosed the fastenings and threw all the power of his knotted muscles into a desperate twirling of the polished spokes. The deck slanted. The yawl shot about in a foaming half circle and fled like some live, terrified thing from the whirling, topless column of fire that had leaped out of the sea.
Dunning stared, over his shoulder, across the lurid waters that a moment before had been a glassy plain, silvery under the moon of a windless Pacific night. The crimson pillar soared stupendously, the speed of its whirling whipping the ocean into long, blurred spirals of fire.
The tremendous blare of sound leaped suddenly higher in pitch, became a shriek. Something sprang into view at the base of the fiery column, something huge and black and round. On the moment the sea heaved and climbed heavenward till the flame was lashing from within a huge liquid crater. The dark wall of water expanded. A towering wave rushed toward Dunning with incredible speed.
Dunning crouched over the wheel as if to add the naked force of his will to the frantic putt-putt of the Ulysses' motor. The little vessel darted away like a thoroughbred under the lash. But the towering wave caught up with her, loomed appallingly above her. A briny avalanche crashed down on the doomed craft.
Jim Dunning fought for his life in a seething welter of waters. A hatch-cover, torn from its hinges, thudded against him. With a last, instinctive effort he hauled himself across the cleated plank, clung to it desperately as consciousness left him.
A reckless bet with some of his club members had sent Jim Dunning out from 'Frisco, six weeks before, on his disastrous attempt to cross the Pacific, single-handed, in a thirty-foot, auxiliary-engined yawl. And now in the greying dawn, his still shape floated on the tiny raft amidst a mass of wreckage. About him the vast circle of the horizon enclosed a waste of heaving waters, vacant of any life. Only a light breeze ruffled the sea's surface, calm again after the sudden disturbance of the night.
Eventually his eyes opened. Hopelessly, he raised his head. A curious object that looked like a large spherical buoy, floating half submerged, met his gaze. But what was a buoy doing here, a thousand miles from the nearest land, in water a half mile deep?
Dunning kicked off his shoes and swam strongly through the cool brine. The great ball hung above him as he floated, its exterior glass-smooth. He swam slowly around it, searching for some projection that would enable him to get to its summit. Inches above the water a threadlike crack showed. It made a rectangle three feet wide by five. Was it an entrance to the interior of the ball whose floating showed it to be hollow? There was no handle, no means of opening it.
Dunning trod water and with the flat of his hand he pushed against the unyielding sector, inward, then side-ward, with no result. In sudden exasperation he drove his fist against the polished surface and yelled: "Open, damn you, open up and let a fellow in!"
AMAZINGLY, the metal moved! Dunning stared as the curved panel jogged inward for an inch, then slid smoothly aside.
"It's like the Arabian Nights," he muttered. "I yelled 'open sesame' and it opened." A prickle along his spine did deference to the uncanny happening. Then, oddly enough, he chuckled.
"That's it! An electric robot. Nothing to be scared of."
Only a week before Dunning's departure Tom Barton had demonstrated to him this latest ingenuity of the electrical wizards. It was installed in Barton's garage, a phon-electric cell so adjusted that at the coded honking of a horn it would set a motor in motion to open the doors. Barton had picked up the idea at the airport; where the same device turned on the floodlights in response to a siren signal from an approaching airplane.
"If honking horns and howling sirens can open doors, why not the human voice? Well, let's take a look at the Forty Thieves."
Gripping the opening's lower edge Dunning leaped out of the water and through the aperture. He was in a confined chamber, its walls and ceiling the vaulted curve of the sphere itself.
Sprawled across the flat floor was a girl, unmoving. Dunning caught his breath at the white beauty framed by long black hair that cascaded along her slim length.
"No!" he groaned. "She can't be dead!"
Dunning bent over the girl and lifted one limp hand, feeling for a pulse. There was a slow throb. A long whistle of relief escaped him. She was breathing, shallowly but steadily, and her dark lashes quivered a bit where they lay softly against the curve of her pale cheeks.
There was a couch just beyond the girl. He lifted her to it, laid her down. Gently he straightened her robe of some unfamiliar, shimmering material—and whirled to some inimical presence glimpsed from the corner of his eye.
