The Meteor Girl

By Jack Williamson

[Illustration: _She seemed to scream, though we could hear nothing._]

[Sidenote: Through the complicated space-time of the fourth dimension
goes Charlie King in an attempt to rescue the Meteor Girl.]


"What's the good in Einstein, anyhow?"

I shot the question at lean young Charlie King. In a moment he looked
up at me; I thought there was pain in the back of his clear brown
eyes. Lips closed in a thin white line across his wind-tanned face;
nervously he tapped his pipe on the metal cowling of the _Golden
Gull's_ cockpit.

"I know that space is curved, that there is really no space or time,
but only space-time, that electricity and gravitation and magnetism
are all the same. But how is that going to pay my grocery bill--or
yours?"

"That's what Virginia wants to know."

"Virginia Randall!" I was astonished. "Why, I thought--"

"I know. We've been engaged a year. But she's called it off."

Charlie looked into my eyes for a long minute, his lips still
compressed. We were leaning on the freshly painted, streamline
fuselage of the _Golden Gull_, as neat a little amphibian monoplane as
ever made three hundred miles an hour. She stood on the glistening
white sand of our private landing field on the eastern Florida coast.
Below us the green Atlantic was running in white foam on the rocks.

In the year that Charlie King and I had been out of the Institute of
Technology, we had built the nucleus of a commercial airplane
business. We had designed and built here in our own shops several very
successful seaplanes and amphibians. Charlie's brilliant mathematical
mind was of the greatest aid, except when he was too far lost in his
abstruse speculations to descend to things commercial. Mathematics is
painful enough to me when it is used in calculating the camber of an
airplane wing. And pure mathematics, such as the theories of
relativity and equivalence, I simply abhor.

I was amazed. Virginia Randall was a girl trim and beautiful as our
shining _Golden Gull_. I had thought them devotedly in love, and had
been looking forward to the wedding.

"But it isn't two weeks, since Virginia was out here! You took her up
in our _Western Gull IV_!"

* * * * *

Nervously Charlie lit his pipe, drew quickly on it. His face, lean and
drawn beneath the flying goggles pushed up on his forehead, sought
mine anxiously.

"I know. I drove her back to the station. That was when--when we
quarreled."

"But why? About Einstein? That's silly."

"She wanted me to give it up here, and go in with her father in his
Wall Street brokerage business. The old gent is willing to take me,
and make a business man of me."

"Why, I couldn't run the business without you, Charlie!"

"We talked about that, Hammond. I don't really do much of the work.
Just play around with the mathematics, and leave the models and
blueprints to you."

"Oh, Charlie, that's not quite--"

"It's the truth, right enough," he said, bitterly. "You design
aircraft, and I play with Einstein. And as you say, a fellow can't eat
equations."

"I'd hate to see you go."

"And I'd hate to give up you, and our business, and the math. Really
no need of it. My tastes are simple enough. And old 'Iron-clad'
Randall has made all one family needs. Virginia's not exactly a
pauper, herself. Two or three millions, I think."

"And where did Virginia go?"

"She took the _Valhalla_ yesterday at San Francisco. Going to join her
father at Panama. He cruises about the world in his steam yacht, you
know, and runs Wall Street by radio. I was to telegraph her if I'd
changed my mind. I decided to stick to you, Hammond. I telegraphed a
corsage of orchids, and sent her the message, 'Einstein forever!'"

"If I know Virginia, those were not very politic words."

"Well, a man--"

* * * * *

His words were cut short by a very unusual incident.

A thin, high scream came suddenly from above our neat stuccoed hangars
at the edge of the white field. I looked up quickly, to catch a
glimpse of a bright object hurtling through the air above our heads.
The bellowing scream ended abruptly in a thunderous crash. I felt a
tremor of the ground underfoot.

"What--" I ejaculated.

"Look!" cried Charlie.

He pointed. I looked over the gleaming metal wing of the _Golden
Gull_, to see a huge cloud of white sand rising like a fountain at the
farther side of the level field. Deliberately the column of debris
rose, spread, rained down, leaving a gaping crater in the earth.

"Something fell?"

"It sounded like a shell from a big gun, except that it didn't
explode. Let's get over and see!"

We ran to where the thing had struck, three hundred yards across the
field. We found a great funnel-shaped pit torn in the naked earth. It
was a dozen yards across, fifteen feet deep, and surrounded with a
powdery ring of white sand and pulverized rock.

"Something like a shell-hole," I observed.

"I've got it!" Charlie cried. "It was a meteor!"

"A meteor? So big?"

"Yes. Lucky for us it was no bigger. If it had been like the one that
fell in Siberia a few years ago, or the one that made the Winslow
crater in Arizona--we wouldn't have been talking about it. Probably we
have a chunk of nickel-iron alloy here."

"I'll get some of the men out here with digging tools, and we'll see
what we can find."

Our mechanics were already hurrying across the field. I shouted at
them to bring picks and shovels. In a few minutes five of us were at
work throwing sand and shattered rock out of the pit.

* * * * *

Suddenly I noticed a curious thing. A pale bluish mist hung in the
bottom of the pit. It was easily transparent, no denser than tobacco
smoke. Passing my spade through it did not seem to disturb it in the
least.

I rubbed my eyes doubtfully, said to Charlie, "Do you see a sort of
blue haze in the pit?"

He peered. "No. No.... Yes. Yes, I do! Funny thing. Kind of a blue
fog. And the tools cut right through it without moving it! Queer! Must
have something to do with the meteor!" He was very excited.

We dug more eagerly. An hour later we had opened the hole to a depth
of twenty feet. Our shovels were clanging on the gray iron of the rock
from space. The mist had grown thicker as the excavation deepened; we
looked at the stone through a screen of motionless blue fog.

We had found the meteor. There were several queer things about it. The
first man who touched it--a big Swede mechanic named Olson--was
knocked cold as if by a nasty jolt of electricity. It took half an
hour to bring him to consciousness.

As fast as the rugged iron side of the meteorite was uncovered, a
white crust of frost formed over it.

"It was as cold as outer space, nearly at the absolute zero," Charlie
explained. "And it was heated only superficially during its quick
passage through the air. But how it comes to be charged with
electricity--I can't say."

He hurried up to his laboratory behind the hangars, where he had
equipment ranging from an astronomical telescope to a delicate
seismograph. He brought back as much electrical equipment as he could
carry. He had me touch an insulated wire to the frost-covered stone
from space, while he put the other end to one post of a galvanometer.

I think he got a current that wrecked the instrument. At any rate, he
grew very much excited.

"Something queer about that stone!" he cried. "This is the chance of a
lifetime! I don't know that a meteor has ever been scientifically
examined so soon after falling."

* * * * *

He hurried us all across to the laboratory. We came back with a truck
load of coils and tubes and batteries and potentiometers and other
assorted equipment. He had men with heavy robber gloves lift the
frost-covered stone to a packing box on a bench. The thing was
irregular in shape, about a foot long; it must have weighed two
hundred pounds. He sent a man racing on a motorcycle to the drug store
to get dry ice (solidified carbon dioxide) to keep the iron stone at
its low temperature.

In a few hours he had a complete laboratory set up around the
meteorite. He worked feverishly in the hot sunshine, reading the
various instruments he had set up, and arranging more. He contrived to
keep the stone cold by packing it in a box of dry ice.

The mechanics stopped for dinner, and I tried to get him to take time
to eat.

"No, Hammond," he said. "This is something big! We were talking about
Einstein. This rock seems energized with a new kind of force: all
meteors are probably the same way, when they first plunge out of
space. I think this will be to relativity what the falling apple is to
gravity. This is a big thing."

He looked up at me, brown eyes flashing.

"This is my chance to make a name, Hammond. If I do something big
enough--Virginia might reconsider her opinion."

Charlie worked steadily through the long hot afternoon. I spent most
of the time helping him, or gazing in fascination at the curious haze
of luminous blue mist that clung like a sphere of azure fog about the
meteoric stone. I did not completely understand what he did; the
reader who wants the details may consult the monograph he is preparing
for the scientific press.

He had the men string up a line from our direct current generator in
the shops, to supply power for his electrical instruments. He mounted
a powerful electromagnet just below the meteorite, and set up an X-ray
tube to bombard it with rays.

* * * * *

Night came, and the fire of the white sun faded from the sky. In the
darkness, the curious haze about the stone became luminescent,
distinct, a dim, motionless sphere of blue light. I fancied that I saw
grotesque shapes flashing through it. A ball of blue fire, shimmering
and ghost-like, shrouded the instruments.

Charlie's induction coil buzzed wickedly, with purple fire playing
about the terminals. The X-ray tube flickered with a greenish glow. He
manipulated the rheostat that controlled the current through the
electromagnet, and continued to read his instruments.

"Look at that!" he cried.

The bluish haze about the stone grew brighter; it became a ball of
sapphire flame, five feet thick, bright and motionless. A great sphere
of shimmering azure fire! Wisps of pale, sparkling bluish mist ringed
it. The stone in its box, the X-ray bulb and other apparatus were
hidden. The end of the table stuck oddly from the ball of light.

I heard Charlie move a switch. The hum of the coils changed a note.

The ball of blue fire vanished abruptly. It became a hole, a window in
space!

Through it, we saw another world!

The darkness of the night hung about us. Where the ball had been was a
circle of misty blue flame, five feet across. Through that circle I
could see a vast expanse of blue ocean, running in high, white-capped
rollers, beneath a sky overcast with low gray clouds.

It was no flat picture like a movie screen. The scene had vast depth;
I knew that we were really looking over an infinite expanse of stormy
ocean. It was all perfectly clear, distinct, real!

* * * * *

Astounded, I turned to find Charlie standing back and looking into the
ring of blue fire, with a curious mixture of surprise and delighted
satisfaction.

"What--what--" I gasped.

"It's amazing! Wonderful! More than I had dared hope for! The
complete vindication of my theory! If Virginia cares for scientific
reputation--"

"But what is it?"

"It's hard to explain without mathematical language. You might say
that we are looking through a hole in space. The new force in the
meteorite, amplified by the X-rays and the magnetic field, is causing
a distortion of space-time coordinates. You know that a gravitational
field bends light; the light of a star is deflected in passing the
sun. The field of this meteorite bends light through space-time,
through the four-dimensional continuum. That scrap of ocean we can see
may be on the other side of the earth."

I walked around the circle of luminous smoke with the marvelous
picture in the center. It seemed that the window swung with me. I
surveyed the whole angry surface of that slate-gray, storm-beaten sea,
to the misty horizon. Nowhere was it broken by land or ship.

Charlie fell to adjusting his rheostat and switches.

It seemed that the gray ocean moved swiftly beyond the window. Vast
stretches of it raced below our eyes. Faint black stains of steamer
smoke appeared against the blue-gray horizon and swept past. Then land
appeared--a long, green-gray line. We had a flash of a long coast that
unreeled in endless panorama before us. It was such a view as one
might get from a swift airplane--a plane flying thousands of miles per
hour.

The Golden Gate flashed before us, with the familiar skyline of San
Francisco rising on the hills behind it.

"San Francisco!" Charlie cried. "This is the Pacific we've been
seeing. Let's find the _Valhalla_. We might be able to see Virginia!"

* * * * *

The coast-line vanished as he manipulated his instruments. Staring
into the circle of shining blue mist, I saw the endless ocean racing
below us again. We picked up a pleasure yacht, running under bare
poles.

"I didn't know there was such a storm on," Charlie murmured.

Other vessels swam past below us, laboring against heavy seas.

Then we looked upon an ocean whipped into mighty white-crowned waves.
Rain beat down in sheets from low dense clouds; vivid violet
lightnings flashed before us. It seemed very strange to see such
lightning and hear not the faintest whisper of thunder--but no sound
came from anything we saw through the blue-rimmed window in space.

"I hope the _Valhalla_ isn't in weather like this!" cried Charlie.

In a few minutes a dark form loomed through the wind-riven mist.
Swiftly it swam nearer; became a black ship.

"Only a tramp," Charlie said, breathing a sigh of relief.

It was a dingy tramp steamer, her superstructure wrecked. Her fires
seemed dead. She lay across the wind, rolling sluggishly, threatening
to sink with every monstrous wave. We saw no living person aboard her;
she seemed a sinking derelict. We made out the name _Roma_ on her
side.

Charlie moved his dials again.

In a few minutes the slender prow of another great steamer came
through the sheets of rain. It was evidently a passenger vessel. She
seemed limping along, half wrecked, with mighty waves breaking over
her rail.

Charlie grew white with alarm. "The _Valhalla_!" he gasped. "And she's
headed straight for that wreck!"

In a moment, as he brought the liner closer below our blue-rimmed
window, I, too, made out the name. The wet, glistening decks were
almost deserted. Here and there a man struggled futilely against the
force of the storm.

* * * * *

In a few minutes the drifting wreck of the _Roma_ came into our view,
dead ahead of the limping liner. Through the mist and falling rain,
the derelict could not have been in sight of the lookout of the
passenger vessel until she was almost upon it.

We saw the white burst of steam as the siren was blown. We watched the
desperate effort of the liner to check her way, to come about. But it
was too much for the already crippled ship. Charlie cried out as a
mighty wave drove the _Valhalla_ down upon the sluggishly drifting
wreck.

All the mad scene that ensued was strangely silent. We heard no crash
when the collision occurred; heard no screams or shouts while the mob
of desperate, white-faced passengers were fighting their way to the
deck. The vain struggle to launch the boats was like a silent movie.

One boat was splintered while being lowered. Another, already filled
with passengers, was lifted by a great ware and crushed against the
side of the ship. Only shivered wood and red foam were left. The ship
listed so rapidly that the boats on the lee side were useless. It was
impossible to launch the others in that terrible, lashing sea.

"Virginia can swim." Charlie said hopefully. "You know she tried the
Channel last year, and nearly made it, too."

He stopped to watch that terrible scene in white-faced, anxious
silence.

The tramp went down before the steamer, drawing fragments of wrecked
boats after it. The liner was evidently sinking rapidly. We saw dozens
of hopeless, panic-stricken passengers diving off the lee side, trying
to swim off far enough to avoid the tremendous suction.

Then, with a curious deliberation, the bow of the _Valhalla_ dipped
under green water; her stern rose in the air until the ship stood
almost perpendicular. She slipped quickly down, out of sight.

Only a few swimming humans, and the wrecks of a few boats, were left
on the rough gray sea. Charlie fumbled nervously with his dials,
trying to get the scene near enough so that we could see the identity
of the struggling swimmers.

* * * * *

A long boat, which must have been swept below by the suction of the
ship, came plunging above the surface, upside down. It drifted swiftly
among the swimmers, who struggled to reach it. I saw one person,
evidently a girl, grasp it and drag herself upon it. It swept on past
the few others still struggling.

The wrecked boat with the girl upon it seemed coming swiftly toward
our blue-rimmed window. In a few minutes I saw something familiar
about her.

"It's Virginia!" Charlie cried. "God! We've got to save her, somehow!"

The long rollers drove the over-turned boat swiftly along. Virginia
Randall clung desperately to it, deluged in foam, whipped with flying
spray, the wild wind tearing at her.

About us, the clear still night was deepening. The air was warm and
still; the hot stars shone steadily. Quiet lighted houses were in
sight above the beach. It was very strange to look through the
fire-rimmed circle, to see a girl struggling for life, clinging to a
wrecked boat in a stormy sea.

Charlie watched in an apathy of grief and horror, trembling and
speechless doing nothing except move the controls to keep the floating
girl in our sight.

* * * * *

Hours went by as we watched. Then Charlie cried out in sudden hope.
"There's a chance! I might do it! I might be able to save her!"

"Might do what?"

"We are able to see what we do because the field of the meteor bends
light through the four-dimensional continuum. The world line of a ray
of light is a geodesic in the continuum. The field I have built
distorts the continuum, so we see rays that originated at a distant
point. Is that clear?"

"Clear as mud!"

"Well, anyhow, if the field were strong enough, we could bring
physical objects through space-time, instead of mere visual images. We
could pick Virginia up and bring her right here to the crater! I'm
sure of it!"

"You mean you could move a girl through some four or five thousand
miles of space!"

"You don't understand. She wouldn't come through space at all, but
through space-time, through the continuum, which is a very different
thing. She is four thousand miles away in our three-dimensional space,
but in space-time, as you see, she is only a few yards away. She is
only a few yards from us in the fourth dimension. If I can increase
the field a little, she will be drawn right through!"

"You're a wizard if you can do it!"

"I've got to do it! She's a fine swimmer--that's the only reason she's
still alive--but she'll never live to reach the shore. Not in a sea
like that!"

Charlie fell to work at once, mounting another electromagnet beside
the one he had set up, and rigging up two more X-ray bulbs beside the
packing box which held the meteor. The motion of the boat in the
fire-rimmed window kept drawing it swiftly away from us, and Charlie
showed me how to move the dial of his rheostat to keep the girl in
view.

* * * * *

Before he had completed his arrangements, a patch of white foam came
into view just ahead of the drifting boat. In a moment I made out a
cruel black rock, with the angry sea breaking into fleecy spray upon
it. The boat was almost upon it, driving straight for it. Charlie saw
it, and cried out in horror.

The long black hull of the splintered boat, floating keel upward, was
only a few yards away. A great white-capped breaker lifted it and
hurled it forward, with the girl clinging to it. She drew herself up
and stared in terror at the black rock, while another long surging
roller picked up the boat and swept it forward again.

I stood, paralyzed in horror, while the shattered boat was driven full
upon the great rock. I could imagine the crash of it, but it was all
as still as a silent picture. The boat, riding high on a crest of
white foam, smashed against the rock and was shivered to splinters.
Virginia was hurled forward against the slick wet stone. Desperately
she scrambled to reach the top of the boulder. Her hands slipped on
the polished rock; the wild sea dragged at her. At last she got out of
reach of the angry gray water, though spume still deluged her.

I breathed a sigh of relief, though her position was still far from
enviable.

"Virginia! Virginia! Why did I let you go?" Charlie cried.

Desperately he fell to work again, mounting the magnet and tubes.
Another hour went by, while I watched the shivering girl on the rock.
Bobbed hair, wet and glistening, was plastered close against her head,
and her clothing was torn half off. She looked utterly exhausted; it
seemed to take all her ebbing energy to cling to the rock against the
force of the wind and the waves that dashed against her. She looked
cold, blue and trembling.

The water stood higher.

"The tide is rising!" Charlie exclaimed. "It will cover the rock
pretty soon. If I don't get her off in time--she's lost!"

* * * * *

He finished twisting his wires together.

"I've got it all ready," he said. "Now, I've got to find out exactly
where she is, to know how to set it. Even then it's fearfully
uncertain. I hate to try it, but it's the only chance.

"You can find out?"

"Yes. From the spectral shift and other factors. I'll have to get some
other apparatus." He ran up to the laboratory, across the level field
that lay black beneath the stars. He came back, panting, with
spectrometer, terrestrial globe, and other articles.

"The tide is higher!" he cried as he looked through the blue-rimmed
circle at the girl on the rock. "She'll be swept off before long!"

He mounted the spectrometer and fell to work with a will, taking
observations through the telescope, adjusting prisms and diffraction
gratings, reading electrometers and other apparatus, and stopping to
make intricate calculations.

I helped him when I could, or stared through the ring of shining blue
mist, where I could see the waves breaking higher about the exhausted
girl who clung to the rock. Clouds of wind-whipped spray often hid her
from sight. I knew that she would not have the strength to hold on
much longer against the force of the rising sea.

Although driven almost to distraction by the horror of her
predicament, he worked with a cool, swift efficiency. Only the pale,
anxiety-drawn expression on his face showed how great was the strain.
He finished the last spectrometer observation, snatched out a pad and
fell to figuring furiously.

"Something queer here," he said presently, frowning. "A shift of the
spectrum that I can't explain by distortion through three-dimensional
space alone. I don't understand it."

We stared at the chilled and trembling girl on the rock.

"I'm almost afraid to try it. What if something went wrong?"

He turned to the terrestrial globe he had brought down and traced a
line over it. He made a quick calculation on his pad, then made a fine
dot on the globe with the pencil point.

"Here she is. On a rock some miles off Point Eugenia, on the coast of
the Mexican State of Lower California. Most lonely spot in the world.
No chance for a rescue. We must--

"My god!" he screamed in sudden horror. "Look!"

* * * * *

I looked through the blue-ringed window and saw the girl. Green water
was surging about her waist. It seemed that each wave almost tore her
off. Then I saw that she was struggling with something. A great
coiling tentacle, black and leathery and glistening, was thrust up
out of the green water. It wavered deliberately through the air and
grasped at the girl. She seemed to scream, though we could hear
nothing. She beat at the monster, weakly, vainly.

"She's gone!" cried Charlie.

"An octopus!" I said. "A giant cuttlefish!"

Virginia made a sudden fierce effort. With a strength that I had not
thought her chilled limbs possessed, she tore away from the dreadful
creature and clambered higher on the rock. But still a hideous black
tentacle clung about her ankle, tugging at her, drawing her back
despite her desperate struggle to break free.

"I've got to try it!" Charlie said, determination flashing in his
eyes. "It's a chance!"

He closed a switch. His new coils sung out above the old one. X-ray
tubes flickered beside the blue fire that ringed the window. He
adjusted his rheostats and closed the circuit through the new magnet.

A curtain of blue flame was drawn quickly between us and the round,
fire-rimmed window. A huge ball of blue fire hung, about the meteorite
and the instruments. For minutes it hung there, while Charlie,
perspiring, worked desperately with the apparatus. Then it expanded;
became huge. It exploded noiselessly, in a great flash of sapphire
flame, then vanished completely.

Meteor, bench, and apparatus were gone!

In the light of the stars we could make out the huge crater the
meteorite had torn, with a few odds and ends of equipment scattered
about it. But all the apparatus Charlie had set up, connected with the
meteoric stone, had disappeared.

He was dumbfounded, staggered with disappointment.

"Virginia! Virginia!" he called out, in a hopeless tone. "No, she
isn't here. It didn't draw her through. I've failed. And we can't even
see her any more!"

* * * * *

Desperately I searched for consolation for him.

"Maybe the octopus won't hurt her," I offered. "They say that most of
the stories of their ferocity are somewhat exaggerated."

"If the monster doesn't get her, the tide will!" he said bitterly. "I
made a miserable failure of it! And I don't know why! I can't
understand it!"

Apathetically, he picked up his pad and held it in the light of his
electric lantern.

"Something funny about this equation. The shift of the spectrum lines
can't be accounted for by distortion through space alone."

With wrinkled brow, he stared for many minutes at the bit of paper he
held in the white circle of light. Suddenly he seized a pencil and
figured rapidly.

"I have it! The light was bent through time! I should have recognized
these space-time coordinates."

He calculated again.

"Yes. The scene we saw in that circle of light was distant from us not
only in space but in time. The _Valhalla_ probably hasn't sunk yet at
all. We were looking into the future!"

"But how can that be? Seeing things before they happen!"

I have the profoundest respect for Charlie King's mathematical genius.
But when he said that I was frankly incredulous.

"Space and time are only relative terms. Our material universe is
merely the intersection of tangled world lines of geodesics in a
four-dimensional continuum. Space and time have no meaning
independently of each other. Jeans says. 'A terrestrial astronomer may
reckon that the outburst on Nova Persei occurred a century before the
great fire of London, but an astronomer on the Nova may reckon with
equal accuracy that the great fire occurred a century before the
outburst on the Nova.' The field of this meteorite deflected light
waves so that we saw them earlier, according to our conventional
ideas of time, than they originated. We saw several hours into the
future.

"And the amplified field of the magnet, though strong enough to move
Virginia through space, was not sufficiently powerful to draw her back
to us across time. Yet she must have felt the pull. Some dreadful
thing may have happened. The problem is rather complicated."

* * * * *

He lifted his pencil again. In the glow of the little electric lantern
I saw his lean young face tense with the fierce effort of his thought.
His pencil raced across the little pad, setting down symbols that I
could make nothing of.

My own thoughts were racing. Seeing into the future was a rather
revolutionary idea to me. My mind is conservative; I have always been
sceptical of the more fantastic ideas suggested by science. But
Charlie seemed to know what he was talking about. In view of the
marvelous things he had done that night, it seemed hardly fair to
doubt him now. I decided to accept his astounding statement at face
value and to follow the adventure through.

He lifted his pencil and consulted the luminous dial of his wrist
watch.

"We saw that last scene some twelve hours and forty minutes before it
happened--to put it in conventional language. The distortion of the
time coordinates amounted to that."

In the light of dawn--for we had been all night at the meteor pit, and
silver was coming in the east--he looked at me with fierce resolve in
his eyes.

"Hammond, that gives us over twelve hours to get to Virginia!"

"You mean to go? But just twelve hours! That's better than the
transcontinental record--to say nothing of the time it would take to
find a little rock in the Pacific!"

"We have the _Golden Gull_! She's as fast as any ship we've ever
flown."

"But we can't take the _Gull_! Those alterations haven't been made.
And that new engine! A bear-cat for power, but it may go dead any
second. The _Gull_ can fly, but she isn't safe!"

"Safety be damned! I've got to get to Virginia, and get there in the
next twelve hours!"

"The _Gull_ will fly, but--"

"All right. Please help me get off!"

"Help you off? It's a fool thing to do! But if you go, I do!"

"Thanks, Hammond. Awfully!" He gripped my hand. "We've got to make
it!"

* * * * *

With a last glance into the gaping pit from which we had dug the
marvelous stone, we turned and ran across to the hangars. As we ran
the sun came above the sea in the east: its first rays struck us like
a fiery lance. The mechanics had not yet appeared. Charlie pushed the
doors back, and we ran out the trim little _Golden Gull_, beautiful
with her slender wing and her graceful, tapering lines.

I seized the starting crank and Charlie sprang into the cockpit. I
cranked until the mechanism was droning dismally, and pulled the lever
that engaged it with the engine. I had been in too much haste to get
up the proper speed, and the powerful new engine failed to fire.
Charlie almost cried with vexation while I was cranking again.

This time the motor coughed and fell into a steady, vibrant roar. With
the wind from the propeller screaming about me, I disengaged the crank
and stood waiting while the motor warmed. Charlie gave it scant time
to do so before he motioned me to kick out the blocks. I tumbled into
the enclosed cockpit beside him, he gave the ship the gun, and we
roared across the field.

In five minutes we were flying west, at a speed just under three
hundred miles per hour. Charlie was crouched over the stick, scanning
the instrument board, and flying the _Gull_ almost at her top speed.
Again and again his eyes went to the little clock on the panel.

"Twelve hours and forty minutes," he said. "And an hour gone already!
We're got to be there by five minutes after six."

We were flying over Louisiana when the oil line clogged. The engine
heated dangerously. Reluctantly, Charlie cut off the ignition, and
fell in a swift spiral to an open field.

"We're got to fix it!" he said. "Another hour gone! And we needed
every minute!"

"This new engine! It's powerful enough, but we should have had time to
overhaul it, and make those changes."

* * * * *

Charlie landed with his usual skill, and we fell to work in desperate
haste. A grizzled farmer, a wad of tobacco in his cheek and three
ragged urchins at his heels, stopped to watch us. He had just been to
his mailbox, and had a morning paper in his hand. Charlie questioned
him about the storm.

"Storm-center nears the American coast," he read in a nasal drawl.
"Greatest storm of year drives shipping upon west coast. Six vessels
reported lost. _S. S. Valhalla_, disabled, sends S. O. S.

"A thousand lives are the estimated toll to-night of the most terrific
storm of the year, which is sweeping toward the Pacific coast, driving
all shipping before it. Radiograms from the _Valhalla_ at 5 P. M.
report that she is disabled and in danger. It is doubtful that rescue
vessels can reach her through the storm."

We got the engine repaired, took off again. Charlie looked at the
little clock.

"Five minutes to ten. Eight hours and ten minutes left, and we've got
a darn long ways to go."

We had to stop at San Antonio, Texas, to replenish gasoline and oil.

"Ten minutes lost!" Charlie complained as we took off. "And that
monster--waiting in the future to drag Virginia to a hideous death!"

Two hours later the plane developed trouble in the ignition system.
The motor was new, with several radical changes that we had introduced
to increase power and lessen weight. As I had objected to Charlie, we
had not done enough experimental work on it to perfect it.

* * * * *

We limped into the field at El Paso and spent another priceless
half-hour at work. I got some sandwiches at a luncheon counter beside
the field, and listened a moment to a radio loudspeaker there.

"Many thousands are dead," came the crisp, metallic voice of the
announcer, "as a result of the storm now raging on the Pacific coast,
the worst in several years. The storm-center is spending its force on
the coastal regions to-day. Millions of dollars in damage are reported
in cities from San Francisco to Manzanillo, Mexico.

"The greatest disaster of the storm is the loss of the passenger liner
_Valhalla_, of the Red Star Line. It is believed to have collided with
the abandoned hulk of an Italian-owned tramp freighter, the _Roma_,
which was left by its crew yesterday in a sinking condition.
Radiograms from the liner ceased three hours ago, when she was said to
be sinking. The officers doubted that her boats could be launched in
such a sea--"

I waited to hear no more. Charlie checked our route while we were
stopped. And we took off; we crossed the Rio Grande and flew across
the rocky, brush-scattered hills of Mexico, in a direct line for the
rock in the sea.

"If anything happens so we have to land again--well, it's just too
bad," Charlie said grimly. "But we've got to go this way. It's
something over six hundred miles in a straight line. Fifteen minutes
to four, now. We have to average nearly three hundred miles an hour to
get there."

He was silent and intent over his maps and instruments as we flew on
over the lofty Sierra Madre Range, and over a long slope down to the
Gulf of California. Head-winds beset us as we were over the stretch
of blue water, and we flew on into a storm.

"We had hardly time to make it, without the wind against us," Charlie
said. "If it holds us back many miles--well, it just mustn't!"

* * * * *

Purple lightning flickered ominously in the mass of blue storm-clouds
that hung above the mountainous peninsula of Lower California. I had a
qualm about flying into it in our untested machine. But Charlie leaned
tensely forward and sent the _Golden Gull_ on at the limit of her
speed. Gray vapor swirled about us, rent with livid streaks of
lightning. Thunder crashed and rumbled above the roar of our racing
engine. Wild winds screeched in the struts; rain and hail beat against
us. The plane rose and fell; she was swirled about like a falling
leaf. The stick struggled in Charlie's hands like a living thing. With
lips tightened to a thin line, he fought silently, fiercely,
desperately.

Suddenly we were sucked down until I had an uneasy feeling at the pit
of my stomach. I saw the grim outline of a bare mountain peak
dangerously close below us, shrouded in wind-whipped mist.

In sudden alarm I shouted, "We'd better get out of this, Charlie! We
can't live in it long!"

In the roar of the storm he did not hear me, and I shouted again.

He turned to face me, after a glance at the clock. "We've less than an
hour, Hammond. We've got to go on!"

I sank back in my seat. The plane rolled and tossed until I thanked my
lucky stars for the safety strap. In nervous anxiety I watched Charlie
bring the ship up again, and fight his way on through the storm. For
an eternity, it seemed, we battled through a chaos of wind-driven
mist, bright with purple lightning and shaken with crashing thunder.

Charlie struggled with the controls until he was dripping with
perspiration. He must have been utterly worn out, after thirty-six
hours of exhausting effort. A dozen times I despaired of life. The
compass had gone to spinning crazily; we dived through the rain until
we could pick up landmarks below. Three times a great bare peak loomed
suddenly up ahead of us, and Charlie averted collision only by zooming
suddenly upward.

Then slate-gray water was beneath us, running in white-crested
mountains. I knew that we were at last out over the Pacific.

"We've passed Point Eugenia," Charlie said. "It can't be far, now. But
we have only fifteen minutes left. Fifteen minutes to get to
her--before the attraction of the meteor jerks her away, perhaps to a
horrible fate."

* * * * *

We flew low and fast over the racing waves. Charlie looked over his
charts and made a swift calculation. He changed our course a bit and
we flew on at top speed. We scanned the vast, mad expanse of sea below
the blue-gray clouds. Here and there were lines of white breakers, but
nowhere did we see a rock with a girl upon it. Presently the green
outline of an island appeared out of the wild water on our right.

"That's Del Tiburon," Charlie said. "We missed the rock."

He swung the plane about and we flew south over the hastening waves. I
looked at the little clock. It showed two minutes to six. I turned to
Charlie.

"Seven minutes!" he whispered grimly.

On and on we flew, in a wide circle. The motor roared loud. An endless
expanse of racing waves unreeled below us. The little hand crawled
around the dial. One minute past six. Only four minutes to go.

We saw a speck of white foam on the mad gray water. It was miles away,
almost on the horizon. We plunged toward it, motor bellowing loud.
Five miles a minute we flew. The white fleck became a black rock
smothered in snowy foam. On we swept, and over the rock, with
bullet-like speed.

As we plunged by, I saw Virginia's slender form, tattered,
brine-soaked, straggling in the hideous tentacles of the monster
octopus. It was the same terrible scene that we had viewed, through
the amazing phenomenon of distortion of light through space-time, four
thousand miles away and twelve hours before.

In a few minutes the time would come when Charlie had ended our view
of the scene by his attempt to draw the girl through the fourth
dimension to our apparatus in Florida. What terrible thing might
happen then?

Charlie brought the ship about so quickly that we were flung against
the sides. Down we came toward the mad waves in a swift glide. In
sudden apprehension, I dropped my hand on his shoulder.

"Man, you can't land in a sea like that! It's suicide!"

Without a word, he shook off my hand and continued our steep glide
toward the rock. I drew my breath in apprehension of a crash.

* * * * *

I do not blame Charlie for what happened. He is as skilful a pilot as
I know. It was a mad freak of the sea that did the thing.

The gray waste of mountainous, white-crested waves rose swiftly up to
meet us, with the rock with the girl clinging to it just to our right.
The _Golden Gull_ struck the crest of a wave, buried herself in the
foam, and plunged down the long slope to the trough. We rose safely to
the crest of the oncoming roller, and I saw the black outline of the
rock not a dozen yards away.

Charlie had landed with all his skill. It was not his fault that the
blustering wind caught the ship as she reached the crest of the wave
and flung her sidewise toward the rock. It is no fault of his that the
white-capped mountain of racing green water completed what the wind
had begun and hurled the frail plane crashing on the rock.

I have a confused memory of the wild plunge at the mercy of the wave,
of my despair as I realized that we were being wrecked. I must have
been knocked unconscious when we struck. The next I remember I was
opening my eyes to find myself on the rock, Charlie's strong arm on my
shoulder. I was soaked with icy brine and my head was aching from a
heavy blow.

Virginia, shivering and blue, was perched beside us. I could see no
sign of the plane: the mighty sea had swept away what was left of it.
Clinging to the lee side of the rock I saw the black tentacles of the
giant octopus--waiting for a wave to dash us to its mercy.

"All right, Hammond?" Charlie inquired anxiously. "I'm afraid you got
a pretty nasty bump on the head. About all I could do to fish you out
before the _Gull_ was swept away."

* * * * *

He helped me to a better position to withstand the force of the great
roller that came plunging down upon us like a moving mountain.
Virginia was in his arms, too exhausted to do more than cling to him.

"What can we do?" I sputtered, shaking water from my head.

"Not a thing! We're in a pretty bad fix, I imagine. In a few seconds
we will feel the attraction of the meteor's field--the force with
which I tried to draw Virginia to the crater through the fourth
dimension. I don't know what will happen; we may be jerked out of
space altogether. And if that doesn't get us, the tide and the octopus
will!"

His voice was drowned in the roar of the coming wave. A mountain of
water deluged us. Half drowned, I clung to the rock against the mad
water.

Then blinding blue light flashed about me. A sharp crash rang in my
ears, like splintering glass. I reeled, and felt myself falling
headlong.

* * * * *

I brought up on soft sand.

I sat up, dumbfounded, and opened my eyes. I was sitting on the steep
sandy tide of a conical pit. Charlie and Virginia were sprawled beside
me, looking as astonished as I felt. Charlie got to his knees and
lifted the limp form of the girl in his arms.

Something snapped in my brain. The sand-walled pit was suddenly
familiar. I got to my feet and clambered out of it. I saw that we were
on our own landing field.

Astonishingly, we were back in the meteor crater. Charlie's vanished
apparatus was scattered about us. I saw the gray side of the rough
iron meteorite itself, half-buried in the sand at the bottom of the
pit.

"What--what happened?" I demanded of Charlie.

"Don't you see? Simple enough. I should have thought of it before. The
field of the meteorite brought Virginia--and us--through to this point
in space. But it could not bring us back through time; instead, the
apparatus itself was jerked forward through time. That is why it
vanished. We got here just twelve hours and forty minutes after I
closed the switch, since we had been looking that far into the future.
The mathematical explanation--"

"That's enough for me!" I said hastily. "We better see about a warm,
dry bed for Virginia, and some hot soup or something."

* * * * *

Now the rough gray meteorite, in a neat glass case, rests above the
mantel in the library of a beautiful home where I am a frequent guest.
I was there one evening, a few days ago, when Charlie King fell silent
in one of his fits of mathematical speculation.

"Einstein again?" I chaffingly inquired.

He raised his brown eyes and looked at me. "Hammond, since relativity
enabled us to find the Meteor Girl, you ought to be convinced!"

Virginia--whom her husband calls the Meteor Girl--came laughingly to
the rescue.

"Yes, Mr. Hammond, what do you think of Einstein now?"