"Looks like a one-bug plague to me," he remarked. "--Whoops, here comes our cowpuncher!"
Angus McClellan still had his one-sided grin as he shook his long lanky body and looked quizzically at the disheveled group of humans.
"Never had anything like that around Sidney," he said. "Chamber of Commerce wouldn't allow it. What's the next installment anyway of the 'Clue of the Chitin Claw'?"
Randall shook his head. "That's all of us, I guess. Anybody hurt?"
Everyone looked around, and finally all shook their heads.
"That is, if you don't count a damaged ego and a completely wrecked peace of mind," added Blake Garnet. "Now what, for heaven's sake?"
"May as well look around," suggested Randall. "I see some kind of buildings across the field."
The others followed the Agent's gesture; saw several dozen low, domed structures squatting in even rows a few hundred yards away.
Randall started toward them, the others following cautiously. When they were within a dozen yards of the structures, a door in the first one opened and a man stepped out.
He was a magnificent figure of a man. And his splendid body was a fitting support for the god-like head, broad of brow, features finely chiseled.
"Wel-come," he said in queer blurred accents. "Wel-come to the Time Tribe."
He advanced toward them, extending his hand. "I am Zor Ala, a 40B-7 type from the 43rd Century, according to the ancient reckoning of Anno Domini. And you--?"
Randall spoke for the group, his mind fumbling for the meaning of the man's words. "We're a group of passengers who were somehow snatched from our passage through the Earth-Tube. But what--"
"Oh, yes," interrupted Zor Ala reminiscently. "That strange and useless hole through the Earth that finally collapsed around 3000 A.D. We have a number of other Earth-Tube passengers here with us. But from what period did you come?"
Randall replied wonderingly, "Why from this,--2062 A.D. of course!"
Zor Ala shook his head slowly, a strange smile on his lips. "But this is far from being 2062, my friend," he said softly. "As closely as we have been able to reckon it, we are now living in what you would call the Carboniferous Period, probably in the latter part."
He waited a moment for his words to take effect, then continued: "And that would place our present era--" He nodded at Doctor Gerard. "Yes, my friend, I see that you understand we are now, amazingly enough, living in a time which preceded our births by approximately two hundred million years!"