"Come on up here, everybody, quick! Look! There's a platform up here and a couple of peepholes, and--and it's the damnedest thing you ever seen. We ain't moved an inch. We're still in the temple. But--but it ain't empty now. There's about three billion people gathered in it!" CHAPTER VII Gods of the Jungle Red's hyperbole achieved at least one result. That of creating an immediate scramble for the ladder. Within a very few minutes all the party, including even the muttering Sheng-ti, had joined him on the platform before the circular openings he had mentioned. Of these there were approximately a dozen, spaced at irregular intervals around the chamber in which they now found themselves. Ramey, standing beside the girl Sheila, stared down upon a sight to stagger the wildest imagination. He looked from an elevated vantage post out across a tremendous hall of Angkor Vat. But there was a subtle difference between this room and those which Dr. Aiken had shown him hours--or was it centuries--ago? At first Ramey could not name that change. Then, with a start, he realized what it was. Everything looked newer, cleaner, brighter. The pillars supporting the high, vaulted roof were more sharply incised, the carving more clearly cut, undulled by the leveling file of age. Furthermore, not just a few, but _all_ the murals, the carvings, the multifold bits of statuary were painted, not in dull, faded hues, but in gaudy color, freshly radiant! These things were evidence enough that a change had been wrought in their lives. But if anyone needed more, the court below stirred with _living_ proof. "Three billion" was a typical Barrett estimate, but there were, Ramey saw swiftly, easily three, perhaps four hundred people gathered in the altar room. And _what_ people! From every lurking corner of earth they must have sprung. Ramey gasped to identify representatives of every race, creed and color known to man. For the most part they were Asiatics, saffron of skin, oblique-eyed. But here stood a little group of gigantic Nubians, ebony-hued and strong, draped in jewel-encrusted girdles of samite; over there gathered a band two-score strong of golden-haired, pale-fleshed warriors, fur-garbed and armed with gleaming halberds; elsewhere, anxiously whispering amongst themselves, huddled a knot of dark-haired, hawk-nosed captains with rich beards that curled to their breasts! Dr. Aiken whispered hoarsely, "Then--then it is true! We _have_ traversed Time! Come back to the period of Angkor's glory. For, see? Syd, those bearded men--" "Assyrians," acknowledged Syd O'Brien, "or I'm stark, staring mad. But--but that means, Doctor, Angkor is centuries older than we thought. Their era was around 2500 B.C." Red Barrett gulped, "You mean that there bellywash you was talking a little while ago is _true_? We actually have come back through Time? I don't believe it!"