He flung over the switch. When the shock had passed, George stood up; Dee was already on her feet beside him. It was night outside; lights were flashing. They rushed to the window. The sky was lurid with bursting colored bombs; an inferno of noise sounded, an intermittent pounding that seemed to shake the earth. From-almost directly overhead a red rocket exploded. Its light persisted, illuminating the scene for miles around with a vivid red glare. The giant city buildings were visible. As George stared, a great flame seemed to leap from the sky. One of the buildings fell. Nearer at hand a cloud of swarming mechanisms burst out of the air, swooping down, circling. Beams of light from them and from the city crossed like swords in the sky. The earth under the plane was rocking. Beside it, a green flash struck and sent rocks, boulders, and dirt flying up like a waterspout. "George! _George!_" Dee's terrified cry in his ear was almost drowned by the scream of dynamos; the whistling, bursting, and pounding. George's trembling fingers found the proton switch; he pulled it. The inferno of the night melted, slipped away into a gray, soundless blur. War! They had fallen into the midst of a battle--that giant Earth city defending itself, perhaps against invaders from another planet. "We won't try that again," George murmured. "Azeela," said the girl suddenly. "She tells me that Toroh has secured weapons! He is returning to our time-world!" Toroh had landed at another city, in another time, but still in that same greater civilization. He had chosen a night, bound Azeela, left her in the plane and stolen weapons. George listened blankly. "What sort of weapons?" "Azeela does not know. One large piece of apparatus. He has it in the plane covered by a black bag. He will not let her touch it. And there are other things--a pile of disks or something. White--like steel. She can't see them well--he has covered them also. He is filled with triumph. His plane is speeding toward Anglese City." "In space or time?" "In time. They are hovering in space. Azeela does not know where they are. Toroh says he will wait, and when the time-world of the island is reached they will recognize the land. Then Toroh will take Azeela to the Noths. He says if our father does not yield, he will _kill her_. And then he and the Noths will conquer the Anglese." George had lost. But still there seemed nothing that they could do but try and keep as close to the other plane in time as they could. Toroh's plane was sweeping forward. He had released Azeela, commanding her to instruct him in more detail in the handling of the Frazia motors. Azeela's dials now read some fifty-five hundred years behind the Anglese time-world. George's read about six thousand.