"With that they can see ahead of us a great distance. It flings the vision--like gazing along a beam of light--to space-time factors in advance of our present position. In effect, a telescope." * * * * * There were a few hours of the journey when Don and I slept, exhausted by what we had been through. Tako was with us when we dozed off, and I recall that he was there when we awakened. How much time passed we could not tell. "You are refreshed?" he said smilingly. "And hungry again, no doubt. We will eat and drink--and soon we will arrive at the predestined time and place." We were indeed hungry again. And while we were eating Tako gestured to the window. "Look there. Your world seems visible a little." Just before we slept it had seemed that mingled with the shadows of Tako's world was the gray outline of an ocean surface beneath us. I gazed out at the dim void now. Our flight was far slower than before. We were slackening speed for the coming halt. And I saw now that the shadows outside were the mingled wraiths of two spectral worlds, with us drifting forward between and among them. The terrain of Tako's world was bleaker, more desolate and more steeply mountainous than ever. There were pits and ravines and gullies with jagged mountain spires, cliffs and towering gray masses of rock. And mingled with it, in a general way coincidental with it in the plane of the same space, we could see now the tenuous shapes of our own world. Vague, but familiar outlines! We had passed Sandy Hook! The ocean lay behind us. A hundred feet or so beneath us was the level water of the Lower Bay. "Don!" I murmured. "Look there! Long Island off there! And that's Staten Island ahead of us!" "Almost at our destination," Tako observed. And in a moment he gestured again. "There is your city. Have a good look at your dear New York." * * * * * Diagonally ahead through the window we saw the spectres of the great pile of masonry on lower and mid-Manhattan. Spectres of the giant buildings; the familiar skyline, and mingled with it the ghostly gray outlines of the mountains and valley depths of Tako's world. All intermingled! The mountain peaks rose far higher than the tallest of New York's skyscrapers; and the pits and ravines were lower than the waters of the harbor and rivers, lower than the subways and the tubes and the tunnels. "Another carrier!" Don said abruptly. "See it off there!" It showed like a great gray projectile coming in level with us. And then we saw two others in the distance behind us. Fantastic, ghostly arrival of the enemy! Weird mobilization here within the space of the doomed New York. "Can they see us?" I murmured. "Tako, the people down there on Staten Island--can they see us?" "Yes," he smiled. "Don't you think so? Look! Are not those ships of war? Hah! Gathered already--awaiting our coming!"