The Corridors of Time Read Online Free PDF Page A

sameluminous surfacing, it must be a hundred feet in diameter. Arrow straight it ran, right and left, until the ends dwindled
     out of sight – why, it must go for miles, he realized. The humming noise and the lightning smell were more intense here, pervading
     his being, as if he were caught in some vast machine.
    He looked back at the door through which he had come, and stiffened. ‘What the hell!’
    On this side, though no higher, the portal was easily two hundred feet wide. A series of parallel black lines, several inches
     apart, extended from it, some distance across the corridor floor. At the head of each was a brief inscription, in no alphabet
     he could recognize. But every ten feet or so a number was added. He saw 4950, 4951, 4952. … Only the auroral curtain was the
     same.
    ‘No time to waste,’ Storm tugged at his sleeve. ‘I shall explain later. Get aboard.’
    She gestured at a curve-fronted platform, not unlike a big metal toboggan with low sides, that hovered two feet off the floor.
     Several backless benches ran down its length. At the head was a panel where small lights glowed, red, green, blue, yellow—
     ‘Come
on
!’
    He mounted with her. She took the front seat, laid her gun in her lap, and passed her hand across the lights. The sled swung
     around and started left down the corridor. It moved in total silence at a speed he guessed to be thirty miles an hour; but
     somehow the wind was screened off them.
    ‘What the jumpin’ blue blazes is this thing?’ he choked.
    ‘You have heard of hovercraft?’ Storm said absently. Her eyes kept flickering from the emptiness ahead to the color disc in
     her fingers.
    A grimness came upon Lockridge. ‘Yes, I have,’ he said, ‘and I know this is nothin’ like them.’ He pointed to her instrument.
     ‘And what’s that?’
    She sighed. ‘A life indicator. And we are riding a gravity sled. Now be still and keep watch to our rear.’
    Lockridge felt almost too stiff to sit, but managed it. He setthe rifle on the bench beside him. Sweat was clammy along his ribs, and he saw and heard with preternatural sharpness.
    They glided by another portal, and another, and another. The gates came at variable intervals, averaging about half a mile,
     as near as Lockridge could gauge in this saturating cold illumination. Wild thoughts spun through his head. No Germans could
     ever have built this, no anti-Communist underground be using it. Beings from another planet, another star, somewhere out in
     the measureless darkness of the cosmos —
    Three men came through a gate that the sled had just passed. Lockridge yelled at the same moment that Storm’s indicator turned
     blood red. She twisted about and looked behind. Her mouth skinned back from her teeth. ‘So we fight,’ she said on a trumpet
     note, and fired aft.
    A blinding beam sprang from her pistol. One of the men lurched and collapsed. Smoke rolled greasy from the hole in his breast.
     The other two had their guns unfastened before he was down. Storm’s firebolt passed across them, broke in a coruscant many-colored
     fountain, and splashed the corridor walls with vividness. The air crackled. Ozone stung Lock-ridge’s nostrils.
    She thumbed a switch on her weapon. The beam winked out. A vague, hissing shimmer encompassed her and her companion. ‘Energy
     shielding,’ she said. ‘My entire output must go to it, and even so, two beams striking the same spot could break through.
     Shoot!’
    Lockridge had no time to be appalled. He brought the rifle to his cheek and sighted. The man he saw was big but dwindling
     with distance, only his close-fitting black garments and golden-bronze Roman-like helmet could be made out, he was a target
     with no face. Briefly there jagged across Lockridge’s memory the woods at home, green stillness and a squirrel in branches
     above…. He shot. The bullet smote, the man fell but picked himself up. Both of them sprang onto a gravity sled such as was
     parked at every