What a spot to be left in: to emerge from a cocoon of ages only to be thrust into sudden war and then left alone in a rocket I had no idea how to operate. I was Rip Van Winkle in mid-air!

Tando told me shortly after he'd revived me that there was a war in the air and I had only just realized that he meant it literally. If I didn't do something and quick I would be another casualty.

I'll admit I panicked a little. I ran from man to man, trying shake him awake, shouting and giving each a couple of slaps. This was no fainting-spell though. They were out so long as that sound kept up.

I climbed into the control chamber at the front and lifted a stunned man from his seat beside Tando.

The controls mystified me, rows of knobs and switches, a couple of lights, gauges, and some other things that simply had no idea what they were.

I looked over at Tando and noticed that there was a pair of levers in his hand that seemed to move in all directions. He'd been steering the craft, so that must have been how it was done. I took hold of the controls, but they didn't seem to do anything on my side. The station where I sat was the same as Tando's, yet my controls did nothing.

I thought of lifting Tando from his seat and simply taking over from there, when I noticed a lever with arrows between the two sets of controls, and that it was switched towards Tando. When I grabbed it and flipped it back my way I suddenly had control.

When I looked up through the glass bubbles on the front of the ship, I realized that the enemy were right before us, ready to collide or worse!

On reflex, I bent the levers in my hands sharply to the right and the black battleship was soon out of my view. The high-pitched noise did not let up, though.

I saw the horizon rise up and realized that I had us heading downwards towards the ground.

A shaky series of trials and errors showed me that one stick handled direction while the other determined altitude.

Flying round in a circle, I found the battleship in the sky again, already turning to try and find me.

Soon I discovered the trigger for the big guns in the nose and tried to blast at the enemy. I flew over them quickly, tossing down rays, but they didn't do much good. I repeated the process, but again I might as well have been piloting a horse-fly.

So far the giant vessel hadn't bothered to shoot back, but I knew that could still come.

I could try and run away from them and get us to safety, but where was safe? I had a hundred questions, but I had nobody to ask.

“Dammit, fellas, you need to wake up!” I shouted.

Still, the paralyzing sound filled the air. Whatever it was, that was the source of all my problems right then, and I had to stop it.

I managed to steady the rocket on a course behind and below the battleship. Angling the guns up at the belly of the beast, I opened fire from every one of the ray cannons and kept it coming.

Some smoke came off the bottom of the ship, but it stopped at that.

In my frustration, I whipped us around and tried it over again.

The sticks trembled in my hands and I poured sweat, hardly able to keep my attention on the various controls. Unsteadily, we moved along the bottom again, shooting as best I could.

Again, smoke began to issue from the battleship's underside.

Suddenly two things happened: the enemy began to shoot his rayguns at me and the noise weapon ceased it's attack.

I spun us away from the rays, one or two of which managed to shake us. Again, I flipped around for another shot at them.

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A voice at my side asked “What are you doing?”

I glanced over long enough to see Tando coming back to life “I think I can fly it.”

Tando nodded and flipped the lever back to his side “Let me do that. You work the guns.”

I nodded and opened fire at the black ship, which was coming at us again.

“Cylas, focus the rays on the riveted parts around the fins. If you can blow those off we can crash them.”

“Whatever you say.”

I could barely aim though, the way Tando flew. He had us going in rolls and devilish spirals around the enemy rocket. They could hardly sight us to shoot us, although they tried.

I fired wildly, and now and then it actually seemed to hurt them.

Tando could tell I was having problems, so he loosened his track around the enemy and gave me room to shoot.

I learned later that the fins themselves were designed to deflect rays, but the armored material was in short supply, so the rest of the hull was more vulnerable.

As soon as I had a good view of them I started blasting fins off of the battleship. It was slow work since the huge lumbering thing had all sorts of clever devices to keep it in the air.

“I don't know how you managed it,” Tando said, “but you took out their secret weapon before. I don't know how you kept your senses.”

“I figure they didn't design it to work on fossils.” I grinned.

On our last pass, several explosions rocked the black ship and it began to drift down towards the trees, trailing smoke.

I breathed a sigh of relief “That's that.”

“There's more where that came from.” Tando said.

“I'm just looking on the bright side. We'll live to fight another day.”

“Do you think it's your fight?”

I shrugged “I think it might as well be.”

“Here,” Tando said, steering us sharply upwards, “let me show you what we're up against.”

Our rocket climbed up over layers of clouds, the world below shrunk, looking like nothing so much as a classroom globe.

Tando pointed, out on the horizon where the blue of our atmosphere ended and the black night of the empty cosmos began. Against the stars were several objects, they looked like tin tops floating above the world. We got as close as Tando dared, but they were still very far away. Tiny objects swarmed in and out of them.

“Those little gnats are battleships like the one we just fought, the big floating objects are the cities of the enemy. Those are the fortified satellites of The Satellite Lords.”

“Who are they?”

“They are a race from another galaxy. As far as we can tell, they've been invading worlds since they knew how. They have been doing it for thousands of years, maybe longer. Since before recorded history they've been trying to add the Earth to their empire, and men like us have been fighting them since that time.”

“It might sound crazy, but I think they were trying it in my time.”

“It wouldn't surprise me much.”

“Will there ever be peace?”

“There has been peace before. Sometimes they give up for a few centuries, even a few thousand years, but then somebody on their home planet gets the fever for conquest again and they start over.”

We couldn't linger there for fear of being detected. Tando took us back down into the atmosphere and down towards where we'd started out.

The world below looked vaguely like the maps I recognized from my own time. I remember someone telling me once that of all the things that change, geography is among the slowest.

The others began waking and asking about what happened.

Mardo asked “What happened to the enemy? Did he give up and go away?”

Tando answered “No. Cylas here saved us.”

I took modest satisfaction in the stupefied look on Mardo's tanned face. He managed to say “Good job, Foss... er... I mean, Cylas.”

“Thanks.”

Tando took us down low, not too high above the tree-tops. On the horizon up ahead was a huge flat-topped mountain, casting it's broad shadow over the forest below.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“To our city,” Tando answered, “Rothrock. How'd you like to become a citizen of Selenium?”

We move up towards the top of the mountain, which proved to be a gigantic crater. Inside the crater was a huge glittering city. It looked like a fantasy, a dream, towers and spires that looked like they were made from china and crystal, abuzz with flying machines. As we descended into it I began to realize its scope, and it put New York and London to shame.

It struck me speechless at first, but then I answered “I think I'd like it just fine!”