he morning of December 15th, we descended to one of the lowest
levels. To our surprise, we found no water there. Obviously it had
drained off through some break in the strata. We noticed too that the
rock in the side walls of the shaft was soft, evidently due to the
radioactivity, and pieces crumbled under foot rather easily. We made our
way cautiously down the shaft, when suddenly the rotted timbers above us
gave way.

I jumped ahead, barely escaping the avalanche of coal and soft rock, but
my companions, who were several paces behind me, were buried under it,
and undoubtedly met instant death.

I was trapped. Return was impossible. With my electric torch I explored
the shaft to its end, but could find no other way out. The air became
increasingly difficult to breathe, probably from the rapid accumulation
of the radioactive gas. In a little while my senses reeled and I lost
consciousness.

When I awoke, there was a cool and refreshing circulation of air in the
shaft. I had no thought that I had been unconscious more than a few
hours, although it seems that the radioactive gas had kept me in a state
of suspended animation for something like 500 years. My awakening, I
figured out later, had been due to some shifting of the strata which
reopened the shaft and cleared the atmosphere in the working. This must
have been the case, for I was able to struggle back up the shaft over a
pile of debris, and stagger up the long incline to the mouth of the
mine, where an entirely different world, overgrown with a vast forest
and no visible sign of human habitation, met my eyes.

I shall pass over the days of mental agony that followed in my attempt
to grasp the meaning of it all. There were times when I felt that I was
on the verge of insanity. I roamed the unfamiliar forest like a lost
soul. Had it not been for the necessity of improvising traps and crude
clubs with which to slay my food, I believe I should have gone mad.

Suffice it to say, however, that I survived this psychic crisis. I shall
begin my narrative proper with my first contact with Americans of the
year 2419 A.D.

CHAPTER I

Floating Men

My first glimpse of a human being of the 25th Century was obtained
through a portion of woodland where the trees were thinly scattered,
with a dense forest beyond.

I had been wandering along aimlessly, and hopelessly, musing over my
strange fate, when I noticed a figure that cautiously backed out of the
dense gro