He tightened the couch about them. "Blow the stuff out of the way," he
said cheerfully. "Maybe." He swooped in from the east. "Keep an eye
peeled for the Caves' entrance--I bet it won't look like it did last
month."
The _Latecomer_ touched the runway at little more than a hundred miles
per hour. Its forward rockets braked sharply, blasting aside the
scattered dead limbs and smaller trees--roaring, bucking and hissing.
Its underside buckled from triphammer contact with rock slides and a few
larger logs. It grated to a bumpy halt, gouged, scarred, split, its
warped hull a forever useless thing.
Before opening the port he buckled the long knife at his waist, had
Carol do the same with the short one. He climbed out, breathing deeply
of the warm, moist air, savoring the incense of pine while helping Carol
to the ground.
* * * * *
They avoided the radioactive path made by the ship, picked their way
along the side of the strip until Carol pointed and cried, "There it
is!"
Ken gripped her arm. "You follow behind me, and if the welcoming
committee moves this way you get up in that big madrona over there."
"_What?_"
He pointed out the bear, watching from a wet tangle of brush. "If it's a
male--or a female with no cubs--we're probably all right."
"Oh. But what will _you_ do?"
"Don't argue, Lieutenant." His hand moved to the pommel of his knife.
Ranger training wasn't exactly qualification for tangling with a bear,
but long odds were becoming commonplace.
The animal remained where it was. They climbed over a rock slide and
faced a wide bronze door protected by a concrete foyer. Out a way from
the door was--
"Look, Ken--that's been a recent campfire!"
He whipped the blade from its sheath. "C'mon, kitten--get that knife
out!" He vaulted the ashes.
A six-inch square was cut deeply in the dense metal. Ken poised his
knife over a slot, and as Carol plunged her blade into the wall he
rammed his home to the guard.
With a squeak and a sigh the door, terraced like a vault portal, swung
outward slowly. Ken grabbed a recessed knob to hurry it up. Lights
flashed inside, flooding a man-changed interior.
He leaped across the raised threshold, dragging Carol with him, swung
the door shut and shot home two great bolts on its inner surface. On a
rack just beside the door was an automatic rifle, ready for instant use.
The psychologists had not known about the campfire, but they had planned
for the possibility of a hostile builder.
Ken and Carol looked about the first of the labyrinthine caverns.
Squared walls were lined solidly with glass-enclosed bookshelves
stretching as far as they could see. Crowding the floor were machines,
cabinets of tools, implements, instruments, weapons and medical and
surgical supplies.
They moved to stand before a large video screen set near the door. Ken
flipped the single toggle below it. A scene grew, showing a white-haired
army colonel seated behind a desk, facing them.
"Ken--it's Dr. Halsey," Carol whispered.
"_Was_ Dr. Halsey," said Ken heavily. "I used to wonder if we had the
same instructors."
The officer's lips moved. "Hello, Ken and Carol. I've been selected to
make this film to greet you, and I know both of you will return to see
it." His eyebrows lifted in the quizzical expression they knew well.
"I'm going to rattle off a lot of explanations and suggestions, but I
imagine the first thing you'll want to know is how all the things you've
seen could have happened so quickly. And knowing that, will clarify the
rest.
"You remember the experiments the Air Force made, sending small animals
above the stratosphere. By means of controlled diets and more
complicated devices you'll find explained in a book, we learned that
these animals were not subjectively experiencing the time-span they
should have aloft. In effect, they were aging hardly at all away from
gravity--the farther away, the less aging.
"We got some fairly accurate figures on the time-distance ratios.
Briefly, assuming you held to your course until you were recalled, you
can figure that an average of ten years has elapsed on the earth's
surface for every hour you were in space."
Ken muttered, "We were actually out of atmosphere about twenty-four
hours. That would make it the year--"
"About 2200," finished Carol breathlessly.
"... how or why, but that Time was evidently a variable. The realm of
physics was a madhouse--discreetly so, lest our enemies profit by our
knowledge. There is no visual or other subjective means to sense the
deceiving change in time-rate, or its illogical effects; we knew, for
instance, that you would not see the moon as a solid ring girding a
gyroscopic earth, as might seemingly be expected.
"Your message of recall was a record, slowed down to be within an
intelligible range of fast chatter or slow drawl when you received it.
We could have told you to open the envelope at a certain time or
distance, but even minutes and miles were critical and"--the pictured
features smiled paternally--"we knew your interest in each other might
cause a delay, while"--the expression changed to serious sympathy--"we
didn't know just when Space-Fear would strike."
Carol blushed and laid her cheek against Ken's chest. "They knew
everything that would happen, didn't they? They--they _planned_
everything!"
He crushed her to him. "Lucky they did, honey. Seems like they've put
all their hopes in us."
"... imminent war, and what radiation would do to surface life. We could
not go with you, nor was there time to build underground installations
for surviving more than half a century and emerging to a temporarily
unproductive soil. We selected you to inherit the world, and you have
had the hopes and prayers of your nation and your people."
They sat on a low chest and listened to the psychologist's voice for
nearly an hour more. He finished on a message of hope. "You have seen
the results of war. With the knowledge and material at hand, and the
atmosphere craft waiting at the sealed exit, you can contact what
survivors' descendants you may find in hidden corners of the world and
lead them to the peaceful glory of Earth's future.
"Obviously, life will not visit back and forth between the stars, or
even the planets. The laws of Space and Time confine man to one
world--but it _can_ be made the best of all possible worlds, free of war
within, and free of conquest from without, since the reasons which keep
man from visiting other spheres will keep other life from visiting him."
The screen faded and was silent, followed by a clear, trilling whistle
which swelled in a paean of lilting sound. While Ken squeezed Carol's
hand in mounting amazement, the piping strain formed clearly into
words--
_With understanding of universal laws, life may do as it wills, go where
it wills ... we have come to your planet to help you ... may we?_
The psychologists had not foreseen quite everything....