"We can't help him...." Dust clouds were spinning over the back of the
mesa, concealing the upper slopes. Dowland glanced to the west, winced
at the towering mountain of darkness sweeping toward them through the
sky. He plunged up the slope, hauling her along behind him. Jill cried
out incoherently once, in a choking voice, but he didn't stop to hear
what she was trying to say. He shoved her into the house, slammed the
door shut behind them, hurried her on down the hall and into the living
room. As they came in, he switched off his AR field and felt air fill
his lungs easily again. It was like surfacing out of deep water. The
detector still hissed its thin warning, but it was almost inaudible.
They would have to risk radiation now.
"Out of your suit, quick! Whatever's happening in the lab has whistled
up a dust storm here. When it hits, that radiation field will strangle
you in a minute outdoors."
She stared at him dumbly.
"Get out of your suit!" Dowland shouted, his nerves snapping. "We're
going down the eastern wall. It's our only chance. But we can't get
down alive if we can't breathe...." Then, as she began unbuckling the
suit hurriedly with shaking fingers, he turned to the pile of camping
equipment beside the fireplace and pawed through it.
He found the communicator and was snapping it to the mountaineering
harness when the front door slammed. He wheeled about, startled. Jill's
radiation suit lay on the floor near the entry hall. She was gone.
He was tearing the door open three seconds later, shouted, and saw her
through the dust forty feet away, running up toward the forest.
He mightn't have caught her if she hadn't stumbled and gone headlong.
Dowland was on top of her before she could get up. She fought him in
savage silence like an animal, tearing and biting, her eyes bloodshot
slits. There was a mechanical fury about it that appalled him. But at
last he got his right arm free, and brought his fist up solidly to the
side of her jaw. Jill's head flew back, and her eyes closed.
* * * * *
He came padding up to the eastern side of the mesa with her minutes
later. Here, beyond the ranch area, the ground was bare rock, with
occasional clusters of stunted bushes. The dust had become blinding,
though the main storm was still miles away. There was no time to stop
off at the house to look for the quiz-gun, though it would have been
better to try the descent with a dazed and half-paralyzed young woman
than with the twisting lunatic Jill might turn into again when she
recovered from his punch. At least, he'd have her tied up. Underfoot
were grinding and grumbling noises now, the ground shaking constantly.
At moments he had the feeling of plodding through something yielding,
like quicksand. Only the feeling, he told himself; the rock was solid
enough. But....
Abruptly, he was at the mesa's edge. Dowland slid the girl to the
ground, straightened up, panting, to dab at his smarting eyes. The mesa
behind them had almost vanished in swirling dust.
And through the dust Dowland saw something coming over the open ground
he had just traversed.
He stared at it, mouth open, stunned with a sense of unfairness. The
gigantic shape was still only partly visible, but it was obvious that
it was following them. It approached swiftly over the shaking ground.
Dowland took out his gun, with the oddly calm conviction that it would
be entirely useless against their pursuer. But he brought it up slowly
and leveled it, squinting with streaming eyes through the dust.
And then it happened. The pursuer appeared to falter. It moved again in
some manner; something thundered into the ground beside Dowland. Then,
writhing and twisting--slowly at first, then faster--the dust-veiled
shape seemed to be sinking downward through the rock surface of the
mesa.
In another instant, it was gone.
Seconds passed before Dowland gradually lowered the gun again. Dazedly,
he grew aware of something else that was different now. A miniature
human voice appeared to be jabbering irritably at him from some point
not far away. His eyes dropped to the little communicator attached to
his harness.
The voice came from there.
Terra's grid-power had returned to Lion Mesa.
* * * * *
A week later, Lieutenant Frank Dowland was shown into the office of the
chief of the Solar Police Authority. The chief introduced him to the
two other men there, who were left unidentified, and told him to be
seated.
"Lieutenant," he said, "these gentlemen have a few questions to ask
you. You can speak as openly to them as you would to me."
Dowland nodded. He had recognized one of the gentlemen
immediately--Howard Camhorn, the Coordinator of Research. Reputedly one
of the sharpest minds in the Overgovernment's top echelons. The other
one was unfamiliar. He was a few years younger than Camhorn, around
six inches shorter, chunky, with black hair, brown eyes, an expression
of owlish reflectiveness. Probably, Dowland thought, wearing contact
lenses. "Yes, sir," he said to the chief, and looked back at the
visitors.
"We've seen your report on your recent visit to Terra, Lieutenant
Dowland," Camhorn began pleasantly. "An excellent report,
incidentally--factual, detailed. What we should like to hear now are
the things that you, quite properly, omitted from it. That is, your
personal impressions and conclusions."
"For example," the other man took up, as Dowland hesitated, "Miss
Trelawney has informed us her uncles were attempting to employ the
Ym-400 they had acquired to carry out a time-shift to an earlier Earth
period--to the period known as the Pleistocene, to be somewhat more
exact. From what you saw, would you say they had succeeded in doing it?"
"I don't know, sir," Dowland said. "I've been shown pictures
representing that period during the past few days. The scene I
described in the report probably might have existed at that time." He
smiled briefly. "However, I have the impression that the very large
flying creature I reported encountering that night is regarded as
being ... well, er ... ah...."
"A product of excited nerves?" the short man said, nodding. "Under such
extraordinary circumstances, that would be quite possible, you know."
"Yes, sir, I know."