_Key Out of Time_
ANDRE NORTON
Published by The World Publishing Company
2231 West 110th Street, Cleveland 2, Ohio
Published simultaneously in Canada by Nelson, Foster & Scott Ltd.
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 63-10861
SECOND PRINTING
2WP164
Copyright © 1963 by Andre Norton
[Transcribers note: This is a Rule 6 Clearance. A copyright renewal
has not been found.]
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced
in any form without written permission from the publisher, except
for brief passages included in a review appearing in a newspaper
or magazine. Printed in the United States of America.
_Contents_
1. Lotus World
2. Lair of Mano-Nui
3. The Ancient Mariners
4. Storm Menace
5. Time Wrecked
6. Loketh the Useless
7. Witches' Meat
8. The Free Rovers
9. Battle Test
10. Death at Kyn Add
11. Weapon from the Depths
12. Baldies
13. The Sea Gate of the Foanna
14. The Foanna
15. Return to the Battle
16. The Opening of the Great Door
17. Shades Against Shadow
18. World in Doubt
KEY OUT OF TIME
1
Lotus World
There was a shading of rose in the pearl arch of sky, deepening at the
horizon meeting of sea and air in a rainbow tint of cloud. The lazy
swells of the ocean held the same soft color, darkened with crimson
veins where spirals of weed drifted. A rose world bathed in soft
sunlight, knowing only gentle winds, peace, and--sloth.
Ross Murdock leaned forward over the edge of the rock ledge to peer down
at a beach of fine sand, pale pink sand with here and there a glitter of
a crystalline "shell"--or were those delicate, fluted ovals shells? Even
the waves came in languidly. And the breeze which ruffled his hair,
smoothed about his sun-browned, half-bare body, caressed it, did not
buffet on its way inland to stir the growths which the Terran settlers
called "trees" but which possessed long lacy fronds instead of true
branches.
Hawaika--named for the old Polynesian paradise--a world seemingly
without flaw except the subtle one of being too perfect, too welcoming,
too wooing. Its long, uneventful, unchanging days enticed forgetfulness,
offered a life without effort. Except for the mystery....
Because this world was not the one pictured on the tape which had
brought the Terran settlement team here. A map, a directing guide, a
description all in one, that was the ancient voyage tape. Ross himself
had helped to loot a storehouse on an unknown planet for a cargo of such
tapes. Once they had been the space-navigation guides for a race or
races who had ruled the star lanes ten thousand years in his own world's
past, a civilization which had long since sunk again into the dust of
its beginning.
Those tapes returned to Terra after their chance discovery, were
studied, probed, deciphered by the best brains of his time, shared out
by lot between already suspicious Terran powers, bringing into the
exploration of space bitter rivalries and old hatreds.
Such a tape had landed their ship on Hawaika, a world of shallow seas
and archipelagoes instead of true continents. The settlement team had
had all the knowledge contained on that tape crowded into them, only to
discover that much they had learned from it was false!
Of course, none of them had expected to discover here still the cities,
the civilization the tape had projected as existing in that long-ago
period. But no present island string they had visited approximated those
on the maps they had seen, and so far they had not found any trace that
any intelligent beings had walked, built, lived, on these beautiful,
slumberous atolls. So, what had happened to the Hawaika of the tape?
Ross's right hand rubbed across the ridged scars which disfigured his
left one, to be carried for the rest of his life as a mark of his
meeting with the star voyagers in the past of his own world. He had
deliberately seared his own flesh to break the mental control they had
asserted. Then the battle had gone to him. But from it he had brought
another scar--the unease of that old terror when Ross Murdock, fighter,
rebel, outlaw by the conventions of his own era, Ross Murdock who
considered himself an exceedingly tough individual, that toughness
steeled by the training for Time Agent sorties, had come up against a
power he did not understand, instinctively hated and feared.
Now he breathed deeply of the wind--the smell of the sea, the scents of
the land growths, strange but pleasant. So easy to relax, to drop into
the soft, lulling swing of this world in which they had found no fault,
no danger, no irritant. Yet, once those others had been here--the
blue-suited, hairless ones he called "Baldies." And what had happened
then ... or afterward?
A black head, brown shoulders, slender body, broke the sleepy slip of
the waves. A shimmering mask covered the face, catching glitter-fire in
the sun. Two hands freed a chin curved yet firmly set, a mouth made more
for laughter than sternness, wide dark eyes. Karara Trehern of the Alii,
the one-time Hawaiian god-chieftain line, was an exceedingly pretty
girl.
But Ross regarded her aloofly, with a coldness which bordered on
hostility, as she flipped her mask into its pocket on top of the
gill-pack. Below his rocky perch she came to a halt, her feet slightly
apart in the sand, an impish twist to her lips as she called mockingly:
"Why not come in? The water's fine."
"Perfect, like all the rest of this." Some of his impatience came out in
the sour tone. "No luck, as usual?"
"As usual," Karara conceded. "If there ever was a civilization here,
it's been gone so long we'll probably never find any traces. Why don't
you just pick out a good place to set up that time-probe and try it
blind?"
Ross scowled. "Because"--his patience was exaggerated to the point of
insult--"we have only one peep-probe. Once it's set we can't tear it
down easily for transport somewhere else, so we want to be sure there's
something to look at beyond."
She began to wring the water out of her long hair. "Well, as far as
we've explored ... nothing. Come yourself next time. Tino-rau and Taua
aren't particular; they like company."
Putting two fingers to her mouth, Karara whistled. Twin heads popped out
of the water, facing the shore and her. Projecting noses, mouths with
upturned corners so they curved in a lasting pleasant grin at the
mammals on the shore--the dolphin pair, mammals whose ancestors had
chosen the sea, whistled back in such close counterfeit of the girl's
signal that they could be an echo of her call. Years earlier their
species' intelligence had surprised, almost shocked, men. Experiments,
training, co-operation, had developed a tie which gave the water-limited
race of mankind new eyes, ears, minds, to see, evaluate, and report
concerning an element in which the bipeds were not free.
Hand in hand with that co-operation had gone other experiments. Just as
the clumsy armored diving suits of the early twentieth century had
allowed man to begin penetration into a weird new world, so had the
frog-man equipment made him still freer in the sea. And now the
gill-pack which separated the needed oxygen from the water made even
that lighter burden of tanks obsolete. But there remained depths into
which man could not descend, whose secrets were closed to him. There the
dolphins operated, in a partnership of minds, equal minds--though that
last fact had been difficult for man to accept.
Ross's irritation, unjustified as he knew it to be, did not rest on
Tino-rau or Taua. He enjoyed the hours when he buckled on gill-pack and
took to the sea with those two ten-foot, black-and-silver escorts
sharing the action. But Karara ... Karara's presence was a different
matter altogether.
The Agents' teams had always been strictly masculine. Two men partnered
for an interlocking of abilities and temperaments, going through
training together, becoming two halves of a strong and efficient whole.
Before being summarily recruited into the Project, Ross had been a
loner--living on the ragged edges of the law, an indigestible bit for
the civilization which had become too ordered and "adjusted" to absorb
his kind. But in the Project he had discovered others like himself--men
born out of time, too ruthless, too individualistic for their own age,
but able to operate with ease in the dangerous paths of the Time Agents.
And when the time search for the wrecked alien ships had succeeded and
the first intact ship found, used, duplicated, the Agents had come from
forays into the past to be trained anew for travel to the stars. First
there had been Ross Murdock, criminal. Then there had been Ross Murdock
and Gordon Ashe, Time Agents. Now there was still Ross and Gordon and a
quest as perilous as any they had known. Yet this time they had to
depend upon Karara and the dolphins.
"Tomorrow"--Ross was still not sorting out his thoughts, truly aware of
the feeling which worked upon him as a thorn in the finger--"I will
come."
"Good!" If she recognized his hostility for what it was, that did not
bother her. Once more she whistled to the dolphins, waved a casual
farewell with one hand, and headed up the beach toward the base camp.
Ross chose a more rugged path over the cliff.
Suppose they did not find what they sought near here? Yet the old taped
map suggested that this was approximately the site starred upon it.
Marking a city? A star port?
Ashe had volunteered for Hawaika, demanded this job after the disastrous
Topaz affair when the team of Apache volunteers had been sent out too
soon to counter what might have been a Red sneak settlement. Ross was
still unhappy over the ensuing months when only Major Kelgarries and
maybe, in a lesser part, Ross had kept Gordon Ashe in the Project at
all. That Topaz had been a failure was accepted when the settlement ship
did not return. And that had added to Ashe's sense of guilt for having
recruited and partially trained the lost team.
Among those dispatched over Ashe's vehement protests had been Travis Fox
who had shared with Ashe and Ross the first galactic flight in an
age-old derelict spaceship. Travis Fox--the Apache archaeologist--had he
ever reached Topaz? Or would he and his team wander forever between
worlds? Did they set down on a planet where some inimical form of native
life or a Red settlement had awaited them? The very uncertainty of their
fate continued to ride Ashe.
So he insisted on coming out with the second settlement team, the
volunteers of Samoan and Hawaiian descent, to carry on a yet more
exciting and hazardous exploration. Just as the Project had probed into
the past of Terra, so would Ashe and Ross now attempt to discover what
lay in the past of Hawaika, to see this world as it had been at the
height of the galactic civilization, and so to learn what they could
about their fore-runners into space. And the mystery they had dropped
into upon landing added to the necessity for that discovery or
discoveries.
Their probe, if fortune favored them, might become a gate through time.
The installation was a vast improvement over these passage points they
had first devised. Technical information had taken a vast leap forward
after Terran engineers and scientists had had access to the tapes of the
stellar empire. Adaptations and shortcuts developed, so that a new
hybrid technology came into use, woven from the knowledge and
experimentation of two civilizations thousands of years apart in time.
If and when he or Ashe--or Karara and her dolphins--discovered the
proper site, the two Agents could set up their own equipment. Both Ross
and Ashe had had enough drill in the process. All they needed was the
brick of discovery; then they could build their wall. But they must find
some remainder of the past, the smallest trace of ancient ruin upon
which to center their peep-probe. And since landing here the long days
had flowed into weeks with no such discovery made.
Ross crossed the ridge of rock which formed a cocks-comb rise on the
island's spine and descended to the village. As they had been trained,
the Polynesian settlers adapted native products to their own heritage of
building and tools. It was necessary that they live off the land, for
their transport ship had had storage space only for a limited number of
supplies and tools. After it took off to return home they would be
wholly on their own for several years. Their ship, a silvery ball,
rested on a rock ledge, its pilot and crew having lingered to learn the
results of Ashe's search. Four days more and they would have to lift for
home even if the Agents still had only negative results to report.
That disappointment was driving Ashe, the way that six months earlier
his outrage and guilt feelings over the Topaz affair had driven him.
Karara's suggestion carried weight the longer Ross thought about it.
With more swimmers hunting, there was just that much increased chance of
turning up some clue. So far the dolphins had not reported any dangerous
native sea life or any perils except the natural ones any diver always
had at his shoulder under the waves.
There were extra gill-packs, and all of the settlers were good swimmers.
An organized hunt ought to shake the Polynesians out of their present
do-it-tomorrow attitude. As long as they had had definite work before
them--the unloading of the ship, the building of the village, all the
labors incidental to the establishing of this base--they had shown
energy and enthusiasm. It was only during the last couple of weeks that
the languor which appeared part of the atmosphere here had crept up on
them, so that now they were content to live at a slower and lazier pace.
Ross remembered Ashe's comparison made the evening before, likening
Hawaika to a legendary Terran island where the inhabitants lived a
drugged existence, feeding upon the seeds of a native plant. Hawaika was
fast becoming a lotus land for Terrans.
"Through here, then westward...." Ashe hunched over the crate table in
the mat-walled house. He did not look up as Ross entered. Karara's still
damp head was bowed until those black locks, now sleeked to her round
skull, almost touched the man's close-cropped brown hair. They were both
studying a map as if they saw not lines on paper but the actual inlets
and lagoons which that drawing represented.
"You are sure, Gordon, that this _is_ the modern point to match the site
on the tape?" The girl brushed back straying hair.
Ashe shrugged. There were tight brackets about his mouth which had not
been there six months ago. He moved jerkily, not with the fluid grace of
those old days when he had faced the vast distance of time travel with
unruffled calm and a self-confidence to steady and support the novice
Ross.
"The general outline of these two islands could stand for the capes on
this--" He pulled a second map, this on transparent plastic, to fit over
the first. The capes marked on the much larger body of land did slip
over the modern islands with a surprising fit. The once large island,
shattered and broken, could have produced the groups of atolls and
islets they now prospected.
"How long--" Karara mused aloud, "and why?"
Ashe shrugged. "Ten thousand years, five, two." He shook his head. "We
have no idea. It's apparent that there must have been some world-wide
cataclysm here to change the contours of the land masses so much. We may
have to wait on a return space flight to bring a 'copter or a hydroplane
to explore farther." His hand swept beyond the boundaries of the map to
indicate the whole of Hawaika.
"A year, maybe two, before we could hope for that," Ross cut in. "Then
we'll have to depend on whether the Council believes this important
enough." The contrariness which spiked his tongue whenever Karara was
present made him say that without thinking. Then the twitch of Ashe's
lip brought home Ross's error. Gordon needed reassurance now, not a
recitation of the various ways their mission could be doomed.
"Look here!" Ross came to the table, his hand sweeping past Karara, as
he used his forefinger for a pointer. "We know that what we want could
be easily overlooked, even with the dolphins helping us to check. This
whole area's too big. And you know that it is certain that whatever
might be down there would be hidden with sea growths. Suppose ten of us
start out in a semi-circle from about here and go as far as this point,
heading inland. Video-cameras here and here ... comb the whole sector
inch by inch if we have to. After all, we have plenty of time and
manpower."
Karara laughed softly. "Manpower--always manpower, Ross? But there is
woman-power, too. And we have perhaps even sharper sight. But this is a
good idea, Gordon. Let me see--" she began to tell off names on her
fingers, "PaKeeKee, Vaeoha, Hori, Liliha, Taema, Ui, Hono'ura--they are
the best in the water. Me ... you, Gordon, Ross. That makes ten with
keen eyes to look, and always there are Tino-rau and Taua. We will take
supplies and camp here on this island which looks so much like a finger
crooked to beckon. Yes, somehow that beckoning finger seems to me to
promise better fortune. Shall we plan it so?"
Some of the tight look was gone from Ashe's face, and Ross relaxed. This
was what Gordon needed--not to be sitting in here going over maps,
reports, reworking over and over their scant leads. Ashe had always been
a field man; and the settlement work had been stultifying, a laborious
chore for him.
When Karara had gone Ross dropped down on the bunk against the side
wall.
"What _did_ happen here, do you think?" Half was real interest in the
mystery they had mulled over and over since they had landed on a Hawaika
which diverged so greatly from the maps; the other half, a desire to
keep Ashe thinking on a subject removed from immediate worries. "An
atomic war?"
"Could be. There are old radiation traces. But these aliens had, I'm
sure, progressed beyond atomics. Suppose, just suppose, they could
tamper with the weather, with the balance of the planet's crust? We
don't know the extent of their powers, how they would use them. They had
a colony here once, or there would have been no guide tape. And that is
all we are sure of."
"Suppose"--Ross rolled over on his stomach, pillowed his head on his
arms--"we could uncover some of that knowledge--"
The twitch was back at Ashe's lips. "That's the risk we have to run
now."
"Risk?"
"Would you give a child one of those hand weapons we found in the
derelict?"
"Naturally not!" Ross snapped and then saw the point. "You mean--_we_
aren't to be trusted?"
The answer was plain to read in Ashe's expression.
"Then why this whole setup, this hunt for what might mean trouble?"
"The old pinch, the bad one. What if the Reds discover something first?
They drew some planets in the tape lottery, remember. It's a seesaw
between us--we advance here, they there. We have to keep up the race or
lose it. They must be combing their stellar colonies for a few answers
just as furiously as we are."
"So, we go into the past to hunt if we have to. Well, I think I could do
without answers such as the Baldies would know. But I will admit that I
would like to know what did happen here--two, five, ten thousand years
ago."
Ashe stood up and stretched. For the first time he smiled. "Do you know,
I rather like the idea of fishing off Karara's beckoning finger. Maybe
she's right about that changing our luck."
Ross kept his face carefully expressionless as he got up to prepare
their evening meal.
2
Lair of Mano-Nui
Just under the surface of the water the sea was warm, weird life showed
colors Ross could name, shades he could not. The corals, the animals
masquerading as plants, the plants disguised as animals which inhabited
the oceans of Terra, had their counterparts here. And the settlers had
given them the familiar names, though the crabs, the fish, the anemones,
and weeds of the shallow lagoons and reefs were not identical with
Terran creatures. The trouble was that there was too much, such a wealth
of life to attract the eyes, hold attention, that it was difficult to
keep to the job at hand--the search for what was not natural, for what
had no normal place here.
As the land seduced the senses and bewitched the off-worlder, so did the
sea have its enchantment to pull one from duty. Ross resolutely skimmed
by a forest of weaving, waving lace which varied from a green which was
almost black to a pale tint he could not truly identify. Among those
waving fans lurked ghost-fish, finned swimmers transparent enough so
that one could sight, through their pallid sides, the evidences of
recently ingested meals.
The Terrans had begun their sweep-search a half hour ago, slipping
overboard from a ferry canoe, heading in toward the checkpoint of the
finger isle, forming an arc of expert divers, men and girls so at home
in the ocean that they should be able to make the discovery Ashe
needed--if such did exist.
Mystery built upon mystery on Hawaika, Ross thought as he used his
spear-gun to push aside a floating banner of weed in order to peer below
its curtain. The native life of this world must always have been largely
aquatic. The settlers had discovered only a few small animals on the
islands. The largest of which was the burrower, a creature not unlike a
miniature monkey in that it had hind legs on which it walked erect and
forepaws, well clawed for digging purposes, which it used with as much
skill and dexterity as a man used hands. Its body was hairless and it
was able to assume, chameleon-like, the color of the soil and rocks
where it denned. The head was set directly on its bowed shoulders
without vestige of neck; and it had round bubbles of eyes near the top
of its skull, a nose which was a single vertical slit, and a wide mouth
fanged for crushing the shelled creatures on which it fed. All in all,
to Terran eyes, it was a vaguely repulsive creature, but as far as the
settlers had been able to discover it was the highest form of land life.
The smaller rodentlike things, the two species of wingless diving birds,
and an odd assortment of reptiles and amphibians sharing the island were
all the burrowers' prey.
A world of sea and islands, what type of native intelligent life had it
once supported? Or had this been only a galactic colony, with no native
population before the coming of the stellar explorers? Ross hovered
above a dark pocket where the bottom had suddenly dipped into a
saucer-shaped depression. The sea growth about the rim rippled in the
water raggedly, but there was something about its general outline....
Ross began a circumference of that hollow. Allowing for the distortion
of the growths which had formed lumpy excrescences or reached turrets
toward the surface--yes, allowing for those--this was decidedly
something out of the ordinary! The depression was too regular, too even,
Ross was certain of that. With a thrill of excitement he began a descent
into the cup, striving to trace signs which would prove his suspicion
correct.
How many years, centuries, had the slow coverage of the sea life
gathered there, flourished, died, with other creatures to build anew on
the remains? Now there was only a hint that the depression had other
than a natural beginning.
Anchoring with a one-handed grip on a spike of Hawaikan coral--smoother
than the Terran species--Ross aimed the butt of his spear-gun at the
nearest wall of the saucer, striving to reach into a crevice between two
lumps of growth and so probe into what might lie behind. The spear
rebounded; there was no breaking that crust with such a fragile tool.
But perhaps he would have better luck lower down.
The depression was deeper than he had first judged. Now the light which
existed in the shallows vanished. Red and yellow as colors went, but
Ross was aware of blues and greens in shades and tints which were not
visible above. He switched on his diving torch, and color returned
within its beam. A swirl of weed, pink in the light, became darkly
emerald beyond as if it possessed the chameleon ability of the
burrowers.
He was distracted by that phenomenon, and so he transgressed the diver's
rule of never becoming so absorbed in surroundings as to forget caution.
Just when did Ross become aware of that shadow below? Was it when a
school of ghost-fish burst unexpectedly between weed growths, and he
turned to follow them with the torch? Then the outer edge of his beam
caught the movement of a shape, a flutter in the water of the gloomy
depths.
Ross swung around, his back to the wall of the saucer, as he aimed the
torch down at what was arising there. The light caught and held for a
long moment of horror something which might have come out of the
nightmares of his own world. Afterward Ross knew that the monster was
not as large as it seemed in that endless minute of fear, perhaps no
bigger than the dolphins.
He had had training in shark-infested seas on Terra, been carefully
briefed against the danger from such hunters of the deep and ocean
jungles. But this kind of thing had only existed before in the fairy
tales of his race as the dragon of old lore. A scaled head with wide
eyes gleaming in the light beam with cold and sullen hate, a gaping
mouth fang-filled, a horn-set muzzle, that long, undulating neck and,
below it, the half-seen bulk of a monstrous body.
His spear-gun, the knife at his waist belt, neither were protection
against this! Yet to turn his back on that rising head was more than
Ross could do. He pulled himself back against the wall of the saucer.
The thing before him did not rush to attack. Plainly it had seen him and
now it moved with the leisure of a hunter having no fears concerning the
eventual outcome of the hunt. But the light appeared to puzzle it and
Ross kept the beam shining straight into those evil eyes.
The shock of the encounter was wearing off; now Ross edged his flipper
into a crevice to hold him steady while his hand went to the sonic-com
at his waist. He tapped out a distress call which the dolphins could
relay to the swimmers. The swaying dragon head paused, held rigid on a
stiff, scaled column in the center of the saucer. That sonic vibration
either surprised or bothered the hunter, made it wary.
Ross tapped again. The belief that if he tried to escape, he was lost,
that only while he faced it so had he any chance, grew stronger. The
head was only inches below the level of his flippered feet as he held to
the weeds.
Again that weaving movement, the rise of head, a tremor along the
serpent neck, an agitation in the depths. The dragon was on the move
again. Ross aimed the light directly at the head. The scales, as far as
he could determine, were not horny plates but lapped, silvery ovals such
as a fish possessed. And the underparts of the monster might even be
vulnerable to his spear. But knowing the way a Terran shark could absorb
the darts of that weapon and survive, Ross feared to attack except as a
last resort.
Above and to his left there was a small hollow where in the past some
portion of the growths had been ripped away. If he could fit himself
into that crevice, perhaps he could keep the dragon at bay until help
arrived. Ross moved with all the skill he had. His hand closed upon the
edge of the niche and he whirled himself up, just making it into that
refuge as the head lashed at him wickedly. His suspicion that the dragon
would attack anything on the run was well founded, and he knew he had no
hope of winning to the surface above.
Now he stood in the crevice, facing outward, watching the head darting
in the water. He had switched off the torch, and the loss of light
appeared to bewilder the reptile for some precious seconds. Ross pulled
as far back into the niche as he could, until the point of one shoulder
touched a surface which was sleek, smooth, and cold. The shock of that
contact almost sent him hurtling out again.
Gripping the spear before him in his right hand, Ross cautiously felt
behind him with the left. His finger tips glided over a seamless surface
where the growths had been torn or peeled away. Though he could not, or
dared not, turn his head to see, he was certain that this was his proof
that the walls of the saucer had been fashioned and placed there by some
intelligent creature.
The dragon had risen, hovering now in the water directly before the
entrance to Ross's hole, its neck curled back against its bulk. It had
wide flippers moving like planes to hold it poised. The body, sloping
from a massive round of shoulders to a tapering rear, was vaguely
familiar. If one provided a Terran seal with a gorgon head and scales in
place of fur, the effect would be similar. But Ross was assuredly not
facing a seal at this moment.
Slight movement of the flippers kept it as stabilized as if it sprawled
on a supporting surface. With the neck flattened against the body, the
head curved downward until the horn on its snout pointed the tip
straight at Ross's middle. The Terran steadied his spear-gun. The
dragon's eyes were its most vulnerable targets; if the creature launched
the attack, Ross would aim for them.
Both man and dragon were so intent upon their duel that neither was
conscious of the sudden swirl overhead. A sleek dark shape struck down,
skimming across the humped-back ridge of the dragon. Some of the
settlers had empathy with the dolphins to a high degree, but Ross's own
powers of contact were relatively feeble.
Only now he was given an assurance of aid, and a suggestion to attack.
The dragon head writhed, twisted as the reptile attempted to see above
and behind its own length. But the dolphin was only a streak fast
disappearing. And that writhing changed the balance the monster had
maintained, pushing it toward Ross.
The Terran fired too soon and without proper aim, so the dart snaked
past the head. But the harpoon line half hooked about the neck and
seemed to confuse the creature. Ross squirmed as far back as he could
into his refuge and drew his knife. Against those fangs the weapon was
an almost useless toy, but it was all he had.
Again the dolphin dived in attack on the reptile, this time seizing in
its mouth the floating cord of the harpoon and giving it a jerk which
jolted the dragon even more off balance, pulling it away from Ross's
niche and out into the center of the saucer.
There were two dolphins in action now, Ross saw, playing the dragon as
matadors might play a bull, keeping the creature disturbed by their
agile maneuvers. Whatever prey came naturally to the Hawaikan monster
was not of this type, and the creature was not prepared to deal
effectively with their teasing, dodging tactics. Neither had touched the
beast, but they kept it constantly striving to get at them.
Though it swam in circles attempting to face its teasers, the dragon did
not abandon the level before Ross's refuge, and now and then it darted
its head at him, unwilling to give up its prey. Only one of the dolphins
frisked and dodged above now as the sonic on Ross's belt vibrated
against his lower ribs with its message warning to be prepared for
further action. Somewhere above, his own kind gathered. Hurriedly he
tapped out in code his warning in return.
Two dolphins busy again, their last dive over the dragon pushing the
monster down past Ross's niche toward the saucer's depths. Then they
flashed up and away. The dragon was rising in turn, but coming to meet
the Hawaikan creature was a ball giving off light, bringing sharp vision
and color with it.
Ross's arm swung up to shield his eyes. There was a flash; such
answering vibration carried through the waves that even his nerves, far
less sensitive than those of the life about him, reacted. He blinked
behind his mask. A fish floated by, spiraling up, its belly exposed. And
about him growths drooped, trailed lifelessly through the water; while
there was a now motionless bulk sinking to the obscurity of the
depression floor. A weapon perfected on Terra to use against sharks and
barracuda had worked here to kill what could have been more formidable
prey.
The Terran wriggled out of the niche, rose to meet another swimmer. As
Ashe descended, Ross relayed his news via the sonic. The dolphins were
already nosing into the depths in pursuit of their late enemy.
"Look here--" Ross guided Ashe to the crevice which had saved him, aimed
the torch beam into it. He had been right! There was a long groove in
the covering built up by the growths; a vertical strip some six feet
long, of a uniform gray, showed. Ashe touched the find and then gave the
alert via the sonic code.
"Metal or an alloy, we've found it!"
But what did they have? Even after an hour's exploration by the full
company, Ashe's expert search with his knowledge of artifacts and
ancient remains, they were still baffled. It would require labor and
tools they did not have, to clear the whole of the saucer. They could be
sure only of its size and shape, and the fact that its walls were of an
unknown substance which the sea could cloak but not erode. For the
length of gray surface showed not the slightest pitting or time wear.
Down at its centermost point they found the dragon's den, an arch coated
with growth, before which sprawled the body of the creature. That was
dragged aloft with the dolphins' aid, to be taken ashore for study. But
the arch itself ... was that part of some old installation?
Torches to the fore, they entered its shadow, only to remain baffled.
Here and there were patches of the same gray showing in its interior.
Ashe dug the butt of his spear-gun into the sand on the flooring to
uncover another oval depression. But what it all signified or what had
been its purpose, they could not guess.
"Set up the peep-probe here?" Ross asked.
Ashe's head moved in a slow negative. "Look farther ... spread out," the
sonic clicked.
Within a matter of minutes the dolphins reported new remains--two more
saucers, each larger than the first, set in a line on the ocean floor,
pointing directly to Karara's Finger Island. Cautiously explored, these
were discovered to be free of any but harmless life; they stirred up no
more dragons.
When the Terrans came ashore on Finger Island to rest and eat their
midday meal one of the men paced along the beached dragon. Ashore it
lost none of its frightening aspect. And seeing it, even beached and
dead, Ross wondered at his luck in surviving the encounter without a
scratch.
"I think that this one would be alone," PaKeeKee commented. "Where there
is an eater of this size, there is usually only one."
"Mano-Nui!" The girl Taema shivered as she gave to this monster the name
of the shark demon of her people. "Such a one is truly king shark in
these waters! But why have we not sighted its like before? Tino-rau,
Taua ... they have not reported such--"
"Probably because, as PaKeeKee says, these things are rare," Ashe
returned. "A carnivore of size would have to have a fairly wide hunting
range, yet there's evidence that this thing has laired in that den for
some time. Which means that it must have a defined hunting territory
allowing no trespassing from others of its species."
Karara nodded. "Also it may hunt only at intervals, eat heavily, and lie
quiet until that meal is digested. There are large snakes on Terra that
follow that pattern. Ross was in its front yard when it came after
him--"
"From now on"--Ashe swallowed a quarter of fruit--"we know what to watch
for, and the weapon which will finish it off. Don't forget that!"
The delicate mechanisms of their sonics had already registered the
vibrations which would warn of a dragon's presence, and the depth globes
would then do the rest.
"Big skull, oversize for the body." PaKeeKee squatted on his heels by
the head lying on the sand at the end of the now fully extended neck.
Ross had heretofore been more aware of the armament of that head, the
fangs set in the powerful jaws, the horn on the snout. But PaKeeKee's
comment drew his attention to the fact that the scale-covered skull did
dome up above the eye pits in a way to suggest ample brain room. Had the
thing been intelligent? Karara put that into words:
"Rule One?" She went over to survey the carcass.
Ross resented her half question, whether it was addressed to him or mere
thinking aloud on her part.
Rule One: Conserve native life to the fullest extent. Humanoid form may
not be the only evidence of intelligence.
There were the dolphins to prove that point right on Terra. But did Rule
One mean that you had to let a monster nibble at you because it might
just be a high type of alien intelligence? Let Karara spout Rule One
while backed into a crevice under water with that horn stabbing at her
mid-section!
"Rule One does not mean to forego self-defense," Ashe commented mildly.
"This thing is a hunter, and you can't stop to apply recognition
techniques when you are being regarded as legitimate prey. If you are
the stronger, or an equal, yes--stop and think before becoming
aggressive. But in a situation like this--take no chances."
"Anyway, from now on," Karara pointed out, "it could be possible to
shock instead of kill."
"Gordon"--PaKeeKee swung around--"what have we found here--besides this
thing?"
"I can't even guess. Except that those depressions were made for a
purpose and have been there for a long time. Whether they were
originally in the water, or the land sank, that we don't know either.
But now we have a site to set up the peep-probe."
"We do that right away?" Ross wanted to know. Impatience bit at him. But
Ashe still had a trace of frown. He shook his head.
"Have to make sure of our site, very sure. I don't want to start any
chain reaction on the other side of the time wall."
And he was right, Ross was forced to admit, remembering what had
happened when the galactics had discovered the Red time gates and traced
them forward to their twentieth-century source, ruthlessly destroying
each station. The original colonists of Hawaika had been as giants to
Terran pygmies when it came to technical knowledge. To use even a
peep-probe indiscreetly near one of their outposts might bring swift and
terrible retribution.
3
The Ancient Mariners
Another map spread out and this time pinned down with small stones on
beach gravel.
"Here, here, and here--" Ashe's finger indicated the points marked in a
pattern which flared out from three sides of Finger Island. Each marked
a set of three undersea depressions in perfect alliance with the land
which, according to the galactic map, had once been a cape on a much
larger land mass. Though the Terrans had found the ruins, if those
saucers in the sea could be so termed, the remains had no meaning for
the explorers.
"Do we set up here?" Ross asked. "If we could just get a report to send
back...." That might mean the difference between awakening the
co-operation of the Project policy makers so that a flood of supplies
and personnel would begin to head their way.
"We set up here," Ashe decided.
He had selected a point between two of the lines where a reef would
provide them with a secure base. And once that decision was made, the
Terrans went into action.
Two days to go, to install the peep-probe and take some shots before the
ship had to clear with or without their evidence. Together Ross and Ashe
floated the installation out to the reef, Ui and Karara helping to tow
the equipment and parts, the dolphins lending pushing noses on occasion.
The aquatic mammals were as interested as the human beings they aided.
And in water their help was invaluable. Had dolphins developed hands,
Ross wondered fleetingly, would they have long ago wrested control of
their native world--or at least of its seas--from the human kind?
All the human beings worked with practiced ease, even while masked and
submerged, to set the probe in place, aiming it landward at the check
point of the Finger's protruding nail of rock. After Ashe made the final
adjustments, tested each and every part of the assembly, he gestured
them in.
Karara's swift hand movement asked a question, and Ashe's sonic
code-clicked in reply: "At twilight."
Yes, dusk was the proper time for using a peep-probe. To see without
risk of being sighted in return was their safeguard. Here Ashe had no
historical data to guide him. Their search for the former inhabitants
might be a long drawn-out process skipping across centuries as the
machine was adjusted to Terran time eras.
"When were they here?" Back on shore Karara shook out her hair, spread
it over her shoulders to dry. "How many hundred years back will the
probe return?"
"More likely thousands," Ross commented. "Where will you start, Gordon?"
Ashe brushed sand from the page of the notebook he had steadied against
one bent knee and gazed out at the reef where they had set the probe.
"Ten thousand years--"
"Why?" Karara wanted to know. "Why that exact figure?"
"We know that galactic ships crashed on Terra then. So their commerce
and empire--if it was an empire--was far-flung at that time. Perhaps
they were at the zenith of their civilization; perhaps they were already
on the down slope. I do not think they were near the beginning. So that
date is as good a starting place as any. If we don't hit what we're
after, then we can move forward until we do."
"Do you think that there ever was a native population here?"
"Might have been."
"But without any large land animals, no modern traces of any," she
protested.
"Of people?" Ashe shrugged. "Good answers for both. Suppose there was a
world-wide epidemic of proportions to wipe out a species. Or a war in
which they used forces beyond our comprehension to alter the whole face
of this planet, which did happen--the alteration, I mean. Several things
could have removed intelligent life. Then such species as the burrowers
could have developed or evolved from smaller, more primitive types."
"Those ape-things we found on the desert planet." Ross thought back to
their first voyage on the homing derelict. "Maybe they had once been men
and were degenerating. And the winged people, they could have been less
than men on their way up----"
"Ape-things ... winged people?" Karara interrupted. "Tell me!"
There was something imperious in her demand, but Ross found himself
describing in detail their past adventures, first on the world of sand
and sealed structures where the derelict had rested for a purpose its
involuntary passengers had never understood, and then of the Terrans'
limited exploration of that other planet which might have been the
capital world of a far-flung stellar empire. There they had made a pact
with a winged people living in the huge buildings of a jungle-choked
city.
"But you see"--the Polynesian girl turned to Ashe when Ross had
finished--"you did find them--these ape-things and the winged people.
But here there are only the dragons and the burrowers. Are they the
start or the finish? I want to know--"
"Why?" Ashe asked.
"Not just because I am curious, though I am that also, but because we,
too, must have a beginning and an end. Did we come up from the seas,
rise to know and feel and think, just to return to such beginning at our
end? If your winged people were climbing and your ape-things
descending"--she shook her head--"it would be frightening to hold a cord
of life, both ends in your hands. Is it good for us to see such things,
Gordon?"
"Men have asked that question all their thinking lives, Karara. There
have been those who have said no, who have turned aside and tried to
halt the growth of knowledge here or there, attempted to make men stand
still on one tread of a stairway. Only there is that in us which will
not stop, ill-fitted as we may be for the climbing. Perhaps we shall be
safe and untroubled here on Hawaika if I do not go out to that reef
tonight. By that action I may bring real danger down on all of us. Yet I
can not hold back for that. Could you?"
"No, I do not believe that I could," she agreed.
"We are here because we are of those who must know--volunteers. And
being of that temperament, it is in us always to take the next step."
"Even if it leads to a fall," she added in a low tone.
Ashe gazed at her, though her own eyes were on the sea where a lace of
waves marked the reef. Her words were ordinary enough, but Ross
straightened to match Ashe's stare. Why had he felt that odd instant of
uneasiness as if his heart had fluttered instead of beating true?
"I know of you Time Agents," Karara continued. "There were plenty of
stories about you told while we were in training."
"Tall tales, I can imagine, most of them." Ashe laughed, but his
amusement sounded forced to Ross.
"Perhaps. Though I do not believe that many could be any taller than the
truth. And so also I have heard of that strict rule you follow, that you
must do nothing which might alter the course of history. But suppose,
suppose here that the course of history could be altered, that whatever
catastrophe occurred might be averted? If that was done, what would
happen to our settlement in the here and now?"
"I don't know. That is an experiment which we have never dared to try,
which we won't try--"
"Not even if it would mean a chance of life for a whole native race?"
she persisted.
"Alternate worlds then, maybe." Ross's imagination caught up that idea.
"Two worlds from a change point in history," he elaborated, noting her
look of puzzlement. "One stemming from one decision, another from the
alternate."
"I've heard of that! But, Gordon, if you could return to the time of
decision here and you had it in your power to say, 'Yes--live!' or
'No--die!' to the alien natives, what would you do?"
"I don't know. But neither do I think I shall ever be placed in that
position. Why do you ask?"
She was twisting her still damp hair into a pony tail and tying it so
with a cord. "Because ... because I feel.... No, I can not really put it
into words, Gordon. It is that feeling one has on the eve of some
important event--anticipation, fear, excitement. You'll let me go with
you tonight, please! I want to see it--not the Hawaika that is, but that
other world with another name, the one they saw and knew!"
An instant protest was hot in Ross's throat, but he had no time to voice
it. For Ashe was already nodding.
"All right. But we may have no luck at all. Fishing in time is a chancy
thing, so don't be disappointed if we don't turn you up that other
world. Now, I'm going to pamper these old bones for an hour or two.
Amuse yourselves, children." He lay back and closed his eyes.
The past two days had wiped half the shadows from his lean, tanned face.
He had dropped two years, three, Ross thought thankfully. Let them be
lucky tonight, and Ashe's cure could be nearly complete.
"What do you think happened here?" Karara had moved so that her back was
now to the wash of waves, her face more in the shadow.
"How do I know? Could be any of ten different things."
"And will I please shut up and leave you alone?" she countered swiftly.
"Do you wish to savor the excitement then, explore a world upon world,
or am I saying it right? We have Hawaika One which is a new world for
us; now there is Hawaika Two which is removed in time, not distance. And
to explore that--"
"We won't be exploring it really," Ross protested.
"Why? Did your agents not spend days, weeks, even months of time in the
past on Terra? What is to prevent your doing the same here?"
"Training. We have no way of learning the drill."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, it wasn't as easy as you seem to think it was back on Terra," he
began scornfully. "We didn't just stroll through one of those gates and
set up business, say, in Nero's Rome or Montezuma's Mexico. An Agent was
physically and psychologically fitted to the era he was to explore. Then
he trained, and how he trained!" Ross remembered the weary hours spent
learning how to use a bronze sword, the technique of Beaker trading, the
hypnotic instruction in a language which was already dead centuries
before his own country existed. "You learned the language, the customs,
everything you could about your time and your cover. You were letter
perfect before you took even a trial run!"
"And here you would have no guides," Karara said, nodding. "Yes, I can
see the difficulty. Then you will just use the peep-probe?"
"Probably. Oh, maybe later on we can scout through a gate. We have the
material to set one up. But it would be a strictly limited project,
allowing no chance of being caught. Maybe the big brains back home can
take peep-data and work out some basis of infiltration for us from it."
"But that would take years!"
"I suppose so. Only you begin to swim in the shallows, don't you--not by
jumping off a cliff!"
She laughed. "True enough! However, even a look into the past might
solve part of the big mystery."