closed eyes his brain was busy, and he did not cultivate the patience he
needed. Peep-probes were all right, but Karara had a point. You wanted
more than a small window into a mystery, you wanted a part in solving
it.
The setting of the sun deepened rose to red, made a dripping wine-hued
banner of most of the sky, so that under it they moved in a crimson sea,
looked back at an island where shadows were embers instead of ashes.
Three humans, two dolphins, and a machine mounted on a reef which might
not even have existed in the time they sought. Ashe made his final
adjustments, and then his finger pressed a button and they watched the
vista-plate no larger than the palms of two hands.
Nothing, a dull gray nothing! Something must have gone wrong with their
assembly work. Ross touched Ashe's shoulder. But now there were shadows
gathering on the plate, thickening, to sharpen into a distinct picture.
It was still the sunset hour they watched. But somehow the colors were
paler, less red and sullen than the ones about them in the here and now.
And they were not seeing the isle toward which the probe had been aimed;
they were looking at a rugged coastline where cliffs lifted well above
the beach-strand. While on those cliffs--! Ross had not realized Karara
had reached out to grasp his arm until her nails bit into his flesh. And
even then he was hardly aware of the pain. Because there was a building
on the cliff!
Massive walls of native rock reared in outward defenses, culminating in
towers. And from the high point of one tower the pointed tail of a
banner cracked in the wind. There was a headland of rock reaching out,
not toward them but to the north, and rounding that....
"War canoe!" Karara exclaimed, but Ross had another identification:
"Longboat!"
In reality, the vessel was neither one nor the other, not the double
canoe of the Pacific which had transported warriors on raid from one
island to another, or the shield-hung warship of the Vikings. But the
Terrans were right in its purpose: That rakish, sharp-prowed ship had
been fashioned for swift passage of the seas, for maneuverability as a
weapon.
Behind the first nosed another and a third. Their sails were dyed by the
sun, but there were devices painted on them, and the lines of those
designs glittered as if they had been drawn with a metallic fluid.
"The castle!" Ashe's cry pulled their attention back to land.
There was movement along those walls. Then came a flash, a splash in the
water close enough to the lead ship to wet her deck with spray.
"They're fighting!" Karara shouldered against Ross for a better look.
The ships were altering course, swinging away from land, out to sea.
"Moving too fast for sails alone, and I don't see any oars." Ross was
puzzled. "How do you suppose...."
The bombardment from the castle continued but did not score any hits.
Already the ships were out of range, the lead vessel off the screen of
the peep as well. Then there was just the castle in the sunset. Ashe
straightened up.
"Rocks!" he repeated wonderingly. "They were throwing rocks!"
"But those ships, they must have had engines. They weren't just
depending on sails when they retreated." Ross added his own cause for
bewilderment.
Karara looked from one to the other. "There is something here you do not
understand. What is wrong?"
"Catapults, yes," Ashe said with a nod. "Those would fit periods
corresponding from the Roman Empire into the Middle Ages. But you're
right, Ross, those ships had power of some kind to take them offshore
that quickly."
"A technically advanced race coming up against a more backward one?"
hazarded the younger man.
"Could be. Let's go forward some." The incoming tide was washing well up
on the reef. Ashe had to don his mask as he plunged head and shoulders
under water to make the necessary adjustment.
Once more he pressed the button. And Ross's gasp was echoed by one from
the girl. The cliff again, but there was no castle dominating it, only a
ruin, hardly more than rubble. Now, above the sites of the saucer
depressions great pylons of silvery metal, warmed into fire brilliance
by the sunset, raked into the sky like gaunt, skeleton fingers. There
were no ships, no signs of any life. Even the vegetation which had
showed on shore had vanished. There was an atmosphere of stark
abandonment and death which struck the Terrans forcibly.
Those pylons, Ross studied them. Something familiar in their
construction teased his memory. That refuel planet where the derelict
ship had set down twice, on the voyage out and on their return. That had
been a world of metal structures, and he believed he could trace a
kinship between his memory of those and these pylons. Surely they had no
connection with the earlier castle on the cliff.
Once more Ashe ducked to reset the probe. And in the fast-fading light
they watched a third and last picture. But now they might have been
looking at the island of the present, save that it bore no vegetation
and there was a rawness about it, a sharpness of rock outline now
vanished.
Those pylons, were they the key to the change which had come upon this
world? What were they? Who had set them there? For the last Ross thought
he had an answer. They were certainly the product of the galactic
empire. And the castle ... the ships ... natives ... settlers? Two
widely different eras, and the mystery still, lay between them. Would
they ever be able to bring the key to it out of time?
They swam for the shore where Ui had a fire blazing and their supper
prepared.
"How many years lying between those probes?" Ross pulled broiled fish
apart with his fingers.
"That first was ten thousand years ago, the second," Ashe paused, "only
two hundred years later."
"But"--Ross stared at his superior--"that means----"
"That there was a war or some drastic form of invasion, yes."
"You mean that the star people arrived and just took over this whole
planet?" Karara asked. "But why? And those pylons, what were they for?
How much later was that last picture?"
"Five hundred years."
"The pylons were gone, too, then," Ross commented. "But why--?" he
echoed Karara's question.
Ashe had taken up his notebook, but he did not open it. "I think"--there
was a sharp, grim note in his voice--"we had better find out."
"Put up a gate?"
Ashe broke all the previous rules of their service with his answer:
"Yes, a gate."
4
Storm Menace
"We have to know." Ashe leaned back against the crate they had just
emptied. "Something was done here--in two hundred years--and then, an
empty world."
"Pandora's box." Ross drew a hand across his forehead, smearing sweat
and fine sand into a brand.
Ashe nodded. "Maybe we run that risk, loosing all the devils of the
aliens. But what if the Reds open the box first on one of their
settlement worlds?"
There it was again, the old thorn which prodded them into risks and
recklessness. Danger ahead on both paths. Don't risk trying to learn
galactic secrets, but don't risk your enemy's learning them either. You
held a white-hot iron in both hands in this business. And Ashe was
right, they had stumbled on something here which hinted that a whole
world had been altered to suit some plan. Suppose the secret of that
alteration was discovered by their enemies?
"Were the ship and castle people natives?" Ross wondered aloud.
"Just at a guess they were, or at least settlers who had been
established here so long they had developed a local form of civilization
which was about on the level of a feudal society."
"You mean because of the castle and the rock bombardment. But what about
the ships?"
"Two separate phases of a society at war, perhaps a more progressive
against a less technically advanced. American warships paying a visit to
the Shogun's Japan, for example."
Ross grinned. "Those warships didn't seem to fancy their welcome. They
steered out to sea fast enough when the rocks began to fall."
"Yes, but the ships could exist in the castle pattern; the pylons could
not!"
"Which period are you aiming for first--the castle or the pylons?"
"Castle first, I think. Then if we can't pick up any hints, we'll take
some jumps forward until we do connect. Only we'll be under severe
handicaps. If we could only plant an analyzer somewhere in the castle as
a beginning."
Ross did not show his surprise. If Ashe was talking on those terms, then
he was intending to do more than just lurk around a little beyond the
gate; he was really planning to pick up alien speech patterns,
eventually assume an alien agent identity!
"Gordon!" Karara appeared between two of the lace trees. She came so
hastily that the contents of the two cups she carried slopped over. "You
must hear what Hori has to say--"
The tall Samoan who trailed her spoke quickly. For the first time since
Ross had known him he was very serious, a frown line between his eyes.
"There is a bad storm coming. Our instruments register it."
"How long away?" Ashe was on his feet.
"A day ... maybe two...."
Ross could see no change in the sky, islands, or sea. They had had
idyllic weather for the six weeks since their planeting, no sign of any
such trouble in the Hawaikan paradise.
"It's coming," Hori repeated.
"The gate is half up," Ashe thought aloud, "too much of it set to be
dismantled again in a hurry."
"If it's completed," Hori wanted to know, "would it ride out a storm?"
"It might, behind that reef where we have it based. To finish it would
be a fast job."
Hori flexed his hands. "We're more brawn than brain in these matters,
Gordon, but you've all our help, for what it's worth. What about the
ship, does it lift on schedule?"
"Check with Rimbault about that. This storm, how will it compare to a
Pacific typhoon?"
The Samoan shook his head. "How do we know? We have not yet had to face
the local variety."
"The islands are low," Karara commented. "Winds and water could--"
"Yes! We'd better see Rimbault about a shelter if needed."
If the settlement had drowsed, now its inhabitants were busy. It was
decided that they could shelter in the spaceship should the storm reach
hurricane proportions, but before its coming the gate must be finished.
The final fitting was left to Ashe and Ross, and the older agent
fastened the last bolt when the waters beyond the reef were already wind
ruffled, the sky darkening fast. The dolphins swam back and forth in the
lagoon and with them Karara, though Ashe had twice waved her to the
shore.
There was no sunlight left, and they worked with torches. Ashe began his
inspection of the relatively simple transfer--the two upright bars, the
slab of opaque material forming a doorstep between them. This was only a
skeleton of the gates Ross had used in the past. But continual
experimentation had produced this more easily transported installation.
Piled in a net were several supply containers ready for an exploring
run--extra gill-packs, the analyzer, emergency rations, a medical kit,
all the basics. Was Ashe going to try now? He had activated the
transfer, the rods were glowing faintly, the slab they guarded having an
eerie blue glimmer. He probably only wanted to be sure it worked.
What happened at that moment Ross could never find any adequate words to
describe, nor was he sure he could remember. The disorientation of the
pass-through he had experienced before; this time he was whirled into a
vortex of feeling in which his body, his identity, were rift from him
and he lost touch with all stability.
Instinctively he lashed out, his reflexes more than his conscious will
keeping him above water in the wild rage of a storm-whipped sea. The
light was gone; here was only dark and beating water. Then a lightning
flash ripped wide the heavens over Ross as his head broke the surface
and he saw, with unbelieving eyes, that he was being thrust
shoreward--not to the strand of Finger Island--but against a cliff where
water pounded an unyielding wall of rock.
Ross comprehended that somehow he had been jerked through the gate, that
he was now fronting the land that had been somewhere beneath the heights
supporting the castle. Then he fought for his life to escape the hammer
of the sea determined to crack him against the surface of the cliff.
A rough surface loomed up before him, and he threw himself in that
direction, embracing a rock, striving to cling through the backwash of
the wave which had brought him there. His nails grated and broke on the
stone, and then the fingers of his right hand caught in a hole, and he
held with all the strength in his gasping, beaten body. He had had no
preparation, no warning, and only the tough survival will which had been
trained and bred into him saved his life.
As the water washed back, Ross strove to pull up farther on his
anchorage, to be above the strike of the next wave. Somehow he gained a
foot before it came. The mask of the gill-pack saved him from being
smothered in that curling torrent as he clung stubbornly, resisting
again the pull of the retreating sea.
Inch by inch between waves he fought for footing and stable support.
Then he was on the surface of the rock, out of all but the lash of
spray. He crouched there, spent and gasping. The thunder roar of the
surf, and beyond it the deeper mutter of the rage in the heavens, was
deafening, dulling his sense as much as the ordeal through which he had
passed. He was content to cling where he was, hardly conscious of his
surroundings.
Sparks of light along the shore to the north at last caught Ross's
attention. They moved, some clustering along the wave line, a few strung
up the cliff. And they were not part of the storm's fireworks. Men
here--why at this moment?
Another bolt of lightning showed him the answer. On the reef fringe
which ran a tongue of land into the sea hung a ship--two ships--pounded
by every hammer wave. Shipwrecks ... and those lights must mark castle
dwellers drawn to aid the survivors.
Ross crawled across his rock on his hands and knees, wavered along the
cliff wall until he was again faced with angry water. To drop into that
would be a mistake. He hesitated--and now more than his own predicament
struck home to him.
Ashe! Ashe had been ahead of him at the time gate. If Ross had been
jerked through to this past, then somewhere in the water, on the shore,
Gordon was here too! But where to find him....
Setting his back to the cliff and holding to the rough stone, Ross got
to his feet, trying to see through the welter of foam and water. Not
only the sea poured here; now a torrential rain fell into the bargain,
streaming down about him, battering his head and shoulders. A chill rain
which made him shiver.
He wore gill-pack, weighted belt with its sheathed tool and knife,
flippers, and the pair of swimming trunks which had been suitable for
the Hawaika he knew; but this was a different world altogether. Dare he
use his torch to see the way out of here? Ross watched the lights to the
north, deciding they were not too unlike his own beam, and took the
chance.
Now he stood on a shelf of rock pitted with depressions, all pools. To
his left was a drop into a boiling, whirling caldron from which points
of stone fanged. Ross shuddered. At least he had escaped being pulled
into that!
To his right, northward, there was another space of sea, a narrow strip,
and then a second ledge. He measured the distance between that and the
one on which he perched. Staying where he was would not locate Ashe.
Ross stripped off his flippers, made them fast in his belt. Then he
leaped and landed painfully, as his feet slipped and he skidded face
down on the northern ledge.
As he sat up, rubbing a bruised and scraped knee, he saw lights
advancing in his direction. And between them a shadow crawling from
water to shore. Ross stumbled along the ledge hastening to reach that
figure, who lay still now just out of the waves. Ashe?
Ross's limping pace became a trot. But he was too late; the other
lights, two of them, had reached the shadow. A man--or at least a body
which was humanoid--sprawled face down. Other men, three of them,
gathered over the exhausted swimmer.
Those who held the torches were still partially in the dark, but the
third stooped to roll over their find. Ross caught the glint of light on
a metallic headcovering, the glisten of wet armor of some type on the
fellow's back and shoulders as he made quick examination of the sea's
victim.
Then.... Ross halted, his eyes wide. A hand rose and fell with expert
precision. There had been a blade in that hand. Already the three were
turning away from the man so ruthlessly dispatched. Ashe? Or some
survivor of the wrecked ships?
Ross retreated to the end of the ledge. The narrow stream of water
dividing it from the rock where he had won ashore washed into a cave in
the cliff. Dare he try to work his way into that? Masked, with the
gill-pack, he could go under surface if he were not smashed by the waves
against some wall.
He glanced back. The lights were very close to the end of his ledge. To
withdraw to the second rock would mean being caught in a dead end, for
he dared not enter the whirlpool on its far side. There was really no
choice: stay and be killed, or try for the cave. Ross fastened on his
flippers and lowered his body into the narrow stream. The fact that it
was narrow and guarded on either side by the ledges tamed the waves a
little, and Ross found the tug against him not so great as he feared it
would be.
Keeping hand-holds on the rock, he worked along, head and shoulders
often under the wash of rolling water, but winning steadily to the break
in the cliff wall. Then he was through, into a space much larger than
the opening, water-filled but not with a wild turbulence of waves.
Had he been sighted? Ross kept a handhold to the left of that narrow
entrance, his body floating with the rise and fall of the water. He
could make out the gleam of light without. It might be that one of those
hunters had leaned out over the runnel of the cave entrance, was
flashing his torch down into the water there.
Behind mask plate Ross's lips writhed in the snarl of the hunted. In
here he would have the advantage. Let one of them, or all three, try to
follow through that rock entrance and....
But if he had been sighted at the mouth of the lair, none of his
trackers appeared to wish to press the hunt. The light disappeared, and
Ross was left in the dark. He counted a hundred slowly and then a second
hundred before he dared use his own torch.
For all its slit entrance this was a good-sized hideaway he had chanced
upon. And he discovered, when he ventured to release his wall hold and
swim out into its middle, the bottom arose in a slope toward its rear.
Moments later Ross pulled out of the water once more, to crouch
shivering on a ledge only lapped now and then by wavelets. He had found
a temporary refuge, but his good fortune did not quiet his fears. Had
that been Ashe on the shore? And why had the swimmer been so summarily
executed by the men who found him?
The ships caught on the reef, the castle on the cliff above his
head ... enemies ... ships' crews and castle men? But the callous act
of the shore patrol argued a state of war carried to fanatic proportions,
perhaps inter-racial conflict.
He could not hope to explore until the storm was over. To plunge back
into the sea would not find Ashe. And to be hunted along the shore by an
unknown enemy was simply asking to die without achieving any good in
return. No, he must remain where he was for the present.
Ross unhooked the torch from his belt and used it on this higher portion
of the cave. He was perched on a ledge which protruded into the water in
the form of a wedge. At his back the wall of the cave was rough, and
trails of weed were festooned on its projections. The smell of fishy
decay was strong enough to register as Ross pulled off his mask. As far
as he could now see there was no exit except by sea.
A movement in the water brought his light flashing down into the dark
flood. Then a sleek head arose in the path of that ray. Not a man
swimming, but one of the dolphins!
Ross's exclamation of surprise was half gasp, half cry. The second
dolphin showed for a moment and between the shadow of their bodies, just
under the surface, moved a third form.
"Ashe!" Ross had no idea how the dolphins had come through the time
gate, but that they had guided to safety a Terran he did not doubt at
all. "Ashe!"
But it was not Ashe who came wading to the ledge where Ross waited with
hand outstretched. He had been so sure of the other's identity that he
blinked in complete bewilderment as his eyes met Karara's and she half
stumbled, half reeled against him.
His arms about her shoulders steadied her, and her shivering body was
close to his as she leaned her full weight upon him. Her hands made a
feeble movement to her mask, and he pulled it off. Uncovered, her face
was pale and drawn, her eyes now closed, and her breath came in ragged,
tearing sobs which shook her even more.
"How did you get here?" Ross demanded even as he pushed her down on the
ledge.
Her head moved slowly, in a weak gesture of negation.
"I don't know ... we were close to the gate. There was a flash of
light ... then--" Her voice sealed up with a note of hysteria in it.
"Then ... I was here ... and Taua with me. Tino-rau came ... Ross,
Ross ... there was a man swimming. He got ashore; he was getting to his
feet and--and they killed him!"
Ross's hold tightened; he stared into her face with fierce demand.
"Was it Gordon?"
She blinked, brought her hand up to her mouth, and wiped it back and
forth across her chin. There was a small red trickle growing between her
fingers, dripping down her arm.
"Gordon?" She repeated it as if she had never heard the name before.
"Yes, did they kill Gordon?"
In his grasp she was swaying back and forth. Then, realizing he was
shaking her, Ross got himself under control.
But a measure of understanding had come into her eyes. "No, not Gordon.
Where is Gordon?"
"You haven't seen him?" Ross persisted, knowing it was useless.
"Not since we were at the gate." Her words were less slurred. "Weren't
you with him?"
"No. I was alone."
"Ross, where are we?"
"Better say--when are we," he replied. "We're through the gate and back
in time. And we have to find Gordon!" He did not want to think of what
might have happened out on the shore.
5
Time Wrecked
"Can we go back?" Karara was herself again, her voice crisp.
"I don't know." Ross gave her the truth. The force which had drawn them
through the gate was beyond his experience. As far as he knew, there had
never been such an involuntary passage by time gate, and what their trip
might mean he did not know.
The main concern was that Ashe must have come through, too, and that he
was missing. Just let the storm abate, and, with the dolphins' aid,
Ross's chance for finding the missing agent was immeasurably better. He
said so now, and Karara nodded.
"Do you suppose there is a war going on here?" She hugged her arms
across her breast, her shoulders heaving in the torch light with
shudders she could not control. The damp chill was biting, and Ross
realized that was also danger.
"Could be." He got to his feet, switched the light from the girl to the
walls. That seaweed, could it make them some form of protective
covering?
"Hold this--aim it there!" He thrust the torch into her hands and went
for one of the loops of kelp.
Ross reeled in lines of the stuff. It was rank-smelling but only
slightly damp, and he piled it on the ledge in a kind of nest. At least
in the hollow of that mound they would be sheltered after a fashion.
Karara crawled into the center of the mass, and Ross followed her. The
smell of the stuff filled his nose, was almost like a visible cloud, but
he had been right, the girl stopped shivering, and he felt a measure of
warmth in his own shaking body. Ross snapped off the torch, and they lay
together in the dark, the half-rotten pile of weed holding them.
He must have slept, Ross guessed, when he stirred, raising his head. His
body was stiff, aching, as he braced himself up on his hands and peered
over the edge of their kelp nest. There was light in the cave, a pale
grayish wash which grew stronger toward the slit opening. It must be
day. And that meant they could move.
Ross groped in the weed, his hand falling on a curve of shoulder.
"Wake up!" His voice was hoarse and held the snap of an order.
There was a startled gasp in answer, and the mound beside him heaved as
the girl stirred.
"Day out--" Ross pointed.
"And the storm--" she stood up, "I think it is over."