Thorn did not ask himself why his resting place was dark and stuffy,
rocky and dry, or where the stale, sour smell of woodsmoke came from.
He was content to lie there and let his mind snuggle down into his
body, lull itself with simple sensations, forget the reverberations of
its terrible journey. World II still clung to him sluggishly. But like
a nightmare from which one has wakened, it could be disregarded.
In a moment he would rouse himself and do what must be done. In a
moment, he knew, he would know no peace until the warning had been
given and all essential steps taken, until the invasion had been met
and decisively thrown back. He would be a creature of tension, of
duty, of war.
But for the moment nothing mattered, nothing could break his sense of
peace.
Odd, though, that the heavy woodsmoke did not make him cough, and that
his body was not aching from its cramped position and rocky crouch.
Muffledly, as if its source were underground, came a distant howling,
melancholy and long-drawn-out, ending on a low note of menace.
He started up. His shielding hand encountered a low ceiling of rock,
hurriedly traced it to jagged, sloping walls on either side.
It was he that was underground, not the howling.
What the devil had Thorn II been doing in a cave in World I? Why was
he wearing this odd jumble of heavy clothing, that seemed to include
thick, stiff boots and furs? Where had he gotten the long knife that
was stuck in his belt?
The cramping darkness was suddenly full of threats. In panicky haste he
continued his feeling-out of the walls, found that he was in a small
domed chamber, high enough in the center so that he could almost stand
upright. On three sides the walls extended down to the uneven floor, or
to the mouths of horizontal crevices too narrow to stick more than an
arm in.
On the fourth side was a low opening. By getting down on hands and
knees he could wriggle in.
It led slightly upward. The smell of woodsmoke grew heavier. After
two sharp turns, where jagged edges caught but did not tear his heavy
clothing, he began to see the gray gleam of daylight.
The roof of the passageway grew higher, so that he could almost walk
upright. Then it suddenly opened into a larger chamber, the other end
of which was completely open to a gloomy landscape.
This landscape consisted of a steep hillside of granite boulders and
wind-warped pines, all patched with snow, at a middle distance, as if
across a ravine.
But Thorn did not inspect it closely, for he was looking chiefly at the
fire blocking the mouth of the narrow passageway, sending up smoke that
billowed back from the ceiling, making the day even more gloomy and dim.
It immediately struck him as being a very remarkable fire, though he
couldn't say why. After a while he decided that it was because it had
been very cleverly constructed to burn steadily for a long time, some
of the logs and branches being so placed that they would not fall into
the fire until others had been consumed. Whoever had built that fire
must have painstakingly visualized just how it was going to burn over a
period of several hours.
But why should he waste time admiring a fire? He kicked it aside with
the clumsy boots Thorn II had dug up God knows where, and strode to the
mouth of the cave.
Claws skirred on rock, and he had the impression of a lithe furry
animal whisking off to one side.
The cave opened on a hillside, similar to the one opposite and
slanting down to a twisting, ice-choked stream. Overhead a gray, dreary
sky seemed to be trending toward nightfall. The walls of the ravine
shut off any more distant horizon. It was very cold.
The scene was hauntingly familiar.
Had Thorn II been insane, or gone insane? Why else should he have
hidden himself in a cave in a near-arctic wild-life reserve? For that
certainly seemed to be what he had done, despite the difficulty in
picturing just how he had managed to do it in so short a time.
A fine thing if, after getting back to his rightful world, he should
starve to death in a reserve, or be killed by some of the formidable
animals with which they were stocked.
He must climb the hill behind him. Wherever he was, he'd be able to
sight a beacon or skylon from its top.
It suddenly occurred to him that this ravine was devilishly like one in
the woodland near the symchromy amphitheater, a ravine in which he and
Clawly used to go exploring when they were boys. There was something
unforgettably distinctive about the pattern of the streambed.
But that couldn't be. The weather was all wrong. And that ravine
was much more thickly wooded. Besides, erosion patterns were always
repeating themselves.
He started to examine the queer, bulky clothing Thorn II had been
wearing. In doing so, he got one good look at his hands--and stopped.
He stood for a long moment with his eyes closed. Even when soft paws
pattered warily somewhere over his head and a bit of gravel came
trickling down, he did not jerk.
* * * * *
Rapidly the determination grew in his mind that he must get to the
hilltop and establish his position before he did anything else, before
he thought anything else, certainly before he examined his hands or
his face more closely. It was more a terror-inspired compulsion than a
determination. He stepped to the rocky lip in front of the cave, and
looked back. Again there was the impression of a gray, furry animal
streaking for cover. Something about the size of a cat. He hurriedly
surveyed the routes leading upward, picked one that seemed to slope
more gradually and avoid the steeper barren stretches, and immediately
started up it at a scrambling trot, his eyes fixed resolutely ahead.
But after he had gone a little way, he saw something that made him stop
and stare despite the compulsion driving him.
On a pine-framed boulder about a dozen yards ahead, to one side of the
route he was taking, three cats sat watching him.
They were cats, all right, house cats, though they seemed to be of a
particularly thick-furred breed.
But one wouldn't normally find house cats on a wild-life reserve. Their
presence argued the nearness of human habitation. Moreover, they
were eying him with a poised intentness that indicated some kind of
familiarity, and did not fit with their earlier racing for cover--if
those had been the same animals.