"But it's incredible!" the President said.
"They're afraid," said the CIA chief. "They lie awake nights.
They've become convinced that we're on the verge of traveling in
time. They've tried and failed, but they think we're near success.
To their way of thinking, they've got to hit us now or never,
because once we actually get time travel, they know their number's
up."
"But we dropped Project Mastodon entirely almost three years ago.
It's been all of ten years since we stopped the research. It was
twenty-five years ago that Hudson--"
"That makes no difference, sir. They're convinced we dropped the
project publicly, but went underground with it. That would be the
kind of strategy they could understand."
The President picked up a pencil and doodled on a pad.
"Who was that old general," he asked, "the one who raised so much
fuss when we dropped the project? I remember I was in the Senate
then. He came around to see me."
"Bowers, sir," said the JCS chairman.
"That's right. What became of him?"
"Retired."
"Well, I guess it doesn't make any difference now." He doodled
some more and finally said, "Gentlemen, it looks like this is it.
How much time did you say we had?"
"Not more than ninety days, sir. Maybe as little as thirty."
The President looked up at the JCS chairman.
"We're as ready," said the chairman, "as we will ever be. We can
handle them--I think. There will, of course, be some--"
"I know," said the President.
"Could we bluff?" asked the secretary of state, speaking quietly.
"I know it wouldn't stick, but at least we might buy some time."
"You mean hint that we have time travel?"
The secretary nodded.
"It wouldn't work," said the CIA chief tiredly. "If we really had
it, there'd be no question then. They'd become exceedingly
well-mannered, even neighborly, if they were sure we had it."
"But we haven't got it," said the President gloomily.
X
The two hunters trudged homeward late in the afternoon, with a
deer slung from a pole they carried on their shoulders. Their
breath hung visibly in the air as they walked along, for the frost
had come and any day now, they knew, there would be snow.
"I'm worried about Wes," said Cooper, breathing heavily. "He's
taking this too hard. We got to keep an eye on him."
"Let's take a rest," panted Hudson.
They halted and lowered the deer to the ground.
"He blames himself too much," said Cooper. He wiped his sweaty
forehead. "There isn't any need to. All of us walked into this
with our eyes wide open."
"He's kidding himself and he knows it, but it gives him something
to go on. As long as he can keep busy with all his puttering
around, he'll be all right."
"He isn't going to repair the time unit, Chuck."
"I know he isn't. And he knows it, too. He hasn't got the tools or
the materials. Back in the workshop, he might have a chance, but
here he hasn't."
"It's rough on him."
"It's rough on all of us."
"Yes, but we didn't get a brainstorm that marooned two old friends
in this tail end of nowhere. And we can't make him swallow it when
we say that it's okay, we don't mind at all."
"That's a lot to swallow, Johnny."
"What's going to happen to us, Chuck?"
"We've got ourselves a place to live and there's lots to eat. Save
our ammo for the big game--a lot of eating for each bullet--and
trap the smaller animals."
"I'm wondering what will happen when the flour and all the other
stuff is gone. We don't have too much of it because we always
figured we could bring in more."
"We'll live on meat," said Hudson. "We got bison by the million.
The plains Indians lived on them alone. And in the spring, we'll
find roots and in the summer berries. And in the fall, we'll
harvest a half-dozen kinds of nuts."
"Some day our ammo will be gone, no matter how careful we are with
it."
"Bows and arrows. Slingshots. Spears."
"There's a lot of beasts here I wouldn't want to stand up to with
nothing but a spear."
"We won't stand up to them. We'll duck when we can and run when we
can't duck. Without our guns, we're no lords of creation--not in
this place. If we're going to live, we'll have to recognize that
fact."
"And if one of us gets sick or breaks a leg or--"
"We'll do the best we can. Nobody lives forever."
But they were talking around the thing that really bothered them,
Hudson told himself--each of them afraid to speak the thought
aloud.
They'd live, all right, so far as food, shelter and clothing were
concerned. And they'd live most of the time in plenty, for this
was a fat and open-handed land and a man could make an easy
living.
But the big problem--the one they were afraid to talk about--was
their emptiness of purpose. To live, they had to find some meaning
in a world without society.
A man cast away on a desert isle could always live for hope, but
here there was no hope. A Robinson Crusoe was separated from his
fellow-humans by, at the most, a few thousand miles. Here they
were separated by a hundred and fifty thousand years.
Wes Adams was the lucky one so far. Even playing his
thousand-to-one shot, he still held tightly to a purpose, feeble
as it might be--the hope that he could repair the time machine.
We don't need to watch him now, thought Hudson. The time we'll
have to watch is when he is forced to admit he can't fix the
machine.
And both Hudson and Cooper had been kept sane enough, for there
had been the cabin to be built and the winter's supply of wood to
cut and the hunting to be done.
But then there would come a time when all the chores were finished
and there was nothing left to do.
"You ready to go?" asked Cooper.
"Sure. All rested now," said Hudson.
They hoisted the pole to their shoulders and started off again.
Hudson had lain awake nights thinking of it and all the thoughts
had been dead ends.
One could write a natural history of the Pleistocene, complete
with photographs and sketches, and it would be a pointless thing
to do, because no future scientist would ever have a chance to
read it.
Or they might labor to build a memorial, a vast pyramid,
perhaps, which would carry a message forward across fifteen
hundred centuries, snatching with bare hands at a semblance of
immortality. But if they did, they would be working against the
sure and certain knowledge that it all would come to naught, for
they knew in advance that no such pyramid existed in historic
time.
Or they might set out to seek contemporary Man, hiking across four
thousand miles of wilderness to Bering Strait and over into Asia.
And having found contemporary Man cowering in his caves, they
might be able to help him immeasurably along the road to his great
inheritance. Except that they'd never make it and even if they
did, contemporary Man undoubtedly would find some way to do them
in and might eat them in the bargain.
They came out of the woods and there was the cabin, just a hundred
yards away. It crouched against the hillside above the spring,
with the sweep of grassland billowing beyond it to the slate-gray
skyline. A trickle of smoke came up from the chimney and they saw
the door was open.
"Wes oughtn't to leave it open that way," said Cooper. "No telling
when a bear might decide to come visiting."
"Hey, Wes!" yelled Hudson.
But there was no sign of him.
Inside the cabin, a white sheet of paper lay on the table top.
Hudson snatched it up and read it, with Cooper at his shoulder.
Dear guys--I don't want to get your hopes up again and have
you disappointed. But I think I may have found the trouble.
I'm going to try it out. If it doesn't work, I'll come back
and burn this note and never say a word. But if you find the
note, you'll know it worked and I'll be back to get you. Wes.