No Life of Their Own: And Other Stories (The Complete Short Fiction of Clifford D. Simak Book 5) (12 page)

Cabot’s voice held an edge of steel command.

“We can argue about how it got here after we have it stowed away,” he said. “Pascal, you and Hugh go down and bring up the tractor. Yancey and I will start carrying this stuff up to the surface right away.”

Yancey toiled up the throat of the cave. Reaching the surface he slid the sack of jewels from his shoulder and wiped his brow.

“Tough work,” he told Cameron.

Cameron nodded.

“But it’s almost over now,” he comforted. “Just a few more hours and we’ll have the last of the stuff in the tractor. Then we can get out of here.”

Yancey nodded.

“I don’t feel too safe,” he admitted. “Somebody hid all this junk in the cave. How they did it, I don’t have the faintest idea. But I have a queer feeling it wouldn’t go easy with us if they caught us.”

Pascal stagger out of the cave and slid a gold bar from his shoulder.

He mopped his brow with a shirt sleeve.

“I’m going down to the tractor and get a drink of water before I pack that a foot farther,” he announced.

Yancey stooped to pick up his gunny sack. Pascal’s scream echoed.

The hillside below the tractor before had been empty of everything except a few scattered boulders and trees. Now a machine rested there, a grotesque machine of black metal, streamlined, with stubby wings, suggestive of a plane. As Yancey caught his first sight of it, it was indistinct, blurred, as if he saw it through a shimmering haze. Then it became clear, sharp-cut.

Like a slap in the face came the knowledge that here was the answer to those vague fears he had felt. Here must be the owners of the treasure cache.

His hand slapped down to his thigh and his gun whispered out of its holster.

A door in the strange machine snapped open and out of it stepped a man—but hardly a man. The creature sported a long tail, and it was covered with scales. Twin horns, three inches or so in height, sprouted from its forehead.

The newcomer carried something that looked like a gun in his hand, but no gun such as Yancey had ever seen. He saw the weapon tilt up toward him and his .45 exploded in his fist. Even as flame blossomed from his gun, he saw a .45 come up in Cameron’s hand, in the second after the blast of his own gun, then heard the deadly click of a cocking hammer.

The first of the scaly men was down. But others were tumbling out of the strange mechanism.

Cameron’s gun barked and once again Yancey felt the comforting kick of the .45 against the heel of his palm, hardly knowing he had squeezed the trigger.

From one of the guns carried by the scaly men whipped out a pencil of purple flame. Yancey felt its hot breath clip past his cheek.

Before the time-tractor lay Pascal, stretched out, inert, like an empty sack. Over him stood Cabot, gun flaming. Another one of those purple flames reached out, hit a boulder beside Yancey. The boulder glowed with sudden heat, started to chip and crack.

With mighty leaps, Yancey skidded down the slope, landing in a crouch beside Pascal. He grasped the old scientist by the shoulder and lifted him. As he straightened, he glanced at the strange machine in which the scaly men had come. Through the open door he could see a mass of machinery, with banks of glowing tubes.

Then the machinery erupted in a thunderous explosion. The roar seemed to blot out the world. For one split second he glanced up and saw on Cabot’s face a baleful grin of triumph, knew that he had fired a shot which had wrecked the scaly men’s machine.

The ground seemed to be weaving under Yancey’s feet. With superhuman effort he plodded toward the door of the time-tractor, dragging Pascal. Hands reached out to help him, hauling him inside.

Slowly his brain cleared. He was sitting on the floor of the tractor. Beside him lay Pascal and he saw now that the scientist was dead. His chest had been burned away by one of the pencils of purple flame.

Cabot swung down on the door-locking mechanism and stepped back into the room.

“What are they, Jack?” Yancey asked, his mind still fuzzy.

Cabot shook his head wearily.

“Don’t you recognize them?” asked Cameron. “Horns, hoofs, tails. Today we’ve seen the devil in person. Those are the people who gave rise to the ancient legend of the devil.”

Yancey got to his feet and looked down at Pascal.

“Feel bad about that,” he whispered. “He was a regular guy.”

Cameron nodded, stiff-lipped.

From a port Cabot spoke.

“Those devil-men are up to something,” he announced. “They’ll probably make it hot for us now.”

He wheeled on Cameron.

“Can you get us out of here, Hugh?”

Cameron considered the question.

“Probably could,” he said, “but I would rather not try it right now. I think we’re safe here for a little while. That time brain is a tricky outfit. I know its principle and given time I could figure it out so I could take a try at it. If worse comes to worse, I’ll do it. Take a chance.”

He walked to the time-brain apparatus and snapped the switch. The brain glowed with a weird green light.

“That must be a time-machine out there,” said Yancey. “Another machine would explain the treasure cache. I’ll bet those birds are robbing stuff through time and bringing it back here to cache it. Damn clever.”

“And they landed up ahead to cache some stuff and found some of it missing. Then they came back through time to find out what was wrong,” supplied Cabot.

Cameron smote his thigh.

“Listen,” he said. “It that’s right it means time-travel is well established up ahead in the future. We might be able to reach help there. Those fellows out there must be outlaws. If so, we’d rate some help.”

“But how will we reach the future?” demanded Cabot. “How will they know we need help?”

“It’s just a chance,” said Cameron. “A bare chance. If it doesn’t work I can always try to get us back to the twentieth century, although the chances are nine out of ten I’ll kill all of us trying it.”

“But how?” persisted Cabot.

“Pascal said the ‘time force’ or whatever the brain generates, is similar to electricity. But with differences. It is important just what those differences are. I don’t know, not enough, anyhow. The time mechanism is run by the force generated by the brain, but we have regular electricity for the tractor operation.”

Cameron pondered.

“I wonder,” he mused, “if the time force would be sufficiently like electricity to operate the radio?”

“What difference would that make?” snapped Yancey.

“Maybe we could broadcast in time,” Cameron suggested.

“But that brain generates very little power,” protested Yancey.

“We might not need much power,” Cameron told him. “It’s just a blind shot in the dark. A gamble—”

“Sounds plausible,” Yancey asserted, “let’s take a long shot.”

Cameron switched off the brain mechanism and with lengths of wire connected the radio to the mechanism. Then he switched the brain back on again. The sending set hummed with power.

“Better start gambling,” said Cabot. “Those boys out there are beginning to ray us. Playing that purple flame on the tractor.”

Cameron’s voice boomed out, speaking into the microphone.

“SOS … SOS … party of time travelers stranded in the Thames valley, near the village of Aylesford, approximately seventy thousand years before the twentieth century. Attacked by beings resembling the devils of mythology. SOS … SOS … party of time travelers stranded in the Thames valley …”

Cameron’s voice boomed on and on.

Yancey and Cabot stared out of the ports.

The devil-men were ringed around the tractor, playing the purple beams on the machine. They stood stolidly, like statues, without a trace of emotion in their features.

The tractor was beginning to heat up. The air was becoming hot and the metal was warm to the touch.

The interior of the tractor suddenly flashed with a green burst of flame.

Yancey and Cabot wheeled about.

The brain mechanism was a mass of twisted wreckage.

“Blew up,” said Cabot. “Something in the purple rays. This is the end of us now if our time-casting didn’t work. We can’t even operate the time-mechanism without the brain.”

“Look here!” cried Cabot from a port.

Cameron and Yancey rushed to his side.

Swooping down toward the tractor was a black ship, an exact duplicate of the time machine of the devil-men.

Like an avenging meteor the black craft tore downward. From its nose flashes of green fire stabbed out viciously and living lightning bolts crashed among the devil-men.

Terrified, the devil-men tried to scurry out of reach, but the lightning bolts sought them out, caught them, burned them into cinders.

“A ship out of the future!” gasped Yancey. “Our radio worked!”

CHAPTER V
The Thrill-Hunters

Andy Smith spoke earnestly. “There’s just one thing,” he said. “We can’t go back to the fifty-sixth century. Steve and I stole this time-machine. Lucky for you fellows we did, because apparently no one else caught your radio message. But if we’re caught back there it means a life stretch on Mercury for us. Our machine is the second one ever stolen. The first one is over there.”

He nodded toward the devil-men’s machine, blasted on the hillside.

“Hell,” said Yancey, “what are we blabbering around about? We have a machine that will take us through time and space. Any place we want to go. There’s plenty of room for all of us. The ship’s loaded with treasure. Do we have to decide where to go? Why can’t we just skip around and stop wherever things look good to us? Like those Centaurians. Me, I don’t care whether I ever go back to the twentieth century. I didn’t leave anybody back there.”

“Just an old maid aunt,” Cabot spoke for himself. “And she didn’t approve of me. Figured I should have settled down and made more money—added to the family fortune. Thought hunting was silly.”

The four of them looked at Cameron. He grinned.

“I’d like to find out something about what the next couple three hundred thousand years have done in the way of science,” he admitted. “Maybe could pick up a few tricks. Skim the cream of the world’s science. Probably lots of ideas we could incorporate in the time-flier.”

“Wish we knew more about that time-brain,” mourned Smith. “But I can’t understand it. The fifty-sixth hasn’t anything like it. Our machines are run on an entirely different basis. Warping of world lines principle.”

They sat in silence for a moment. From the river came the roaring bellow of a mammoth bull.

“Say,” asked Yancey, “has anyone seen anything of One-Eye?”

“No,” said Cameron. “He must have hit for high timber when all the fireworks broke out.”

“By the way,” asked Steve Clark, “What are you going to do with Pascal’s body?”

“Leave it here,” suggested Yancey. “In the tractor. If we worked a million years we couldn’t erect a more suitable burial site. Shut the door and leave him there. With his time brain. No one else will ever build another. It was all in Pascal’s head. No notes, nothing. Just his brain. He told me he meant to write a book when he got around to it. We can’t take the body back to the twentieth century and deliver it to the authorities. Because nobody would believe us. They’d throw us in the can.”

“We might take it back and leave it somewhere on his premises for someone to find,” Cabot suggested.

Yancey shook his head.

“That would be senseless. Just stir up a lot of fuss. An autopsy and an inquest and Scotland Yard half nuts over a new mystery. Pascal would rather be left here.”

“I’m inclined to agree,” said Cameron.

“That’s settled then,” said Smith, getting to his feet. “What do you say we get started? We got lots of places to go.”

Clark laughed.

“You know,” he said, sweeping a hand toward the wrecked time-flier, “I get a big kick out of the way this Centaurian business turned out. For five hundred years those long-tailed gangsters just toured all over hell, robbing everything that looked like it was worth taking. Dragging it back into prehistoric time and hiding it away. And in the end all their work was done so that five Earthmen could use it to finance a life-time of time wandering.”

Andy Smith looked thoughtful.

“But,” he said, “the Centaurians must have been robbing for some purpose. They must have had something in mind. They amassed billions of dollars in treasure. For what reason? Not just for the love of it, surely. Not just to look at. Not just for the thrill of taking it. What were they going to do with it?”

“There,” said Cameron, “is one question that will never be answered.”

Old One-Eye squatted inside the time-tractor.

It was snowing outside, but the tractor provided an excellent shelter and One-Eye was well wrapped in furs and skins. In one corner of the tractor was plenty of food.

Wrapped to his ears in a great mastodon robe, One-Eye nodded sleepily. Life was pleasant for the old Neanderthaler. Pleasant and easy. For the tribe which had wandered into the valley and found him living in the shining cave had taken him for a god. As a result they brought him food and furs, weapons and other offerings, gifts to appease his wrath, to court his favor. For who could doubt that anyone but a god would live in a cave that glinted in the sunshine, a cave made of hard, smooth stone, beautifully shaped, a cave that had no draughts and was secure against the attack of any wild beast.

One-Eye, dozing, dimly remembered the day when, curiously and idly jiggling at the door handle of the tractor, the handle moved in his hand and the door had swung smoothly open.

Henceforward the tractor had become One-Eye’s cave. In it he had lived through many summers and many snows. In it he would live out the rest of his days.

One-Eye remembered the strange friends who had come to him in this shining cave. They had gone, long ago. And One-Eye missed them. Vaguely he was lonesome for them. Many times he wished they might come back again.

The old Neanderthaler drew in his breath with a slobbering sigh. Perhaps some day they would. In the meantime, he kept close and jealous guard and maintained the proper respect to the one of them that had stayed behind, the one whose bones lay neatly arranged in one corner of the tractor.