Time Traders (28 page)

"End of run—here we go . . ."

As far as Travis could see they were still in the box. But when Ashe pushed open the door panel, the stacked boxes which had lain there before had been replaced by an untidy heap of rocks. And clambering over those in the wake of his companions, the Apache did find a very strange world before him.

Gone was the desert with its burden of sun-heated rock. A plain of coarse grass, thigh- or even waist-high, rolled away to some hills. And that grassy plain was cut by the end of a lake which stretched northward beyond the horizon. Travis saw brush and clumps of small trees. Although too distant for him to distinguish their species, he could make out slowly moving lumps which had to be grazing animals.

There was a sun overhead, but an icy wind lashed Travis' three-quarters-bare body. He pulled the hide robe about his shoulders, and saw that his companions had copied that move. The air was not only chilly, it was dank with a wealth of moisture. And each puff of breeze carried new, rank smells, which his nostrils could not identify. This world was as harsh and grim as his own, but in an entirely different fashion.

Ashe stooped and rolled aside one of the nearby rocks to disclose a small box. From his supply bag he produced three small buttons and gave one to each of the younger men.

"Plant that in your left ear," he ordered, and did so with his own. Then he pushed a key on the side of the box. A low chirruping sound was instantly audible. "This is our homing signal. It acts as radar to bring you back here."

"What's that?"

A plume of wind-whipped smoke bannered to the north. Travis could not believe that the long trail of grayish vapor marked a forest fire, yet it surely signalized a conflagration of some size.

Ashe glanced up casually. "Volcano," he returned. "This part of the world hasn't settled down yet. We head northwest, around the lake tip, and we should strike the wreck." He started off at a steady lope which told Travis that this was not the first time the time agent had played the role of primitive hunter.

The grass brushed against them, leaving drops of cold moisture on their bare legs and thighs. Travis concluded that there must have been rain just before their arrival. And from the look of the massing clouds to the east, a second storm might catch them soon.

As they came away from the hill marking the time transfer, the chirruping in his ear grew fainter, varying in intensity as Ashe twisted and turned about the hooked end of the lake. The wide reach of lush grass continued. This was truly game country although they had not yet passed close enough to any of the grazers to identify them.

About a half mile from the curving shore of the lake rested an object that Nature never made. Half a globe of metallic material had been rammed into the ground. Two jagged rents gaped in its side. The blackened earth around it bore random clumps of new grass. But what impressed Travis chiefly was the object's size. He deduced that only half of the thing was visible—if its form had originally been a true globe. Yet that half now above the earth was at least six stories tall. The complete vessel must have been a veritable monster, far larger than the largest aircraft of his own time.

"She certainly got it!" observed Ross. "Bad crack up at landing—"

"Or else she had it before landing." Ashe leaned on a spear to survey the hulk.

"What—?"

"Those holes might have been caused by shell fire. We'll leave that to the experts to determine. This could be a wreck from a space battle. But look! That storm's coming fast. I say we'd better circle west ahead of it and find some shelter in the hills. If the first reports are correct, we'll be caught in a rain worse than we've ever known!"

Ashe's lope lengthened into a trot, and the trot into a run. He was heading away from the wrecked ship to the distant hills. To reach them they had to round the narrow end of the lake.

They were carefully threading their way through a marshy spot when a scream halted them. Travis knew that it was a death cry, but the sound ahead was followed by a yowling squall which could come from no throat, animal or human, of his own time. The squall was answered in turn by grunts that might have issued from the deep chest of a grand pig. And that grunting was echoed on a higher note almost directly behind them!

"Down!" Obeying the order from Ashe, Travis threw himself flat on the muddy ground, wriggling to the left. A moment later all three scouts huddled in a growth of tough brush. They paid no attention to the bramble scratches on their arms and shoulders, for they had front-row seats on a wild drama which held them enthralled.

Crumpled on the ground was a mound of heaving flesh. It was plainly in the death throes for its long, shaggy yellow hair was sodden with blood. Crouched at bay behind that body was another animal. Travis identified it when he caught sight of those long, curved fangs: sabertooth. It was slightly shorter than a lion of Travis' own day, and its muscular legs and powerful shoulders had the power to daunt a larger beast. But now it was facing a giant . . .

The opponent, whose cub had been killed, was a mountain of flesh, rearing almost eighteen feet above the ground. Balanced on large-boned hind feet and thick tail, it confronted the sabertooth with powerful forearms, each tipped with a gigantic single claw. As the narrow head twisted and turned above the slender forebody, its thick brown hair rippled constantly.

A rank animal smell was blown to the men in the brush as a second monstrous ground sloth moved in to give battle. And the sabertooth spat like the enraged cat it was.

A hand closed on Travis' arm, jerking his attention from the shaping battle. Ashe pointed westward and pulled again. Ross was already creeping in that direction. The wind was at their back so that they caught the fetor of the beasts without danger of being scented by them in turn.

"Get to it!" Ashe ordered. "We don't want that cat on our trail. It can't take on two adult sloths and it'll be one mighty disappointed diner—out looking for another meal pretty quick."

They wormed their way forward, trying to gauge from the squalls of the cat and the grunting of the sloths whether battle had yet reached the stage of actual blows. If the cat was smart, Travis thought it would let itself be driven off. And knowing the tactics of mountain lions of
his
southwest, he believed that was what would happen.

"Okay—run!" Ashe scrambled to his feet and set a good pace across the open lands, the other two thudding behind him. The sun had completely disappeared now, and the grayness under those lowering clouds approached twilight. The thin chirrup of their homing device sounded very lonely and far away.

Brown-gray lumps swung up heads with wide stretches of horns. Save that those horns were straight and not curved, the animals might have been the bison of the historic plains. Catching the scent of the scouts, they tossed those horned heads and set off northward across the open land at a lumbering gallop. Large-headed horses with spectacularly striped coats ran among them with more speed, and far more grace. This was plainly a hunter's paradise.

The rain raced behind the men, making a visible curtain of water. When that enfolded them, Travis gasped, choked and fought for breath under the pounding flood. But his legs kept the striding pace Ashe had set, and the three continued to head for the hills which were now scarcely visible through the downpour.

A rising slope slowed them, and twice they had to leap runnels of streams carrying water from the heights above them. A vicious crack of lightning lit up the scene. A hand pulled Travis to the left, and so into partial shelter from the storm.

He crowded together with Ashe and Ross, half crouching in the lee of some rocks. It was not quite a cave, but the crevice was better than the open slope.

"How long will this last?" Ross growled.

Ashe's answer offered little hope, "Anywhere from an hour to a couple of days. Let's hope we're lucky."

They squatted, drawing their hide robes about them, pressing together for the warmth of body contact in the midst of that damp cold. Perhaps they dozed, for Travis came alert with a jerk of his head which hurt neck and shoulder. He knew that the rain
had
stopped, though there was night outside their inadequate shelter. He asked:

"Do we move on?"

But the world outside their hiding place replied with a roar loud enough to split eardrums. Travis, his nails digging into the wooden shaft of his spear, could not stop shuddering after that menacing blast.

"We do if we want to provide a midnight snack for our friend out there," Ashe commented. "The rain probably spoiled hunting for somebody. Hereabouts we have sabertooth, the Alaskan lion, the cave bear, and a few other assorted carnivores I don't want to meet without, say, a tank in reserve."

"Cheery spot," Ross remarked. "I'd say our playmate upridge hasn't had much luck tonight. Any chance of his coming down to scoop us out—or try for a taste?"

"If he, she or it does, he'll get a pawful of spear points," Ashe replied. "One advantage of this hole, nothing can get in if we're firm in saying No!"

There was a second roar, from farther away, Travis noted with relief. Whatever meat hunter on the hoof prowled the hills, it would not have followed their trail. The rain must have cleansed their scent from grass and earth. Huddling there, stiff and cold, they managed now and then to change position of arms or legs so that morning would not find them too cramped to move. They remained until the sky did lighten with the first sign of dawn.

Travis crawled out and straightened up painfully. He bit back a stinging word or two, as a below zero morning breeze cut in under the flap of his cloak blanket. He decided that to properly prepare for roaming the Pleistocene world in the garb of its rightful inhabitants, one should practice beforehand by spending a month or so in a deep freeze stripped to one's shorts. And he was pleased to see that neither Ashe nor Ross was any more agile when he emerged from the hole of refuge.

They mouthed food-concentrate bars from their storage bags. Travis, though knowing the energy-building uses of those small squares, longed for real meat, hot and juicy, straight from the fire. There was no taste to these concentrate things.

"Up we go." Ashe wiped the back of his hand across his mouth and slung his bag over his shoulder. He studied the way before them to find the best ascent. But Travis had already started, winding in and out between boulders which marked the debris of a landslide.

When the scouts at last reached the summit, they turned back to look into the valley of the lake. That smooth sheet of water occupied perhaps half of the basin. And it seemed to Travis that the mirror surface reached closer to the wrecked ship today than it had when they passed it the afternoon before. He said as much, and Ashe agreed.

"Water has to go somewhere and these rains feed all the streams heading down there. Another reason why we must make this a fast job. So—let's get moving."

But when they turned again to follow the line of the heights, Travis halted. Thin, watery sunlight broke through the clouds, carrying with it little or no warmth as yet, but providing more light. And—he peered intently westward and downslope on the other side of the hills . . . No, he had not been mistaken! That sunlight, feeble as it was, was reflecting from some point in the second valley. From water? No, the answering spark was too brilliant.

Ashe and Ross, following his direction, saw it too.

"Second ship?" Ross suggested.

"If so, it is not marked on our charts. But we'll take a look. I agree that's too bright to be sun on water."

Had there been survivors from the other crash? Travis wondered. If so, had they established a camp down there? He had heard enough during the past few days to judge that any contact with the original owners of the galactic ships could be highly dangerous. Ross had been pursued by one of their patrols across miles of wilderness. He had escaped from the mind compulsion they exerted only by deliberately burning his hand in a fire and using pain to counter their mental demand for surrender. They were not human, those ship people. What powers or weapons they possessed were so alien as to defy human understanding so far.

So the three took to cover, making expert use of every bit of brush, every boulder, as they advanced to locate that source of reflection. Again Travis was amazed by the skill of his companions. He had hunted mountain lion, and lion in the beast's native ground is very wary game. He could read trail with all the skill imparted to him by Chato who knew the ways of the old raiding warriors. But these two were equal to him at what he always considered a red man's rather than a white man's game.

They came at last to lie in a fringe of trees, parting the grass cautiously to look out on an expanse of open land. In the middle of it rested another globe-shaped ship. But this one was entirely above ground and it was small, a pygmy compared to the giant in the other valley. At first superficial examination it looked to have been landed normally, not crashed. Halfway up, the curve facing them showed the dark hole of an open entrance port, and from it dangled a ladder. Someone
had
survived this landing, come to earth here!

"Lifeboat?" Ashe's voice was the slightest of whispers.

"It is not shaped like the one I saw before," Ross hissed. "That was like a rocket."

Wind sang across the clearing. It set the ladder clanging against the side of the globe. From the foot of the strange ship some birds tried to rise. But they moved sluggishly, awkwardly flopping their wings. And the wind brought to the three in hiding a sweetish, stomach-turning odor that could never be mistaken by those who had ever smelled it. Something lay dead there, very dead.

Ashe stood up, watching those birds narrowly. Then he stepped forward. A snarl rose from ground level. Travis' spear came up. It sang through the air and a brown-coated, four-footed beast yelped, leaped pawing in the air, and crashed back into the grass. More of the gorged carrion birds fluttered and hopped away from their feast.

What lay about the foot of the ladder was not a pretty sight. Nor could the scouts tell at first glance how many bodies there had been. Ashe attempted to make a closer examination and came away, white-faced and gagging. Ross picked up a tatter of blue-green material.