Time Traders (45 page)

"All ready."

They still had time to say "no" to this crazy venture, to choose known perils against the unknown. Travis felt a surge of panic. His hands levered against the bunk, pushing his body up. He had to stop Renfry—they must not blast into space.

Then he lay down once more, made his hands clasp the bunk straps across his body, his lips pressed tightly together. Let Renfry push the proper button—soon! It was the waiting which always wore on a man. He felt the familiar vibration, singing through the walls, through his body. There was no going back now. Travis closed his eyes and tried not to stiffen his whole body in protest against that waiting.

"We're out—safely."

"So far—so good." Another voice made answer to that over the com system.

Travis opened his eyes and wondered if anyone ever became fully inured to the discomfort of a planetary take-off. He had forgotten during the past days when they had been comfortably earth-bound what it meant to be wrenched into the heights beyond the atmosphere and gravity. But at least the tape had worked to the extent that they had lifted safely off world.

And their flight continued, until at length they all breathed easier and began to hold more confident feelings than just hope concerning their future.

"If we simply repeat the pattern," Ashe observed thoughtfully on the evening of the fifth day, "we set down again on the desert world sometime tomorrow."

"Be better if we could eliminate that stop," Travis remarked. There was something in the desolate waste and the night things which repulsed him as nothing else had during this fantastic voyage.

"I've been thinking . . ." Ross glanced across the swinging seat to the pilot's perch where Renfry spent most of his waking hours. "We refueled on the trip out—at the first port. Suppose—just suppose that we exhausted the supply there."

Renfry grinned, a death's-head stretch of skin across bones. His thumb jerked downward in the immemorial gesture of sardonic defeat. "Then we've had it, fella. Let's hope that we can stretch our luck past that particular point along with all the rest of the elastic tricks."

This time they downed on the desert port in the early morning, when the lavish display of flames along the horizon was paling into nothingness. They saw the blaze of the rising sun reflected too brightly from the endless drifts of sand.

"Two days here, roughly—
if
we do duplicate the pattern exactly.

Waiting two days, cooped up in the ship, not sure that they
would
take off again. At the thought of it, Travis shifted restlessly in his seat. And the specter Ross had evoked shared the narrow confines of the cabin with them all.

"Any walk-about?" Ross must be feeling it too—that goading desire to be busy, to drown in action ever-present fears.

"Not much reason for that," Ashe replied calmly enough. "We'll take a look outside—in daytime. Not that I believe there is much to see."

The sun-repelling helmets on, they opened the outer hatch. They surveyed the expanse where the winds might have whittled new patterns among the dunes, but where they could see no change since their last visit. The enigmatic sealed buildings still squatted beyond, with no sign of life about.

"What
did
they do here?" Ross's hands moved restlessly along the frame of the exit port. "There was some reason for this stop—there had to be. And why were those same things—people, animals, whatever they are—or were—on the other world, in the funnel-topped building?"

"Which are the exiles?" Ashe asked. "Is this their home world, while those others exist across the void and have for generations because they were not recalled in time? Or are these the exiles and the others are at home? We may never know the reason or answer to any questions about them." He studied the squat building among the creeping dunes. "They must live underground, with the building covering the entrance. Perhaps they live underground on the other planet also. Once they must have been here to service ships—to maintain some necessary outpost."

"And then," Travis said slowly, "the ships didn't come any more."

"Yes. There were no more ships. Perhaps a whole generation waited—hoping for ships—for recall. Then they either sank into apathy and stagnation, to slide down the hill of evolution, or they more consciously adapted to their surroundings."

"In the end, the result was the same," Ross observed. "I don't think those here are any different from the ones in the funnel building. And there they had a better world to adapt to."

"Wait!" Travis had been studying that sand-enclosed block with interest. Now he thought that his memory of the place as it had been weeks earlier did not match what he saw now. "Was that elevation on the left there before?"

Ross and Ashe leaned forward, their attention settling on the end of the structure he indicated.

"You're right, that's new!" Ross's affirmation came first. "And I don't think that projection is made of stone like the rest, either."

The block which had so oddly appeared on the corner of that distant roof did not flash like metal in the sun's rays. But neither was it dull. There was a sleek sheen to it, such as might be displayed by opaque glass or obsidian. The hump had no openings that they could see, and what its purpose might be remained as much of a mystery as the rest of this age-old puzzle.

It remained so for only a few moments. Then came action the watchers in the ship did not expect. They had seen the rays which protected the roof of the building against assault or investigation. Now they witnessed the use of another aggressive weapon belonging to the men who had first erected that block.

What was it which lashed out, cracked a whip's thong about the skin of the ship? A beam of fire? A bolt of energy? A force which the humans could neither imagine nor name?

Travis only knew that the energy wash of that blow crushed him back into the globe, hurled him into the inner door of the lock with Ross and Ashe thrust tight against him. Their bodies were flattened on the metal wall of the ship until the breath was forced from their lungs and the world went black about them.

Travis was on the floor, fighting for the air his body had to have, pain in bands about his chest. And before his blurred eyes was the open door of the port. In that moment all that mattered was that oblong of emptiness. Beneath the torture of his body, he knew that that space must be shut out for what lay beyond it meant final extinction.

He clawed at the body across his knees, turned over somehow and inched painfully from under its weight, moving in a worm's progress toward the outer port. There was a singing in his ears, filling his head, adding to his daze. Then he was staring out into the glare of sun and sand.

At first he thought he was lightheaded. What he was seeing could not be true. For there was no wind, yet from the hidden floor of the landing space sand was rising in thin, unwavering sheets, walling in the globe. And those curtains of grit arose vertically, unmoved by any breeze! It could not happen—yet before his eyes it did.

He lunged to his knees, thrust against the door, shut out the curtains of sand, the harsh light of the sun, the thing which could not be true. And as his hands fumbled to shoot home the alien bolts, the pain lessened. He could breathe again without the constriction which had held his lungs imprisoned. He turned to the other two.

Alarmed by the congested blueness of their faces, Travis jerked both men up into a sitting position against the wall. Ashe's blue eyes opened.

"What—?" He only got out that one faint word as Travis turned his attention to Ross.

There was a thin thread of blood trickling from the corner of the younger scout's slack mouth. He moaned as Travis shook him gently. Ashe moved and winced, his hands going to his chest.

"What happened?" He was able to get out the whole demand this time.

"The space—marines—landed." Ross's lips shaped the words one at a time. There was a shadow of a grin about them. "—On me, I think."

"Hullloooo down there!" The call was disembodied over the ship's com, but it was imperative. "What's going on?"

Although the hull could cut out sun, sound, and the world without, they could now feel movement through its layers of protection. It was as if the ship were being buffeted by some force. Those walls of sand? Travis hauled himself to the ladder wall and began to climb, seeking the screen by the controls which was now their only link with outside.

He discovered Renfry standing before that link, his disbelieving eyes on thick curdles of sand, sand rising from the ground with steady purpose to engulf the ship. They were on the point of being buried in a sea of grit, and there was no reason to believe that that was not directed, consciously, by active animosity and intelligence.

"Can we get out?" Travis dragged himself to the nearest seat. "Any way to up ship?"

If the tape governed their departure according to the earlier schedule, they were stuck here for another night, another day. By that time the globe could be so deeply buried that there would be no hope of blasting free from the tons of sand. They would be sealed into a living tomb.

Renfry's hands went out to the keyboard of the controls, hesitated there. His lips tightened.

"It's a big risk but I could try."

"It'll probably be a bigger risk to stay." Travis remembered the two he had left at the lock. They must be brought out of danger before the shock of blast-off. "Give me five minutes," he said. "Then blow—if you can!"

He found Ashe on his feet, dragging Ross out into the corridor. Travis hurried to help.

"Renfry is going to try to blast off," he reported. "We're being buried in sand."

They got Ross to a bunk. Ashe flopped into the adjoining one, and Travis barely made it to the next cabin and the waiting cushion there, when the warning shrilled through the com. There was the vibration of laboring engines. But it went on far longer than before. Travis lay tense, willing the wrench of blast-free to come, counting off seconds . . .

The vibration was building up—higher than he had ever known it to go before. And the ship rocked on its base, movement and sound becoming one, a sickening mixture which churned the stomach, deadened thought but not fear.

The break came in an instant of prolonged red agony. Afterward came blackness—nothing at all . . .

Vibration was gone, sound was gone—but sensation remained. And the clean, aromatic scent of the healing jelly which filled the bunks on occasion of need. Travis opened his eyes. Had they pulled free from the desert planet?

He sat up, brushing the jelly from him. It slid easily from his skin, from the suit, leaving the usual well-being of mind and body. The confidence which had been jolted out of him had already flooded back. He got to his feet, went to peer into the neighboring cabin.

Ashe and Ross still lay inert under the quivering mounds of that substance on which the aliens had based their first aid. He climbed to the control cabin.

Renfry was strapped into the pilot's chair, but his head lolled limply on his shoulders, his white face alarming Travis. His questing fingers found a slow pulse. He unfastened the technician and somehow managed, with the aid of weightlessness, to get him to his bunk below. The screen presented only that swirl of dead black which was the sign of hyperspace. They had not only broken loose from the sand trap, they were also embarked on the next leg of the long journey which might or might not take them home.

How long had that portion of the journey lasted before? Nine days by Renfry's watch—nine days between the sand and the fueling port. Nine days until they could be sure that Renfry's blast-off had not thrown the tape off course.

As they recovered from that shock Ashe took command, using the loot they had gathered from the storehouse of records to focus their interest outside themselves. On the plea of hunting another ship's operation manual, he set them to work in shifts at the record reader, processing every tape which could still be run through that machine. More than one promising coil broke, whipped into a tangle they did not dare try to unravel. But even those must be kept for the experts at home to study. For Ashe never admitted after their break from the desert world that they were
not
going to get home. He pointed out that the odds they had already licked totaled a formidable sum and that there was no reason to believe that their luck would not continue to hold.

But even Ashe, Travis thought to himself,
must
have doubts, be as nervous as the rest—though he did not show it—when Renfry's watch marked the ninth day's flight and they had no warning of arrival at the fueling port. They made only a pretense of a midday meal. Travis had calculated rations just that morning. By going on very slim supplies, they would have enough of the food they dared use to see them home—
if
the voyage was not prolonged. He reported that fact to Ashe and received only an absent-minded grunt in reply.

Then—as if to prove all their worst forebodings untrue—the warning came. Travis strapped down, sharing quarters with Ross this time. The other grinned at him.

"The chief's called it right again! Here we go for a shot of gas from the service station—then home!"

Even the discomfort of landing could be forgotten when they did see about them the ruined towers marking off landing spaces, the metallic turquoise sky of their first galactic port. Why, they were almost home!

They clattered down to the space lock and opened it eagerly—to watch for the creeping snake of the fuel line and its attendant robot. But long moments went by and there was no movement in the shadow of the nearest tower. Travis studied the immediate terrain. Had they set down in the same square they had visited before? Might a change in so slight a matter provide the reason for the silence about them?

"Could be due to the time element." As Ashe's voice sounded in his helmet com, the old man might have been reading his thoughts. "We left the second stop well ahead of our former schedule."

They clung to that hope as an hour, and then two, passed and there was no movement from the tower. Pooling their recollections of the place, they were fairly certain that they had landed in the same square. And they avoided putting into words the other dire possibility—that the mechanism of the ancient port had at last been exhausted, perhaps by the very effort put upon it weeks before when the globe had been serviced there.