Time Traders (36 page)

"Home?" This time Ross asked the question.

Renfry, entranced as he still watched that display of fiery light, made a usual cautious answer.

"I don't know—I just don't know."

"We'll try a look-see from the port." Ashe took up his planet-side command.

"Might be a volcano," Travis hazarded from his experience in the prehistoric world.

"No, I don't think so. I've only seen one thing like that—"

"I know what you mean." Ross was already on the ladder. "The Northern Lights!"

The checkerboard spread of the fueling port, different as its architecture had been, was yet not too far removed from their own experience. But this—Travis gazed at the wild display beyond the outer door—this was the most fantastic dream made real.

That flickering red played in tongues along the horizon, filling about a quarter of the sky, ascending in licks up into the heavens. It paled stars and battled the moon which hung there—a moon three times the size of the one which accompanied his home planet.

Rippling out from about the ship was a stretch of cracked, buckled field that had once been smoothly surfaced. There was a faint crackling in the air which did not come from any wind but from static electricity. And the lurid light with its weaving alternately illuminated and reduced to shadow the whole countryside.

"Air's all right." Renfry had cautiously slipped off his helmet. At his report the others freed their own heads. The air was dry, as arid as desert wind.

"Buildings of some sort—in that direction." They turned heads to follow Ross's gesture.

Whereas the towers of the fueling field, ruined as they were, had fingered straightly into the sky, these structures, or structure, hugged the earth, the tallest portion not topping the globe. And nowhere in the red light could Travis sight anything suggesting vegetation. The desolation of the fuel port had been apparent, but here the barrenness was menacing.

None of them was inclined to go exploring under that fiery sky, and nothing moved in turn toward the ship. If this was another break in their journey, intended for the purpose of servicing their transport, the mechanics had broken down. At last the humans withdrew into the ship and closed the port, waiting for day.

"Desert . . ." Travis said that half to himself but Ashe glanced at him inquiringly.

"You mean—out there?"

"There's a feel in the air," Travis explained. "You learn to recognize it when you've lived most of your life with it."

"Is this the end of the trip?" Ross asked Renfry again.

"I don't know." They had climbed back to the control cabin. Now the technician was standing in front of the main control panel. He was frowning at it. Then he turned suddenly to Travis.

"You feel desert out there. Well, I feel machines—I've lived with them for most of
my
life. We've set down here, there's no indication that we're going to take off again. Nothing but a sense that I have—that we're not finished yet." He laughed, a little self-consciously. "All right, now tell me that I'm seeing ghosts and I'll have to agree."

"On the contrary, I agree with you so thoroughly that I'm not going too far from the ship." Ashe smiled in return. "Do you suppose this is another fuel stop?"

"No robots out," Ross objected.

"Those could have been immobilized or rusted away long ago," Renfry replied. He appeared sorry now that he had raised that doubt.

They went at last to their bunks, but if any of them slept, it was in snatches. To Travis, lying on the soft mattress which fitted itself to the comfort of his body, there was no longer any security—the ambiguous security offered by the ship while in flight. Now outside the shell he could rest his hand against was an unknown territory more liable to offer danger than a welcome. Perhaps the display of fiery lights in the night, perhaps the dry air worked on him to produce the conviction that this was not a world of machines left to carry out tasks set them before his kind had evolved. No, there
was
life here and it waited—outside.

He must have dozed, for it was Ross's hand on his shoulder which brought him awake. And he trailed after the other to the mess. He ate, still silent, but with every nerve in his gaunt body alert, convinced that danger lay outside.

They went armed, strapping on the belts supporting the aliens' weapons. And they issued into a merciless sunlight, as threatening with its white brilliance as the flames of the night before.

Ashe shielded his eyes with his hand. "Try wearing the helmets," he ordered. "They might just cut some of the glare."

He was right. When they fastened down the bubbles, the material cut that daylight so that their eyes were unaffected.

Travis had been right, too, in his belief that they were in desert country. Sand—dunes of white sand, glittering with small sun-reflecting particles which must be blinding to unshielded eyes—crept over the long-deserted landing space. Here were no other grounded ships like the ones at the first galactic port, only lonely sweeps of sand, unbroken by the faintest hint of vegetation.

Sand—and buildings, low, earth-hugging buildings—perhaps a quarter of a mile away.

The four from the ship hesitated at the foot of the ladder. It was not only Renfry's hunch that their voyage was not completed that kept them tied to the globe. The barrenness of the countryside certainly was no invitation to explore. And yet there was always a chance that some discovery might help to solve the abiding riddle of their return.

"We do it this way." Ashe, the veteran explorer, took over with decisive authority. "You stay here, Renfry—up at the door. Any sign the ship is coming to life again and you fire—on maximum."

A bolt of the force spewed from the narrow muzzle of the alien weapon would produce crackling blue fire which should be visible for miles. They were not sure of the range of the helmet coms, but they could be certain of the effectiveness of a force bolt as a warning.

"Can do!" Renfry was already swinging up the ladder, displaying no disappointment in not being one of the explorers.

Then, with Ashe in the center and the lead, the other two flanking him a little behind and to the right and left, the humans headed for the buildings. Travis mechanically studied the sand under foot. What he was searching for he could not have told, nor would that loose sand have held tracks—tracks! He glanced back. The faint depressions which marked his footsteps were already almost indistinguishable. There was certainly nothing to indicate that anyone—or
anything
—had passed over that portion of the forgotten base for days, months, years, generations.

But the sand was not everywhere. He stepped aside to avoid a broken block of the pavement tilted up to one side and forming a hollow—a concealing hollow. Travis hesitated, gazing down into that hollow.

Last night a wind had swept across this field; he had felt it up at the port of the ship. Today the air was dead, not a breeze troubled the lightest drift of sand. And that hollow was free of sand. He did not know why his instincts told him that this was wrong. But because he was nudged by that subconscious uneasiness, he went down on his knees to study the interior of the pocket with the close scrutiny of a hunter-tracker.

So he saw what he might otherwise have missed—a depression marked in the soil where the sand had not drifted. On impulse he rubbed his fingertips hard across that faint mark. There was a greasy feel. He unfastened his helmet long enough to raise those same investigating fingers to his nostrils.

A rank odor—sweat of something alive—something with filthy body habits. He was sure of it! And because that thing must have crouched here for a long time in its well-chosen hiding place to watch the ship undetected, he could also believe it possessed intelligence—of a kind. Snapping down his helmet once more, he reported his find over the com.

"You say it must have been there for some time?" Ashe's voice floated back.

"Yes. And it can't have been gone long either." He was basing all his deductions upon that lingering taint which had been imparted by a warm body to the dusty earth within the small shelter.

"No tracks?"

"They wouldn't show in this stuff." Travis scuffed his foot across a small fan of sand. No, no tracks. But there could only be one place from which the hidden watcher had come—those buildings half concealed by the creeping dunes. He stood up, walked forward, his hand swinging very close to the weapon at his belt. The sense of danger was very strong.

Ashe stood before the midpoint of the buildings—there was really only one as they could see now. Each of its two outlying wings was connected by a low-lying, windowless passage to the main block. Travis was familiar with the effects of wind and blown-sand erosion upon rock outcrops. Here the same factors had operated to pit surfaces, round and polish away corners and edges, until the walls were like the dunes rising about them.

There were no windows—no visible doorways. But at the end of the wing before Travis there was a dip in the sand dune, breaking the natural line chiseled by the wind. It was a break unusual enough to catch his alerted attention.

"Over here," he called softly, forgetting that the helmet com and not the air waves carried his voice. Slowly, with the caution of a stalker after wary game, he moved toward that break in the dune. There were no tracks, yet he was almost certain that the disturbance had been recent and made by the passage of something moving with a purpose—not just the result of a vagary of the night wind.

He rounded the pointing finger of one dune which rose at his shoulder height against the wall, and knew he was right. The sand had obviously been thrust back—blocked loosely on either side—as if some door had opened outward from the building, pushing the sand drift before it.

"Cover him!" Ashe's shadow crossed the sun-drenched sand of the dune, met the other one cast by Ross. With the two time agents at his back, the Apache began a detailed inspection of that length of wall.

Although his eyes could detect no difference in that surface, his fingers did when he ran them along about waist level. There was a strip here, extending down to the ground, which was not of the same texture as the substance above and to the sides. But though he pressed, pulled, and applied his weight to move it in every way he could think to try, there was no yielding. He was sure that that portion could open, to cause the marks in the sand.

At last, getting down on his hands and knees, Travis crawled along, trying to force fingertips under at ground's edge. And so he discovered a harsh tuft of protruding hair. Combined efforts of knife tip and fingers worked the wisp loose. It was coarse stuff, coarser than any animal's he had ever seen, each separate hair was larger than six strands of a horse's mane. And it was gray-white in color, melting into the shade of the sand so it could not be distinguished against the dunes.

Having a greasy feel, it clung to Travis' fingers. He did not really need the evidence of his nose to tell him that it was rankly odorous. He brought it back to Ashe, his distaste in handling it growing steadily. The latter put the trophy away in one of his belt pockets.

"Any chance of opening that?" Ashe indicated the hidden door in the wall.

"Not that I can see," Travis returned. "It is probably secured on the inside."

They studied the building dubiously. Behind its length, as far as they could judge, there was only a waste of sand dunes reaching out and out to the sky rim where the fire had played the night before. If there was any riddle to be solved, its answer lay inside this locked box and not in the desert countryside.

"Ross, you stay here. Travis, move on to the end of the wing. Stay there where you can see Ross—and me, as I go along the back."

Ashe used the same care as the Apache had done, running his hands along the eroded surface, seeking any indication of another door which might possibly be forced. He went the entire length of the building and came back—with nothing to report.

"There were windows once and a door. But they were all walled up a long time ago, sealed tight now. We might pick out the sealing, given time and the right tools."

Ross's voice came through the helmet coms. "Any chance of getting in through the roof, chief?"

"If you're game to try—up with you!"

Travis stood against the wall which refused to give up its secrets and Ross used him as a ladder, mounting to the roof. He moved inward and the two left on the ground lost sight of him. But on Ashe's orders he made a running commentary of what he saw through the com.

"Not much sand—you'd think there would be more . . . Hulloo!" There was an eagerness in that sudden exclamation. "This
is
something! Round plates set in circles all over—about the size of quarters. They are solid and you can't move them."

"Metal?"

"Nooo . . ." The reply was hesitant. "Seem more like some kind of glass, opaque rather than transparent."

"Windows?" suggested Travis.

"Too small," Ross protested. "But there are a lot of them—all over. Wait!" The urgency in that last cry alerted both the men on the ground. "Red—they're turning red!"

"Get out of there! Jump!" Ashe's order barked loudly in all their helmets.

Ross obeyed without question, landing with a paratrooper's practiced roll on one of the dune crests. The others scrambled to join him, all their attention focused on the roof of the sealed building. Perhaps something in the sun-repelling qualities of their helmets enabled them to see those rays as faint reddish lines cutting up from the roof far into the sky.

The skin on Travis' bare hands tingled with a pins-and-needles sensation as if the circulation in it had been arrested and was not coming back to duty. Ross scrambled up out of the sand and shook himself vigorously.

"What in the world is going on?" There was an unusual note of awe in his tone.

"I think—some fireworks to discourage you. I believe that we may assume whoever lives in there is definitely not at home to curious callers. Not only that, but the householder has some mighty unpleasant gadgets to back up his desire for privacy. Probably just as well we didn't find his, her, or its front door unlocked."