The Fury Out of Time (34 page)
Read The Fury Out of Time Online
Authors: Lloyd Biggle Jr.
Tags: #alien, #Science Fiction, #future, #sci-fi, #time travel
A rock smacked into his chest, leaving him unhurt but shaken. He moved sideward and began to climb again, shouting as he fumbled for hand- and footholds, “Stop! Stop and listen, you idiots!”
The rocks chased after him. No one with an urge to throw them had ever worked with a better source of supply. Whatever finally stopped the Hras, it wouldn’t be because they ran out of ammunition. Through all the eons since some mysterious force had gouged this valley, the mountains had alternately frozen and baked and slowly eroded an enormous accumulation of debris; and the Hras were throwing everything that they could move.
“Stop, you idiots!” Karvel shouted. “Don’t you see? The future didn’t find us. Their planes and ships are nothing like yours, and if they had found us—”
A ricochet staggered him, and in the instant while he was regaining his balance all of his ingenious reasoning crumbled. A hundred million years of development would have altered the Hras ship beyond recognition, and its discovery would have been buried deeply in man’s forgotten history.
In angry frustration he continued to climb. He found another ledge, and quickly determined that it led nowhere. He could not climb higher, and sober reflection convinced him that he would never climb down again. He could not possibly remember the tenuous hand- and footholds that connected these ledges, and no amount of nerve-wracking search could locate them in the dark.
A rock slammed into his kneecap and left him writhing in agony. The knowledge that the Hras were sucking the pain from his mind, savoring it greedily, infuriated him.
“Is that the hardest you can throw?” he taunted.
They were ranging in on him in earnest, and he was struck repeatedly. He sent off another taunt. “Is that the hardest—”
Light flashed somewhere above him. He whirled to look upward, lost his balance, and fell.
For one blazing instant the valley was starkly illuminated. The Hras stood motionless, transfixed by light, some with arms frozen in the act of throwing. The rocks they had already launched still arched swiftly upward.
The light vanished as abruptly as it had appeared, and Karvel fell into darkness.
He lay on the hammock in the spaceship. Hras Drawa was there, and Hras Klaa, and the corridor beyond the circular door was crowded with Hras. Karvel spoke around the edges of a monstrous headache. “You caught me?”
“No,” Hras Drawa said. “We tried to catch you—”
“You broke my fall, anyway. It looked like a long way down, but I suppose on the moon one doesn’t fall as hard. Are there any broken bones?”
“We do not think so, but you will have many hurts.”
“I already have many hurts,” Karvel growled. He would be one unending bruise from head to foot. He shook his head, but the headache did not lessen. He said slowly, “That light. . .”
Hras Drawa waited silently.
“There must have been one of those crevasses above me.”
“Far above you,” Hras Drawa said.
“And one of you threw a uranium detector.”
“Many of us threw them.”
“Of course. They’re just the right size and weight for effective throwing. But one of you missed me by the proverbial country mile, and the detector sailed far back into the crevasse. And before it landed and smashed itself it detected a fair amount of uranium.”
“An enormous deposit,” Hras Drawa said. “Deep in the mountain.”
“You disappoint me,” Karvel said bitterly. “I saw you climbing, and I assumed that you investigated the deep crevasses. You weren’t really searching—you were just going through the motions.”
“We searched as high as we could climb,” Hras Drawa said. “We could not reach the crevasses.”
“You’ll reach that one now, won’t you?”
Hras Drawa hesitated, and then said weakly, “Yes—”
“That’s exactly what I mean. You went through the motions. You searched as high as you could climb conveniently, and not an inch farther. You expected to find the uranium piled up and waiting for you.” He shifted his leg, and winced. Hras Drawa hovered over him anxiously.
Karvel said thoughtfully, “Your leaders—your
real
leaders—were killed, weren’t they?”
“In the explosion,” Hras Drawa said. “And when we first landed in the swamp.”
“I suppose that explains your muddled searches, and your U.O. blundering, and everything else. You needed someone to tell you what to do. If I’d had a suit when you were exploring the valley, I’d have told you.” He shrugged resignedly. “Well, you’ve found your uranium. It’s easy to see why the base was located down in the valley. Obviously they couldn’t build it in the crevasse, and it was probably easier to tunnel after the ore than to put machinery up there and work in the open. Try to get the stuff out without leaving any traces, if that’s possible. Man will encounter enough mysteries on the moon without having to wonder who’s been mining the uranium.”
“We will work with care. There will be no traces.”
“That also applies to all the mucking about you’ve done since we’ve landed. Maybe a hundred million years will cover your tracks. If not, the first human explorers will think a herd of drunken moon cattle stampeded up and down the valley.”
“The tracks will be removed,” Hras Drawa promised.
“Fine. Carry on, then. Go get the uranium.”
Hras Drawa did not move. None of them moved. The silence lengthened as Karvel looked from Hras Drawa to Hras Klaa and to the Hras crowded into the open circle of the doorway.
“It’s all right,” he said. “You couldn’t help it I understand.”
Then they left him.
Chapter 7
Most of the dinosaurs were gone. A few stragglers grazed futilely along the bare fringes of the swamp, but the vast herds had taken what they could of the scanty vegetation and moved on. The drought had intensified; the small stream at the foot of the hill was a twisting ribbon of sand and—where a few shallow pools had stood—dried mud.
On the plain the Hras ship loomed enormously.
“In any case,” Hras Drawa said, “we cannot leave you here. There is no water. You will not reconsider?”
Karvel shook his head. “No. I’m honored, and very grateful, but—no.” To live out his life sleeping in beds that were too small, and stooping through round doorways, and being served foods that he could not eat, and appearing to all and sundry as weird-looking as the Hras appeared to him—it had not required much reflection for him to decline their generous offer to take him home with them.
“What are you going to do?” Hras Drawa asked.
“I haven’t thought about it. I really don’t know.”
“Do you wish to return to your own time?”
Did an escaped convict wish to return to prison? “There’s Force X to consider,” Karvel said lightly.
“You can now return without causing significant damage,” Hras Drawa said, rolling out the word
significant
with a lilting wheeze. Of all the Hras, only Hras Drawa seemed to enjoy talking to Karvel. “We can arrange for you to take ample fuel. You could travel in many short time leaps, and arrive without the Force X.”
“I’d forgotten about that.”
“And we would give you instruction in the operation of the U.O., so that you could plot your distance accurately.”
“You’d really leave the U.O. for my use? I don’t think any human should be trusted with it.”
“We could not leave you marooned in this terrible. . .terrible
environment.”
Hras Drawa wheezed out the word gleefully. “In any case, we cannot leave you in this place. There is no water. If you like we will move the time beacon and the U.O. to the mountains, where there is water and you will be safe from dinosaurs.”
“Fine. If it isn’t too much trouble.”
“Not at all. We must replenish our own water. And we will build you another cabin. And fit the U.O. with reserve fuel tanks, so that you will have ample to return to your own time whenever you are ready.”
“Fine,” Karvel said. Return to his own time to do what? Take up astronauting again? After what he’d seen and done, a rocket landing on the moon would be, to put it mildly, anticlimactic.
And he foresaw problems.
The authorities, bless them, probably regretted their haste in dispatching the U.O. If they got their hands on it again, and learned that it could be operated safely, they would certainly proceed to operate it.
Like the Overseer, they would look for ways to turn a profit.
Hras Drawa was still wheezing. “—leave you any tools you want, and supplies—”
“Fine,” Karvel murmured.
“—and a reserve of fuel to be stored at the time beacon, so that you can return there in case—”
“In case I go somewhere and then change my mind? Fine.”
He felt superbly at peace with himself. His mountain peaks were still unattainable, and always would be; but he had climbed high, and the view was dazzling.
“What are you going to do?” Hras Drawa asked again.
“I won’t know until I’ve given it some thought,” Karvel said.
He needed new worlds, or new times, to conquer. He might find a tribe of primitive men and set himself up in the God business. Or probe the deeply remote past, and laugh hilariously as he watched man’s distant ancestor drag itself out of the slime of the sea. He had stood on Earth long before the human race existed; it might be amusing to stand there again when man was not even an obscene memory.
First there was work to be done—to move the U.O. and the time beacon, to build a new cabin, to choose the equipment and supplies he would need. And then, when the Hras left, he must sleep. He had been unable to rest well on the spaceship, and he was desperately tired.
Tomorrow he would decide.
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