* * ** * *
It might have been almost two minutes later before Dowland began to think clearly again. He had reached the house at a dead run—a senseless flight reaction under the circumstances, not far from complete panic. In the darkness outside, the mesa had seemed to sway and tilt, treacherous footing over the eerie booming of a river which had rolled through a long-dead past. In those seconds Dowland hadn’t thought to question Jill Trelawney’s story about a machine that brought about shifts in time. His senses seemed to have as much evidence to support it as anyone could demand.
Back in the house, though the thundering disturbance continued, that conviction rapidly faded. He could close his eyes and immediately have the feeling of being on an unstable bridge above the swirls of some giant current. He could open them again and tell himself that YM-400 had a reputation for freakish effects—and that this specific effect, at any rate, should not be very harmful since Jill had reported it as having occurred on three separate occasions during the preceding day. To speak of such a commotion as being only the sound of a “river flowing under the house” seemed to approach the outrageous in understatement; but Jill Trelawney had turned out to be an unusual young person all around.
She and her uncle hadn’t stirred, but Dowland knew that their presence in the room steadied him. He knew, too, that, whatever happened next, he couldn’t allow himself to be rattled into blind fright again. The situation was dangerous enough. If he let his nerves stampede him, he would find himself unable to take any effective action.
He went over deliberately to the mountaineering harness he had dropped when he entered the lighted room, and began to check through the equipment. He intended to carry, in addition, only the communicator, the IPA gun, a canteen of water, and a small flashlight; and he would abandon the harness and its items at the foot of the mesa. There were two hunting rifles in the car, with a vastly better range than the handgun; but a rifle would slow him down and would make very little real difference if he had the bad luck to run into Carter’s Troopers in the desert.
Somewhat to his surprise, the underground tumult appeared to be growing fainter before he had concluded his inspection. Dowland paused to listen, and within a few seconds there was no more doubt about it. Jill had said it had gone on for half an hour on each of the previous occasions; but Dowland’s watch confirmed that the present disturbance was subsiding rapidly after less than ten minutes. By the time he stood up, snapped on the harness and shrugged it into position, it had become almost inaudible.
Which might be a good sign, or a bad one, or without particular significance of any kind. He couldn’t know, and he’d probably be better off if he didn’t start thinking too much about it. He turned for a last survey of the room before setting out, and discovered that Miguel Trelawney had opened his eyes and was looking at him.
* * *
Dowland stood stockstill for a moment, hardly daring to believe it. Then, quietly, he unbuckled the harness again, and let it down to the floor. The eyes of the big man on the couch seemed to follow the motion, then shifted slowly up toward the ceiling of the room, and closed again.
“Trelawney,” Dowland said softly, without moving.
Miguel Trelawney made a deep, sighing sound, turned on his side and lay quiet, his back now to Dowland. A few seconds later, Dowland was looking down at him from the other side of the couch.
It might have been only a momentary thing, a brief advantage medic had gained in its invisible struggle with a process which would still end in death. But he couldn’t be sure. The eyes remained closed, the pulse was weak and unsteady. Dowland thought of injecting a stimulant into Trelawney, and discarded the idea immediately. Medic manufactured its own stimulants as required, counteracted any others. Even the effects of the quiz-drug would be reduced by it, but not enough to keep Dowland from getting any answer he wanted—provided Trelawney’s mind cleared for only three or four minutes of lucidity.
There was no way of knowing when such a period of lucidity might develop. But now that the man had appeared to awaken, the possibility that it would happen within the next hour or two became a very definite one.
Dowland stood briefly in scowling indecision. The next hour or two could also see him nearly down the side of the mesa, depending on the difficulties of the descent . . . but there was no real choice. It was a gamble either way again; if Trelawney didn’t awaken, the other gamble remained. . . . How long, at most, could he afford to delay?
Leaving YM out of the calculation, since it couldn’t be calculated, he had only the arrival of the Freeholder Troopers to consider. There was no apparent possibility that any sizable party could appear before daybreak, but there was an even chance they would be there around that time. When they came, he must either be in communication with the Solar Police Authority or far enough away from Lion Mesa to be able to avoid detection. . . .
Four hours should be enough to give him a reasonable safety margin. He had till midnight, or a little later.
Dowland pulled a chair up to the side of the couch and sat down. The night wasn’t quiet.
The hogs squalled occasionally, and the wind still seemed to be rising. In spite of his efforts to avoid unsettling lines of thought, the nightmarish quality of the situation on the mesa kept returning to his mind and wasn’t easily dismissed. The past—the past of over half a million years ago—had moved close to the present tonight. . . . That was the stubborn, illogical feeling—and fear—which he couldn’t entirely shake off.
* * *
Half an hour later, Miguel Trelawney began breathing uneasily, then stirred about, but lapsed again within seconds into immobile unconsciousness.
Dowland resumed his waiting.
His watch had just told him it was shortly before eleven-thirty when he heard the shots. They were three shots—clear, closely spaced cracks of sound, coming from a considerable distance away. Dowland was out of his chair with the second one, halfway down the dark entry hall as he heard the third. He opened the door at the end of the hall just wide enough to slip through, moved out quickly, and closed the door behind him to keep the glow of light from the living room from showing outside.
As the door snapped shut, there were three more shots. A hunting rifle. Perhaps two miles to the north . . .
* * *
Dowland stood staring up toward the wind-tossed line of the forest above the ranch area. Who was up there on the mesa—and why the shooting? Had the Troopers managed to get some men in by air? What would they be firing at?
Signal shots, he thought then. And a signal to the ranch, in that case . . . Signaling what?
With that, another thought came, so abruptly and convincingly that it sent a chill through him.
Doctor Paul Trelawney . . .
Paul Trelawney, not in the laboratory building—as Jill had surmised. Gone elsewhere, now returned. And, like his brother, returned to a point other than the one from which he had left.
A man exhausted and not sure of where he was on the big tableland, an injured man—or perhaps one weakened by radiation sickness—such a man would fire a gun in the night to draw attention to himself. To get help.
Minutes later, Dowland was headed in the direction from which the shots had come, carrying one of his own rifles, along with the police gun. It was very unlikely he could get close enough to Trelawney—if it was Trelawney—to be heard approaching; but once he reached the general area of the shots, he would fire the rifle, and wait for a response. In the forest, the wind was wild and noisy, and the going was as rough as he had suspected it would be. Moonlight flowed into the open rocky stretches occasionally, and faded again as clouds moved on overhead. Among the trees he could barely see his way and had to advance more slowly.
He came presently to a wide, smooth hump of rock shouldering up through the timber, and stopped to check the time. Twenty-five minutes had passed since he left the area of the house. If he had calculated correctly, the shots should have come from approximately this point. He moved somewhat cautiously into the open—a man waiting for help would think of selecting a place where he could be easily seen; and this could be the spot Paul Trelawney had chosen. And Trelawney, armed with a gun, might react rather abruptly if he saw a stranger approach.