Abruptly, he was at the mesa’s edge. Dowland slid the girl to the ground, straightened up, panting, to dab at his smarting eyes. The mesa behind them had almost vanished in swirling dust.
And through the dust Dowland saw something coming over the open ground he had just traversed.
He stared at it, mouth open, stunned with a sense of unfairness. The gigantic shape was still only partly visible, but it was obvious that it was following them. It approached swiftly over the shaking ground. Dowland took out his gun, with the oddly calm conviction that it would be entirely useless against their pursuer. But he brought it up slowly and leveled it, squinting with streaming eyes through the dust.
And then it happened. The pursuer appeared to falter. It moved again in some manner; something thundered into the ground beside Dowland. Then, writhing and twisting—slowly at first, then faster—the dust-veiled shape seemed to be sinking downward through the rock surface of the mesa.
In another instant, it was gone.
Seconds passed before Dowland gradually lowered the gun again. Dazedly, he grew aware of something else that was different now. A miniature human voice appeared to be jabbering irritably at him from some point not far away. His eyes dropped to the little communicator attached to his harness.
The voice came from there.
Terra’s grid power had returned to Lion Mesa.
* * *
A week later, Lieutenant Frank Dowland was shown into the office of the chief of the Solar Police Authority. The chief introduced him to the two other men there, who were left unidentified, and told him to be seated.
“Lieutenant,” he said, “these gentlemen have a few questions to ask you. You can speak as openly to them as you would to me.”
Dowland nodded. He had recognized one of the gentlemen immediately—Howard Camhorn, the Coordinator of Research. Reputedly one of the sharpest minds in the Overgovernment’s top echelons. The other one was unfamiliar. He was a few years younger than Camhorn, around six inches shorter, chunky, with black hair, brown eyes, an expression of owlish reflectiveness. Probably, Dowland thought, wearing contact lenses. “Yes, sir,” he said to the chief, and looked back at the visitors.”
“We’ve seen your report on your recent visit to Terra, Lieutenant Dowland,” Camhorn began pleasantly. “An excellent report, incidentally—factual, detailed. What we should like to hear now are the things that you, quite properly, omitted from it. That is, your personal impressions and conclusions.”
“For example,” the other man took up, as Dowland hesitated, “Miss Trelawney has informed us her uncles were attempting to employ the YM-400 they had acquired to carry out a time-shift to an earlier Earth period—to the period known as the Pleistocene, to be somewhat more exact. From what you saw, would you say they had succeeded in doing it?”
“I don’t know, sir,” Dowland said. “I’ve been shown pictures representing that period during the past few days. The scene I described in the report probably might have existed at that time.” He smiled briefly. “However, I have the impression that the very large flying creature I reported encountering that night is regarded as being, . . . well, er . . . ah . . . .”
“A product of excited nerves?” the short man said, nodding. “Under such extraordinary circumstances, that would be quite possible, you know.”
“Yes, sir, I know.”
The short man smiled. “But you don’t think it was that?”
“No, sir,” Dowland said. “I think that I have described exactly what I did hear and see.”
“And you feel the Trelawneys established contact with some previous Earth period—not necessarily the Pleistocene?”
“Yes, I do.”
“And you report having seen a spaceship in that prehistorical period. . . .”
Dowland shook his head. “No, sir. At the moment I was observing it, I thought it was that. What I reported was having seen something that looked like a spaceship.”
“What do you think it was?”
“A timeship—if there is such a word.”
“There is such a word,” Camhorn interrupted lazily. “I’m curious to hear, lieutenant, what brought you to that conclusion.”
“It’s a guess, sir. But the thing has to fit together somehow. A timeship would make it fit.”
“In what way?”
“I’ve been informed,” Dowland said, “that the Overgovernment’s scientists have been unable to make a practical use of YM because something has invariably gone wrong when they did try to use it. I also heard that there was no way of knowing in advance what would happen to make an experiment fail. But something always would happen, and frequently a number of people would get killed.”
Camhorn nodded. “That is quite true.”
“Well, then,” Dowland said, “I think there is a race of beings who aren’t quite in our time and space. They have YM and use it, and don’t want anyone else to use it. They can tell when it’s activated here, and use their own YM to interfere with it. Then another experiment suddenly turns into a failure.
“But they don’t know yet who’s using it. When the Trelawneys turned on their machine, these beings spotted the YM stress pattern back there in time. They went to that point and reinforced the time-blending effect with their own YM. The Trelawneys hadn’t intended a complete contact with that first test. The aliens almost succeeded in blending the two periods completely in the area near the laboratory.”
“For what purpose?” Camhorn asked.
“I think they’re very anxious to get us located.”
“With unfriendly intentions?”
“The ones we ran into didn’t behave in a friendly manner. May I ask a question, sir?”
“Of course,” Camhorn said.
“When the Trelawneys’ machine was examined, was the supply of YM adequately shielded?”
“Quite adequately,” Camhorn said.
“But when I opened the door, the laboratory was hot. And Miguel Trelawney died of radiation burns. . . .”
Camhorn nodded. “Those are facts that give your theory some substance, lieutenant. No question about it. And there is the additional fact that after you shut off the YM flow in the laboratory, nearly ten minutes passed before the apparent contact between two time periods was broken. Your report indicates that the phenomena you described actually became more pronounced immediately after the shutoff.”
“Yes, sir.”
“As if the aliens might have been making every effort to retain contact with our time?”
“Yes, sir,” Dowland said. “That was my impression.”
“It’s quite plausible. Now, the indications are that Paul Trelawney actually spent considerable time—perhaps twelve to fourteen hours, at any rate—in that other period. He gave no hint of what he experienced during those hours?”
“No, sir, except to say that it was night when he appeared there. He may have told Miss Trelawney more.”
“Apparently, he didn’t,” Camhorn said. “Before you and he went into the laboratory, he warned her to watch for the approach of a creature which answers the description of the gigantic things you encountered twice. But that was all. Now, here again you’ve given us your objective observations. What can you add to them—on a perhaps more speculative basis?”
“Well, sir,” Dowland said, “my opinions on that are, as a matter of fact, highly speculative. But I think that Paul Trelawney was captured by the aliens as soon as he appeared in the other time period, and was able to escape from them a number of hours later. Two of the aliens who were attempting to recapture him eventually followed him out on Lion Mesa through another opening the YM stresses had produced between the time periods, not too far away from the first.”
Camhorn’s stout companion said thoughtfully, “You believe the birdlike creature you saw arrived by the same route?”
“Yes, sir,” Dowland said, turning to him. “I think that was simply an accident. It may have been some kind of wild animal that blundered into the contact area and found itself here without knowing what had occurred.”
“And you feel,” the other man went on, “that you yourself were passing near that contact point in the night at the time you seemed to be smelling a swamp?” Dowland nodded. “Yes, sir, I do. Those smells might have been an illusion, but they seemed to be very distinct. And, of course, there are no swamps on the mesa itself.”
Camhorn said, “We’ll assume it was no illusion. It seems to fit into the general picture. But, lieutenant, on what are you basing your opinion that Paul Trelawney was a captive of these beings for some time?”
“There were several things, sir,” Dowland said. “One of them is that when Miss Trelawney regained consciousness in the hospital she didn’t remember having made an attempt to get away from me.”
Camhorn nodded. “That was reported.”
“She made the attempt,” Dowland went on, “immediately after she had taken off her radiation suit to avoid being choked in the dust storm on the way down from the mesa. That is one point.”
“Go ahead,” Camhorn said.
“Another is that when I discovered Paul Trelawney early in the morning, he was wearing his radiation suit. Judging by his appearance, he had been in it for hours—and a radiation suit, of course, is a very inconvenient thing to be in when you’re hiking around in rough country.”