“The supply port was long deserted,” Travis pointed out. “There may be nothing left of their empire anywhere.”
“Well, we’ve not found the home port yet.” Renfry got to his feet. “Once we set down there—I hadn’t intended to say this, but if we ever get to the end of this trip, there’s a chance we may get back, providing—“ He drummed his fingers against the door casing. “Providing we have more than our share of luck.”
“How?” demanded Ashe.
“The controls must now be set with some sort of a guide-perhaps a tape. Once we are grounded and I can get to work, that might just be reversed. But there are a hundred ‘ifs’ between us and earth, and we can’t count on anything.”
“There’s this, too,” Ashe added thoughtfully to that faintest of hopes. “I’ve been studying the material we have found. If we can crack their language tapes—some of the records we have discovered here must deal with the maintenance and operation of the ship.”
“And where in space are you going to find a Rosetta Stone?” returned Travis. He did not dare to believe that either of the two discoveries might be possible. “No common word heritage.”
“Aren’t mathematics supposed to be the same, no matter •what language? Two and two always add to four, and sums such as that?” puzzled Ross.
“Please find me some symbols on any of those tapes you’ve been running through the reader that have the smallest resemblance to any numbers seen on earth.” Renfry had swung back to the pessimistic side of the balance. “Anyway—I’m not meddling with the machines in that control cabin while we’re still in space.”
Still in space—how long were they going to keep on voyaging? And somehow they found this second lap of their journey into nowhere worse than the first had been. All of them had been secretly convinced that there was only one goal, that their first star port would be their last. But the short pause to refuel now promised a much longer trip. Their only way of telling time -was by the hours marked on the dial of Renfry’s watch. Days—Ashe made a record of those by counting hours. It was one week since they had left the fuel port—two days more.
Out of the sheer necessity for keeping their minds occupied, they pried at the puzzles offered them in the ship. Ashe had already mastered the operation of a small projector which “read” the wire-kept records, and so opened up not a new world but worlds. The singsong speech which went with the pictures meant nothing to the Terrans. But the pictures— and such pictures! Three-dimensional, colored, they allowed one a window on the incomprehensible life of a complex civilization stretching from star to star.
Races, cultures, and only a third of them humanoid— were these actually factual records? Or were they fiction meant to divert and amuse during the long hours of space travel? Or reports of some service action? They could guess at any answer to what they saw unrolled on the screen of the small machine. “If this was a police ship and those are authentic reports of past cases,” commented Ross, “they sure had their little problems.” He had watched with rapt attention a very lurid battle through a jungle which appeared to be largely waterlogged. The enemy there was represented by white amphibious things with a distracting ability to elongate parts of their bodies at “will—to the discomfiture of opponents they were so able to ensnare. “On the other hand,” he went on, “these may be just cheer-for-the-brave-boys-in-blue story writing to amuse the idle hour. Who are we to know?”
“There’s one which I discovered this morning—of more interest to us personally.” Ashe sorted through the plate-shaped containers of record wire. “Take a look at this now.” He drew out the coil of the jungle battle and inserted the new spool.
They watched the minute screen expectantly. Travis tried to guess the meaning of the high-pitched cackle of explanation which rang through the cabin, its tone shrill enough to rasp human ears.
Then they saw a sky, gray, lowering with thick clouds. Below it stretched a waste of what could only be snow such as they knew on their own world. A small party moved into the range of the picture, and the familiar blue suits of those in it were easy to distinguish against the gray-white of the monotonous background.
“Suggest anything to you?” Ashe asked of Ross.
Murdock was leaning forward, studying the picture with a new intentness that argued an unusual interest in so simple a scene.
There were four blue-suited, bald-headed humanoids. They wore no outer clothing and Travis remembered Ross’s remarks concerning the insulating qualities of the strange material. Over their heads they did have the bubble helmets, and they were traveling at a pace which suggested the need for caution in footing. The tape blinked in one of those quick changes to which the viewers had become accustomed. Now they must be surveying the same country from the angle of one of the four blue-clad travelers. There was a sudden, breath-taking drop; the camera must have skimmed at top speed down into a valley. Before them lay a second descent—and the perspectives were out of proportion.
They were not distorted enough, however, to hide what the photographer wanted to record. The viewers were gazing down onto a wide, level space and in that, half buried in banks of drifted snow, was one of the large alien freighters.
“It can’t be!” Ross’s expression was one of startled surprise.
“Keep watching,” Ashe bade.
At a distance, around the stranded half globe, black dots moved. They trailed off on a line marked clearly in the beaten snow as a path which had been worn by a good amount of traffic. There was another disconcerting click and again they saw ice—a huge, murky wall of it, rearing into the gray sky. And directly to that wall of ice led the beaten path.
“The Red time post! It must be! And this ship”—Ross was almost sputtering—“this ship must have been mixed up in that raid on the Reds!”
There was a last click and the screen went blank.
“Where’s the rest?” Ross demanded.
“You’ve seen all there is. If they recorded any more, it’s not on this spool.” Ashe fingered the colored tag fastened to the container from which he had taken the coil. “Nothing else with a label matching this, either.”
“I wonder if the Reds got back at them some way. If that was what killed off the crew later. Germ warfare. . . .” Ross jiggled the switch of the projector back and forth. “I suppose we’ll never know.”
Then, over their heads, blasting the usual quiet of the ship, came the warning from the control cabin where Renfry kept his self-imposed watch.
“She’s triggering for another break-through, fellas. Strap down! I’d say we’re due for the big snap very soon!”
They hurried to the bunks. Travis pulled at his protecting webbing. What would they find this time? Another robot-inhabited way stop—or the home port they were longing to reach? He set himself to endure the wrench of the breakthrough from distance-defeating hyper-space to normal time, hoping that familiarity would render the ordeal easier.
Once more the ship and the men in it were racked by that turnover which defied natural laws and paid in discomfort of mind and body.
“Sun ahead.” Travis, opening his eyes, heard Renfry’s voice, a little sharpened, through the ship-wide com. “One—two-four planets. We seem to be bound for the second.”
More waiting time. Then once more descent into atmosphere, the return of weight, the vibration singing through walls and floors about them. Then the set-down, this time with a slight grating bump, as if the landing had not been so well controlled as it had at the fueling port.
“This is different. . . .” Renfry’s report trailed into silence, as if what he saw in the plate had shocked him into speechlessness.
They climbed to the control cabin, crowded below that window on the new world. It must be night—but a night which was alive with reddish light, as if some giant fire filled the sky with the reflection of its fury. And that light rippled even as flames would ripple in their leaping.
“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!”
10
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.