“End of run—here we go. . . .”
As far as Travis could see they were still in the box. But when Ashe pushed open the door panel, they looked out not on the piled boxes which had lain there before but upon an untidy heap of rocks. And clambering over those in the wake of his companions, the Apache did find a very different world before him.
Gone was the desert with its burden of sun-heated rock. A plain of coarse grass, thigh-, even waist-high, rolled away to some hills. And that grassy plain was cut by the end of a lake which stretched northward beyond the horizon. Travis saw brush and small trees dotting in clumps. And, too distant for him to distinguish their species, he could make out .slowly moving lumps which could only be grazing animals.
There was a sun overhead, but a cold, harassing wind whipped with an ice-tipped lash around Travis’ three-quarters-bare body. He pulled the hide robe about his shoulders, and saw that his companions had copied that move. The air was not only chilly, it was dank with a wealth of moisture.
And there were new, rank smells, which his nostrils could not identify, carried by each puff of breeze. This world was as harsh and grim as his own, but in a very different fashion.
Ashe stooped and rolled aside one of the nearby rocks to disclose a small box. From his supply bag he produced three small buttons, giving one to each of the younger men.
“Plant that in your left ear,” he ordered, and did so with his own. Then he pushed a key on the side of the box. Instantly a low chirruping sound was audible. “This is our homing signal. It acts as radar to bring you back here.”
“What’s that?”
A plume of smoke, whipped by the wind into a long trail of gray-white vapor, bannered to the north. From the shape Travis could not believe that it marked a forest fire, yet it surely signalized a conflagration of some size.
Ashe glanced up casually. “Volcano,” he returned. “This part of the world hasn’t settled down too stably yet. We head northwest, around the lake tip, and we should strike the wreck.” He started off at a steady lope which told Travis that this was not the first time the time agent had played the role of primitive hunter.
The grass brushed against them, leaving drops of cold moisture on their bare legs and thighs. Travis concluded that there must have been rain very shortly before their arrival. , And from the look of the massing clouds to the east, a second storm might catch them soon.
As they came away from the hill whose foot sheltered the time transfer, that chirruping in his ear grew fainter, varying in intensity as Ashe twisted and turned about the hooked end of the lake. The wide reach of lush grass continued and this was truly game country. As yet, though they had not passed close enough to any of the grazers to see what type of animals they were.
About a half mile from the curving shore of the lake rested an object which was not natural. Pushed deep into the earth, its rounded side showing two jagged rents, lay a half globe of metallic material. Around it was a wide patch of blackened earth only raggedly striped with new grass. But what impressed Travis chiefly was the object’s size. He deduced that perhaps only half of the thing was visible—if its form had originally been a true globe. Yet that half now above the earth was at least six stories tall. The complete vessel must have been a veritable monster, more equal to an ocean liner than the largest sky transport he knew of in his own time.
“She certainly got it!” observed Ross. “Bad crack up at landing—“
“Or else she had it before landing.” Ashe leaned on a spear to survey the hulk.
“What-?”
“Those holes might have been caused by shell fire. We’ll leave that to the experts to determine. But this could be a wreck from a space battle. That storm’s coming fast. I say we’d better circle west ahead of it and find some shelter in the hills. If the first reports are correct, we’ll be caught in a kind of rain we know nothing about!”
Ashe’s lope lengthened into a trot, and the trot into a space-covering run. He was heading away from the wrecked ship to the distant hills, and to reach them they had to round the narrow end of the lake.
They were carefully threading their way through the edge of a marshy spot when a scream halted them. Travis knew that it was a death cry, but the sound was followed by an appalling, yowling squall which could come from no throat, animal or human, of his own time. It sounded from directly before them. The squall was answered in turn by a grunting, such a grunting as might have issued from the deep chest of a giant pig. And that grunting was echoed on a higher note almost directly behind them!
“Down!” Travis obeyed the order from Ashe, throwing himself flat on the muddy ground, wriggling to the left. A moment later all three scouts huddled in a growth of tough brush. They paid no attention to the torment inflicted by its brambles on their arms and shoulders, for they had front-row seats on a wild drama which held them enthralled.
Crumpled on the ground was a mound of heaving flesh, plainly in the death throes, its long, shaggy yellow hair sodden with blood. Crouched at bay behind that body was another animal. Travis could classify it when he caught sight of those long, curved fangs: sabertooth. It was slightly shorter than a lion of Travis’ own day, and its muscular legs and powerful shoulders displayed a threat of force which would daunt a larger beast. But now it was facing a giant. . . .
The opponent, whose cub had been killed, was a mountain of flesh, rearing almost eighteen feet above the ground. Balanced on large-boned kind feet and thick tail, it fronted sabertooth with powerful forearms, each tipped with a gigantic single claw. The narrow head twisted and turned above the slender forebody, the thick brown hair covering it in constant movement.
There was a rank smell of animal blown to the men in the brush as a second monstrous ground sloth moved in to give battle. And the sabertooth spat like the enraged cat it was.
4
A HAND closed on Travis’ arm, jerking his attention from the shaping battle. Ashe pointed westward and pulled again. Ross was already creeping in that direction. The wind was at their back so that they caught the fetor of the beasts without danger of their being scented in turn.
“Get to it!” Ashe ordered. “We don’t want that cat on our trail. It can’t take on two adult sloths and it’ll be one mighty disappointed diner—out looking for another meal pretty soon now.”
They wormed their way forward, trying to gauge from the squalls of the cat, the grunting of the sloths, whether battle had yet reached the stage of actual blows. If the cat was smart, Travis knew, it •would let itself be driven off. And knowing the tactics of mountain lions of his southwest, he believed that that was what would happen.
“Okay—run!” Ashe scrambled to his feet and set a good pace across the open lands, the other two thudding behind him. The sun had completely disappeared now, and the gray-ness under those lowering clouds approached twilight. The thin chirrup of their homing device sounded very lonely and far away.
Brown-gray lumps swung up heads with -wide stretches of horns. Save that those horns were straight and not curved, the animals might have been the bison of the historic plains. Catching the scent of the scouts, they tossed those horned heads, set off northward down the open land at a lumbering gallop. Among them ran with speed and far more grace large-headed horses equipped with the spectacularly striped coats of zebras. This was plainly a hunter’s paradise.
The rain came from behind the men, making a visible curtain of water. When that enfolded them, Travis gasped, choked, fought for breath under the flood which beat and pounded him. But his legs kept the striding pace Ashe had set, and the three continued to head for the hills which were now only vaguely visible through the downpour.
A rising slope slowed them, and twice they had to leap runnels of streams carrying away the excess of water being dumped on the heights above them. Lightning cracked with a lashing viciousness, bringing a scrap of illumination with it.
A hand caught at Travis to the left, and so into partial shelter from the storm.
He was crowded together with Ashe and Ross, half crouching in the lee of some rocks. It was not quite a cave, but the crevice was better than the open slope.